by Matthew Crow
But not today.
I finished work at six and managed to make it to the library just in time, whereupon - though still in possession of the previous week’s selection - I took out a further collection and walked the last mile and a half home, weighted with words and fatigue, arriving at a not entirely unreasonable seven fifteen.
I must say, however, that for all my selfish joy I was not only shocked, but frightened by your last letter. You worry me, Verity. How can a woman of sound mind allow such events to spiral into the uncontrollable? I know I am not entirely one to talk. But at least I was always the driver of my fate, my consequences always a direct result of my often foolish and always careless actions.
I suppose at this point I ought to be thankful for your survival. And I am, truly I am. Yet I suffer that strange dichotomy which must befall each and every parent whereby hearing of such incidents is only marginally more tolerable than suspecting them. I feel a knot that can slacken but never entirely unravel each time you tell me of your troubles. That is not a criticism of your (our) correspondence. But increasingly I feel helpless and hopeless. I want so much to assist you, to guide or nurture, but it’s an impossible task as things stand. And so all we have are our words; the ink and ideas, which can ease the intangible yet, I daresay, would hold little value in the face of a problem such as your own. So tell me, Verity, how you came to be where you are. I can’t promise I will help but I can promise I will try in my own distant way. Lord knows the difference a kind word can make, or an alternative perspective (your very offerings have dragged me from a dark that seemed so permanent I could have curled up and died on a number of occasions), and for what it is worth I will hold you dearly in my heart and my hopes. This is all I can offer, Verity, and I hope it is enough.
I kept my proposed plans for employment secret during yesterday’s breakfast. Keen not to elicit any specific interest in my character or circumstances, nor encourage any scorn from my relatively new neighbours by accepting a job on some doomed and ill thought of project. Increasingly talk is veering towards the subject of the funding that has been cut in order to afford such a grandiose vanity project. I can’t say I have an opinion either way at this stage, and can’t pretend that for now if pushed for an answer, my loyalties err on the side of the development itself.
Unusually, a pretty young girl sat with Levi at his usual table. He seemed smitten yet inattentive towards his newfound companion. She, herself, seemed happy to sit silently in his presence, occasionally twirling a lock of her golden hair, or teasing her fingers across the string of pearls that spread up from the collar of her dress like some exquisite rash; the ashen beads dotting her throat like bullet holes. Where his breakfast usually sat his ledger now lay open, the ink indecipherable from where I perched at the counter. Behind the cash register Mary harrumphed, heavy footed and uptight. A patch of stitching to the right of her shoulder, mended a number of times over and each time with an ever so slightly different spool of black thread, had come loose. The pale flesh of her shoulder, rounded like the hump of a whale, poked out from the serrations in the cloth and caught embarrassingly on the lights that shone onto the counter. She placed my coffee in front of me with a subtle yet discernable bang before returning to the furthest reach of the counter, where she began the arduous process of wiping the crystal formations of sugar from the worktops.
I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Hi stranger,” came the voice.
“Morning,” I offered.
“You must be Jonah,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
I asked how she seemed to know my name. She chose to ignore me and took the swivel seat next to mine.
“Penny for ’em,” she said, swaying to and fro on the seat.
“I doubt they’d even make that much at auction.”
“I’m Aimee,” she said eventually, grinding to a gradual halt. On the counter she placed a glossy magazine opened and creased at a central page. “This poor lady had a baby with hooves,” she said, stroking the image of the disfigured infant. “Can you believe it?” She spoke as though we were long time companions, picking up form where we last left off.
“I’d question the source,” I said, turning my face from the magazine.
“Say, what star sign are you? You’re a Taurus, aren’t you? I can tell a Taurus a mile off.” She picked up the magazine and flicked to the rear pages, tracing the text with the tip of her finger.
“Don’t know. Even if I did can’t say I’d pay much attention.”
“Of course you know, everybody knows their sign.”
“Not me.”
“Well, when’s your birthday?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“Oh,” she said, placing one hand on my arm. “Don’t be shy, I won’t judge you. Age means nothing these days, it’s how you act... ”
“I’m not embarrassed, I don’t know my own birthday, fact.”
The girl looked puzzled for a moment, scanning my face for a twitch or smirk that might give away the joke. In fact I was telling the truth. I have no birth certificate, no driver’s licence, no tangible proof of any particular start date, and am left with only the foggiest of memories of a time when ribbons and candles marked my celebration. I have a vague idea, of course, working forward or back from incidents when somehow my specifics were deduced, but on the whole I’m a mystery even to myself. I know little more than the fact that I’ve been around for as long as I can remember.
“I’m with Levi today,” she said, girlishly, pressing at the pleats of her dress. Both conversation and magazine discarded as though they never happened.
“And what - ” I asked perhaps more coldly than I had intended, “ - could a man of Levi’s years possibly have to interest a girl like you?”
With that she smiled and stood up, amused as though I had walked into the very trap she had so carefully lain for me. “Not what you think, stranger,” she said, standing at the jukebox and selecting an old time love song which began to drift across the room like fog. On the spot, and to an empty room save her escort, the waitress, and myself, she began to sway to the sound of the jukebox, looking down at the floor yet somehow dancing for and only for me. “He’s going to make me immortal,” she said breathily, at which Levi stood up and placed his coupons on the counter. “Like you.”
