Transparent Christian Magazine

Last night, out here in Hoquiam, Washington the moon rose all flat and round like a big white plate. I come here sometimes to help my friend Barbara restore an old house she bought. Barbara is 68, and the house is 102, but she is giving it a new birthday. She drives down from Bellingham in her Prius to install new wiring, sand the hardwood floors, tear down the rotten chimney. Sometimes I am with her but most times not.

Look at Barb: a little bird-shaped thing with honey-brown (no grey) hair and fine wrinkles around her mouth, she moves like a movie in fast forward. Darting into the kitchen to grab a crowbar, then down on her hands and knees in the bathroom to scrape off the old linoleum.

I’ve been here 3 nights of the 5 I’ll spend, and I have to tell you about the conversation I had last night at Stiffy’s, the bar me and Barb go to after work. Stiffy’s has a strange name and free wi-fi and a dozen microbrews on tap, so it’s pretty much the place to be in Hoquiam.

Anyway, this happened Tuesday:

Barbara and I drive over to Stiffy’s for hot wings and coleslaw. This part always happens: she brings her own wine in an Odwalla container and asks the bartender for a glass of water. She promptly drinks the water, fills the glass up with wine. I order the local IPA.

We eat and talk about how cheap the shower door is at the Home Depot versus the local place, who’s likely to win the democratic nomination, my girl trouble, her girl trouble, and then she’s done with the wine and the coleslaw and so she takes the car home. I hang out to email and watch ultra fighting on the high def.

While I’m sitting there the guy who had cooked my hot wings comes out from behind the kitchen and sits down almost next to me at the bar, a seat between us. He is sort of fat, thirtyish but with grey hair, and thin glasses that make him look smart. He still has his apron on and is already half done with his glass of beer. An IPA too, I notice.

We watch two dudes beat the crap out of each other on the tele and we both shout when one of them lands a nasty punch. He looks over at me and lifts his beer, like in a ‘cheers-to-that’ sort of way. I nod knowingly.

During the commercial break he asks me how did I like my hot wings. So I tell him the truth, which is that they were pretty good but not very hot.

He says: “yeah, I’d like em to be hotter but that’s how they come out of the freezer so that’s the way I cook em.”

He asks me where I’m from so i tell him the short story, Tennessee. He says, “where else?” so I say well I went to school in Bellingham but moved down to Seattle in 03 and then Nashville a year ago, and I’ve come back to play a show in Seattle and in the meantime am helping my mom work on her house. Barb is not really my mom but everything else is true.

He doesn’t say anything to that so I ask him where is he from?

He says “Here. Except I was away for a few years and then I came back.”

I say oh yeah where’d you go?

He says Shelton.

Just then the TV fight comes back from commercial, we both turn and sip beer. While we watch I think about what he just said. The way he said it, and I realize that Shelton didn’t mean Shelton the town 30 miles away, it meant Shelton the medium-security prison next to the town.

I want to ask him about it, but the fight is on. Ah but I am in luck, because less than 2 minutes into it, the dude in the white trunks has pinned the dude in black and is hitting him repeatedly in the face with his elbows, and so the referee stops the fight.

Mr. Apron claps and hoots a bit. I wait a moment, and then I say “hey what did you do?”

He looks at me blankly. I look back and wait.

He says, “when?”

I say “Shelton.”

He looks at me through his thin glasses and I can see that I guessed right. I think he is deciding whether or not I’m in the club. But I already know I am.

He picks up the remote from the bar counter and flicks it to mute.

“Have you ever gotten bad news?” he asks.

I don’t say anything.

He says, “well I got some bad news a few years ago. My mom was killed by a drunk driver.”

I say, “that’s awful, I’m sorry.”

He says, “yeah but the f****d up part was that the drunk driver was my step brother. He was on his way home from a Super Bowl party–this was like 6 years ago–and he ran a red light and clipped my mom’s Corolla and knocked it into a telephone pole. It happened just around the corner over there, on Wishkah.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah” he said, looking at the TV. “F***** up.”

I looked at the TV with him, waiting. He took a sip and said-

“Anyway, the dude was an a$$***e. Before this happened I mean. The kind of guy who’d beat his own dog if he felt like it. I hated him before my mom married his dad. I hated him the whole time they were married. Still hate him now. I was at work when it went down. My sister called me and told me what happened. She said Stepbrother didn’t get hurt at all, that he was in the jail in Aberdeen. So I went to the bank and got enough cash to post his bail, went to the jail and got him. And instead of driving home I drove out to the beach in Ocean shores.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You know how you can drive all up and down right on the sand? Well I drove about six miles past the state park and beat him almost to death there on the beach. Then I drove home to Hoquiam.”

Holy s**t is what I said, sad because he didn’t really look like the kind of dude who would do that. Did he fight back? is what I said next.

“He tried, but he was a little ****er and I’m not. I left him there on the beach and I guess he was there all night until a jogger found him the next morning. They took him to the same hospital my mom died in. Few days later was when the cops arrested me.”

“Wow. How long were you in Shelton for?”

“2 years. It was supposed to be 4 but I got out early on good behavior. You know,” (he looks over at me) “I’m really not that kind. The kind who beats people up. It just had to happen. I probably’dve done it again all things considered.”

“Wow” was what I said one more time. And thought about my own mom and dad, who are still together and pretty happy I think. And my brother who is a pastor in LA, and my sister who would give you her last dollar if you asked her for it. And I felt something like gratitude and guilt, that I have known so little suffering in this world that breaks people and takes their mothers away and sends them to prison.

I wished I could do something for this guy, whose name I still don’t know. So I asked him if he drank whiskey and he said yes so I bought him and me a shot of Jameson and then I walked home.
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Korby's next show is at 12th and Porter 
Thursday, January 29th at 9:00.