I Need Blood

"We'll need to compare your blood against someone else's before you can leave," a doctor tells me.

I am outside and it is autumn. This is a hospital and it is also the courtyard in the center of the hospital. Orange, red, and yellow leaves dance and fall and decay around me and the branches of trees are baring and skeletal. People bustle.

"Okay," I say.

"Do you have anyone you can call to compare it to?"

"Yes."

I sit on a bench near the registration desk and the breeze is cool and I relax a little. I use my cell phone and call Cliff.

It rings and he answers immediately.

"Hello?"

"Hey," I say. "I need blood."

"Okay."

He hangs up and I put my phone away.

The doctor looks at me impatiently.

I wait for hours and Cliff does not show.

Someone calls my name from near the large stone archway entrance. It is Gene. Cliff's brother.

I stand up and walk over to him.

"I have been waiting forever," I say.

"I have blood," Gene says.

He walks to the registration desk and I sit on the bench again. I can almost hear the conversation.

Gene says: "You'll see some scarring..." You know, how when bone... Under it, it has... like that."

"Like this?" the doctor asks as he lifts his shirt.

"Yes, a forklift got right under it. In my ribs."

Climbing Up the Walls (18-21)

18.

I woke up twice choking on blood and Megan fell asleep at my feet, crouched in a ball, and would wake up with me.

“Are you okay?” she would ask.

I would spit up some blood and wipe some of the dried blood from my face and say: “yeah,” and fall asleep again. I couldn't afford to go to a hospital and I was sure I'd be fine.

19.

I had the notion to build a tree fort. The sun was up and I was alone. The air was cooling and even though it had been for a few weeks, I wasn't getting used to it and it made me nervous and I wished I lived somewhere warmer. Like California.

My face felt like it was stuffed with wet towels pressing from the inside and soaking in blood and thoughts. I was having trouble focusing and every now and then my nose would drip blood and I would wipe it off and try to remember to scrape off the dried streak later. I went into the woods to collect wood. Even as a child I had never built a tree fort. I thought maybe it was the restrictive suburban environments of my foster homes, but there were at least two with property near forests. I assumed that I just didn't want to and thought that maybe I didn't want a childhood. Maybe I just wanted it over. Maybe I just wanted my mother and if I couldn't have her then maybe I just wanted my childhood over. I collected wood in the forest in the spots of light breaking through the tree cover and thought about trying to write more of the fake novel later and wondered exactly what kind of sticks and branches a tree fort required. I collected whatever was around and brought them to a small clearing near the tree line but not too near. A few minutes walk from it.

As I walked I noticed blood on my shoes. I thought about Dean. I wondered if he smoked pot. I thought that maybe I should have spent the evening making connections with people instead of being some quiet feral child stray. I realized I was a terrible business man. I couldn't think about money or how to make it and because of this I would probably never have any fair amount of it and may live in the woods for the rest of my life, however short or long that may be. If I believed it though, I thought, then I should just accept it and be okay with it, but I suppose I didn't believe it and with an armful of thick branches I tried to think about something else and in the splotches of sun in the forest the sun was warm but in the shade I thought I could almost see my breath and I thought about Megan. Where she might live. What her house might be like. What she did in her free time. What she looked like naked and if I might ever know.

The pile of sticks grew and I built a frame. I had no rope and no nails so I began by driving some of the thicker branches into the ground and setting some up where branches from trees split and crossed them to the branches in the ground. I worked through most of the morning and ran out of wood as the sun left its zenith and looked at my pitiful progress and went to the camper where it was warmer.

I decided I would write a bit more.

20.

I don't remember the first home. Or the second. In my earliest memory I am five. I am sitting at a table and I am blowing out candles for my birthday party. It isn't my birthday and no one believes me. Other kids that live there that I am supposed to think of as my brothers and sisters smile and clap when I blow the candles out. There are presents too. I remember wanting to be happy about it all. I remember wanting to be happy about it.

21.

