LOVE, crumbsroom

Need to catch up on these soon.

Or you can spend your time wisely.



I expect zero people to keep up with this, because its just going to keep coming. If people want to dip in, great! But certainly not necessary. Really, what this all is is me airing out the writing process, and this is me developing the hunk of clay that I'm eventually (hopefully) going to make something coherent out of.



First, I got to get a hundred pages of clay under my belt though. Then the magic happens!

BEST FRIEND PART 1: NEVER LEGS

We were meant for the floor. About thirty of us. A square of masking tape on the carpet we were told to sit upon. A woman in a chair watched as each of us found a spot, almost sitting shoulder to shoulder. All of us eyeing each other suspiciously. Wondering what we were doing here.

I’d stopped screaming and now my posture was perfect. Had gently folded my hands into my lap. Crossed my legs. Made sure to keep very quiet. Could see the woman watching, as if waiting for us to do something. But I stayed very still. Made sure I did nothing incorrectly. Let the others call attention to themselves. Pick at their nostrils and wipe their noses with shirt sleeves. Fidget with shoelaces. Slouch and sigh as the silence in the room continued.

I did not make a peep, but some sitting near me soon began to talk. I could hear whispering. See ears leaning into mouths. The woman noticing all of it. Reading their lips. Watching. Some of us even staring back at her after sensing her eyes on them. But not me. Even when I could see their glisten turn towards me, I looked elsewhere. Stared at her fingers. The buttons on her shirt. The part in her hair. I began reciting her name in my head, over and over again to keep myself from forgetting it. So far, it was the only thing we had learned on our first day of school, and I was doing my best to be a good student. The kind that might escape being eaten at the end of the day.

“Miss Cott, Miss Cott, Miss Cott, Miss Cott”

Miss Cott began to hold up cards with words on them. Seemed to be waiting for us to read back what they said. But no one said anything. Every one of us, pretending we couldn’t read. Sitting in silence, trying to make sense of what it was she was telling us.

Dog. Girl. Book. Car. Sun.

As she held up her cards I imagined all of these things, packed into a backseat. A girl with a book on her lap. A dog licking her fingers. All of them driving into the burning heat at the center of the universe. But I kept this to myself. Didn’t let her know I understood. That I could see what she was trying to tell us. Could hear the screaming of a girl and the howling of a dog, all those light years away.

It would only be when she sent us over to the other side of the room where they kept the paints and brushes and pencils and crayons and large sheets of paper we could do anything we wanted with, that I started to show what I’d seen. A world where everything was on fire. A place she also could see, while looking over my shoulder. Telling me it was all very pretty. Realizing now I had been able to read all along, I’m sure.

“You’re a very good artist. I like the colour”, she said. Smiling. “Your name is David, right?”

In the center of the flames I had drawn, I scribbled another dark shape. Whether it was supposed to be me or the teacher, I wasn’t sure. And so closed my eyes and tried to hear what its screaming sounded like. If I could recognize it as my own.

“When can I go home”, I asked. My first words, asked without any of the urgency I felt inside.

I waited for her to tell me never. Make it clear I wouldn’t ever be going home. But instead, she only began to laugh, very sweety. Touching my hair and moving to the next student, who was drawing a snowman.

It was then I stopped painting. Sat listening, waiting for Miss Cott to tell the girl snowmen didn’t have legs. That what she’d drawn was wrong, and the branches it stood upon would surely snap. And it would topple and break apart and return to the snow it had been built from. I felt it was important the girl know this. That her snowman wouldn’t work.

But Miss Cott only said she how she liked it too. And I couldn’t help but wonder if she really did, maybe more than mine, as I waited there for this teacher to go away. Waiting for my chance to tell this girl what I knew . Help her learn something, since wasn’t that what school was for?

BEST FRIEND PART 2: THE INFORMER

In time I began to consider myself an informant, even though I informed no one. Recognized no one was listening. That maybe I had stopped talking entirely. Mary Grace kept drawing bad snowmen. Now with squiggles for toes, as if trying to enrage me even more as I walked past, looking over her shoulder, letting out an enormous sigh like I had just seen enough to give up on the universe. Going home and telling my grandmother about it, who didn’t even turn around, as if it didn’t matter. Or I hadn’t said anything at all.

But she was not the only offender. The boy who only talked about dinosaurs kept wandering off school property. Convinced there were brontosaurus bones to be found past the two oak trees we were told to never pass. Sometimes he’d invite me on his adventure. He’d have a piece of glass he called a magnifier. And a map I think an older brother drew for him. But I’d have to stop when he walked too far. Lean against the trunk of one of those trees and call out to him to come back as he wandered around, got on his knees, dug in the dirt with his hands. Watch as he grew angry at old acorns and filthy sticks that deceived him.

And then there was Randy, a boy I knew of before I’d ever come to this class. He lived around the corner from me with chickens. Had a strange house that was always dark inside. Plastic rain sheets hung in the windows instead of glass. His father sharpened skates at the local arena. We’d see Randy sitting there on the floor, getting showered in sparks. Staring at the dirty slush that had been wiped from the blades.

I had not known his name until I came here, but now he’d sometimes sit next to me on the carpet. Smelling like a mix of motor oil and tomato soup. Picking at the masking tape we sat on. I would tell him to stop. To sit up straighter. That Miss Cott was looking. But he never seemed to hear or say anything and he clearly felt it important to remove as much of that tape as possible.

Meanwhile, Miss Cott kept holding up cards with words on them. Messages I now suspected were meant only for me, the clearer it became no one else here knew how to read. But I wouldn’t even think to raise my hand to read them out loud. No matter how much I could tell that was what I was here to do. Instead, they were mine to puzzle over as my grandmother walked me home. And even those times when Miss Cott would read them to the class herself, get the others to repeat the words back to her, my mouth would never move. I was not one of them. I would pretend it was still a secret between us. Something I would only recite aloud as my grandmother looked down at me to ask how my day was.

