X-Ray, A Short Story from My Recently Published Novel in Stories, Shot
With a Short Speech on the Perils of Publishing and the Unreliable Narrator in Fiction
My novel in short stories, Shot, had an interesting publishing history. My agent was unable to publish it with a big house because the editors thought it was too “literary” for young adults and college students. Granted, all of the stories were published in good literary journals, and I do think of all of my middle-grade and young adult titles as being for adults too, but, “Too literary”? That phrase says much about where commercial publishing is at today, and how stupid many editors think young people are.
Shot includes thirteen stories, all beginning with the sound of a shot and describing how twelve different characters experience it, characters whose lives will overlap with the lives of other characters who are given their own stories in the book. In the literary world, we call this kind of book a short story sequence. Famous ones are James Joyce’s The Dubliners and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. An example of this kind of story can also be seen in movies like Crash and the insanely cool coming-of-age flick Dazed and Confused, which you must see if you haven’t, and which inspired me to write this book.
In the below story, “X-Ray,” we meet one of my favorite characters, who is a real outsider in the book. He’s a black kid living in white suburbia, whose view of the world is tainted by an undisclosed infirmity he treats with Xanax. He’s also a poet of sorts, truly the most lyrical voice in the novel. He was mentioned in my previous post on bullies in the short story called “Muscle,” and I would suggest you go back to read that one, though it’s not necessary to make sense of “X-Ray.”
Unlike X-Ray, I was fairly popular in school and an athlete, but my dirty little secret has been that I’ve spent my entire life dealing with an anxious gene that has hounded my family, probably for centuries. Consequently, X-Ray, to me, is a very sympathetic character.
I truly hope you like X-Ray and root for him at the end. In my mind, he’s doing much better now, for, after all, the characters we create live on long after they find initial life on the page.
X-Ray
I was night fishing and pretty stoned when I heard the shot.
Next, I saw a yellow flash surprise the night―like a squadron of fireflies simultaneously igniting―but I didn’t want to call the cops. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, considering what had happened to me and a guy named Ray last Christmas, not to mention that it was probably just some punks setting off an M-80 a few weeks before the Fourth of July. I was under this enormous tree limb that a kid named Shane had hanged himself from about four years ago, a kid everyone called an Outlier, though he always treated me decently, probably because I was an Outlier, too. Sometimes I feel invisible, like Captain Kirk in that old Star Trek episode where he comes back through the transporter as two Captain Kirks, one who’s all evil and another who’s all good. Like there’s a wrestling match going on inside my head, and I don’t have a clue who’s going to win―a creepy feeling that fades only when I’m with Ray, who gave me a job during the summer and at Christmas breaks and promised to hire me after graduation, which made me feel older, almost normal, the opposite of how I am with kids at school, even nice ones like my friend Robert Hammersmith, because how can I explain to them all the terrible things I see every time I close my eyes? Images even my Xanax can’t scare off, just like it couldn’t stop that shot from rattling around in my head, so that last December with Ray could be happening now, or yesterday, because that’s how it usually goes with me, the natural divisions of time, the past and the present, as indistinguishable as the sky right before daybreak, so that the story I’m about to tell could be the reason for the shot I heard at the pond, or vice versa . . .
* * * *
I’m waiting for Ray’s call, halving my pills with a Swiss Army knife. I put one in my shirt pocket, another in the watch pocket of my jeans in case the old dread arrives, whereupon I’ll swallow it and forget for a while, sometimes even becoming Ray, who right now is on the phone saying Linda told him to get another job or she’ll dump him, and that she wants to get married and have a kid. Then I hear the phone go dead, then a honk outside, so I take another half and one more. I stumble downstairs, grabbing the railing, hugging the wall, my mom in her chair, asleep, the newspaper draped over her chest like a bib. Her mouth’s half open as if practicing for death. Does she know what I’m capable of? That I stiffen when I think of these things, as if God Himself is reaching into my heart and saying, “X-Ray, that sleeping woman is trying to save you from yourself,” because only He can see that black boat anchored in my head, its Captain, shotgun in hand, standing on its prow.
* * * *
If my mom were to change into something, she’d be a large boulder, sanded smooth by years of wind and rain, and I’d draw a large heart on it with red paint.
