Charlie’s a big boy.  When he was ten his parents bought him a super twin-sized bed, and by the time he was eleven he could eat two men’s worth of fried fish nuggets and ice-cream sundaes from the seafood buffet at the Sizzler.  That was just before his dad really moved up at GE.  Now he can eat two men’s worth of lobster bisque and duck liver pate.  At twenty-two he’s perfectly content to be living with his parents and working two part-time jobs.  In a week he’ll be twenty-three.  He wants a motorcycle for his birthday.  It occurred to Charlie earlier today that he hadn’t been under a bed in a while.  He’d hidden under beds all the time when he was younger—for games and sometimes to avoid mowing the lawn.  But it’s been awhile, and he wonders if he can still fit...

…I’ve forgotten what day it is again.  If it’s Wednesday then I have to be in the Kroger meat department in ten minutes.  If it’s Tuesday then I have to be at the restaurant in an hour.  If by some stretch it’s Saturday then Gary and Steve are waiting for me right now at the bar on Frankfort.  I think that may be it.  I bet I’m supposed to be at the bar.  I’m never late.  Why am I running late, just thinking of these things now?  I think it may be that I’m under the bed, that the reason that I’m late is that I-am-under-the-bed.  How the hell did I fit under the bed?  I can’t breathe very well here.
What’s that noise?  Who’s that talking?  Is that the machine?

"CharliEEEEEEEE!  Answer the phone, Charlie.  Charlie?  Get out of bed, CharrrrrrrliEE!  You were supposed to be here an hour and a half ago.  Char—what?  He’s not picking up…”

“Ha…haa…hey…guys.”

Way to go, man!  You’re supposed to be at the bar…with beer.  And there could be girls there.  They could be sitting with girls right now.  No, they’re not sitting with girls.  Hem.  Ha-ha.  I know what kind of girls they’d sit with.  They’d—wait, I’m under the bed, and I can’t get out and I’m breathing-real-hard-it-hurts-my-chest-on-the-springs……

…Shit.  What day is this?  It’s Thursday, I think, I’m thinking, it’s Thursday.  It’s a good thing that I’m off work because I’m under the bed.  And since it’s Thursday, I don’t have to meet the guys and those girls they’re sitting with until Saturday, on Frankfort.  I think the really sad thing about being stuck under the bed is that I didn’t think that I could get under the bed and that if I did then I would probably get stuck—under the bed.  The sad thing is that when I thought that, I was right, and I was pretty sure even then, even before I got myself stuck under the bed, that I was right.

Now THAT is a spider.  More importantly that’s a spider that I can’t kill because when I am stuck under the bed like this, if I move my hands away from the underside of the bed then I won’t be able to breathe well and I will pass out.  And also I wouldn’t be able to wipe my hand off, I don’t think.  I…should really try now to get out from under the bed.  I got my---head---to---my foot---if I can push on something---on---with my arm---shoulder…I-can’t-breathe… …

…Yeah.  Day day day day day Tuesday.  It’s Tuesday.  I’m gonna be late for work.  I really liked that job but they’re gonna fire me now.  Because it’s Tuesday and I’m not slicing a pound of bologna…I’m not slapping that meat, slappin’, slappy slappy slap pap pappa… …

…I’m under the bed still.  I think maybe I should consider really trying hard to think of some way to get out from under here because I don’t know if it’s really very good for my brain to pass out so much.  GOD!  I am SUCH an idiot.  Idiot!  Idiot! Idiot!  That sounds funny  iii-deeee---uuuuut.
I have to pee.

All right!  Puuuuuuuuuush!

Ah yeeeah, I was stuck under the bed, but now that I managed to push the mattress and box springs up with my huge strong arms, and the mattress pushed up and over at least a foot, and then I crawled out and lay down away from the bed, now I am—not-under the bed.  I’m already feeling a lot better.  I didn’t feel very well at first after I was under the bed for four hours and then pushed the mattress and box springs off.  I felt dizzy.  Now I think I’ll get up and go meet the guys for Monday night football.  Hmm, maybe I’ll stay here for a min—… …

 “Hey, gimme the remote—no, the one on the table—no, that’s to the stereo—yeah, that one.”  Steve tosses Gary one of four remote controls.  Gary hits a button in the upper left corner and the screen of the TV turns blue and then two cartoon racecars appear.  In one of the cars, a driver twice the size of his automobile sits looking ferocious and something like a dinosaur crossed with a turtle.  In the challenging vehicle, a mouse in a skirt turns its head toward the dinosaur/turtle and says in a deep demonic voice “I’ll taste your heart, Holesore!”  Steve giggles.  It’s half time.