“What was that you said?”

“Nothing”, I’d answer back. And encouraged by her confusion, a bounce would come to my step as we neared home.

BEST FRIEND PART 3: FOOTPRINTS

School had yet to teach me where friends came from. Thought here I might finally see them coming. Learn from Miss Cott where I should keep watch for them. Not like the friends from before, when I would stay home all day and stand on my lawn staring up and down the street. How they’d arrive when I wasn’t looking. Just suddenly be there, with scabby knees and freckles I thought made their faces look dirty. Keeping me company as I jumped through sprinklers, or dug holes to bury buttons I thought looked like gold coins. The kind of things I could have managed on my own.

I was never sure if I’d even invited them here. Or where they came from. They would just come from whatever lawns they’d been standing on to find me. Like the boy who got yelled at and chased away by my grandmother after she found him in the backyard, peeing against our fence. Or some kid named Pat from down the street, who was only ever leaving. Who I never once figured out what games he wanted to play, or how to get him to turn around as he walked away from me. Unsure if I would even recognize him if he did.

Because I didn’t know where they came from, I was never sure what I was supposed to do with these boys who kept showing up at my front door. Climbing our backyard fence. Peeking in windows and making motions that I was supposed to come outside to play with them. Even when it was cold or raining. Even when I had things to do on the carpet. I’d do my best to let them know I’d be staying inside today. But sometimes I could still hear them scurrying around the perimeter of the house hours later. Suspected they were still out there when it grew dark and I was sent to bed.

During these days before school happened, friends were always coming and going. And I was fine either way. I was never one much for looking. Was comfortable letting them stay disappeared. Except for that one time, when the girl who lived next door went away. I can remember being told by the old man who answered my long knocking that she was never coming back. How it didn’t make any sense and I began to follow footsteps in the snow. Hoping they’d lead me to wherever she was being kept. Knowing they were too big to be hers, but thinking maybe they had been made by whoever carried her away.

That day I had ended up further from my home than I had ever been before. Trying to find this place where friends go when they never return. Maybe it would be the same place they came from too. I’d see all the new, no-good friends that were coming to take her place.

But I would never quite get there. I’d been too worried over how the storm was slowly erasing these footsteps I was following. That soon I’d never find my way home. And so I suddenly turned around. Began to rush home, knee deep in snow. Had forgotten all about her by the time I kicked off my galoshes. Turning her into a shadow I could barely remember any better than that boy who used to urinate in my backyard. And when my grandmother kept talking about what a funny looking girl she was, I couldn’t even see her face. Nothing. I didn’t so much as know her name anymore

Unfortunately, school had made me no better in these matters. I still didn’t know where to look when it came to friends. Was staring in the complete wrong direction, even as he walked up behind me. A voice suddenly in my ear, asking to be my best friend. And as I turned around to face him, I realized I had never seen this person before, even though I recognized his name from the mornings roll call. Thought it sounded strange.

“I’m Garrett”, he said, briefly locking eyes with me, then staring down at the floor. “I hate your shoes”.

BEST FRIEND PART 4: THE FINE FINE PRINT OF FRIENDSHIP

My friendship with Garrett began while across the room from him. He was looking, but I wasn’t. Admitted how he’d been watching for days. Trying to wither my good posture with dirty looks. Said I sat up too straight. That others didn’t like it either. Now all these humpbacks we sat on the carpet with were plotting against me. Crawling about the school yard at recess. Wanting to throw me into the grass and bend me out of shape.

He told me he would never have bothered warning me if we weren’t going to be friends. But, he wanted to make it very clear, this didn’t mean he’d help when they finally caught me. “At recess, I mind my own business”. It was clear there would be no negotiations. Then with great formality we shook hands, and the expectations of our friendship were quickly agreed upon.

But first it seemed there were also some other things Garrett wanted to set straight. He had suspicions I could read, which he didn’t like much either. He’d seen me with books. Sometimes sneaking behind tall shelves to read them in private. Let me know when he climbed to the top of the jungle gym that he could peer down on where I’d hidden. That I was never as alone as I thought. That he could see my mouth moving along with the words I read. There were concerns if he ever invited me over to his home, I would bring books with me. That I was the kind of kid that would do such a thing. This was something he seemed to take very seriously and in no uncertain terms, explained that while he didn’t care what I did in my own time, I needed to be careful what I did during his.

“I don’t let people into my house to sit around and read”, he said gravely. Even the mushroom cap of boyishly blond hair seemed to sulk at the thought. Hung into his eyes as if to keep them from also falling prey to the written word. “I won’t even come to the door if you’ve got a bunch of books with you”

He seemed to think I didn’t have any other friends in the class, which I suppose was true. While I was always pleasant enough when I spoke with Mary Grace, the subject of snowmen did continue to come up, and at times the conversation could get heated. The boy who liked dinosaurs had also begun to drift further and further away during recess, and so I no longer was really friends with him either. Had still not even learned his name. And as for Randy, the only boy in class whom I spoke to with any regularity, it was only whenever I found him back to picking at the carpet that I would look at him and raise my voice. Was becoming less and less friendly with him by the day. Something that had become obvious even all the way across the room where Garret had been watching. Smiling with approval.

“I like when you get mad at him. I’m mad at him too because he lives across the street from me and I can always see his house and I hate it”, he said, looking around to see who might be listening. “They’re poor. They don’t even have electricity. I hate them”

Then he started talking about the chickens and we both started to laugh.

