Thorn-Field

by James Trettwer

  I crashed through my front door, breathless. I had to swallow four ibuprofen with Orange Crush and lie down to calm myself.

  The next afternoon, I decided to start my vigil. I positioned my recliner-rocker against the wall beside the front window and cracked my drapes so I could watch the street without craning my neck. There was a clear view of the intersection, the laundromat, Joe’s convenience store, and anyone loitering in that vicinity.

  I settled in the chair with a heaping bowl of corn flakes mixed with a couple of globs of peanut butter. I have a lactose intolerance and I can’t stand dry cereal. The dull light of an overcast day marginally brightened the room. Motes of dust plumed from the faded drapes, which hadn’t been opened for a couple of weeks.

  Two of the regular girls were strolling in front of the laundromat.

  My girl was on her corner, dressed in the same tube top and denim outfit. I decided to call her Blue. She slouched with another regular, a stocky, dark-skinned girl who wore a clingy white dress. Blue and White-Dress I decided. The two laundromat girls and White-Dress were picked up two or three times over the course of the afternoon. Blue always hung back. Even when she was by herself, she never really looked directly at any passing car. Late afternoon, a dark green Mercedes Kompressor pulled up and some dude with white slicked-back hair stuck his head out of the sunroof. He talked to Blue and White-Dress for a moment. The girls spoke to each other and Blue stepped back, shook her head and gestured for her co-worker to go ahead. The passenger door on the Kompressor swung open. White-Dress shook her head more vigorously, grabbed Blue by her shoulder, pushed her into the car. She waved when the sleek little Mercedes took off. I wondered where they would go, what would happen . . . but then I felt absolutely fatigued. I had to lean my head back and close my eyes, just for a moment.

  I came back later to see Blue back on station. She was not picked up again and a heavy downpour drove the girls off the street around evening news time. I pulled my drapes shut, and then fumbled in the dark for the table lamp. I turned on the TV, having had enough reality for one day, and skipped from the news to the Turner Classic Movies channel. I couldn’t concentrate on Errol Flynn’s swashbuckler antics though. Listening to the downpour, I wondered what Blue was doing at that moment. What the hell did I care about some scrawny prostitute? Get a grip for Christ’s sake.

  I had a spasm in my lower back and felt that tingle in my spine, like thorns reaming the cord’s central canal, and realized that I hadn’t taken my medication the whole day. I chugged a full can of Orange Crush and swallowed four ibuprofen and waited for the pain to subside. Was Blue watching TV? Stop it — focus on the diminishing pain. I stared at the TV, lost in fictional black and white lives, until I climbed into bed around 4:00 AM after more ibuprofen. The rain continued outside, perhaps soaking Blue’s hair, plastering it to her freckled face.

  The next day was clear and bright and I resumed my vigil at the window over another bowl of corn flakes and peanut butter. Business carried on much the same as the day before. Blue only managed one client again: a brown Saturn SL1 trolled the block four or five times before the driver had the gall to park right in front of my house. A fat, fiftyish guy, with only a rim of hair bordering his sweaty chrome dome oozed out of the car, looked furtively around, and then slowly moved toward her corner, constantly looking over his shoulder. He was wearing a white dress shirt and no tie. His collar was loose and he had enough back hair creeping up his neck that it joined seamlessly with the dilapidated growth on his scalp. His wrinkled grey dress pants matched the wrinkled blazer he flung over his shoulder. He waddled over to her. Talk about pork-belly, butt-ugly. And the nerve — leaving his car in front of my house. I wished I had the energy to do something about it. My eyes began to feel heavy.

  Pork-Belly walked up to Blue and talked to her. The whole time he glanced around, looking directly at my house at one point. I could see the sweat glistening on his bald head.

  Blue, arms crossed, stood rigid.

  Pork-Belly touched her arm and White-Dress, lounging in the shade of Joe’s store, yelled something. Pork-Belly opened his wallet and pulled out a wad of bills. Blue snatched the bills and shoved them in her skirt pocket, then strode across the street to the laundromat with the wide-assed waddler in tow.

