Photo by Mark König on Unsplash
Just as there are tax havens for the rich, there are tax traps for the "uninformed"; not that Sam should be considered a victim. In 2010 he purchased a model home in the hollowed-out bomb crater of the 2008 housing crisis, fully knowing his subdivision's developers had already gone bust. It is why he did it.
Sam was not surprised when Wild Oaks' conditional approval for Bexar county incorporation expired, and Wild Oaks reverted to unincorporated land. However, he did write his Congressman after receiving his first electric bill. The Congressman replied, politely reminding Sam that he was no longer technically his constituent and signing off with an email signature line containing a smirking, high contrast headshot.
Fuck him, Sam thought, cracking open a Lonestar beer to lower his blood pressure. Then he printed twelve copies of the email to burn in his backyard firepit. All he needed from the county—from all society—was their utilities, and they required he pay a premium? Maintaining isolation on fixed retirement income was challenging, but he considered it worthwhile to live in The Twilight Zone, as he called it: 37 acres of compact clay baked to a crisp, gently yawning across the prevailing scrubland, disguising pitfalls that could swallow a misplaced foot whole.
Because potholes and mesquite thorns long as fingers made the subdivision inhospitable for even hooligans to wander, it was ruled by cats. From his window, Sam watched the feral predators leap in tight arches like dolphins playing whack-a-mole. This was cat country—acres and acres of fading pink surveying yarn that once denoted boundary lines, cut & fill lines—how deep to tear/how much to bury; all those plans gone to cats now.
To Sam, his subdivision's lack of ownership represented a better world—his derelict mile, with its deleted proposed name. Abandoned cement foundations like tombs lined the curved path he drove monthly when provisions forced him from his mausoleum.
Of course, in Texas, 96% of the land is private, so everything belongs at gunpoint to somebody. The bank that foreclosed on Wild Oaks was obligated to mow Sam's cemetery but only sent someone once every four months. Between cuttings, pungent weeds, and weed-flowers: Bittercress, Dandelions, and Henbit sprung up to preach resurrection.
Sam could not say why churches caused him more anxiety than comfort or why he preferred plants to humans, but Wild Oaks did not ask. It was the type of place a 67-year-old veteran with more disabilities than good memories could find peace.
Five a.m., a size 14 government-issued boot struck Sam's antique bedframe causing his skin to shudder in a way that made him feel very old indeed. His eyes twittered open, calibrating, then recognizing the dotted pattern of his popcorn ceiling, though it was overlaid with fog—no, smoke, he then realized.
Sam rubbed his eyes. He sniffed and smelled gunpowder.
When he opened his eyes, he was under an open sky, a hazy sky like the inside of an oyster shell. "Sulfur breakfast; burnt napalm jelly dessert; burnt flesh; burnt coffee." The scowling Gunny-Sergeant stopped ranting to drink from a steaming tin mug that required calluses for lips. "Welcome back to Vietnam, soldier."
Sam merely yawned and rolled in the opposite direction placing his pillow over his head. He drowsily closed his eyes, remembering that these events were a known side effect of his pain medications; that felt more reasonable than remembering that his hallucinations predated his pain—even his military service.
"Get up, you hippie filth! Whoever decided to imbed you intelligence fucknuts with my Marines deserves to be shot for treason." Sam's ceiling was back, but the Gunny remained. The Sergeant's boots squeaked as he swayed, buzzcut hair grating popcorn balls from Sam's ceiling like parmesan. Sam snarled, imagining later sweeping them up.
The Marine's specter fizzled in and out like a bad connection. Lionlike, Sam sprung to his feet in a slippery spiral before his bones, ligaments, muscles, and tendons had coordinated. It was a motion too sharp for a man of his health. He slipped two discs and startled his blood pressure, but worst, and his strangest sensation, something clenched his lungs to a fist. Sam expelled the last of his breath, muttering, "fuck you!"