The evening rolled on and I thought about making a fire again and sitting by it but instead I smoked a joint and stared out the window at the driveway and tried to imagine the sound of Megan's tires crushing rocks and dirt and sticks as it rolled up the road. I drew a face on the back of the notebook and finished the joint and rolled and smoked another and the face grew into a person and the person grew into a landscape and the landscape grew into some gargantuan abstract fucking mess and I was determined to get every detail exactly as I saw it.

The camper was swallowed in darkness and I strained to see the picture but eventually I couldn't and I stopped and looked back out the window. Megan wasn't coming. I went to bed.

Climbing Up the Walls (15-17)

15.

“Did you get some good writing out?” she asked as we careened down the dirt road.

           

“Yeah, I think so, maybe.”

            

“You look exhausted. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

            

“Yeah. It’s cool though. I probably shouldn’t sleep at the table like that.”

            

“That where you were? Asleep sitting up? Sounds a little cramped.”

            

“I live in a camper.”

           

“Fair enough.”

            

“So, this party…?”

            

“Oh, yeah, it’s my friend Janet’s twenty first, so she’s having this like, thing, while her parents are out of town.”

            

“Don’t most people go to the bar on their twenty first?”

            

“Janet hates people.”    

            

“But she’s throwing a party?”

            

“Well, she likes her friends, she hates strangers, I meant.”          

            

“So you’re bringing me?”          

            

“Geez Louise. Relax, okay?”

            

“Okay.”

            

She smiled at me as we pulled up to the state route intersection. “It’s going to be a good time.”

   

        

16.

I sat in a circle of nine people, Megan to my left. We had been there nearly an hour and were sitting in Janet’s living room and passing around a darkened glass bowl and a bottle of Captain Morgan. I never liked rum, but like most things, I never passed it up. Monotonous hip hop pounded away mindlessly from the stereo in Janet’s bedroom down the hall and maybe it was the pot, but the incredibly irritating beat and nearly inaudible vocals were driving pins through my nervous system and stressing me the fuck out.

            

“Can we change the music?” I asked.

            

“Fuck off, bro,” one of the guys in the circle said. He was the sports type, right down to the eighties clichéd letter jacket. His was blue with white sleeves and a large blue and white “H” was sewn to the front. His hair was gelled and his brow shelved low onto his face. He smiled crooked at Megan. “Jay-Z fuckin’ rules.”

            

No one else seemed to pay attention. Janet was lying on her back staring at the ceiling with her legs crossed in front of her.

            

Two others to my left were mumbling who knows what to each other.

            

Others watched the bowl and bottle make its rounds.

            

Occasionally some of the circle spoke to itself and I sat and watched. Megan sometimes glanced at me and sometimes she glanced at letter jacket Cro-Magnon and I pretended I didn’t notice.  

            

“So why’d you even bring this faggot?” Letter Jacket asked Megan.

            

“Shut up Dane. You’re a faggot. David’s rad.” She nudged me and I didn’t look at Dane. I didn’t have a good feeling.

            

“Yeah, he looks real rad. You rad David? You rad, or’re you a faggot? I bet you’re a real cock licker, aren’t ya?”

            

“That’s it, you got me. Lickin’ cocks all day. Fuck off,” I said.

            

He stopped chuckling. “What the fuck’d you say to me?” He got up on his knees and began climbing to his feet.

            

“Dane, sit down,” Megan said. The others looked up but didn’t say anything.

            

“No, Megan. I think this little fucking queer had something to say to me. Isn’t that right you fucking queer? Fucking rad faggot queer?”

            

I knew as soon as I looked at him I was going to get the shit kicked out of me. I knew I’d embarrass Megan. Possibly destroy some of Janet’s house. I knew I should try to let it pass. But I was drunk.

            

I looked at him. “Sit down you fucking idiot. You’re being a dick.”

            

Before I knew what was happening I was in the air. He had charged me and for the moment I had been lifted into the air and then I was tossed against the wall and my back slammed into it and crushed the sheetrock and Janet was up.

            

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Janet yelled. “You broke the fucking wall! There’s a hole! Megan!”

