Sunday
In Blair, especially downtown Blair, Suits accepted street people. But out in Washburn, the last of the south side suburbs, I was a fish out of water. I hid out in the bushes between the dentist’s office and the narrow parking lot. Across the street the convenience store was too quiet and too empty. So I stood there waiting, hitting my pipe and watching the store. All I needed was to get some food and get as far away from Blair as I could before Chucky and Hector heard about my score the night before. Word on the street spread fast. I wanted to get to Roosterville that day. If I played my cards right, there would be a hotel room waiting for me. A hot shower and a warm bed. I could probably get to Mill City the day after. But that was Monday’s problem. There would be plenty of time to worry about Monday’s problems on Monday.
Once people came out to buy their Sunday papers, coffee and donuts I went inside the 7-11. I slipped down the first aisle past the magazine racks, along the row of cooler doors all the way in the back, and ducked into the Men’s room. The clerks out in the suburbs weren’t like the ones downtown who knew better than to mess with the freaks. Six bucks an hour wasn’t worth having a freak pissed at you. All you had to do downtown was act a little looney tunes and the clerks would look the other way when you stuffed a sandwich in your jacket. In Washburn, acting crazy or getting caught lifting will get the blueys called in a hurry.
After enjoying the comforts of indoor plumbing, something you don’t appreciate much until it’s gone, I pulled the cover off the big square trash can. Below the liner was a roll of more liners, I pulled about six of them off, and put them in my satchel slung from my shoulder and hidden beneath my Army jacket. Before I left I put the trash can back the way I found it.
It was too quiet to go out. I listened at the door and waited until I heard the buzzer on the door a few times and some voices. While the register beeped and zipped as it printed receipts, I made my move. The pimple faced clerk behind the counter had three people in line. That was enough time for me to score and get out. The microwave sandwiches were behind the first cooler door, right next to the bathroom door. I pulled two out at once, stuffed them in my bag, and then took two more. A few cooler doors down I took a quart of orange juice. The clerk was still busy ringing up the customers. I went up the second aisle, a woman in her early forties, who looked to be already dressed for church, started down the same aisle, took one look at me and doubled back to the opposite side of the store. I grabbed some of the small boxes of crackers and a few packages of my favorite peanut butter and oatmeal cookies.
I saw the kid at the register look around the guy paying him as I went past the others in line and out the door. If he did call the cops I knew it wouldn’t take them long to find me. Down from the store I passed a McDonald’s, and its inviting, greasy aroma. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I crossed the street. Not only did I almost walk into the path of an oncoming vehicle, but my first glimpse of the Chevrolet bowtie hood ornament made me think I was looking at Chucky’s Impala. If Chucky and Hector found me all the way out in Washburn, they’d know I was leaving town with the money I owed them. The driver honked at me as he swerved away. I’d never been so happy to see an El Camino in my life.
As my heart rate slowed down, I cut behind one of those huge grocery stores. Shipping and receiving docks lined the rear of the building. I hid among the dumpsters and trailers backed into the bay doors and hit my pipe to help me relax some after my near death experience. The smell from the McDonald’s made it all the way back there and made me even hungrier than I already was. I ripped the cellophane packages open with my teeth and tore into my sandwiches. I ate two and saved two, I never knew where my next meal was coming from so I saved them, even though I was hungry enough to eat them all right then. I don’t even know what was on them and it didn’t really matter, it was food in my stomach.
On the other side of the grocery store was Washburn Road. I could take that all the way into Roosterville. I made my way down there every few weeks. The farm kids, the ones in high school that lived out that way, didn’t have much to do for fun. They would all drive around and decide on a place to meet up and drink. And when they were done and didn’t want to go home with a car full of empty cans, they’d dump them in the ditches along a road out in the middle of nowhere. Quite often that would just happen to be on Washburn Road between Washburn and Roosterville. I could get a dime a piece for those empty cans. It doesn’t seem like much, but you get a couple of warm weekends in a row or a big game and those kids can tip back some beers. That was how we did it when I lived out there when I was in school. Most of the times I made the trek down that road I stuffed at least two garbage bags full. The previous Friday, Roosterville and Washburn played each other in the last basketball game of the regular season. If I knew my farm boys, there was going to be gold in those ditches.
I wasn’t even out of the grocery store parking lot when I found my first empty, a single Coke can rolling in the wind. Suits’ time was too valuable to go to the trouble to bend over and pick up a can and redeem it at one of the machines you have to load them into for a measly ten cents. My time wasn’t too valuable. I had nothing but time. I shook some air into one of my trash bags and dropped the can in. Another 423 and I could get that room at The King Motel. $39.99 plus tax. It seemed like a lot of cans, but they add up quick.