“Who do you want to be?”  Gary asks Steve, tossing him a beer and a game controller all at once.

“Holesore,” Steve says through a gulp of M.G.D.  Belch.

“Where’s Charlie, should we call him?”  Steve asks, eyes glued to Holesore as his thick fingers move deftly from one button to the next on his controller.

“Yeah, you call him,” Gary says.  Gary throws his shoulders to the left and almost falls over as he furiously holds down the left turn button with his index finger.  Dread, his mouse in a skirt, flips out of its car as it careens into the right-hand wall and explodes.  Gary jerks.  Within two seconds, Dread is unscathed, back in its car, racing.

Steve, almost inaudibly, has been chanting “come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on,” since they started playing.

“All right, but you gotta pause it.”

“All right.”  Gary pauses the game.  The game’s carnival-like music comes to an abrupt halt to reveal the noise of Gary gulping at his beer like someone might gasp for air; he’d forgotten he had one.

Steve, phone to ear and shoulder, cracks open another one as he walks back into the room.  “He’s not answering—you think he forgot?...Ah, I got the machine.  CharliEEEEEEEEE!  Answer the phone, Charlie.  Charlie?  Get out of bed, CharrrrrrrrrliEE!  You were supposed to be here an hour and a half ago.  Char---“

“Is he there?” Gary asks, interrupting.

“What?  He’s not picking up...” Steve hits the off button.

“We’ll call him back in a couple of minutes,” Gary says and flips the TV to cable.  The game is already back on.  The Packers are losing.

“Yeah, Mitch?  Hey, this is Max Greenwell from the Bloomington plant.  Listen, we’re hearing stories that Louisville’s Appliance Park is gonna fold in less than a year.  We’re thinking about making plans now to relocate to Mexico two fiscal years from then—to kind of ride in on their coattails.  Expand whatever they’ve got, you know….  Yeah, we know, but popular opinion isn’t changing how much money we make or burn.  No matter how many ‘dependent communities’ fold here, we’ll still pull in enough from Mexico to make up for any negative sales from the move.  People forget fast, it’ll be fine.... What?  Oh, right—Hugh Wagner wanted me to call and see if there’s anything you can give us to prep our PR guys for the slam when this goes off.  We’ve got guys here to deal with it, but they’re home-towners and we figure they won’t stick around to sweet-talk their friends for us; we’ll need somebody new.  We were hoping you had some recommendations...”

Max Greenwell hangs up the phone twenty minutes later with a list of four names of possible new-hires.  He leans far back into his leather chair and swivels it from side to side with the shiny black toe of his shoe against his big mahogany desk as he thinks about a brand new secretary—she’ll have sweet golden brown skin and will mumble to him in Mexican while she’s on her knees in his new office.  He also wants big plate glass windows.

A noise shoots through the room and cuts into his daydreaming.  It settles immediately behind his left eye to start another one of his headaches.  They have been getting worse.  He will find out a year after he moves to Mexico, which will actually be in five fiscal years, that he has a brain tumor.  Before he can have it removed though, his secretary’s boyfriend will shoot him in the back of the head at a company picnic for knocking her up.  He will immediately shit his pants due to a simultaneous convulsion of his nervous and excretory systems.  The shit will remind the orderly at the hospital that his wife wants him to pick up the ingredients for refried beans on the way home.  She refuses to buy the canned, pre-made version in the American’s store in the taco aisle—she says it tastes like caca.

Max jabs at the intercom button to make the noise stop.  “What?!”

“Mr. Greenwell, your wife is on hold from the hospital.  Would you like to speak with her?”  His secretary asks through the white box on his desk.  Every time that buzzer rings throughout the room he wishes she would just shout whatever it is through his fucking door.  This makes him think of his father yelling through the house every night when he got home from work when Max was a boy.