            

Megan was already up though and shoving Dane. “Get the fuck out! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She was screaming at him and everyone else was still sitting down. I looked at them and they mumbled and they smiled and I stood up and looked at the wall. I had put a hole into it. Or Dane did.

            

“You want more faggot?!” Dane said.

            

“Dane! Shut the fuck up!” Megan was trying to pull him toward the front door.

            

“You broke my fucking wall! Both of you! Get the fuck out of my house!” Janet said.

            

My back hurt. I had missed a coffee table and an end table and a vase. I picked up the vase and threw it at Dane.

            

It landed and exploded around his face.

            

Janet screamed. Megan screamed. Some of the remaining circle members laughed. Some clapped. Dane stumbled backward. Megan glared at me. “Let’s go.”

            

She came toward me. “I’ll bring you home.”      

            

I didn’t have time to answer. Megan was tossed to the side and Dane’s terrible face was streaked in blood and dirty water and his skin was red beneath it and his eyes were wide and his brow hung low and he charged me. The night ended.

17.

A streetlamp here. A neon sign. The rumble of dirt under tires. Black. The car was stopped. No light. Door opened. My face hurt. The air was cold.

            

“Let’s go,” Megan said. “Stand up.”

            

I could feel her lift my arm over her shoulder. I stood. All of my body said no.

            

“I’m sorry,” I tried to say.

            

“Is it unlocked?” she asked.

            

“What?”

           

“The camper, David. Is it unlocked?”

           

“It doesn’t lock.”

            

She pulled me along and I shuffled through the dirt and she leaned in and I heard the door open and I could smell the piss mold and then I was climbing the stairs and inside.

            

“Fuck,” Megan said.

            

“What?”

           

“It’s small in here. I hit something. Where do you sleep.”

            

“Bed.”

           

“Yeah, I know, I meant, never mind. Found it. Lay down.”

            

She swung me and I bumped into the counter and fell onto the old mattress.

            

“Did I win?”

           

“Win what, David?”

           

“The fight.”

            

“Wasn’t much of a fight.”

           

“Okay. I’m not tired.”   

           

“You need to sleep.”

           

“I’m not tired.”

            

I felt her sit on the mattress near my legs and heard her sigh. “I tried to tell Janet it wasn’t your fault.”

            

“Thank you.”

            

“Yeah.”

            

“Megan?”

           

“What?”

           

“I just met you.”

           

“That’s true.”

            

“So…”

            

“So what?”

            

“You stuck up for me.”

            

“What are you getting at?”

            

“And you got me home.”

           

“I took you out.”

            

“And you took me out.”

            

“Christ almighty. I know all of this. What are you getting at David?”

           

“Well, why?”

            

“What is it with you David? Are you always asking why? Didn’t you ask me this earlier? Who gives a shit why. I hung out with you because I wanted to and it was fun. I brought you out because I had fun hanging out. I stuck up for you because I’m not a shitty person and Dane is. I took you home because I brought you there. What do you want me to say?”

           

“You’re a good person I think and I’m glad I met you,” I said.

            

“Me too.” She put her hand on my leg.

            

“Megan?” I asked.

           

“Yeah?”

           

“Is my fucking nose broken?”

           

“I think so.”

            

“Fuck.”

            

“Yeah.”

A Loud Hum in My Ears

Let's all sit around and stare at the walls and realize we're alive. Each time our vision blurs and color melts into color and depth fades and some ringing static slips into our consciousness, let's blink back into it, the real world. Let's forget that for a second our eyes were open and we saw shapes and tones that weren't there. We could see sound and know emptiness and beauty simultaneously. Let's all forget that ever happened because we have bills to pay.

I don't belong here.

Climbing up the Walls (10-14)

10.

I ate the chips as I walked by the pine trees and along the road. I wanted to save them for later but it wasn’t happening.

I had a song in my head but I couldn’t remember what it was or who sang or when I had last heard it and the sun was burning high above me. I had food and forty dollars and a swimming head still. I could hear birds chirp high in the trees and leaves dancing and my flat footsteps echoing only a little around me. My shoes were old and I felt every crack in the pavement.

