Les Bohem

The Center of the Universe

2007
With nothing much left,
Carol thought she might move to Des Moines.
Or maybe try Kansas City,
somewhere where she could start again
without having to think about Luke.
These places got cold in the winter
but Carol didn’t mind.
She wanted to live somewhere
without reference to her life so far.
She was born in Poughkeepsie
but didn’t remember a thing about it.
Her parents had moved to Takoma
when she was seven.
Her dad had died a year later.
A work accident.
Something heavy, she’d never known what,
had fallen on him.

After he died, her mother had found a job at Thurston Family Farms
in Coeur D’Alene processing chickens.
She had trained as a deboner in Takoma,
but they had only moved there for the job that killed her husband.
She was happy to leave
once she found the job in Coeur D’Alene.
Carol had grown up with Idaho cold—
Midwest cold didn’t worry her at all.

It was in Coeur d’Alene,
some years later,
that she met Luke.

A cowboy—
a for real, born-on-the-range cowboy.
Luke—a cowboy’s name,
romantic in a flat, unromantic way.

He worked piecemeal on ranches
picking up odd jobs.
He could do most anything
that needed doing on a ranch.
He rodeoed in the spring and
seemed to live on a diet of Copenhagen and Coca-Cola.
The poor man’s C & C, he called it.

She’d met him while working at the Prairie Jifi.
She’d laughed when he’d put down the can of snuff
and the can of cola
and said that, about the poor man’s C & C.
She was seventeen and just out of high school without a clue past the job at P-Jif.
He was thirty-four and seemed to know all the answers
and, when he asked—
So, you been up the Blossom Lakes Trail yet?
it felt as if he already knew that she had not
and that she would be going with him.
My truck’s right out front.
How much longer you gotta work?

They’d driven up to the Lakes that afternoon
taking the I-90.

His truck was a 1974 Chevy C-10 with rusted-out floorboards
and a broken glove compartment door—
Sorry about that, he’d said.
If I stop short, it’ll take your legs off just below the knee.
Part of the thrill of the ride.
He drove like a cowboy,
Like the truck was a bucking horse.
It was the most exciting ride she’d ever been on—
maybe the most exciting thing she’d done
in her life.

He got off the Interstate in Wallace,
saying
I want to show you something first,
and, once they were off the Interstate and into the town,
pulling the truck into a diagonal spot along Main Street.
No matter what happens with us next, he said
If we get married or if this is the last I ever see you,
you can say I took you here.

He took her hand.
His were rough and calloused.
For her, this was as exciting as the truck ride had been.

He led her to the corner of Bank and Sixth streets.
Led her out into the middle of the intersection
(there was never much traffic in Wallace).
He led her to the Center of the Universe.
A few years earlier, in 2004,

the town of Wallace had declared the manhole cover
at the center of Bank and Sixth Streets
to be the Center of the Universe.
It was embossed with those very words,
THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE,
and decorated with the symbols of the great hard rock mines of the area.

In case you were wondering where it was, he said.
He had a boyish but utterly self-assured smile.

They walked back to the truck
and he drove them up Dobson Canyon Road to the Blossom Lakes Trail.

He parked by the trailhead
and they went down toward the lower lake.
He had brought the blanket that he kept
in the bed of his truck.
He laid it on the ground there,
on a slope that overlooked the crystal blue lake.

She’d been with a couple boys already,
gangly teenagers who had yet to grow into their bodies,
but she wasn’t prepared for this fully grown man.
For the feel of his firm, muscled arms.
A grip both strong and gentle,
a confidence and, honestly,
a style.

He makes love like a cowboy, too,
she thought.
As if she knew how cowboys made love.

Later—lying there
in the cooling evening,
she studied the many scars along his chest.
This one? she would ask,
and he would answer,
Billings, bull went at me—
Cheyenne, tractor blade nearly took my arm off.

You know what they say in the rodeo,
he told her
as she buttoned her blouse and he folded the blanket—
wounds heal and ladies love scars.

She turned eighteen in the fall.

They got married just after Halloween.
Trick or treat, he said.
Winter work was scarce for a cowboy in Idaho
and he got a job at a gas station
grease-monkeying on cars
until his boss said something he didn’t care for
and he hit him with a line wrench.
The man filed charges
and Luke got three months at St. Anthony’s Work Camp.
Shoveled snow all winter instead of eating shit, as he described it.

He came home in March
with a meth habit.
Carol was four months pregnant.

She had never realized how unhappy he was,
or that there were wounds that didn’t heal—
scars that ladies might not love.
They hardly ever talked about their families.
She had told him about her father dying,
that she did not get along well with her mother.
They had never been close.
Her mother had been so angry
after her father‘s death
and all Carol seemed to be to her
was a reminder of the man she’d lost.
This man whom something heavy had fallen on.

All Luke had ever said about his growing up
was that his mother had run out on him and his little sister
when he was five and his sister was two.
His dad had done the best he could,
but he’d never much been able to hold down a job
or keep from drinking,
and he and his sister had spent most of their childhood
in foster care.
She lived in San Diego now.
He never heard from her.
Maybe a postcard around Christmas if he crossed her mind.