"Max, goddamnit, where’s your mother?!  Max!!  Where the fuck are you, you little shit?!  I come home from working all fucking day in that fucking factory and ain’t nobody got any FUCKING dinner on my table!!   Somebody answer me GODDAMNIT!!!...There you are you piece of shit, now get your ass up and boil me some hotdogs.”

Max caresses the Italian leather of his chair and smiles.  His father died in a nursing home in South Bend ten tears ago and no one was there but an orderly that Max had suspected liked to kiss the old men at night when visiting hours were over.  Henry, Max thinks was the orderly’s name, but who cares.

“Yeah, I’ll take it Jeanie,” he picks up the phone and pushes a button that puts him through to his very expensive wife.  “Hello?”
 “Max?  It’s me, Charlie’s in the hospital, Max!”

“Calm down, Franny.  Is he all right?  What’s happened?”

“Well, I’m not sure really.  I got home from work and he was passed out on his bedroom floor.”

“Is that little shit on drugs again, Franny?  You better tell me if you know anything.  Because if he is then that’s it!  No twenty-two year old son of mine is going to stay in my house for free and smoke dope all the time—he needs a real job.  He needs to come and work for me instead of cutting bologna and smoking dope with those fool friends of his.”

“Max, Charlie’s known Gary and Steve since grade school,” Fran says in her reasoning with Max voice, “And anyway, it’s not drugs.  It was—lack of—oxygen.”

“What does that mean, Fran?  Lack of oxygen?”

“He says he got stuck under his bed.”

Max remains silent.

“Max?...Max?”

“I won’t be home in time for dinner, Fran.  Eat without me.”

“Max?  Aren’t you coming to the hospital?”

“No.”  Max hangs up the phone and leans thoughtfully back in his chair.  He has hated his father since he was five when Mr. Greenwell put Max’s little hand through the living-room window for flicking the side of his mouth for too long.  Max had been trying to learn to make that popping sound his cousins could make so well.  Mr. Greenwell had told him to stop though.
And Max has tried to be a good father.  Sure, he’s fucked most of his secretaries and couldn’t make it to many of Charlie’s t-ball games.  But that’s because he’s had to make money so that his family can have the nice things he hadn’t had, that his lousy father never gave him.  But his son is an idiot.  He’s raised a fucking moron.  He decides to go to Rita’s house after work tonight instead of his own.  Rita doesn’t have any kids, but she does have the best fucking tits this side of Texas.  His father had always said that about his mom, “Your mother’s the dumbest bitch I ever met, but she’s got the best tits this side of Texas.  HAHAHA!!”  Max feels bad immediately for thinking this of Rita.  He decides to buy her something on the way over to make up for it.

 Fran’s mother Doris had warned her not to marry Max.  “He’s a liar, Franny,” she had said, “He’ll cheat on you and he’ll be a bad father.  He only cares about his money and his sex and he’ll get tired of you.  So he’ll find some pretty young thing, like his secretary, to please him.”

“To please him?  Mom, come on.  That sounds like something out of a movie.  People aren’t really like that.  And Max is a good guy. You could at least try to give him a chance,” Fran had said reasonably.

She and Max had laughed about it in his bed later that night.

“Don’t worry,” Max had said, “I’ll make you the happiest woman alive.”

Three years later Charlie was born.  Fran’s mother came to help her through the labor.  She didn’t say anything about Max not being there and Fran was grateful.  When it was over they both held the new born baby boy and cried.  Fran cried because she was happy and felt a new strange love well up inside of her for this new human, and also because she thought Max might spend more time at home when he fell in love with her baby too.  Doris cried because this baby looked just like Fran when she was born, and also because she hoped Fran would need her help with the newborn so that she could spend more time with her only daughter.
 

Now Fran sits at the hospital and wonders why Max isn’t coming.  She’s not stupid.  She knows that he cheats on her.  She knows that Charlie is not so bright as they had hoped he would be.  She even knows already that Max is planning on moving the plant to Mexico.  That he plans to take her away from her big beautiful house, one of the biggest in town, that they have lived in for ten years.  To take her away from her son and her mother, who will probably die soon.  To take her away from her friends and her committees.  She already knows that she will file for divorce when he finally tells her this.  She will get half of his money, his big beautiful house, Chuck—his dog—and at least two of his six cars.  She will finally take ballroom dancing lessons.  She will spend more time with her mother.  And Charlie can live at home as long as he wants.  The longer the better.