* *
Late that afternoon I was 12 miles south of Washburn and surrounded by clusters of modular houses standing among the corn fields. I walked along the road with a bulging garbage bag in each hand. The plastic and aluminum inside the bags clicked with the hollow echoes of their own secret language. At the corner where Grove Highway crossed Washburn Road, two cardboard cases of cans sat at the bottom of the ditch. I ripped the boxes open, the sharp corners of the cases tended to split the bags, and dumped them into a third liner.
I walked that last mile or so into Roosterville and found a few more empties along the way. The high school parking lot was littered with soda cans and bottles. There were a bunch of them in the barrels by the baseball diamond. I passed the apartment complex and hit the car wash. The trash cans next to the big vacuums were a good spot too. To get to the returnables at the bottom I had to pull a bunch of garbage out of those cans. After I fished the cans out, I put all the garbage back in and then crossed over to the small plaza that the grocery store was in.
Lampkin’s was an odd little store. They had just recently installed the bottle return machines. I preferred feeding them into the machines myself, as opposed to waiting for the attitude-soaked teenagers who used to count them and separate them into the big cages. I went inside the store and pulled a shopping cart over to the small room the machines were in. They had a sign up that read, $25 Limit Per Day. I’d brought back more than that several times and no one ever denied me my money. Can after can, and bottle after bottle, I fed my empties into those machines. By the time I fed them all in, one of those attitude-soaked teenagers had to come and empty one of the aluminum bins. I had fifty some dollars in tickets. I’d not only get the hotel room, but I could get some supplies too. I picked up a toothbrush, a travel size tube of paste, the cereal bars that were on sale and a couple of apples. I couldn’t remember the last time I had fruit.
I was a little nervous at the check out lane. Even though they usually didn’t say anything about exceeding the dollar limit, I always thought there would be a first time. The girl never even looked at me or said a word. She scanned my merchandise and dropped it into a plastic bag. Then held her hand out for money. I handed her my return slips and she blew her bangs out of her eyes with a hint of annoyance. She poked some buttons on her register and scanned the bar codes on the tickets. My heart raced as the “Change Due” amount on the monitor grew each time she scanned a ticket. It stopped on $46.20 and inside my head I did a celebration dance. I could feel the hot shower already.
My feet and knees ached as I walked across Lampkin’s parking lot. The King Motel was another half mile down the road. When I saw the dark green Impala making a slow roll toward me, I dropped my purchases and ran. My feet and knees responded with a new sense of vigor. I ran all the way to the fence that stood behind the pharmacy and the hardware store in the same plaza as Lampkin’s. In desperation, I tried climbing the chain links. Before I was more than a foot or two off the ground Hector pulled me down and punched me hard in the stomach. Twice. I dropped to the ground and assumed the fetal position.
Chucky’s footsteps came toward me. I opened my eyes as he cocked his foot back.
“Where is it?” He asked.
“Where’s what?” I asked as if I was fooling someone.
He kicked me in the ribs. Pain wasn’t a strong enough word to describe the fire that seared in my side. Chucky cocked his foot back again. “Where is it?”
“It’s gone,” I managed. I was pretty sure Chucky broke some of my ribs.
Chucky and Hector pulled my coat down and took my satchel. Hector dropped to his knees, shook the contents of my bag onto the grass and picked through my belongings. He found the cigarette box. Inside the box the plastic sleeve from the pack was rolled down into a small pouch that was stuffed full of rocks.
Hector held it up to Chucky, who looked very disappointed. “You make us chase you all the way down here, and you don’t even have enough to pay us back?” They pawed all over me and dove their hands into my pockets. I tried to keep them off of me, but my side was killing me. Hector came out with my forty-six dollars, which he promptly handed to Chucky.
“NO! It took me all day-”
Hector stood me up. I staggered, trying to hold still. Chucky walked up to me slow. He smiled at me, real quick and then went back to his sullen stare. “You’re a lucky man, you know that?”
I shook my head.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“Why?” I asked, not really wanting to find out.
“Because I’m not going to kill you.” He said and punched me square in the face. I was out cold before I hit the ground.
* * *
When I came to in the grass behind the pharmacy, my side was throbbing where Chucky kicked me. They left my satchel, but they took everything inside it. My food, my trash bags and the rocks. But as any addict can tell you, you never keep all of your rocks in the same place. I took one from my sock, also wrapped in the cellophane off a pack of cigarettes. My lighter was in the grass next to me, but my pipe was gone. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about it, but an empty beer can was right against the fence. I took it, flattened it down on one side and poked a couple of small holes into it with a stick. I sat against the back wall of the pharmacy and smoked that rock out of my MacGyver pipe. My last rock was in my other sock. I was going to have to save that for Monday morning and my journey down to Mill City.
