Matt Thompson's Blog: and the falling cease, page 2

Prologue to my new book, Oleanders in Alaska

Here's the prologue to my upcoming new book! It's also posted at http://www.oleandersinalaska.tumblr.com

Prologue

1986

Dano was bussing the last table of the day when he saw him.

The table had been occupied by Miss Jess, the resident spinster. She wasn’t really old, and she had at one time been married, but her dreams of having children were never realized. It wasn’t something she talked about openly, but St. Laurent’s wasn’t a big place and people talked. They could see it in her countenance, the way she walked hunched over, hands in her pockets clutching tissues-the walk of a much older woman. They could tell from how her smile lingered over their own children, her face aglow with the mundane-the laughing and playing and fighting of children. Still, she was all in all a happy person, and tried to display that to the world, but still they talked and there was nothing she could do about it.

Dano always felt badly for her, and felt guilty about feeling badly. She wasn’t asking for anyone’s pity, and he somehow felt that his earnest wish for her dreams to be realized was insulting.

“More coffee, Jess?” he had asked as quietly as possible. He didn’t want to disturb her; she was reading. She set her book down, using her palm as a bookmark-not setting it facedown how some non booklovers might.

“That depends.”

Dano was taken aback. He had done it. He had offended her. She could tell that he believed some of what he heard about her. She could see right through him.

“On what?” he managed to sputter out.

“If you’ll join me. I was going to get out of your hair here shortly, but if you sat with me I’d feel less like I was putting you out.”

“Nonsense. You can stay as long as you like.”

He stood awkwardly holding the coffee pot and looked out the window.

“Are you going to sit down?”



He was laughing at himself while bussing the table. He must have looked like such a fool to Miss Jess, stuttering and stumbling over his words-a grown man acting like a schoolboy. He was laughing and clearing her silverware into his gray plastic container. They clinked against her empty coffee mug. He noticed when he put it up that it was still a little warm. It unnerved him how much he lingered. The warmth was from the coffee, not her hands. It was then that he looked up and saw his friend stumbling and falling. He was sure that it was Ole, even with his recognizable gait clearly impaired. He set down the gray plastic tub and wiped his hands on the front of his apron before opening the door to his diner. The bell tied to the handle tinkled lightly. He shouted:

“Ole!”

No response. The figure stumbled again and fell flat on his face. Dano walked out fully, letting the door fall closed. He called out again, walking forward now.

“Ole! Are you alright?”

He had the figure’s attention now. He lifted his head up and looked.

“You’re laying in the middle of the road.”

Oleander was able to get up on his haunches by the time Dano reached him.

“Guess I fell a bit,” he said, rocking back slightly. Dano rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder to keep him from falling over backwards into the road again.

“A bit? Didn’t know you could fall just a bit.”

“‘s a gift.”

“Let me help you up. Why don’t you come get some coffee in the diner?”

“Bitty!” Ole basically yelled, his voice cracking at it speak volume. Dano said nothing, but hoisted his friend up and draped his arm over his shoulder.

“Gonna have to walk a little, Ole. I’m not as strong as you are.”

They made their way slowly back to the diner, the short walk a marathon with Ole’s inebriation and Dano’s rather average body strength. Dano walked with his head down, his shoulders forced to hunch with the weight of his friend. It wasn’t until they were nearly at the diner’s door that he looked up. He looked up because he heard his own bell.



The bell had been a gift from Ole actually, several years before-just after Ole had showed up in town. He had been sitting at the counter, drinking his black coffee while Dano pretended to wipe down the counter with a dish rag.

“Don’t have a bell.”

“What?”

“Your door,” he said. “There’s no bell on it. What if you’re in the back and someone shows up?”

“I don’t know.”

Here was this man who Dano had only just met, telling him how to run his diner. Ole left a generous tip for his coffee and said:

“I’ll get you a bell,” and left.

So it was Ole’s bell that rang out in the clear night as Dano dragged his friend. Dano looked up at the sound of the bell, and Ole mumbled, “Bell.” Miss Jess was there, book underarm, glasses fogged, holding the door open.

“I came back,” she said, and Dano cringed. He was too busy with Ole to wallow too much in his embarrassment. He was glad for that. As she had left earlier he had said,

“Come back any time you like,” and she had smiled, ignoring the ridiculous nature of his comment. Of course she can come back whenever she wants. This is a restaurant.

“I’m glad. Don’t know if I could have opened the door and held this one.”

“Drinking?” she asked.

“Certainly looks that way.”

They hauled Ole together into the booth she had earlier occupied. The gray tub still sat atop it, the coffee mug with the warmth still balanced on top of her plates and silverware.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Dano said.

