Bio
Based in Boston, Gary Duehr has taught creative writing for institutions including Boston University, Lesley University, and Tufts University. His MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001 he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Journals in which his writing has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Chiron Review, Cottonwood, Hawaii Review, Hotel Amerika, Iowa Review, North American Review, and Southern Poetry Review.
His books include Point Blank, (In Case of Emergency), Winter Light (Four Way Books) and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).
Trigger Warning
Through the grimy window of the Deja Vieux, Martin caught sight of his mother from behind, brandishing a wooden pistol at the gang of losers slopped over the bar. He couldn’t hear a word with Beyonce bouncing out of a loudspeaker across Dauphine, but he knew her routine by heart. He could see her wagging her shaggy head as she cried, “Hands up!,” while the nobodies glanced up bleary eyed, only Carlos the bartender raising his arms with a toothy grin.
Martin pounded his palms on the glass, but everyone ignored him just as they had laughed off his mother, who slumped onto a stool. Carlos gently slipped the pistol from her grasp and poured her half a Hurricane. On the big TV behind the bar, a Brazilian soccer game bathed the whole scene in sickly chartreuse.
“How did he land here?” Martin wondered. A little tipsy himself, he leaned back against the Deja Vieux for balance. Drunk college kids swathed in beads weaved around him, chanting “Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, uh oh” along with Queen Bey. He looked down at his sneakers, awash in foam from street cleaners. The soapy scent of beer and vomit hit his nose. He bent over and retched a little into his mouth, then wiped off his lips and plopped onto the curb. The night’s bright neon swirled over his head.
Six months ago he’d had to admit defeat to himself, and worst of all, to his mother. From the Queens flat he shared with three roomies—all marginal actors like him in their early thirties, their best hope to be a dead body on “Law and Order”—he dialed home and asked if his room was still intact.
“Sure it is, baby boy,” said his mother. “I’ll move my knitting.”
“Just till I get back on my feet, Ma.”
He could picture it: the single bed with a tufted bedspread, the kid’s desk with a rabbit lamp, the felt pennants of states—Texas, Arkansas, Missouri—pinned to the wall from summer car trips.
So he’d grabbed a Greyhound with his last few bucks and crawled back under the covers, venturing out only at night like a vampire to score a six-pack of Keystone at the corner Circle K with money he’d scavenged from his mother’s desk drawer, sucking them down in his room with the rabbit lamp glaring back at him.
Once in a while, to make nice, he’d creep out and share the couch with his mother to watch “48 Hours” as they cornered a murderous husband or fiancee. They’d both get sloshed, critiquing the reenactors for being over the top.
“She can’t even collapse convincingly!” his mother would snort.
Martin had found the prop wooden pistol under a sofa cushion when he was fishing for change. He thought it must be for protection, but when it went missing one night when his mother was out on the town, he went in search for her.
Once he crossed Rampart into the Quarter, he checked off her usual haunts: Red Penny, Jake’s, One-Eyed Dog, the Alibi. He’d found her Skeeter’s Lounge curled up by the Ladies, dead asleep, the wooden pistol tucked under her like a baby.
From the patrons he pieced together the whole incident. Mother bursting in the open doorway with pistol blazing, screaming “This is a holdup!,” waving her weapon around while everyone dived for the floor. The bartender grabbing a baseball bat, about to hit a homer when he ID’d the fake gun and slapped it out of her hand. The pistol skidding across the damp floor as she lunged for it, knocking herself out on a table leg. In the aftermath, all he could do in his own fuzzy state was mumble apologies and haul his mother out onto the sidewalk.
Her penchant for mayhem had become a weekly event, usually on Saturday night when the TV was all reruns. He didn’t mind going after her; it was the only time he got much exercise. Plus the foray got him out of the house, away from the terrifying big black crows he could hear settling on the roof, sharpening their metal talons on the chimney. Late at night, hugging himself in bed to calm his shakes, he could hear them scratching against the bricks. Sometimes he dreamt they swooped down to carry him off, back to the tall glass cliffs of New York City—where, after his mother, humming to herself, set the table— they feasted on his entrails.
“Come on, Ma,” Martin said as he eased her off the stool at the Deja Vieux. “Time to go home.”
He stuck her pistol in his back pocket, threw a couple of fives on the bar, and dragged her out backwards, his elbows locked under her armpits like a fireman rescuing a victim from a burning house.
“Lemmo go!” she grunted. “I’m not done yet! Gimme all your money!”
A couple of wise guys by the door flung some coins at her. She stretched one hand up like the end of a horror movie then conked out again.
In the middle of Dauphine, a break dancer was spinning on a flattened piece of cardboard as two guys banged on buckets. Tourists flashed their cellphones.
Martin felt dizzy. He looked up, afraid the horrific crows might have trailed him. “We gotta get outta here,” he said, half-stumbling into the darkness, his arm around his mother’s waist. They rounded the corner onto Conti. He could feel the shakes start to work their way up his legs. He wasn’t sure how long he could handle her bulk.
With a big shush, a city bus lurched up to the curb. Its bright windows glowed like a spaceship. They clambered up the back steps and sank into a seat, his mother splayed across his lap.
He cradled her head and stroked her wiry gray hair. “It’s gonna be ok, Ma. I got you.” He felt his trembling legs start to settle. “You’ll get ’em next time.”
She looked up at him and cracked a smile, “That’s my baby boy.” Then she dozed off, snoring a blue streak, her squishy mouth half open.
He felt the pistol’s lump under him, and he knew he’d stuff it back under the cushions like he always did. He didn’t want to add to her shame.
The Quarter bumped past, yellow lights dripping from doorways like candlewax, on the sidewalk shadowy figures clumped together. As the bus crossed Rampart, a metallic screech ran down the roof of the bus, grating his ear. Martin clasped his mother tighter. He felt dread ball up in his chest. This was the role he was born to play, this was the scenario that he and his mother were locked in, the one that in time they would perfect.