and the plan that Jimmy makes, it is like this
by J. A. Tyler
When a mother is cut in half it makes two directions, one way to go, and another. Jimmy’s mother was, like that, made into two. So Jimmy, he has two plans.
His mother, Jimmy’s, she drank so tight into herself that she could hear people applauding her singing when no words were actually coming out of her mouth, no melodies, and no people were nearby her. And Jimmy, he could do that, he could get his dad, who is bleeding in and out of existence anyway, without his wife, without Jimmy’s mother, he could be the one to drop the money on the counter and carry the bottles home, hook them to Jimmy’s lips and walk with him to the tracks, like mother like son, sit on the steel and await the running of trains on lines. This is one thing that Jimmy could do. This is one way that Jimmy could do to make the noises in his head, the static he hears when he can’t hear anything else, Jimmy could make all that stop.
And Jimmy too, because he knows that the sun has two ways about it, it has the setting and the rising, Jimmy knows that there is always more than one way about anything.
So Jimmy he knows too that he could drink himself down like his mother, the way of his mother and his father’s wife, or he could do something else. He could in fact, go against what his mother always said. And his mother, Jimmy’s mother, she always said to him when he was going off fishing, you stay away from the water, the shore, it is a danger.
And Jimmy, with fishing on his hands always made sure to step at least one toe in, if not the ankle or up to the knees, the waist, because the fishing in the river was only good when he was wading, and the pond was weed-beds up close and walking out was the only way to get there, where the fish were bigger and he could feel the fight.
So to Jimmy, there was the water too, not the drinking down but lowering his body beneath a liquid lid, taking away the air of his breath and going against his mother just as she had gone against herself, the always saying that she would never leave, would never die, and then her going and doing it anyway, dying, and taking away from Jimmy all the choices that he had, save these last two, that are in front of him now, wandering and with too much time to decide.
Jimmy is not dumb, he will choose right.
J. A. Tyler is the author of SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (ghost road press, 2009) and IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (willows wept press, 2010) as well as the chapbooks ZOO: THE TROPIC HOUSE (sunnyoutside, 2009), EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING OF DEATH (achilles, 2008), and THE GIRL IN THE BLACK SWEATER (trainwreck press, 2008) . He is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press. Visit: J. A. Tyler.Com