Terminal

The women who thought that they could change him usually fared worse than the freaks, at least on an emotional level. Sherm’s serious relationships had a shelf life of about one month, and they always panned out the same way. Girl meets Sherm. Girl is attracted to the hurting little boy she thinks is hiding inside the bad boy image, the soft heart beneath the “I-don’t-give-a-shit”

exterior. Girl tries to heal the little boy. Girl gets hurt after investing all her love and emotions, finding out that somewhere along the way, Sherm got fucked over so badly by a woman that he doesn’t trust anything with breasts, especially her. Girl is destroyed. Girl is devastated. Girl is ruined for life. Girl leaves in tears and Sherm loses himself in another freak until the next relationship.

Did he treat them like shit on purpose? I don’t know. Probably not. But I do know that the dude could get pussy, and that was one of the reasons we hung out with him. If you’re a guy, you’ll understand that.

Women thought Sherm was broken, and immediately they wanted to fix him. And maybe they were right. Maybe he was broken. But what they failed to understand was that Sherm didn’t want to be fixed. He liked the way he was.

I watched him squirm in his seat. He was always twitching, and talking a little too loudly, like he was trying extra hard to have a good time. I always had the impression that just underneath that party hard exterior, there was a guy waiting to snap and go postal. But he made me laugh. I think that’s why we loved him so much. Sherm could make you laugh like nobody else. That was how John and I first met him. He moved here four years ago, all the way from Portland. He never told us the whole story, but I got the impression that he’d been in some trouble out there; he knew a lot about guns and shit. Maybe he came east looking to get away from whatever it was. He got a job at the foundry, and the first time we saw him, he was standing behind us at the time clock, making sarcastic comments under his breath about everybody who walked by. He had us laughing so hard that tears literally ran down our faces. We introduced ourselves, invited him out for a beer, and that was all it took.

Sherm could make you laugh— but he could piss you off just as quickly. He could cut you with his words; his tongue was like a razor, and he knew how to use it. One comment from Sherm could slice your jugular. He was good at tearing things down— things you cared about. He’d borrow money and not pay you back. He liked to pick fights when he was really drunk. He was always right about everything, even when he was clearly wrong. And sometimes, just sometimes, you got the impression that he’d sleep with your wife if he knew that he could get away with it. Half the town wanted to hug him, and the other half wanted to strangle the living shit out of him. With the exception of John and my family, I’m closer to Sherm than I am with just about anyone else in the world, and I’ve wanted to do both. But the bottom line is this. He may have been crazy, he may have been completely fucking mental and immature and cocky, and sometimes he may have pissed me off so bad that I wanted to shoot him, but at the end of the day, he was my friend, and that’s all that mattered to me. Him and John. My best friends, guys I’d take a bullet for.

I had to tell them.

Angie showed up with another round, and set the beers and shots down in front of us. She started to speak but then flinched, as if she’d been goosed. Still holding the serving tray, she reached behind her back and grabbed Sherm by the wrist.

“Hey,” she called out to the bar, “did anybody lose a hand? Because I found this one halfway up my crotch!”

She held his arm up for all to see. The room erupted with laughter, and Sherm grumbled something under his breath. Then everyone returned to their conversations, their dart games, the pool table, and who was going home with whom later on that night. I asked Angie to take a round over to Juan and his crew to make up for our fight earlier in the day. Somebody fed another dollar into the jukebox and now it segued from Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” to something new by Method Man. Like I said before, it was that kind of town and that kind of bar. John chuckled into his beer. “She busted you, Sherm! Angie got you good!”

“Shut up, Carpet Dick . . .”