2:30 in the morning at QuikMart. Todd made the subs - 13 meat & cheese, 10 Italian, 5 roast beef. After that, sweep the store and take out the trash. After that, restock the beer in the cooler and forget thee not the cigarette rack. If there was time, rotate the canned goods. Then wait on the early risers – in summer, usually assembly line workers and fishermen - until Beth came in at 7. After that...
Don't think. Don't. Baby?
The radio, tuned to the public station in Bemuth, droned on about the state budget crisis. Essential state services ‘hung in limbo’, according to the pudding-voiced reporter. The police and the postal workers toiled on, but the rest of the civil servants were on a forced summer vacation, their offices deserted, with no indication when it would end. The reporter speculated that it might even mean a delay in the start of the school year.
It also meant no lifeguards at the beach. Karyn was a lifeguard. That meant she was stuck home for the foreseeable future. Todd wondered if and when he might get a phone call.
Don't think. Think… baby.
By now, most of the ancient, wrinkled rummies and high school kids that came to refresh their buzz were passed out or possibly even dead somewhere. You saw a lot of alkies, working the night shift.
Todd refused to sell to anyone without a valid ID, no matter what they told him someone on another shift did. Most tried to pretend - even if only to themselves - that their case-or-two-a-night habit was nothing out of the ordinary. And for their crowd, maybe it wasn’t. Todd could always smell them coming - their skin sweated poison, and the older ones had a doughy, translucent quality, as if decades of drinking left them partially dissolved from the inside out, digested by decades of yeast.
They all seemed to smoke, too. That made it even better.
What can make THIS better?
Todd wasn't ready to be a dad. Until yesterday, the thought had never entered his mind. His dad was a dad, and look how well that had gone - years of swing shifts had made the old man a stranger, and his sullen silence created a wall even when he was home.
The closest Todd ever felt to his father any more was when he came home late and found the old man asleep on the living room floor in front of the TV. He looked almost human then. Vulnerable. Sometimes Todd would cover him with a blanket, if he didn't think it would wake the old man and bring the smoldering stare down, and the questions that were traps waiting to spring.
Nineteen. His dad had been nineteen when Todd was born, the same age that Todd was now. Maybe that was why things had turned out this way - the new generation repeating the mistakes of the last, and with the same result.
What Karyn had told him only confirmed what he’d already known in the pit of his stomach: She was pregnant, it was his, and life was going to be very different from here on.
Different? More like over. College? Forget it. He would be stuck at Quik-Mart until he died. And the old man - oh, God…
How could he have been so stupid? He'd known the condom was slipping off, had felt it happening, but Karyn was too far gone to stop and then so was he.
Afterward, there was the incredibly awkward time spent fishing it out, then the silent drive home, neither of them knowing what to say, followed by the quick kiss at the door, guilty eye contact that felt like a blow.
And in the weeks that followed, conversations that felt like someone else was having them, tears, hugs, promises.
Todd couldn't remember what he’d said, that first night. Something stupidly brave, for her sake. He got her to smile, just as she ducked in the kitchen door, rubbing the tears away in case her mom or dad saw her coming in. He wondered how her folks would take it, and felt sick when he thought about facing them.
How could I have been so stupid? Why couldn't I have waited? Or at least pulled out?
Karyn wouldn't have an abortion - he was sure of that. Adoption was probably out, too, unless her parents forced her into it. What did that leave? Marriage? What kind of marriage would that be, and what kind of answer to give a son or daughter?
"Well, honey, we had you because Daddy's rubber came off at the worst possible time, but that doesn't mean we don't love you just as much as if we’d actually planned to have you. In fact, we don’t resent giving up all of our hopes and dreams at all. Really."
God, what have I done? thought Todd. Nineteen, and my life is over, and Karyn’s only 17. Please God, I’ll do anything if you’ll just let me take it back, if not for my sake, then for hers. Please…
The radio started into a Chrome Bones song, one that Karyn had sung to him as they danced at her prom. It was too much; without a thought, Todd slapped the radio off the counter, yanking its cord out of the wall and sending a dozen plastic pieces scattering across the floor on impact.
Which was when the Stench walked in.
It was wrapped in an army surplus coat and the dirtiest pair of jeans that Todd had ever seen. It clenched a bulging plastic garbage bag in each fist. They dripped onto the floor.
