Andersen Prunty's Blog

Sometimes a good day is sleeping in, making and eating a good breakfast, sipping coffee and getting high, lighting incense and playing music way too loud, leisurely cleaning the house, taking hot showers, and slowly fucking before taking a nap.

Waking up should feel weird.

I’ve become the protagonist from the comedies of my youth: a middle-aged, entitled white male having a hilariously difficult time.

I devour a stick of butter on the way to my third job. It’s all I have time for. I work so much I’m unaware of my body. I arrive at the job site amidst the departure of ambulances and chaperoned rides. I pull up to the building and take a generous slurp of water from the hose attached to an outdoor faucet. I’m too concerned to use the drinking fountain inside because everyone here is diseased. I get water all down the front of my heavily stained shirt.

Someone laughs at me. Alarmed, I look toward the sound. My first feeling is panic because I know I’m probably not supposed to be drinking out of the hose on the side of the building. I immediately relax. It’s just Buddy. Buddy’s sitting at the company picnic table draining his leg.

“Pretty thirsty, huh?” He’s squeezing his calf, a viscous red-yellow ooze running from his leg and into the grass.

“Parched,” I say. “How was it today?”

He locks eyes with me, all joviality gone. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

This is not at all what I want to hear.

“I guess we’d better get to it.” I stare at the last drips of bloody pus dropping from his leg. He gives it a shake.

“Let me get wrapped up.”

He expertly wraps his calf before sliding his socks and Crocs back on. I have to wait for him to get into the building. I’m only a contract employee. Buddy’s shorter and wider than me and I find it fascinating to watch him move. His feet make a squelching sound when he walks.

He uses a fob to unlock the door and I follow him in, watching his socks darken with ooze.

“Wish I didn’t have this fuckin’ diabetes,” he says.

I’m only here once every couple of weeks so Buddy says the same things every time. No one has any memory anymore. I know what he’s going to say next.

“Wish I’d gotten one of those fun diseases.”

I always remember what he’s going to say. I never have any idea what he’s talking about. I’ve worked so many hours and listened to so many people I can only remember the most random snippets of things.

He opens the janitor’s closet and turns the light on the mop bucket and all the other cleaning supplies. I push the bucket under the faucet and begin running hot water.

“What’s your idea of a fun disease?”

Buddy, breathing heavily, leans against the doorframe and says, “Terry’s got cancer pretty bad. He’ll probably get to go to Disneyland or some shit.”

“I think that’s Make-a-Wish or something. He’s probably too old for that.”

“She.”

“Sorry. She.” I have no idea who he’s talking about.

Buddy shrugs. “At least she’ll get good drugs. What about you? You got any diseases?” He watches me dump some soap into the water. “Yeah, look at you. I bet you got a real fun one.”

“The only disease I have is poverty,” I say.

“That’s no fun. Pretty much the opposite. And it’s not a disease. It’s like … a condition or something.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m brain damaged.”

He whistles. “Now that can be a good one. I had a cousin with brain damage. He got to do whatever he wanted. Still does, I guess. Spends his days eating onions, beatin’ off, and watchin’ porno. Hardly ever even has to take a shower.”

“It’s probably the only thing keeping me from killing myself when I leave here.”

“The poverty?”

“No. The brain damage.”

“Hell yeah. You should focus on that one. It sounds more fun.”

I turn off the water and toss a rag in to soak.

“Okay,” I say. “Show me what I’m dealing with.”

“Like I said, it’s been a tough week.” He waits for me to wheel the mop bucket out of the janitor’s closet. “We should probably check out Carol’s cube first.”

The first thing I notice in Carol’s cube is all the blood. A few puddles of it are pooled on her otherwise fairly clean desk. In the middle of each pool of blood is an exceptionally large tooth.

As though seeing the teeth has sparked some kind of memory, Buddy’s finger is stuck way back in his mouth trying to dislodge something.

When he notices me staring at him, he says, “Carol has too many teeth. Like sixty or something. Every now and then it gets uncomfortable and she has to remove one. Our insurance is so bad she can’t afford to keep going to the dentist to have it done.”

We fall silent, standing shoulder-to-shoulder under the harsh fluorescent lights, gazing into Carol’s cubicle.

The cubicle next to Carol’s is remarkably clean.

“This should be easy,” I say. The only things I notice are a mouse that’s turned in an awkward way and a thin layer of dust over the monitor screen.

“Yeah, this is Bryce’s. I guess he has one of the more fun diseases.”

“What’s he got?”

“He shits gum. Says it’s delicious. Lotta people here chew it. I can’t bring myself to do it, even though he cleans it up real good. Probably my diabetes. I need more sugar in my gum. He runs a pretty good side hustle with it too. Big Bryce’s Natural Chewables. I guess he can’t legally call it gum, since no one really knows what it is. Lucky bastard. Says he never has to wipe.”

Buddy takes a couple steps back and I follow him as he squelches to the other side of the cube quad.

“What do you guys do here?” I’ve never asked this question before or, if I have, I don’t remember.

“We’re not allowed to talk about it. All of us regular employees had to sign an NDA—that’s a non-disclosure agreement.”

Buddy’s never condescended to me before but I bristle at the elitism and condescension in what he just said. He exudes it. I have a momentary urge to hit him with the mop handle but know I wouldn’t feel good about myself if I did.

I say only “Hm.” Looking around, it’s the most generic office I’ve ever been in. Everything is beige and the flooring, cubes, and desks are the cheapest money can buy. The only things hanging on the walls are large photographs of the employees, all of them smiling awkwardly in front of the same outdated background. I see a woman with teeth uncontained by her mouth and think that must be Carol. I could just wait until Buddy leaves and rummage through the desks but there are cameras everywhere and I badly need this job to afford to make it to all my other jobs so I’ll probably just have to remain in the dark.

We get to the next cube. Everything in it is covered in a bright yellow-green dust. There’s a distinct but not immediately identifiable odor coming from it. It’s not unpleasant.

“This is Darren’s cube,” Buddy says.

“What’s wrong with him?”

Buddy sighs. “We don’t think people have things wrong with them. I mean just look at Bryce—”

“Who?”

“The gum guy. He’ll be a millionaire soon because of his condition. That certainly doesn’t sound like he has something wrong with him. Am I wrong because of my diabetes? Are you wrong because of your brain damage?”

Upon concluding, Buddy has to rest his meaty arm on top of one of the cubicle walls as though he’s delivered a lengthy and important speech.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re right. You know, I’m not actually brain damaged.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Buddy says. “You’re brain enhanced. The parts you’re missing is what makes you special.”

We’re silent for a few seconds. I tune in to a sound of running water and have no idea where it’s coming from.

I come back around and say, “So what makes Darren special?”

“He has tennis elbow … pretty much daily. He develops a modest-sized tennis ball at his elbow and it usually explodes around four to four-thirty every day. Gives the whole office a real jolt.”

I take another deep breath. That’s the unidentifiable odor. Tennis balls. Grassy. Felty. A hint of garage and compressed air.

“So what’s next?” I say.

Buddy takes a couple steps back and squelches sideways to the next cube. There’s a pungent body fluid or animal odor coming from it although it looks relatively tidy.

“This is Lorraine’s area,” Buddy says. “She gives birth to an adorable litter of puppies almost once a week.”

The sound of running water is louder. I’m focusing on the sound as I say, “It looks pretty clean.”

“Oh, she always eats the placenta and cleans them up really good.”

