Things You Need Read online

  Something clicked.

  To my right.

  Clicked again. Began clicking and whirring in rapid succession. I did as little writing in high school and college as possible, but I knew that sound, recognized its rhythm, which was undeniable.

  Printing.

  Something was printing. To my right. I turned slowly and approached the sound until I reached it in several slow, halting steps. There, sitting on a rickety nightstand at the end of a row of shelves was a gray word processor. And it was on. Clicking and whirring steadily away, printing words on a piece of paper scrolling out the top, and as I peered over, I read the words I started sidewalk scavenging for the extra cash . . .

  SCAVENGING

  I started sidewalk scavenging for the extra cash. I lost my teaching job about a year ago, one year short of tenure and in a way guaranteeing I’d never teach ever again. While Clifton Heights is large enough for several churches, a small hospital, two high schools and a zoo, it’s also small enough that news travels fast. The only place willing to hire me was the twenty-four hour Mobilmart outside town, and then only part-time, third shift. I wasn’t crazy about it, but paying rent and utilities provided plenty of motivation.

  I knew working part time for minimum wage at a gas station wasn’t going to cut it, so I had to take additional measures. For example, once a month a food bank visits Clifton Heights Methodist Church. Though it killed me to accept handouts, it lowered the grocery costs, which helped me pay bills and still eat.

  I also began collecting cans and bottles along the interstate and side roads, because The Can Man was offering six and a half cents for each. After seeing an ad in the classifieds for Greene’s Scrap Processing saying they pay for metal, I decided to start collecting scrap also, because along the roads I often found rusted parts of tail pipes, mufflers, other bits and pieces of steel and iron. Sometimes if fortune favored I found whole mufflers, catalytic converters, aluminum hubcaps, and on occasion aluminum wheels.

  That’s why I started sidewalk scavenging. Thursday morning Webb County collects trash, so Wednesday night folks leave it on their curbs. The idea struck me on the way to work one night, passing homes and their garbage: Here was scrap metal lying around for the taking.

  I did some research first, calling Greene’s for a breakdown of the scrap metal rates, and believe it or not you can turn a decent buck scrapping. The most valuable metal, copper, garnered two-fifty a pound. I rarely found much of that, maybe because most folks knew they could get decent money for it themselves. I did collect a fair amount of old brass, though—in doorknobs or exterior lighting fixtures—which went for a buck sixty a pound.

  Mostly I found steel—seven cents a pound—and a decent amount of aluminum, forty cents a pound. After a few trial runs I managed to fill my minivan with old metal lawn chairs, filing cabinets, pots, pans and old propane grills, lighting fixtures, aluminum siding, toolboxes, bed frames, you name it. If it was metal, I took it. Depending on how much aluminum and brass I collected, Thursday morning I’d earn anywhere from fifty to seventy bucks. May not sound like much, but even at the minimum, it amounted to two hundred dollars at month’s end. Combined with my gas station wages and the cans I collected, this made life bearable.

  Which was all I’d wanted. I knew what I’d done. Knew it was stupid, reckless, knew it had destroyed someone’s life. Knew it was wrong. I also knew I’d gotten off relatively easy, all things considered. I’d wanted nothing more than to numb myself. Pay my bills, eat, and live.

  Sidewalk scavenging is legal, too, but I’d already known that. Three years prior to losing my job I’d encountered a scavenger picking over my garbage, considering either an old nightstand or a cheap wooden bookcase. He declined both but showed up the following week, looking over some pots and pans before moving on empty-handed. I called Sheriff Baker and he said so long as my landlord didn’t care and no one made a mess, it was legal.

  The fellow didn’t return and I never saw him again. I remember feeling relieved because something in his disconnected gaze made me feel uneasy, as if I’d been offered a haunting glimpse of how anyone could fall out of the human race.

  It’s ironic, how I see his gaze now in my minivan’s rear-view mirror, staring back at me.