  She looked so bored. Was she experiencing the same excruciating tedium I went through every day? With my Journalism and Communications Degree in hand it had started immediately — ten years of churning out corporate newsletters, reports, and articles for the Liverwood Potash Corporation’s Information Department. Everything was irrelevant. The company. Life. Where did my words go? What purpose did they serve? I felt like Oblio, banished to my own version of the Pointless Forest. Except I had no heroic purpose. My spine had been tingling for years and I had to keep shifting in my office chair every five or ten minutes to head off the pain. I hated the meaningless reams of words. When boxes containing the thick annual report, two informational brochures, plus thousands of envelopes for a mass mailing showed up, I hefted them all myself, with the full knowledge of the possibly dire consequences.

  The next day, I couldn’t get out of bed and had to call an ambulance. I had a compressed spine and the muscles in my lower back were badly inflamed. I learned to keep the condition constant by twisting suddenly and by ignoring the physiotherapist’s recommended stretching and strengthening exercises. With prescription pain medication and ibuprofen, I could keep the resulting discomfort at a bearable level and I was able to score long-term disability.

  I spent my slightly less tedious days reading; Stranger in a Strange Land, Bend Sinister, Catch 22.

  Now I wondered when that fucker was going to move his car from in front my house? My back hurt. I closed the drapes, took four ibuprofen and turned on the TV, flipped stations. I didn’t feel like reading. I tried napping. But all I could think of was the sprinkling of freckles on Blue’s cheeks, those intriguing green flecks in those hazel eyes. If it wasn’t for the pocking all over her face, she could have passed for a teenager. Maybe she was a teenager. I’d heard tell that crack-addiction tears a person’s face to shreds. I tried to imagine her as a young girl. A child. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the sound of her voice.

  The VCR clock said 10:35 PM. I peeked through the curtains and saw that the Saturn was gone, the intersection deserted. In the laundromat, the machines were idle sentinels, except for one dryer with its door hanging open. I was goddamned if the pastor wasn’t in there folding his laundry. At that hour? He stopped for a moment and looked toward the street. He must live in the neighbourhood.

  Did Blue live nearby too? Did she use the same washing machines I did? I imagined her tube tops and denim skirts tumbling around in the dryer I used.

  A sudden back-spasm stabbed and my spine burned. I gritted my teeth. Switching on the table lamp, I found my ibuprofen bottle and gave it a little shake. The pill count was dangerously low. I needed more ibuprofen, and groceries. I had to venture out. Maybe tomorrow. I took the last six of my pills and drifted off to sleep in the recliner. What did Blue eat from day to day? Did she have enough money to survive?

  The bus trip to Superstore was uneventful and tediously long. It was an overcast, drizzly day so I wore my over-sized, fleece-lined windbreaker, which was appropriate for the weather, but also necessary to augment my ibuprofen stock. I had slit open a pocket’s seam so I could slip extra medicine neatly to the bottom of the inner lining. Over-the-counter medication was not covered by my health plan, therefore I had the right to obtain what I thought necessary to live by any means.

  Once at the store, I grabbed a couple of boxes of generic corn flakes, a litre tub of peanut butter, a six-pack of Orange Crush and wandered over to the pharmacy and asked a zit-faced, teenage runt stock-clerk new to the store to help me find my pills. Pretending to be stupid as well as half-blind, I asked him to grab me two bottles. He reached down and the split-second before he closed his hand on one, I said, “Oh, I see them now,” darted out
my hand and hit his arm to knock stock off the shelf. With a broad sweep of my arm, I flung a cascade of stock to the floor and apologized profusely. While the frustrated clerk crouched to pick things up, I passed him some stock from the floor and managed to slip four bottles of ibuprofen through the slit in the pocket of my windbreaker.

  Rising, the clerk said he would be more than happy to carry my purchases for me. I smiled at him, picked up four more bottles of ibuprofen and followed meekly.

  I didn’t get back home until past 6:00 PM and then flew into a rage. I was good-goddamned if that Saturn wasn’t parked in front of my house again. That pork-bellied jerk’s plastic-wrapped rattle trap would draw unnecessary interest from the cops. I dumped my purchases on the kitchen table and sat down, staring at the car through my living room window. How would the vinyl body shatter if it was hit with a hammer?

