Bound for Home (Tyler Cunningham Shorts) Read online

  Bound for Home

  Jamie Sheffield

  2013

  “Bound for Home”

  © Jamie Sheffield, 2013

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author /publisher.

  Published by SmartPig through Amazon.com KDP.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SmartPig Office, 3:48pm, 6/4/2002

  When Maurice broke into my office and found me asleep on the couch, he pointed a narrow finger dramatically in my direction and actually said, “Aha!” (like a policeman revealing the guilty party on an old TV show). I struggled my way up into the world, and wondered some combination of ‘now what?’, ‘get out!’, and ‘lunch? … maybe donuts’. He must have tiptoed up, putting his weight on the sides of the old wooden stairs in the old wooden building (or I would have heard the creaking which normally alerts me to people approaching). Since he owns the whole building and I’m never behind on my rent, it occurred to me that he had no need to sneak around, so he must have wanted something in particular.

  “Maurice, come in.” I offered, although he was already in. Social conventions are hard enough for me to learn and follow when people follow them, but I had no idea how to treat someone who entered my locked office without my permission; so I ignored it.

  My greeting seemed to take the wind out of his accusatory sails; he lowered his pointing finger, and jingled his keys with an apologetic tilt of his head and arching of eyebrows.

  My landlord Maurice communicates largely through gestures, and in the nearly seven months that I’ve been renting this office space, it has become abundantly clear that he finds my manner of human-to-human interactions equally off-putting and confusing. He dragged one of the chairs around my work-table (really a kitchen table, but there’s no kitchen, so …) and moved it close to the couch, then settled himself slowly down onto the seat as I shook myself free of the last of my nap.

  “What do you want?” I asked, in a manner much too direct for Maurice, who prefers to circle the subject for discussion sometimes for an hour or more before getting down to business.

  Maurice looked at me blankly, patted the chest pocket of his worn-thin flannel shirt, pulled out a mostly crushed pack of Lucky Strikes (the short filterless ones, I noticed), and looked around (as he always does) for an ashtray. I hate the smell of cigarettes, and have to air out SmartPig for hours after each visit from Maurice. He knows this, but it’s (probably) better than him lifting his leg to claim dominance/territory like the dogs at the shelter.

  I fished an empty Coke can out of the recycling bin, and passed it to him. He looked at the can with a mixture of deep sadness and disappointment (at me … the can … both … I’ll never know), shook it, and tapped the half-inch of ash already accumulated into the can (which gave off a sour little hiss as the hot ash fell into the few stray milliliters of Coke at its bottom).

  I don’t want to repeat my question, but Maurice seemed either not to have heard it the first time, or was waiting for reasons known only to him to respond. He nodded and smoked and tapped and sighed, then whistled through his teeth and asked, “So it was cold last night, yes?”

  It’s been coming for months, but I saw it in a flash of conversational (and gestural) images now; the next ninety seconds of this conversation could leave me actually (as opposed to only virtually) homeless. When I settled into my new life in the Adirondacks, and found how much I loved camping and sleeping outdoors, I let the lease on my apartment in town lapse, keeping the office-space for my few belongings and to have a place to get out of the rain. Maurice must have figured out that I no longer have an apartment (people in small towns apparently know almost everything, about almost everyone, almost all of the time), and became concerned that I was using the SmartPig office as a residence (which is in violation of my lease). I had a moment of mixed fear/anger/panic/frustration as I contemplated losing this space, but Maurice didn’t see it; I don’t emote like other people do, and unless I’m trying, I don’t generally have facial expressions … or blush … or cry.

  “Yes, it was … surprisingly so.” I responded; ready to talk about the weather for hours, if called upon to do so. “It was record-breaking if I’m not mistaken.” (I’m not.) “26 this morning when I woke up next to Little Green Pond, and it hit 70 this afternoon just before I lay down for my nap.”

  Maurice squinted at me through his smoke, and dropped the tiny butt of his cigarette down into the can, giving it a shake before putting it down purposefully on my table.

  “And tonight … where will you sleep tonight Tyler?” He looked around the room as he asked, taking in the neat piles of gear, the slightly less neat piles of books and magazines, and the messy piles of clothes that a slightly open closet door has failed to hide. He got up, shook the butt out into my garbage, rinsed the can in the sink, and returned it to the recycling container; looking uncomfortable and angry and worried, all at once. (I love watching his face, for the emotions that play across it … I may be horrible at reading and/or portraying emotions, but his are fun to watch.)

  “I was thinking about one of the campsites around Follensby Clear Pond for tonight. Have you ever been out there? It’s beautiful, and so …” I was ready to continue extolling the virtues of Follensby Clear Pond, but he cut me off.

  "Acgh! No, I sleep in a bed. Every night, in a bed.” His French-Canadian accent, often missing completely (although the structure of his sentences always suggested a Gallic influence) flared when he felt strongly about something (which was quite often with Maurice). “This is what I am talking about Tyler. It’s no good.”

  “What’s no good Maurice?” I was pretty sure that I could see where he was going, but it was important to the favorable flow (and outcome) of the conversation that he get there on his own, before we could fix it together.

  “I cannot rent my building to a man with no home. When it gets cold again, you will live all the time in here … sleeping on the couch. And you will burn my building down.” This all came out in an explosion of words and spit and gasps and hand gestures and eyebrow wiggles, and at the end … a hand slapped down loudly on the coffee-table for emphasis.

  “You must find a place to live … a home. I like you Tyler. You are a good tenant, always neat, always paying the rent on time, help out with the garbage and recycling for all the renters ...”