“What does she do with them?”

“Gives some of them away. The ones she can. Pretty sure she eats the rest. Most of them are … distempered.”

I find this penultimate bit of information oddly exhilarating. I think about asking Buddy to point her out to me on the wall of photos but it feels like an invasion of privacy. Or maybe it would ruin the mystery. I know I’ll think about Lorraine until that part of my brain is trampled by other, more important, things to think about.

“Not sure how fun that sounds,” I say. “But, right, probably fucking adorable.”

More running water. Louder now.

Buddy raises his eyebrows and says, “They are not cute.”

“All right. What’s next?”

Buddy places his hands over his stomach and says, “I need to excuse myself.”

“How many people work here?” I scan back into the building, unable to remember how many cubes there are. All the lines of cube quads, mysteries in the dark.

Buddy, already walking away rapidly, says, “We have one hundred employees.”

Buddy goes into the restroom and I go back to where I left my mop bucket and rag at Carol’s cube. I pick the teeth out of the congealed blood and give them a quick clean in the mop bucket before putting them in my pocket. I don’t use gloves or anything because my goal is a quick death to escape from having to do this kind of thing every day. I wonder what Carol’s doing right now. Probably home with her family. I wonder if they have too many teeth too. Maybe it’s genetic. Fuck. I’m going to be here all night.

Buddy doesn’t come back.

Nor does the sound of running water. I miss it. I found it soothing.

I finish the four cubes Buddy showed me and figure he must have gone home. I’m glad. I don’t like to work when people are standing over me. Plus, I can half-ass everything and try to get out before dawn so I can get back to my studio apartment and decide whether or not I want to drink, jerk off, or sleep before going to my next job.

I turn the rest of the lights on and quickly work my way down the remaining cubes. Buddy’s not here to tell me about the fun diseases his fellow workers have and my brain doesn’t work well enough to come up with a reason for the state of some of their cubicles. Many of them are alarmingly clean. One is covered in what looks like pink spray paint. Stalks of corn grow from soil in one of them. I do some light pruning but leave it mostly as is. Another one is soaking wet. I throw all the electronics in the trash and dry it as best as possible. Another is filled with scabs. One has empty water bottles covering every surface.

I get to the last one and it’s filled with bones. Probably a whole skeleton’s worth. I leave it as is.

I turn off the lights and clean my rag and mop bucket in the janitor’s closet.

I walk toward the restroom and realize I don’t have to use it since my body is in a state of near-permanent dehydration and I partake of very little solid food.

I turn to head toward the front door when I hear someone, probably Buddy, say, “Hey. You still here?”

I’m surprised. Buddy is usually long gone by this hour. At least, I’m pretty sure he is. I think about pretending not to hear him and continuing on, but maybe he needs my help.

I open the bathroom door to find Buddy on the floor. He’s filling the floor, spread all over like a big, blubbery carpet.

His head, leaning against a rubber baseboard, looks disembodied. His eyes are alight with an excitement I don’t think I’ve ever seen them possess.

“I think I’ve developed a fun disease,” he says.

I’m tired and want to go home. I’ve been cleaning up after people’s diseases for the past eight hours and want to go home and continue to contribute to my own various diseases, none of them fun.

“What’s that?” I say.

He opens his eyes wide and pushes his head toward his expansive body.

“I’m a waterbed,” he says.

“Hm,” I say.

“Try me out. You’ll be the first. It’s Saturday now. No one comes to the office on a Saturday, no matter what disease they have.”

“I have to go to my next job soon.”

“Come on,” Buddy says. “A little nap won’t kill you. I know you’re tired. All that cleaning.”

He’s right. I am tired. And he does look comfortable. Like I could just sink right into him. He’ll be warm against the chill of the overly air-conditioned office. His breathing will rock me to sleep like a baby.

I notice the sound of running water again. It’s coming from Buddy.

“Only an hour or so.”

“Hop right on,” he says.

I don’t really hop. It’s more of a collapse. I’m asleep before I know it. I sleep for a full twenty-four hours, waking up on Sunday morning. It’s the best sleep I’ve ever had. It doesn’t even matter I’ve probably been fired from all four jobs I was supposed to work and will most likely be unable to pay rent.

Before we leave, I drain him into the toilet and gag several times.

Michael rents an apartment.

Once the mover brings up the last load and piles it with the rest of the stuff in the middle of the living room, he says, “I’m gonna take a look around.”

“Okay.” Michael stares at his heap of belongings and wonders how much of it is broken.

The mover comes back from the bedroom and says, “There’s a pitcher back there. People before you musta left it. I can take it off your hands.”

“I’d better take a look at it first,” Michael says.

He wanders into the bedroom and sees the painting of a woman. He finds it pleasing but … odd. Why would someone just leave this behind.

“So, whaddya think?” the mover says.

“I think I’ll hang onto it,” Michael says.

“Suit yourself. I’m gonna go buy a sandwich and eat it. Then I’m gonna go home and take a nap. All this movin’ stuff makes me tired.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Michael is captivated by the painting of the woman.

* * *

After putting away his meager possessions, Michael finds himself without any spare clothes.

“Dammit,” he thinks. “The idiot mover must have forgotten to load them into the truck.”

He goes out to buy more clothes. Most of the storefronts on his street seem to be abandoned and someone has stolen the wheels off his scooter. He drifts down the street until he comes to a shop called Velour and More. Michael thinks people stopped wearing velour a number of years ago but … he doesn’t really know.

He walks into the store and it’s just rows and rows of beige velour running suits. The clerk behind the counter looks a lot like the mover.

“The sign says ‘Velour and More’,” Michael says. “Where’s the more?”

“That’s kind of a joke,” the man says. “It’s really just velour. Maybe we shoulda called it Just Velour, huh? But we can put whatever you want on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, we can put pitchers on it or bedazzle it. You know, whatever you want really. Want us to staple some cheese slices to it. We can. We can do pretty much anything. Velour’s a very versatile fabric.”

Michael’s mind is spinning.

“I’ll be back,” he says.

He returns with the painting.

“Can you put this on there?” It’s the most beautiful thing Michael can think of.

“Sure can,” the clerk says. “Like I said. We can do just about anything.”

“Great,” Michael says.

“You can pick it up tomorrow.”

“Will I …?” Michael still hasn’t let go of the painting.

“Yep. You’ll have to leave the painting.”

Reluctantly, Michael does so, returning to his apartment and wondering if he made the right decision both about leaving the painting with a questionable person and what could possibly be a questionable fashion choice. He watches a reality show where everyone makes far worse decisions than he just made and is able to doze off feeling a little better.

He calls into work the next morning and returns to Velour and More.

The same clerk is there.

“Here you go,” the clerk says. “I been workin’ on it all night.”

He lifts the plastic from the velour tracksuit and a fairly faithful facsimile of the painting covers the entire front of it. Proudly, the clerk flips it around. The back is covered in the same image.

“Beautiful,” Michael says. “May I have the original painting, too?”

“No can do,” the clerk says. “My greatest apologies but I seem to have misplaced it. I got your number. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

Michael finds himself suddenly furious. He snatches the velour suit out of the man’s hands.

“This is completely unacceptable,” Michael says.

“Yeah, well, here’s what I’ll do. No charge on the suit. It’s all yours. Even Steven.”

Michael stalks out of the store and heads back to his apartment. He quickly shucks out of his clothes and slides into the velour suit. It feels nice. It feels perfect.