  Pork-Belly came out of the laundromat with a smug look on his face, and hoisted his pants up to his fat gut before he waddled to his car. He then had the gall to sit there and talk on his cell phone. Before I realized, I was standing directly in front of the window in time to see Blue, hands in her skirt pockets, head down, her hair covering those freckles, wander out of the laundromat. I moved back. Pork-Belly switched the cell phone from his right to his left hand and reached for something in the back seat. I caught the flash of a gigantic stone on his ring finger.

  When he took off I plopped down in my recliner without bothering to close the curtains. I looked around the confines of my dusty living room and took stock. The heavy wall-to-wall drapes and hide-a-bed in lieu of a couch. The laminated coffee table. My lamp and pressboard shelves on cindercrete blocks. My TV. My overstuffed recliner-rocker. I had walked away from our condo and Barbara, my partner for twelve years, a few months after going on disability.

  I had been reading Catch-22 when she appeared in front of me in her black silk housecoat to say, “I can’t live with your belligerent silence. What do you want to do?”

  It took a minute to register that she was actually speaking to me. “Do about what?”

  “What do you think?”

  I shrugged.

  “I can’t keep doing this. Whenever we had a fight before we’d fuck our brains out afterward. Now all you do is read. You don’t even touch me anymore. Am I that hideous?”

  She was six foot two, a couple of inches taller than me, and slender with a sexy belly that stretched her housecoat. Large breasts prevented the silky housecoat from ever completely covering her cleavage. Her wet, jet-black hair framed her face in that sweaty, pouty perfume-ad kind of way.

  “I wouldn’t say you’re hideous.”

  “You bastard.” She clenched her fists. “What the hell has happened to you?”

  What had happened indeed? I couldn’t concentrate. I was tired all the time and only wanted to read or sleep.

  “Say something.” Her lower lip quivered. “You were always there for me. And now you’re not. Now you’re not anything. Matthew, I’m asking once more: what are you going to do?”

  I opened my mouth a couple of times and then looked at the book splayed on my lap just to avoid her glare.

  Her pitch rose slightly. “Talk to me.”

  “Uh, I’m working on it?”

  “Work harder. I’m not going to let you drag me down with you.”

  I had no response. So I picked up the book. Her eyes were moist, red, and she shook slightly, fists still clenched and held tightly at her sides. I had to admire her. She did not cry.

  “Have it your way,” was the last thing she said to me.

  Barbara handled it. When I returned to our condo from a CAT-scan, to verify my long-term disability eligibility, my key didn’t work. Inside an envelope taped to the door was a key, a yellow sticky with an address, and cab fare all neatly folded inside a note. It said she’d found me a furnished rental house through a friend at a property management company. He and his buddies had moved my chair and personal stuff. The first month’s rent and damage deposit were on her. She’d added the landlord’s and property manager’s contact information. I walked over to the Golden Mile shopping centre and called a cab.

  Recalling all this made me just want to sleep. My head was bobbing. I took some ibuprofen. The outside light didn’t seem much different from when Pork-Belly had taken off. So help me, if he parked in front of my place once more I would take action. Blue and White-Dress exited Joe’s with bottles of pop. They leaned against the front window of the store and drank. I saw a flash of orange in Blue’s hand. She drank Orange Crush.

  I needed one too. But a cold bottle, not the warm can on my kitchen table. I stood. My stomach twisted and my mouth went dry. I sat. Then bolted toward the front door. Grabbed the knob — stopped. Who really wants a bottle? Me, damnit. Out the front door, I headed diagonally across the street, straight for Joe’s, deep-breathing to counter my racing heart, trying to keep my eyes steady on the store. White-Dress poked Blue with her elbow and then sauntered away. I slowed down when I reached the sidewalk. Blue set her bottle down on the brick sill of the window. She pressed herself flat against the glass, stretched her arms up over her head and arched. Her denim jacket pulled up exposing a substantial amount of midriff. Pink stretch marks glared angrily at me.

