Half Price Life

I just get so angry sometimes. This is not my life. This is not the life I wanted. Not the one I was destined for. I was a highschool star. They gave me full ride to Louisiana State playing football. Until my knee injury. It is always a knee injury, isn’t it? I should have gone pro. Instead I was booted from the system and tossed aside like an empty beer can. I never finished college. I couldn’t afford it. I went straight to work roughnecking it on an offshore rig. My sweetheart was pregnant with my first boy. I guess I should be grateful it weren’t a girl. Now, I got this punk kid talking to my like I am some sort of white trash has-been-that-never-was. So what if I live in a trailer home? It’s a double wide. I do well for myself. Well, I do what I can for myself. I try to make ends meet. I try. Sometimes trying is hard, though. That don’t mean I gotta listen to his smart lip hurling garbage at my ears. I just want to rearrange that face of his. I want to crooked his nose something fierce.

My wife is standing here with the two boys. She is the one who had me bring these damn worthless movies here in the first place. The punk says they are “Vee Aytch Ess.” Damn if I know what they hell that means. He says he can’t give me squat for ‘em cause they are “two evolutions passed.” I know he’s using that high speech to talk over me. Then he starts babbling about Dee Vee Dees and Blue Rays. Now, I heard of them Dee Vee Dees. That’s why I am here selling these damn things that take up a whole wall in the TeeVee room. We got one of them new players that takes those discs. It takes up less room too. I can arrange my trophies a little nicer now in that space. My chair fits better too. It ain’t all crunched up in a corner like it used to. I think he is making up this whole Blue Ray thing. Like we are a bunch of aliens or something.

Naw, he’s just making fun of me. I oughta pop him a good one.

You know how much he offered me? 10 bucks. He says he is being generous with that. Generous? Shit. I got over a hundred movies on the counter. That’s less than fifty cents a piece. I know I paid more than that when they was new. They call this place Half Price Books. I figure they gotta sell them for at least half price to make any money. So, it stands to reason they gotta buy them for at least a quarter of the price I paid for them. No, that ain’t right. These things are old. I can’t expect that much for them. But I at least want a dollar a piece.

“A hundred bucks,” I tell him.

He looks a little taken back by my offer. “What?”

“A hundred bucks for all of them, “ I say again.

“There is no way we can give you that for these. Half of them we just recently bought from somebody else. The other half are crap.”

He just stepped over the line. “Crap,” is what he called my taste in video.

“Like what,” I say.

He picks up one of my wife’s workout videos that she never watched. Some Jane Fonda bull. I spent twenty bucks a piece on those damn things. She saw some late night commercial about it, wrote down the phone number, and told me about it. She says it would get her back into that slim figure she had in college. Yeah right. I knew better. But I had hope. It was like lying to myself, it was. She did some lying to her own self, too. She thought she just had to buy the video and it would magically be so. Like some sort of Jane Fonda elf would sneak into her dreams at night, eat up all the fat, and shit out muscle. She never thought she had to actually exercise. That bitch. She is the one who had me bring these fool movies here in the first place. She said we could easily get two hundred bucks for them all. She said she was in here the other day and saw a bunch of the movies we owned selling for five dollars each. Half of that is two fifty. Multiplied by a hundred is two hundred and fifty. You take out fifty bucks for all the crap and you got two hundred. I didn’t want to sell them anyway. I got my wrestling that I still watch. And Bull Durham. All the money this guy is offering me could not even afford to buy one of those on Dee Vee Dee. But she rides me. She is always riding me. I seen the way she looks at me when I am in my chair watching the game. She don’t think I notice, but I do. She hates me. She hates the life I given her. She hates the mobile home. She hates the neighborhood. I tried to find one that ain’t so “racially divided.” That’s how you have to say it now. She hates my job. I hate my job. From football to construction is a short leap when you got a busted leg.

And he calls my movies crap. I am yelling at him now. I don’t remember what I am saying. I am sure I am calling him a smart ass. I am probably using language my boys shouldn’t be hearing. I stepped backward into my head. I let the other guy in there take control, the one that used to play ball, the one that would wreck the other team’s offense, the one that would sack their quarterback before he could throw a short pass, the one that knew when to hit or jump on a fumble. The one that makes split decisions in less than the blink of an eye. He could evaluate the situation and pounce. When he comes on I get a little of that high speech also. Did you hear that? Evaluate. I like it when my thoughts think like that. I like it when he comes up. It reminds me of the glory days. He shows them others who is boss. I am. It is my house. These are my movies. This is my family and I ain’t taking none of your lip.

The punk just stands there in front of the counter smiling. He does not say a word. That’s right, just stand there, kid. Just take it. What are you gonna do? Fight? You better hope not. I can only hold back the bull for so long. I got him on a tight leash. He is bucking and thrashing and waiting for the right moment to strike. The reigns slip a little. A finger of mine comes up to the center of his forehead and pushes. That oughta wipe off that shit eating grin. It doesn’t. I feel him tense up. His knuckles are curled at his side. He wants to hit me. I hope he does. It would give me a reason to full on let go. My wife makes that mistake every once in a while. The kids never do, anymore. I trained them right.

The manager steps in. She tells me to leave the store. The hell I am leaving. I got all my movies right here. Not only do they not want to pay me top dollar for them, now they want to just take them all away from me for free? I don’t think so. She calls the other employees up to the front. She also calls the cops.

She says she is going to pack them up for me like I am some child. My wife has me by the elbow. Damn, she rides me. I oughta put one in her face. I oughta put one in that kid’s face also. He is still there, smiling at me. My youngest is looking up at me. I decide to be the big man. I step outside.

She takes forever getting those videos back to me. What the hell is she waiting for? Me to just leave without them? No way. She needs to hurry before I go back in there. If I have to go back in there . . .

The cops are here now. They are questioning me. They make it all seem like my fault. They see me as a trailer trash also. At a break in the interrogation I talk to my boys.

“The nice young officer is going to take me to jail tonight.”

The cop is offended. The boy is crying. Good. It serves their guilty conscience right. He pulls my wife aside. They separate me from my boys. I am not worried about that. They’ll stand up for their old man. They better. They have before when that nasty social worker was snooping around. It is my wife that concerns me. She would throw me to the dogs in a heartbeat. She has proven that in the past. He has a couple customers in the mix. I mentally memorize their features in case I need to make a play at them later. A skinny kid and his girlfriend, an old lady with too much perfume. That’s it. Nobody else wants to step up against me. Smart thinking of those others. I will get them all. One by one. Throw me in the slammer, chief. Put me in the penalty box. I dare you. It will just give me some time to plot revenge. And some time away from home. Jail would be a vacation.

He let’s me go. Damn. I was almost looking forward to some time off. It might make them appreciate me a little more.