He left for the kitchen. The swinging kitchen door rocked in and out, showing brief glimpses of Dano preparing the coffee, but as its inertia waned the window into the kitchen became smaller and smaller until Dano was obscured entirely. Miss Jess turned to Ole.

“It’s my fault,” he said without a trace of hesitation in his voice. Jess tried to shush him, but he wouldn’t listen.

“It was my fault.”

P.O.W.

This is a short story that I'm very proud of and will likely include in a collection at some point.







P.O.W.


Momma and I watch a documentary about glass. The man with the British accent says that glass is pretty much everywhere. We're constantly in contact with it. Momma says she doesn't believe it but it makes sense to me. I have my head in her lap. We're waiting for Harold to get home. The top right corner of the TV has a faint green tint. I think momma believes it but she doesn't want me to worry about cutting myself on the glass that's everywhere or something like that.





I’m at war with the trash. I stab and stash my finds in the black trash bag that’s being buffeted by the wind. It’s not real wind; it’s city wind; it’s cabs and business men’s coattails and cigarette smoke from hookers’ nostrils. Cigarette butts are the worst; they’re the acne scars and pockmarks of the pavement. They blemish the sidewalk like I do the city. That’s why they have me out here. One imperfection working on another. Trash on trash.

That’s what he called me, the man in the brown suit. It was my court day and I was sitting on the bench that they make you sit on and he walked by with another man in a suit.

“Another day of taking out the trash of this city. I’m tellin ya it wears on you.”


“We’ll see. Maybe I’ll whip your ass today and the trash will pile up a little more before getting taken out.” They laughed and I listened to the sound their shoes made as they made their way down the hallway until they were gone.






The cigarette butts prove to be my toughest enemy. They seem to multiply. I stab one and ten more pop up. I curl my toes inside the black rubber work boots they gave me and feel them move inside; the boots are a little too big. I like that. It makes me feel free. As I curl them I can feel grit between them, sand and little rocks and probably tiny pieces of glass. I read somewhere once that glass is almost everywhere but we just can’t see it. I don’t know if that’s true or not but I sure think about it a lot. I curl my toes and I think about glass. I curl my toes and I think about momma curling her toes. She had the longest toes. Harold used to say they looked like Freddy Krueger’s fingers dipped in milk chocolate. He had to relate everything to sweets. He was obsessed with sweets. I guess he still is. It doesn’t make any sense to talk about him in the past

tense. Momma would smack him real good when he said that but I could always see the cracks in her lips as she turned her head and I knew she was smiling.

She would take us to the lake with the beach and walk along the water’s edge as Harold and I splashed around and made general fools of ourselves. Once in awhile I’d see her stop and balance awkwardly on one leg as she wrapped her toes around something and tossed it away from the water, a cigarette butt. Once when we were eating PB & J sandwiches under one of the wooden tents I asked her why she did it and she said “Why not Charles Jr.? You don’t want fish to get lung cancer do you?” We’d laugh and next time she’d be right back out there along the edge of the water, in her faded jeans and cardigan; she never wore beach clothes, wrapping her milk chocolate dipped finger toes around cigarette butts and tossing them away from the water. Protecting the fish from lung cancer.

I don’t recognize the man that sits in the van and slowly follows us down the street. I don’t suppose I should. I guess some part of me expected it to be someone I would recognize from the courthouse. You know how you always imagine things in your mind, and the real thing






doesn’t live up to it? It’s kinda like that. In my mind I always pictured the judge out here, his long black robes being bustled by the city wind, using his gavel to point out trash for me to pick up. I guess I shoulda known it wouldn’t be like that because in my mind he was wearing one of those big white judge wigs and he wasn’t wearing one of those in the courtroom. The man in the van is smoking and tosses his cigarette butts out the window and one lands in front of me. I stab it and put it in my bag with all the rest; all cigarette butts are created equal and I am at war with all of them.

There was a sign in the courtroom that said The War on Crime. I guess that’s where I picked up this war business from, me being at war with the cigarette butts. The judge looked like he was in a war. He mostly looked tired. His face sagged. Some people, like famous people you see on TV on soaps and stuff have droopy parts of their faces, like their cheeks or their skin on their neck right below their chin but the judge’s whole face was droopy, no part of it was spared. He had an ash colored birthmark on his right cheek and gray stubble clinging stubbornly to all

the droops. His glasses rested on the edge of his nose. They were slightly crooked, or his nose was I’m not really sure. He looked down at me and asked me a question. I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t think he would be talking to me directly. My guy never told me that. My guy with the suit and the shoes didn’t tell me I would get to talk to the judge. Maybe he didn’t want me to; he probably thought I’d make it worse.

“Mr. Michaels, why are you in my courtroom today?” That was even more unexpected.


