Waste (19 page)

“Mmmmmm! Mmmmmmuuuu!”

The Lorax was naked. His arms and legs were duct-taped to the chair. His eyes stared at the ceiling as Jamie tried to pull the gray tape off his mouth. The tape pulled off skin and hair with it, leaving tiny beads of blood behind. The Lorax coughed up a mess of half-eaten mushrooms and broken yellow pills straight down his chest. Jamie

noticed all the baggies were empty, the prescriptions too. The Lorax coughed again and more gray mushrooms fell into his lap.

“Oh, Larry, you dumb motherfucker…what did you do?”

All the baseball cards were torn up into little pieces. Jamie climbed the counter and looked for a pair of scissors, a knife, even a broken piece of glass sharp enough to cut through the thick gray tape. More of it was wrapped around the Lorax's torso too, pulled taut against his sagging belly. The exposed skin was red and blistered. The Lorax stretched his mouth out.

“You ever—ugh, blah—you ever watch the Pirates this summer?”

“You know who did this shit?” Jamie said. “You fucking told them, didn't you? And you can't even get that shit right! Where are your goddamn scissors?”

“There was this game this summer. I mean, what a game,” the Lorax said. “I don't know if I can stay a true fan after watching it. There are no scissors. You know that, Jamie. They aren't stupid. No knives either. Nothing sharp. You shoulda seen this game though, buddy.”

“A knife? You got nothing here?”

The Lorax kept talking.

“You don't watch baseball, do you? Back in June, and my Pirates, I don't even know why I like the Pirates, do you? It's kind of like cheering for a corporation if you think about it too hard, so of course I don't. I'm just surprised you're here. I thought you'd be gone before me, Brock or Jamie or whatever.”

Jamie kept digging through the drawers. The smell of burning fungi wafted through from the old dentist's office. A picture of two wolves began to melt in the waiting room. They watched Jamie through the hole in the wall, trapped behind their glass frame.

“Not even, like, an X-Acto? A razor?”

“Earned ten runs in the first inning, first inning. Insane,” the Lorax said. “Just insane. What a game it coulda been, right? Ten runs. Game is over. But no, they just had to fuck it up. And that's what happens. You try to get ahead, but it's over. You're never golden, you slip up. Like the whole giraffe thing.”

“Larry, I want to fucking untie you before the whole place goes up, if only to kick the shit out of you, but you aren't helping.”

“So why isn't your face fucked up?” the Lorax asked. “I never did lose my teeth. What did I tell you? Oh, I've got a lot of stories. Like the one where I crashed my bike into the green box on my street, or when I bit down on a roll of change. Truth is they plucked them like fucking raspberries back when Crane was bein' all crazy. Pop. Just 'cause I did a little biz here and there on the side. Only a little though. Like raspberries, man. The teeth. You ever pick raspberries?”

The Lorax's voice was still calm and level. Jamie slammed another drawer.

“Larry, I need you to shut up and think.”

“They made me eat it all, you know—all of it. I had to eat it all, Brock…Jay…what do you even know? Even the insulin pills. You sell those to the kids who don't know what they're getting.”

Another drawer. More shredded baseball cards.

“Who did I tell what?” the Lorax asked. “The guy with the lion. Kilkenny on the farm. They killed him dead. But the Pirates in this game, I tell you, man, it just goes to show you can't bet on a guaranteed thing.”

Jamie gave up on the drawers. The smoke gathered around the ceiling of the room. Pig shit and dying mushrooms. He staggered away from the back wall and began to pry at the tape while more mangled mushrooms and pill capsules fell out of the Lorax's mouth and onto the dirty floor. The Lorax didn't seem to notice the chunks dripping from his toothless face.

“It was June eighth. I remember 'cause it was my birthday, and they took me out to get wasted, both of them. I had this kid working for me, Condon—Astor's old bitch boy—but couldn't get him to come out. Just stayed cooped up in his place and never comes out. So just me and those bearded fucks. And we got ten runs in the first inning. Barry Bonds whacking home runs and killing it out there. And it's against Philly, fucking Phillies. All their fans are assholes. Ten runs. I'm not even from Pittsburgh. Never even been there, but I'm watching this game 'cause it's my birthday. And they popped my teeth like raspberries. Pop. Just like that.”