In the summer of 1983 Charlie, Steve and Gary spent two weeks at a nature camp in Dalton, Georgia, named Squirrel City.  This was when they had become best friends.  The Dalton squirrels were friendly and abundant.  They streamed through the residential areas—a modern day plague.  But instead of the hum of an oncoming locust swarm, you could hear the unending chatter and squeak of dozens of squirrels in one yard alone.  It was best not to feed them—they came to expect it after a while.
 Charlie and the guys took so much interest in this particular population of rodents for one simple reason—target practice.  The camp schedule bulletin that circulated at the beginning of each week noted the times and dates for the learning and practicing of the fine art of archery.  The boys had never experienced the exhilarating feeling of allowing a deadly weapon to sail through the air at top speed with no assurance that someone or something wouldn’t die upon its landing.  The tight, neat suburb streets that they had grown up in in Bloomington didn’t much allow for chucking a rock too far, much less aiming and projecting the sharp end of an arrow.  Life would never seem so sweet again as in those moments of nine-year-old homicide in the quiet suburbs of Georgia.

“Wait-up!”  Gary hissed.  He was scooting forward on the ground about thirty feet behind Charlie and Steve.  Gary had had something of a weight problem when he was younger and it was on occasions like these, and most other occasions, when he regretted it.  He ran his big dirty forearm across his damp face and checked to be sure the bow and arrows were still securely on his back.  Robin Hood—he had imagined the night before when they were making plans for the big hunt the next day.  Robin Hood, the daring do-gooder of that time back when.  He would assail the evil betrayers of justice with full force on the morrow!   The guys reminded him that Robin Hood wore tights and a really queer hat.  They, of course, planned to be Indians.  Gary shut up about Robin Hood and waited until it wouldn’t seem too obvious before he switched his alliance to the feather-wearing warriors.  His neck burned with embarrassment until he was sure that they’d forgotten all about Robin Hood.

“Come on, Gary!”  They said as loudly as they dared.  They had stopped to wait at the base of a gigantic pine.  Gary finally caught up with them, heaving like he’d run a mile.

They were safely off the main road now and back in the dense tree growth of some Georgian’s huge back yard.  Their eyes scanned the yard for the little brown creatures to dart into view.  They decided to spread out and each took a corner of the property.  They created something of a triangle with their vantage points and focused all attention on the enemy.

The squirrels were plentiful that hot August day.  And the arrows began to fly.  It really didn’t occur to any of them until they were dragging fat Gary back to the camp with an arrow sticking out of his leg that they were all firing at each other.  They didn’t even know which boy had fired the rogue arrow that landed with a thump in Gary’s right thigh.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

“Gary?”

“Shit!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

“Gary?!”

Gary didn’t move while he was screaming because he was so fascinated by the sight of the arrow in his leg and also because the arrow had tacked him to the ground.  It was just like so many thumbtacks holding notes to his mom’s kitchen bulletin board that said “Buy snacks for Gary!” or “Out of butter!”

They got him loose from the dirt but couldn’t stomach pulling it through his leg.  When their parents got there to pick them up after they’d been kicked out of camp for the whole thing, Max had looked at Charlie and said, “I don’t know why we bother, Charlie.  You’ll never make it.”

Charlie’s worked in the Kroger meat department for about six months now and he really likes the job because all the meat guys are so funny.  Once Rick told Charlie that he had a phone call and when Charlie put the receiver to his face he felt the cool wetness of a piece of sirloin on his ear and chin.  They were always joking around in there.  Charlie once ate a handful of raw meat on a dare and they had all been great friends ever since.  He’s up for a fifty-cent raise in two weeks, and today at work he and Rick are calculating how much they would make after so long with so many raises.  They lose count but decide they’ll be doing pretty well in a couple of years.

“What are you gonna do when you retire?”  Charlie asks a thirty-eight-year-old Rick.

“Get a boat,” Rick responds quickly as though he’d thought all this through many times before.

“What kind of boat?”