Michael goes everywhere in his suit, only taking it off once he gets back to the apartment, carefully removing it and hanging it in a corner. His suit attracts stares and, sometimes, even compliments.

One day as he’s walking around downtown he hears a voice behind him.

“Excuse me,” the voice says. “Excuse me, sir.”

It’s the sweetest voice Michael has ever heard and he already knows what he will see before turning around.

“Yes.” He turns around, smiling.

“Why is my face on your clothes?”

Already, looking into her eyes, he sees some look of recognition or, what? He isn’t sure. Fate maybe.

And she is wearing a nearly identical velour suit. For all he knows, it could have been purchased from the same place. And his face is staring back at him.

They don’t need to say anything else.

The following story originally appeared in Amazing Stories of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

My mother sat at the kitchen table, smoke from her cigarette curling around her head. She stared vacantly at an invisible spot just in front of her.

“You need to go upstairs and look in the bedroom,” she said. “And remember to be thankful.”

I was going to question her but that part about being thankful sounded good. It wasn’t my birthday or Mega Buffet Day but I wasn’t going to quibble. I went upstairs and into my parents’ bedroom, wondering what the surprise could possibly be.

My father lay face down on the floor.

“Dad?” I said.

I walked toward him. I was going to reach down and nudge him but what if he were …?

“He’s dead.” Mom appeared in the doorway.

“How did it …?”

“That’s not important. The important thing is that it was meant to happen and we should thank the Monster.”

“But I don’t believe in …”

She had moved next to me and now quickly silenced me with a finger over my lips.

“We don’t talk like that in this house. You’re going to help me with the ceremonies, aren’t you?”

“I’ll help however you want me to.”

“Besides, we hadn’t really gotten along for a while. I’m pretty sure we were headed for a divorce. He drank all the time and sometimes he hit me. He may have been having an affair. Of course I’ll have to start masturbating again. Sex was really the only thing I got from him. You masturbate, don’t you, Charlie?”

I slowly nod my head, still trying to digest the death of my father.

“Of course, I’m female so it means masturbation is even better. Did you know a woman can have two types of orgasms?”

“I … never really thought about it.”

“It’s true. You’ve got the clitoris near the outside, and that one can send you through the roof. But then you’ve got your G-spot way back in there. It varies from woman to woman. Hit this the right way and you can have a really long, deep orgasm. Of course I don’t really mean ‘you’. You don’t have a vagina. That was one of the things I liked about your father though. When we coupled, the head of his penis hit my G-spot perfectly and it felt like I came the whole time. I’ll probably have to buy a dildo. Ready to get his clothes off?”

I was well-familiar with the ritual. We stripped off his clothes and took him down to the car. He was too stiff to fit in the backseat so we had to fasten him to the roof with cables.

Mom told me she was too upset to drive to the dump, so I did.

“Now that your father’s gone, I’ll probably lose everything. You understand that, don’t you? I haven’t worked a day in my life and we … I mean, I still owe on the car and the house. I’ll probably have to move into your apartment. But if that happens it was meant to be. The Monster has a plan for each of us.” She looked west, toward Ristorante Familia. She spent the rest of the trip calling family members.

We reached the dump and drove around the lot until we found the corpse pile.

Mom slid her phone back in her purse and said, “Well, Aunt Carla’s not coming. Bitch.”

I honked the horn to clear somebody else’s grieving family members and pulled up to the pile of corpses. It looked like it had been a busy week.

I got out of the car and looked at the bodies, all in various states of decay, all traditionally nude.

“All this sadness,” I said.

“All this joy,” Mom said. “Each of these bodies represents a joyful life lived on earth and an eternal life after. When our time comes, when we’re stripped naked and taken to the dump, we’ll see your father again. I’ll hopefully have remarried by the time that happens.”

I didn’t really believe her. It still seemed overwhelmingly sad to me. I tried to keep myself from crying but a small sob and maybe a tear or two escaped.

Mom looked over at me. “You better bottle that shit up. Keep it all in there. Nobody wants to be around your negativity and pessimism. You’re going to have the loneliest funeral ever.”

I moved the car out of the way and waited for the other family members to arrive. Our family was small and insular, mostly ignorant and afraid of outsiders, so there weren’t that many people there. We stared at the pile of corpses and exchanged stories about my dad. It was hard to find positive things to say about him so we just decided to laugh a lot as we told about finding him passed out, picking him up from the police station, discovering missing objects and money, nursing our wounds. The laughter added a layer of respectful levity. Or maybe, to an outsider, a kind of frenzied madness.

When we got bored Mom finally said, “May the Giant Spaghetti Monster bless his soul,” and we all went to Ristorante Familia.

We sat around a large table presided over by Father Vincent Severity. He didn’t really say much. Mostly he only spoke to relay a bawdy story from his soldiering days or to have a violent outburst directed at a member of the wait staff. We all had the same thing—a plate of spaghetti covered in marinara sauce and two meatballs. We couldn’t begin eating until Severity blessed the food.

“Today is another celebration of the Giant Spaghetti Monster’s awesome generosity. It is not just that He has reclaimed the life of Peter Thorazine, it is that He welcomes Peter Thorazine into the afterlife. So we will partake of the Giant Spaghetti Monster—the pasta of his flesh, the sauce of his blood, the meatballs of his dual brain. Amen.”

We were all ravenous and ate quickly. A server took all the empty plates away and brought us buckets. We all vomited into the buckets to symbolize the rebirth of the Monster. Then we all went out to try and find unfortunate hungry people to partake of the vomit, as a symbol of the Monster’s generosity.

It was dark by the time I got Mom home. I didn’t know how she was doing and I didn’t really care.

“Well, see you next week,” I said.

“You don’t need to bother coming over. I’ll probably be trolling the bars looking for a new husband. If it’s the Monster’s will …”

“Whatever.”

“All right. I’m going to go inside and masturbate now.”

She got out of the car and I drove away before she even made it onto the porch. I turned on the radio and figured Mom must have messed with the settings. It was a Monster rock station where the singer just sings about the Monster instead of a girl or a guy. It sounded creepy and strange. I scanned the stations until I found something that didn’t have any words at all. I thought about getting something to eat because I was starving but tradition dictated eating nothing but the ceremonial dinner until the following day. I drove back to my tiny room in the ghetto and tried to fall asleep amidst the hunger and the sounds of people fucking and fighting.  I heard a number of gunshots and thought to myself how that was just another example of the Monster’s generosity. I put my hands over my growling stomach and thought about all the things I was thankful for.

The following story appears, in slightly different form, in The Sorrow King.

Oletta Goom woke up on the morning of October 31st and went into the baby’s room, knowing exactly what she would find.

Emptiness.

The crib stood in the middle of the room, white cotton blankets piled up against one side. Outside, the wind, turned cold with the season, spat at the house and invaded the open window. Oletta grabbed the worn wooden rail of the crib with a bony hand and cried, her tears running down her wrinkled face and falling onto the cotton sheet that still smelled faintly of Jacquelyn. “Jack,” Oletta had called her.

But now Jack was gone.

Just like all of the girls that had come before her. And it was always on this day, the first birthday, Halloween, that the Jackthief came and took them away. Now she would have to wait another year before going into the haunted woods to claim her prize.

Unless she could find out where the Jackthief took the babies. Unless she could get this one back.

