The Doudette
Yeah, I’m that guy.
Maybe you read about me in the paper. Or heard about me on the local news. A guy goes twenty-nine years with no one knowing his business and then one day wakes up and sees his face all over town. It’s like I’ve hit the lottery, from hell.
Before the accident, I got, like, maybe one or two calls every other day. I’m not a reject but I’m not Clooney either. People hit me up when they need me. That’s all I’m saying. The day after the incident I got bombed with calls and texts. Everyone from Aunt Wilma to my second-grade gym teacher Mr. Shoemaker called to thank me for what I’d done, said it was about time. Man, it was all good until this old dude who works for the City gave me a piece of his mind. It wasn’t about The Doudette though, it was about his fucking grass. He said that fucking lawn was his masterpiece. He was furious I’d left tire-tracks on his emerald grass and just what in the hell was I going to do to make it right?
Of course, I didn’t get these calls until I’d gotten home from the city jail, having spent six and a half hours behind bars getting my mug shot taken and sitting in a gray cell with some delinquent with meth mouth while I waited on my old man to come bail me out.
“You done what?” my dad yelled when he finally took the foam plugs from his 68-year-old ears. Ever since he and my mom moved out on County Line Road, he’d stoppered up his hairy ears so he wouldn’t have to listen to the engine rumbling along the tracks behind his house. The Pennsy came by twice a day hell-bent for Chicago as it made its way through the cornfields and housing clusters.
“Dad, I’ll explain later. Just come get me please?”
“I gotta throw on some clothes first. Dammit, Josh!”
“City jail,” I reminded him, “The city jail.” Sometimes when he just woke up he’d have cobwebs in his brain. I didn’t want him going to the county lock-up by mistake.
I was ready to hang up when he asked, “You ain’t pranking me are you, son?”
“Dad, it’s too early to screw around, just get here quick.”
And when the guard came and got me out and led me into the office where my old man was standing, the fly on his faded blue jeans wide open so I could see his white BVDs, the sun was just starting to come up. Seeing him standing there and hearing and smelling coffee dripping sobered me up better than the seven hours I’d spent waiting in that stink hole of a barred room.
When we got in his Dodge Dakota, my old man said, “Okay, now let me have it, and tell it to me straight.”
* * *
It was a balmy summer’s evening – typical Indiana weather – and I’d gone over to Stella’s to kick back. We’d been shooting pool most of the night – that, and drinking Jack and Cokes. But mostly I’d gone over to be with my sister, which is kind of strange since our family isn’t one of those overly-sappy types. Stella and Larry had a baby girl, Andersen, and ever since mom died I’d found myself spending a lot more time over there. Maybe the stopper to the hole where my life seemed to be leaking out was in that house. Staring at Sen-Sen, sometimes holding that little girl when she wasn’t fidgety, helped. That evening after my brother-in-law had taken me to the cleaners on the pool table, I asked Stella if she thought about mom much.
“Sure,” she said.
“I mean, you know, really think about her. Like she’s coming back, you just don’t know when?”
“No one ever wants to lose their mom.” Stella looked at Sen-Sen. “Now, if you’d ask me about Dad,” and she began to laugh.
“It’s like I woke up one day and everything changed. The world looks different now. I go to work and I’m doing whatever and it’s like I’ve never done it before. Hell, my apartment seems different. It even looks different.” I finished my drink. “I don’t know. It’s just weird. Everything’s weird.”
And that’s when Larry, who’d been within earshot came into the kitchen and said, “Hey, why don’t you take the Camaro out for a spin? It’ll be good for you, and anyway my baby needs the lead blown out bad.” Over pool he’d admitted that he’d hardly taken the Camaro for a spin since they’d had Sen-Sen. He grabbed the keys off a hook on the wall and tossed them to me. “Just be careful, man,” he said, glancing compassionately at me.
Here’s what’s funny: I wasn’t even interested in thinking about his car. Oh sure, I’d dreamt of getting my hands on the wheel, feeling that wicked thrust under my foot. But I hadn’t even been thinking about the damn Camaro until then. What the hell, sure, I thought.
