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.