* * * *
We’re in Linda’s car, a brand-new red Ford Escort station wagon. The day she bought it Ray asks her, “You going upscale on me?” And Linda asks back, “What’s upscale about an Escort?” Then Ray says, “Next, you’ll be sleeping with a lawyer.” Then Linda says, “Only if he gives back rubs like you, Ray.” And that’s how they get along, but not tonight, just Ray saying, “X-Ray, we’re on our way.” “To where?” I ask. “To some other planet,” he says, giving that Ray laugh, full of confidence and trouble, mostly because of the Jack Daniel’s wedged between his seat and emergency brake on this mid-January night, the roads as crystal clear as Ray’s question: “You with me, X-Ray? You thought about it, man? Because this car has a mind of its own, and it’s leading us to Louie’s, where there will be princesses and trouble.”
I’m hoping he’s right. I’m hoping he’s wrong.
* * * *
If Linda were to change into something, she’d be a lilac bush, and I’d place her flowers in a jar next to my bed, and I’d never tell Ray.
* * * *
Juney June is June and Alice is Christine, women we met at Louie’s the night Ray named them, just like he named me—all of us actors in a movie written by yours truly, X-Ray.
Cast of Characters
RAY: About six feet tall. Handsome. Strong. Irish. Light brown hair tied back into a ponytail, green eyes, square jaw. Always wears blue jeans and untied work boots. Always wears flannel shirts. Often agitated.
ALICE, a.k.a. Christine: Almost as tall as Ray with short red hair, cut like Cleopatra’s. Bright red lipstick, a red butterfly-shaped birthmark on her left cheek. Knee-high brown leather boots with zippers. Very often complains.
JUNE, a.k.a. Juney June, a.k.a. X-Ray’s Juney June: Short and very thin. Purple hair spiked in sections. Tight blue T-shirt, tight black yoga pants, black high heels. Angelic.
X-RAY: Our hero. Usually nervous.
The Play
ALICE [sipping a White Russian]: I don’t want to be called Alice.
JUNEY JUNE [sitting on a stool, hands between her legs]: I like Juney June—it sounds like a bird’s song or a new kind of print dress.
RAY: We should go someplace. We should run off and get married.
ALICE: You really are nuts.
RAY [leaning over and blowing into her ear]: And you, Alice, really are sexy.
ALICE: You going to keep calling me Alice?
RAY: When I saw you drinking that White Russian, I was going to call you Maalox.
[Alice laughs.]
X-RAY [talking to himself]: Ray, if I could just be like you for a moment.
RAY: What was that, X-Ray?
X-RAY: Nothin’, Ray.
JUNEY JUNE [to X-Ray]: Do you like Dwayne Johnson?
X-RAY: He’s okay.
JUNEY JUNE: I’ve liked all his movies, but I never thought he looked like a rock. [Pause.] Whenever I say that, everyone laughs. Why didn’t you laugh, X-Ray?
[X-Ray laughs, fingering a tiny white pill in his watch pocket.]
RAY: X-Ray, stop playing with yourself!
[X-Ray removes his hand from his pocket and waits for laughter to fade.]
ALICE: I want to know why you call him X-Ray.
RAY: I got drunk one night and decided we should give each other nicknames, and because he’s like my alter ego, I named him X-Ray.
JUNEY JUNE: Like cutting your fingers and becoming blood brothers. That’s cool.
RAY: Yeah, something like that. You know, you think like a poet, Juney June.
X-RAY [talking to himself]: You already have Alice, Ray, and Linda’s at home. Let me have Juney June.
RAY: Stop mumbling, X-Ray. They’re going to think you’re weird.
JUNEY JUNE: I don’t think he’s weird.
ALICE [to Ray]: So what’s your nickname, Big Shot?
RAY: We couldn’t come up with one. I guess I’m too big of a personality.
ALICE: No doubt.
[Juney June and X-Ray go off to play a video game, which they never get to because Juney June keeps asking questions about Dwayne Johnson and movies with other black actors that X-Ray has never seen.]
JUNEY JUNE: You should go to college after high school, X-Ray. Anybody can go to a community college. I’m there now, taking this course called Genealogy, where you look up your family tree. I found out my family’s from the same area as Tom Sawyer, so I’m thinking we might be related. Don’t you ever want to look up your family tree?
X-RAY: No, not really, but I’m glad you like me instead of Ray.
JUNEY JUNE [laughing]: What an odd thing to say, X-Ray.
[X-Ray and Juney June go back to the bar, where Alice is showing Ray some postcards.]
JUNEY JUNE: I was just asking X-Ray if he ever wanted to look into his family tree.
RAY: If X-Ray has a family tree, it probably has a noose with his neck size hanging from one of its branches.
X-RAY [trying to change the subject]: Juney June says she thinks she’s related to Tom Sawyer.
RAY: I thought he was a character in a book.