Oletta had been several years younger when she had retreated to her house in the woods. Perhaps it was more of a shack, but it served the purposes of shelter and warmth just fine and that was all she needed now. Shelter and warmth. Maybe it wasn’t all she wanted, but it was all she needed, along with a little food every now and then.

What Oletta wanted more than anything was a baby. She was not a young woman anymore, twenty years past childbearing age, but that desire had never left her. It was only since the death of her husband that she realized it was an impossibility. Before, she had always prayed for a miracle. Maybe, she had thought, God would fix whatever was broken inside of her and she would finally get pregnant. But it was never meant to be.

So her husband had died and she had moved to the woods feeling like, if she was going to be alone, she was going to do it right.

But moving to the woods proved to be the source of more joy and sorrow than she would ever know.

It was there she met the Jackthief. There, during the strangest of circumstances.

Summer was buried, Halloween standing atop it like a cold gray tombstone, and Oletta didn’t see how she was going to spend a winter alone in the tiny shack. She figured her best days were well behind her and there weren’t going to be any good ones ahead. She found a length of strong rope in the old woodshed. She was going to take the rope out into the woods, find a good sturdy branch, and hang herself. She didn’t plan on learning how to do it proper. If she had to dangle for a while, choking on her own windpipe, then she just figured that would be penance for the awesome sin she was about to undertake.

After a brief survey, she found a branch that would do the trick. The rope was slung around her neck to give her frail arms the strength to carry an old wooden ladder. It was a gray day. The clouds were bloated black-gray, threatening rain. Maybe, if it rained, it would help weigh down her body.

It took about a half an hour to make sure everything was in place. She figured the knot was strong enough to do the trick. Climbing to the top of the ladder, the fiber of the rope scratchy around her neck, the sky rumbled a hungry growl and she hoped it would drown out the sound of her strangling to death.

Standing at the top of the ladder, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. But this wasn’t a spontaneous decision. It was something she had thought about for a very long time. This was the only way out. The lonely days had become unendurable and she was too proud to be stuck in this constant state of self-pity.

The sky screamed.

Oletta took a deep breath and kicked the ladder away.

She dropped. The rope tightened around her neck.

And then broke.

She fell to the ground, lightning streaked across the sky, fat cold drops of rain hammered down, and her life changed forever.

On the other side of the tree she had tried to use to kill herself, she heard a baby crying. Oletta unfastened the rope from around her neck, not believing what it was she thought she heard. Nursing a twisted ankle, she trudged through the dead leaves, turned soggy, until she found the source of the crying.

When she saw the baby, swaddled in black cloth, at the base of the tree, her face split and her tears mingled with the beating rain. Stooping down, she picked up the baby and took it back to the house, wanting to get it out of the rain, wanting to get it into the warmth.

Sometimes, Oletta knew, when a person wanted something so much, it was not necessary to question the source. It was not necessary to question the truth or validity behind that desire. A Christian wanted a God to save her and an afterlife to house her soul when she dies. The Christian does not question these things, she believes them and calls that belief faith. So Oletta believed in her new baby maybe not so much as born but given to her on this Halloween day.

She took it home with her. First she named her Jacquelyn and called her Jack. She loved Jack. She fed her and sang to her and talked to her and cared for her and took her everywhere she went. She even took her into the town to buy food and clothes, not caring if the folk talked and wondered. They would, Oletta knew, come up with their own reasons why she now had a baby and those reasons could not come even remotely close to the fantastic truth.

For exactly one year, Oletta was the mother of a beautiful baby.

On Jack’s first birthday, Oletta opened the door to her room and discovered the baby gone, the bedroom window open, a cold wind blowing in. The following year, she searched for baby Jack. Searched and mourned because she knew the baby was gone.

That was the worst year of Oletta’s life, having had something and then lost it. Each day was worse than the one before. Her life had become a spiraling black nightmare as she wondered about who would steal the only thing she had ever wanted. She never found the Jackthief but she had a picture of him in her mind.

The Jackthief was carved from wood and bone. He traveled by moonlight and drank the sorrow of others. He was drawn to this sorrow and, drunk off it, had to create more. Oletta knew the Jackthief had always been there. He was the one who had snapped the rope when the only thing she wanted to do was snap her neck. He did it because she had not suffered enough. She was a well of suffering and the Jackthief had not drunk the last of that well. So he had let her love the baby for a year. And just as quickly, he had taken it away. Now he surrounded her in the woods, watching her, mocking her silently as she searched and searched.

A year later, she found baby Jack in the same place she had found her two years earlier. The baby was the same size as the very first time Oletta found her and she had a distinct feeling of falling back two years in time. But, once again, the sorrow had lifted. She had her baby. Maybe the circumstances were not normal. Maybe they weren’t even believable, but it was nice to hold Jack in her arms once again and feel a year of sadness melt away.

Over the next two years, the cycle repeated itself.

Always from Halloween to Halloween. One year of joy. One of sorrow. One a trick. The other, of course, a treat.

After losing Jack again, Oletta did not search for her.

She sat in her house and waited, her mind expanding out into that depressed madness, knowing her time would come again. Yet knowing that did not make it easier. The only thing she could think of was the year after that, when she would have to go without the baby again. The Trickyear. And, after all, wasn’t the point of having a baby to watch it grow? To shape it and give it a good life? To see what kind of adult it became?

That year, Oletta decided she was not going to go without Jack again.

On October 31st, when she found Jack under the tree, Oletta said to her, “I’m never letting you go. If he takes you again, I will find you.” And she took the baby back home and they had another good year—the Treatyear—but now the time had come again and Oletta stood in an empty room, surrounded by nightmares.

That morning, she left the house in search of the Jackthief, knowing he was out there, somewhere. She was not going to go back home until she found the baby. For days, she wandered deeper into the woods, the noose of cold and hunger wrapping around her neck.

Madness rats nibbled at her brain. She followed the Jackthief. She followed his scent. He smelled like wax and fallen leaves. He smelled like memories. Some nights, she thought she heard the baby crying. Some nights, she thought she heard the Jackthief laughing.

She became hungry and confused, knowing she was too far from her house to ever get back. The sorrow was black and swollen in her mind. She let it grow, knowing that the greater the sorrow, the more likely she was to see the Jackthief. And then she could take her baby back.

On the night of her death, before the Jackthief came and took the sorrow away for good, Oletta couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t see the Jackthief. But she thought she could open her eyes far enough to see the little black bundle he held in his arms. She pawed at the blankets, wanting to touch Jack’s soft baby skin one last time but the thing inside the blankets was not Jack.

It was carved from wood and bone.

It smelled like burning wax and dead leaves.

And when it opened its mouth, it didn’t want milk, it wanted to drink sorrow and a whole life filled with longing. And when it satiated itself on those things, it laughed, and moved onto the next person in the next town.

We try to have as many lost weekends as we can. We don’t do a lot of work. We sleep in. We get high. We fuck. We talk. We watch movies. Drink beer and listen to music. Take bike rides, hikes. Play in the yard. Order food. Get caught in a storm. Sip coffee and watch the sun set or maybe witness a murder. These things take time, something we’ll never have enough of.

I’m walking through the city with my aunt. I get fidgety. We don’t have smartphones or the internet or vape or smoke or anything really.

My aunt says, “Why don’t you just go into a meditation chamber? They’re all over. I can entertain myself for a while.”