I walked back across the parking lot and went to the gas station that was on the next corner. The Men’s room door was right outside. Inside they had a small vending machine mounted on the wall. It was full of single doses of aspirin and Tylenol. And Rolaids and condoms. I tried like hell to get it open and to pull it down, but it seemed the designers had anticipated such an event. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. I gave up, pulled a few trash bag liners from the bottom of the can and walked to the McDonald’s next door. I went straight for the dumpster. In the city they build fences around the dumpsters, not only because they are unsightly, but because they draw a crowd of bums due to the fact that they are a good place to find food when your choices are limited and your standards are non-existent.
I pushed bag after bag around. The ones with the drink cups and pools of brown liquid at the bottom come from the dining room. You have to be really desperate to eat from those bags. The best ones are from the back, where they empty the bin of the burgers that have been sitting out too long. I dug around and finally found one. I pulled it open and took those sandwiches, still wrapped in their colorful papers and put them into one of my trash liners.
My rib was killing me and it was going to be dark before much longer. It was the wrong direction, but I headed back north to the apartment complex. I watched for security guards like the complexes in Blair have, but I never did see one. Signs mounted on the building pointed me in the direction of the laundry building and the swimming pool.
In the laundry room only one of the dryers had clothes in it. I took the three pairs of jeans. A second hand store in Mill City paid two dollars a pair for used jeans. I’d need that money on Monday. The pool was just down from the laundry room. It was covered with a tarp and the plastic lounge chairs were stacked along the back fence. I hopped the gate and thought I was going to pass out from the pain in my side. I moved a chaise lounge chair over by the small building that housed the swimming pool filter. Just for the hell of it, I turned the knob on the door of that little building. I thought for sure it was going to be locked, but it wasn’t.
I peeked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching and pulled the chair into the room with me. There was barely enough room, but it fit. I folded it down. The room had a laundry tub and running water. Hot water. I cleaned up as best as I could. It was no King Motel, but it would sure get me through the night. It was a little cold in there, so I pulled my trash can liners out. I tore open the bottom seam on one and stepped into it, pulled it up to my shoulders, and put my feet into a second one. My trash liners were the closest thing I had to a blanket.
I knew I’d regret it, but I pulled my blankets back off and took out my last rock. The one I was saving for Monday. I sat there and smoked it, thinking to myself that there would be plenty of time to worry about Monday’s problems on Monday.
Once people came out to buy their Sunday papers, coffee and donuts I went inside the 7-11. I slipped down the first aisle past the magazine racks, along the row of cooler doors all the way in the back, and ducked into the Men’s room. The clerks out in the suburbs weren’t like the ones downtown who knew better than to mess with the freaks. Six bucks an hour wasn’t worth having a freak pissed at you. All you had to do downtown was act a little looney tunes and the clerks would look the other way when you stuffed a sandwich in your jacket. In Washburn, acting crazy or getting caught lifting will get the blueys called in a hurry.
After enjoying the comforts of indoor plumbing, something you don’t appreciate much until it’s gone, I pulled the cover off the big square trash can. Below the liner was a roll of more liners, I pulled about six of them off, and put them in my satchel slung from my shoulder and hidden beneath my Army jacket. Before I left I put the trash can back the way I found it.
It was too quiet to go out. I listened at the door and waited until I heard the buzzer on the door a few times and some voices. While the register beeped and zipped as it printed receipts, I made my move. The pimple faced clerk behind the counter had three people in line. That was enough time for me to score and get out. The microwave sandwiches were behind the first cooler door, right next to the bathroom door. I pulled two out at once, stuffed them in my bag, and then took two more. A few cooler doors down I took a quart of orange juice. The clerk was still busy ringing up the customers. I went up the second aisle, a woman in her early forties, who looked to be already dressed for church, started down the same aisle, took one look at me and doubled back to the opposite side of the store. I grabbed some of the small boxes of crackers and a few packages of my favorite peanut butter and oatmeal cookies.
I saw the kid at the register look around the guy paying him as I went past the others in line and out the door. If he did call the cops I knew it wouldn’t take them long to find me. Down from the store I passed a McDonald’s, and its inviting, greasy aroma. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I crossed the street. Not only did I almost walk into the path of an oncoming vehicle, but my first glimpse of the Chevrolet bowtie hood ornament made me think I was looking at Chucky’s Impala. If Chucky and Hector found me all the way out in Washburn, they’d know I was leaving town with the money I owed them. The driver honked at me as he swerved away. I’d never been so happy to see an El Camino in my life.
