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the archive(s):
issue no. 6:
Blindspot/ Michael Jarrette-Kenny
When I turned 18, I got a job at Lemmy's wire and cable, working the 12-8 shift. It's not that I couldn't have gone to college; I just didn't feel like I had it in me. Besides I didn't have the money.
The warehouse was pretty grim; everything painted this dull institutional gray to match the concrete floors, like some burned out bunker from a Twilight Zone episode. It was just across from the town cemetery and the pavilion where Quack and me used to play floor hockey.
My '81 Reliant was running its last miles; the driver side door was held on with an aluminum clamp and some twine, the driver seat had been torn from the floor and was held in place with a beer cooler. I'm 6'2'' but I still had to slide down the seat to reach the gas petal. The poor rust bucket couldn't go faster than 15 miles an hour. Because the shift was so late I could take the back roads and not have to worry about other cars pulling up behind me and blasting their horn. Half the time it wouldn't start anyway and I'd end up hitch hiking.
* * *
There's something about being awake when everyone else is asleep, a feeling like the world's not real, mixed up with this sense that you're violating the rules, like when you're a little kid and you read comic books under the covers with a flashlight, waiting for the sound of your mom's footsteps outside the door. I guess that's how I felt at first, but after awhile the loneliness started getting to me, being cooped up in this warehouse, all alone with these loud churning machines. It's different when you're outside under the stars, you feel so small and insignificant, but at the same time that makes you kinda feel like you can slip by and be free for a little while, before somebody notices and screws it all up.
* * *
I'm the first to admit it: I'm a lazy bastard with no pride in my work. You're supposed to think about the paycheck and not worry about the utter uselessness of what you're doing, but ten minutes into any job I would start thinking about it and it would spoil everything. All I did every night was feed copper wire off of spools into this menacing looking mass of metal, a contraption straight out of Doctor Seuss, with all these unlikely angles and spouts. You'd pour the plastic pellets into the top of the thing and it would melt the plastic and feed it over the wire, collecting it down on the other end on these huge metal spools. There was this metal bar that looked like a fireplace poker with a hook on the end that you'd cut the wire with as it was moving, and the fucking thing felt like it could take your arm off. I thought for sure that one day the morning crew would find me, a big lump cocooned in a mass of stereo cable. After 6 months they moved the factory up the road and the mullet man who serviced the machinery (Keith or Kevin or Kenny) informed me that I wouldn't be accompanying them to the new location.
* * *
Towards the end, I would crawl home just as the sun was coming out and pass out until I had to go to work. It got so bad that when I was there I would just sit there in front of the extruder listening to my walkman, waiting for that faint glow of sunlight to come creeping through the plate glass windows, all smoke stained and murky. I'd almost start tearing up at the sight of it, feeling stupid and a little crazy. Anyway, this place kind of reminds me of that, that feeling of waiting in the dark, waiting for some sign that you could go home.
* * *
A few weeks after my unemployment ran out, I filled out an application at this convenience store one town over and got a job working the register. This skinny blond guy Dan was the store manager. He was only two years older then me, fresh out of community college. I thought he might be a little light in the loafers. Not that it bothered me or anything; I figure it takes all kinds, who am I to judge?
Anyway, Dan didn't seem to mind if I took a pack of smokes or grabbed a candy bar now and then and he occasionally put on the local rock station instead of that light music junk they play in dentist offices. That put him way ahead of my previous bosses.
* * *
I know I said I wouldn't go into it, but I guess I might as well get it over with. See, everybody expects you to have a reason for doing things, and if I could clear one thing up that would be it. My girlfriend didn't leave me (I would have to have one for that to happen), I didn't have a fight with my parents, my dog didn't get run over or anything. It happened like this.
There was this old lady who'd always be hanging out in the parking lot. Dan said she'd been there forever, back when the place used to be a liquor store, sort of like a local celebrity. Everyone called her Iris but I don't think that was her real name. She reminded me of a fairytale witch somehow; the matted gray hair scrunched up underneath this grease-stained Yankee's cap, a filthy floral print dress covered by a fluffy blue coat with a fur-trimmed hood. I didn't really talk to her. I'd just sort of watch her while I drank my morning coffee. Every day she would show up and start digging through the dumpster, collecting bottles and other knick-knacks, throwing everything into this rust encrusted shopping cart. Sometimes she would come in and by a cup of tea, cradling it between her fingerless gloves.
"That'll be $1.10," I'd say.
"Dollartendollartendollartendollarten." She would keep whispering under her breath as she searched her numerous pockets, like she wasn't saying it, like she was rehearsing to say it.
That was really the extent of our conversations. At first I thought it was entertaining to watch her. I know it sounds coldhearted; you're supposed to feel bad for people like that, but I didn't see it that way. She didn't seem miserable. Whenever she discovered something it was like she won the lottery; this smile would just break through. I don't know about the rest of her life, but for that one instant, every morning, she was a kid in a candy store. It occurred to me that her digging through the dumpster like that made a hell of a lot more sense then me polishing the doors to the frozen food cases 20 times a day. At least her job made her happy.
Anyway, about three months or so after I started, one of the head honchos came in just as I was starting my shift. He was waiting in the parking lot, slumped against the wheel of a black Lincoln Continental, one of those cars that must get 3 miles to the gallon. He was in his mid fifties and very overweight, his jowls covered with this thin veneer of black hair, wearing those large framed glasses that went out of fashion around 1977. I think that the light from my headlights must have startled him awake, because he seemed all disconcerted. I turned off my car and watched him for a second, finishing my cigarette. He somehow managed to squirm his way out from beneath the steering wheel, meeting me at the door, thumping a clipboard against the side of his legs.