“I guess some kids have chickens in their backyard and others have got a pool”, he said, suddenly growing serious again. “And mine has a pool”

And so as Miss Cott called us back to the carpet, got us sitting cross-legged next to each other for the first time, Garrett continued to talk about what it was like to have such a magnificent place for swimming. Making sure I understood that when it was the summer, it was a wonderful thing for a boy to have. But that just because we were friends, this didn’t mean I could go ahead and just jump in whenever it got hot.

“You’ve got to remember it’s mine. Not yours”. We watched as Miss Cott began holding up her cards. “Never, ever yours”

BEST FRIEND EPILOGUE: A TANTRUM OF PUPPETS

Miss Cott believed in friendship and so she had trusted us. The two of us trusted to be in this dark place, crouched down, with no adults watching. Puppets at our feet, piled high. As many as we could bring with us. Once clenched to our chests and overflowing from our arms as we stepped inside of here, now dumped onto the ground and up past our socks. Even in the darkness we could see their eyes staring up at us. Their mouths open as if screaming. Their arms reaching up from the floor, making themselves easy to be grabbed and then thrown. Less puppets now than we had started with. But still more than enough to fend them off, just a little while longer.

We’d told her we’d been rehearsing all afternoon. That we wanted to put on a show. A great adventure. Maybe a love story. She had seemed excited by what we’d promised. Announced to the class that we had something special prepared for them. But now, as we found ourselves on our knees, crouched below the open curtain of that tiny stage, we heard them growing restless out there. Knew we had nothing to tell them. That we were liars and fiends. And so with nothing to lose, could only grab handfuls of these puppets and, together, be brave. Stand up. Stick our faces through the curtains, smiling and gap toothed. Arms reaching out from the stage. Aim for their heads. Keep throwing even as they scattered.

Miss Cott covered her face with her hands. Whimpering but barely moving. Waiting for us to run out of ammunition. That's when she would come for us. We both knew it. Grew nervous and giddy at the thought of what she might say. What she might do. How angry she might get. And so as we ducked back down into the darkness, now only the two of us, we were laughing as we heard them approaching. Not just our teacher, but all of them. Screaming with excitement. Shaking the stage. Everyone wanting more. The beginnings of a beautiful friendship. An adventure. A love story.

STEPDAD/STEPMOM

1: RANDY

I met my stepfather in the basement where my mother slept on a pull-out couch. We’d come a long way for this. Subways and then buses. Crossing busy roads. Sneaking between houses into a backyard. Through the darkness, hitting shins on old lawn furniture. All this way and he wasn’t even my stepfather yet. Was just some guy who lived upstairs who we could hear walking around. Who my mother kept saying would come down later.

My cousin worried he wouldn’t want to watch Knight Rider, which was coming on soon. She’d talked about this talking car the whole way down here. Was worried we were travelling for so long we’d miss it. Because of this, she said she didn’t want to meet the guy upstairs. Even if he didn’t change the channel, he might talk through it. And I agreed with her. She was my favorite cousin, even though her hair was messy and her sweatshirt had a hole in the armpit. The kind of things my grandmother warned me to notice when I visited this part of my family.

Eventually he came down to collect the rent. He was skinny. Wore a shiny jacket indoors that he’d just bought at a racetrack. He said it was expensive. A collectible. It was the only thing he wanted to talk about and it was clear he was proud to be wearing it. Would wear for the next forty years. Indoors and outdoors. Cold or warm. Never taking it off until it finally began to rot off of him. Shedding off his back one day and standing upright where it fell. Sitting there, umoving and hard, like the shell of a beetle overturned on the sidewalk, dying under the sun.

He tried to talk to us but we just stared at him. Looked at his face very closely and noticed things. How he didn't have acne but his skin gave the impression that it was considering it. Or how he wore glasses and stared at us through tinted lenses like we were a sight that stung his eyes. He was friendly but he didn’t say much. And when he wasn’t talking a noise would slowly rise from inside his head. A squeaking, shuddering, rubbery noise. Like the sound I imagined a sausage casing would make while it was being filled with minced pork. We’d watch him as it grew louder and louder. How his face would never change, like he couldn’t hear it, or didn’t think we could. We’d laugh and began to wonder if he didn’t like us as he looked over at our laughing. Not understanding what was so funny.

Then suddenly things changed. I didn’t see what had happened, but my cousin was arguing with him. I don’t think he’d changed the channel, but she was still angry and soon she was crying. I wasn’t sure what he had said, but she ran down the hall. Past the furnace. Past the water heater. Up an old, wooden staircase that had carpet stapled to the steps. The same stairs Randy would come down when it was time to collect his rent. I went to console her. Tell her I didn’t like him either. That he didn’t matter. Who was this guy anyways?

Years later, as we stood smoking on the porch of a different home, in a different city, he told me he remembered that night as the night when everything started to go bad. Everything had been great up until the time I came to sleep in that basement.

“I was on top of the world. I was out of school and had a job. Drank beer every night. Was living in my first house with a Firebird in the driveway. And a girl living in my basement. And then suddenly there’s this kid who I didn’t ask for. And now I’m supposed to start taking you to baseball games. Rent horror movies with you. That's when everything went to shit”

I asked him if he remembered what he had said to my cousin to make her cry. He said he didn’t and we lit another cigarette.

2: JANE

Jane never talked to me. She had a small mouth that spoke only to her knitting as she sat on my grandmothers couch, watching The Love Boat with my father. Sometimes she had a smell about her that made me think of a boiled egg that had been dug up out of wet earth. An odor that would sink to the carpet, where I lay on the floor in front of them. Staring up at the television. Trying to listen to the voices behind me. If she even talked to my father.

When she could she would sit in a completely different room from me. Some place she wouldn’t have to say hello. I’d walk by a doorway and see her mop of blonde hair at a table. Huge and combed straight down. Bright enough that I would see it before I even turned my head. Realize she was here from the corners of my eye. Sitting in a sweater she had knit for herself. Always enormous and oversized. Suspended in wool wherever she went. More hair and sweater than stepmother.