"You take Shtroths?" said the Stench, revealing gums al almost entirely free of teeth. A wet-looking cigarette hung from the corner of its mouth, ringed by at least a month's worth of dirty grey stubble, topped by a guhe pair of greasy glasses and comically enlarged eyes.
"Pardon me?"
"Shtroths. You take Shtroths?" It shook the bags at him. They rattled and drip, drip, dripped onto the floor.
"Strohs? Yeah, we take Strohs. But you can't smoke in here."
The man nodded, pushed the door open with his foot and flung the butt out into the parking lot. So much for sweeping.
"Got a ton more. Where you want'em?"
I don't, thought Todd. The thought of sorting bottles and cans touched by those hands - let alone the ditches where the bottles and cans had probably come from - was almost as bad as the man's smell. Had he ever had a bath in his life? How could anyone live like that?
"You can put'em in there," Todd nodded to the side room. The man nodded and disappeared. He was gone long enough that Todd almost followed him. Then he popped back out, the Stench preceding him like a wave.
"Use your potty?" he asked.
Potty? What was he, five?
"We're not supposed to let anyone. Sorry."
The man grimaced. "I really gotta go. Squirts, me."
"Sorry. I'd get in a lot of trouble. But the gas station on the corner has one you can use."
The man's face was as open as a child's. Incomprehension flew across it, then frustration, then acceptance. "How 'bout you help me get the rest outta my car, then?" he asked. "Get me outta your hair quicker."
Todd hesitated.
"I really gotta go." He bobbed up and down for emphasis, like a kindergartener. Todd wondered things about the Stench that he instantly regretted.
"Okay," he said. "But if anybody drives up, I've got to wait on them."
"Sure, sure." The man fairly danced to the door, held it open for Todd and waved him through as if he were a prom date.
The car was about what Todd expected - a decrepit Olds Delta '88 that might once have been some shade of blue. The windows, thankfully, were too dirty to see through, but the crowded shadows inside suggested that the car might be both transportation and accommodation.
The man watched him in a funny way as he unlocked the trunk, as if afraid that Todd might change his mind. The trunk came open, and the smell filled the world, beyond words, sickly sweet and foul.
Todd saw what was in the trunk. Doubled over and heaving on his shoes, he tried to back away, eyes wide.
The man appeared puzzled, watching him. Then he looked in the trunk, too. The expression of surprise on his face would have done credit to a cartoon character. He blushed, red as an apple, and Todd realized that the reason that the Stench didn't bother him was because he lived in it, night and day. He had simply forgotten about it, as he had also apparently forgotten about the long-dead little boy in his trunk.
What the fishflies saw:
Clouds of other fishflies swirling around the lights, circling the two men as they move, as if the scene was underwater, winged plankton in the current.
Todd backs away, retching up everything, and when there is nothing left, dry heaves. Fishflies alight on his clothing, arms and face. He turns toward the store. Stench-Man runs to his car, fishflies breaking like surf before him. He throws the door wide, grabs a red bandana and something else from the front seat.
Todd reaches the store entrance just as Stench-man grabs him from behind and shoves the red bandana violently into Todd’s mouth and nose. Todd falls to his knees, blinded, one hand on the door handle. He pulls the door open, trying to shake the man off. A swirl of fishflies flies past him into the store.
Stench-Man won't let go.
The two fall sideways, Todd reaching back to push weakly at the other man, but the bandana is clamped over his face like an iron band. Todd's hand slips. His eyes roll up into his head. Both men fall to the pavement.
Stench-Man maintains his hold a few moments more, then rolls over and stands, looking at a hand that has been bloodied in the struggle. He kicks Todd once, hard. Then he looks around quickly, his hair and beard so coated with fishflies that he looks like a child's nightmare of Santa Claus. He slings Todd awkwardly over one shoulder and duck-walks him back to the trunk, where Stench-man dumps him like a bag of laundry. He slams the trunk, takes one last look around, then climbs into the driver seat.
Like a big boat, the Olds rolls out of the driveway, fishflies popping like bubble-pack beneath its tires. The fishflies don't mind. Like many creatures in the summer night, their brains are too small to hold more than one thought at a time.
This is what's on their mind tonight:
Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck…
No comments:
Post a Comment