As my heart rate slowed down, I cut behind one of those huge grocery stores. Shipping and receiving docks lined the rear of the building. I hid among the dumpsters and trailers backed into the bay doors and hit my pipe to help me relax some after my near death experience. The smell from the McDonald’s made it all the way back there and made me even hungrier than I already was. I ripped the cellophane packages open with my teeth and tore into my sandwiches. I ate two and saved two, I never knew where my next meal was coming from so I saved them, even though I was hungry enough to eat them all right then. I don’t even know what was on them and it didn’t really matter, it was food in my stomach.
On the other side of the grocery store was Washburn Road. I could take that all the way into Roosterville. I made my way down there every few weeks. The farm kids, the ones in high school that lived out that way, didn’t have much to do for fun. They would all drive around and decide on a place to meet up and drink. And when they were done and didn’t want to go home with a car full of empty cans, they’d dump them in the ditches along a road out in the middle of nowhere. Quite often that would just happen to be on Washburn Road between Washburn and Roosterville. I could get a dime a piece for those empty cans. It doesn’t seem like much, but you get a couple of warm weekends in a row or a big game and those kids can tip back some beers. That was how we did it when I lived out there when I was in school. Most of the times I made the trek down that road I stuffed at least two garbage bags full. The previous Friday, Roosterville and Washburn played each other in the last basketball game of the regular season. If I knew my farm boys, there was going to be gold in those ditches.
I wasn’t even out of the grocery store parking lot when I found my first empty, a single Coke can rolling in the wind. Suits’ time was too valuable to go to the trouble to bend over and pick up a can and redeem it at one of the machines you have to load them into for a measly ten cents. My time wasn’t too valuable. I had nothing but time. I shook some air into one of my trash bags and dropped the can in. Another 423 and I could get that room at The King Motel. $39.99 plus tax. It seemed like a lot of cans, but they add up quick.
* *
Late that afternoon I was 12 miles south of Washburn and surrounded by clusters of modular houses standing among the corn fields. I walked along the road with a bulging garbage bag in each hand. The plastic and aluminum inside the bags clicked with the hollow echoes of their own secret language. At the corner where Grove Highway crossed Washburn Road, two cardboard cases of cans sat at the bottom of the ditch. I ripped the boxes open, the sharp corners of the cases tended to split the bags, and dumped them into a third liner.
I walked that last mile or so into Roosterville and found a few more empties along the way. The high school parking lot was littered with soda cans and bottles. There were a bunch of them in the barrels by the baseball diamond. I passed the apartment complex and hit the car wash. The trash cans next to the big vacuums were a good spot too. To get to the returnables at the bottom I had to pull a bunch of garbage out of those cans. After I fished the cans out, I put all the garbage back in and then crossed over to the small plaza that the grocery store was in.
Lampkin’s was an odd little store. They had just recently installed the bottle return machines. I preferred feeding them into the machines myself, as opposed to waiting for the attitude-soaked teenagers who used to count them and separate them into the big cages. I went inside the store and pulled a shopping cart over to the small room the machines were in. They had a sign up that read, $25 Limit Per Day. I’d brought back more than that several times and no one ever denied me my money. Can after can, and bottle after bottle, I fed my empties into those machines. By the time I fed them all in, one of those attitude-soaked teenagers had to come and empty one of the aluminum bins. I had fifty some dollars in tickets. I’d not only get the hotel room, but I could get some supplies too. I picked up a toothbrush, a travel size tube of paste, the cereal bars that were on sale and a couple of apples. I couldn’t remember the last time I had fruit.
I was a little nervous at the check out lane. Even though they usually didn’t say anything about exceeding the dollar limit, I always thought there would be a first time. The girl never even looked at me or said a word. She scanned my merchandise and dropped it into a plastic bag. Then held her hand out for money. I handed her my return slips and she blew her bangs out of her eyes with a hint of annoyance. She poked some buttons on her register and scanned the bar codes on the tickets. My heart raced as the “Change Due” amount on the monitor grew each time she scanned a ticket. It stopped on $46.20 and inside my head I did a celebration dance. I could feel the hot shower already.
My feet and knees ached as I walked across Lampkin’s parking lot. The King Motel was another half mile down the road. When I saw the dark green Impala making a slow roll toward me, I dropped my purchases and ran. My feet and knees responded with a new sense of vigor. I ran all the way to the fence that stood behind the pharmacy and the hardware store in the same plaza as Lampkin’s. In desperation, I tried climbing the chain links. Before I was more than a foot or two off the ground Hector pulled me down and punched me hard in the stomach. Twice. I dropped to the ground and assumed the fetal position.