  ***

  After several false starts—one week finding only a bent section of an old storm gutter, the next a frying pan—I got better acquainted with most of Clifton Heights’ streets, avenues, cul-de-sacs and dead ends. I also learned several things I’d never thought about before, things I might’ve thought important if I still felt a connection with people.

  For example, I found most my scrap in the better sections of town, not in Center Village Apartments or out at the Commons Trailer Park. You need a certain income to buy new stuff often enough to throw old stuff out. Also, folks living in the poorer sections simply can’t afford to throw anything away, even broken things. Life has taught them to waste nothing.

  Also the poorer sections offered more moving portrayals of humanity, which probably would’ve meant more to me if I’d still been teaching English, still reading poems, plays, and short stories. I’d quit reading after getting fired. Most of the time, I numbly consumed hours of talk shows.

  One night, I drove past an apartment building which almost made me feel something. The worst slum; it had gone unpainted for years. Its exterior was a mottled gray, with no shutters on its windows, out of which hung battered air conditioners. The front steps leaned and the porch sagged in the middle.

  The lawn offered the most striking portrait. No grass at all, but someone had raked the dirt with meticulous care. Under a diseased elm sat an oval picnic table, and next to it a charcoal grill. In spite of the apathy I’d cultivated since losing my job, I imagined a small patchwork family of a mother, child, and boyfriend, perhaps interracial, savoring whatever enjoyment they could cooking cheap hamburgers or hot-dogs and eating them under that sickly old elm.

  In the middle of this raked dirt lawn sat the most lovingly cared-for flower garden I’d ever seen. It was filled with pansies, black-eyed Susan’s and irises. Mulched with black compost, ringed by stones which someone had obviously spray-painted white.

  It was breathtakingly beautiful. Someone was doing the best with what they had. I couldn’t help wondering if a Mayella Ewell lived there, and what her life was like.

  ***

  Another thing I learned about Clifton Heights I hadn’t known before: Its roads were more complicated than I’d ever realized. Every Wednesday I turned down a road, into a cul-de-sac or a residential complex I’d never seen before. I often lost my way, driving around in circles, retracing a road I’d just taken. In fact, once or twice after taking a wrong turn the premonition struck me: Maybe I’d actually gotten lost.

  In short order, however, I encountered a familiar landmark—a sign, a distinct garbage can or porch swing—and found my way again. My dull worry faded, forgotten until the next time it happened.

  Turns out, I should’ve paid closer attention to how easy it was to get lost in your own hometown.

  ***

  I never ran into anyone I knew, though I’m certain I must have driven by their homes and scavenged metal from their curbs many times. It didn’t dawn upon me right away, but soon enough I couldn’t help but think of the scavenger I’d encountered. I couldn’t help but think of his dead eyes, realizing then the same thing was happening to me. I’d been left at the curb like the refuse I scavenged through, with one major difference.

  No one was likely to come scavenging after me.

  ***

  I’d been scrapping for about six months when I pulled up to a promising pile of junk before a two-story white home with blue trim on Hyland Avenue. After a quick once-over, however, I decided to leave because like many other homes this one had boxes of books on its curb for disposal, which always depressed me. Despite not having read anything since losing my job, it still saddened me to encounter discarded books.

  This house had thrown
out hundreds of books, neatly sorted in cardboard boxes. For the first time since I started scavenging I felt the urge to rescue them (though I wasn’t planning on reading them), so I wanted to get out of there before I succumbed to the temptation. As I rounded the boxes a name jumped out from one of the covers, halting me in my tracks.

  Ray Bradbury.

  Above it: The Illustrated Man.

  The cover hit me hardest. It was older, featuring a heavily tattooed man sitting with his back to the reader. Against my will I bent over and with numb fingers picked up the well-worn book. Straightening, I opened the cover and turned a few pages to the blank page after the title page.

  Except it wasn’t blank.

  In an all-too familiar looping script, I read: To Emily. Live Forever! And, of course, it had been signed.

  By me.

