The Day that James Died by Aaron Scobie

Author Note: The idea I was going for in this story was to emphasize the idea that John is still stuck on what is means to be an adult. What it means to live life, to grow up. The story centers are him, with a much different mindset, dealing with his family and the death of his uncle. One thing I kept struggling on was the pacing of the story. I wasn't sure if I needed to expand on certain parts that the narrator just talks about. I guess is there enough dialogue to the scenes.

The Day That James Died

Aaron Scobie

“Give me a quote,” said Wade.

            “What?” I said.

            “From your little book there. Give me a quote.”

            I’ve been coming to Corner Hole Coffee a lot recently. Usually when I come in here I have a book of some variant with me. It use to be thick textbooks and laptops all the time, but I’ve moved on past all of that. I am finishing my time at school here and it seems the closer I get to graduation the more intellectual applications of literature, or “books that make ya a smartass” like Nanny Ree says, arise weekly. The more I read and the more I think about “big words” and “smarty-pants phrases” the less I want to use them.

            “A quote?”

            “Jesus, John, it isn’t that difficult.”

I held up the book and read the cover Dubliners by James Joyce. It was a collection of his short stories. I had just bought it the other day so by this time I hadn’t even started reading it. To be honest I shouldn’t have been reading it at all. I had gotten behind in my readings for a lot of my classes and my stubbornness to not use any online summaries was beginning to fade. I flipped a few pages, mostly introduction or some other BS about Joyce that I didn’t care about. I stopped on the first page. I made a quick glance at Wade and saw him patiently waiting for me to reply. His eyes were locked on the book in this sort of half strain: his attempt at reading the back-cover. I am a terribly slow reader. The feeling of impatience came over me as I began to scan the page for a unique word or something that stood out. There were a few things italicized but finally decided on the word “paralysis”.

“Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis.”

A beam of sweat coasted along my face like a greasy water slide. It had only been somewhere close to maybe half a minute before I said it. I thought it was a good quote at the time and I did say it in this weird tone. I think I was trying to seem like an intellect. The way I thought Joyce would say it. I quickly realized how absurd the line sounded. I felt a few more streams of sweat slide down my face converging together creating a sort of alluvial fan.

“Interesting,” Wade said.

“Ha! Really?” I said.

“Yeah, totally.”

I knew that he was lying. Wade was good about making his customers feel welcomed and homey. He always talked to everyone who would order from him and even more so to those who sat at the bar. After six Wade would open up the beer taps and start to serve alcohol. I remember that more and more places started to serve alcohol. I recall an old roommate I had back then thought I was so absurd that coffee shops would serve alcohol. Corner Hole only served one brand of beer. Wade knew the guy who ran the brewery and got really good deals on the mini kegs he would buy.

“Hey Wade. Do you mind if pour me a Scotch Ale.”

“Sure.”

Wade still hadn’t gotten the hang of pouring beer yet. You have to tilt the glass and kind of rotate back and forth. And as the beer got closer to the top you would even the glass out in a more vertical stance. I had looked back at my book and in order to try and figure out what it was about in case Wade would ask me more about it. I read the first line, “There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.”

“Damn.”