I stared at the ground as I walked and after a few minutes I could hear an engine approaching. I turned to look and the car was silver or white or gold, the sun bent color around it. The car slowed and I stepped further toward the pine trees. It came to a crawl along next to me and a window rolled down. Inside the car was darker and I had to squint to see.

“You need a ride?”

It was the girl from the store. Long brown hair. Deep eyes. Full lips.

“Sure,” I said.

The car stopped and she reached over and popped the door open. “Get in then.”

11.

I wasn’t clean and I had a back pack full of water bottles and beer and bread tied to it and we were driving to my ruined camper in the middle of the woods. I didn’t think this was the best first impression. I couldn’t think of anything to say, beside:

“Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem,” she said not looking over. She was in cutoff shorts and a black tank top and I wanted to see her naked but was fairly certain the camper wasn’t going to let that happen. “Guy at the store said you had a ways to walk, so I figured I’d help you out. You don’t look like a rapist or anything.”

“What do you rapists look like?”

“Oh. I don’t know. Good point. Are you a rapist?”

“No.”

“All right.”

“Turn here,” I said.

We turned down my road and the radio was on in the car. I didn’t recognize the song but it sounded like Zeppelin. I couldn’t tell. The car bounced along the dirt road and she slowed down a little.

“My name’s Megan, by the way,” she said.

“Oh, David.”

“Nice to meet you David.”

“You too.”

“So, what do you do David?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, with your life.”

“I’m a writer.”

“Yeah? Written anything I might have read?”

“Probably not. I haven’t been published. I working on a novel.”

“Oh. Well shit, this area’s a great place for peace and quiet to write, huh?”

“Yeah, it sure is.” I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. “Turn here.”

We pulled onto my driveway and I had never realized how narrow it was until her car was barely squeezing through it. The sunlight fell between the trees and the dirt almost glowed and soon, the camper shone at the end of the driveway.

“You live here?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, like, for the summer?”

“Not really. Well, kind of. I did. I just haven’t gotten around to finding something for the winter I guess.”

“Oh. Want to give me a tour?”

I couldn’t tell if I was still stoned. She looked at me and smiled.

“Sure,” I said.

She put the car in park and shut it off.

12.

The afternoon was warmer than it had been and I realized I should have bought deodorant. I opened the camper door and remembered the smell of it. Megan stood behind me.

“It’s small in here. I don’t think I can really show you around.”

“That’s cool.” She turned and began to walk along the edge of the concrete slab to ward the back of the camper. “It’s so quiet here.”

I put my bag in the camper. “Yeah. You want a beer or, do you smoke?”

“Sure.”

“Sure…?”

“I’ll take a beer, and assume you mean pot. So, yes, sure.”

She disappeared toward the fire pit and I took the beer out of my bag. I didn’t know why I had bought them. They’d be warm and disgusting in an hour if they weren’t already. It’s why I stuck to wine. I rolled a joint and took it and the beer to the fireplace. She was sitting in one of the plastic chairs with her feet up on a rock. I handed her a beer.

“You know,” she said, “it isn’t much, but I could totally live like this.”

“It’s not great.”

“Why? You’re away from assholes and noise. You can do whatever you want. No one looking over your shoulder. Just sit around and write and get fucked up all day. Seems perfect.”

“It was nice for a while and sometimes it still can be, but I don’t have a car, so I’ feel trapped more often than not, to be honest. I think maybe if I had transportation, I’d feel a little better but, without the option, I’m just isolated.”

“Why don’t you read me some of your book?”

“My what?”

“The novel you said you were working on. Read me some.” She took a drink and set the can on the ground next to her as I handed her the joint.

“No, it isn’t ready. I’d be too embarrassed.”

“I’m going to get you to.”

“I doubt it.”

The sky over the forest was cloudless. Blue and unending and like everything else here, unreachable.

