Fat Man in the Bathtub

One day Curly Mirrors woke up. He was cold as fuck with a headache that could split a locust stump. You’d think the headache would be a clue, but it took ten minutes, a coughing fit that sounded like a silverback laying waste to a TB unit, and the foggy awareness of a six inch long crack running down the top passenger side of his windshield, to jar Curly into the terrifying and painfully unpleasant realization that he was not dead.

His head lurched into motion like something out of a Soviet industrial junkyard. He searched for some memory of the night before and all he could focus on was the snaggle tooth of his boss, an old woman that ran his unit at the detention center. There she was, peering at him through the fog of car exhaust, whiskey, and Calf Mountain’s best outdoor-grown smoke, staring a hole through what looked like another example of Curly’s shocking incompetence.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Curly thought. He threw open the door to the truck and vomited all over the blacktop. Curly got down on his hands and knees and said, “Hey momma, let me check your oil all right?” before passing out on the blacktop with a grin.

Our Man

This Curly—he was something. He had a voice, sweet and raspy,  that when spoken sounded like Carol Burnett if she was sprinkled with curry and put through a sausage grinder. When he sang, the man sounded like Robert Johnson would’ve, had he grown up blue-eyed and fed a steady diet of frog legs, venison, and Ronald Reagan. Curly could put a baby to sleep and keep a grown man awake, weeping.  He looked like Jerry Garcia—sort of. If Jerry and Willie Nelson double teamed a Hell’s Angel, Curly would be the offspring.

Now, despite being the biggest goddamn man I’ve known, Curly was thin on problem-solving. Which is to say, Curly didn’t make many decisions. Our man was one to toss his fate to the hand that was dealt—like a mixed metaphor in a John Prine song, he just figured that if things got too heavy he’d grab a bottle of Jack Daniels and sing about it. And true to the form of a small town blue-eyed bluesman, Curly hated just about everything that stunk of middle-class normalcy. He worked nights down at the Calf Mountain Detention Center.

The town of Calf Mountain, like his work, was another one of those things he backed into. He loved music, the Bible, and football. After high school Curly decided to head off to seminary school. That gig didn’t last long though due to the Lord frowning on threesomes in the refectory. For Curly, it wasn’t a matter of right and wrong, he knew an impromptu flesh celebration on the Sunday altar was a sin. But Curly was not exactly a pick ‘em up easy guy and “give me chastity, but not yet Lord?” was how he figured he’d play it once confronted with the opportunity.

So, after six months of Bible study, Curly took off in the only other direction that made sense to him.  He followed the Grateful Dead around the country.

Those years were nice, but one by one, his group of friends started leaving the scene. One got married, another went to graduate school and by the time Curly was in his late twenties he was all by himself. On his way back down to Alabama from a New Year’s Eve show in New York, his car broke down in a little town called Calf Mountain. He called an old tour friend in town to see if he could snag a spot on a couch. The very next night, on account of his size and a fortuitous conversation about how Job’s suffering could have easily been relieved with a plate full of mac and cheese with an old snaggle-toothed lady in the buffet line at the local Sizzler, Curly found a job. Snaggle Tooth, turns out, was the late night shift supervisor at the detention center and hired Curly the moment they met in line for second helpings. That was eight years ago.

The Big Idea

The thinking that led to his suicide was a slow one. Like the building anticipation in the transition from Lady with a Fan to Terrapin Station, it didn’t sneak up on him, but boy was it sweet; an aha moment that thundered through his head and made the water in the tub start to splash.

The revelation, dare I say the answer, came one night when Curly found himself alone in his vintage clawfoot tub. Curly floated his hands across the water and found an island of soap bubbles. He had long since finished a joint and was aching through this relief from the frustration that had become his life. He ran a checklist of thoughts through his vision; a biography of BB King, an old Miles Davis riff that he couldn’t get out of his head, the last Dead show he went to, the sweet distortion of nitrous balloons, the warmth of his son draped across his chest when he rocked him in his lazy boy, the condescension of his father-in-law when he offered money, the 43^rd Psalm, an excerpt from the big black book of the 12 step program… how’d that get there? A progress review from the community college he dropped out of after getting in a fight with his math teacher, the price of duct-tape at Walmart, the twisted water hose frozen unwound in the backyard. Curly clapped his hands together and bubbles went flying. “That’s it!” he thought. Curly knew what he had to do and drifted off into a calm sleep.