  Because impossibly, this was the short story collection I’d given one of my students for her eighteenth birthday. This wasn’t her house or her neighborhood, but I felt certain, as impossible as it was, this was the book I’d given Emily Travis about a year and a half ago. Before I’d been fired for sleeping with her. Before she killed herself when she learned she was pregnant with my child.

  ***

  I remember the first time I saw Emily Travis, during my fourth year of teaching, her ninth grade year. I’d dashed from the school across a rain-pounded parking lot to my car. I was throwing my books into the back seat, struggling with my umbrella when I saw her.

  Sitting on a swing in the playground, head hanging, clutching the swing’s chains, arms limp, shoulders sagging. Sitting there in the rain, her black hair plastered to her face.

  I froze, unable to tear my gaze away. Nothing untoward reared in my head then (and nothing would for several more years), but I couldn’t shake the heartbreaking poignancy of the moment: This girl slumped over on a swing in a downpour, oblivious and uncaring of the cold rain pelting her shoulders, head and arms.

  Today, I know what I should’ve done. I should’ve shaken the moment off, resolved to alert the guidance office to what I’d seen. After, I should’ve left well enough alone.

  I didn’t do that.

  I popped the umbrella up and walked over to the playground to see if she was okay.

  Then I gave her a ride home.

  ***

  As I stood outside the house on Hyland Avenue holding that impossible Ray Bradbury collection with its impossible inscription, the memories of Emily and I tumbled through my head. I’ll never share those with anyone. I’m not going to pretend what happened between Emily and I was ‘special’. I’ll not defend nor justify my actions, because they were wrong. Though I never meant any harm, I’m an adult. I was a teacher. A figure of authority and responsibility. I failed that responsibility. I destroyed her life and mine in the process.

  When we slept together, I was only twenty-eight and she was eighteen, bearing the weight of double those years on her shoulders. However, we were first linked after that rainy day on the playground. It took several years for it to manifest into life-destroying proportions, but I should’ve been more aware. More cautious. I should’ve seen it coming and headed it off. If I had, I might still be teaching today, (at another school far away), and Emily Travis would still be alive.

  But she’s dead.

  And I’ll never teach again. There’s nothing which can change this, no matter how hard I search for it.

  Doesn’t mean I can stop looking.

  ***

  I left The Illustrated Man behind, explaining its existence away. Emily’s father more than likely donated all her books to Arcane Delights, a used book store on Main Street run by Kevin Ellison, (where I still have over a hundred dollars trade-in credit I’ll never use). Whoever lived in the house on Hyland Avenue had purchased it, ignorant of its origins. When they’d finished it, they had discarded it.

  A logical and rational explanation.

  So I dropped it among the others. Climbed into my minivan and drove away. Forgetting it, hoping to come across a large gas grill or something else nice and heavy.

  I left it there.

  Only now realizing I shouldn’t have.

  ***

  That night it was harder getting home than usual. I took wrong turns down streets I’d never seen before. Retraced my routes, driving in circles before finding my way back to Main Street. When I finally did, I sighed, my anxiety seeping out of me.

  Over the next few weeks, however, finding my way home got harder.

  ***

  The following Wednesday night rolled around as if no time had passed. I was again cruising for scrap metal. I didn’t think anything unusual at the time because it wasn’t as if much had happened since the previous Wednesday. I worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at the Mobilmart, 11 P.M. to 7 A.M., which meant I slept most of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning and early afternoon. Monday evening I usually walked one of Clifton Height’s many back roads to pick up cans and bottles. I spent Tuesday watching whatever talk show was on. Tuesday night I’d go to The Stumble Inn, order a plate of hot wings, sit, and quietly get myself as drunk as I could afford. Then, the next day was Wednesday, which meant more talk shows and then later, scavenging.

  My social schedule didn’t offer much in the way of milestones to mark passing time, and I’d become accustomed to ‘slippage’. It didn’t seem strange I couldn’t recall what I’d done since the previous Wednesday. That’s the way things were, and my memory of finding the impossible copy of The Illustrated Man had hidden itself behind the blurred scenery of my colorless existence.