“A sail boat.  And then I’m going to sail around the world and live all over the—world,” Rick says wistfully.

“My dad has a boat,” Charlie says.

“Really?”  Rick says shortly to hide his immediate jealousy.

“Yeah, but he never lets me use it,” Charlie says.

“When I have a boat I’ll let my son use it.  But only when I’m not using it,” Rick says, feeling generous and happy.  But now he remembers how his fourteen year-old-son Bobby took his Honda Civic one night and brought it home the next morning with a dent on the hood and the left side-view mirror missing.  He frowns.

“What?”  Charlie asks.

“Maybe I’ll just let him come out with me and sail sometimes,” Rick said.

“Yeah, my dad doesn’t let me do that either,” Charlie says.
 Rick smiles.  He feels generous again.  “What are you gonna do, Charlie?”  He asks.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Charlie says thoughtfully, fingering some tenderloin, “Maybe I’ll work for my dad at GE.”

“What would you do there?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie says, a little confused.

“Maybe you could be vice-president,” Rick offers.

“Yeah, maybe,” Charlie says without conviction.

Rick goes back to wrapping up plates of meat with cellophane.  Charlie rests his forearms on the cool glass of the meat display and thinks.  A few minutes later he looks up and says with a smile, “Hey, Rick?”

“Yeah?”

“I could be in charge of the assembly lines.  Or I could be a Union rep.  I could even work on the lines,” Charlie says enthusiastically.

“If you’re just gonna work on the lines, you may as well work here,” Rick says calmly, but secretly he can barely control his excitement at the idea that Charlie could stay and work with him.  He thinks that Charlie looks up to him just like his son doesn’t.  He decides he’ll take Charlie out on his boat when he gets one.  Maybe Charlie can even sail around the world with him.

“What?” Charlie asks, “work here?”  He chuckles a little.  “I’m not gonna work at Kroger the rest of my life, man!”  He doesn’t notice the look on Rick’s face as Rick slowly finishes wrapping the last of the plates of cut meat and then puts them all back in the back refrigerator.  “Ah, I was just kiddin’ anyway, Charlie,” Rick says quietly, “Your dad’ll make you vice-president for sure.”  They throw on their jackets and turn off the lights as they leave the meat department.

The floor waxer has already been through the aisle that they walk down every night to get to the front of the store.  Charlie and Rick both watch the dull gleam on the floor from the over-head fluorescents as they walk.  They can hear the waxer humming thickly in lane #13—the Coke aisle.  They both feel sorry for the man with the waxer, as they do every night when they are leaving the store and he is still rumbling away, polishing away, mostly blind and pretty damn old.  No telling how long he’d been there.  They will be genuinely happy for him when, in about three months, the mostly blind floor waxer man will win $100,000 in the lottery.  The first thing he will do is quit his job.

“Charlie!”  A couple of voices shout as he enters the poolroom at Patty O’s bar.  He makes his way back to his friends, weaving through the pool tables—each one occupied by at least one person he knows; they all smile at him.  The knocking of balls goes on around him as he adjusts his eyes to the smoky dim light of the room.  Each table’s suspended lights swirl with the smoke of cigars and cigarettes and the floor is shiny clean with the exception of the area beneath the hand chalk—it has a powdery coating that swims a little as Charlie walks by.  He takes a seat at the booth next to their pool table.  Shaking chalk cubes in his hand like dice he watches the pool game absently.  Nine ball, corner pocket.  Eleven, off the rail.  Miss.  Two ball, side pocket.  Combination, four off the five, corner pocket.  Scratch....

“Hey, what’s on your mind, Charlie?”  Steve asks, leaning against the pool table, stick in hand.

“Oh, nothing,” Charlie says.

“Hard night playing with your—MEAT, Charlie?” Gary asks.  He laughs loudly at his joke.  Everyone else ignores him.  He quiets and begins to study the pool table, seemingly plotting his next few moves.