Megan took another drink and I looked at the shape of her legs. The tone of her skin. The perfect form of them. She was slouched in the chair and her hair blocked her face from mine and I thought I had never known someone as beautiful and it occurred to me that she was beautiful and new and here and suddenly I couldn’t understand.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she said.

“Don’t take it the wrong way.”

“Not the best way to start, David, but okay.”

“Yeah. Well, why,” I swallowed, “why are you here?”

“I’m relaxing. Having a drink and smoking a joint. Looking at trees.”

“No, I mean why did you come here? Pick me up, and not just drop me off? I mean, I get the whole ‘good Samaritan’ thing, but…”

“Should I have just dropped you off?”

“Well, no, I guess.”

“I can leave if you want. I mean, if you’ve got writing to do or something.”

“No, no, I just, I was curious.”

She sat up and looked at me, handed me the joint, and smiled. “Who knows, David? I’m here and it seems good. Are you good?”

After a second I nodded. “I’m good, yeah.”

“Good,” she said. “Now smoke it or pass it.”

I took a drag and passed it to her.

13.

She left after an hour or so and I boiled some of the water and took my first shower in a few days. She had insisted she’d see me soon and I didn’t doubt her. She unnerved me and I found it both frightening and alluring and I felt like I was in a terrible movie. I got dressed and went to the camper. I opened another beer and sat at the small table with my notebook and pencil.

I flipped through the pages of drafted suicide notes and shopping lists and found a blank page. I decided to write a novel.

I didn’t know where to start so I just began to write about nothing. About me. About shit that had happened to me.

I never understood my mother, I wrote. I stared at the sentence, and true as it was, hated it. I didn’t read enough. I didn’t know how to start something like this. I decided that the next time I was in town I should see about getting a library card. I drank another beer and lit another joint and when my mind let go of worrying, I wrote:

It was easier for me to forgive my mother than to forgive myself. She didn’t have a choice, really and I think I would have made the same. For years, through foster home after foster home, I cursed her and blamed her and prayed that none of it was real. That she hadn’t died and that none of this was real. She didn’t have a choice. I was born, and that was all that was important to her and now at night, while I stare at the crumbling ceiling, it isn’t her name I accuse anymore. It isn’t her. It’s me.

I read the paragraph over and didn’t know if it was good or if it wasn’t, but I kept going. Soon the beer was gone and my joint was long gone and I couldn’t read, so I just wrote and hoped it turned out all right.

14.

I woke up at the table and it was black in the camper and a light was pouring in through the windows and I could hear an engine in the driveway. I looked around and couldn’t see anything. I stumbled over to the door and opened it and the headlights hurt my eyes and I couldn’t see past them. The car turned off but the lights stayed on. I heard a door open and I couldn’t see.

“Hey. Let’s go to a party,” Megan said.

Climbing Up the Walls (6-9)

6.

Indian Tommy never came and I wasn’t surprised or bothered but I was low on water and it had been days since he had come. Days since my last candle. Days in the darkness. I couldn’t wait any more for someone to come so I put my back pack on and decided I would walk the mile to the state route and the three or four miles to the nearest gas station on the edge of town, and hopefully find someone to give me a ride back. In case I didn’t though, I left early in the morning.

The morning was cool but promised a bit more. The woods were already alive around me as I walked along the dirt driveway and later the dirt road. The wind brushed lightly through the trees and small animals skittered about near me and probably far from me also. Large animals, I didn’t want to think about them. Birds chirped. Light splayed through branches and leaves and rocks and across the dirt in front of me in an ever changing show of light and dark. Color and contrast and there was beauty and I thought to myself, This isn’t so bad.

7.

I was hungry by the time I had reached the state route. The sun was creeping higher in the sky and sweat beaded on my forehead, even though I hadn’t really done much of anything and it wasn’t that hot.

The road stretched out in both directions in front of me but was insulated on both sides by tall pine trees.

A red car drove by me and it was going much too fast to stop if I stepped in front of it and I thought of the light patterns in the dirt road.

I turned right and walked toward town.