"Can I help you?" I asked.
"Can he help me, he says." He smiled sarcastically, revealing these really small teeth, like his adult teeth had never come in. The smile evaporated almost instantly.
"Yeah, you can help me. I'm Gerhardt, from the corporate office."
"Well what can I do for you, Mr. Gerhardt?"
I tried being extra polite because it seemed to irritate him.
"Well for one, you can tell me why you're standing here when you're supposed to be opening the store?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know if he expected an answer. I had learned from watching Dan's interactions with the regional managers that whether you answered or not, it wouldn't do any good, so I chose the option that didn't require any effort. He stood in the doorway, watching me, blocking my path as I dragged the papers in. I felt myself begin to sweat as I struggled with the binding. He had taken up a position next to the coffee station and was already on the third page of what I assumed was a lengthy checklist. I brought out my drawer from the back and started the coffee maker.
The next few hours dragged by like that, him telling me I was doing it all wrong, and me coming up with some lame excuse.
Around 7:00 I went to the back of the store and started loading up the frozen pizzas in the case next to the microwave. A second later, I heard Gerhardt start sputtering.
"What's going on?" I said
He didn't answer just pointed out toward the dumpster.
"That's just Iris," I said.
"You know its name? What the hell is going on around here?"
He took off behind the counter and picked up the bat phone. We called it the bat phone because it was only supposed to be used when the place was getting robbed or if a customer was bleeding to death in the parking lot
"She's just some harmless old lady, she's not hurting anyone."
"Not hurting anyone? Do you think our customer want to see that when they stop off to get something to eat?"
It didn't take long for the cops to get there. I recognized Travis. He usually came in for coffee in the morning. He was guy you knew in high school who you would least like to have carry a gun. Still he was all right. He came toward Gerhardt as he went out into the parking lot.
"What's the problem?"
"What, is everybody blind around here? That's the problem."
He gestured toward Iris who apparently didn't notice the whole fracas surrounding her.
"Who are you, sir?"
He did a double take, as if asking for his name was a deliberate attack on his integrity.
"I'm James Gerhardt, head of quality control for Miller Farms and I want to charge her with trespassing."
Travis laughed.
"What the hell is so goddamn funny?"
Travis's smile disappeared beneath his mustache, one of those mustaches that only cops seem to wear.
"Did you try asking her to leave?"
He didn't hesitate for one second.
"Of course, I informed her that she was on private property and she refused to move."
He turned to me.
"Is that what happened?"
I know what I wanted to say but I couldn't. When the words came out of my mouth I instantly felt sick.
"Sure, I mean I was inside but..."
With that I went back into the store, I couldn't watch him put her in the back of the car. I went and got my coat. By the time I returned they were gone, Iris and Travis. Gerhardt kept yelling at me as I got into my car, but I don't think I heard a word he said.
I sat around the house for the rest of the week watching TV. My mom was off with her boyfriend in Florida, so I had the house to myself. When she called to make sure I paid the electric bill I didn't tell her I had quit my job; she would have started in with that lazy bum trip, and I didn't feel like hearing it.
I drove by the store a couple times to pick up my check but I didn't have the nerve to go in and get it. Iris was never there.
* * *
That Friday night I dug out a bottle of my mom's Vicodin from the back of the medicine chest and washed it down with some cheap red wine I found in the back of the liquor cabinet. The pills were huge and felt like pieces of chalk in the back of my tongue. When they mixed with the vinegary wine I could barely keep myself from choking.
After I got down the last of the pills, I lay back on the couch and closed my eyes. I don't know how much time went by, but when I went to move, my arms felt like concrete. I wondered to myself if anyone would show up at my funeral, I tried thinking about it like I didn't care, about how good it would be not to have to think about anything anymore, to have to go through another fifty years of disappointments and stupid jobs. I didn't know how people did it. I guess they just tuned out, tried to think about getting messed up on the weekend or going on vacation to Disneyland or whatever. All I could see was how crappy everything was in front of me.
* * *
Like I said, I tried to concentrate on dying and all that, but I couldn't focus at all, mostly because I had left the TV on with the volume just loud enough to make my last moments on the planet miserable. I tried shutting it out, but just when it felt like I had succeeded, this loud piercing voice would punch through the gauze that surrounded my skull. It must have been one of those infomercials for hair spray that they put on after they run out of re-runs, when insomniacs are flipping through the channels, tormented by visions of their hair falling out.
I started imagining hell as an unending commercial, some mad scientist type hunched over you, emptying aerosol can after aerosol can, shouting into your face "for a limited time, if you act now, only 20 installments of $19.99."
I knew that I couldn't die with that droning in my ears. The rest of the group thinks I'm full of shit, that I won't admit that I just didn't want to die. I tell them they don't know what they're talking about. Somehow I got to the phone and dialed 911. I don't remember doing it, but I did it.
* * *
That's it. I know it's not much of a reason but that's how it happened. Maybe it will make more sense to you then it does to me. I still can't stand the thought of going back to everything the way it was. I don't think I'm crazy, but I guess that's the thing about being crazy‹you can't see things clearly.
One thing I know though. Next time, I'll make sure to leave the TV off.
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