“I just don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life,” Charlie says.  “I don’t think my dad is gonna make me vice-president.”
 His friends look at him somewhat bewildered.  After high school they’d all decided to take a couple of years off before college.  Charlie’s parents had stormed around the house for a month yelling up to his bedroom that he was never going to make anything of himself now for sure!  Steve actually deferred from IU where he was going to study sports team management.  And Gary had just been relieved.  He hadn’t gotten in to any of the schools that he applied to, but he never got around to mentioning that to the guys.  They figured that they could use a break.  The break had turned into a five-year vacation and the thought of college had ridden off into the sunset like so many cowboys with a woman thrown over the front of their saddle.  Gary and Steve have a cheap apartment near the university and go to college parties every weekend, and Charlie still lives with his parents because his mom won’t let his dad charge him rent—which is what had happened to the other guys.
One day Gary’s mom came home from work and he asked her if she was going to the grocery store anytime soon.  She opened the fridge and pulled out a stick of butter and threw it at him.  It hit him in the eye, and while he was holding a baggy of ice over it an hour later, she had come back to his bedroom.  “Gary, your father and I think that you should move out.  Or you can pay rent and buy your own food.  And, Gary?”  “What, Mom?”  “I’m sorry about the butter, but I went to the store yesterday and you’ve already eaten all of my Mallomars and everything else.  You need to go on a diet, Gary.  You’re fat.  You know what I’m saying, honey?  I just don’t know how you got so fat.”  She left the room shaking her head slowly back and forth.  Gary sat and stared at his hands for a while.  He had always wanted to be a baseball player when he grew up.  He and Steve moved out the next month.  That was two years ago.  Their moms still bring them food at least once a week.

“Vice-president?”  Steve asks from across the pool table.

“Yeah...well...you know, I thought since he’s the president, I could be—vice-president,” Charlie says timidly.

“Charlie, you can’t be vice-president if you haven’t gone to college,” Steve says.

"But I’ll go.  I mean, I can go now,” Charlie offers.

“You don’t want to go to college, man, you can just work at Kroger and we can hang out here for the rest of our lives,” Gary says, venturing back into the conversation.

“Gary—shut-up, will ya?” Steve says quickly.  He senses the gravity of the topic for Charlie but he doesn’t really know what to say.  Charlie’s kinda dumb, Steve thinks; he can’t go to college now.

Charlie is sinking farther and farther down into the seat of the booth with a look of utter despair on his face.  His flannel shirt is bunched up at his shoulders and neck, and his round stubbled face is pretty red.  He almost looks like he’s about to cry.  Though he won’t, of course.  His huge frame is slumped forward and he keeps sighing deeply like some Hoosier Hamlet.

Suddenly though he sits up straight and smiles.  “You know what I could do though?  I could be a manager in the meat department, or in some other department.  Rick’s a manager and he never went to college, so they have to let me do it.  And the managers there have way better schedules and get paid more.  I could work there as a manager for a couple of years and then retire and get a boat like Rick,” Charlie says all of this quickly and excitedly.  His friends agree that this is a good plan.

 “And we can hang out here for the rest of our lives,” Charlie says contentedly.  Gary smiles.  So does Steve.

As Charlie rubs his chin in contemplation of this bright future, a pale blue beard appears on his face from his hands, now coated in pool chalk from his fidgeting.

That same night Max and Fran are lying in their king-sized bed staring at the ceiling.  Max has just told Fran about the big move to Mexico.  He hasn’t asked her what she thinks of the idea, but he has told her not to go spouting off to any of her friends yet.

It’s not official.

Fran is trying to think of how she should tell Max that she wants a divorce.  Max is thinking about Coronas on the beach and Mexican women.

“Max, I’m not going to Mexico.  I knew already that you were going to move and I decided that when you told me I was going to tell you that I don’t want to go.  I like my house and my friends and my life here, Max.  And I’m not leaving....Max?  Max, aren’t you going to say anything?  I want a divorce.”

Snoring from Max’s side of the bed.

“Max?  Are you asleep?”  Fran rolls over onto her side and looks at her husband sleeping.    She’ll just tell him in the morning.  But what about Charlie?  She remembers Max at Charlie’s age.  Max, with his charm and wit, and her mother had been right after all.  But Charlie wants a motorcycle and got stuck under his bed yesterday.  Fran smiles at this.  He’ll be fine.

Max continues to snore.  Fran turns off the light.  She closes her eyes and imagines telling all of her friends about the divorce.  She’ll serve quiche.