That’s alright, he said.
She’s got her life.

Luke cleaned up for a while,
having to piss-test once a week for the six months of his probation,
but as soon as the probation was over, he started using again.

Cody, named for Luke’s favorite bull rider, Cody Lambert,
was born the summer
just before Luke started up again.
There was this guy, Allan, he’d met at the work camp
who cooked in the garage of his mother’s house
out in Harrison,
close to where the steamers used to land.
Luke was going out there weekends.
I’m just taking a little vacation time, he said.
Nothing serious.

Allan’s got a real problem, he said.
He’s all gakked out,
thinks sleep’s a waste of time.
So far gone, he said,
that last week he sold his bed.
The man has no place to lie down.
He says he doesn’t see the point.

Soon, Luke was staying at Allan’s a week at a time.
When he came home there was nothing in his eyes.
He didn’t hit her or anything like that,
he just crawled inside himself and never came out.

Once Cody was on a bottle and not nursing,
she tried meth a few times with him,
letting him fix her
because she didn’t think she could give herself an injection.
It seemed like she should do it to keep him company,
or at least to be a part of this life
he would otherwise be leading without her.
The first time she got high it felt incredible.
It felt like she had found Life.
Her body was cool and on fire all at once.
Everything fit together and made sense,
and their sex took her to a place
she had never known it was possible to go.

But when they were all done with the fucking
the baby was crying.
And after that Cody had taken off for Allan’s
and she was up for two days straight.

She did it a few more times with him.
The sex was almost as good each time,
but, once you were expecting something,
the thrill was a little different.
After a while, though, Luke seemed to be fucking by rote,
and, with the days cranked awake,
no sleep,
Cody colicky,
and then Luke gone,
really, there was no place in the world that she wanted to get to
that was worth the way she felt
as she gnashed her teeth
and drank three bottles of vodka in an afternoon
to try to bring herself down.

Come on, he said, one time when he had come back from Allan’s,
gone for almost a week
and with a new batch he’d cooked himself.
When she said no
he said, alright then—more for me.
For a long time that was the last they talked about her getting high.

At first, even tweaking,
he was able to find ranch work.
But as another winter came on
and the work got scarce and the nights long and dark,
he lost all interest in even looking.

Maybe you should ask your mom if they’re hiring at Thurston, he said,
although he knew that she hadn’t spoken to her mother
since he’d been at St. Anthony’s.
When she’d told her she was pregnant
the woman had laughed in her face
and told her she was a fucking idiot.

The garage in Harrison blew up in late February,
killing both Allan and his mother.
After that there was the last time she got high with him.
It was a mistake.
She knew that even as she felt the rush turning her inside out—
those miraculous first seconds
as the drug takes control of every nerve in your body.
Fuck fucking, Luke had said as he was fixing himself.
This is the orgasm everyone goes looking for.

She had just wanted to try and bring him back.
The news of the explosion had scared her.
Luke could’ve been there helping Allan cook.

It could’ve been him.
But everything went wrong with the high right from the start—
from that first moment—
knowing she had made a mistake.
And then, instead of wanting Luke, she just got angry.

They had fixed
and they had fucked,
or at least tried to.
Luke had been so high for so long
that he could no longer get an erection,
and after a while he buttoned up his fly—
he hadn’t even bothered to take his jeans off—
and went out to his truck.
The truck was on its last legs by then.
He had never fixed the floorboards,
and now there was a problem with the differential
and the entire transmission was about to go.
She heard the gears grind
as he drove off.
Cody had started howling.
Now, almost two years old,
he had a few words,
although at the clinic
they had told her that they were a bit concerned
that he might be developmentally challenged.

She had assumed that Luke would be gone again for a week,
but he was back in forty-five minutes.

She heard him making a lot of noise bringing things into the kitchen
and she had gone in.
Seen the crate of drain cleaner,
the boxes of lye,
the bottles of antifreeze.
Brown glass bottles
with labels that read
Carolina—hydrochloric acid.

There were two propane tanks,
their fittings coated in a blue/green residue,
some red-stained coffee filters,
rubber gloves,
respiratory masks,
two large Revereware pots,
and some glass beakers jerry-rigged with duct tape.

He had gone to Allan’s storage space,
Keylock Storage over on Fruitland Lane,
and cleaned out all of his supplies.
Later, she found out he’d broken in with a claw hammer and a crowbar.

This is the shit you’ve been putting in your body, she said,
looking at all the poisons sitting there in boxes on the kitchen floor.
It’s chemistry, he said—
the science of transformation.
I am cooking God’s own whisper.
Don’t you hear it?
Don’t you see?

But what she saw
was the gaping maw of a cruel, empty life.

The last time they’d kissed
he had told her to go easy with her tongue—
his teeth were coming loose,
and now, as he smiled,
she saw that one of his teeth was missing.

