“Awkward?”
“Deal stands, Blake. You’ve got room and board so long as you’re willing to help out. I’m as happy to have you as you are to be here, if I’m not making bad assumptions.”
He didn’t sound happy. “I’m happy to be here.”
When the first really cold rain had hit for the early fall, I’d headed to the youth shelter. The idea had been floated around by shelter staff, that if we wanted secure accommodations, there was always a chance to find work in the more rural areas between the big cities. Situations just like this. Farmers who needed help but couldn’t afford to pay a wage.
It was tentative, mostly for springtime when the workload was heavier. Most who made the offer had been bitten more than a few times. Stuff stolen, addicts who flaked, choosing the high over the work. The job could end any time, without warning, and it was very possible to be worse off in the end than if we hadn’t tried at all.
I’d made the leap, and it had worked out for the most part.
“There’s already frost on the ground, first thing in the morning. You’re not dressed for it, and neither Chrissy or me have clothes that would come close to fitting you. If you keep going like you are, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
I very deliberately avoided looking at his more prodigious stomach. It bulged in a weird way, like he had a hernia or parasite.
He continued, “Unless I’m wrong, you don’t have money to buy better clothes, and we- we’re not in a position to buy clothes for you, however helpful you are. Not good, rugged, warm clothes that are going to do you for the winter.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’m not wrong then,” he said. “You didn’t think that far ahead? You don’t have clothes I don’t know about?”
“No,” I said. “Even if I had thought about it, I don’t think there was much I could do.”
“I suppose you’re right, Blake. Six or seven hours a day of work outdoors, it’s… it would be cruel to expect you to do it, as it stands, and it’d hurt us more than it helped if we kept you on but kept you indoors, in terms of finances and all that.”
I didn’t have a response for him. There was only waiting.
“Might have to let you go,” he said. “Just to be safe.”
Oh, the anger that the me of then had experienced. The frustration, even. Not so different from my recent experience in the drains.
To fight and work myself feverishly for a place in the world, to do it with my own strength, then to get kicked while I was down, again. To try my hardest and just have circumstance take it all away?
“Sorry,” he said.
“Yeah, I am too,” I said. My feelings were so bare that I could only decide between sullenness and anger, and I’d gone for the former. I’d hated how I’d sounded, then. How much it reminded me of the family I’d run away from, the passive-aggressiveness.
“I was thinking, after you’re done with the fence, you want to help me with wiring the lighting in the new stable? You’d learn something you could take with you.”
“Back to the streets?” I asked. “Yeah, might keep me warm in the coming months, earn me a job.”
I’d been looking to wound, maybe, to slap him in the face, to get a reaction.
He didn’t flinch.
I’d probably felt worse at hearing those words come out of my mouth than he did.
“Shit,” I muttered. Even now, my shame was as sharp as it had been then. “Sorry. Nevermind that, please. Please just forget I said that. I’d really like to learn whatever you can teach.”
The silence was like a weight around my neck, too heavy. Each step forward was harder than the last.
“You know what? I’m going into town tonight,” he said. “Need to pick up some stuff. Why don’t you come? I can maybe ask some people I know, they’ve got kids who are or were about your age, might have some stuff to spare. You can stop by the bin at the back of the church. Bit of a long shot, lot of a long shot, and I dunno how you feel about…”
Oh.
That was how this worked, wasn’t it?
Just like the witch had told me.
All I had to do was say no.
This would end here, on this pleasant note.
All I had to do was deviate from the script.
“About relying on the kindness of others?” I asked, before he could say begging. “If it means staying, it’s fine. That’d be great.”
The ‘great’ came out a little strained to my own ears, where I’d meant it to be enthusiastic, meaningful.
“Good man,” he said.
One meaty lump of a hand fell on my shoulder. For the me of now, it was a weight, body contact, uncomfortable to the point of being unbearable. For the me of then, it was the first time anyone had ever called me a man in a way that felt real.
There was a reason I was starting this early on. Digging into a period of time I didn’t even like to think about.
Lose-lose, in the end. Either I said no, and I gave up, or I said yes, over and over, knowing what was coming.
■
It wasn’t as fragmented as I’d hoped it would be. No jumps from scene to scene.
The environment and the hideousness of my surroundings began to grate, fluctuating here and there. Eating was hard, the taste slightly off. Everything uncomfortable. There was no respite here.
I felt like there was a rule at work, and it wasn’t entirely about the script, the story, or the stage.
I was making my way through this with hindsight, and wherever that hindsight helped me against what had been unfamiliar or uncomfortable before, this landscape replaced it with ugliness. The food was an unfamiliar taste, the dynamic at work still uncomfortable, and that was represented in the meal.
The me of then hadn’t quite been able to trust people. People were made monstrous.
The end result was that I was more or less on the same equivalent footing as I had been back then.
My mind was working overtime to figure out how this place worked, to take my thoughts off the future, and the realization of when and why things were ugly was my sole epiphany, over the course of the day’s work, finishing the fence and learning about the wiring.
My anxiety ratcheted up as it came time for us to head to town. In the end, the me of now was almost in a worse mental space than I had been then.
Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck this reality. Fuck the Drains.
The small town came into view. Old buildings, peeling paint, all under a dark sky. The streetlamps and lights from inside the buildings were the sole illumination.
Fuck, fuck fuck.
Fuck.
The car stopped.
“Got some stuff to do, errand, asking around,” he said. “Meet you here in, hm, hour and a half?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Good luck,” he said.
I nodded.
This spot was darker, a little more jumbled, the buildings closer together in an odd way, but still spaced apart, as if there was one destination in each cardinal direction. The church, the stores, the bit of hill overlooking the water.