commonwealth

Halloween has come and gone and fall is here. There are some submission deadlines marked on my calendar so my writing energies are wrapped up in that for the moment, which is why you got a glimpse of my mostly already-written essay collection introduction last week and why you're getting another work in progress today. This one, however, is a long short story. It started out as a normal short story, but turned into a mini-novella. So now, I am on the fence about where it should land lengthwise. It's currently 15,000 words, but I'm trying to cut it down to 10k so I can submit it to an online competition. What it will end up like after that is anyone's guess.

Without further setup, explanation, or more writing on my part, the first section of my fiction story is below. If you're not in the reading mood today, I totally get it. Hopefully you can just enjoy the banner image taken yesterday at the local animal prison and go on with your day. Prisoner #394B2, a giraffe, is currently serving a ten-year sentence for larceny. Word around the yard is be sure to lock your second-floor windows. Okay, I'll stop. Here's the story:

Commonwealth

Joe Hesta is full of shit, literally and figuratively. The latter no longer bothers him, though it once did. The former wakes him abruptly on a dreary fall morning and fills him with a clear sense of purpose, actually turns him into a man of action, into the kind of man he hasn’t been in years.

Finding a bathroom’s not so simple though, as Joe has spent the last three nights parked in his weathered heavy-duty pickup truck on an uneven dirt turnoff in one of the many shaded, out-of-the-way runs tucked in the city limits of Pittsburgh. He rips off the thin sleeping bag covering his tired body and stuffs it into the rear of the cab. He jams his pillow back there as well, forcing a place for it atop a growing pile of dirty clothes and a box of sports memorabilia and a folder of loose family photos and a laptop computer that’s missing its charger and whatever else is under all that. The situation doesn’t bother him, because he knows this is a stop-gap solution. Because he knows this is temporary. He just knows it.

A gurgling wave of discomfort manifests as goosebumps on his clammy flesh. He presses the ignition button with force and says, “Come on,” out loud to himself. On worn shocks, he feels the jolt of each pothole, the press of each wind in the road. In his mind’s eye, he can picture the bright blue portable toilet – salvation! – on a worksite up ahead. It’s not his worksite, but it’s early and he suspects no one will be there at this hour. Around another bend, he sees the blue shape through a crack in the windshield right in his eyeline that he has become accustomed to enough to ignore. The balding tires leave the road and careen across the dusty shoulder. He slams it in park, grabs his phone from the charger, bounds out of the cab, and finds a rusted padlock barring his entry into the smooth plastic shell. Unthinking, he leaps back into the truck, plugs his phone back in, and peels off.

Ripples of pain now. He pulls the waistband of his son’s basketball shorts away from where it cuts into his abdomen, thinking this might help. It doesn’t. Connor’s Conveniences is a mile away. Just one mile. He can make it. If only the man in the car in front of him would step on it. “The speed limit’s 35, guy!” He’d honk, he’d hammer the horn, but he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, his registration isn’t exactly current. Another lurching spasm. He can’t remember what he ate the previous day, what could have wrecked his innards. But he hasn’t been eating well. It’s hard to when you don’t have access to a kitchen. Not that he cooks. The driver of the slow car in his way turns right without a signal and Joe lifts his eyes to the sky, thankful for this act of mercy. Now, he can see the harsh lights of the convenience store: a bright oasis under a soft grey sky. It’s in his sights. He bounces into the lot faster than intended and parks the truck.

A Rabbinic text from the ninth century declares that every person is accompanied, at all times, by a procession of angels crying out, “Make way, for an image of the Holy One is approaching!” The owner, employee, and customers of Connor’s Conveniences hear no such declaration as Joe takes stiff-legged steps through the entrance. Only the chime of a digital bell stuck to the metal doorframe heralds his arrival. He ducks into the first aisle, staying out of sight of anyone behind the counter, and hurries toward the bathroom. A sign affixed to the door states that, “Restrooms are for customers only!” He knows he'll buy something. He always does. But when he pushes on the door, it doesn’t budge. He tries the handle, panicked now, but it doesn’t turn. It’s locked. He knocks and waits for a response, anything to give him hope that this trial will end soon. Nothing. But instead of intensifying, the urge in his bowels backs off a bit. He sucks in a breath, thankful.