“Your,” I couldn’t think of the word I was supposed to use. It wasn’t “highness” but I couldn’t think of what it was. “Sir, I thought you would know that already since I’m already here and all.” He looked down at me and paused for what seemed like an eternity and then he






laughed. “Well Mr. Michaels, I believe you’re right, though that wasn’t quite the answer I was expecting.” He paused again. “Mr. Michaels, I’m going to give you a break this time. You’ll have to serve three months time and then six months of community service.”

“Thank you sir.” “And Mr. Michaels.” “Yes?”

“Don’t let me see you in here again.” I didn’t get to respond because my guy stood up and said a few things and then I was on my way out of the courtroom. It didn’t seem like much

of a battle. It seemed to me like he more or less surrendered. I guessed that was probably why the war on crime was taking so long. The judges must have been surrendering too easy.

I’m spending a particularly long time on a butt that’s stuck in a crack in the sidewalk and the man in the van tells me to keep moving. I want to tell him I’m losing the war but he probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about and with the rate he’s smoking it seems like he’s on the other side. I wonder if Harold ever has to go to war. I feel bad for Harold. I’m going to bring him a Snickers bar when I get out. He’ll still be in then, and pretty much forever after that. I feel bad for him because momma lived to be disappointed in him. I guess she’s probably disappointed in me too, but I can’t see her crying when she’s in the sky and I’m down here with the trash. Trash picking up trash.

I think everyone saw her crying on Harold’s court day. I was there too. In a suit that momma came home with unexpectedly. I didn’t think I’d be going but we both went and sat in the back row as the judge scowled and made spittle at the edge of his mouth as he talked to






Harold. Momma and I both knew he was guilty. It wasn’t anything like we were pulling for him to be acquitted, we knew, but momma still cried and everyone saw. She was wearing one of those fancy hats that matched her outfit and she didn’t even pull it down to cover herself. She cried and cried and looked at Harold as he was led down the aisle. I don’t know why she did; he wasn’t looking at us.

I know momma was ashamed because later when she was washing dishes or something like that she’d spontaneously yell out a curse and cry and continue what she was doing and say “God damn it Harold, God damn it,” and she would never look at me or anything but when she was done washing dishes or folding clothes she would get down and apologize to God for using his name against Harold like that. That’s how I know momma’s up there watching me warring my heart out. Maybe she was happy when I won my first battle, the one that landed me in this one, maybe she was, who knows. The judge didn’t put up much of a fight though.

The man in the van has to get out and shoo away the hookers. They wear bright colored swimsuits with nothing underneath and flash their pierced nipples at the van man as he tells them to move along to somewhere else. One of them is wearing flip flops and I can see that she has long toes. I keep my head down and spear the trash. I don’t want to look up and see her face. I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed with it; I’m okay with just knowing what her toes look like. I’m okay with just knowing that there are still toes like that in the world. I wonder if that hooker saves fish from lung cancer sometimes. The man gets back in the van and cranks it back up. It takes two tries.

Momma’s car would start on the second try sometimes and sometimes it wouldn’t start at all. “It’s a blessing in disguise” she would say and poke me in the stomach, “Looks like you need






the exercise,” and she would start off down the street, her purse swinging from her side and Harold and I would have no choice but to follow after her. I used to think that this God she was always praying to was full of surprises. It seemed like he disguised nearly everything; I didn’t notice like she did though. She always had an eye for them.

She saw them at the grocery store when she swiped her card and the thing beeped and the woman behind the counter would shake her head. We’d walk out and she’d ask if we wanted to have movie star night. Harold and I loved movie star night. We’d go to the gas station and momma would buy us each a TV dinner in a little box and Harold and I would eat them on fold up trays and we got to watch a late night movie. Sometimes I'd be allowed to invite my friend Rod over, but usually momma liked it to just be the three of us. Except after Harold had to leave, then Rod got to come most times.

“This is how movie stars eat,” she said. “Right off one of these tall trays so they barely have to move.” Harold and I agreed with the convenience. Momma never participated in movie star night. We were the movie stars. “I’m just the booking agent for two young talents,” she’d say. She was our agent in a way. She always made us do things that neither of us wanted to do. We weren’t particularly interested in school or anything. I liked sports and all Harold really cared about was candy and girls. I remember when she made us try out for the school play and Harold didn’t get a part so he didn’t have to do it. I didn’t find out until later that he was bad on purpose to get out of it. The play was Hamlet and I was cast as Horatio. He’s like Hamlet’s best friend and he’s supposed to be super smart and stuff. Momma and Harold got dressed up and sat

in the front row and he was eating sour gummy worms and she was clutching her purse in her lap like she did when she was nervous. I don’t really remember much about the play except for the






last line I had. Momma said I was like Sidney Poitier though; I remember her saying that. She touched her necklace when she said it. I think she was proud of me.