Every town and city has meditation chambers. Single-occupancy only. Since too many of us are crammed into tiny houses and tinier apartments and corporations own nearly everything, the government decided people were entitled to ten minutes of privacy at least once a day. This was relatively easy for them to afford since they no longer paid for any kind of institutions or infrastructure. They were cleaned by prisoners and the disabled. The intent was for them to be used for prayer or meditation. Because I sleep on a couch in an apartment with ten-to-fifteen other family members, I mostly use them for masturbation.

I thank my aunt and dash off into a masturbation chamber where I really go wild and release a copious amount. I clean up as best as possible and look woefully at the tip code. I’d like to leave one, but so much of my income is taken to fund the police, the military, and politicians’ lavish lifestyles, I actually make negative income.

I leave the chamber and find my aunt. She’s with some other older folks. They stop talking when I get near, but their eyes roam my body. I feel judged and force myself to present as more grounded and connected to a mythological being or force rather than satisfied, relaxed, and spent.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they start putting cameras in the meditation chambers. Then it will be meditating/praying/thinking only.

I remind myself to practice masturbating without using my hands.

We get together and make fun of each other’s girlfriends until we have to fight. Each of us is left without a choice and we can’t get on with the evening until it’s resolved. My therapist tells me it’s a form of primal therapy. We’re modern men and try not to be too misogynistic about it. We try not to talk about appearance or sex, although that does swiftly cut to the quick.

“I saw Joan at the bar with that hunk from the gas station yesterday,” I tell Klaus. Often, I opt for lies.

“Yeah? What did Liz make for dinner last night? More hot dogs and chips? She must like big guys.” It’s okay to insult the other’s appearance. Also, he’s right. I’ve gained over thirty pounds since meeting Liz. And we did, in fact, have hot dogs and chips for dinner last night, but I made them.

“We mostly eat out,” I lie. “It keeps things equal.”

Klaus rolls his eyes.

“Did Joan buy those shoes for you?” I say.

Klaus looks down at his shoes. “What the fuck’s wrong with my shoes?”

“They’re super weird. Whoever picked them out clearly doesn’t have a functioning brain.”

“They were my Christmas present. I’d wanted them forever.”

“Still. Joan should know better.”

“Is it true Liz makes you shit in the yard?” It is, but I’m not going to tell him this. I understand her reasoning.

“What about you? You have to pee sitting down?”

“It’s a choice, okay? Less mess.”

“Then she must shave your ass as well.”

“Sure. It’s erotic.”

Klaus punches me in the stomach.

“What the fuck?” I say after catching my breath.

“I couldn’t think of any more insults.”

This is usually the way it goes. Klaus and I are not bright guys.

I hit him in the arm and then we’re off, wrestling on the floor until we get tired and sweaty.

When we’re finished, we clamber back onto the couch and watch some porno Klaus brought over.

He checks his phone before going home.

“Joan broke up with me,” he says. He doesn’t seem incredibly sad.

“This really changes things,” I say.

“You never even met her,” he says.

“It’s because she’s too good for me.” This feels like an admission of some kind. “Which means she’s too good for you.”

“You’re probably right,” Klaus says. He slides his phone back into his pocket and heads out to his car.

I pick up my phone and text Liz before remembering she’d blocked me months ago.

I’m at an outdoor gathering. The night is heavy with humidity. The owner of the house won’t let anyone inside. There are maybe twenty of us broken into groups of two or three. I’m standing around with two guys whose names I’ve forgotten.

“So what kind of stuff do you watch?” the guy on the right says.

“I like fail videos.” I take a sip of my beer.

“You know who else likes fail videos?” the guy says. “This guy.”

He points to the guy on my left before drifting over to another group.

“So … fail videos,” I say.

“I could watch them all day,” he says.

“Some of them get repetitive.”

“Like the people falling down their porch steps. Like, it’s snowy and icy, you’ve just come out of your door, you’re probably going to fall.”

“I was surprised this one time. I thought that was going to happen. And it probably would have, but a bear charged the porch and mauled them. It didn’t say no one was harmed but the camera didn’t like … linger.”

“I’d watch that,” the other guy says.

“I’ll send you a link if I can find it. Do you … remember why we’re here?”

“I’m here for the free beer. I just saw a group of people in a yard and wandered in.”

“I don’t even know whose house this is. I think I got a text from … someone. I don’t know anyone here.”

The modest house attached to the yard bursts into flame.

The other guy motions to the house with his beer bottle.

“I guess we’re here for an immolation or arson or … something.”

“You gonna stick around?”

“Probably until the fire trucks show up.”

A man on fire charges out the back door of the house flapping his arms. He hits the first step on the porch, rolls his ankle, and goes sprawling into the yard.

The other guy and I can’t help but laugh, even though it’s a pretty tired fail.

Two other guys rush over to the burning man and dump a cooler on him. They didn’t have time to empty it so a lot of cans and bottles bludgeon the man on the ground.

The guy I’m talking to, illuminated by flames, says, “I wonder if he’ll live.”

The flames are making the already warm night unbearably hot. I drift into the shadows of the yard and farther away as the shadows are consumed. I keep receding until I’m out of the yard and wandering the glowing orange neighborhood, sirens erupting around me.

*This story originally appeared in If I Only Had Cocaine and Other Drug Stories (edited by Will Paoletta)

My grandmother Ruby was the biggest drug addict I knew. Some people see the elderly as stodgy and authoritarian – something to be rebelled against. But I saw my grandmother as something of the ultimate rebel. Much like an aging Keith Richards, she dazedly stumbled through her latter years. She had used the system created for her generation and now moved through her days free from time or financial restraint, her brain wrapped in a comforting fog provided by her collection of amber bottles. She even had kind of a rock star name. We called her Grube.

***

“You got any pot?” Todd asked.

He was in town from college. This was his first summer back since we’d both turned twenty-one and the only reason we weren’t going out to a bar was because neither one of us had any money. I worked part-time at a used bookstore and lived with my parents. My first marriage had already ended and most of my meager earnings went to pay child support.

When Todd asked this question we were actually sitting in my childhood/current bedroom and looking at the crib I’d had to sell my record collection to buy.

“Um … no,” I said.

“Know where we can get some?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer this. I did know where we could get some. At least half my coworkers were chronic pot smokers and would have happily shared but then I would have felt like I owed them something. And probably the real reason was that I was now sort of embarrassed by Todd and actually would not willingly introduce him to anyone I’d met after graduating high school. He had dreadlocks, perpetually wore something that looked like pajama bottoms for pants, a shirt that looked like it could have been made from a rug, smelled like patchouli, and listened to the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Bob Marley. I wore a lot of black and was going through an experimental jazz phase. We didn’t really mesh anymore.

“I have no idea.”

He shook his hair back and ran a hand through his beard, inspecting his nails as though he’d snagged a nit or some old food crumbs.

I had to think of something. Todd was the type of person who wouldn’t leave unless you either asked him to or came up with some excuse like going to sleep. I was way too nice to ask anyone to leave, and since it was still relatively early evening, I didn’t think the going-to-sleep thing would work. That actually wasn’t guaranteed to work anyway. There were times in high school when I’d fallen asleep only to wake up to him playing my video games, rocking around in a chair and shouting at the TV like it was filled with real people. Now, of course, I didn’t have any of those games. It was pretty much just me, my bed, a highly distressed wardrobe filled with more distressed clothes, and the crib, currently minus one child.

If I didn’t think of something soon I imagined falling asleep out of sheer boredom and waking up in the harsh light of dawn to find Todd in exactly the same position.