More smoke filled the room. Jamie tried jamming his keys into the tape, but they wouldn't cut through the thick fibers. On his knees, he began to saw back and forth against between the Lorax's wrists. It was quiet outside the sound of crackling drywall.

“Shut the fuck up, Larry. Shut the fuck up for like five seconds,” Jamie said.

“I had to tell them, you know, had to—it wasn't like a choice, you know. It took a lot to steal that beast. You wouldn't believe how much Kilkenny cried before we finished him off, guy was all water. Musta pissed himself. But that game Rooker, the guy calling that ballgame. That was his name. He was calling it in Philly.”

“Larry, you gotta help me with this shit. Try to lean back or something.”

“They made me eat it all,” the Lorax said. “Even the little weird hormone shit they give the guys who wanna sprout tits. But not Jim Rooker. He was calling the game. He said he'd fucking walk home from Philly if the Pirates lost. Counting your chickens before they die, right? Or eggs? 'cause that's what they did, they died right there in front of everybody. Embarrassing.

“It was like watching an execution in slow motion, but baseball is always in slow motion. It was my birthday, and they'd just got the lion too. The team blew the lead, ten runs. Do you remember? They were supposed to get you too. They didn't even warn me, didn't even bring the drill. Never used tape before. That was new, that was very new…”

The Lorax droned on at a steady volume as the room got smaller and smaller.

“Larry! I'm trying to—”

“You. They were supposed to get you first and then they got me, because Crane knows. I'm like a free agent. I play out the contract and the contract ends. They really, really made me eat it all, man—”

“That wasn't even….You can't keep one thing straight, can you? You even recognize my face? That wasn't even my fucking address on the prescription…”

The Lorax was not listening to Jamie. He wasn't even listening to himself.

“That game. Don't matter how far you're ahead. Don't matter. It isn't over till the fucking ninth inning. Yeah, they found me. And I always wanted to be a big deal, you know? This operation here, this was just a beginning. This wasn't an end. I wanted to be like a Mazeroski, the Maz. I wanted that big walk-off. I could hold it on my own out here. I still hung out with them after that too, even after they took my teeth. They tore up my Maz, too. Eight-time Gold Glove winner!”

Smoke was everywhere. Jamie backed up from the body in the chair. The voice kept pushing at him through the smoke. The same droning voice that told those two all about the lion and the address. It was the wrong address, and now Brock had no teeth at all. A busted fucking jack-o'-lantern, the kind you find shattered on the street after Halloween, and the voice kept speaking inside that cloud of smoke laced with pig feces and burning fungus. The ceiling tiles rippled and began to fall. Jamie dodged the smoking panels and crawled toward the door. Sweat smeared the smoke onto his forehead.

“They coulda left me anywhere,” the Lorax said. “That's what they do—like a warning. You don't need to sign it because you know who it's for and what it means and they shoulda gone to you first, not me. But they knew, they always know. You can't blow a lead like that. No one gets the walk-offs. No walk-offs for anybody, just more of the same. I can't—you still there?”

The body back at the butcher shop was probably frozen. The bone can wasn't supposed to be outside. The voice kept coughing and Jamie pushed his way through the door. The thick fumes made his eyes water and he hacked on the pavement outside. His spit was black and chunky. The Lorax kept talking, his voice finally rising as the flames began to nip at his bare, pimpled skin. His voice spat the words into the haze while Jamie watched the whole plaza smouldering.

“It was my birthday, and they took me out to the bar, and there was a ten-run lead in the first. You can't stay fucking ahead, though. Never. Final was fifteen to eleven and the announcer said he was gonna walk home all the way from Philly back to Pittsburgh. All the way. They didn't even take me to the woods and let me crawl, you know that? Just left me here.”

Jamie stumbled back toward his car. He didn't hear any sirens, just the voice of the Lorax tunneling into his brain. He could hear his lungs crackling from the heat, the smoke choking each individual cell until they collapsed on top of one another.

“The announcer walked home and they wouldn't even let me crawl out of my own.”

Jamie climbed into the car and turned up the radio. His knees popped with the static. He couldn't find a station. A lone flame swayed from the roof of Harry's Holistic Hobbies like a sputtering signal flare. Jamie closed his eyes and tried to start the engine. The cold air clutched it tight and the motor sputtered in convulsions. He needed to return the message.