On Christmas my father made her play a videogame with me. She held the joystick like it was a hand she didn’t want to hold. I beat her 27 to zero.

I can only remember their wedding a little bit. My father marrying all that hair. Jane marrying his crooked bowtie. Me sitting at the reception, being fed meatballs on toothpicks by a fat woman in a white hat. I was never invited to their table. Just stayed sitting with this woman who was very nice. Whose name was Joanne and ate even more meatballs on toothpicks than me.

DAD MA BARKER

PART 1: A View

All he wanted was a window to watch the boats go by. This is what my father would say when we told him he’d drank enough already. Just a little window. Big enough to see all the little boats. It was all so simple, yet he would say it many times. As if we didn’t understand. The only possible answer left when asked what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Even though that wasn’t what we’d asked him.

He’d tell us if he could just have that, he wouldn’t bother anybody. Would keep out of trouble. No need for anyone to visit. He’d buy his own groceries. Cook for himself. Steak sandwiches every day. The words becoming mushy in his mouth. Holding them there for too long before speaking them.

“I could sit looking out of it for a long time. Longer than you could ever believe”

With this kind of view—the trees, the lake, the hummingbirds that would come and pay him a visit every morning—he said he wouldn’t even notice he was all alone. That we’d forgotten about him as we undoubtedly would. Would never drive that far to see him. Then he’d grow quiet, as if hearing the sounds coming up from the water. Waves underneath a dock. A distant outboard motor. I would try to listen too but then there would be the crack of another can opening. And I’d be back in this living room. My father the only one to have briefly escaped it. The rest of us stuck to these couches, facing each other.

PART 2: Crossword Pen

A family meeting had been called by my grandfather. Only just back from the barbers. His hair once again kept from ever growing so much as half an inch. He should have been in good spirits. Old Italian men undoubtedly complimented what a handsome head of hair he'd brought them. Massaged blue rinse into it.

But upon returning home, he’d seen my father fall down the stairs. Had stood watching his son trying to get back to his feet. A tragedy in socks. Shook his head and told him it was too early for this. That we needed to talk. All of us. To sit on couches and stare at each other. He would even bring his crossword pen with him, which made things seem serious. At this hour he should have been using it to crack codes on his horse racing form.

Something was wrong. Something was about to happen.

“You can’t continue like this any longer. I know it. Your mother knows it. Your son knows it. You know it. By now, I’m sure even all the ********* neighbours know it”

My father's moustache had a way of drooping over his lips when trying to hide words from us. Or lifting to reveal his porch-brown teeth when he got angry. But on this day, it raised only slightly, as if it already knew no one wanted to hear about the boats ever again. Especially my grandfather, clicking his pen with one hand, smoking a cigarette with the other. Waiting for him to say something. Aware of what was coming. Already knowing exactly how much that window was going to cost.

PART 3: A Contract in Yellow

Eventually, my father signed it. My grandfather too. Put their names on lines the old man had drawn with a ruler. A contract scribbled on yellow loose leaf. Handwritten with a crossword pen. A spot left for me and my grandmother at the bottom. We were witnesses and so stood nearby. My grandfather calling us close to where they sat. Instructed us to watch over them. Over the ashtray. Over the television guide. Over all the table clutter the conditions of this agreement had been written in.

There were to be no negotiations. He was not about to write another contract. It had already been enough of a pain in the ass. His pen was almost out of ink and he still had a racing form to tend to. My father could take it or leave it as it was. He'd only get this one chance. Had until tomorrow morning to prove himself. Once he woke up, there would be no more drinking. Not a drop. Not for a whole year.

“Then you'll get your window and I don’t even care what you do while you’re looking out of it. In fact, I hope I never find out”

It would be somewhere up north. A cottage in the woods. Surely, the smallest and cheapest that could be found. Possibly with weeds growing up between the floorboards and bats in the stove. But still, a shockingly generous offer from a man known to be very tight with his money. Cleary, he had become desperate. It seemed that if it could get his son to stop opening beer cans, to stop hearing that sound over and over again, the pop and fizz, the pop and fizz, the pop and fizz all day long, it would be worth it.

But first there would be arguing. Disagreements over how much he had already drank today. Over whether or not my grandfather had ever thrown a coffee mug at him and cracked open his forehead. Then insults as my father made it very clear he didn’t believe this offer. That it was all going to be a big dirty trick. Another thing to make him look like a joke.

“You’ll find a way to change your mind. When you see how easily I can stop. Just like that. You’ll change your mind when you see it wasn’t worth it”

But he had watched closely as my grandfather meticulously began to write out this contract. Even eventually began to hum as he sucked on what could have been one of his last beers if he chose to sign. Possibly the sound of a motorboat that was far away, but slowly approaching. Still humming merrily as foam dribbled over his fingers onto the carpet. As my grandfather held his pen out to him. Sighing over the growing wet spot at his feet.

PART 4: Toothbrush Skeptics

In the morning the fridge posed no danger. My father had been sure to empty it yesterday. Stayed up late to complete the task. Held his hand over his mouth and sprayed vomit sideways onto the walls as he ran down the hallway. I had looked up when I heard his footsteps begin to quicken. Watching from the couch in front of the television. The sun almost already coming up. I’d been up later than I should have been too.

At the breakfast table my father didn’t sit down. Didn’t eat. Smelled strangely fresh. Like brushed teeth. But lots of them. Thousands and thousands of brushed teeth. Even my grandfather with his nose full of tobacco smoke noticed it at the other side of the table. His mouthful of eggs. His shirt cuffs full of toast crumbs. Looking up from his newspaper quickly, as if he needed to catch a glimpse of something fleeting.

