ADUMBRATIONS
by Quentin James
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/sudok1

I.
The residents are always sleeping when you arrive. This is good. During the day they take classes, attend lectures and workshops, and have group or individual therapy sessions. At night, they simply sleep. It’s your job to monitor them and ensure their safety, basically make sure nothing happens.  At three in the morning, you gather their meds and make the rounds.  One by one, you knock on their open doors, and they wordlessly come to you, take the pill cup from your hand to their lips, toss their heads back and swallow, and then before lumbering back to their beds and sleep, they open their mouths wide to show you the underside of their tongues so you can make sure everything has gone down and no pills are lingering. When you get to Kimber’s door, it’s closed, which is not normal or permitted, so you open it slowly. Kimber is a quiet, older woman who smiles at strangers and keeps to herself. Her grown children checked her in here two months ago because she shaved off her eyebrows, stopped eating, and tried to trade her car for a baby on craigslist. The light is on in her room, and her bed is empty but made. There’s a brief moment of panic when you see her sitting naked and cross-legged atop her six foot armoire with a bunch of ink pens in her hand.  Never before has a woman this old been so naked in front of you.  Her body reminds you a little of Yoda. She sits so still and peaceful that a part of you feels guilty for interrupting her, as if she is posing for a portrait. When she finally does moves, it’s to look at you curiously and politely ask that you stay out of her room. Regulations state that unless there is an immediate danger staff members are not allowed to be alone in a room with a resident, so you stand in the doorway asking her what she was writing with those pens, if everything is okay, why she is on her wardrobe, suggesting that she get down and put some clothes on. She, quite calmly, tells you that you should go fuck your father. You don’t over-react. In the two week training period you went through after getting hired, they stressed that de-escalation is the key. When she places the pens in her mouth and bites down cracking them open, sucking from the ends, spilling the ink into her mouth and down her throat, you can’t bring yourself to move. She looks up at you and begins gagging violently, her body contorting with each cough, her teeth and chin coated blue, her grey eyes bulging and full of tears. You walkie the support staff, and they rush past you to get her down from the wardrobe. She’s vomiting and kicking and punching and swearing, and when the support staff restrains her, she ends up biting one of them. 911 is called. She says she doesn’t blame you as they strap her onto the gurney and take her away. Her mouth is dried blue and she’s crying and she doesn’t blame anyone. Later, you’ll be fired because throughout it all, you forget or perhaps didn’t want to believe that any of it had anything to do with you. It felt like you were watching a painting come to life only to see it die before your eyes, and you cared so deeply about how it ended that you were too afraid to do anything.

II.

On the evening news, there’s a story about a boy who had just graduated from the same middle school you attended as a kid. The story says he had just started learning to play the guitar, had just gone to his first rock concert a few days ago, and had just last weekend camped out in his backyard with his friends for the first time this year. The boy was really looking forward to having a great summer, his last summer before he was to start high school. But what happened was that yesterday he was walking across some train tracks on his way to the movie theater in mid-county, and since he had his headphones on with the music too loud, he didn’t hear the horn from the oncoming train, and it struck him, killing him instantly. The story says that no charges will be filed and the train engineer is being offered counseling to ease him though any trauma or guilt he may be experiencing from witnessing such a tragedy. The boy’s classmates are holding vigil for him on the front steps of our former middle school. Towards the end of the story, the boy’s dad comes on the television, and with microphones stuck in front of his mouth and his head down trying to hide his red, puffy eyes, he tells about how his son was going to be a veterinarian. Two years ago when the boy’s German Shepherd was diagnosed with a terminal illness and about to be put down, the boy wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck and laid with it on the back porch of their home for hours. The boy’s dad says that his son had a golden heart. Then, the boy’s dad takes a second to compose himself and meekly asks that everyone respect his family’s privacy and allow them the opportunity to mourn in full. The boy’s name was Matthew Jasperson, and he was fourteen years old. The thing is that you wish you could feel worse for him than you do, but you can’t because, while of course it’s terrible, the kid at least was happy. You bet there wasn’t a cell in his body that was being wasted on anything but happiness the moment that he died.

III.

After she told him that she was pregnant, he knew that she was lying until suddenly he realized that she wasn’t. A few days later, he drove her to the hospital, a place that used to make him feel safe, a place where people went to get all better. Now he only felt the tint of yellow on everything in the waiting area. The draft of the examining room. When she dropped her clothes and fiddled to put on her johnny, he felt nervous because she stood naked so comfortably before him. As the nurses finally wheeled her away, she rubbed his arm and lightly patted it twice as if to provide comfort. When alone in the room, he rummaged through the drawers and cabinets, stuffing the bandages and latex gloves that he found into his pocket. He had no plans to use either, but he figured that you never know. All he wanted was to just pry open and bury himself inside of something. They brought her back into the room a few hours later, and she looked tired, sunken in. He asked her how she was doing. She wasn’t sure. Either queasy or nauseous or hungry or fine. Later, at home, she rested on top of her bed. The shapes and figures forming inside of her eyelids wouldn’t let her sleep. When he called her and asked her how she was doing, he expected her to say something like empty, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel like talking about it with him again. Her brain was like the moon and her thoughts were only walking on the surface. There was something greater needing to be said that eventually would never come. This is not how things should be, she said, and then softly they were done.

