{"id":702,"date":"2013-08-01T08:08:31","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T16:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=702"},"modified":"2013-08-01T08:08:31","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T16:08:31","slug":"the-9-volt-battery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/01\/the-9-volt-battery\/","title":{"rendered":"The 9-Volt Battery"},"content":{"rendered":"

fiction by Jason Edwards<\/em><\/p>\n

Hey what\u2019s up, my name\u2019s Frank. I\u2019m a battery. That\u2019s not a metaphor; I\u2019m an honest-to-god 9-volt battery. And I know how it is, you guys like to make fun of me. Double-A gets all the work, even triple-A comes in from time to time. And all those little watch batteries with their special ops. And me, old Frank, old has-been 9-volt, no good for anything except smoke alarms.<\/p>\n

Well, you know what, mofo? It\u2019s a quarter to four in the morning, and yeah, I could wait a few hours until you\u2019re awake\u2014hell, brah, I might even make it to the weekend. But no, screw that, I\u2019m using up the last of my juice to let you know, loud and clear, in seventy-five second intervals, that I need to be changed.<\/p>\n

Joke\u2019s on you, jerk, because: am I in the smoke detector outside your bedroom, easy to get to? Nope. Am I down the hall in the office, close to where you keep the spare batteries? No sir. Maybe the kitchen, the smoke alarm that gets all the work whenever you fry bacon and forget to turn the fan on, ya terrible cook? No such luck for you.<\/p>\n

Go ahead, try closing the bedroom doors to drown me out. Did it work? CHIRP! No it did not. Turn the fan on high, right next to your head, dry out your sinuses for all I care just for the white noise\u2026 CHIRP! There you go, pillow over your head, have to tweak your neck at a weird angle, your arm flopped over the top to-CHIRP! Better come find me, doofus.<\/p>\n

Walk into the hallway. All is darkness and silence. Waiting, waiting for the sound. Where will it come from? Was it just a dream? Should you go back to CHIRP! Made ya jump!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the one above the front room, that lofty space, about 15 feet up. You know where I\u2019m talking about. Yeah, you wanted \u201corganic lines\u201d and \u201cfree-flowing space\u201d and \u201clots of natural light\u201d when you bought the house. Time to pay the piper, dumb-butt. Time to get the ten-foot ladder.<\/p>\n

The one in the garage. Punch in your house alarm code beforeyou go into the garage. Man that\u2019s loud, how does your wife sleep through it? There\u2019s the ladder, hanging on the wall, almost wedged in there where you parked your car too close. You idiot. So open the garage door. It\u2019s louder at four in the morning, isn\u2019t it? Now get in your car, to make room in the garage. Aw, you forgot your keys? CHIRP!<\/p>\n

Get your keys. Get back in your car. Start it. TURN OFF THE DAMN RADIO! Jesus pleas us, who listens to NPR at THAT volume? Wow. Anyway, ease into your drive way. Turn off the car, set the parking brake, get out, step on a tiny pinecone with your bare feet. Are you loving this yet, suburbanite? My 9-volt ass is loving this.<\/p>\n

At least it\u2019s sort of calm out here, in the night air. Not too cold, not to warm. The sound of the highway, sort of like the ocean. CHIRP! Yeah, I can ruin anything.<\/p>\n

Get the ladder, drag it inside by the light of baseboard night-lights because you don\u2019t want to squint against regular lights. Carefully! You\u2019ve already risked the wrath of wife with stumbling out of bed, closing bedroom door, turning fan way up, opening door, punching alarm code, opening garage door, starting car, shouting wonderful colorful curse words into the night air when stepping on pine cone! Don\u2019t up the ante shattering vases with your Three-Stooges-ladder-carrying-technique, chirp!<\/p>\n

There you go. You awake now? Well. A little foreshadowing\u2014you will not fall off the ladder. That\u2019s not part of my story. Your story. It\u2019s our story now. Set up the ladder\u2014Ah heck. Looks like the geniuses who built this house with its organic and its free-flowing and its natural decided to put the smoke detector on a part of the ceiling sort of but not quite above the staircase. So the ladder is sort of but not quite in the right place. Ha ha ha, chirp, etc.<\/p>\n

Climb up anyway. Your halfway there. You forgot to get a fresh battery. You freeze. Your life now moves in 75-second intervals. Maybe you can just stop right there. You can stand halfway up this ladder, and maybe not move, and maybe time will stop too, and you can sort of just be, for all eternity, and that would be just fine. A tableau in frozen dimensions\u2014you on the ladder, me silent forever, your wife all snug in her wee little bed\u2026 CHIRP! THIS AINT NO CHRISTMAS CAROL! GO GET THAT SPARE!<\/p>\n

Sheesh, can I just lighten up for a second? NO. WAY. Off the ladder, up the stairs, quick little revelation- pinkie toes and ladder legs do not get along. Seriously, dude, WHERE did you learn to curse like that? There\u2019s stevedores working the docks who\u2019d blush to hear what you say. It\u2019s just a toe, man, calm down. Go get the god-damned battery.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in the laundry room. In the cabinet above the washing machine. No, not that cabinet. Yes that one. Not that shelf, that one. That little boxy drawer thing. Not that drawer, that\u2019s spare keys. That\u2019s one\u2019s old keys that don\u2019t open anything but you can\u2019t throw away for some reason. That\u2019s one extra rolls of Scotch tape. Nope, no clue why your wife keeps them here and not in the gift-wrap box. No, that drawer\u2019s old mailing labels\u2026 don\u2019t ask me, maybe people sometimes have to address packages of freshly washed clothes or something. This drawer DOES have batteries in it\u2014but they\u2019re all double A! Ha! A lot of good they\u2019re doing you now!<\/p>\n

Oh, way in the back, one 9-volt. Just the one. Not even in a package. And you, you have this tendency, don\u2019t you, of not keeping track of your used batteries. You leave them lying around. And you can\u2019t just throw them in the trash. You can\u2019t recycle them, as it were. So what do you do? And later, your wife finds them, or you find the ones she\u2019s left lying around, and sometimes they get put back in the battery drawer.<\/p>\n

Which you only realize is the case when, for example, you swap out the batteries in the TV remote, and then it only works for a few hours before it dies again. As the kids say, WTF, man? You\u2019re getting nervous, aren\u2019t you. What if this is a used 9-volt? When was the last time you swapped out one of me in another alarm? A few years ago, or only months but enough months to feel like years? Are 9-volts sold individual or in multi-packs? Is this one fresh, was it bought with another, or has it been so long, even unused it\u2019s still going to last only a few hours? Damn it damn it damn it.<\/p>\n

Well, nothing to do about it now but try it and see. Chirp, by the way, as a reminder. Gurgle, your stomach says. Your bladder has finally decided this is not a quick wake and flip the pillow and go back to sleep situation. You are up, probably for good, and there are certain morning rituals your body has gotten used to. Chirp. Burp. We\u2019re a regular rock n roll band, your body and me.<\/p>\n

So there you are, sitting in the dark, in the bathroom. The guest bathroom, just in case wife finally wakes up, decides to use the bathroom herself, opens the door, startles you, making you yelp, making her absolutely scream, and hilarity and 911 calls ensue. Chirp. Your sitting because you have nothing manly to prove to anyone, and besides, it\u2019s difficult to aim in the dark. Chirp. Did you leave the door to the garage open, the garage door itself open, your car door open? Aw who cares. Chirp. Once you\u2019re done here, you can change the battery, put away the ladder, park the car, close up the house, go back to bed, wait for your wife to nudge you and tell you to stop snoring. Chirp. Where\u2019s that spare battery? In the pocket of your pajamas, which are pooled around your ankles. Why do pajamas have pockets? For chirp like this, I guess.<\/p>\n

All done? Good. Brief wiggle, stand up, pull up your pajamas, ignore that plopping sound, flush, wash, all in the dark. You\u2019ve lived here a long time, you know every square inch of this house, working in darkness is no problem. Hands washed, out the bathroom door, square-inch my ass, there goes your pinkie toe against the side of the door jamb. You can\u2019t even curse this time, can you, just bite your bottom lip and makea sort of \u201cFFFGGGFFF\u201d sound. Hand in your pocket despite the pain to get the spare.<\/p>\n

Hand finds nothing. Other hand in other pocket. Also nothing. Pause, in pain, and wonder why Satan would choose this exact time to drive you insane. And then a revelation, and you can feel your soul sinking out of your stomach and through the floorboards. That plopping sound.<\/p>\n

This is where I decide I\u2019ve won. Frank the 9-volt has won. You don\u2019t even curse anymore. You don\u2019t even care, do you. Turn around, back into the bathroom, flip the lights on, blazing steely-hot javelins of light stabbing your eyes. There in the still trembling water of the commode, the 9-volt, at the bottom. You\u2019re reaching in before you have time to think about it. Hauling it out. Back at the sink and casually soap and lather and rinse and repeat four or five times in water so hot that if you cared you\u2019d be in pain. But you don\u2019t care. Nothing matters.<\/p>\n

Your bed and your wife and your house and your car. All of it, pointless. All of it meaningless because you had to make fun of me, Frank, me, a 9-volt battery, make fun of ME even though I AM THE ONE who alerts you if your house catches on fire. ME. FRANK the FUCKING 9-VOLT BATTERY helping to make sure YOU and your BED and WIFE and your HOUSE and your shitty little CAR in your GARAGE don\u2019t burn down because SOMEBODY forgot to blow out the candle or turn off the stove or some other DUMBSHIT move that only YOU and not BATTERIES LIKE ME could ever do.<\/p>\n

Get back downstairs. Get up that ladder. Open up the smoke detector. Pull me out. Put another me in. Did you remember to check which way I go? Is it positive left, negative right, or the other way around? Well, it\u2019s too dark to tell, so you\u2019ll just have to wait. Up there, 15 feet above the floor, perched precariously.<\/p>\n

All those times you cooked bacon, forgot to turn on the fan, and the smoke detector goes off, and you got MAD. Idiot. MAD that the thing that keeps you from dying actually still works. Oh, the things you said. The number of times you pulled me out and let me dangle there by wires so you could unplug and replug me. Just dangling like a, like a\u2026 like a I don\u2019t know what. But it sucked, man. It really sucked. You shouldn\u2019t have treated me like that, man, you just shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But look. I mean listen. Hear that? Nothing so far. Maybe you got it right your first try. Count to something. I don\u2019t know, count to one hundred. Slowly! There you go. Yes, sixty\u2026 seventy\u2026 man you\u2019re on edge now, hey, better grip the top of the ladder tighter, in case the detector makes that sound and startles you off into a 15-foot fall. Break your ankle, if you\u2019re lucky, your hip, old man, your spine, your neck, wife widowed, who\u2019s going to change 9-volts for her when you\u2019re gone? Ninety\u2026 one hundred.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re still not moving. Maybe you counted too fast. No, you didn\u2019t count too fast. I think it\u2019s okay. Descend, human. Fold up the ladder. Yeah, it\u2019s probably okay. And you know what, if you\u2019re wrong, if you did put in the battery backwards, or it\u2019s an old one, so what, right? You\u2019ve learned your lesson. You can set up the ladder again. Hop in your car and go to the 24-7 convenience store, whatever. Life\u2019s too short to hate chores and make fun of 9-volt batteries.<\/p>\n

Ladder folded, back in the garage. Yeah, yeah, you knocked over that broken lamp on the shelf next to where the ladder hangs, so what. Car back into the garage. Garage door closed. Door to the garage closed. House alarm set. Back up the stairs. Back into bed. Aaahhh. You thought you were wide away. But this feels sooo good.<\/p>\n

Almost worth it, am I right? All that petty agony, that minimal suffering, all that suburbanite angst. Almost worth it to get back into this cozy bed. Wife snuggling up to you. A few hours left before the clock radio alarm will go off. So nice. No chirps for several minutes now. The torpor of drowsiness settling in. Wife murmurs \u201cbig spoon\u201d as she rolls over. So with the last of your energy, roll over to hold her.<\/p>\n

That used 9-volt battery, me, Frank, still in your pocket, and now pressing against your hip, smashed into the bed, very hard. But it\u2019s okay. \u201cMotherfucker,\u201d you kind of chuckle. You\u2019ll have a bruise when you wake up. So what. Small price. We\u2019re friends now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

fiction by Jason Edwards Hey what\u2019s up, my name\u2019s Frank. I\u2019m a battery. That\u2019s not a metaphor; I\u2019m an honest-to-god 9-volt battery. And I know how it is, you guys like to make fun of me. Double-A gets all the work, even triple-A comes in from time to time. And all those little watch batteries … <\/p>\n

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