Fish Out of Water By Christopher Green
I roll across the Mason-Dixon in a car
stained with rock salt and disuse the day before
Thanksgiving, and back at the apartment, up
North, it's already dipped twice into the single
digits. I'm still picturing the place in vicious
tableau: a gaggle of Midwesterners huddled
around great big steel oil drums with fires
popping inside, everybody wearing checkered
flannel jackets and those hats with the ear flaps.
The men all have bristling mustaches; the women
are swollen with the next chubby, screaming kid.
Down here, though, through Texas,
Mississippi, the Georgia seaboard, the Florida
panhandle, and into the great Heart of Dixie, it
gets balmy. It's downright subtropical. I have to
stop at a Sunoco for sunglasses (sunglasses!), and
the woman at the counter purrs at me, “How you
doin' today, hon?” The sound of her is all thick
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and syrupy-sweet, every word like a pie left out to
cool on a windowsill.
I smile and slip the shades on, the
wraparounds that friends' fathers would wear
over the grill when I was a kid. I ask how I look.
Like Jeff Gordon, she tells me, and for some
reason, maybe just because I'm so awash with
homesickness, I take this as a compliment.
The hills level off into great sprawling fields
of Southern Pines as I go, and I'm taken aback by
all that green, by the little fireworks going off on
every branch. As the road spills out in front of me
over sun-soaked farmland I have to roll the
window down to stem the sweat. It is seventy-
eight degrees outside, warm even by Southern
standards this time of year, bright as a stage light
even with the shades on: the great wide Tanning
Bed of America.
My grandmother's house is a modern
behemoth set a hundred feet back into coastal
Alabama forest, and it teems with silence. A great
wooden porch stretches the length of two sides,
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and by the front door is the cushioned rocker I
used to fall asleep in every Sunday afternoon.
There are no exhaust fumes, no oily spatter of
polluted rain on my windshield. I'm in love with
the smell of salt and the sound of my own
breathing, and I've only just got here.
So while somewhere up in Ohio, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Indiana some kid is shoveling
tarnished, hard-packed snow, some dog is pissing
icicles, some colleague of mine is traveling
beneath a great big suicide-gray sky into a
building made of cold steel and resentment, while
all this is going on, I am eating a thick slice of
pecan pie. I am drinking sweet tea. I am on the
beach, reading the biography of Hunter
Thompson and planning my next seafood dinner
in the back of my mind. I am steeped in my roots,
and there is a glow beneath my skin that hasn't
been there since I left.
On a Saturday morning I awake to an open
window, leaves like rushing water, the click of the
AC as it roars to life. I walk outside on dream-
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light feet, kneel down in the grass, and bury
myself. It's St. Augustine. Not the coarse, spindly
weeds from up North, not the stuff that can make
you bleed, but a soft carpet of life, vibrant and
warm. I want this color to be a part of me. It's not
enough to feel the blades on my lips, across my
cheek. I want to knit a blanket from them and
wrap it around my heart. I settle back on my legs
and stare up at the canopy, shining down on me
like the cover of a card in some Christian
bookstore in Muncie, Indiana.
And then, as quickly as I came, I am gone.
And the laughing winds of the Great Lakes are
swallowing me up again, like quicksand, like a
slow and stealthy resignation, like a dirty mouth.
Back home, in the frozen North, I wrap my
windows in plastic. I sleep in my socks. I spend
hours shoveling the driveway and then listen to
the angry slurp of tires in an icy trench. The cold
waits outside my window like a vampire, wanting
my flesh. In the morning I put on gloves and
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earmuffs and dive into the breathless air. I cross a
purgatorial expanse to get to the office, where the
only things to touch are frigid metal and
Styrofoam and my own closed eyelids. The
carpets are like fuzzy tile. The windows are
frosted and dark from years of smog. No one
smiles.
I am falling apart with sadness here. I have
frostbite in my chest. I want tea and sunshine, I
want people who tell me hello, who wish me a
good day. I want to die, because no matter where
I go, it's got to be warmer.
At about two in the afternoon, six days after
the world put its shroud back on, it occurs to me
that this calls for a desperate plan.
This plan must be executed with great
finesse, or not at all. This plan is something that
will get me locked up and in a straight jacket if
I'm not extremely careful. This plan, in fact, will
almost certainly ruin my life no matter how I hack
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it. I love this plan. Just the thought of it gets me
through my day.
