what?

my little sister got engaged?

my name is mackenzie.

sometimes that weirds me out. i answer to mackenzie. i may be the only male you know who answers to that name. i used to be called “mac” and “handy.” names weird me out. it’s weird. this is weird. mackenzie. mac-ken-zie.

whoa.

Husking Shells

By MacKenzie James Hand:

The room is filled with the orange glow of sunset. Brian Heyworth is lying down on the couch with his hands folded over his chest. He is resting. It is late summer and the sound of a light breeze through the magnolia tree in the front yard is calming. For a moment Brian almost forgets where he is.  That is, until he hears his father cry “oh, God.” 

Brian sits himself upright, and uses the back of his left hand to rub his eyes. 

“Oh, God.” He hears again. He stands up and moves to the bottom of the stairs. It had been silent in the house for nearly two days, and now he hears “Oh, God.” He knows it won‘t be long. Brian walks up the stairs and turns into his father’s bedroom. He grabs the bottle of liquid morphine from the night stand, draws the plunger on the syringe, and places the end into his father’s mouth. His father‘s face wrinkles up with the bitterness of it. Brian places the morphine and syringe back on the nightstand, and sits next down at his father’s bedside. He looks down at his hands and folds them together. 

“Oh, God,” his father cries out again. Brian looks up at him. His eyes are still closed, but his head is rocking back and forth. He is moving his lower jaw rapidly, and squeezing at his bed sheets. “Oh, God” he says again. Brian leans over him and places a hand on one of his father’s own, cold and purple.

“OH GOD!” Brian yells it in his father‘s face.

“Oh, God,” his father says again. Brian strengthens his grip and looks up at the ceiling.

“OH GOD!” Brian yells. He is even louder this time.

“Oh god,” His father says back, trying to raise his voice. Brian grits his teeth and holds his eyes shut, a laugh begins to build up inside of him and he shouts again.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.” The laughter is hysterical, and soon Brian is crying. He pulls his hands to his mouth, bites his knuckle to try and cease his outburst. He shakes with frustration.

His father this time lets out a whisper, “Oh, God.” Brian crosses his arms over the restraining bars on the side of the hospice provided bed and rests his head on them. He closes his eyes and whispers back: “Oh, God.”

Brian begins to dream about his father being young again. He used to be a handsome man, the kind you look back at in family photo albums and say to yourself, “what happened?” When Brian was just a young boy, his father would regularly bring him along on walks to the bar down the road from their home. There, he would binge drink and dance with the local girls as Brian sat and drank sodas. The only time he would get any attention would be when his father would lean in and tap his shoulder, and with a girl laughing around his other arm he’d say, “Don’t tell your mother, son.” Brian grew to hate his father for his addictions, but back then their regular trip to the bar was Brian’s favorite part of the week.

Alibi’s Pub was one of those bars where guests can toss their peanut shells on the floor, and were often encouraged to do so. Brian would sit down at the bar end, and for hours he could husk all of the peanuts he could eat and order all of the colas he could drink. Those shells would collect in a pile under all of the customers, and you could hear them crackle as his father and dance partner would waltz their way over them.

In the dream they are both in the bar together. Brian is eating peanuts and tossing the shells on the floor while his father moves around the floor with one of his dance partners. Brian watches as the pile of shells grows larger. It continues to grow up the barstool, reaching Brian’s feet. He looks around him and others are husking their peanut shells into the pile. He sees his mother tossing her shells into the pile, and his sisters alongside her. The bartender is emptying bowls of shells into the pile. The various hospice nurses are there as well, contributing to the pile. It grows and grows, covering Brian’s legs and moving up his torso. He pleads for everyone to stop but they do not. They all just laugh at Brian, their mouths full of chewed peanut.  Just when Brian thinks all hope is lost, he feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns to see his father, smiling with his dance partner in his other arm. He says to Brian; “pay attention, son.”

Brian wakes up to darkness and silence. He feels around for the lamp on the nightstand, and when he pulls its chain, his father is staring directly at him. His eyes are now grey, both pupil and iris. They look dead. Brian hears and sees no signs of breathing. He rests his head on his father’s chest. Before a beat may be recognized, Brian’s head heaves up with a sudden inhale from his father. Pause. Exhale. Brian calmly rests his head there and allows himself to move with his father’s breaths. His head rises and falls in this irregular pattern with his father’s breathing for some time. There are no words to exchange anymore. There are no doses of medicine to give. There is only waiting.