And just as I was walking out the back door he said, “And goddamit, Josh, you put so much as a scratch in it I’m gonna kick your ass!”
I told him I’d be back in a flash.
The lime-green, metal-flaked Camaro SS had a V8 supercharged engine with 20-inch staggered ace convex all matte black wheels. She was hot. Man did she feel good – her tires hugged the soft-hot asphalt and her engine purred while I wove through Stella and Larry’s neighborhood. But when I got out on the four-lane road where I could give her a little gas and throttle it into gear, well, I gunned her good. The car and I lunged down to the red stoplight. While I sat there I looked in the rearview mirror. She and I had the road all ourselves. I checked for cop cruisers and when I didn’t see any – not one car, person, hell even animal – I floored her gas pedal when the light flashed green. We screamed down that road under the orange arc-lights. I syncopated my pedal-shifting to the thumping bass line on her ass-kicking stereo. And for the first time in a long time I thought of one thing only: driving that sweet automobile.
I kept going until I saw the sign for Glennhaven. We grew up and lived in Russellville, a sleepy town outside of Glennhaven, but unlike my folks and my sis, the city was always a gorgeous siren calling out to me. I decided to take the Camaro into Glennhaven – buzz around – then head back to Sleepyville.
When I got downtown, the bars were open and people were doing the bar-shuffle. There were a couple of places on Main Street I sometimes frequented. I wondered if I’d see any familiar faces. Some of the guys I worked with liked to go to The Brass Rail, so as I idled there I kept my eyes trained on the small pockets of folks hanging outside the bar. But I didn’t see anyone I knew so I lit the tires up and made the lime she-devil chirp. In the rearview mirror I saw a couple of people standing on the sidewalk looking at us speeding away. Kiss my chrome-ass, I thought, burning down the street.
When I looked back at the street, some damn fool had pulled out in front of me. The Camaro’s tires were melting as she jetted down the runway. The idiot in the car ahead was going slow, too damn slow. Shit, I thought, shit – no time. I hit the brake and fishtailed. The Camaro’s wheels grabbed the curb and hit hard – the car rode up onto the sidewalk and skidded into the grass. The gorgeous pristine car crashed into a jungle-gym of structured steel. Fuck me.
Fuck me.
* * *
I must have blacked out, although I don’t remember blacking out. After I came to, a cop was standing over me, bellowing greasy onions and hamburger breath in my face.
“Son? Can you hear me?” He shone a flashlight in my face. “We’ve got an EMS on the way. Keep still, don’t try to move. Let them get you out of the car. You’re fine.”
By this time I could tell the car wasn’t fine. When I looked over the crumpled hood – it looked like balled tinfoil – my stomach and bowels began to churn. I was alive but in deep shit, not only with the law, but with the car’s owner. The cop was standing there. “You’re lucky son – real lucky,” he said. Sirens screamed from a few blocks away.
“Lucky,” I thought. Shit, I was anything but.
I’d collided with the sculpture called The Doudette. Everyone who lived in or near Glennhaven and who had half a mind, could read the newspaper or listen to the radio or TV, knew all about that thing.
What was The Doudette? It was a mangled-mass of steel I-beams meant to resemble a herd of charging African elephants – you only knew this if you’d read the artist’s statement. To the untrained eye, The Doudette was nothing but a bunch of metal angles. Named for the French conservation biologist Henri Doudette, the sculpture had been commissioned by Larkin-Chester Corporation, one of Glennhaven’s thriving businesses in the mid-1980’s to celebrate the company’s deep-rooted presence. Since then, the “artwork” had become a local icon.
The charcoal-colored I-beams, anchored in cement, had had a distinct advantage over the lime-green Camaro. The impact of metal-into-steel was a lose-lose, the crumpled car and the tusks and appendage-like rods of the otherwise hardy sculpture had sustained major dents and scuffmarks. Mainly though, The Doudette had been knocked off its anchoring base. I was uninjured, but a little shaky. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was looking at a DUI, for starters. And even if the accident hadn’t killed me – unless the cop was an angel of God greeting me at the Pearly Gates – I figured Larry probably would, and I wasn’t sure Pearly Gates would be in my future.
* * *
Want to know something strange? A funny thing happened a few days after the accident: I became a sort of local hero. I started hearing my name mentioned on call-in radio shows and TV news. There was even an online petition going around that said all charges should be dropped against me. Of course it wasn’t right for me to sign, but I made sure my family did so I could count on at least three signatures.
CNN and FOX News sent crews out to film the crippled Doudette and to interview Charles Leopold, director of the Glennhaven Art Museum. Leopold is a pretentious asshole who wears his long blonde hair in a ponytail, need I say more? He did everything in his power to come off, as he said, “shocked and saddened” by what had happened to The Doudette. CNN even managed to work in a short interview clip with the sculptor, a skinny bastard called only by his surname – Gagu – from his studio in southern California. Gagu was even more of an ass than ponytail-man. Both stations hounded me for an interview but my lawyer said no way in hell was I to talk on camera.
And then this in the Glennhaven News:
“The trashing of The Doudette has generated dissenting feelings in this Midwestern community bringing to the forefront a long-standing debate about the merits of the postmodernist sculpture. Many citizens have taken to social media sites like Facebook to express their concern that The Doudette not be restored. ‘It’s not worthy of the time and money needed,’ said one commentator . ‘Haven’t we had to live with this monstrosity long enough? Josh is a hero. He doesn’t deserve time in prison; he deserves a term in the mayor’s office!’”
* * *
Some people claimed The Doudette was never an icon nor a “work of art.” Most run-of-the-mill, hardworking folks of Glennhaven never did “get” that sculpture. For one thing, it didn’t even look like elephants, at least none I’d ever seen. Hell, anyone who’s made a trip to the Toledo Zoo or watches PBS or the Republican convention knows what a stupid elephant looks like. All that bent metal couldn’t resemble an amazing pachyderm. You didn’t have to be an art sophisticate to know that some dumbass artist had pulled the proverbial wool over the eyes of citizens who’d paid good money to have a piece of shit installed on their front lawn. To them, the postmodern “Doudette” was nothing but an eyesore.
Back in 1980, the wife of the CEO had made a big show of presenting a check for the sculpture. She sat on the board of the art museum, and since the city of Glennhaven depended on her husband’s business for its revenue and taxes, all anyone could really do was grumble. And there was plenty of grumbling. People wrote letters to the editor, and they griped amongst themselves in coffee shops, the grocery store, and even in beauty salons and barbershops. Hell, even some art lovers thought the controversial sculpture was offensive.
Of course, some people – namely the museum staff, the Mayor and the members of the Chamber of Commerce – said the very essence of art is to provoke discussion. Others, however, said The Doudette was nothing but a joke at the expense and dignity of the city. So much did some people despise the sculpture their animosity extended to their kids. It was not uncommon for high school pranksters to sneak up to it late on Friday or Saturday nights and dress it with rolls of toilet paper. No one seemed to really care.
* * *
Since my blood-alcohol level was 0.15, almost twice the legal limit, I was charged with drunken-driving, and to further my pain, endangerment and property damage were added.
The art museum had an insurance policy covering The Doudette, but since I’d been found guilty, the museum’s insurance company decided to ask my insurance company to cover the repair costs.
In an interview with the newspaper, Leopold said that before the accident The Doudette had been valued between one and 1.5 million dollars. Talk about a load of shit! Now Leopold was getting appraisals for the current market value of the artwork and said that smaller pieces had recently gone to auction by the artist selling for as high as $900,000.
In other words, I was screwed.
I make two bucks over minimum wage at the foundry. I’ve got basic car insurance with Gecko, but I’ll be screwed out of any coverage after this whole mess gets straightened out. I’ve also got a Camaro-less brother-in-law who, when he’s not giving me the evil-side-eye, is acting like he’d like to really hurt me. Who can blame him? How’s his Camaro going to get fixed? That damn art museum is going to take me for every last penny.
The other day I read where once The Doudette gets fixed, the art museum is going to have a special exhibition that “chronicles the sculpture’s inception, creation, tragic fall, and victorious return to glory in Glennhaven.” “Tragic fall,” “victorious return to glory”? Give me a fucking break! It sounds like I’m some anti-liberal intent on destroying a cultural landmark. I was shit-faced drunk, no time to plan anything.
* * *
The day after my sentencing – fifty hours of community service with local art organizations, a suspended sentence for a year, and DUI classes – Stella had me and Dad over for dinner. She said maybe we’d all be better off if we started doing family things again like we’d done when mom was alive. Dad and Larry were out in the garage surveying the damage to the Camaro. Larry didn’t want to turn a claim into his insurance agency for fear his premiums would skid out of control, and my insurance didn’t amount to jack-shit.
Sen-Sen was down on the floor crawling around trying to pull herself up. She was grunting and groaning, her pink face a tight fist of determination. Stella watched her and smiled wistfully, “When she’s like that she reminds me of mom.”
I took a handful of M&Ms from the bottomless candy bowl my sis always kept, just like mom had.
“Mom didn’t take shit from nobody,” I said.
The baby’s wobbly legs shook as she began to right herself. Just as she was about to stand, she crumpled over onto the padded blanket running amok with green elephants and yellow tigers. She grabbed at her chubby pink toes and gummed a smile.
“Ooops, there she goes!” said Stella laughing and bending down to tickle the baby’s tummy. She stood up and put her hand on my shoulder. “Josh, look. I know you’ve had it tough lately, but remember what Mom always said? ‘This too shall pass’?”
I took another handful of candy. I remembered. It was one of those mom-things I’d never forget.
“Soon enough things will go back to normal – they always do. You’ll get through all the court-ordered stuff and somehow the damn Doudette will get fixed up and paid for, and then it won’t be a story anymore. You know, it’ll just fade out like everything else.”
What she meant by everything was everything that had changed with Mom not around. Even that feeling would pass, she was reminding me, not that she’d meant it would pass but it would be less painful.
Larry and Dad came in from the garage. Larry went over to the kitchen sink and washed his hands and when he turned around I didn’t know what to expect. I thought he might take a swing at me if he had half a chance. Instead he went to the refrigerator, took out four bottles of wine coolers and passed them around. When he went to hand one to me he said, “No hard feelings, Josh,” and he tapped my head with the bottle.
“Really?” I asked, happily confused.
“Like hell,” he said, and then winked, “no hard feelings today.”
My dad said, “Look Josh. Your mom would never want nothing coming between this family. I’m gonna help Larry and Stella out with this. I’m gonna take some money out of my retirement to get the car fixed up. They won’t owe me back and neither will you. But we’re gonna go on from here.”
I needed to ball like my sister’s baby, but I just took a long gulp of wine cooler. I’d come with Dad. I’d lost my license for the time being, so he was the DD for the evening. We shot some pool and Stella fixed us an excellent dinner like mom used to – Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed green beans, and apple pie for dessert.
* * *
When it was time to go Dad and I climbed in his Dodge Dakota. Once we got on the road he turned to me and said, “Before I drop you off at your place what say we take a little cruise.”
I didn’t care. He had the wheel.
“When you gotta start them art appreciation classes?” he asked me as we drove on.
“Tomorrow,” I answered. I was supposed to go to an art gallery in Glennhaven and help out for two hours doing odd-jobs or whatever they wanted me to do.
Dad drove us down Main Street and it wasn’t long before I realized where we were going. He pulled us into the Glennhaven Art Museum parking lot and we got out. We walked over to The Doudette, which was casting a crumpled shadow. Though orange fencing and cement barriers had now been erected around it, you could see it was a metallic mess. It was the first time my dad had actually seen the wreckage up close.
“You did a pretty good number on that thing,” he finally said shaking his head.
“I know.”
Then he turned to me, “Can’t hardly see as how it’s any worse for the wear.”
I smiled.
My dad put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a hug. Then he backed off and patted my cheek. “If you ever do something this stupid again I’m gonna kick your ass,” he said.
We started back to the parking lot. Just before we got into the truck I said to him,
“Dad, your barn door’s open.”
He looked down and zipped up.
• • •
DS Levy has been published in Little Fiction (nominated for Pushcart), the Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia, South Dakota Review, Brevity, The Pinch, and others. My collection of flash fiction, A Binary Heart, was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press.