  “Hey.” She dropped her arms and stood straight. “No laundry today?”

  I swallowed hard. She remembered me. “Uh, yeah.” I hung my head and darted past her, stumbled, panting, into the store.

  “Hiya, Joe.”

  Joe was sixtyish, short and pudgy, balding, with two double chins. He greeted me with his typical grunt in some European accent without looking up from his Guns and Ammo magazine. I stood in a fog checking his four shelving units. Condoms, jellies, and creams, more brands than I ever knew existed; chocolate bars, licorice, and gummies; chips, potato and taco; dips and salsas; countless two-litre bottles of pop; behind the counter, cupboards of tobacco products, and probably controlled substances. I turned to the two old-style coolers, with top sliding lids, under the storefront window.

  Through the bars I could see Blue’s hair pressed flat against the glass. I grabbed a six-pack of Orange Crush, slammed the cooler lid shut, went to the counter. Joe set his magazine down and wiped his hands on his smock.

  “How’s business, Joe?” I said.

  “Same as last time you ask. Girls buy many rubbers. Hardly no time to keep up. Those kids then. Always buy chips. Buy cheesies. Never enough time for me to smoke mad-icinal cigarettes.”

  “Yeah, life’s tough all over.”

  “You still on pogey?”

  “Disability.”

  “Whatever. You buy more from Joe’s. I stay in business then for you to buy your orange drink.”

  “You bet. Keep the change.”

  Joe grunted and picked up his magazine.

  I hesitated at the door and took a deep breath. The conversation with Joe had momentarily soothed me but I had to push on. I stepped outside.

  Blue pushed herself away from the window. “Hey, again.”

  I didn’t say anything, just nodded, avoiding eye contact, but at least I had the courage not to run away. I stood remarkably steady and examined the freckles on her face; I wanted to reach out and touch each one; like counting candies in a jar.

  “Orange Crush, eh?” She waved her bottle at me.

  “Yeah.” I lifted the pack and gave it a little shake. “Uh, I only started drinking it to settle my stomach.”

  “Gut problems, eh?” Her voice had an Alanna Myles scratch to it.

  “Just for medicinal purposes for an ailment I have.”

  “Uh, sure.” Blue ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing it.

  “Yeah, the meds make my guts burn bad. This juice settles it up good. You want another one?”

  “I guess.” She twirled her hair in her fingers. “Sure.”

  I passed her a pop.

  She pressed her empty into my hand. “Don’t wanna rip off your deposit.”

  “Thanks.” I
squeezed the empty into my pocket.

  Crows cawed distantly in the silence. A Bic lighter peeked out from under the flap of her jacket pocket. I thought of Pork-Belly parking in front of my house and wondered what it would feel like to slide my 14-inch flat screwdriver into his gullet. My face felt hot, my teeth clenched hard.

  “Fifty bucks ‘cause you live around here.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  My face turned hotter and I could feel sweat under my arms. I was not Pork-Belly. That was not my game. What the hell was she thinking? I said, “Uh, no offence, but we’re like, neighbours, aren’t we? I’m here because I — just want to talk to you.” I had trouble believing those words had actually oozed from my mouth. I couldn’t tell if Blue thought I was simple or just nervous, but at least her face softened. “Besides, I don’t drive a brown Saturn.”

  She said, “That guy a friend of yours?”

  “That fat-fuck who always parks in front of my house? I’ll gut him for bacon if he doesn’t stop doing it.”

  I could clearly see the green flecks in Blue’s wide eyes. She took a step back. “Sure.”

  “I mean . . . I hate it when he parks in front of my house.”

  She took another slow step back. “Whatever. But, hey, I gotta blast. Thanks for the drink.”

  My head throbbed and I wanted to lounge in my recliner. I chastised myself for stupidly getting involved with the locals. What the hell was I thinking? I managed to stumble home, popped some pills and flopped in the recliner. The conversation with Blue replayed in my mind. I’d showed her I was just another testosterone-laden, tongue-tied jerk. How could I prove that wasn’t the real me? But what the hell for and what did it matter? But it did matter and what could I do? The debate rolled on and on until past dark.