Goodbye from Hades Part 1

Goodbye from Hades PART 1 of 3

Steven Overholt

What happens in the mind of a tender man who's had grievous loss?

BARGAINS

John Weston hops around in the shower while leaning in and out of the spray. How could it be? He used to splash-dance to the beat of a waterproof boombox--Bose, at that--but now it's to these crashing waves of shivers. The only warmth is straight down his cheeks. And on top of all that, two slivers of store brand soap keep trying to slip his half-numb hand. Finally, as the last, blood-tinged flecks dribble down his legs, he slams off the slush-water.

I feel like a damn ice sculpture. Maybe money can't buy happiness, but misery comes from the bargain bin. Contorting his face, he lifts the slivers high. "GAAAH!" It's a tiny pleasure watching them hurl to the drain.

Stepping from the rusty clawfoot tub, he grabs a half-rag, half-towel. Borrowed, not stolen. Swiped from a fleabag motel back when he thought his life could change. Wandering from the bathroom and rubbing hard, he stops. No... don't, he chides himself. But he does. Skulking back to the scene of his torment, he rips back the curtain: "I can't believe it. It's really come to this." He digs the slivers from the drain, then straightens up and turns to let them tumble one by one from his fingertips to the soap holder. He plunks down with a sharp wince, his big boned but hungry frame bent over alongside his second-rate soap. The heels of his hands squash his cheeks while chilly fingers deep-rub his temples.

Drawing a deep breath, John lifts his head, looking through the door and taking in his barren living room. He gets up, smacking a hand to his left hip as pain explodes, stutter-stepping, "Oww. Oww. Owwww!" across the plywood floor. He curses again the debt-collector goons who last night opened up a couple cans of whoop-ass on him. Hobbling to a RIDGID Tools wall calendar, the sole decor of the bungalow, he checks his countdown to the winter heating season and its forced restoration of gas service. BAM! He slams the wall with the side of his fist, careful of his knuckles. It was the last day of September 2009, and it was cold early this year. Very cold. Maybe Carlos will let me crash with him a while. No way he really meant what he said.

Teeth-chattering reminds him he's buck-naked. His foggy breath curls. "That might just be the odor," he sneers.

In his head flickers a scrap from that weird dream last night. He was digging in a garden. He found a human tooth lying beside his foot. Then another. And another. Just then a raven streaked in from a gnarly oak to his right, dive-bombing his head. As he threw his arm up and ducked, all his teeth tumbled out quite painlessly. He'd had other bizarre dreams before, like that annoying one of getting on the school bus in a tuxedo, but never like this. The teeth thing... it disturbed him, even in his sleep.

Shivering sends him back to the present. He wobbles along in all-over pain; reaches out, but nothing's there. Hands to his knees as prickly little lights whirl around his head. Wheezing breaths rise; he counts them to ten. Straightening up, he turns to grab clothes from a saggy air mattress askew against the wall. Oh God! Bright blood stipples the pillow. Both hands fling to his mouth. Ahh, they're all there. It must've been this fat lip.

With zero wardrobe choices to mull, he dresses in under a minute.

Warmer now, standing with blue eyes un-blinking, John feels an urge--a calling, really--to read the book he borrowed from Carlos last week. That's kinda weird. Oh, what the heck, I'm up an hour early. He stumbles to a slanted card table and hefts The Tommyknockers, turning it front, back, spine; considering the third Stephen King novel he'd borrowed in a row, and promising himself to someday return the other two. Not previously a fan of horror, a few months back he decided it would nicely fit his moods. Turns out he was right. Reading horrific happenings will be a fine use of the extra hour.

He backs up a couple feet, feels the wall against his butt, then slides down next to an overturned box sprouting a flickering green candle fixed in drippings. That's real stupid, he tells himself for the umpteenth time, knowing that if he ever dozes off, the box and he will probably go up in smoke.

Stephen King was masterful, and John is soon engrossed. But then, when he gets to the part where Bobbi Anderson dreams of her teeth falling out, a reflex jerks back his head. With a CRACK he slams the book shut. That's just too weird! This can't be coincidence. Not with Stephen King! Needing to get rid of the thing, he slings the book across the floor, its creepy premonition piling up cigarette butts, dustballs, and candy wrappers until it slams the wall. It erupts a flurry of debris and splits down the spine. I guess I won't be returning that one either.

Without really deciding, he jumps up and darts out the door, owning the pain. Now, though, he does face a decision: Is it light enough to drive without headlights?

John limps across his rude little insult to lawns, carefully aiming for his car, to see what things look like from inside it. With the sun's first rays eerie through the frosted windshield, he avoids looking in the rearview mirror. He'd made that mistake before. He remembered how he'd strained to come up with a powerful description of his "visage"--something like a fancy author would write. He considered himself well-read and "eloquent," but knew he really wasn't. With a wry smile, he recalled his masterstroke of self-contempt, though: Chiseled, but pale and decrepit like a crumbling Roman statue.