Levi walked to the door and Aimee followed dreamily, still breathing to the sway of the song. “Until the next time, stranger,” she said as the door clicked and sealed.
The record dimmed to a whisper and then with a polite click and a bright red sign demanding further payment, the machine fell silent.
“Yeah,” Mary said out loud. “God damn genius alright and never so much as a civil word. Damn fool.” She looked at me and for a moment a wave crossed her face which suggested an apology was beginning to form, a wave she managed to single-handedly denounce before returning to the semi-snarl which she had worn, like a veil, all morning. “Sorry, sugar,” she said, though her face made no such attempts at remorse. “I got problems that just won’t quit. You just ignore me until you need some more coffee, honey, and I’ll see if I can’t fix me a smile.”
“Not on my account,” I added, standing up. If there is one thing worse than being unhappy it is being forced to suggest the alternative to an audience. “I hope you find an answer to your prayers.”
“And you yours, sugar,” she said without looking up, “... and you yours.”
My duties amongst the site itself seem to be relatively straightforward. I turn up and dig. I tear out foundations, the chipped wood and petrifying fragments of whatever went before, leaving only empty ground to be filled anew and built into a structure which will be, in some small way, my own.
At the sound of a klaxon we cease work twice a day. There is the celebrated forty-five minutes for lunch, and a further fifteen minutes to be utilised as we see fit somewhere between three and four in the afternoon. During these periods we congregate into subsections around
a pile of dirty chairs and make small talk about lives, which require minimal discourse at the best of times. Some of the men indulge in hurried smoking. I was never taken with tobacco, and so align myself with the family men whose wives insist on smoke-free homes and have consequently curtailed their addictions entirely. That is not to say they are a wholly health conscious bunch. At least two of my colleagues sip throughout the day from tarnished hip flasks, and the scent of the steam from several of the thermoses would be enough to send you spiralling over the drink driving limit. The breaks are a small mercy, I can tell you that. Were it not for the pleasure of mumbled introductions and a whole host of new characters to memorise and evaluate I could easily have begun to doze by early afternoon.
My first job was as a gravedigger, I don’t know if I ever told you this. Four days after I left home for good I drifted into a backwoods town, starving and freezing despite the sepia promise of spring, and in a moment of almost hallucinatory desperation stumbled upon the parish where I intended to do little more than beg for the necessities that would allow me to see in another morning. The priest, a firm but kind man whose ordination was based solely upon his ability to read and his minimal criminal activity, asked few questions and agreed that once my strength resumed I would be taken on as a cemetery assistant. Oh such grandeur!
I was to aid the elderly gentleman who was at that point providing the entire town’s eternities alone, and in turn would be paid by the grave at a rate so extortionate that were I not dazed by hunger I would never have agreed. Thankfully a combination of youthful vigour and the region’s ceaseless smallpox pandemic meant that within two months I was earning more money than most of the town combined, and within six months was in possession of my very own automobile and a satchel full of dirty money which I used to propel me straight out of that hellish backwater never to look back.
Such memories remain distinct and clear whereas many - for example the entire purpose of last week, or the name of the street on which I lived previously - slip from my mind with alarming ease, and so I am used to the nature of the task at hand. For now the repetition and the hypnotism that comes with rote undertakings of a manual nature are a pure luxury.
Several hours have passed since I began this letter. Though in no small part due to excitement I have found myself distracted of late, particularly this evening. That same black car has circled my street all night. At first it remained stationary outside my living room window. The twitch of the curtains and the television’s cobalt glow roused the engine to a quiet purr before the vehicle shifted towards the furthermost point of my street. They drove slowly until positioned at a distance I was unable to observe through the small square of my window. Though for all intents and purposes out of sight I could tell they were still there. So I went and stood out on the porch, clutching a coffee for warmth. The night air crystallised the bathwater on my stomach and arms and caused me to shake like a corn field caught in a breeze. The car’s interior lights were dimmed. From the weak glow of the streetlamps yet to be shot out by disgruntled nightshift workers I was able to make out two figures. One tall man and a companion whose shapes could easily have been cardboard cut-outs were it not for the occasional movement as they turned to talk to one another. A bullet of light shot from the car’s mirror as it was repositioned. It caught my eye and then dimmed as the engine began once more and continued down the street and around the corner.
Thankfully they’re gone now, and if not out of mind then for now I will settle with out of sight.
Of all the men I work with, Harlow seems to offer the most promising chance of friendship. He is older than I, though by how much I couldn’t say. He has a kindly face and an open manner.
He caught my eye as we sat down for lunch, he nodded as did I, and initially that was enough. Whispers of the previous nights’ escapades rattled through the luncheon club. Younger boys bragged about various levels of speed and inebriation depending on their preferred method of relaxation. One or two of the recently married men spoke proudly of the latest vowel uttered by their offspring, or bemoaned the now constant fog of exhaustion that clouds their wives. I sat and absorbed it all, hungry but happy. Harlow noticed my lack of reserves and made his way over to where I sat. “The wife always gives me too much,” he said, placing half a sandwich in front of me. “Twenty-seven years and you’d think she’d have got the balance right. Still, I aint complaining. Too much better than not enough, that’s my motto.”