Then I thought of Grube.

It was a long shot.

It could possibly work with Todd. He was the type of person who just needed to be drunk or high at all times but was too naïve to see himself that way. He still looked at everything as an experience. To me, most of the time, that experience seemed to consist of watching Star Trek reruns or going to Taco Bell and ordering disturbing amounts of food.

“Does it have to be pot?” I asked.

“Why? You got anything else?”

“I don’t have anything but I know someone who does.”

I would have gotten specific with him but it proved to be unnecessary. He stood up, pointed at my bedroom door, and said, “Let’s go.”

***

Being an adult child is way more humiliating than being an actual child. We ran into my mother as we tried to leave the house. She sat at the kitchen table eating a bag of chips and staring dazedly into the middle distance.

“Goin’ out,” I said.

“Don’t stay out too late.”

“Might stay over at Todd’s.” I had no intention of staying over at Todd’s but if I didn’t tell her this she would stay awake until I got home. It was more of a motherly anxiety thing than a controlling thing.

“Be careful on the roads. All those drunk drivers …”

My mother rarely left the house after dark. I have no idea what she imagined it was like, swarms of drunk drivers rampaging through our conservative rural town of fewer than 5000 people.

“Will do.”

“And you boys don’t do anything you’re not supposed to do.”

Now, I have no idea what my mom was like at my age. Okay, well, I guess I do. She was married and had already had my older brother but, before that, before responsibility, I had no idea what she was like. I knew she graduated high school in the late Sixties though. My knowledge of the Sixties came primarily from classic rock, Hunter S. Thompson, and Allen Ginsberg. I pretty much imagined everyone doing bong hits in between gangbangs with the Hell’s Angels. I wanted to tell her she didn’t really have anything to worry about. This was the mid-’90s. We grew up with U2, REM, Morrissey, and grunge. If we ever, for a second, felt like we were having a good time, we knew something was wrong. And while dance music did exist and I knew a few people who’d been to a rave, these were people with far fewer social anxieties and much less cynicism than me.

***

After a few minutes of riding in my trashed Pontiac, Todd finally asked, “Where we going, anyway?”

I didn’t want to tell him we were going to my grandmother’s house. Even though I was sure he would be excited about all the treasure contained therein. I needed to make it sound cool and desirable so I said, “Well, let’s just say I call it the pharmacy.” I’m not sure why I did that. I wasn’t and never had been a drug user but whenever interacting with them, I tried to sound like I used way more drugs than they did. I’m not sure how convincing it was. I looked and acted like a guy who read for fun. And I was.

“Cool,” he said.

Success?

***

“Dude, isn’t this your grandma’s house?”

We sat in Grube’s driveway. Grube slept whenever the hell she felt like it so I had to quickly scan her windows to make sure I could see a light or the television flickering, even though it wasn’t yet dark. I couldn’t remember Todd ever being here but then I recalled a summer where we were around each other all the time. So much so that I had grown so used to him being there I’d apparently just erased him from that time period. He just came over and never left.

“Trust me,” I said.

I was sure we’d be able to find something. I remember staying with Grube when I was something like twelve and, when I complained about a headache, she’d given me a Darvon and I’d blacked out. My older brother, who’d often gotten in fights with my parents about being drunk and high all the time, moved in with Grube briefly. He’d told my parents it was so he’d be closer to his job but I knew it was because of the never-ending supply of Xanax and also, because of Grube’s chemical oblivion and loose moral code, he could have his girlfriend there for sleepovers. Of course, Grube – my father’s mother – hated my mother so it’s possible she was rebelling against her milquetoast born againism by introducing my brother to the party lifestyle of the elderly.

***

The door swung open and I was met with the stark appearance of Grube. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a large hatchet nose and ice blue eyes. She wore her gray hair in the typically fluffy old lady perm. My brother referred to this style as the ‘Vicious Poodle.’ Today she wore a powder blue blouse with ruffles down the front tucked into elasticated white cotton pants in a crazy jumbled fusion of elegance and leisure. Because of some blood pressure medicine that increased her sensitivity to light she was pale as a vampire.

“Grandma Rube!” I usually used this voice shortly before asking for money or coming to retrieve some moderately high-dollar piece of furniture or electronics I’d convinced them they didn’t need. I was hoping it was not announcing I was there for her to give my friend drugs.

“Hey there.” She pulled me into her cloying scent of perfume, cigarette smoke, instant coffee, Doublemint gum, and fabric softener.

It wasn’t until receiving cards for my graduation and failed marriage that I realized Grube didn’t know my name. I was one of four children, we were all boys, and that was too confusing and not worth her time. Plus she had a few other grandkids she liked way better. My name was relatively close to one of my uncles’ – give or take a few letters – so, if forced to address me by a name, she usually chose that one. I didn’t bother re-introducing her to Todd. I knew from her previous encounters she didn’t like his personality and, while he looked completely different now, I knew she wouldn’t understand why he looked like that. Any male who didn’t wear button-down shirts and creased polyester dress pants or a full suit was pretty much a hobo.

She also never seemed concerned or asked why you were there. She assumed you were there to hang out with her.

“Come on in. I was just folding laundry.”

Grube did few things. She cooked. She cleaned their small ranch house. She did laundry and dishes. She occasionally had to lie in bed for days with her back. And she did drugs and sat in a chair and smoked, sometimes while having languidly laconic conversations with a relative either over the phone or in person, sometimes with the ad section of the newspaper spread before her. I wasn’t sure she could read the actual paper.

She waved us in and said there was ice cream in the freezer. I had liked this in my fat youth and it was the one thing she remembered about me.

“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t really want any ice cream but knew she kept all her pills on the top of the refrigerator so I needed to draw Todd’s attention to them and then distract Grube while he helped himself. As I grabbed a bowl from a cabinet and glanced at Todd while moving toward the freezer I saw him looking at the pills with the same reverence an alcoholic stares at all those lighted, gleaming liquor bottles behind the bar. My plan was to get some ice cream and lure her out to the renovated garage where she did the bulk of her lounging and smoking.

I grabbed the container of ice cream from the freezer and sat it down on the faux wood counter. It was store-brand vanilla in the form of a half-gallon brick. Grube still stood in the kitchen, staring at me. Todd still gazed at the pill bottles and remained unacknowledged by Grube. Hopefully Todd was reading the prescription labels and deciding what he needed. I opened random drawers looking for a spoon or ice cream scoop. My incompetence would soon make Grube anxious and impatient and she would either do it for me or go calm down. Either one of those would provide the necessary distraction. I grabbed a spoon and, as soon as I started bending it in the tundra of the ice cream, she moved in.

“Maybe I should use the scoop,” I laughed.

I grabbed the scoop. She made an exhausted sound and slowly sauntered out to the finished garage.

I glanced at Todd and mumbled, “Just take the whole bottle.” I figured since Grube was a collector, she would have plenty of backup to last until her next pill run. He reached up and grabbed three bottles with a silence and dexterity I didn’t know he was capable of. Then he vanished back to the bathroom. Looking down at my current project, I realized I didn’t want any ice cream and deemed the sliver I had chiseled and transferred to the bowl enough. I put the box of ice cream back in the freezer and carried the bowl out to the garage.

Grube sat at the faux wood bar they’d had installed, a Viceroy 100 burning in her mannish right hand while her left clasped to forehead. The room smelled like cigarette smoke, new carpet, and newspaper.