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“You bet!”

“How many times? It’s overpowering”

“Lots!”

We both stared at him as if something was up. He'd had the same toothbrush for more than ten years. Almost all of the bristles had fallen out or had been flattened sideways even though I’d never seen it in his mouth. I wanted to go upstairs. Touch it to see if it was wet. But instead, just sat there with my breakfast, growing worried over everything he started to say, but not knowing why. Listening to him talk quickly. Already laughing at nothing. Beginning to insist he needed to go to the hardware store. At ten in the morning. And that he wanted me to come with him.

“It’ll be fun”, he said.

Part 5: Skull Lozenges

I wondered if maybe I should have looked longer. Kept eye contact. Then maybe the man in the red shirt, might not have sold him the gun. His name was Clint, but I didn't think I was allowed to call him that. He hadn’t introduced himself. I’d only just read it on his name tag.

He’d seen me glancing up at him. I could tell he was trying to read my face as he opened up the glass case and handed my father the box he’d asked for. My father smiled, as if delighted. His hands fumbling with it as he turned it around and around, saying ‘Very nice, very nice’ as if he knew anything at all about what made some guns better than others.

It was only a replica but it looked very real. It shot plastic bullets that were included inside. Shining pellets that looked like amber lozenges you could swallow with a sip of water. That didn’t look deadly, but that he would later tell me were strong enough to embed themselves in a human skull when fired close enough. But first it would need modifications before it could do that. Before it could become an almost deadly weapon.

As we left the hardware store, we didn’t speak of what he’d just bought. Didn’t speak at all as he shoved the empty box down into a trashcan outside. Stuffed what it had contained in the waistband of his jeans. Its barrel pointing down directly towards his withered leg. As if taking aim at his weak spot. As if he was some kind of defective outlaw. Hobbled by a childhood bout of scleroderma. Armed with a plastic firearm.

In the past he talked of a man who had murdered a girl in the desert for fun. To see what it felt like. How he had been known around town for stuffing newspapers and flattened pop cans into his cowboy boots to make himself look taller. These were the kinds of little details he liked when he would talk of terrible things and he would speak about them with the kind of reverence he saved for other similar tales from his own life.

This included the story of how he had first come to know about my mother’s family. How a neighbour had found my uncle sitting in a dumpster, huffing glue. How that had made him seem like the kind of friend he had always wanted and how after that he wandered the streets, looking into trashcans, trying to find him. He told that story a bunch as well. How if it wasn’t for that bag of glue, and that dumpster, and that uncle of mine sitting in it, red faced and prematurely bald by the age of 15, that I would never have existed.

It was as we walked down the street that I began to think of the story of the man with junk in his boots. Something about the sound he was making as we walked towards the Salvation Army reminded me of it. Listening to the clomp of the cowboy boots he’d always wear when he’d been drinking. That he’d bought when he was drunk from a man on a highway overpass. I thought about the skinny leg that was inside of them. The one he would never show. Never wearing shorts in the summer. Never going swimming, except when alone at our cottage where no one but me would see it. How he probably wished he could do something to make it look thicker. More manly. Like stuffing crushed pop cans down his pants. Or possibly a gun. Even if it wasn’t a real one.

Part 6: A Furniture Mission

Following him into the Salvation Army, I hadn’t forgotten the gun was there as we walked around looking at old furniture. I could see it under his shirt, even though he had pulled it down. Worried it might fall out onto the floor as he stumbled and leaned against old cabinets for balance. Bumped into high backed dining room chairs. Tripped over wooden toy chests sitting on the floor. Somehow, even as he began to grab at an old dresser, wrestling it from the wall it had been pushed against, it remained tucked into his waistband no matter how much he twisted himself back and forth. Even as cigarettes fell out of his pockets, and change rolled down his pantlegs.

I told him to stop. People were looking and there wasn’t room to bring a dresser back with us in grandpa’s car. But he just kept pulling. As it shuddered across the concrete floor, dead moths shook loose from somewhere inside of it. Drawer handles unscrewed themselves and clattered to the ground. And as a roiling froth of dust overtook us, causing us to cough and sneeze until all eyes turned towards us in this dingy corner, I began walking towards the exit. To get back into daylight. Away from him. But he went nowhere. Wouldn’t stop pulling. Continued to cough and swear and sweat out a foul stink of mouthwash and cigarette smoke. Wanted to see something behind it but wouldn’t explain what.

I didn't help as he dragged the dresser towards the cash register. Everyone watching as he reached for his wallet. Took out his credit card. No one else understanding what a relief this was to see. That he wasn’t planning on taking it by force. Plastic gun blazing. Firing lozenges around the store. Bullets bouncing off walls. Softly landing in the curls of old lady hair as they browsed through used cookbooks. He paid for it and motioned for me to come and help him.

Carrying it out into the parking lot, he finally explained he did not actually want the dresser. It was a piece of junk. He only wanted the mirror that was attached to the back of it. He was going to put it on his dresser at home. He thought it would fit. Make his room better.

“Did you see my reflection in it? Made me look real good”, he said, “I couldn’t leave that handsome man back there to be bought by some bum with no taste.”

He began to laugh. And then he stumbled. Tripped over the curb. The dresser overturning, loudly hitting the ground. The mirror smashing on the asphalt. Glass spilling out into the road. My father screaming and collapsing in tears. Telling me his stomach burned. That he wanted to die. And then when my grandfather finally arrived fifteen minutes later to pick us up, even as the tires of his car rolled over the shards we had not bothered to pick up from the street, the dresser was nowhere to be seen. We had already carried it to the back of the store and left it there as it began to rain.

“As long as I still have this, the mission was not unsuccessful”, he whispered to me in the backseat, patting the bulge in his waistband. I pretended not to hear him as we slowly drove home.