Rise, pause, fall, pause, rise, pause, fall, rise. Each pause becomes progressively longer in length until one final exhale, and then nothing.

Brian waits until he is sure his father has passed, and then raises his head.The grey eyes still stare off into nothing. He closes them and folds the sheet over to cover the face.  Brian fills another syringe halfway with the liquid morphine and injects it into his own mouth. It is bitter. He walks downstairs to the kitchen table and calls the hospice nurse, who tells him that she and the morgue will be on their way shortly.

When the vehicles are all gone from the driveway, Brian walks back upstairs to the kitchen table where he looks over a pile of sticky notes and index and business cards. There is not a single name he recognizes. He feels sorry for his father, understanding that he was the only one willing to take care of him in his dying days. Brian had worried that it may someday be him dying alone, and putting his trust in Karma, he agreed to come home after speaking with the hospice nurse two weeks earlier. He had no idea what to do with himself. His mother had been dead for some years, a car accident. Drunk driver. His sisters would not speak to their father. Brian begins to pile up all of the various numbers and names and addresses that are scattered about, and places them in the trash bin. He goes downstairs and puts his jacket on. He exits the house and turns left, toward Alibi’s.

When Brian walks in it is empty. No one there but the bartender. Same guy as always, and he even looksthe same as Brian remembers, save the grey hair. Brian sits down at the bar end and orders himself a cola. The bartender cocks his head at Brian. “With whiskey,” Brian adds.  When the bartender brings his drink over he stands there for a bit, looking over Brian’s face.

“Hey, don’t I know you kid?” Brian looks up at the man and then back down. He notices the floor is clean.

“I don’t think so. I’m not from around here.” Brian clears his throat. “Say, isn’t this one of those bars where people can husk their shells on the floor?”

“Was until my wife passed away,” replies the bartender. “I hated cleaning that shit up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” 

The bartender looks around at the place for a while, and then slams his hands onto the counter.

“I tell you what; go to town on those things.” He moves the bowl of peanuts closer to Brian. “Sometimes I long for the old ways.”

“Hey thanks,” Brian responds. He cracks open a peanut, dumps the two nuts into his one hand, and then with the other lets the husk fall to the floor.

“There we go,” says the bartender, and he gives Brian a pat on the shoulder.

Brian sits there until closing, alone, husking peanut shells onto the floor and drinking whiskey and coke. When the bartender walks over and taps him on the shoulder for closing, he almost expects to hear him say “don’t tell your mother, son.”

prince charming:

new song lyrics, recording soon:

hands working tirelessly

to mend all the holes in this net

trying to keep in all the memories

so that you will never forget

but some things you really should let go

i can’t be expected to scale your stonewall

but that doesn’t mean i won’t stop trying

even if to my death i will fall

because i’m to reach you

yeah i’m trying to reach you up there

can’t you hear me shouting

won’t you please let down your hair

and i know you’ve had it hard

some things happened that aren’t right

but you can’t avoid all your fears

by sleeping away every day and night

what happens in your dreams

that’s so much better than what you have in real life

maybe it’s time that you woke up

take my hand and we’ll make things alright

because i’m trying to wake you

yeah i’m trying to wake you, my dear

come back to the real world i miss you

together we can take on all your fears

you don’t have to clean up

any messes that aren’t your own

i can’t let you stay in a place

that’s a house but isn’t a home

yet you still want to stay

if the shoe fits why don’t you come with me

it’s like you’ve got stockholm syndrome

why don’t you take this chance to be free

and i’m trying to help you

trying to get you away from that life

we can go where you wanna

so long as i’m by your side i’ll make things right

and it’s not easy being prince charming

it’s not easy saving these girls

they always take what they need

and then flee the scene

leave me the saddest man in the world

right now i’m only the prince

but someday i’ll be the king of love

and you’re the queen i’ve been dreaming of

let me reach you my dear

let me save you from fear,

let me take you away

from the pain you’ve been forced to bear

for all these years

it’s not easy

being prince charming

and it’s not easy

being in love with the girls that are always the most fucked up