Watch and learn, he said.
None of that Shake ‘n Bake shit.
I got my skills at Allan’s feet.
Yeah, well, she said,
Allan blew himself to hell and gone.

I’ve already been to hell, he said.
No open flames when I’m cooking
and I won’t be gone.

Look at that,
Lost another one.
And he pulled a tooth
from his mouth.

Fucking crank decay, he said.
I gotta cook a purer product
before I lose my boyish good looks.
He wiped off a bit of the blood that was coming from his gums
onto his shirtsleeve
and turned back to his pots and beakers.

You want to cook here in the kitchen, she said.
When were you planning on starting?

He was already setting up the beakers
and the Revereware pots.
No time like the present, he said.

What she did next made perfect sense to her, high,
and she believed that she had come up with the only possible solution.
When she had finished being angry,
she had found that, more than anything, she was depressed.
She had looked at Cody asleep now in his crib
and thought about what a piece-of-shit life
lay ahead of him.
It had sickened her.
For the first time in years,
she found yourself thinking about her father.
She didn’t remember much about him at all.
She knew that he could blow smoke rings
and she thought that she could remember his laugh.
She wondered what it was that had crushed him.

She was looking at Cody.
It was the only solution.
No open flames, he’d said.

She found a Bic lighter
in the dresser drawer.
Luke smoked Marlboros and left lighters
all over the house.
She found an old People magazine
that she had brought home from the clinic waiting room
when she’d taken Cody for his shots and the assessment
that had said he might be challenged,
because she had wanted to read about
Tom Cruise jumping up and down
on Oprah’s couch.
She left the bedroom and walked
through the living room and outside,
hearing Luke singing “Live Like You Were Dying,”
his favorite Tim McGraw song,
while he began the process of turning all those poisons
into the whisper of some mad god.

She sat on the ground
outside the kitchen door,
propped against the wall of the house
listening to Luke sing
the same stupid song
over and over.

The explosion would kill him right away, she thought,
and Cody—
it was an awful thing
to think of a toddler burning to death.
But what were a few minutes of agony
compared to a lifetime of pain?

There was not one way that she could see
her baby’s life being anything but awful
and Luke’s life was already over.
She didn’t care at all what happened to her
once she had come up with this—
the only possible solution.

The meth was hard-edging her now.
Every nerve,
the ones that it brought alive in the rush
now torn and jangled,
her teeth grinding.

It was time.
She flicked the Bic,
remembering that that had been
their advertising slogan when she was a kid—
Come on, man, flick your Bic—
and set the People magazine on fire.

She opened the kitchen door
seeing Luke, wild-eyed as he turned
at the sound of the door opening,
saying what the fuck are you doing
as she tossed the magazine
and saw the burning paper
land on the kitchen floor.

A sheet of flame raced along
the kitchen counter
where Luke had set some of the beakers.
One of the propane tanks
stood against the cabinets below the counter
with some tubing running up to it,
but the tanks had not gotten hot enough to explode
and, when she’d opened the door to throw in the magazine,
she had let in enough fresh air to dissipate
the fumes that might otherwise have ignited.

The fire hadn’t done much damage.
The kitchen walls had been scorched
and the curtains had burned,
But there had been flames
and a neighbor Carol had never spoken to
had called the fire department.
Luke had run into the bedroom,
grabbed Cody,
and driven off in the truck.
The firemen who responded
saw what was in the kitchen
and called the police.

Luke was picked up two hours later.
He was sitting in the truck out on the Idaho 3
holding Cody and trying to get his hungry, frightened,
dirty-diapered son to stop crying.

He’d tested positive for meth.
There was the lab in the kitchen,
and, with charge of manufacture of a controlled substance
as a second offense,
he got more than the work camp.
He got two years in SICI.
But he cowboyed up—
never said a word to anyone
about Carol having started the fire.

Cody went into the foster care system
since no one could locate his mother.

Carol had wandered away from the house
and, when she didn’t hear an explosion,
had made her way to her mother’s
and asked to borrow her car.
For some reason, her mother had said yes.

She had driven through Wallace
and up Dobson Canyon Road to the Blossom Lakes Trail.
She’d parked her mom’s old Camry by the trailhead
and taken the trail to the lower lake.
She didn’t have a blanket
so she sat on the cool, mud-wet ground.

She sat there for a long time
and it was only as she got up to go
that she realized that she had driven through Wallace
without stopping to see the center of the universe.

Wallace, Idaho – 1997
Los Angeles, California – 2023

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Les Bohem is a songwriter with songs recorded by Emmylou Harris, Randy Travis, Freddy Fender, Johnette Napolitano, and Alvin (of the Chipmunks.) He played bass with the legendary band, Sparks as well as with his own band, Gleaming Spires. His audible novels, Junk (narrated by John Waters) and Jive, are available on Audible. Junk was a NYT notable for 2019. Please listen to his recent album, Moved to Duarte, available wherever you stream your music. He wrote the movies Dante’s Peak, and Twenty Bucks, and the miniseries Taken, for which he won an Emmy. You can find out more at lesbohemswonderfulworldoflesbohem.com

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