I accepted the sandwich and smiled. Already our relationship seemed too advanced to offer an offensively formal handshake. “Thank you,” I said. “I could just about chew the head off a shovel. It’s been a while since I did a full day’s work.”
He laughed once and it felt like a gift. “Yep, I know that feeling. Nothing like an empty life to make a man feel halved. What’s your name, buddy?”
“Jonah.”
“Well I’m Harlow. And you need anything you come to me. They’ll work you alright, but it aint that bad once you get used to it. Plenty of folk round here’d give their right arm for the chance on this site. You must be one smooth talker to have walked right into a post.”
“I guess I’m just lucky,” I offered, almost apologetically.
“Aint no such thing as luck,” he said. “I seen you around town of late. You new to these parts?”
With this the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Yup,” I said solemnly, taking a second and final bite of the sandwich. I have come to realise that whilst barefaced lies become accumulative and corrosive, minimising the truth - that is, to give of yourself precisely what is required without any further embellishment - is often the most effective way to conduct yourself.
“It aint a bad life round here. Plenty wants fixin’, but plenty’s just fine,” he said, chewing through his crusts with one final wipe of his lips. He wrapped the sandwich foil into a tight ball and tossed it into a dustbin. “You take care, Jonah. And remember what I said. You need anything you just come to me. I’ll be seeing you around.”
After lunch it was an effort to raise the spade above my head even when empty, but the added weight of dry earth became excruciating. The sun had rose slowly throughout the day and hit its peak well after noon; it shone a fiery gold that caused heat waves not two feet from your face, making even the most redundant object appear uncertain as though a dream. The sweat dropped from my forelock and spattered the ground like I was haemorrhaging and the hours seemed to wade past you through treacle. The final klaxon, ‘Tools down boys! See y’all bright and early!’ was as welcome as the job itself.
“You got family round these parts?” asked Harlow who had caught up with me in the ant march back to town.
“No sir, just me,” I said. “Yourself?”
“Yup, got me two daughters,” he said, pulling a picture from his back pocket. It was yellow and peeling, and no doubt hideously out of date, but showed two smiling blonde girls as pretty as any father could ever hope for. I told him as much and he beamed. “They’re good kids. God knows they’ve got their quirks, but both got good hearts,” he said with a laugh. “Say, you like barbeque, boy?”
I nodded.
“Well the wife’s having some friends round later on next week, why don’t you swing by? Some of the guys from the site’ll be there. Might give you a chance to make some new friends rounds here. Or at any rate decide who’s worth befriending and who’s not.”
I accepted and we parted with the ease of long-time friends.
So that’s that, I suppose. Funny how much things can change in a twenty-four hours. Romantic almost. I know this may seem silly to you. If the truth be told I take one step back from myself and realise just how damn silly it is to me too. I don’t think a job on a building sight ever caused a grown man such happiness. But it feels like the beginning, like a catalyst, or perhaps even the beat of the butterfly’s wings which spawns the hurricane miles and miles away. Undoubtedly I’m setting myself up for a fall here, but optimism is fresh ground for me and fo
r now I’m happy wallowing blindly until an alternative presents itself.
Outside the raccoons are beginning to scratch and root for sustenance. I hear them scurry along the porch, tearing through my garbage, picking morsels from the litter and upturning all and sundry in the vain hope of survival. Usually I would make an effort to dissuade them, but tonight I feel generous, and so I let them feast as I prepare for welcome slumber.
Take care of yourself, Verity. This is all I can ask of you, and in return I offer my thoughts and my prayers. In keeping with our newfound honesty I would also like to know precisely how you ended up where you were, if it is not too much to ask, if only to abate my appetite for each and every aspect of you and your life which I find so fulfilling. I don’t now what I did before it became the muzak to my own existence.
I have enclosed a small carving made from a log I picked up on the walk back from work. I whittled it down and smoothed the edges until it began to resemble the shape of a heart, somewhere between the cartoon Hallmark sentiment and the ugly yet vital organ on which it is based. The shape seemed pleasing, apt almost, though incomplete, and so I suppose you are the recipient of a work in progress. I hope you like it.
With all my love,
Jonah
Dear Jonah,
There was a bullet lodged in my front door this morning. How it didn’t wake me I don’t know. And whether by accident or design it has certainly affected the overall mood of my day. Suffice to say its appearance caused little stir amongst the occupants of this quaint little motel, and so I choose to take it as simply par for the course in my newfound residence, lest my mind run away with itself.
But first things first. Congratulations. If I know one person who deserves a chance in this life, whether second, third or fourth seems irrelevant, it is you. I feel as though all my prayers have been answered. As if by fixing you I will become solved myself. How likely this is I do not know. But one thing I know for certain is my joy for you and your newfound lease of life. I will raise a glass in your honour.