I took a joint out of my pocket and lit it. Thank God for that crop, I thought. No one would bother me. I walked and inhaled and exhaled and became lighter in my head and I thought about writing a book or whittling or becoming a knot enthusiast. I knew a couple of knots. I could tie my shoes a few different ways. I could make others up. Maybe I’d find the perfect knot. Maybe because I knew nothing of knots and what was considered right or wrong in the knot enthusiast world I could break all of the rules and be some goddamned knot dynamo and I wondered if they had knot tying championships and I knew that if I kept at it I would be the greatest in the world and I would be the first knot champion ever that children would look up to and Wheaties would want me on their box and…

A car honked and I jumped and dropped the joint.

“Shit,” I said and picked it back up. The car was gone and I noticed I was almost to the gas station. I could see it and I saw that the sun was higher now. I was hungrier and I wished I had bought more bread the last time I was out. I told myself I had to remember to buy more bread. And something protein. I had been feeling weak. Maybe nuts. I didn’t think nuts went bad and they had a lot of protein. Unsalted.

The gas station was yellow and fit in a small cutout of pine trees all around it. The parking lot was small and the black top was old and I could feel where it had buckled under many winters under my feet and the pumps weren’t digital here yet.

I walked up to the door and opened it and the sleigh bells above it chimed and the I went in.

8.

I was high. I hadn’t quite realized it until the clerk looked up at me from under his glasses and didn’t smile and I smiled back at him but he didn’t. I went to the cooler.

“You have to leave your bag up front here,” the clerk said.

His words bounced around in my skull and I stood I front of the cooler for a second trying to catch them.

“What?”

“You can’t walk around with a bag like that. You get what you want and pay for it and then put it in the bag.”

“What do I do with it until then?” I was still staring at the cooler.

“Put it outside.”

“I can’t. What if someone steals it?”

“Then put it up here on the counter. No one will steal it here.”

“Okay,” I said. I walked back up to the counter and slid my bag off of my shoulders and the clerk grimaced at me and his face contorted around the air and he knew I was fucked up and I looked at the ground. I set my bag on the counter.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” I walked back to the cooler. “Do you sell wine?” I asked.

“No. Beer only.”

“Oh.” I knew that but I had forgotten. I opened the cooler and from the bottom row I pulled out two twenty four packs of bottled water. I stared at them and wondered if I took them out of the plastic if they would all fit in my bag and I imagined putting them all in my bag and they fit so I took them up to the counter.

“That it?” the clerk asked.

“No. Food.”

He raised an eyebrow at me and I was hungrier than ever now.

I went to the small grocery section and took two loaves of bread and three large cans of unsalted nuts and a bag of chips and brought them all up to the counter and set them down.

“How much is the beer?” I asked.

“What beer?”

“Oh, I’m,” I looked around. “I’m going to get some.”

“You have I.D.?”

“Yeah.”

“Bring the beer up here and I’ll tell you how much it is.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.”

I walked back to the cooler, grabbed the cheapest twelve pack there was and brought it up.

“Ten twenty nine,” he said.

“For all of it?”

He looked it all over. “No.” He rang things up. “Thirty seven eighteen.”

“Okay.” I took out my wallet and handed him two tens and four fives.

“I.D.?”

“What?”

“I.D. son. For the beer.”

The beer was on the counter. “Oh, yeah. Right.” I handed him my I.D. and he looked at it and looked at me and handed it back. He took my money, rang me out and gave me my change.

“Thanks sir,” I said.

“No problem. You want a bag?”

“I think it will fit in here.” I pointed to my backpack and the clerk shook his head.

“Good luck.”

I began filling the back pack up and I fit the nuts and the beer and most of the water. I put more water bottles in my pocket and I tied the loaves of bread to the straps of my backpack like sneakers over a telephone wire and held the chips. I was quite proud. I looked at the clerk and smiled.

“Well done,” he said.

“Thanks.”

A girl came in.

9.

