mostly nonfiction and bakersfield news | September 28th, 2009
Last Man Standing
by JM Blaine
Robert Ducote was sucking down ponies from a 24 pack and racing his souped-up Chevy 85 mph down Twin Bridges Road.
He lobbed an empty bottle over the top of his car and laughed as it shattered against the black and yellow sign.
Ducote had a smart mouth and we were always going back and forth, teenage boy BS, insults, threats and cockfight strut. In 8th grade we warred for class favorite. I heard I won by a landslide but Robert insisted he lost only by a few. “Nobody white voted for you,” he sneered.
Freshman year we battled for a spot on drumline. We both got in but I got big bass and he got the brass crash cymbals. “Marching band’s for queers,” he spit, then quit to play JV football. Then I quit too, to wrestle and play in a rock band.
Summer of sophomore year I dated his little sister Tiff. Her best friend Lisa was Robert’s girl.
Ducote struck first, his knuckles scraping my cheek. I tucked my chin and stole his legs out from under him, crashing us both to the ground.
“Stop it you two, stop!” Lisa cried, yanking at our shirts. The girls had fishtailed into a ditch and Robert and I had to push them out. We worked together until the car was free, then came to blows.
“Let ‘em go. I am so sick of this,” Tiff groused, arms folded and sucking on a Sonic Cherry Coke. I barred Ducote’s face to the side while he rabbit punched my kidneys.
“Tiii-if!” Lisa pleaded.
“Fine,” Tiffany huffed, pelting us with ice until we rolled on our backs and gasped for breath.
Six months later she dumped me.
Ducote was sitting on the hood of his car when I pulled up behind the girl’s gym that Friday morning. “Hey Blaine,” he called out. I walked over and we shook, the way enemies do in the South, glaring and trying to crush each other’s hand.
“Goin’ to Savoy’s bonfire tonight?” he asked.
“Probably not.”
He nodded and eased his hand up the antenna. “Yeah, might be best. Tiff’ll be there with Greg.”
I gave it back. “And Lisa. No telling who she’ll be with…”
“Screw her,” he scoffed. “Got my eye on that freshman girl wears those big goofy-ass glasses.” He shot me a twisted smile. “Pretty hot.”
Becca Mooney. Bowl-cut blond and bookish she hadn’t made much of an impression until she’d flipped her booster skirt from end to end of the gym and shored up a spot on the cheerleader squad. I had a crush long before that though and had trimmed back my hair and cleaned up my act in hopes of winning her over.
“I hear her folks finally gonna let her date,” he said, sliding off the hood. “We been talking. On the phone. She’ll probably be there tonight.”
I narrowed my eyes into his and he stopped just short of laughing. “Whatever,” I said. “Give it your best shot.”
“Yeah I’ll give it a shot,” he cackled, biting his lip and pumping his hips between clenched fists.
I walked away, over to my buddy Todd. “Sonofabitch Ducote,” I seethed. “Needs to die. God should just kill people like that.”
Todd looked over to where Robert stood and nodded slowly.
I made a beeline for Becca in the hallway between classes and asked her out. “Think we could um – maybe meet somewhere… tonight? I mean, pizza? – whatever you want…”
She pushed up her glasses and smiled shyly. “I’ll ask my mom. I think it’d be OK if you picked me up though.”
“That would be cool,” I gushed un-cooly.
She rested her hand against my arm and smiled again, this time not so coy. “My sister will have to go with us. That OK?”
Smitten, I sighed. “Completely.”
Mooney and me were in Showbiz Pizza, giggling with her sister and playing slaphands when Mindy Reese rushed our table. “Did you hear?” she gasped. “About Robert Ducote?”
Two days later I sat in the back at the funeral home thinking about what I’d said. I didn’t have the guts to say anything to his family. After the service Tiff caught me trying to slip out the door and pulled at the sleeve of my jacket.
“Can you be a pallbearer?” she asked. I guess she could tell I was shocked. “Please?”
“Your brother couldn’t stand me.”
She patted the back of my hand. “Nah. Not even that long ago he told me, ‘Stupid, you shoulda stuck with Blaine.’” I just nodded.
“Remember that day ya’ll fought in the ditch?” Tiff asked.
“Yeah.”
“You know what he said? After you stormed off?”
“What?”
“He laughed and said ‘Damn Blaine. One day I’m gonna beat his ass at something.’”
She pinned a flower to my chest and we rode together to the cemetery.
We set his casket on the rails and a machine lowered it into the ground. Each of us threw in a shovel of dirt. Before I walked away his mother kissed my cheek.
That night I climbed into Todd’s Mustang and we headed north to Twin Bridges Road, a pint of Jim Beam Black in the console between us.
“Last man standing,” he said, taking a hard hit and passing the flask to me. He laid the pedal to the floor and the Mustang roared to life.
Todd’s tires gripped the road as he pegged his needles into the red. The wind whipped through the car and we shouted, pounding the roof with our fists as we shot through the fatal curve.
He pulled into the gravel just past the bend and shut the motor down.
I took a short pull of bourbon, dragged the back of my hand across my mouth and said to the night: I won. But the words carried no weight.
We got out and walked round to the roadside. There was a hard chill in the air and the moon was bone-white and high. Skid marks scarred the grass across the way and Todd pointed to a charred patch in the field. “There,” he said. “Right there.”
“To Robert,” I raised the bottle to the sky. “Rest easy man.” My voice cracked and Todd glanced over from the side.
“You two hated each other,” he said.
All the eternal ghosts of youth and the endless night waited for words that were true, for words that would return with weight.
“Nah,” I said. Then drained the last of Kentucky’s best and threw the bottle towards the black grass.
We stood there in the dark with the terrible weight. Then finally, slowly, we drove away.
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JAMES MICHAEL BLAINE is an accidental psychotherapist, bass-playing rapper in Music City’s third most popular party band; personal fitness trainer and prize fight manager (permit good only in the state of Georgia). As likely to quote Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach as Saint Augustine, he’s a licensed suicide specialist who helps break southern rap artists and writes songs for secretly gay Nashville cowboys. He has worked in libraries, haunted houses, megachurches, radio stations, roller rinks and may or may not have been the infamous Japanese masked wrestler “Sir Pink” who was booed lustily in auction barns and National Guard armories across the rural South. JM has been welcomed into the Vanderbilt MFA program, just as soon as he can more efficiently channel his “inner Yeats.” He is happily married to a Vandy med school student and former ballet dancer. They have no children, no pets and no yard.
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2 Responses for “Last Man Standing”
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Holy shit JMB. I'm speechless.
This is such a powerful story. As always, your sense of timing in telling it is amazing. Wish I could write like that.