I sat at that bar for a good long while. Wade and the other barista knew me fairly well, or rather more so than most of the customers that came in. I was a regular. Whenever Wade would close he did that really cheesy thing where he would play “Closing Time” to get rid of the people that liked to linger. I was trying to finish that first short story when Wade cranked it up real loud. I remember getting anxious. My eyes flew across the words to the point where I only got bits and pieces of the sentences I read. I remember Wade looking at me and telling me to take my time and that I didn’t have to leave. It was at that moment I felt like I was part of this ‘in’ crowd: this crowd who I saw as the “cool crowd” which was stupid because we were all adults. I was twenty-one at the time, Wade was about to push thirty and the other barista, I think her name was Sarah, had to at least be twenty-two or something. That song just blared that night. I could hear the conversations that circled around me: Wade and Sarah talking about the significance of Closing Time and how it was not about alcoholism and how it was really about the singer sneaking in a song about his kid. The band got mad at him and gave him this ultimatum that he had to stop writing about his kid, he agreed but this limiting of his creative writing introduced him to the ability to be more secretive creative consciousness. The other conversation, I recall, was between two girls in large sweatshirts with the delta gamma logo embedded on them. They were talking about how one of them sang this song at karaoke the previous night. Wade and Sarah conversation made me think about what Mike Kinsella had said in a interview. He said that before he had a kid, all of his music was about failing at understanding relationships and that that’s what he thought music, and in that, life was about. I was sipping beer while all of this was going on. Mike Kinsella said that when he became a dad that all of his thoughts shifted from music to being a dad. Oh how monotonous. I finished my beer and decided to go home. When I walked outside I pulled my phone out. At the time a buddy of mine and gotten me into this app, whose name alludes me at the moment, but you could log in your beer and basically show off to everyone in the area how cool you were and how cool your taste in craft beer was. I went to go log in my scotch ale and whenever I was about to hit “Confirm Brew?” I decided to write a comment about it. I had never written one before, and even after this I still never wrote one. But this time I had decided to write one. I must have really wanted everyone to understand how I wanted them to see how I felt:

 “It’s Thursday, my uncle died today and I’m reading Joyce. Events like that can make a beer taste special.”

I only had two classes that day. I was in my senior year at Georgia Southern as I made sure to only have a few class a day. This semester I remember I had to have all my classes in the morning. Normally I would of had a class at noon but it got canceled. The two I had were both morning classes. Nanny had been pestering me about coming down back to Clayhatchee for a few days now:

“Johnny, now it’s important that you call me as soon as you get done with class,” she said.

“I know Nanny,” I replied.

“Don’t get smart. This is important ok. When do you get done with class today?”

“I get done around 1 on Fridays.

“When do you plan on leaving?”

“Probably 2ish I think.”

“Good, good.”

“Yeah.”

“…”

“Hey…hello?

“I’m still here Nanny.”

“Cut the tone ok. Now listen to me alright, Johnny?”

“What?”

“Johnny…”

“What?”

“Thank you sweety. Now listen, when you get down here I don’t want you acting like your current self alright?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I mean. I want you to be humble when you come down here.”

“Of course I’m going to be humble Nanny. What made you think about that.”

“Well last time you came down here, you know that early Christmas dinner we had? JoAnne brought to my attention how bad your attitude can be at times.”

“What on Earth are you talking about? I got snooty because she started making gay jokes about me. She was being a bitch and you were just letting her get away with it.”

“Hey! Shut up. You don’t talk to me like that alright mister?”

“…”

“Now JoAnne informed me that I made a wrong comment about something and you corrected me and started to sort of make fun of me in doing so.”

“Nanny if I did I’m sorry but I—

“Johnny, listen, please. I know you’ve been at that school of yours for a few years now and I know that ever since you switched majors, a lot of your likes and dislikes changed. You changed quite a lot. But even in all of that, I still know you’re my John boy and I love you very much but if you act like your current self, I gonna cut you off financially a lot sooner than you’d like. Are we clear?”

“…”

“John Raskols are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” I replied.

“Good. I have to go now. Some of the ladies from Church are coming up from Coffee Springs and they want to talk about the arrangements for Saturday.”

“Is the memorial going to be in Coffee Springs?”

“Yes…”

“Alright. I gotta go Nanny. I love you.”

“Love you too sweety. Don’t forget to call me when you leave.”

“I won’t. Bye.”

“Bye-bye.”