Her hair was dark and curled and waved gently over her shoulders and down her chest and back and her lips were full and her eyes were deep and I looked like a fucking idiot. She smiled at me as she walked by.

I didn’t say anything and I left.

I was hungry.

　

　

　

　

　

Climbing Up the Walls (1-5)

1.

Derek had moved to Florida and he had left me his camper. He had a concrete slab in the middle of the woods, property his grandparents owned, and on it the camper. It was small and old and smelled of mildew and cigarettes and maybe something’s piss. I didn’t want to live so far removed from civilization, but I had run out of options. I spent the summer sleeping where I could. Beaches, benches, couches, Laundromats. It was warmer then and I could. There was no work in town so I was selling pot to buy beer and wine and water and cigarettes. Even then I was scraping by.
    

The woods were thick and endless, dark and at night darkest. The forest heaved and breathed deep and loud and reminded me who was the guest there. I stayed in my trailer after dark, unless I could afford my wine and then sometimes I would go behind the trailer and light a fire in a circle of rocks and put my feet up on a large stump and stare into the fire and dream of love. I was alone, and worse yet, I was lonely.
    

Derek was the last person around that I would have considered my friend. We came up through school together and had our first drinks together and stole a car together and when we got to Poughkeepsie, were arrested together. He began to work for his father’s construction crew when he was sixteen and saved his money. Bought the camper and a car, and saved more money and then left me behind. With his camper and a small crop behind it.
    

I was alone, and worse yet, lonely, and I dreamed of love. Some beautiful girl and we would steal each others hearts and we would never live in a camper in the goddamned forest and we would have a home and a car. Two cars. We would have money and I would be climbing the ladder and she would smile at me because she loves me and I love her. I could smell her perfume some nights. I could feel the cloth of her sundress, the nylon underneath it, the skin beneath that. I could feel her breath in my ear, and the ache in my heart.
    

I would sit by the fire and sip at my wine and smoke a joint and listen to the crackle of the burning sticks and the chirps, howls, and mysteries of the forest around me until I was too drunk to stay awake, or too lonely to stay awake. Throw sand on the fire. Go back inside. Leave the radio on and a candle burning and squeeze onto the tiny bed and pull the blanket up around me and try to sleep. Try not to stare into the darkness. Try not to be the darkness.


2.

I had a pot of water boiling over the fire in the backyard for my shower in the morning. I had a rubber bag with holes in the bottom nailed to a tree near the camper and if I was fast enough I could soap up first and then pour the water in and rinse it all off and sometimes I was fast enough and sometimes I wasn’t and I would rub the dried soap off with a paper towel. I had to get my water either from the store whenever I could convince someone to bring me to town, or from a creek in the woods a few miles in. I hated carrying the jugs back that far through the woods so I usually only showered a couple of times a week and tried not to drink too much. I had no one to impress. I hoped for better days but didn’t expect them.
    

From the camper a winding dirt driveway meandered through the woods for nearly a mile and connected to a longer and windier dirt road that on one end connected to a state route and on the other, I didn’t know. Sometimes I would hear cars on the road and they would come up the driveway and people would get out of the cars and they would be my friends while they bought from me and they would leave a half hour later and then days or sometimes weeks would pass before I would hear another car. Sometimes I listened to the forest and imagined I heard a car but I didn’t. There were no cars today.
    

I took off my clothes and got my bar of soap wet and lathered up my body and then brought the pot of boiling water to the bag and dumped it in and took a deep breath and then stood under the holes and in tiny streams it burned me and ran down my skin in rivers that underneath turned pink and red and I clenched my jaw and the soap ran off me and I used all of the unchristly fucking water. I couldn’t justify wasting it. I couldn’t save it. After, I walked back to the camper, put my clothes on over the pink and red skin and felt refreshed none the less. I poured a cup from the port wine jug and sat on the pull out steps of the camper and stared at the driveway. I needed to collect firewood.
   

3.

Evening had come and in the air I could feel the crispness of autumn. The days were shorter and I wondered how well the camper held body heat. I dropped a good sized pile of sticks, large and small, next to the fire pit and went back inside.
    