“It doesn't matter how far you get ahead, Brock. Brock, yeah? Doesn't matter, not until the ump says you're done. You can't end it till then—and it's always too late.”

Jamie let static fill his ears instead. The body was still waiting for him. A letter they didn't bother signing. He was the one who ran over the lion. It was addressed to him. Jamie wiped his hands across his lap. Each finger left behind a sticky red mess.

“It was my birthday, and they took me out for a drink…”

Jamie drove out of the parking lot. He didn't bother to signal when he turned onto the street.

Police would later assume it was insurance fraud tied to the estate case. The bed sheet curtains across the street remained closed as the Lorax burbled and melted in the burning dark.

23

The bullet ricocheted four times before embedding itself in the skull of Francis Paul Garrison. It first bounced off the temple of the cow on the killing floor of the Tillson Abattoir and then ricocheted into the rafters. It then struck a two-inch-wide steel beam that fired the slug back down at sixty miles an hour, where it eventually collided with the concrete floor and sprang back up toward Francis's face. As he tried to protect himself, the lead passed directly through his left palm before burrowing deep into the bone between his temple and right ear. Medical staff on site agreed it was too dangerous to remove the slug, and Francis Paul Garrison quit two months later without any explanation. No cows rejoiced. There was always someone else to pick up the gun.

“Dad, you need to open the door and let me in,” Jamie said. “It'll honestly take five minutes. Just open the door. I will leave you be, all right? Open the door.”

“It's almost two in the morning.”

“I can tell time, Dad.”

“Your mother's asleep,” Francis said. “She can't be disturbed. You can't just come whenever you feel like it and disturb the schedule we have here.”

Jamie's father was never the same after that bullet passed through his hand. In the first few months afterward, Francis sat in the living room with his cigarettes and let the smoke eat a hole through the ceiling. He no longer cared to watch his embattled Leafs lose season after season, and he stopped trimming his hair. The only reason he cut his nails was the annoying click they made against the television remote. He left the clippings in his lap.

The hole in Francis's hand never fully healed. You could poke your pinkie finger through it when he was asleep, but he didn't close his eyes very often. Francis Garrison did not believe he deserved to participate in the world after that incident with the cow. He had interfered enough, caused enough sorrow, eaten from the wrong tree in the wrong garden during his time on this earth. The problem was knowledge, he decided. Knowledge of that gun and everything else—the machines of man had betrayed him. Francis sat in that chair while the Cold War crept past and watched men try to destroy each other with all their hard-earned knowledge packed into warheads and submarines. He still ate meat, but he never asked about its origins. He had uncluttered his mind of all the useless facts his cells had collected over the years. Each synapse was issued an expiry date.

“I'm already halfway in the door anyway,” Jamie said. “I promise I won't waste any of your precious fucking meditation time or whatever. Go sit by the TV and I'll find it myself. I just need the gun. The old one, all right? Just for a few days. You going to let me in or what?”

Jamie had watched his father recede for years, the old man's inaction burning pancakes and abandoning laundry until ants began to treat it like a home. Mrs. Garrison did her best to stay out of the house, spending shifts at the bingo halls downtown, where the glass was covered in greasy facial imprints from the homeless. Two of these illuminated fishbowls sat on King Street, their clouded interiors beckoning with heaters and a two-dollar minimum to sit down at the tables. Jamie's mother's hands were covered in green dabber ink like liver spots, and the second-hand smoke made her smell like the bathroom stalls at work—musty and overgrown with mildew. It was better than home, though, and the lump in the corner who refused to turn the television from anything but the news. Francis Garrison watched it on mute.

“You want what?” he said. “You can't have the gun. It don't even work the way it did…”

Jamie pushed past his father into the living room.

Francis never got rid of the gun that propelled that fateful hunk of lead into his skull. He kept it as a reminder of his hubris. That's what he told his sons before he stashed it in their house on Olive St. A reminder of his pride and all the fallout that was to come. Never interfere. You must let nature take its course—it will decide your fate. This is what he told his sons while their house burned down. They had found him standing on the front lawn smoking and watching it burn in the dark. The rifle was in his hand.