Southern folk love to gossip and love to talk about each other’s families. They also love to talk about children, or well in Nanny Ree’s case grandchildren. I only remember JoAnne very briefly but I remember that dinner very well. Nanny was talking about politics and more so talking about dumb news she had heard during her “Older Singles” small group at church. JoAnne was usually the one to lead the charge of who to bash that day and to my knowledge Nanny would usually keep to herself just nodding her head and adding some ‘mmhmms’ here and there. She was never one to avidly speak poorly on someone unless she felt justified in her actions. That’s how she would put it at least. I would get daily phone calls from her telling me about someone from church and how this person did this one thing or did something to someone or with someone. She would always tell me how proud she was that I decided to take the ‘smart adult’ path and go to college. However, JoAnne always had some snooty little chime to say about me. As I advanced in years the more and more she grew to dislike me. I think it was because I called her an old hag. I remember really hating myself after I said it and I apologized but she was one of those people who seemed to think that if she wasn’t upset then the universe was out of flux and looked to pick someone apart and be angry. I guess it wasn’t too hard for me to get on her ‘bitch about’ list.

“You’re a little shit, you know that boy?” JoAnne said.

“Oh piss off. You would have found something to be pissed at me about,” I replied. “I just made your job easier.

“You don’t deserve the grace that Ree gives you.”

“Well at least I don’t fill her head with hate and nonsense,” I said.

“Well, I do hold her back.”

“What?”

“You hold her back,” JoAnne said. “In her eyes you are still a child.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“She is 67 and is still trying to act like a new mother. Your inability to grow into your age is damaging her health. Her thought that you still need to be helped is increasing her stress level. Your constant asking for money is showing everyone how much of a child you still are. You told everyone last time you came down that you finally got a job how you felt you were becoming an adult. Fuck you. You are a child. You have always been a child. You need to realize that becoming an adult takes a lot more than just going to college and getting a dead end job.”

Just as I had gotten out of my last class that day when I got a phone call from my boss asking if I could come into work. I think it was because one of the other staff leaders at the theater who was suppose to close that night quit. I remember him really begging me to come in. If I didn’t come in that means that he had to actually take charge and direct people around. He was really bad at telling people what to do. I had already packed my bag and was about to leave. It was only 10:38 and I had figured it was better to get on the road early seeing as I had a four-hour drive ahead of me. My boss had been waited impatiently on the other end of the line when I began to think about not going to Clayhatchee. I use lie to Nanny Ree all the time in college. Usually it was about what I doing (which was probably drinking) or I’d tell her some BS about why I couldn’t come down a weekend when she wanted to see me. I knew it would look terrible to my family but I really didn’t care then. At that point in my life I felt as though Tillis, Toree, Jack, Jamie, and all of their kids weren’t family to me anymore. They were just people who shared the same last name as me or had the same blood as me. My boss once again pleating for me to come in had cut off my thought:

“Johnny please come in. Where short staffed as it is.”

“…I can’t Bennet. Not today.”

“And why the f—“

I think he also quit that weekend. Maybe JoAnne was right.

I had decided to just get up and go. I wasn’t going to tell anybody I was leaving or why. I was just going to go. It was weird that drive. Usually on Friday, traffic was awful and the four hours seemed like I would have an eternal ache in my right ankle from the constant stopping and going of have to deal with lunch rush in Georgia. But that day, that day there was only two cars between I-85 and me. I remember verbally expressing my disbelief in what I was seeing. I decided that I wasn’t going to listen to the radio for a while. I had wanted to just stay in the silence of wind. It was a rather warm day that ended that February. I think it was in the high sixties, low seventies. I always had the window rolled down in that car because it drained my gas if I ran any sort of hot or cold air. I remember sitting, thinking about what I was going to say and how I was going to act at Jim’s memorial. The drive began to trip me out because there were at least two moments were I was in the left lane and I didn’t remember changing lanes or what I was thinking about. It scared me for some reason. I kept thinking about how time had moved so fast that semester and I really desperately wanted it to slow down. I became terrified of the fact that the real world was creeping up on a much more stagnant pace than I had myself. All of my friends I had made in college, all the relationships I had, all the love interests I had, everything was going to end. I remember thinking:

“Is this what it means to be an adult? To give up everything I hold near and dear to me in my heart? To give up all the people I cared about? Where I and only I would tell all the memories I have? Only me. No more going to bars and laughing with Gusto’s of thick stouts. No more getting into fights with my friends over trivial shit. No more fun. Is this why Tillis and Toree, and the South for that matter, decide so early on to get married and have kids? So they too don’t have to feel the weight of age creep over their skin? So that they might distract their minds with the happiness of their own children? So that they might have a chance to live again like the children they have? And hopefully their children, when old enough, will have children early enough to have grandchildren and spoil them? And so on and so on and so on? Do I need to wait? Should I just deal with the girls I can get with and who I know I could marry easily?”

My thoughts back then seemed to only be flooded with questions, which constantly kept asking more questions as to help shape the previous questions. I thought I was being forced to grow up so quick that I wasn’t able to enjoy the time I did have to be happy. When I had just gotten through Enterprise I got a phone call from Nanny:

“Hey sweety have you left yet?”

“Yeah I left a long time ago”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Just outside Enterprise, I should be at the trailer in half an hour.”

“Oh…well wonderful.”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, I just would have liked to know you were going to be here sooner. I would have had a chance to clean up quicker.”

“Are you mad?”

“No, no, no”

“…”

“Hey, you still there?”

“Yeah.”

“JoAnne is going to be staying with us this weekend and also going up to Coffee Springs with us tomorrow.”

“What, why?”

“Because Johnny, she has been helping me with a lot of stuff and it doesn’t matter. She is staying in your room so you’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

“Nanny!”

“Hey!” she said.

“…”

            That was the worst thing I ever did to Nanny. I hung up the phone after that conversation. I’m sure she understood but back then I had such a hot head and was ‘going through a lot’. I never realized how much Nanny was hurting that weekend. I guess it hadn’t registered with me that Jim meant a lot to Nanny. Even though he was just a stepson from her first marriage, he was still the closest thing she had to family back then. He was the only child she had left.

           

            That first night I didn’t spend a lot of time with Nanny and JoAnne. I think I talked to Nanny for two or three hours about how school was going and how life was going and how I recently been wanting to become a writer. JoAnne had gotten a kick out of that. I feel as though if I were to see her today she would give me the same spill about how I will get nowhere as a writer and that I should stick to my theater day job and hope to die as a manager. After that I drove to Dothan to see my friends who never made it out. We had spent to night out on the town. I only told Jake, my best friend at the time, that my uncle had died. I remember not wanting everyone to feel bad for me and putting a damper on the night. I think we went to a sports bar called ‘Alabama Slammer’. I had wine and everyone else had Coors or Bud Lite. I think I should’ve just stuck with beer that night but something in me just wanted to show off my pseudo-intellectualism and maturity. I was a dick back then. After laughing about dumb stuff we did in high school, I had ordered everyone a shot of Fireball and gave a toast:

            “Here’s to good friends, good memories, and good futures.”

            I have always hated Fireball but back then it was the only thing anyone ever drank when it came to shots. I probably shouldn’t have driven home that night but I didn’t care. Back then the urge to get wasted and make poor decisions and drive home seemed to overtake my mind. The desire of wanting to be in control took over all rational thought and reason I was capable of back then. I thought that that was what it meant to have fun when you were in college. I thought that if you weren’t doing those things then you would miss out of what was defined as the ‘best years of my life’. Oh how cliché.