IV.

When you don’t have anything, it’s like having every problem in the world and none at all at the exact same time. The mornings both taunt and invite you. You sleep in a lot. You take a lot of walks. The really good ones are when there’s no one else around. Or when there are so many people around that you simply become a part of the tapestry. You walk by Laundromats and liquor stores, cheap diners and weird bookstores, real estate offices and sidewalk churches, constantly wondering about the people inside. Who are they? What do they have? What have they lost? What do they want? Can they dance? Are they scared of the ocean? Do they like Tuesdays? You walk until you get lost. And then walk some more until you’re not. You see teenagers at bus stops thumbing away on their smart phones complaining about being broke to their friends, and you want to punch them in their throats, steal their phones, and sell them for winning lottery tickets and send the money across the planet to strangers who need it more than all of you, but you don’t because you’re not really the type of person who does anything like that. One night, you wake up at two o’clock in the morning and lay in your bed for around two hours trying to sleep before you can’t stand just being anymore and figure, Just get up, asshole. You put on your shoes and walk the couple of blocks to Mass Ave. and then up it once and back down it, and the day is almost ready to get light. There is not another soul around. You sit on a bench next to a vacant taxi stand. A girl comes from down the street and sits on the other side of the bench and asks you for a cigarette. She asks if you’ve been waiting long. You tell her that you are not waiting for a cab.  She giggles and you sit in silence for a spell. She may be drunk, but it doesn’t matter because she’s not acting like it. At your apartment you have half of a hoagie left over from lunch you will eat when you get back. You tell the girl that this is the best time of day that the both of you are caught up in, how by watching the sky get lighter and the city slowly coming alive you can actually see the earth turning one slow crank at a time. She tells you that there is something in your teeth.  You tell her that it’s spinach from that half of hoagie you had for lunch.  The two of you end up talking about something and end up laughing about whatever it is. Then you both settle down and kind of just look at the sky being strangers alone together. The clouds tinged pink, the sky always some shade of blue. She asks you if you want to go to a party. You kind of don’t but say yes because who knows, and she gets up and says, “Follow me.” She starts down the street and you follow her. For twenty minutes you walk, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Lefts and rights down unfamiliar blocks. When you get to the place where she was trying to go, an apartment, she knocks on the door and rings the doorbell and then tries to call somebody on her cell phone, but no one comes to let you in. She looks at you and shrugs her shoulders and says, Damn. Damn is right. You don’t know where you are. Then she says something about it being hard to trust people, and the two of you laugh good and hard about that. Then a cab drives by and she hails it saying goodbye. You say, Take it easy because she was nice and you want her to remember you well. Then she gets in and leaves and you spend the next hour trying to find your way home to that hoagie. Damn is right. Slowly slowly it turns.

V.

Your cousin calls your cell phone and tells you he wants to show you something.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Nothing,” you say.

“Come over. I want to show you something.”

“Okay.” You don’t ask questions. The answers just lead to more questions. When you pull up to his duplex, he’s outside with his daughter, Marnie. The three of you walk through the neighborhood for twenty minutes or so. Your cousin has a meandering walk. He wears untucked, short sleeve, button-down shirts with khaki pants every day. His infinite confidence is betrayed by his eyes always drifting to the ground as if his head is just too heavy to hold up. He likes Tyler Perry movies, never lies, loves animals, is very superstitious, and eats three square meals a day with two snacks mixed in. One snack a little bit after lunch and another before going to bed. He’s married and has a precious little daughter named Marnie who he would do anything for. He would rob a bank if she asked sweetly enough. He works for UPS, never knew his father, jogs three miles every morning before his shift, and is probably the best friend you will ever have. You’re not even sure if he’s really your cousin. The sky is turning purple like the palm of a hand. You become content with the idea that this is how it could be forever. Just walking. There are worse ways to be. You get past the houses of the subdivision and into an area a little more wooded. At one point your cousin asks you why you didn’t come over to his place for dinner a few weeks ago, and you tell him that you didn’t know you were invited, and he says, “Bullshit. I spoke to you on the phone about it,” and you vaguely remember the conversation. You ask him how his wife is doing, and he tells you that she worries about you.

“She doesn’t need to do that,” you say.

Your cousin says, “She can’t help it.”