The Marine's face kept turning. Sam completed his spiral back in bed where he had begun, but now in near-complete paralysis with breath shallow and labored.
Where he landed, Sam could no longer see more than the upper corners of his doorframe. He hated acknowledging his hallucinations—attention seemed to make them multiply—but currently, he was being stalked by a predator he could not see. He tried to raise his chest and turn his head, but his movements caused sharp, jagged pain.
Sam admonished himself; "Why do I let yall get the best of me?"
Then the scents of gunpowder and burnt coffee cooled—blown as if by fan or gust of wind—first, to mint, then gardenia.
In recognition, Sam's palms grew sweaty and feet cold. He hoped his cheeks didn't flush, were not puffy and red—not because he loved her, he reasoned, but because of the awkward dynamic between ex-lovers—especially one who is dead.
"How’s the step-down treatment, Sammy?”
Sam struggled to look down his sightline. The fat mounds beneath his cheeks formed a crescent perspective that again made him feel old, as did the eighteen-year-old standing beneath his doorframe.
She could have danced on a car during a Whitesnake music video, he thought. She was all Gapped-teeth, knobby-knees, bushy eyebrows, and Virginia Slims, looking like the first day she had accidentally crashed into his life in rented roller-skates.
Before Sam had joined the military to secure their apartment, necessity forced them to make love at night in the cemetery between their houses. Perhaps that was why he was cursed? But every year since that first had been a nightmare. Now, it was 30 years and her untimely death since they had laid eyes on each other.
He knew his emotions were running choppy, reckless. How old was her infidelity? What defined unforgivable? Regardless of the answer, he felt it essential that their relationship remained—whatever it already was.
“Could be worse,” Sam replied. “I don’t need drugs when my doctor lets me treat the pharmacy like a candy store. Poppa still gets his fix. My doctor wants me to die so America can stop paying me disability, and I don’t blame him.” Sam stopped. Shocked by his own confession and the vulnerability he felt, he struggled to refocus their subject to her by asking, “To what do I owe the pleasure? Is child support late?”
Her smile was disarming. “You were always on time. I never had to ask. And you were always good to our daughter. You were my only husband; that’s why I’ve come for you.”
“Well, she is a wonderful girl,” he replied, fighting the warm pressure building behind his tear ducts. His smile was only sad because he had never hoped for such a gentle ending. He didn’t expect death to be kind and so did not know how to accept it, asking, “God sent you for me? God! Am I that lonely of a bastard?”
“Why God?” She asked. “Perhaps I am just who came for you at the end. Could that enough?”
He consented but could not nod. She lay on the bed behind him and delicately draped one arm over his shoulder. Her touch fully paralyzed him, relieving his choice between accepting and fighting his fate. He was grateful. Tender as a lover, she laid two fingers atop his right forearm to feel his blood gallop like a ragged beast. “Poor Sam; you are dying,”
Sam was sure of it too now: an amassing of presence, a swelling awaiting his final exhale. But before leaving, Sam said something cheesy like: “Well, it’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.”
Nathan Dean Talamantez is a Fiction Novelist and Nonfiction Essayist who often blends the cultural and spiritual into surreal fever dreams. Nathan's sardonic narratorial voice offers readers "a view of yourself twisted through a prism by which I may show you something about yourself you've never seen before." Influential authors include Chuck Palahniuk, John Kennedy Toole, and George Saunders. Nathan graduated from Texas State University in 2012, before serving seven years maintaining aircraft in the United States Air Force. Between 2019-2022 his essays were featured in several publications, including Pensive Journal, Drunk Monkeys, and URevolution. Nathan's debut novella, Sacred Fool, was released via Atmosphere Press in January 2021. He is currently seeking a publisher for his debut novel: Texifornia Border. Nathan is projected to receive his MFA from The California Institute of Integral Studies in May 2022. He was awarded The Writers' Colony fellowship in February of 2022.