Chucky’s footsteps came toward me. I opened my eyes as he cocked his foot back.
“Where is it?” He asked.
“Where’s what?” I asked as if I was fooling someone.
He kicked me in the ribs. Pain wasn’t a strong enough word to describe the fire that seared in my side. Chucky cocked his foot back again. “Where is it?”
“It’s gone,” I managed. I was pretty sure Chucky broke some of my ribs.
Chucky and Hector pulled my coat down and took my satchel. Hector dropped to his knees, shook the contents of my bag onto the grass and picked through my belongings. He found the cigarette box. Inside the box the plastic sleeve from the pack was rolled down into a small pouch that was stuffed full of rocks.
Hector held it up to Chucky, who looked very disappointed. “You make us chase you all the way down here, and you don’t even have enough to pay us back?” They pawed all over me and dove their hands into my pockets. I tried to keep them off of me, but my side was killing me. Hector came out with my forty-six dollars, which he promptly handed to Chucky.
“NO! It took me all day-”
Hector stood me up. I staggered, trying to hold still. Chucky walked up to me slow. He smiled at me, real quick and then went back to his sullen stare. “You’re a lucky man, you know that?”
I shook my head.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“Why?” I asked, not really wanting to find out.
“Because I’m not going to kill you.” He said and punched me square in the face. I was out cold before I hit the ground.
* * *
When I came to in the grass behind the pharmacy, my side was throbbing where Chucky kicked me. They left my satchel, but they took everything inside it. My food, my trash bags and the rocks. But as any addict can tell you, you never keep all of your rocks in the same place. I took one from my sock, also wrapped in the cellophane off a pack of cigarettes. My lighter was in the grass next to me, but my pipe was gone. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about it, but an empty beer can was right against the fence. I took it, flattened it down on one side and poked a couple of small holes into it with a stick. I sat against the back wall of the pharmacy and smoked that rock out of my MacGyver pipe. My last rock was in my other sock. I was going to have to save that for Monday morning and my journey down to Mill City.
I walked back across the parking lot and went to the gas station that was on the next corner. The Men’s room door was right outside. Inside they had a small vending machine mounted on the wall. It was full of single doses of aspirin and Tylenol. And Rolaids and condoms. I tried like hell to get it open and to pull it down, but it seemed the designers had anticipated such an event. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. I gave up, pulled a few trash bag liners from the bottom of the can and walked to the McDonald’s next door. I went straight for the dumpster. In the city they build fences around the dumpsters, not only because they are unsightly, but because they draw a crowd of bums due to the fact that they are a good place to find food when your choices are limited and your standards are non-existent.
I pushed bag after bag around. The ones with the drink cups and pools of brown liquid at the bottom come from the dining room. You have to be really desperate to eat from those bags. The best ones are from the back, where they empty the bin of the burgers that have been sitting out too long. I dug around and finally found one. I pulled it open and took those sandwiches, still wrapped in their colorful papers and put them into one of my trash liners.
My rib was killing me and it was going to be dark before much longer. It was the wrong direction, but I headed back north to the apartment complex. I watched for security guards like the complexes in Blair have, but I never did see one. Signs mounted on the building pointed me in the direction of the laundry building and the swimming pool.
In the laundry room only one of the dryers had clothes in it. I took the three pairs of jeans. A second hand store in Mill City paid two dollars a pair for used jeans. I’d need that money on Monday. The pool was just down from the laundry room. It was covered with a tarp and the plastic lounge chairs were stacked along the back fence. I hopped the gate and thought I was going to pass out from the pain in my side. I moved a chaise lounge chair over by the small building that housed the swimming pool filter. Just for the hell of it, I turned the knob on the door of that little building. I thought for sure it was going to be locked, but it wasn’t.
I peeked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching and pulled the chair into the room with me. There was barely enough room, but it fit. I folded it down. The room had a laundry tub and running water. Hot water. I cleaned up as best as I could. It was no King Motel, but it would sure get me through the night. It was a little cold in there, so I pulled my trash can liners out. I tore open the bottom seam on one and stepped into it, pulled it up to my shoulders, and put my feet into a second one. My trash liners were the closest thing I had to a blanket.
I knew I’d regret it, but I pulled my blankets back off and took out my last rock. The one I was saving for Monday. I sat there and smoked it, thinking to myself that there would be plenty of time to worry about Monday’s problems on Monday.