  Everything changed when I found the next thing, in front of a small white Colonial with red trim on Novak Street. Soon as I stepped out of my van and saw it, several connections fired in my head. I remembered how hard it was getting home last Wednesday, how afraid I was of being lost. I remembered with a shiver The Illustrated Man I’d given Emily before she died.

  A gray Texas Instruments 8010 electric word processor. Sitting atop a box of old TIME magazines.

  It was mine.

  I knew this because of the round sticker on the keyboard’s cover, of a robot—I think from the cover of an Issac Asimov novel—sitting on a cliff, watching a sky turning purple-orange at sunset. The sticker came in the mail with my subscription to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. One of the many speculative magazines I’d consumed during college (along with Cemetery Dance and Twilight Zone Magazine) as I pounded out stories on that gray Texas Instruments 8010 electric word processor in my attempts to become a writer.

  I forgot to mention writing, didn’t I? I’d grown up in love with science fiction, fantasy, and horror. During college all I’d wanted was to write, my degree in English Education a half-assed fallback plan.

  Right then I realized I couldn’t possibly explain away the word processor’s presence. I’d destroyed it twenty years ago after receiving my thirtieth rejection. I’d gotten drunk and tossed my word processor out our third-floor dorm room window in a fit of rage. Luckily I didn’t hit anyone but I still got written up by the Residence Director and fined.

  Twenty years later there it sat on a box of moldy TIME magazines in front of a red-trimmed white Colonial on Novak Street. As I stared at it, something broke inside of me. A door opened and loosed the real reason why I’d hurled my word processor out my dorm room window. At the time I’d told myself I’d gotten fed up with writing, disgusted with the endless toil and the sting of rejection, angry I didn’t have the necessary talent.

  Maybe all those things were partly true. I realized, however, standing on the curb, it wasn’t the whole truth.

  I’d been afraid. Of my father. Afraid of his continued scorn of my dreams. I’d grown tired of weathering said scorn. Upon receiving my thirtieth rejection letter, I hurled my dreams out the window with my Texas Instruments 8010.

  I’d always assumed my rage had come from the bitter realization I didn’t have enough talent to write. Staring at that impossible word processor, however,
I understood my rage had come from knowing I didn’t have the courage to stand up to my father’s scorn. The rage had come from giving up my dreams.

  ***

  Then I remembered how I’d left behind Emily’s copy of The Illustrated Man the previous week. I gathered up the Texas Instruments 8010 and took it to the van. A piece of paper fluttered from its wheel to the ground but I didn’t stop to inspect it. The masthead appeared terribly similar to the kind on my last rejection letter, from my college literary journal, The Oswegian.

  That would be too much, seeing the same letter twenty years later.

  ***

  Emily had loved all the speculative genres as much as me. She’d grown up reading Bradbury, Poe, Matheson, L’Engle, Lewis, Tolkien, Dahl, and so many others. She’d escaped from her fractured childhood into those mesmerizing tales.

  Like I’d escaped from mine.

  ***

  I did manage to find some scrap metal. Three rusted lawn chairs and a crooked folding chair. I missed a lot after collecting the Texas Instruments 8010, however, numbly cruising the streets. Buildings, houses, telephone poles and garbage piled on curbs blurred past.

  I also had a hard time getting home. Got lost in the poorer section of town, only blundering by pure happenstance onto Old Barstow Road and the NYSEG Utility Payment center to find my way back to Main Street.

  For some reason, however, I wasn’t as afraid of getting lost. I kept driving, ignoring the garbage piled on curbs in front of houses . . .

  Because they didn’t have what I needed.

  Something inside kept pushing me to drive, drive until I found something I did need.

  ***

  Another numb week of working third shift at the Mobilmart passed by. I slept, walked for cans, and drank at The Stumble Inn. Then, once more, with seemingly no time passing, I found myself blinking awake as I pulled off Main Street onto a side street I didn’t recognize. Apparently I’d been sleep-driving into another night of sidewalk scavenging.