Part 7: Target Practice

Once home, my father went to his room. To be by himself. The door closed for a long time. When I finally heard him open it, I walked down the hall to talk to him. Turned to see him pointing his gun at me. In his bed, halfway beneath the covers. Firing a lozenge at my head. It ricocheted off the wall and scared his cat who spiraled to the floor from where it had been sitting on the television. I just stood looking at him.

“Got to make it meaner. More deadly”, he mumbled. I could see an empty bottle of mouthwash next to his bed. A bunch of tools scattered across his bedsheets.

I made it clear he wasn’t to do that again. I wouldn’t be used as target practice. I would tell my grandfather what he was up to. Have him put an end to their agreement. Tear up their contract. But he didn’t seem to care anymore about his window or the boats drifting by.

“Just shut up and get in here”

Coming into the room I could see his arms were swollen with long red marks. Like fresh scratches. He pulled his shirt sleeves up to let me see them better. “That old man doesn't know anything. Thinks these are from the cats”. His eyes glinted weirdly. He began cackling as if nothing could make him happier. “What could you possibly tell a man who doesn’t even know what world he’s living in. But go ahead. Rat me out you little rat. It doesn’t make any difference to me anymore. Not when I got this”

He held his plastic gun out into the light. You could tell how he held it that it wasn’t real. It had no shine in it. I left the room and heard him pull the trigger. The sound of a plastic bullet rattling around in his room as he laughed and laughed and laughed.

Part 8: Stormwatchers

He offered me a hundred dollars to come with him. Follow him a little way up the street. It was raining and we wouldn’t have an umbrella but he said I shouldn't let that stop an adventure. Otherwise, he’d be lonely. He didn’t want to rob the pharmacy, take all their drugs, and not have someone to talk to on the way home.

“But when I come running out, I need you to be ready to be quick on your feet. Keep up. We’re gonna have to be fast to stay ahead of them. Because they’ll be coming. They’ll by trying to catch up with us. That’s why I’m paying you the big money. To be fast. To be brave”

He told me I wouldn’t have to go inside with him. I could wait out on the street in the rain while he did his thing. I wouldn’t have to do anything bad or get myself in trouble. He just wanted me there when he came out. He couldn’t stand being alone anymore. He wanted to scream all the time. And he promised to turn himself in to the police tomorrow. Would get clean in prison. Then, when he got out a few years from now, he’d have his little window waiting for him.

“Just come. Please, just come”

I sat on the front porch with him. Each of us in an oversized wicker chair. Him, stroking the plastic gun he had in his lap. Occasionally I would hold out my hand, hoping he’d give it to me. Tell him to give it to me. Then we could go back inside and stop looking at the rain. Listening to the lightening that sounded like it was coming through the neighbours roofs.

“I’m Ma Barker”, is all he would say. “And Ma Barker keeps her gun close”

Eventually I went inside. Left him by himself on the porch. Didn’t even bother listening to hear when he came back in.

Part 10: End (The End)

The next morning my father was out of everything. Nothing to drink. Still not eating. Hadn’t slept.

My grandfather drove him to our family doctor before we’d even had lunch. While he was out of the house, I looked for where he put the gun, but couldn’t find it.

When they returned, my father came to tell me he’d be going away for awhile. He was going to the hospital. It seemed something the doctor had said scared him.

“I can’t do it anymore”

They left shortly after this. I didn’t go with them. My grandfather drove with my grandmother in the passenger seat. My father in the back, like a boy being driven to school.

I never saw my father’s last drink. I had no idea what it had been. Have never asked. He had drunk it all alone.

“One day too late”, was all my grandfather would say about the matter of the window he’d promised. Of the boats drifting by. And according to the stipulations of the contract, this was true. He didn’t owe my father anything. No matter how unfair my father said it was. No matter how unsatisfactory his view would continue to be when he got home from the hospital.

Went back to his room.

Closed the door.

JANE AND THE INSTITUTE OF DUMB KIDS EVERYWHERE

Part 1

My stepmother had been going to school for a long time. Studying how the brain works but also how it sometimes doesn’t. Hoping one day to become better at telling apart those who were smart from those who were stupid. Learn the science so she could be sure. So that no one could disagree with her assessments.

But she was not yet qualified to do this. Kept disappointing herself with the quality of the people she had surrounded herself with. Would have to study harder. Stay up later with her books as her husband lay in bed next to her, snoring and stinking of beer. Sounds and smells that only made her feel maybe it was hopeless. That she might never understand the qualities of a good brain. Or how to avoid the bad ones.

Then on the night she called my father obtuse, she found herself delighted when it became clear he didn’t know what that word meant. Couldn’t help but notice the dictionary was in a different spot later that night. It seemed her training was coming along just fine. Her instincts were sharpening.

“Obtuse means you aren’t smart”, she made sure to mention at breakfast. She could not be sure he had actually found the definition of the word last night. He was a distractable man and she wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed his opportunity of truly understanding this opinion of a real professional. Or at least, a professional-to-be.

Once she became trusted enough to bring intelligence tests home with her, she was eager for my father to be the first she could designate into the defective pile. She told him she needed his help with her studies, and he willingly gave up his Friday night in the dingiest corner of a bar to sit on the couch and answer her questions.

She watched how his eyes squinted in concentration. Trying to think through the fifteen-year haze of beer drinking. The sound of the television. The disgrace of a cat dropping turds into a nearby litter box. A terror of bare light bulb coming from a lamp with no lamp shade. The smells spewing up from the singed dinners of neighbours. The rattle of the elevator behind their walls. The intense, unforgiving look she gave him as he struggled for words, spilled drinks on the table, scratched at the growing headache in his temples.