The Plan

Curly Mirrors woke up, he was cold as fuck. Candles were all burned down, and the bathwater hovered around his belly, still, with a froth—like the thickening milk surface separating from cooling tomato soup.

At work that night, after he finished the first round of bed checks, he saddled himself up to the computer and went online. This night there would be no endless searching for cultural oddities like trepination or smoking banana peels. No, tonight, Curly had a purpose.

He typed, “suicide by car exhaust.” After an hour of reading, he found the warning: late 90’s model cars and newer produce emissions too clean for this type of suicide, must have a vehicle made before 1995. And then there was the list. Twenty bucks bought him a garden hose, duct tape, and a package full of rags.

Preparation

He set out that morning with resolve. Curly had made up a story about needing to get an early jump on mulching his yard so that he could borrow Snaggle Tooth’s ‘89 Ford pickup. On the way, he dropped off his boy at the sitter’s, that was the hardest part—knowing the little man would be better without him—and off to Walmart.

He bought a hose, duct tape, razor blade, and rags. Twenty dollars and Curly was feeling strong. The purpose with which he moved took him back to that place in his living room as a kid on Tuesday nights watching Macgyver and the A-team. Tonight, he would get to be his own hero. Just one more stop at the ABC store for a bottle of whiskey, because, ya’ll know, this is no task for the sober.

Getting It Done

On the drive up the mountain, he listened to Little Feat sing about a fat man with the blues, cause he can’t get laid.  The song seemed fitting to Curly, the frustration of knowing a lay was just around the corner but being told instead to come back later. It’s like as a kid when he would go trout fishing with his dad and there was always somebody who would say; “shoulda been here yesterday.” Or when his wife would give him shit for spending the last of his paycheck on a bag of weed and then get mad when he ran out ‘cause she wanted to smoke.  The damned woman never wanted to get high until he was out. Curley pushed the thought aside and sang along with the radio.

”All I want in this life of mine is some good clean fun
All I want in this life and time is some hit and run”

I hear you moan, I hear you moan, I hear you moan”

Then Curly opened his eyes and let out a guttural moan when he saw standing in the road in front of him a gigantic deer. He swerved to miss it, catching the rear of the animal and spinning the buck over the side of the mountain while running the truck into the ditch.

“Aghhh!” Curly shouted.

He got out of the vehicle and grinned at his good fortune for it was at this point that Curly remembered that he wouldn’t be around to have to deal with Snaggle Tooth or the shit his wife would give him for wrecking somebody else’s truck. All Curly needed was to be able to get the truck out of the ditch.

It took four tries before the engine turned over. He pulled out of the ditch, began making the slow winding climb up the mountain and around the dark and light places of his head. A drunk Methodist minister with wild eyes and wandering hands, a high school history teacher who sold Curly his first bag of weed, the first buck he shot which also happened to be the first time he heard his dad shout at him to “stop fucking crying.” An angry football coach and of course Curly’s wife screaming at him for leaving his bong out on the coffee table for the boy to find in the morning.

He drifted off that night comforted by the knocking of the engine, not the fantasy of his hysterical wife longing for a cosmic do-over full of kindness or the “fuck you” his letter would say to his boss.  The final sweet memory was that of his sweet-old-vintage-cast-iron-clawfoot tub. The paint was chipped and he’d had to replace one of the feet twice but it was a tough old tub, built for a big man. When Deadwood came out on HBO, Curly would hole himself up in his bathroom with a joint and watch the newest episode. Some men love their lazy boy. Other men obsess over their riding mower. Curly loved his bathtub. It was a $1000 tub, which was 5% of what Curly made in a year and it took five years to convince his wife to let him buy it. The tub, like Curly, didn’t exactly fit in their two-story ranch life.

Happy Ending

Curly looked over the edge of the mountain down into the valley, he thought about jumping, but then it was the thought of living that stopped him. Curly couldn’t stand the thought that he might survive killing himself twice.  So, he turned, head pounding twenty degrees outside with vomit and whiskey frozen to his jacket and began the 20-mile walk down the mountain. He sang to cover the thought of all the explaining he had to do when he got back to Calf Mountain town, he sang, “There’s a fat man, in the bathtub, with the blues.”