The thought of stone prods him to go check the coffee can under a mound of rocks in the woods next door. It's under a massive oak-the one bearing a bronze plaque inscribed with his poem to Wendy, his deceased young daughter. A lance of guilt runs him completely through. Today's the eighth anniversary of her death, and his tiny trifles made him forget. Now, he must face the horror of his annual ritual and read aloud that elegy. It's the most ceremony he can bear.

Done, he presses his forehead to her name on the inscription, waiting for some supernatural experience that this year does not come. Inspiration, though, is his consolation: I think, "a joy and beauty like a laughing rose," would be better than just, "a joy and beauty." He'll have to redo that.

Turning, he kneels as his arms fling and spin jerky circles of pain. He pulls a rock from the pile, noting its position for replacement, making sure not to disturb the moss. Those nosy kids down the road are never gonna notice his stash.

The sting of hefting rocks like 20-pound ice cubes with his bare hands really pisses him off, but he's intent as hell.

It's still here. He opens the Folgers can and counts. Just a couple hundred more dollars and he can finally afford a fitting monument. He'd hoped to have it all by this anniversary of his precious daughter's departure, but some of the poundings had been truly unbearable. His choice of what to do with the $328.00 from his last paycheck hadn't helped this cause either.

He clutches the front of his jacket and pulls hard, then thumps his chest. Biting his fat lip, he resolves that for the first time he will not break down on the dreadful anniversary morning and will even make it in to work. It just doesn't seem right going to work. But then again, I have no choice. He turns to face his little shrine. "It's for you, Wendy," he sobs, then sprawls, arms outstretched, headlong across the rocks.

After a few minutes John stands and walks back to his car. Getting in, he reaches over and tenderly sits up straight a tattered ragdoll on the dash, making sure she's tightly fastened to the Velcro. He'll take the most remote backroads to work, just like always. It may take longer and cost twice as much in gas, but it's worth it.

He backs onto the rutted dirt road with a jolt and a mudpuddle splash, drawing a sharp scowl from the doll. Ignoring the disapproval, he shifts and roars for the hills, but goes only 50 yards before stopping. He looks down to the left but pegs his eyes up out the corners toward the doll. "I'm so sorry, Wendy. I'll be more careful."

A few minutes later, coming over the crest of a hill, John screeches to a halt just short of ravens pecking on roadkill. His eyes widen, then scrunch to slits. "You MURDERERS! Demons of Hades!" Reaching fast to the dashboard for Wendy as she turns to look, he covers her eyes. When the blackhearts start cawing, he pulls her to his chest, feeling her little body tremble. "Calm down... calm down. Not this time. Daddy's got you this time."

Quaking as he fixates on the ravens' every move, he shifts to reverse, ready for hasty retreat. Exhaling through pursed lips, he watches them turn and saunter away. But one bird slings its head around and runs back shrieking. John's guilty mind hears it screaming, "I know what you did! I know what you did!"

Ten minutes later, sitting gun-barrel straight in the tattered seat, he torments his rattling rust-and-white Taurus as it labors uphill. Still stomping the pedal on the way down--glad now for the gravity assist--he muscles around steep S curves, body swaying hard left and right--his face and Wendy's wearing neither grimace nor smile.

"You know, I spent all that time getting this junker to run and now Carlos expects me to pay for it!" He notes a little pout from Wendy that encourages him. "And the damn window crank mechanism broke. Try that in the summer with no air conditioning," although he knows that's exactly what she'd tried.

A couple weeks ago he finally found a rickety but working crank mechanism at a junkyard and installed it, too late to help Wendy. Some dad I am!

There's a reason someone came up with the word 'beater.' This thing would be better off wrapped around a tree.

Seizing on that thought, he leans in for dramatic effect and devises bizarre fates for his car: getting sideswiped at sixty and run off the road by a drunk 14-year-old who stole his mom's Lexus for a midnight joy ride--the fender-dragging Taurus then skidding across a freshly sodded lawn; squared-off green chunks piling in front of the tires until blocking the headlights... a moment of pitch blackness... then WHAM: front fender bear-hugging a statuesque oak. Festive sprays of prairie fly up and garland the tree's lower branches.

Or swerving hard left as a pair of amorous albino squirrels--one without a tail, the other twirling to reveal black on one side--frolic on sun-dappled asphalt; car rolling three times to the right and then, WHAM... crumpled roof putting the squeeze on a stout hickory. A shower of tasty reward clatters down to the frisky little oddities for their awesome apprehension.

He then imagines the Taurus barreling bobsled-wild down a Montana logging road, sailing off a hairpin curve, then pirouetting like a bull rider until slamming backwards into a towering pine. BOOM shoots over the emptiness while a license plate spins through the air, severing the head of a ruffed grouse in flight, its fat body plopping onto the paws of a lynx ebbing in the final stage of winter starvation.

"I'd go ahead and do it, Wendy," he sighs, "if it weren't for you."

Sometimes though, in a rare moment of weakness, John casts his eyes to the east as the sun lays glory over misty hills and hollows of northern Minnesota. Desperately serenity tries to penetrate parts of him that were once so open, so welcoming. That's the downside of this route. For a long time now, the only way he's allowed atonement is by stabbing at the guilt with his mighty dagger of grief.