ALICE: A character in a book? You mean all this time you’ve been telling people you’re related to someone in a book? That’s as stupid as being related to a cartoon character.
[If Alice were to change into something, she’d be a weed or a plant with a big mouth, like a Venus flytrap.]
X-RAY [coming to the rescue]: A lot of characters in books are based on real people. I think that’s what Juney June meant.
RAY: Yeah, that’s right. I was probably wrong, anyway. I don’t read books. [He grabs X-Ray by the arm and pulls him close.] Dig these postcards, X-Ray. Pictures of Niagara Falls in winter. Alice has this friend that moved there a month ago. Hardly anyone goes there in winter. Look what she writes on the back, “We want to see you, Alice, just show up.” Just show up, X-Ray. What do you think about that?
X-RAY: I think you should bring Linda’s car home.
ALICE: Who’s Linda?
RAY: My sister.
ALICE: Won’t she mind?
RAY: Not Linda, she’s a good egg.
JUNEY JUNE: I certainly want to go. What do you think, Christine? I mean, Alice.
ALICE: I think it’s a long way to go to get laid.
[X-Ray sighs, then feels in his jacket pocket for his bottle of pills.]
* * * *
If Ray were to change into something, he’d be a big stray dog, like an Irish setter, and he’d love and protect you, and then one day he’d disappear like he never existed.
* * * *
All four of us are crammed into a Ford Escort station wagon on the New York State Thruway for six hours in the middle of the night. Why didn’t we count on the alcohol wearing off, or on Alice zipping her boots up and down, up and down, or on her saying, “I gotta pee again,” or “Don’t they have liquor stores on this road?” or “Why the hell did you have to finish the whole bottle of JD?” And finally, “If you call me Alice one more time, I’m gonna punch you.” All this for six hours, her head one time vanishing into Ray’s lap, but mostly just zipping and unzipping her leather boots, driving Ray a little bit crazy, until she says, “Did I tell you I slept with this old guy who slept with Elton John,” which is when Ray veers into a rest stop outside of Syracuse.
“It’s coffee time,” he says.
The next time we see him he’s on his cell phone outside the rest stop, and when he returns, Alice says, “Who the hell did you call?”
“Linda,” Ray replies.
“You mean your sister?” Alice asks.
“No,” Ray says, “I mean the woman I’m living with.”
X-Ray duly notes the following:
1. Alice punches Ray in the arm and says, “You think you can treat us like fucking whores?”
2. Ray says, “What a mouth.”
3. Alice says, “You weren’t complaining about it an hour ago.”
4. Ray says, “How do you plan on getting home from the Falls?”
5. Alice says, “The same way we got there, but with one less asshole on board.”
6. It begins to snow outside X-Ray’s window, big wet flakes.
7. Juney June, who’s fallen asleep on X-Ray’s lap, awakens. X-Ray places his finger over her lips, saying, “Shh . . .”
Three hours of silence between Syracuse and Buffalo suggests that Ray and X-Ray will be alone in Niagara Falls.
* * * *
Niagara Falls! My last image of Alice and Juney June—they’re standing next to each other in front of a convenience store, Alice asking me to roll down my window, jamming her head into its opening. “You want a nickname, Big Shot?” she yells at Ray. “How about Jerk, Asshole, or Little Dick?” As she starts to walk away, I roll up the window, but she turns as if she’s forgotten something. She wheels around and hikes up her skirt, then presses her ass against the glass. A big laugh, then she turns and faces me. “This has nothing to do with you, X-Ray. You’re cool.”
As Ray pulls away, I see Juney June for the last time. She’s smiling, shrugging her small shoulders.
* * * *
When Ray and I arrive at the American side of the Falls, the ground is snow-covered, the sky clear, the temperature feeling like zero. On the road to the tourist center something remarkable happens. Though we can’t see the Falls, the mist is everywhere, and the trees seem made of glass, their branches and boughs encased in fine tubes of ice that shimmer beneath the sun.
“It’s like we’re in one of those glass paperweights,” I say.
“I told you it’d be worth it,” Ray says. “Totally exquisite, man. If only Linda were here.”
When we reach the tourist center, we see one parked car but no people. The sidewalks haven’t been sanded or salted, so we have to tiptoe to a rise overlooking the Falls. Ray goes first, grabbing my hand and pulling me with him. I feel myself go numb—not because of the rush of falling water, or the mist, or the noise, but the fear of tumbling into the gorge, which seems as wide as one hundred football fields and as long as the finger of God. There are ice-covered stairs winding their way down to a scenic overlook, which is rimmed by a tubular metal fence, but we’re blocked from the stairs by a chain and a sign that says this space is off-limits until spring.
