Lyer’s Poker
by Donald McElroy
I
Carl Peters slammed the door shut on his truck and slapped the steering wheel with open-palmed hands until they stung and throbbed back at him. "NO NO NO NO NO!" On the last “NO” his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth a bit, the bitter aftertaste of stale beer mixed with panic. He began to run through the last 30 minutes in his head. At first Yvie had complained of a slight discomfort, and he thought it was drinking on an empty stomach. Once she grabbed the knife, he knew she had drank from the wrong glass.
He turned the truck over and radio squeaked out, "All I want for Christmas is my two teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth". Only one station broadcast in Van Buren at that time of night, so Carl Peters gave up and turned off the radio. He could hear the voices from inside the house. Two were arguing, one was gurgling.
"No, Martha, we can't let her do it…"
"But she's suffering."
Eugene looked across the room to the kitchen where half-cooked stew sat on the stove. The knife used to chop the vegetables lay on the floor on the invisible boundary between rooms. "The ambulance is on it's way."
"You know it can't get here in time" Martha’s voice was pinched and reedy.
Carl Peters got out of the truck and started back towards the house. His feet crunched the hard ground. As he got closer to the door, the voices began to soften, he could see Martha and Eugene kneeling on the floor, a grisly nativity scene. He wasn’t strong enough to go inside, and he wasn’t scared enough to run. “I’ll just tell them it was an accident, because it was” ran like a stag loop in his head. The lights framing the door window reflected off his face. The colors gave an illusion of change.
"Yes, that's why I wanted to drive her myself." Eugene glanced sideways at his daughter then furrowed his brow so only his wife could see, "Talk to her, Martha, she needs to hear you."
"I don't know how." That is when Martha finally begin to sob.
"Remember when she got the mumps, you talked to her every night."
"It's not the same thing. I wasn't in the war, so I can't lie like you."
"You are going to be ok, Yvonne. Your mother and I love you." Yvonne tried to talk but only air gurgled in the back of her throat. Her back arched in spasms of pain.
"I love you, Yvie." Martha found it almost as hard to speak as her daughter. From the other room a baby cried, screaming for her mother.
II
"So he just sat in the car while she died?" Stella cradled the glowing laptop and radiated disgust.
"Pretty much, until the police get there."
"What the fuck, Donald. I thought this was a Christmas story."
"It is a Christmas story, it takes place at Christmas."
"People have a certain expectation of Christmas stories. It should be happy. It shouldn't include someone accidentally poisoning his war-widow fiancee with lye."
"Well it’s not a total accident, he wanted to kill someone, just not her. Besides, I got it from the newspaper. I didn't make it up." Donald tried to sound jovial.
"You brought it to life, that makes you an accessory after the fact. Who wants to remember this?"
"I don’t know if I want to, but I have to." As he said this, Donald noticed that the blinking lights in their own bedroom gave a similar illusion to Stella’s expression.
"Just because you choose to relive all this grief, doesn't mean everyone should have to."
"Where I grew up, there is a very dark core waiting under the veneer of their Norman Rockwell chairs."
"It's like that everywhere. 'You aren't special, my dear', isn't that what you always say?"
"I don't say 'you aren't', I say 'none of us are', there is a big difference."
"It makes me feel the same."
"I'll work on that” Donald promised. “What bothers me most, is that I never heard of it. Nothing happens up there. You know...you’ve been there...the Pioneer Times is mostly filled with birthday parties and recipes. This was the trial of the century, but no one ever talked about it! People like to point at all this moral decay like it's something new, but it's not. That is why we shouldn’t forget these stories."
“Maybe they were just trying to forgive.”
“Forgive and forget? I can forgive, but I can’t forget.”
“Maybe they need to forget so they can forgive.” Stella cocked her head a cracked half a smile. Donald gave her a kiss on the forehead and took back the laptop in humble silence.
