Bob in the Crosshairs

Damian Dressick

 Cheryl

 Our first date was a humid Friday night in late spring and he took me to see his uncle’s band play the Polish Falcon’s Nest. The weather was warm for that time of year and we sweat through our clothes moving around the high-ceilinged room to songs like the “Beer Barrel Polka” and “That’ll Be the Day.” I liked how his muscles bulged his tight collar and tapered sleeves, the way his big hands held me through the damp, clinging cotton of my blouse as we spun on the sawdusted wooden floor. During the slow numbers, I let him pull me in close. I stared up into his coffee-colored eyes, watched the curve of his thick lips. I adored the way his pomade-darkened hair stayed shellacked in place, except for an inky squiggle that dangled over his forehead like it was taking a dare.

Outside, I noticed the welding scars on his wrists and forearms when he leaned in to kiss me. His chest felt solid against my splayed palm, reassuring, but his tongue was too big for my mouth and I could smell the sweat souring on his shirt in the night air. I told him my dad needed me home before eleven and started for the passenger door of his Dodge, leaving him standing with his thick arm on the yellow brick wall of the Falcon’s, cigarette burning away to nothing.

Lois

I could tell right away he didn’t belong in Principles of Modern Accounting any more than a golden retriever belongs in command of missile defense for the European Theatre—but there he sat, hunched in the second row, coveralls stained black, cigarette behind his ear, gnawed pencil between his fingers week after week, look of confusion on his face so intent we all assumed his first language was something quite unrelated to English, at least until the soggy afternoon around midterms when he cocked his hip and asked me for a light.

He told me he owned a garage out on the highway and had taken the class to get up to speed on the billing since his wife left him high and dry the year before. The first night he drove me out there, he put the moves on me right away, throwing his arm around my shoulder as we drove, his hand brushing at the swell of my breast.

We only ever slept together in his garage nights after class when my sister thought I was mastering the intricacies of monetary unit assumption with the ladies’ study group. Each time we did it, he bent me over the quarter panel of a car in for repairs, a Pontiac or a Chevy. He’d call me a “dirty bitch” and worse the whole time we were screwing. It excited me that he actually seemed very angry when we did it, like I was a stand-in for everything that was wrong with the world. It was flattering to be focused on so intently. It kept me coming back for a while. After the semester break, when we didn’t see each other for a few weeks, I thought I might need some kind of therapy and when I saw his number on the caller ID, I let the phone ring and ring.

Jo

No matter what you’ve heard, nothing much happened between us. Not, at least, until the middle of his divorce proceedings. Even then it wasn’t much. Twice. Maybe, three times. He’d toy with the hem of my skirt as I sat on the edge of my desk while we went over the testimony he’d give the judge. He’d grouse about how unhappy he’d been with his wife, talk up his experiences with other women. He’d compliment the smell of my dark hair, the cut of my dresses, the curve of my ass. Some nights he’d rest his hand on my knee. One night when I was pissed at Karl for not paying me enough attention, I let it stay there.

I’m well aware, however, small towns never offer generous allowances of discretion for outsiders. It isn’t a long journey—maybe only from the corner bar to the coffee shop—before lawyers, especially married ones, who don’t have their own trove of secrets to raise as a bulwark against rumor, become the butt of sexual appetite jokes, at least for the few trying months that precede the rigors of a disbarment hearing.

Martha

Thursdays were my nights. I’d press the buzzer for his apartment over the Tipple Tavern and he’d let me in. We’d sit on the bed and swig Budweiser from cold brown bottles, watch television till Leno, then screw standing up. The first time I found panties two sizes too small bunched under the bed, I told him I wouldn’t be back. The second time, I learned I might be the kind of woman who puts up with that sort of thing and he was the sort of man who would let me.

 Caroline

My father’s kidney problems aren’t the root of his meanness, but I’m hoping they become the root of my forgiveness. The winding, meditative drive to Dave’s Dialysis grants us the dubious blessing of proximity. His rheumy eyes twitch in their dark sockets taking in the coal country landscape like a punishment.

In the waiting room, I read Family Circle or Redbook, think about what to make for dinner, imagine my mother in her patterned apron and bouffant pulling a tray of steaming haluski from the oven as we wait at the Formica table in the kitchen of our frame house on Sixth Street, sour look on her broad face suggesting tolerance pushed hours too far into the night and faltering. I picture my father reclined on the chilly table inside, shriveled body badged with the titanium intake valve that saves his life every week. I try to decide if my mother were still alive, would she be grateful?

Sometimes on the way back to my father’s ranch house off the highway we’ll stop at the Valley Dairy on Dark Shade Drive. He’ll order an egg white omelet with turkey bacon, slash his eyes sideways and joke with the waitress about the weather, the football team. On these mornings when he’s full of clean blood, I’ll want to ask him about the women that took him away from us, ask him if they were worth breaking our hearts, but instead I sit quietly in the booth, watch him chew his eggs like they’re beefsteak.

Damian Dressick is the author of the story collection Fables of the Deconstruction (forthcoming CLASH Books 2020). His stories and essays have appeared in more than fifty literary journals and anthologies, including W.W. Norton’s New Micro, failbetter.com, Post Road Cutbank, New Orleans Review, Hippocampus, Smokelong Quarterly and New World Writing. A Blue Mountain Residency Fellow, he holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Damian teaches at Clarion University.