Then, as he began to drudge up thoughts and words she had never expected to be in that head of his, she quickly turned her attention to scribbling things down with a pencil in a pad of paper. Not looking at him anymore. Realizing she was not able to discourage him with dirty, disbelieving looks. Giving him no indication if his answers had been acceptable, even as he kept asking her if she wanted more. If she needed him to keep talking. He didn’t know what she wanted from him.

“Next question”, is all she would say. Praying the next one might prove to be more difficult.

It would be as my father slept that night, that Jane sat by herself in the kitchen and grimly tabulated his score. Checking and re-checking her notes. Worrying maybe all of her studying had been for nothing. That she still didn’t know anything about discerning the good brains from the bad. And then, as he woke in the middle of the night to see why she hadn’t come to bed, stood in the doorway looking at her, she refused to tell him how smart he might actually be. Instead, trying to think of another word he didn’t know. Something to catch him off guard while he was still scrubbing the sleep from his eyes.

JANE AND THE INSTITUTE OF DUMB KIDS EVERYWHERE: Part 2

I suppose it made sense Jane never looked at me. Maybe she saw my mother in there somewhere. A face she knew well from when she began dating my father. That she would try to avoid when she saw it coming. Showing up on the lawn of a house she was inside of. Appearing in a parking lot she was walking through. A face she’d seen up close when it unexpectedly pushed itself between the two of them sitting at the bar. The one they would go to during those early days.

“Why don’t you move over and make some space for me, Horse Face”

My mother had the kind of face that looked like it was full of even more names she couldn’t wait to call her. The eyes in it glaring at her long mane of blonde hair. Hanging within easy reach. Looking like she might grab a handful of it. Pull her off the barstool, down to the floor. A face that would look down at her from up above. That might have ideas of kicking inside of it. Or spitting. Or pouring drinks down onto her own face. It was a laughing, mean face she could never understand, even when she locked eyes with it. Eyes that seemed to be painted on. Flat eyes that had no thinking in them. No thinking beyond doing the kinds of bad things Jane always worried might happen, but never did.

Or maybe she wouldn’t look at me because I had a face that reminded her of all the other faces hidden down in the furthest corner of that bar. Where the rest of my family would be huddled in shadows whenever Jane and my father arrived at exactly the wrong time. All of them looking just like me. And when my mother reached out, not grabbing at Jane’s hair, but instead my father’s arm, dragging him towards where they stood hooting and hollering, she could see their features better as they leaned into the colored lights. All of them weirdly lit and looking a lot like me. Round, plug-nosed faces with impossible eyes that let no one in.

On these occasions my father would never dare dance with my mother in front of Jane, but at times would be drawn beneath the glitter of a sad discoball by my Gramma Theresa. And her face was also like mine, only numbed by Pepsi and rum. And the old woman would begin to dance close to him, swinging her hips back and forth until her pants fell down around her ankles. My father continuing to dance, not looking down. Not seeing the tattered, yellow undergarments his fingers were near to touching. The old woman whispering into his ear how she had seen the future. One that would bring my father back to my mother. And him just continuing to dance, pretending not to notice Jane watching. How she noticed the similarity of all these faces she was surrounded by. Faces she had already had more than enough of, before she’d even met me.

It was a world Jane knew she didn’t belong to and that she didn’t like looking back at her from the face of a child. But mine also happened to be the face of my father. He was in there to, when you stared long enough. The freckles. The eyebrows. The bad haircut she had chosen to marry. This husband of hers who had dared to not be stupid. A face that when mixed in with my face, and the face of my mother and all her bad insults, and all her brothers and sisters sitting in the shadows, and my gramma Theresa with her pants around her ankles, it was only when she saw all of this that she began to truly see me. Thought it was a face she might have some questions for. Questions she kept in a little official briefcase, divided into folders. Questions about words and numbers and puzzles that I would reach out and grab from her after she sat me down at the kitchen table to begin reading them to me. Waiting for this face of mine to give her the kind of answers she had been waiting for.

Now includes Art!:

Jane and the Institute for Dumb Kids Everywhere:

Part 3

Jane brought questions with her. My father let her into the house with them. Bundled in elastics. Piled heavy in a canvas tote bag. Let her get as many answers from me as she could while my grandparents were out.

I had been given a pencil which kept being put back into my hand whenever I put it down.

“Answer even if you think you’re wrong”, she instructed. Made sure I understood what she had come here to get.

It was a bad place for me to think. A kitchen table with the two of them looking at me. A bright light above me, making me squint and want sunglasses. Not understanding why none of the questions would let me answer the way I wanted. Only enough space to put wrong answers. They didn’t want to know about what was really in my head. Like the cobwebs I had begun thinking about. The ones up there. On the shelves above me. Made by the kind of spiders more into trapping my grandmother’s old knick-knacks than insects. Weird spiders into collecting things and not drinking blood.

My growing frustration was clear to them both. I began to scratch out questions I didn’t think applied. Or that I thought had lied to me to get my interest.

“But I thought this question was about cats?”

“Yes, it wants you to guess how many cats there are left, once you take three of them away”

I just shook my head. It had no interest in the cat saddles I had suddenly decided to invent. That would let me ride local strays about town. To the kind of place where they would recognize a really good answer when they saw one. Not just keep putting a pencil back into my hand. Asking for more wrong ones.

“Just so you know, she gave me the same test”, my father told me. “Turns out I’m an almost-genius"

I didn’t see what this had to do with me. And when I slid from my chair to disappear beneath the kitchen table, it would be his foot that tried to scare me back up. Kicking at me. As if it didn’t think this was a place for test taking. Only Jane seemed content to leave me down there. A hand appearing through the tablecloth. Handing me more papers. More questions to solve as I sat with the unswept breakfast crumbs.