On my way home, I stop at Wal-Mart for
twenty-eight potted plants, two cans of kidney
beans, a bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce, a Jimmy
Buffet album, and three boxes of sweet tea. After
that, I stop at the liquor store for a fifth of
bourbon.
At the house, I turn the heat up to eighty
and put on the Buffet with the volume maxed. As
I'm placing the sixteenth plant, drink in hand, my
door explodes with furious pounding. Behind it
stands an obese, red-faced man in an Ohio State
sweatshirt that doesn't fit him. I'm not sure if he's
screaming because he's angry or because my
music is loud enough to set off car alarms, but in
either case I tell him I'll turn it down and then
shut the door and go back to my plants. They're
not very pretty, to tell the truth; it is November,
after all. But they're green, and that's all I'm really
looking for in this, my hour of greatest need.
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I've got a book of recipes I bought at
Borders, but it doesn't have much of anything I'm
looking for, so I call my mother to get all of hers,
especially the stuffed shrimp, the jambalaya, and
(sweet Christ!) red beans and rice, which is
naturally what the beans are for. I don't have any
Conecuh County sausage in my freezer, just a
cylinder of ground turkey the color of brain
matter, but I'm in no position to be choosy. I
throw it all in a pan and start belting out
“Cheeseburger in Paradise.” I make so much noise
that I don't even hear Sweatshirt Guy trying to
bust down my door a second time.
At the office, no one bothers to ask me why
I'm wearing jeans and sandals and a green tee
shirt that says “Pass the Buck-et” above a picture
of a fried drumstick. At least, not with their
words. They give me these really sour,
incredulous glares, but they always do that
anyway, so I pretend like it's got nothing to do
with the fact that my feet are up on my desk and
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my computer's wallpaper is a picture of bikini
girls on a Gulf Shores beach.
If I were older they'd say I'm having a mid-
life crisis. As it is, I'm still just young enough that
they can call it rebellion. And that's fine, because I
suppose that's what it is. Except what I'm
rebelling against is me. I let myself go native. I
gave in to the nagging desire to look away when I
pass someone in the street. I started eating
fucking cod. But no more!
I'm teaching Freshman Composition II this
semester. We're learning about how to write an
analytical essay. We're learning about intentional
fallacy. Every morning I come in and they're
sitting there like thirty copies of McMurphy at the
end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, half a
brain down. Before I came back, I had never
noticed just how much this place reminded me of
a sanitarium, but this week, the peach walls are
looking a lot more white.
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Class, I announce, there is a change in your
syllabus we need to discuss. I'll be blunt: the fact
is, you've been getting a Yankee's education from
a card-carrying Southerner, and I assure you, the
shame of this fact has not escaped me. Starting
this week, I expect every student to present
himself and herself in my classroom on every
class day with the following supplies: one bottle of
Corona, one shrimp cocktail, and a quarter-ounce
of Dixie Duchess marijuana. Any student who
takes it upon himself to bring an item not
appearing on this list will face the appropriate
consequences. So help me God, if I see one
highlighter in the perimeter of my domain I will
react with the most terrible swiftness. You may be
sure of that.
I assign them a paper on how to make
either key lime pie, pan-fried catfish, or fried
oyster strips. Mom is missing some recipes.
The department chair is not immediately
forthcoming with her approval of the new
curriculum. In her office, she seethes with a quiet,
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Nurse Ratchet-like anger. She talks low, but claws
deep grooves into her desk. When asked to defend
myself I merely reply Ma'am, I must regain my
honor. I have suffered a dreadful loss of honor for
which I intend to pay my penance. You will excuse
me, but this is not the department's concern.
The chair, however, disagrees, and so I
offer her the only solution I feel has been left to
us: pistols at dawn. At first she is reluctant, but,
seeing that my will cannot be broken by any lesser
means, she accepts at last. The vice-provost will
serve as her second, while I choose a young
student named Jeremiah, a bright kid from
Kansas who has seen the wisdom in my actions
early on. The field of honor is the north quad,
being the only appropriately-sized arena with any
semblance of flora. I simply cannot abide a duel
on concrete.
The following morning is a bitter one.