Ray smacks the sign with the palm of his hand and says, “Fuck that,” then drags me down the stairs, gripping the icy railing. When we reach the bottom, we’re both too afraid to approach the fence. “This is crazy,” Ray says, letting go of my hand and trying to crawl back up the stairs. I cling to the railing, not saying anything but knowing I can’t let Ray get away, so I grab his legs and pull him down the first few steps. He probably thinks I’m scared, not knowing that it’s come into my head to hurl us into the foamy, deafening noise below. He tries to calm me, then pushes me away, making us both slide toward the fence. When he realizes we’re about to disappear under it and tumble into the gorge, he punches me in the face, then frees himself from my grip, slowly standing and trying to keep his footing as he drags me back to where we first started. “X-Ray,” he yells, “what the fuck are you doing?”
* * * *
What was it all about? you are probably asking. It was about a secret. Earlier that winter, in December, when I was close to eighteen, Ray and I killed a guy, though killed isn’t the right word. We didn’t beat up or shoot anyone, but the fact remains some guy is dead, and if it wasn’t for us he’d be alive.
We knew there was going to be a snowstorm when we got to Louie’s that night, but Ray drank hard anyway. As the snow fell, people began to leave early, but Ray had fought with Linda, so he wanted to keep drinking. I was worried because I had told my mother I was staying at Robert Hammersmith’s house, and I was way underage, and I had a general gloomy feeling that something bad was going to happen. It was midnight by the time we left, and I asked Louie to call a cab, but Ray told us to go to hell. A few minutes later we were driving Linda’s old 2010 Lincoln down the unplowed, deserted streets of Providence. In our defense, Ray wasn’t driving fast, and he didn’t fall asleep, and he was trying to be careful, and why would some guy be walking in the middle of the street at midnight during a snowstorm anyway, but he was, and before we could see him, we hit him from behind and watched as he flew into the air and tumbled over the back of the car.
Ray pulled over and said, “Jesus.” Then he said, “Stay here,” and he got out of the car. I could barely see him drag the body over to the curb, propping it up against a telephone pole. When he returned, I asked if the guy was alive, and he told me to shut up. As he started to pull away, I grabbed the wheel, and he said, “He’s dead, man.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“You want to see for yourself?” And I shook my head, no.
We knew it was wrong, but we left anyway.
The next few days, the paper was full of the news. I learned that the guy had died of a broken neck. I learned all about him, how many kids he had, where he worked, where his wife worked, where he was going to be waked, and like Ray, I waited every day for a squad car to pull up and take me away. But it never happened, and Ray made sure the Lincoln was destroyed.
There’s a guy I know who’s into ghost hunting, his name’s Marty, and he once told me that after people die they leave traces of themselves behind—like the energy that keeps memories from disappearing. If he’s right, I often wonder if the guy we hit is still floating around, angry at me for participating in his death. Although that would make me sad, maybe even a little scared, I’ve also learned that, given enough time, a person can live with most anything.
* * * *
The day after that flash at the pond, I found out that a kid named Alex Youngblood had been killed on the bike path near Echo Pond. He wasn’t my friend, and had even bullied me a few times, yet I somehow ended up at a vigil outside his house with Robert Hammersmith and some other guys. Shortly after getting there, I started to feel anxious and ran off to a quiet spot in the woods where I could watch everything play out. I knew it was going to be a weird night from the moment they picked me up―Robert’s face swollen from a fight he didn’t want to talk about; kids acting like they were at a pep rally instead of a vigil; two guys I couldn’t make out shoving each other over this girl named Patti, who I heard half the school had slept with. Eventually I found my way to a convenience store where I ran into my history teacher, who ended up buying me some Munchkins at a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. It wasn’t until an hour or two later that I felt like myself, playing pool at a pizzeria with Robert, who couldn’t stop talking about how he’d hung out with this rich girl named Missy Rogers after the vigil.
But I still felt anxious, like I was being stomped on by all the death and cruelty in the world. It was like I was waiting for . . . I’m not sure what, but I knew a question was being asked, knew there was an answer, though I couldn’t quite glimpse it, even when I got back home, lighting a cigarette, contemplating the curved neck of that question, staring out the living room window as rain came down, the neighborhood asleep, my parents asleep, rain peppering the road, the front lawn spotted with puddles, telephone lines humped with beads of water. Then Silence, heavy with rain—inviting, bottomless Silence—came forth suddenly, and I embraced it, being in the question, surprisingly unafraid.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories