~Shivved~
Written By Chris Carter & Shayla C. Durbois
I’ve always loved scotch, the smoky flavor. When I knock back that first sip, it smolders on my pallet and burns on the way down. It’s jarring at the start. Your throat’s on fire, but once the flame passes through, it leaves a warm ember in your belly. Scotch is a drink you take your time with. You can’t down it in one go. Sip it slow and let the flavors do their work. I need that, sometimes. My brain moves fast. So does my mouth.
It’s a murky drink too. It doesn’t sit transparent in a glass. Light barely slips between the molecules. Some people are quick to trust clear liquors like tequila or gin. They think that since they can see through, they get it. But in my experience, the best drinks are the ones that don’t give themselves away too quickly, the ones that make you sit and sip with them for a while. Caleb was like that, murky, hard to peg.
A few years earlier, I joined a men’s group, a Bible study. A few weeks in, our leader, Pete, suggested we get drinks. We went ironically at first. The dive bar was only a few blocks from his place in Venice Beach, so it was easy to migrate. But the beer was cheap, the conversations flowed, and soon it became a tradition. We became regulars. The room was dark, the staff reserved, and the clientele brooded in shadowed booths. But we loved the space, and I could swear Bertha – behind the bar – half-smiled at me once.
It was an ordinary Wednesday night, the four of us seated at the bar. We sipped our brews and laughed in the easy manner of men who trusted each other. The stool next to me slid out as a stranger eased himself down onto the seat. Pete jumped up and threw his arm around the unassuming occupant.
“Caleb, you dog, I thought you couldn’t make it,” he said, loud enough for Bertha to shoot us her trademark scowl.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Caleb muttered, reddening at Pete's exuberance
Unabashed, Pete scooped up his victim and paraded him by the group.
“Boys, this is Caleb, fresh off the boat from San Francisco, and the newest member of our Wednesday night crew.”
The moment Pete released his grasp, Caleb b-lined right back to his stool and huddled up again.
“John,” I said. He nearly broke my hand. The grip was that strong.
“Okay, hulk,” I laughed, shaking my hand out. “You must lift.”
He turned, if possible, even redder, mumbled an apology, and looked down at the bar.
“It’s all good.” I slapped him on the back. Yeesh, the dude was solid muscle. He was shorter than me, but compact. I had the height, but that was about all I had on him. Caleb stayed tense, so I hunted for a way to engage him.
“What’s that from?” I asked, pointing to a long awkward scar on one of his biceps.
I just can’t help myself sometimes. Maybe ever. Words just come to me and I blurted them out. My mom called it charming. My dad called it asinine. Everyone else called it honest, clear as gin.
Caleb froze, and I thought for certain I’d gone too far. This guy was going to snap me like a toothpick. And then,
“I used to ride bulls.”
He met my eyes, and for a hair-raising moment, I thought he was serious. Then he flashed me a half-smirk and I laughed. We would get along just fine. The laugh turned into a coughing fit. I pounded my chest and pulled out my inhaler, taking a puff. Once I had my breathing back under control, I signaled Bertha for some water, which strangely appeared much faster than our usual drink orders. Caleb watched me with a frown.
“Had it since childhood. Irritating, but I manage.”
Caleb nodded.
“So, what do you do?” he asked. The words sounded awkward.
“I’m in tech. AI development.”
“What do you like about that?”
“The order. Black and white. The slightest error, things go awry. I like the perfection of it. Everything in its place. That’s where the magic happens: in the rules.”
I couldn’t read the expression on Caleb’s face, but it was clear he couldn’t connect with my passion. I wasn’t surprised though: tech bores most people.
But I get so stoked about AI, I tried to press on: “Neural networks, that’s where things get fun…” but before I could bore my new friend, Pete passed out shots of scotch to toast to our newest comrade. Caleb knocked it back like a man who needed it. I sipped it slowly, considering him.
Maybe it was because we were loud, or because we were all close friends and he was new, but Caleb held himself back, shy. I had some experience with that. My younger brother was shy. I was not. That was why, perhaps, I jumped in and filled the empty spaces in the conversation, the places where he could have shared about himself.
~
Pete wove Caleb into the fabric of our group. Bible studies, dive bar visits (Bertha even learned his name), weekend hangs, bro trips, he was always there. He didn’t say much, but Caleb became a staple in our crew. When he got a job at a Guelaguetza Cantina, we all descended and gave him a really great tip. The grin on his face, seeing all of us, was the first real one I saw. He loosened up after that, really starting to trust us, have fun. He still didn’t talk much about himself though, a private guy.
We all knew he was couch surfing, so when a spot in my apartment opened, I asked him to live with me. I was self-aware enough to recognize my extroverted energy needed a counter-point. A balance. Caleb, with his mild, even temper could be that.
With Caleb, our group had six eligible bachelors. We were decent-looking guys holding down steady jobs, none of us crazy. We’d done our time on Hinge, thumbs sore from swiping. We’d had a steady stream of girlfriends, but not one of us had found that special lady we could slip a ring onto, to whom we could say, with confidence, “I do.”
We started placing bets on who’d get married first. Odds were on me, and the winnings would have helped pay for a nice honeymoon. Until Clarity. None of us saw her coming.
She’d crossed paths with our group from time to time at church. I mean, we’re five loud dudes plus Caleb. We get looks. Then one Saturday, we were all hanging out at the beach near Pete’s place. It was a warm day in July, not a cloud in the sky. We were getting into our usual buffoonery when we noticed a familiar group of girls walking onto the strand. For a few precious seconds, they achieved the impossible over us: silent awe.
“Bro, go talk to them,” Stu nudged me.
“Dude, safety in numbers. No way I’m not shot down.”
“No balls,” Pete dared me.
I stared at him like a crab spotting an incoming seagull. Pete had dropped the ultimate challenge. It was the rule in our crew. Turning down this particular gauntlet meant that at the next Wednesday post-dive bar visit, you had to drink whatever cocktail concoction Bertha whipped up. She always seemed to think her experiments would be a hit. Once Simon tested these peculiar waters, turning down a “no balls.” He ended up with a shot of Baileys and tomato juice. My stomach would never survive that sadistic glass.
I glared retribution at Pete and rose to my feet. Amidst a chorus of geering support, I made my way grimly to the group of females, mustering all the rizz I had.
I swallowed and began, “Hey…” but the words made off faster than a seagull with a French fry.
A swell of giggles broke the awkward silence. Praying they’d put down the red rising in my face to too much sun, I looked back at my crew and sputtered out, “So how about those beach towels?”
One kind stranger swooped in. “Is Caleb actually sitting on a SpongeBob towel?”
Not all heroes wear capes.
“Yeah, lame, right? All the cool kids use Pokémon towels.” I smirked at my red-headed rescuer.
“Clearly,” she grinned. “Why don’t we come see who has the coolest lame towel.”
So, I returned victorious, gaggle in tow. No Bailey’s and tomato juice for me next Wednesday. In your face, Pete.
As we strolled back to the boys, I said to the auburn angel beside me, “It’s Clarity, right? We’ve talked after church a few times.”
She beamed. “Good memory! You guys are so loud. But that other guy Caleb, the one with the SpongeBob towel, he’s kinda quiet. What’s his story?”
Still basking in the glow of my perfectly orchestrated merger, I was feeling generous and had to wingman my bro.
“He’s chill. Doesn’t talk much. Maybe he just needs the right person to hear his story.”
Clarity smiled at me and made her way over to our taciturn dude. None of us expected them to talk all through the day, or the dinners that followed after, or the movie nights. No one bet on him putting a ring on her finger, but he was full of surprises.
~
We stumbled into our apartment after two am. The evening had been an utter blow-out: Caleb was the first of us to embark in nuptials and he needed a proper send off.
It was like we had been training, all those Wednesday evenings, swapping stories, holding our drink, whiling the hours away in each other’s company. We had to finish the night at our beloved dive bar. Bertha, proving once and for all we had made it into her armadillo-tough heart, gave us a round on the house and bid Caleb to “not screw it up.”
I collapsed onto the couch and Caleb grabbed the bottle of scotch and two shot glasses. I never saw him smile as much as he did tonight. He poured our glasses and passed me one.
“Yo, okay, bro, when did you know?” I asked.
“Know what?” he asked with puzzlement. I knocked the drink back. Sometimes one is too drunk to sit and savor, and the best course of action is to just keep going.
“Clarity! Why did you even talk to her?” It came out a bit slurred.
“Ouch! I got game,” he said, smirking.
“No, admit it.” I pushed myself upright for this very important conversation. “You hang back. And Clarity is like…” I gestured airlily for the right term, then snapped, catching it. “The life of the party.”
Caleb looked long at his full glass. “Fair, but when you know, you know.”
“C’mon, bro, SpongeBob did some heavy lifting there, not to mention your boy talking you up.” I threw my arm around his neck in a mock-headlock.
He pushed me away and knocked back his scotch. He held his liqueur much better than I did.
“John, I’m going to let you in on a very special secret,” he said. But then he got serious and the words came out quieter. “We only get so many shots in life… I don’t want to miss any more of mine.”
Part of me wondered why he said “any more,” but the gentle haze of scotch warming my head awed me to the depth of his insight.
“Woah.”
So of course I filled glasses and extended it toward my affianced friend.
“To the groom! A man of action.” We cheers’ed.
“But seriously, dude let’s establish what really happened. She roasted you about your towel, you claimed only a confident man would rep a cartoon character at the beach, and you showed her your scar to prove it. Do you remember what you told her?”
Caleb leaned back, cocked his head, and proclaimed, “God’s own truth.”
“No-no! You said you were saving a child,” I said, waggling a finger at him.
“I was!” Caleb said, feigning injury.
“– that had fallen out of a train.”
“He had.”
“That your arm was caught in the door and that you couldn’t let go or he would die.”
Chuckling to his heroic self, Caleb boasted, “What can I say, I value human life.”
“That the train traveled fifty miles before it stopped.”
“It cut down to the bone,” he said, patting the flexed bicep.
“That you had to stitch yourself with whatever you could find on the train,” I said with a cocked eyebrow.
Caleb lifted his glass. “Yeah, I had her till that part,” he laughed.
“You still got her number, though,” I said, patting him on the back. “But really, how did you get that scar?”
His eyes wandered, finding new interest in the ceiling fan. “Well…”
“Stop right there, Paul Bunyan, I don’t want another myth. I want the real story.” I jabbed an overly insistent finger in his rock-hard chest. The chest won. “You tell a different version every time.”
He shrugged. “I’m a man of many mysteries.”
He is a mystery, and in the three years I’d known him, even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t unravel parts of Caleb’s story. Where I can’t shut up about my childhood, he’s breadcrumbed small factoids. I knew he was from Oakland, and he had a rough upbringing, but that was about it.
The eve of his wedding, after three years living together, it was time for the past to start spilling secrets. No better time, and I knew just how to reel him in.
“No one’s a mystery in 2024. The internet knows all, my friend.”
Caleb rolled his eyes with a laconic grin, “Cause Wikipedia’s never wrong.”
“But you know what isn’t” I shot back, “ChapGPT. I looked myself up. Crazy shit, bro. This thing knew when I got my tonsils out.”
Caleb’s eyebrow shot up as he peered at me for a second. “No way, that’s not real.”
“Here, I’ll show you.” I grabbed my laptop, opened the AI website, and typed in, “Tell me about Clarity Graves.”
Caleb’s face paled in electric blue light as text populated the screen.
“Clarity Graves,” I read, loud and proud, “is getting married on August 31st 2024 to Caleb Smith in Los Angeles at Immanuel Presbyterian church. She has an MA in Russian Literature. Clarity is enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford, and her dissertation is on the dialectical opposition of virtue and vice in The Brothers Karamazov. She leads the worship team at her church.”
Feeling rather proud of myself, I grabbed my scotch and took a bigger gulp than I needed. Caleb stared at his shoes. He got up and started collecting empty bottles and trash left over from the bachelor pre-party. Something was off, but I was abuzz with victory and other spirits
“See,” I gloated.
He deposited the bottles in the bin. “Point proved. We have an early morning, bro.”
With a wave, he walked toward his bedroom, his footsteps in rhythm with the sound of my typing.
“Caleb Smith lives in Montana,” I read aloud. “Oh, wrong one.”
Quick as a google search, Caleb was back into the room. He dove to close my laptop. I protected my computer and, with one hand holding back my bear of a roommate, used my free hand to click “regenerate.”
As text marched across the screen, I felt Caleb go slack. We had a hit.
I leaned it to read the blurb. “Caleb Smith,” I read with intrigue, “grew up in Oakland, born to Susan and Daryl Smith. Both deceased.” This much I knew already. But before I could continue, Caleb tried to pull me back.
“John, stop.”
“Caleb was sentenced to Camp Sweeney,” I read. My head whipped over to my quivering friend. “Sentenced?” I asked. “That’s weird. What kind of camp is it?”
“Summer camp,” Caleb said, forcing a smile. “Part of the marketing to parents sick of their kids.”
I wasn’t buying it, so I read on.
“…at the age of 15 for knocking over a convenience store and discharging a weapon on the officer while resisting arrest.”
For a very long, very confusing second, I stared blankly at the screen. Did I read that right? Like a microburst, this digital RAP sheet descended on me, and the news froze me to the bones.
I raised my eyes to meet Caleb’s, silently praying this wasn’t real. Caleb raised his palms to face me.
“I can explain.”
“Wait,” I mumbled, “does this mean you’re a…” I struggled to sew the syllables together in my mouth. “You’re a convict?”
“Ex-convict,” Caleb said.
“But,” I stammered, “you’re a convict?”
“Ex.”
Suspended between confusion and growing anxiety, I just stared. Cold realization settled in. Caleb was a convict. I had been living, for the last three years, unknowingly, with a convict.
“Ex,” he said again, reading my mind. I didn’t, couldn’t, respond.
With a sigh, he poured more scotch into my glass, sat next to me, put my glass into my hand, clinked it with his own, and knocked it back.
The one-sided cheers ran like a gong in my drowned brain. I burst from the couch, flinging my computer and glass to the floor, and made for the front door. But Caleb body tackled me before I could reach the knob. He pinned me to the ground.
“Help! Help! I’m about to be shivved!”
Blame it on the alcohol, the shock, whatever, I really thought this was my end.
“Bro, stop being so dramatic,” he griped, wrestling me down. “I’ve never shivved anyone. Well, that once, but it was self-defense.”
My screams reached an octave my niece would have been proud of. Caleb picked me bodily up. Of course he could do that, he was prison jacked.
An embarrassingly short time later, I was tied to a chair. I didn’t realize we had this many ropes in the apartment. Duct Tape over my mouth, I glared at Caleb, who paced back and forth, more words spilling from his mouth than I had ever heard at one time.
“Look, I’ve lived with you for three years, I’m not that person anymore. You don’t know what it was like to grow up in Oakland. It’s wasn’t easy. You had to look out for yourself. I had to look out for myself, and my brother and sister.”
He’d mentioned his brother and sister before, but could I really trust anything he said? Caleb looked back at me, but I felt so betrayed. I felt like a fool. I had shared my life with the guy, shared some of my darkest secrets, and here I was blabbering away to someone who not only had, at fifteen, decided to knock over a convenience store, but discharged a weapon on an officer.
“I know, I know. Ends don’t justify the means. But I was just a kid. You wouldn’t understand, you had everything handed to you.”
How dare he! Suddenly me having a decent upbringing means I’m a judgemental ass for being upset, and somehow justifies shooting a gun at an officer? Besides, just because I hold down a decent job doesn’t mean I’m privileged. It means I work hard.
“No, you have. You had parents who saved for college. I bet you had a backyard without homeless person crap in it. You went to MIT! Your parents keep a boat on the lake! You don’t know what it was like.”
Was he really telling me that because my parents were well off, I shouldn’t be upset about him lying to me? Lying by omission, whatever. What else had he hidden from me?
Caleb sighed and pulled the Duct Tape from my mouth which – ouch.
“Are you the reason my car got towed?” I demanded.
“Your car got towed because you left it on the wrong side of the street on a Tuesday.”
Ah, that’s right. But my scotch-addled brain, zinged with shock and simmering with hurt and betrayal, kept throwing words out of my mouth fueled by anger.
“All the knives are dull! Have you been using them to murder people?”
“That’s ridiculous!”
True. But,
“How much of my stuff have you stolen?” I gasped, realizing. “Is that where my rumba went? DID YOU STEAL MY RUMBA?!?”
“WE LIVE IN THE SAME APARTMENT! WHERE WOULD I TAKE IT?”
It was somewhat gratifying to see Caleb, the unshakable, shaken.
“So how are you going to kill me? Huh? In my sleep? A shiv in the shower?”
“Wow, you are really obsessed with that shiv. You never would have survived in Juvie.”
“That’s right! Cause I’m not a hardened criminal like you.”
“I’m not a criminal!”
“Well ChatGPT would beg to differ.”
“That damn ChatGPT!”
“I thought I knew you, you were like a brother to me. What about ice cream Mondays, Caleb? What about ICE CREAM MONDAYS?”
“I love our ice cream Mondays.”
“That’s why you always ordered nutsapalosa, isn’t it? Cause you’re nuts!”
That’s when I started hyperventilating. Damn, just when I was having a serious heart to heart with my roommate.
“Do you need your inhaler?” Caleb asked, immediately serious.
I shook my head, bitter at any sign of weakness. But, given that I was tied to a chair, and couldn’t speak because of asthma, it felt like that ship had rather sailed.
Caleb left the room and returned with my inhaler. He held it to my mouth and met my eyes. He waited for the right moment in my panicked breathing, I read the decision in his eyes and took a big inhale right as he pressed it. Sweet relief filled my lungs.
I gasped and worked to control my breathing. Only after Caleb lifted his hand from my back did I realize it was there in the first place.
Caleb collapsed onto the couch across from me with a huff. All the nervous tension in the room, the panic, betrayal, and anger released with that heavy sigh. The adrenaline of almost choking to death while tied to a chair finally cut through my confusion and left one reigning emotion: hurt.
“Bro, I thought I knew you.”
Caleb didn’t respond immediately. Then he opened his eyes. “I’m the same person I’ve always been, John.”
Then the obvious occurred to me, and I realized I didn’t want to know the answer because either way it went, it would be awful.
“Does Clarity know?”
After a long silent moment, Caleb nodded. Shock landed on me like a gavel. Then denial. “You’re lying. Give me a phone and I’ll tell her.”
“She knows, bro. She’s known for the last year.”
Heat filled my face, but from which of seventeen emotions (or the scotch), I couldn’t tell.
“How could you tell her before me?”
“Look at how you’re reacting. You’re... always so black and white. You throw out condiments the day of their expiration date.”
“Because they’re expired.”
“No they’re not! You’ve got to do the sniff test!” Caleb spread his hands wide, visually breaking himself. It was an old argument between us, but an unhelpful tangent at this point in time. “Look, John. I was intimidated by you.”
“Me?” I demanded. “Look, I’ve got a healthy self-esteem, as you know, but I’m basically a pip-squeak next to you. You’ve got me tied to a chair.”
“John, I met you through Bible Study. You’re the perfect Christian boy. Never stepped a toe out of line. You grew up in church. You don’t have the same scars I do. You’re a type 1 on that stupid Enneagram thing-a-ma-jig. You program software. For you, there are no grays. Everything is either right or wrong.”
“What you did was wrong!”
“You’re right, but I was fifteen. And I did my time. Does one mistake have to determine the course of my life?” He stared into my eyes and I finally saw the deep waters he had always kept hidden from us behind a shy demeanor, a wicked grin, and tall tales. “Nobody can live that way, John.”
A pang went through me, beginning to wonder for the first time what it would have been like to go to prison at fifteen, to move to a new city and not know anybody, trying to start over knowing you had so thoroughly failed in the past, showing up week after week to a group of men whom you knew could never identify with you.
Then it dawned on me: “Pete knows.”
Caleb nodded. “I got saved in Juvie. The guy who led me to Christ, he was helping me get back on my feet, get out of the pattern of my community. When I decided to move to LA, he connected me with Pete.”
Pete talked a big game, the bro-est of bros, but he was like a vault. As our leader, he protected the heart secrets and deep wounds of his friends. He would never say anything if Caleb didn’t want him to. Still, three years…
“I feel like I hardly know you, Caleb. I had to read about you on ChatGPT to find out who you really are.”
“You know who I really am. You’re my best man. I wouldn’t have asked you to be, otherwise.”
That was true. When Caleb asked me, I cried. Strong, manly tears, to be sure, but tears nonetheless, because it was an honor. We had lived together for three years, and it was the most tangible evidence I had that Caleb, who was like a locked box and impossible to really read, valued me as a friend. His best friend.
Caleb sighed. “Look, I understand if you can’t trust me anymore. But living with you for the last three years has been the best years of my life. I hope you can forgive me for not telling you about my past because I want you to be a part of my future.”
Caleb got up and drew close to me. I couldn’t help the flinch. Caleb stopped. We stared at each other.
“You really don’t have a shiv?” I asked.
Caleb raised empty hands.
“I’m going to untie you now. Please don’t scream. If you want me to leave, I will.”
Caleb untied me and stepped back. We didn’t break eye contact, and in those eyes I saw him wrestling, fighting with himself to stay present, not hide behind defenses, and let himself be truly seen.
I lifted my inhaler and took a puff, staving off the attack I still felt hovering at the periphery. Caleb filled the two empty glasses of scotch on the table, took one, and sat down.
I stood, and stared at the glass, my glass, seated on the wedding invitation. Caleb Smith to be married to Clarity Graves, date: tomorrow.
I sat down on the couch next to him, cradling the scotch.
“So, tell me how you really got that scar.”
Chris Carter is a professional photographer who did the behind-the-scenes photography on the “Roommate Generation” film shoot. He currently lives and writes in Los Angeles. He has essays and poetry featured in Ekstasis Magazine, and is the author of Prodigal Disciples, a devotional on the Gospel of Luke, and a poetry book called Between Dust and Wind. You can follow my photography on Instagram @chriscarter_photography and his writing @chriscarterwriting.
Chris and I are also co-writing “Shivved” as a short film, which has officially entered pre-production. If you would like to support this short film being made, please make a donation here, subject line “Shivved-Short Film,” so your funds go to the right place.
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Great story. - proved you shouldn't judge people