Anticipation and frost hang from every surface. I
meet my adversary on the field, and am shocked
to discover that the vice-provost, whom I have not
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previously met, is in fact Sweatshirt Guy. This
only serves to heighten my demand for
satisfaction, as the forces of the Yankee Bastards
are clearly lining up against me now, fixing
bayonets like the regiment of Joshua
Chamberlain.
Dueling pistols are not in ready supply in
the Midwest, so a pair has been overnighted from
Atlanta, arriving in a rich oak box lined with
velvet the color of a Southern sky just after
sundown. We stand on either side of it, my
opponent and I, listening patiently to the terms of
the contest. Jeremiah's breath expands and
dissolves like blood underwater. We take our
weapons, turn, pace, turn, aim. The sun shimmers
on my barrel. I have never been so happy.
Students in the halls of nearby dorms jerk
at the sound of our matching reports.
The department chair lies wounded. I
myself am unharmed; to my shuddering relief,
her own bullet has widely missed its mark. The
match is decided, but there are grim faces all
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around. It is clear to me already that in the North,
such challenges do not carry the same weight. My
suspicions are confirmed when the Dean of Arts
and Sciences himself arrives in my office the
following day to inform me that my services as an
instructor are no longer needed at the university.
Back at the house, I take comfort in the
sweltering heat and the jangly Buffet guitar. I dive
into my mattress, breathe deep, and bask in the
glorious pride of risking myself for my homeland.
After several hours of sleep, I rise, water my
plants, make myself a drink, and sit out on my
deck in sandals and shorts. It is December,
twenty-two degrees, but there is a fire inside me
now, hot as a leather car seat in August, fine as
the sand on a Pensacola beach.
A few students, Jeremiah among them, are
at my door in the morning, offering their praise
and their sorrow. I take them inside and offer
them tea, which they politely decline, and then I
show them the pistols, safely in their velvet beds.
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They are elegant and menacing, trimmed with
brushed brass. They still smell of gunpowder.
Look well, I tell my last remaining pupils, for this
is the past. This is loyalty, and honor, and
accountability, and faith. This is my home.
And then I shut the box.
The weeks pass quickly, and my savings are
limited. The heating bill, I am sure, is what finally
leads me to the streets, to the arms of a Northern
winter. I can hear her, shrill in the early hours of
morning, when I wake to the violent hands of a
store owner or beat cop. I spend my days in front
of Four Fronds, a neon-wreathed bar for aging
Parrotheads, beneath the branches of an
enormous electric palm tree. At dusk, I pack up
my pistols, a necklace of seashells, and my last
potted plant, which I have affectionately named
Scarlett, and huddle beneath the window of an
elderly Cuban couple who insist on the same vinyl
record of boleros every night at 9:30.
At first, my students come for brief visits,
bearing steaming bowls of grits and the
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occasional moon pie. On the last day that I will
ever see him, Jeremiah brings me a bottle of
Aristocrat vodka, with no explanation as to where
he acquired it. “Alabama's number-one seller!” he
proudly recites, and I am so touched, so
overcome, that I throw my arms around him and
choke him with my unwashed scent, and weep
with abandon into his clean, pressed polo.
But youth's fidelity, they say, is a fickle
hound, driven to wander. A few weeks pass, and
the visits cease. I am left to the ghostly traces of
“Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)” wafting
from the Four Fronds doorway, like the lingering
scent of a lover as she speeds away in another
man's car. The other children I can handle—their
affection was passing, mercurial—but it is the loss
of Jeremiah, who so embraced my teachings, that
saddens me to distraction. I mourn him, as I
might mourn a son.
February winds to a close. The cold deepens
to an abyss. I survive only through indoor public
drinking fountains and the refuse behind Long
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John Silver's. Scarlett dies a lonely death while I
sleep. In a moment of final, wrenching injustice, I
am forced to pawn the pistols for a pair of army
boots, three packs of cigarettes, and a bottle of
Southern Comfort. I feel that my torment has
reached its absolute crescendo.
The last memory before the hospital is of a
sliver of sky bleeding through the crack between
two buildings, as I stare up from the alleyway, my
chest cobwebbed and aching. I imagine that the
buildings are so tall I can see stars in daylight, but
this is only fever dream. I tease the last drops of
liquor from the bottom of the bottle, like a
canteen, like my last memories of home, then pass
into comatose sleep, cigarette still hanging from
my pale, chapped lips.
What at first is white sand resolves into
bedsheets and billowing curtains—a hospital bed.