“Morning, Joe!”

Busted. Keeping one eye on the bathroom door, he steps out into the store and tries to appear casual, though he knows he’s sweaty. Behind the register sits JJ, and behind him, Lakshmi, his mother. “Hey, JJ. Shouldn’t you be studying?” Lakshmi smacks JJ with a receipt: Exactly.

“My mom needed some help.”

“I’m fine. I’m just sore,” she says.

“I’m only staying a little. Did you catch the game?”

A man using a tiny pencil to fill in circles on the grid of a standardized lottery form speaks up first, “Why waste your time? They suck.” And Joe gestures toward the man while maintaining eye contact with JJ: My thoughts.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in shorts. Were you at the gym?”

Joe needles on how to answer this. His son left these shorts in Joe’s suitcase after he borrowed it to go to Disney with his mother and the suitcase ended up in the truck and Joe has been sleeping in them so he doesn’t sleep in jeans because he wants to put on fresh(ish) pants in the morning. He doesn’t want people to see him for what he is: a man in between places, in a rut. By way of a response, he flexes his right arm and says, “Can’t you tell.” The movement, the flex, unlocks something feet below and his hand goes to his stomach. Joe wonders if JJ can read his dilemma on his face. But a woman, her groggy pre-teen daughter in tow, rends JJ’s attention from Joe as she tries to pay.

The daughter complains, “I don’t want that.”

“You have to eat something.”

JJ: “4.37. Taps broken.”

“Ugh. I can’t find my card. Here.” The cash register racks open and the woman says, “Keep it,” as she pulls her daughter out into the parking lot. Her daughter holds the granola bar but doesn’t open it.

Joe knocks again on the bathroom door, louder this time. He clenches as he waits for a reply. Silence. He can’t wait any longer. It’s coming.

Ashamed, he has to ask. “JJ, there someone in here?”

JJ looks over his shoulder at his mother, says under his breath, “We have to get one of those locks with code,” and grabs a key. To Joe: “Someone’s in there. Been in there awhile.”

Joe can sense relief. But JJ takes his time, dreading a confrontation with whoever is in the bathroom. He reaches the door and slams his fist against it once, twice. “I’m coming in.”

He unlocks the doorknob and pushes the door open, but it only goes so far. Joe and JJ glance down to see what’s blocking it: a leg. Joe asks, “What’s he doing on the ground?”

JJ squeezes through the thin slit and answers Joe’s question, “Narcan! Up front! And call the cops!” Joe, unable to move quickly, wobbles to the counter where Lakshmi holds a phone to her ear with one hand and a box that says “Nasal Spray” out to Joe with the other. Another customer, a headphones-wearing-teenager underdressed for the chilly morning in a t-shirt and shorts pulls open the entrance door as Joe passes it. The chime announces his entry and the teen makes eye contact with Joe. He senses the chaos inside the store and just turns around and walks away. And Joe envies him in that moment: the carefree way the teen shrugs off his backpack to explore its contents is the same way the teen shrugged off the unpleasant episode unfolding in Connor’s Conveniences. Joe used to be like that teen. Things didn’t stick to him like they do now. But they do now. They stay with Joe. Joe could read the teen’s mind when they made eye contact, he knew exactly what the teen was thinking: don’t become that guy. Joe’s eyes were desperate. His movements as he reached over the counter and took the nasal spray box from Lakshmi, ridged. And Joe agreed with the teen. He’d thought that same thought many times in his youth. But he still became that guy. 

Two Pittsburgh police officers step in through the front entrance next, the chime ringing out again, and Joe holds out the nasal spray for them to take. They ignore him and go the way indicated by Lakshmi’s outstretched arm. A curl of brown hair escapes the hat of the one officer and Joe finally realizes that she is a woman. Another chime and in walks a paramedic, himself looking like he’s overdosing on something, pale and bony and exhausted.