“That all you got?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

“I coulda got it for you.” Grube had rightfully assumed I was too lazy to carve any more out.

“So how ya doing?” This was always a good question, leading her to rattle off a series of ailments or a list of grievances with particular family members.

“Back’s been killing me.”

“I thought you took stuff for that.” I wanted to tell her that most people her age would have back problems if they did twenty loads of laundry a day and rearranged furniture on a weekly basis.

“I took the last one this morning. I’ve got a prescription waiting at Meijers. Dad was supposed to take me but … I don’t know where he is.”

Grube called my grandfather Dad, which was creepy. To heighten her rock star image and because she was super stoned all the time, Grube did not drive. When he was younger, my grandfather had been an alcoholic and, since retiring, if he wasn’t at home Grube jumped to the conclusion he was on a bender. But it was Sunday so I was pretty sure he was at church, where the most nefarious thing he did was to sneak a cigarette on the way there and back. He’d already had one surgery for lung cancer and Grube wouldn’t let him smoke anymore.

She would never ask me to take her. It was possible she didn’t even realize I was old enough to drive and had just assumed me and my derelict friend had been transported there by sorcery to eat her ice cream and keep her company until my grandfather returned from his Dionysian revelry.

While Todd was all about the drugs, I was all about making my life as ridiculous and difficult as possible so I said, “I could take you. If you think they’re open.”

“It’s Meijers. They’re always open.”

I knew they were always open but I didn’t think the pharmacy was. Most of them had even more restrictive hours than bars.

“That’d be a big help. We could take the T-bird.”

“We can just take my car. I think I’m parking it in anyway.” Truthfully, the Thunderbird was just so huge I was terrified to drive it.

She crushed out her cigarette, stood slowly, and put her lighter in a red pleather case housing her pack of cigarettes before snapping its gold clasp shut.

Todd wandered into the garage, looking eager to leave.

“We gotta take Grube to pick up a prescription.”

Todd looked crazy paranoid.

***

I opened the passenger-side door for Grube, always the gentleman. Todd raked a bunch of stuff from the backseat onto the floorboard and dropped himself in. I got behind the wheel and looked over at Grube. Her eyes were so icy and expressionless they were virtually unreadable. The giant lenses of her transitional glasses were now so dark it was impossible to see her eyes anyway. But her disgust was plainly evident by the way her mouth was frozen in something like a silent scream. She had ground her feet down to find the floorboard, fast food wrappers and some old clothes covering her white orthopedic shoes. I had to get out of the driveway while she was still trapped.

“Is this your car?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sorry. It’s a little messy.”

“It’s disgusting.”

I would have had to agree with her but I didn’t know if it represented the irreparable and debilitating character flaw she would have seen it as. It was disgusting. What could I say? I was a young, poor single father who had a job and went to college and sometimes my sloppy girlfriend borrowed my car. I’d clean it when I had time. I wasn’t one of those self-delusional types who didn’t even know how filthy he was.

She continued looking around, moving only her neck.

“If I had knowed it was like this I woulda brought out a trash bag.”

It was no real secret to me how Grube spent entire days doing – in the grand scheme of things – not much of anything. Everything was turned into an Olympian sprawl of OCD.

She began fanning her face with her hand and I could feel some sort of impending meltdown. I had rolled down my window. Todd had rolled down both of the back windows. Still, this cacophony of wind didn’t tip her off that my car did not have any air conditioning.

“Phew,” she said. “Shoo boy. Hot. Why don’t you turn on some air conditioning?”

“I don’t have any.”

One of the reasons she was hesitant to roll down her window was that she didn’t want to mess up her hair.

“Agh. How do you stand it?”

“It’s tough. I have to take a lot of showers and sometimes I have to drive nude and put my clothes on before I get out of the car.”

This was another cool thing about Grube: Because she was usually so stoned and self-involved you could say anything and it wouldn’t get much of a reaction. When I was a few years younger, she and my grandfather had felt brave and let me and my two younger brothers ride with them on a family trip. After most of our conversational efforts and pleas were ignored, we just started saying things like: “I was diagnosed with Leukemia,” and “Mom’s pregnant again.” Nothing got a reaction.

“Shoo,” she said again. Beads of sweat stood out from beneath all the powder on her face. Her cheeks were redder than I’d ever seen them and much of the fluff had fallen out of her perm. “This is just terrible.”

She shuffled her feet around in the trash and searched the door for a lever or button that would automatically roll the window down. My car had neither. The knob was a pair of pliers held in place by a C-clamp and could only roll the window down manually.

“This is just jenky.” She cranked it down using a billion times more effort than was necessary and said, “Why don’t you get rid of some of this garbage?” She reached down and began chucking bags out the window. I laughed and turned the radio on. It was some mix tape I’d made and Aphex Twin’s “Ventolin” came grating out of the two working speakers. Grube chucked another bag out the window and I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if Todd was getting any of this but he’d fallen asleep. I suppose I should have asked her to stop but I hadn’t really learned to care about the environment yet and Grube probably didn’t even know what it was.

Once most of the trash was eliminated, her thin hair was plastered to her scalp and her face powder had separated into weird clumps. It took her way longer to notice the music than I thought it would. If you’re not familiar with the song, you should check it out. I used it to drive customers out of the store at closing time. For all I knew, it took her so long to notice it because it matched the sounds in her head all the time. When she did finally notice it, she looked in horror toward the stereo, her top lip drawing back from gleaming dentures.

“Is this what you kids listen to? It sounds evil.”

“You just have to give it a chance.”

“I like that Kenny Rogers. You ever listen to him? ‘Love Will Turn You Around.’”

“Oh yeah. That was in Six Pack. Good song. I don’t have it, though. This is all I have.”

But our discussion had ended once she stopped talking. I could have pretty much said anything.

“Is your prescription going to be ready?” This question involved her and would get a response.

“Should have been ready since yesterday.”

“I really need to get back so I can get my girlfriend to the abortion clinic.” This question did not involve her and would not get a response.

It didn’t.

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

***

Todd was still asleep or passed out or whatever by the time we got to Meijer. I asked if he needed anything.

Grube lit a cigarette and began ambling through the parking lot.

“Did you already take the pills?” I asked.

His dazed expression answered my question.

“Did you take all of them?”

“You told me to take the whole bottle,” he slurred.

“Fuck. Do you even know what they are? Are you going to be okay?”

“There weren’t that many. Leave me alone.”

I left him alone.

By the time we entered the air conditioning of the store, Grube looked like some kind of midnight monster. The break up of the make-up revealed the deep wrinkles in her rawboned face. Her hair now resembled a fright wig and she shambled along like something that wasn’t completely alive.

Large department stores are designed to waste the time of the very simple. Putting everything on display makes it all look like something you should probably own. The pharmacy was in the back of the store. Grube picked up every item on the way, looking at it, saying something about it that wasn’t really intended for anyone but her and then putting it down wherever she felt like. By the time we reached the pharmacy, I was starting to think the Unabomber had some really great ideas.

I was not incredibly surprised to find the pharmacy darkened, a blue and white ‘closed’ sign in the window next to the sign with the hours.

“It’s closed,” I said.

“Huh.” Now that the tint had gone from her lenses, I could see Grube’s casual blankness replaced by a cold and murderous rage. “Meijers is supposed to be open twenty-four hours. That’s what the commercial says. That’s what the sign out front says.”

“Well, the pharmacy’s closed.”

