by Macy Craig
9/29/2015
The Bar
The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt is afraid that he is getting old. He recently traded out his mid-1990s compact for a Tacoma, but it feels empty with nothing to haul. The Man is turning 43 in a couple of weeks.
He pulls his truck into the parking lot of a roadside lodge and runs through the rain to the bar beside it. The TV is playing. He leans against the wooden wall. Mauer hit two home runs, and we watch them on repeat. The bar is too loud for him, so he leaves.
Outside, there’s a woman smoking. The rain outside makes the man hesitate. She asks him if he’s alright.
“Why?” he asks.
She says he doesn’t look alright. She says that she can tell. She’s a high school teacher.
The Man nods briskly. “I’m fine.”
He walks back to his Tacoma, the one with the canoe on the top. He sits in there for a minute, wondering where to go, watching The Teacher lit up by the bar lights.
The Gas Station
The gas station minimart down the street never closes, even though it probably should. The Attendant is splitting his time between high school and night shifts. He sleeps when he can. When the bell rings, he's sprawled on the counter, face against a paper notice proclaiming CIGARETTES SOLD AT STATE MINIMUM. He snaps to attention.
The Man enters and throws on his baseball cap. The Attendant notices a sort of dark limpness to him, almost ironic against the bright blue of his Hawaiian shirt.
“Keep sleeping,” The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt grunts. “I’ll wake you up when I’m ready to check out.”
The Attendant watches him go into the bathroom before turning around and grabbing a pack of cigarettes behind him. The Attendant flips the pack around in his hands and considers what it would be like to smoke, how the smoke would feel in his lungs. He begins throwing it up in the air, seeing how many times he can clap before catching it again. He’s at six when The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt loudly sets a two-liter Dr. Pepper on the counter.
The Attendant checks him out, watching his eyes bore holes into the walls and go off into some other place. “Will that be all?”
The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt stops, looks at his hands, and replies, “Can I get two Gopher 5’s and a pack of Lucky Strikes?”
The Attendant nods and uses his computer to print out the tickets. “Red or Gold?”
“Whichever’s cheaper.”
“I’m sorry, they’re both $11.”
The Man considers. “I think I’ll take Golds.”
He pays in cash.
The Hiking Trail
The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt parks at the mouth of a hiking trail. The battery-powered seat recliner whines as it lays him back. His dad used to smoke Luckies, the smell made him nauseous. He grabs a Post-it note out his pocket and writes a short message, a kind of explainer. He sticks it to the lottery tickets, folds them up, and puts them in his pocket. He puts the Lucky Strikes on the dashboard and stares at them.
He’s hungry, but he’s only got one meal and it’s packed away for the night. He wills himself to sleep.
***
9/30/2015
The School
The Attendant is just another face in chemistry class. He picks the skin under his fingernails raw as his teacher rotates a model of a trans-2-butane molecule on a reflective plane. The Attendant draws shapes in his notebook that twist and turn over themselves the way he sees people to be.
He quietly rips the page out of his notebook and folds it into perfect quarters. The Teacher asks if he is listening and he lies to her. He gets up and takes the hall pass. Sometimes, to stay awake, The Attendant has to walk laps around the school.
He walks the path that he has walked a million times before.
The Lake
The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt hit the lake at eight in the morning, before most campers had woken up. He didn’t bother getting a permit, and he left his keys on the roof of his car. He paddled as far as he could. He lost track of the portages.
By the time he found a beautiful spot, the sun was low in the sky, and the temperature was dropping. He hauled the canoe up onto the rocky beach, took out his canoe pack, and set up his hammock tent. He rehydrated soup on his electric stove and moved to his hammock to eat.
The Man in the Hawaiian Shirt had wanted to have a kid, had always assumed that he’d take his kid canoeing. He finishes the soup and takes a few handfuls of pills. The world is so beautiful on the water. He sets his soup bowl on the ground and zips up his hammock. He pulls out his notepad and writes a few messages to no one. It takes him a few tries, he doesn’t find them all too important. He never understood how to talk to people. When he gets it right, he slips the note into his pocket next to the tickets.
The drawing is tonight; he doesn’t care if he wins.
His hammock sways as he takes in his last night.
The House
The Teacher flings her computer bag against the wall and throws herself onto a couch in her small living room. The Husband looks over from the kitchen table and asks her what is wrong.
She sighs. “The kids tire me out.”
Her husband sits on the arm of the couch and stares at his hands. He asks her why she feels that way. They sit in silence for a long time.
“I can tell that they're not listening, even when they say they are. I don’t know why I even try.”
He says he thinks it’s because she cares.
“I just want to take a trip,” she starts, staring at the popcorn ceiling, “a trip into the wilderness with a canoe. I saw a man going into the Boundary Waters last night. I want to do that.”
______
Macy still struggles to steer a canoe.
[GO HOME.]