If you had been in school with Matthew Jasperson, you would have called him something like Matty-J. Hey, Matty-J, you’d say and then slap hands five or put out a fist to bump every time you passed him in the halls. Matty-J would wear his headphones everywhere he went. He’d be listening to the Chili Peppers or Blink 182 or something like that. He’d probably run cross country and maybe he’d be in student council. You would have been cool with Matty-J. But he’s dead now. His dad was crying on the TV. The girls who had crushes on him and the boys who looked up to him are lighting candles in front of the middle school.

You finally come to what your cousin wants to show you. “There it is,” he says. It’s a rusty shed that stands before a small chain link fence behind which is a small creek. It looks like years have passed since anyone has been inside. Just rotting away. What a world you live in where old and dying structures are never given proper burials. You all three go up to it, and your cousin knocks, but nothing happens. He tries to open the door, but it won’t budge.

“Is she in there?” Marnie asks. Your cousin puts his hand up to silence her and takes a few steps back from the door. You and Marnie do the same. Then he yells, “Hey!” No one answers. “Hey!” he yells again. “Give me back my dog!” The thing is, you didn’t even know he had a dog. But now things are starting to make sense and you begin to understand your role. There’s a small four-paned window in the middle of the door that you try to look through but there’s a black sheet or a curtain or a towel blocking your view.

“Nobody’s got your dog,” a voice calls out flatly from the other side. This sets your cousin off. You’ve never seen him like this before.

“Give me my fucking dog!” he screams.

“Nobody’s got your dog,” the voice says.

“Give me my fucking dog!”

“Nobody’s got your dog.”

“Give me my fucking dog!”

“There’s no dog in here.”

They go on like this for a few minutes. Just a chorus of nonsense being spewed back and forth. You take a moment to bask in it. The rage your cousin is exhibiting. The unrelenting aloofness of the voice on the other side of the shed.  Marnie looks not afraid but only curious as to what will happen next. Everybody wants something. Not everybody is going to get what they want. But you decide that you are. Today you are.

You take about three paces back and get in a three point stance like you know what you’re doing. Your cousin sees you, and his face turns into confusion. “You look like you’re puking into a toilet,” he says. And no, you’ve never played football before, not even as a child, and sure, the way you look must be ridiculous, but you don’t have time to laugh because you’re too busy charging that door. When you get close enough to lower your shoulder, just before you make contact with it, you catch the faint figure of yourself in the four-paned window. You look old, once lived in but now abandoned and ready to be filled. There is a stolen dog to attend to, and it feels good having a purpose. Your shoulder pounds the frame knocking it from its rotting frame, and you keep driving your legs until the whole thing is off of its hinges and you tumble onto the muddy ground of the shed face first.

And whoever owned that flat and aloof voice is gone. There is a broken back window that he appeared to bolt out of. But the dog is there. It lies in the center of the shed on a pile of neatly folded dirty tarps and blankets, and it’s motionless. It might be dead. Its tongue hangs like a dirty sock from its mouth. But worse than that are the thick gashes of red on its neck and near its anus and the red meat of its lower jaw and the pink scrap where its ear used to be. So many different shades of red, but you can’t tell one’s meaning from the next. Pieces of the sun and sky creep through the large cracks in the ceiling and wall. “Is it alive?” Marnie asks and touches its thigh. The dog stirs slightly. Its eyes all humanlike turn to you. This is when your cousin begins to cry. Marnie grabs his hand. “I named her something,” he says, “but I don’t want to say what it was.” They stay holding hands staring at the dog for a while. You wonder why he brought her here because it just doesn’t seem right but figure it’s for a reason he would justify and you couldn’t understand.

There are more things of course that will be done, but that burden isn’t yours. You realize that this is not even your story. Few are. The beginning and end don’t belong to you; you were merely here for the middle. Either they will try to save it back to life or they will quickly do something now to end its suffering. It has nothing to do with you. You realize that there is somewhere else you are supposed to be. But what has always escaped you is the first step to take to get there. So instead, a decision is made to root yourself into the place where you stand. There is a shovel among the tools in the corner of the shed that you see, so you grab it and take it outside where you begin to dig a hole with the hopes of never having to use it, which is as good a decision as any, and one you’re proud for making.

***

Quentin James is a member of the sketch comedy group Friends of Gertrude (http://fogcomedy.com/), and his comedy team The Quiet Generation has had written works published by The Windsor Review, ShimmyHoots Review, and Arcadia Magazine. His one act play “There is No Good News” (also inspired by the works of David Mogolov) has been produced at ImprovBoston, SLAMBoston, and MadLab Theater Roulette. His screenplay Growing Things, a psychological thriller written with Jenna Sullivan, won the 2014 Grand Prize at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. In addition, he is a writer and producer of the web series Hot Dog and The Ninja (http://charlesriverfilm.com/), which is really about just a hot dog and a ninja.  Quentin received his M.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and originally hails from St. Louis, MO.