            We drove Nanny’s Jeep to Coffee Springs that next morning. I can’t remember how bad my hangover was but it was enough to where I made all three of us stop at Starbucks in Enterprise. I hated Starbucks solely on the fact that they were a chain coffee establishment and also they had bad coffee. While I was getting coffee I kept telling Nanny and JoAnne ways Starbucks was bad. I went into vast detail about why you shouldn’t double roast beans and also shouldn’t mix the roasts. I told her just because the coffee stays warm doesn’t mean it’s fresh. I think it was mostly the hangover but I was being a terrible snob about everything and everyone that morning and at a certain point in the line, JoAnne had enough and called me out in front of the whole line. I think it was then that I thought she was the first person I had ever really hated. The only bad thing about it was that this time she was justified in having the attitude she did. As she had argued with me I realized my actions. It was at that point that I realized that no matter what I do this woman will always hate me in return. This woman will never like me and this woman will do everything in her power to make me look like a fool. When we were in that Starbucks, it wasn’t until Nanny had said:

            “Johnny will you please stop it! This day is not about you.”

            I had walked back to the car after that. I didn’t even wait to get my coffee. I don’t even remember if I Nanny Ree had brought my coffee to the car. I think she wanted to but JoAnne just threw it away before they left the store. The car ride after that was quiet. I think I had disrupted the mood for there to be anything of valuable conversation. The drive from Clayhatchee to Coffee Springs was close to an hour and after you hit Enterprise it’s nothing but woods and miles of field. It is a farmer’s dreamland. A few things had caught me eye as we made our way to the memorial. Just as we left Clayhatchee, there was an even smaller town just before you hit the county road. I don’t think that town even has a name but aside from the handful of homes, I saw there was one store, a convenience named ‘Annie’s Convenience Stor ‘. The gas there was a dollar more than anything in the city was.

            “Nanny why is the gas so much more here?”

            “It’s the country sweety. That’s how things are.”

            We went back to being quiet again after that. The other thing was just outside Enterprise. It was this little cabin that had above the door the name ‘Enterprise School of Massage’. After that was just nice country with old homes and new cars. It was so weird seeing all that. I remember thinking that southern people so desperately try to preserve tradition and the ‘old look and feel’ to things that they don’t progress with the times or at least they don’t on an internal level. Every home it seemed like, and even to this day, has the contrast of chrome cars and moldy brick homes. It had distracted me from the road the whole way there. When we had finally gotten to the memorial it was in that dead town of Coffee Springs. The memorial was at what seemed like at the time, the only functioning building aside from residential homes. It was called the ‘Coffee Springs Joy and Life Center’.

            I had never been to a memorial service before this one. I didn’t know how they were supposed to go. People had filed in in pairs and groups and the women of the family had been preparing a late lunch. Once the thing started Jamie had gone up first and talked and then Nanny went and then other people from church went up and talked. I remember that everything everyone was saying about Jim seemed to be good things. Actually everything they said were good things. Jim wasn’t that good of a man. I had kept quiet every time someone asked the audience if anybody else wanted to talk. Looking back I remember a few people kept giving me a quick glances seeing if I was going to talk. I never wanted to be there let alone talk. All of my cousins had there three or four kids, none of them over the age of thirteen at the time, running around and talking and playing with the fake flowers in the center of the scratchy white tables while this was going on. I had begun to think about what JoAnne said about me being a kid. I know at the time I never would have said this but in some distorted way it was some of the best advice someone could have given me. I remember looking around at my family and thinking:

            “Is this what it means to be an adult, being 32 and pregnant with my fourth child? Or being the husband at the age of 34 and wanting more because I can’t cope with anything other than having children? Not wanting to grow up just yet. This can’t be what it means to be an adult. It just can’t. It can’t. It can’t.”

            After the memorial, I had been waiting for Nanny Ree to get done saying goodbye to everyone when Tillis had come up to say good-bye:

            “Well cousin, I guess this is good-bye,” he said.

            “I guess so.”

            “Hopefully next time it will be in a happier setting.”

            “Yeah,” I said.

            “You make sure to do good in school alright?”

            “I will.”

            “I mean it. Everyone here, even Jim was. We’re all proud of you.”

            “…”

            “You know,” Tillis said, “you are the first Raskols to go to college.”

            “…”

            “Come here. Get in close now.”

“…”

“Don’t be like us, alright. You have the chance to make something of yourself.”

            “…”

            “I love you buddy.”