Connor’s Conveniences has never felt so claustrophobic to Joe. He’d been sneaking in to the use the bathroom, wash his face, and brush his teeth for months, but he has been coming here for years. It used to be a quiet, inviting place. Maybe the politicians were right, maybe things were getting worse in the city. He has rosy memories of coming here with his own father when old man Connor still owned and operated Connor’s Conveniences. It sold worms. It sold chipped ham. There were conversations. It smelled different. Customers weren’t just in and out. Joe only vaguely knew how Lakshmi came to own Connor’s business, knowing that she took it over when she became a widow. Her husband – JJ’s father, Jinto – bled out on the floor near the door, trying to read and relay the letters and numbers of a dirty license plate to a 911 dispatcher who kept saying she couldn’t understand him through his accent as the agitated drunk man who had just gored him with a crowbar drove off into the night. Lakshmi moves out from behind the counter to get a better view of what is going on in the bathroom and stands near Joe, stands on the same few tiles where her husband died. Her hand goes to her mouth. 

Through the slit in the bathroom door, Joe sees JJ yank on a bare arm, tugging the user’s body out of the way of the door. The officers enter one after another and the paramedic squeezes in last. The paramedic grabs a similar box to the one in Joe’s hand and unwraps its contents. All, except JJ, don rubber gloves. As the paramedic depresses the contents of the oddly shaped bottle into the lifeless user’s nose, Joe glimpses the clean white porcelain of the unused toilet and the subconscious mechanics of his body press the contents of his intestines closer to expulsion. He needs to go now. Snapped out of her own thoughts by the noisy gurgle beside her, Lakshmi glances toward Joe’s torso, then catches his eye. She sees him for what he is: failing. He sees her healing black eye, her wrist brace, but was never told what happened. Eyes down, Joe moves toward the drama, toward the toilet, its siren call too alluring for him to stand at a distance, to give the helpers their space. 

Joe wordlessly wills them all to move the waking-but-groggy user out of the bathroom so the rest of that story can resolve. He waits on the threshold of the door, as patiently as he can. The female officer collects the user’s items: a syringe, a comic book, a shoelace, a knit hat, an empty plastic baggie.

“Cuff him,” the paramedic says as he gathers his own things and stuffs them into his bulging bag.

“Let’s see.”

“Trust me, cuff him.”

The male officer doesn’t want to be told what to do, doesn’t want to debate how to treat the user. “You did your job. Let us do ours.”

“He’ll go ballistic in a minute. Easier now than then.” The paramedic shoulders his bag and exits the bathroom. One down, four to go, Joe thinks.

JJ washes his hands in the sink, uses the noisy air dryer, which fills the space and awakens the groggy man more. “There’s no way I pass my test,” JJ says to himself.

“Ah, man,” the user lets out as he makes sense of what’s happening, where his buzz has gone.

“Cuff him,” the paramedic calls out loudly in the second before the chime announces his exit.

Throughout all of this, the man shading in circles on the lottery form has continued to scratch in dot after dot. The scratching stops and he blows eraser bits from the paper. He grabs Laksmi’s attention – he’s ready to pay – and she returns to her chair behind the register with short steps.

The male officer lifts the user to his unsteady feet and guides him out of the bathroom. The user goes along with the prodding, seems too downtrodden to put up a fight. Two more down. JJ smiles at Joe as he steps back into the main part of the store. “Never a dull moment.”

Joe answers, “Yeah.” Only one left. Joe can taste the relief. Almost there. He knows he can hold it. But the body’s proclivity to rid itself of waste has overpowered the willpower of humans much stronger and more determined than Joe.

The female officer does one last dummy check of the space to make sure she collected all of the contraband. As she steps out of the bathroom, she says to Joe, “I’m assuming you witnessed it all. We’re going to need a statement,” and the dependable forces of a working human body release the excrement inside of Joe’s body out into the world.

***

indoor animal is curated by a human: Tim Papciak. On Mondays, he shares one link to one music video to help spark creativity in himself and in other creative types. On Thursdays, he recommends a book, movie, show, art piece, or link to some dusty corner of the internet that he believes either 1.) adds to the human experience, or 2.) serves as a coping mechanism in the year 2025. Note: this is not, and never will be, self-help content.