I lit what was left of the candle and on the notebook next to it wrote “Candles”, next to “Soap” and “Protein”.
    

The light only lasted a half hour and the candle faded out. The air was cooler than the night before and I thought about setting up a fire but wished instead that I had during the daylight and lit a joint and sat on the edge of the bed and hoped I could sleep soon.
    

In the darkness sometimes I thought I saw shapes, and when I was stoned was almost sure of it. Moving around the camper. Trying to get in. Sometimes they were in the camper and sometimes they sat next to me and when I would lie back on the bed they were all I had and the shadows never loved me. The shadows were never there.


4.

I decided to kill myself. I wasn’t sure when. But I decided it would be before snow fell and I ended up freezing to death or starving or being eaten by fucking bears. I decided that if I was going to go it would be my own choice. There was no one to miss me. No one would hurt. No one would notice.
    

I began to write drafts of suicide notes in my notebook.
   
5.

Headlights poured over the camper and were swallowed by the aggressive black of the forest. They turned off when the car did and I watched from the window as Indian Tommy and his girlfriend got out of the car. She had been driving and he wasn’t Indian in either sense. He knocked on the door and I could hear her mumble something.
    

I opened the door.
    

“Hey man,” he said. “How’ve you been?”
    

“All right,” I said. “Could be worse.”
    

“Absolutely. Man it’s fucking dark in there.”
    

“Yeah, I’m out of candles.”
    

“Oh, that sucks.”
    

“Yeah. You want to sit by the fire or something?” I asked.
    

“Sure man. But we can’t stay long. Jen has to go to her fucking mother’s house or some shit.”
    

“Right on. While I’m here how much?”
    

“Just an eighth will do man.”
    

“Eighty.”
    

“Eighty? Fuck.”
    

“Yeah, man,” I said. “Shit’s getting harder to come by.”
    

“Christ. Fine.” He took out his wallet, counted out eighty dollars in tens and fives and handed it over. “Have to start shopping around for a new hook up.”
    

“Do it. There’s no one else around here.”
    

“No shit. That’s why you have eighty fucking dollars.”
    

“Yeah. I’ll meet you by the fire pit.”
    

“All right.”
    

They went behind the camper and from the other window I could see Indian Tommy setting up a fire. I opened up what used to be the fuse box and pulled out the remains of one of my last two pounds. I was hoping it would last me until more grew. I doubted it.
    

I weighed out an eighth of an ounce, put most of it in a sandwich bag and rolled a joint with the rest of it. Outside Indian Tommy was lighting the fire and blowing on it and I could hear his girlfriend saying they needed to go.
    

I lit the joint and walked out to them.
    

“Looks like we can’t stay, man,” Indian Tommy said. “Fucking bitch mother.”
    

“Here’s your bag.”
    

He took it and held it up to the fire and pretended to weigh it with his had. “Feels right, man. Thanks. Hey, next time, we hang out for real, right?”
    

“Sure.”
    

He laughed. “Excellent.”
    

“Hey, can you give me a ride to town?” I asked. “I need to pick a few things up.”
    

“Oh, man, I can’t I really got to split. But, hey, I got the fire going for you.”
    

“Thanks,” I said.
    

“Listen, tomorrow, what are you doing,” he asked.
    

“Same old.”
    

“Cool, how about tomorrow we come back up and we’ll take you into town and pick up your shit, I’ll buy some beers and we’ll hang out. All day. Just get stoned and hammered and chill by the fire.”
    

“Sure. I’ll be here.”
    

“Tommy! Let’s go!” his girlfriend said.
    

“All right! All right!” He turned to me. “Tomorrow man.”
    

“Cool.”
    

“Thanks again man. See you.”
    

“Yeah, see you.”
    

I watched them bicker into the darkness and around the camper. Their car roared to life and the fire glowed behind me and their headlights in front of me and they turned around and dirt and sticks crunched under their tires. I took a drag from the joint and heard them drive away. I sat down in a plastic chair near the fire.