I stab a flier advertising draft beer. The paper crackles against the concrete but gives in to my will. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince. I put the flier in my bag with the rest of the trash. It’s getting dark out and the ratio of hookers to cigarette butts is creeping closer to one. The van man doesn’t bother to get out and shoo them anymore. The one in the flip flops, with the long toes, is gone. The street lamps are starting to flicker and hum; it’s almost time for second day. In the country you have night and day but in the city it’s first day and then second day. I hear the van shut off and I hear the shuffle of feet and I know it’s time to go back. I

haven’t looked up since the hooker with the toes but I look up now and join the ranks.


The van isn’t lit inside and we sit on bench seats and there’s a metal grate in between us and the driver. One other man sits back with us. I don’t know where he came from. He must’ve been in the van the entire time, hiding.

I was hiding when it happened. We were playing hide and seek. That’s what we did on Sundays. She’d put bow ties on Harold and me and take her time straightening them. Sometimes Harold would complain. She’d say that she just wanted to get as many good looks at us as she could before we grew up on her. I’d fidget and wiggle around in the church pew as momma got straight with God; I was waiting for hide and seek. That was my favorite part of Sundays.

The man hiding in the van looks healthy enough to me. Momma seemed healthy enough to me.






I couldn’t see her from under my bed though. By about the third game I’d have to start re-using hiding places but momma always took her time finding me anyway. She took too long when it happened.

“Were you in the van the whole time?” I ask the man who sits with the trash.


I was under the bed on my stomach. My breath was hot on my face because I was so close to the carpet. Sometimes the heels of my shoes got caught on the bed springs. They didn’t when it happened though. Momma used to say she was at war with demons she couldn’t see.

“Keep it down kid.” The hiding man says.


When I crawled out from under the bed my friend Rod was breathing really hard and his hands were on his knees and he had chocolate on his face and some on his teeth. He tried to say something but he couldn’t. He looked like Harold with that chocolate on his face.

“Did you know there’s glass pretty much everywhere? We just can’t see it. It’s all ground up in basically everything.” The hiding man glares at me.

“Look kid. I told you, keep it down.”


I left Rod and pounded down the stairs. Our stairs were green with little brown diamonds. In the center of the steps it was harder to see the diamonds. One of the bars on the handrail was missing. There was glass everywhere in the kitchen. Momma dropped a glass. She was on the floor and there was blood on her lips and teeth. It looked like when she got lipstick on her teeth.

“I think about that a lot, the glass I mean. It’s weird to think about something being everywhere but not being able to see it you know?” The hiding man threatens me with handcuffs. He dangles them in front of me: “One more word kid.”






Rod couldn’t do it but I could. It was okay because it wasn’t his momma. I understood. I dialed the numbers and propped her up against the cabinet. I don’t remember much about the ambulance ride. I suppose it was probably real loud. I looked for the blessing in that ambulance. It must of been a really good disguise because I couldn’t find it.

“Momma said she was at war with demons she couldn’t see. She must’ve lost.” “That’s it kid. You earned the cuffs. I warned you.” The hiding man stood up.

“I didn’t lose today you know. Against the trash. It was trash on trash crime but I won for sure.” The hiding man stands up and I push him away.

I ran. I ran in that hospital and the lights were really bright. The man with the suit and the shoes told me there was somewhere else for me. There was somewhere else for me to live but I ran. I pushed through a red door and a siren went off and I ran. I ran out of the bright lights and straight out into second day.

He doesn’t like that I push him and he grabs my arm and twists it hard. He pushes my hands behind my back but I scream and I kick and something happens. The other trash notice what’s happening.

Outside the hospital nurses on break ground their cigarette butts into the ground and I ran. It was my first second day on my own. The man with the suit and the shoes didn’t catch me.

The hiding man has me in a headlock and the others are swarming him and cursing him and kicking him and punching him. He is wearing glasses and they break. I can feel the glass on my cheeks and some falls on my shoulders and I can feel some under my feet.

I ran until I couldn’t.






I hope that somewhere momma is tipping her fancy hat and looking away but I know she

isn’t. She’s looking right at me, even if I’m not looking at her.


I read once that glass is everywhere. I think about that a lot.


I ran and I came across water. It wasn’t a lake. I’m not sure what it was. It was a dark second day. There were no sun substitutes around but there were plenty of cigarette butts. I took off my shoes and my socks. There was a hole in my right sock. I walked along what was probably a drainage ditch and began my war. I picked them up with my toes and tossed them away from the water. Protecting the fish from lung cancer.