The doctor tells me that I have something vaguely
life threatening, and I say yes, I know, I diagnosed
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it months ago: a terrible case of Ohio. He doesn't
seem amused.
The two weeks in that bed are a blur of
hockey games on the little swinging television
over my bed and the rounded vowels from my
chubby-cheeked nurse, who will not, despite my
gravest insistence, give me back the pot that once
housed Scarlett. She's a big, pasty woman, with
hips like the cab of a freight truck and the cold,
searing eyes of a Baptist minister. She doesn't like
when I complain about the lack of seafood in the
hospital's regimen. She tells me to eat my turkey
loaf.
I get along better with the black night
nurse, Deneice, though I'm usually sleeping when
she's around. On the nights I'm up we watch I
Love Lucy and she sneaks me little dainty
margaritas from the bar across the street. She's a
big woman, too, but in that deliberate way, in
defiance of the code. She has a raspy laugh that
makes her breasts tremble like large, frightened
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animals. She looks over her glasses at me when I
ask for another drink.
The days stretch on. The cold is back on the
outside now, but still hungry. The sky is white as
lies. There's a little rotating space heater on the
window beside me, brought in by somebody who
got tired of hearing me complain about the
temperature. Every time it comes back toward
me, I try to imagine myself somewhere else, like
back in my grandmother's yard, with a face full of
St. Augustine grass. It's tough with no green in
the room. Just white. Everything is white. White
paint, white snow, white skin. There's no color in
this place, except Deneice and my own dreams. I
lie in bed in the long early mornings when my
fever keeps me up, with only the whir of the space
heater for company, and wonder how the shape of
home can change, how you can paint a new face
on it and still call it the same old name.
I have no answers. I fall asleep an hour
after the sun comes up, right after Deneice brings
me key lime pie for breakfast.
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At the end of the two weeks, the
department chair comes to visit. She looks
forbidding in her modest blue blouse, in the
doorway with her hands folded in front of her. I
can see her brain through her nostrils when they
flare at me.
I ask her, with a voice straining to maintain
its confidence, how that arm is feeling.
She says nothing. She sails to the other end
of the room and sits in a chair that faces the foot
of my bed. She does not cross her legs.
Just a little joke, I say. To what do I owe the
pleasure?
She offers me my old job back.
It will be on a tentative basis, of course.
Despite my recent behavior, my service as an
instructor was valuable to the department, and if I
can only promise no more outbursts, they will
consider reinstating me. We had enjoyed, after all,
a very cordial working relationship prior to my
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return from Thanksgiving break. There is a
shortage of qualified teachers in the area, and
they would appreciate it if I could return to my
position with my former respect for
professionalism.
I will not, I assure her, will not dishonor
myself in such a way.
Will I dishonor myself by not paying my
bills, then? she replies, so calmly that it chills my
skin with rage. I owe the hospital quite a sum of
money after my... sabbatical. Without steady work
I will be back in the alley before too long, no
doubt cradling another specimen of deceased
flora. I need food, heat, a sense of purpose. I
could return to a sales cubicle, of course, or to the
back of some brightly colored plastic hut of a
restaurant where the grease hangs like humidity
in the air and no one speaks in language of more
than three syllables.
But I don't want that. I am a teacher. That
is my trade, that is what I know. I can come back
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to it. And I'll only have to be a little more
judicious about what I choose to teach.
The room is silent in that way that only
fluorescent light in winter can be. The department
chair's nostrils stare me down. She smiles, a slow
thing that spreads across her like an oil spill. I
think about palm trees, and sand, and the
splintered wood of a pier, boiled by sun and
saltwater, against the palm of my hand. I think
about green and blue. And then I look down at my
hospital gown. I am all white now.
I sigh, like the last dying draft at the rim of
the hurricane, and the department chair, still
smiling, rises and leaves the room. Outside, it is
snowing for the fourth time today. It covers the
leaves like sheets of canvas over old forgotten
furniture. Spring won't come for weeks.
Christopher Green
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Christopher Green currently lives and works in
Cincinnati. His writing experience includes corporate
copywriting and editing, critical essays for the MA in
literature, and numerous short stories and screenplays. His
plans are to earn the MFA and to publish both literary
fiction and nonfiction, as well as teach writing at the
college level. He maintains a fiction blog
at http://arsmelodia.tumblr.com.