I was surprised she also didn’t want me to come back up. It was a place I worried would be considered cheating for me to go, as I was always smarter in these unseen places. Under tables, where I believed the full-geniuses belonged. Not the almost-geniuses. Like all the chair sitters up there. The ones who asked questions that were dumb and stupid and a waste of my time.

So, I stayed down here. Getting nudged by my father's foot but still managing to be brilliant. Listening to him talk about how maybe there was more of my mother in me than he had thought, after all. Sounding sad. Sounding disappointed. While Jane began scribbling something with great excitement into her notebook. And I began scribbling all over my test.

JANE AND THE INSTITUTE OF DUMB KIDS EVERYWHERE: PART 4

It seemed my answers had caused a sensation. It seemed the test had discovered the great things that were in my head after all. Even under the table, I had been seen.

I knew this when Jane began talking to my grandmother about taking me to the city with her. She’d never been interested in my company before, but now it seemed she could not resist it. Wanted an hour on a bus with me. Then a trip burrowing deep down into the earth, on one subway after another. Then, back above ground, a long walk down a cold street where I kept asking her where I was going. Trying to keep up with her long strides. Worried if she got too far ahead of me, I would never find my way home, and my genius would be lost to time.

The building we entered was like a face with no expression. Long, unblinking and not knowing how to smile. Like Jane’s face, but one where we could walk in through its mouth. I called it The Institute, even though I wasn’t sure if this was the correct word, or where I had ever heard it used. Probably a horror movie. Or something I had read about mental asylums.

Everywhere around us inside The Institute were very serious people. Lots of book carrying. The smell of math equations written in chalk. Lots of people talking excitedly about what I imagined were great discoveries. Everyone badly dressed. Just like Jane. Just like me. But I liked it. People seemed smart here, even though I wasn’t exactly sure why I thought this. Maybe it was that I finally felt I was surrounded by my people. Those who could find all of the complicated things in my head not even I could decipher. That tied my brain in knots and made me not to want to talk to anyone. That, even at my young age, I imagined were slowly killing me.

Jane brought me into a room. There was assortment of toys and puzzles scattered across a table. Piles of papers and freshly sharpened pencils. A chair for me to sit at and consider everything that was in front of me. A movie camera had been set up to watch me play. And think. I thought of all of my friends back home and wondered if they would see me on TV. If they would see all these things I was good at. Be impressed by how my thinking was being recorded. To be studied by future generations. To entertain the country.

Shortly after I had been seated, she began to ask me questions. Slowly and without any inflections in her voice. Just like she had in my kitchen. And because I now knew myself to be very smart, I found myself unafraid of answering them honestly and without any need to crawl beneath the table. There were even more questions this time and once finished, after putting all the papers that contained my answers into a folder she squeezed under her arm, she left the room and closed the door. But not before telling me to start playing with whatever I chose to in the room. There were no rules. No one would stop me.

“Just be yourself. Do whatever comes naturally”

She said she would be gone for a long while.

As I began to play, alone, I could tell I was being watched. From somewhere. By someone. And probably not just Jane. I could sense the eyes of strangers on me. Maybe those of some God-like being. Possibly at the top floor of the Institute. Watching me on TV and learning as I began combing the hair of a doll not wearing any clothes.

PART 5

I never learned exactly how well I did at The Institute. I had begun to think not very well as Jane went back to not looking or talking to me after this. Which didn’t bother me much. I didn’t look or talk to her either.

A few years later her and my father would divorce. Only then would I be told I had scored very highly on my tests. Much better than Jane had been expecting.

I would only see her one more time once she was no longer a part of my family. She suddenly appeared one day at my school. But not in the normal part where the rest of the other students went to class. I had seen her down the hallway where none of us ever went. That we stayed away from. Where we would see children in wheelchairs and boys and girls who had been sent to school in their pajamas.

Jane had been standing down here. Taking them from their class. Leading them down the hallway to another room I had never been inside of. She had a pile of papers under her arm. Bundled in elastics. And she walked right past where I stood, as I slowly began to recognize who she was.

She pretended not to see me.

BIKES: Part 1

They had the best monkey bars. Worth sneaking into the Townhouse to see who was on them. Worth waging a war over. Guarded by soldiers in shorts. Lassos made of plastic jump rope. Storms of small rocks and bits of glass raining down on those who got too close. My ears ringing with their screams to go home. Get lost.

Skyscraping monkey bars. Freshly painted. Sometimes I could see the ones who would chase me away, crawled up into them. Dangling from their legs. Upside down, like bats. Sometimes slipping and cracking their heads on the concrete below. The next day bandages keeping their brains in, but still watching for me. Making sure I didn’t get too close. That I would never get away with standing for too long on this spot where so much of their blood had been spilled.

Sometimes they stole my shoes and made me run for safety, barefoot. All the way home. My grandmother immediately walking me back to where the kids still dangled, demanding they return what they took. My shoes sometimes already tossed up into a tree. Much higher than I or any of them could climb, and we would wait for the wind to shake them down. My grandmother telling me these were not the kind of kids I should play with. While I stood shaking glass and rocks out of my ears. Smiling and having a great time.

*

I was small but knew one day my bike would be a weapon. Knew it as I rode around the perimeter of the townhouse all summer long. Not too fast, but slow enough to stare, and have them stare back at me.

Maybe in a few days they wouldn’t dare look at me like that. I would just need the right buttons and switches. Maybe a little copper wire. Some batteries I stole from my grandmother. Then all the dangerous things I’d found in my neighbours garbage would find their purpose. Could be strapped to my handlebars and launched at the enemies in front of me. And for those behind, something beneath my seat that I could scatter on the road with a few turns of a rusty old crank. Probably upholstery tacks. Keeping those who were following, from ever following too closely.