The particular look she gave me sent a shiver of fear through me. I’d never seen it before. I had heard epic tales of her rage but had never actually witnessed it. My dad’s excuse for Grube not having a license was not that she was permanently stoned or had delusions of grandeur. He said she would have certainly murdered someone by now if forced to deal with road rage. Grube descended to this relatively flat section of Ohio from the dark hollows of the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky and her family was the source of stories that made Flannery O’Connor seem like a gentle read. It also occurred to me that, because she couldn’t drive, she never really went anywhere unaccompanied.

Was I now Grube’s handler?

Could there be a more ill-equipped person for the task?

My philosophy regarding almost everything was to just stand back and observe.

Grube clutched the strap of her red vinyl purse so tightly I thought she was going to sever her arm at the shoulder.

I pointed at the sign like that would help and said, “Closed.”

“I ain’t leavin here till I get my prescriptions. Meijers is open twenty-four hours. I’m here. My prescription’s here. I just need to find the right person to get it.”

I probably should have offered some comforting advice or, hell, just a bit of wisdom from someone who left his house for reasons other than picking up prescriptions or exacting vengeance, but I really just kind of wanted to see how it played out.

“Where’s one of those little jackasses? They’re never around when you need them. I need to rest for a minute. My back is killing me.”

She sat down on one of the plastic chairs put there for people to wait for their prescriptions when the pharmacy was actually open. She fished her cigarette cozy from her purse, pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I laughed.

“Fuck it,” she said.

I moved a little farther away from her. I saw an employee coming down the aisle, probably to tell her to stop smoking. She had her forehead buried in her hand and didn’t see him right away. The man drew closer. He was darker skinned, possibly Indian, and I immediately knew this wasn’t going to go well. Grube was the only person I knew who used the word ‘nigger’ freely and without any apparent malice. Just complete and total ignorance.

Surprisingly, he didn’t even glance at Grube. Unfortunately, she caught sight of him just as he passed. She snapped her fingers at him and said, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Pedro?”

Dear God.

The man gave her a nervous smile, his eyes now finding the cigarette burning between her fingers. He opened his mouth and I was sure he was going to say something about it but Grube spoke before he could.

“I’m here to pick up a prescription.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I need to pick up a prescription. My doctor called it in. It’ll be under Ruby McGwire.”

“I’m sorry but you cannot smoke in here.”

Grube dismissively waved her cigarette at him and now she spoke loudly, as one would to a deaf or foreign person even though, judging by his English and complete lack of accent, I’d be willing to bet he was born here.

“Maybe you didn’t understand me. I said I’m here to pick up a prescription.” She angrily thumbed her hand at the darkened pharmacy behind her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s closed.”

“Ain’t you all open twenty-four hours? You sure try to make people think you’re open all the time.”

“I’m very sorry. Not the pharmacy.”

“Then why don’t you say that in all your commercials?”

“The rest of the store is open for your convenience.”

“This ain’t convenient. My back has me almost paralyzed and I had to find a ride all the way down here. I ain’t leavin till I get my prescription.”

“I’m very sorry but it’s closed. There isn’t anything I can do about it.”

“Sure you can. You’ve got a key. You open that door, find my prescription, and give it to me. I have my insurance card. There ain’t even a charge.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I need to talk to Mr. Meijers.”

This stunned the man. I’m not sure he really knew what she was talking about.

“You know, the guy who runs this place? I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”

“I will go get my manager.”

“I think I’d like you to do that.”

As he walked away, Grube looked at me and said, “That guy’s drunk as a fucking Nazi,” before dropping her cigarette to the floor and crushing it out.

We waited for a really long time. Probably because the harried employee had to explain the bizarre situation to his manager.

A fat middle-age man in a blue Oxford and khaki pants came stalking up to Grube. He caught Grube somewhat off guard, not even addressing her prescription concern.

“Is this your cigarette butt?” He pointed to the floor.

The younger employee stood behind him and said, “Yes. She was smoking it.”

“I have to ask you to leave,” the manager said. “We don’t allow smoking in our stores.”

Grube stood up. She was taller than the manager.

“That doesn’t matter. Did the little sand nigger tell you I’m here to pick up a prescription?”

“Ma’am, you need to leave the store immediately.”

He looked at me like I was going to help. The situation quickly escalated.

“I’m not leaving here till I get my pills!”

Then the man made an even greater mistake than disagreeing with Grube. He tried to grab her arm.

She violently jerked it away, no sign of crippling back pain anywhere, and said, “Get your fucking hands off me. I’ll knock you back to college, you fucking robot.” Grube assumed anyone who worked in anything other than jeans or a uniform was a college graduate.

She grabbed a candle from an end display and threw it at the window of the pharmacy.

“Okay,” the manager said. “I’m calling the police.”

“Why don’t you just unlock that damn door and we all get what we want?”

The man was already walking to the phone.

I approached Grube and said, “I think we should go.”

“Fuck that.” She kicked over one of the chairs.

Sadly, I didn’t really care if Grube got arrested. I mean, it wasn’t something I wanted to see happen but it wouldn’t have had a great effect on me. However, if I were somehow drawn into it and forced to deal with any more hassles, I would feel pretty put out.

“Okay. Well, I’m leaving,” I said, walking back toward the entrance.

Grube followed behind me in a rage, knocking things off shelves and snarling profanities. I found the commotion reassuring. It meant she was keeping pace behind me. I was afraid to turn around and look. I imagined the goonish manager and his henchman were somewhere behind her, all of us with the singular goal to get her out of the store with as little property damage as possible. I doubted they had actually called the police.

We reached the front of the store and I saw Todd, wearing only his underwear, talking to the elderly door greeter. He was sweating profusely and it looked like he had a hard time standing up.

I grabbed his left arm and said, “This one’s mine too,” before roughly dragging him out into the parking lot.

“I got so hot,” Todd said. “And thirsty. I didn’t know where I was. I just came in for a drink of water. They wouldn’t give me a drink of water.”

Grube kicked over a trashcan, turned toward the employees gathered at the entrance, and shouted, “Rapists!”

When we got to the car both Todd and Grube sat in the back, having apparently forged some unknown connection on a mysteriously occluded chemical highway. I pulled out of the parking lot feeling like a chauffeur for the world’s most bizarre, worst two-person band.

I pulled up to Grube’s house, happy to see my grandfather’s car in the driveway. She got out of the car without saying bye or thanks and started back to her clean palace of order where the drugs, air conditioning, and chores waited to take her in their loving embrace.

I met Todd’s half-lidded eyes in the mirror and said, “Get the fuck up here. This isn’t a cab.”

Todd got out of the car and grabbed his bundle of clothes. Two of the empty pill bottles fell out and hit the ground. It was like Grube knew this sound as well as the opening chords to a favorite song. She turned toward the bottles. She moved toward Todd with surprising quickness. Normally I would have let Todd fight his own battles but he probably needed to go to the emergency room. Grube made a sound I’d never really heard before, something like a group of cats being sucked up into a tornado maybe. I panicked and moved in between her and Todd. I covered my head, expecting the worst.

I heard my grandpa say, “Come on now, Grube,” and looked up to see him gently wrangling her toward the house, a white waxy bag in one of his hands.

Grube still thrust herself toward Todd and shouted, “Don’t never bring that hobo around here again!”

Grandpa forced the bag into her hands and she visibly slackened.

“Them boys took me to a terrible place, Dad. Just … awful. I thought I was gonna die.”