  “… and that’s why you want to kick me out? Because I’m a good tenant?” I asked.

  “No. I like you. I don’t want to kick you out, but I can’t have a man in my building with no home. Home is like family, and family is everything.” This last phrase clanged oddly in my mind and brought me back fully to the conversation, wresting me from thoughts of heading down the 23 steps and to the right for 87 paces to get some Chinese food for an early dinner.

  “Maurice, what’s the matter?” I asked. “You know my family is gone, but what does that have to do with my office-space?”

  Maurice literally crossed himself, thinking of my parents dying in the Twin Towers almost nine months previously (I have seen his near-mystic response to my orphan-hood before, and I tried, perhaps clumsily, to cash in on some guilt to kee
p a roof over my gear, if not my head).

  “My family is gone too, Tyler. My granddaughter, Sophia, my princess, her things are gone from the house, and she’s beyond my reach.” From the initial obfuscation, Maurice shifted gears so quickly that my nap-dumb head couldn’t keep up.

  “Wait, what, when … granddaughter? Maurice, what are you talking about? Did someone take your granddaughter?”

  “She has been taken, yes, but of her own free will.” He said, as though that made sense. He moved over to sit next to me on the couch when the topic of conversation changed from my office lease to his missing family. He leaned forward a bit and paused, waiting for pity/clarity/comfort … something. I ran through the most likely options, based on what I had seen people do in similar situations, and reached out tentatively to pat his shoulder … four times. I must have guessed correctly, or at least acceptably, because he breathed out … relaxed a bit.

  “Tell me about it.” I asked, hoping that more information/background would help me understand what had happened that resulted in the derailing of first my nap, and then my verbal eviction notice.

  “Sophia’s classes at North Country (Community College, the SUNY college campus in Saranac Lake, NY) finished over a month ago, and she was lookin’ for some kinda job with her friends. She found a hippie farm out in Gabriels … fell in love with the people, the lil’ goats, the LAND, doing ‘honest’ work, she says. Room and board and a small stipend, she says. She can stay for free in my house ‘til the end of time I say, but she wants this. We argued, she said OK, but she moved out a month ago … she must have waited until I went out … she took some-a her clothes from my house and left everything else. I haven’t heard from her since. I went out to the farm yesterday, my birthday, which she never misses, and the guy at the gate by the road won’t let me in, says she don’t wanna talk to me.” He finished, and went through the cigarette ritual again (patting for them in all of his pockets, pulling out the crumpled pack, looking around for an ashtray). This time when I grabbed his empty can from the recycling, I also grabbed a pair of Cokes from the tiny student fridge, and sat back down … opening the first can as he lit up.

  The Cokes were both for me. Maurice apparently only drinks coffee and wine, so after his first few visits, I ceased all attempts at playing host (as I don’t do hot drinks or alcohol). I had the tiny fridge turned as cold as it would go, but it couldn’t chill the Cokes quite enough for my liking … they were still good, and helped bring me fully awake.

  “Do you think they took her, or that they’re holding her against her will?” I asked, not really knowing what to do regardless of his answers to either of my questions … hoping that more information would bring things into focus, and allow me to see through the static of people and emotions to the clarity of an answer. I live in a godless world, but worship information and patterns and clarity and answers.

  “Nah, she wanted to go … she wants to be there.” He answered simply … no clarity for me yet.

  “Did you have an idea that I could help, Maurice?” One of the useful things about not understanding human artifice is that I tend to cut through the awkward waiting and misdirection that most humans seem to thrive on (or at least need in order to communicate).

  Maurice looked pained at the direct route I had taken. He must have had an elaborate back and forth in mind, involving cigarettes and Gallic shrugs and grunts and both of us observing the niceties of conversational rules which I had never understood. He sighed and nodded at me through a cloud of smoke and skipped ahead to rejoin the conversation.

  “Yah, I was hoping that you could go out and talk to this guy at the gate, to these people, to my Sophia … to make sure that she’s OK, and … also … to talk her out of living out at that hippie farm.”

  “Why do you imagine that I could do that if you couldn’t Maurice? She’s not my granddaughter, I’m not a cop, why would she listen to me, even if I could get passed the guy (guard? Why have a guard for a hippie farm … more on that later … maybe) at the gate.” I passed the conversational ball gently, but firmly, back to him.

  Maurice puffed on the tiny remainder of his cigarette hurriedly, three times, before responding. I could see him thinking about how to answer … and also how to answer without a fifteen minute preamble.

  “I lost my head a little bit at the farm … yelled at the gate-guy a little. I grabbed the tire-iron out of my trunk and tol’ him that I was gonna talk to Sophia, and nobody gonna stop me. He reached out and took the tire-iron from my hand, so quick and gentle I almost didn’t see it or feel it. An ol’ man like me, you think maybe it’s easy….” As he spoke, Maurice’s right hand darted up, flicked my left ear, and was back in his lap before I could flinch or say ‘ouch’.

  “Ouch!” I said. “Maurice! Point taken … so you’re quick … quicker than me … so what could I do, except lose my tire-iron too?”

  “Oh no Tyler, the gate-guy, he gave the tire-iron back to me nice as pie (a clumsy simile if I’ve ever seen one, although I do find pie to be quite nice, and now found myself thinking about some apple pie to go with my Chinese dinner). He politely asked me to leave, gave me his word that Sophia was fine, and that he’s look after her special for me.”

  “And so … what do you think I can do, Maurice?” I asked, trying to put a bit of impatience into my voice (impatience is not me best faux-emotion, it mostly comes off as whiny).

  “You’re smart Tyler, you’re mailbox even says so.” He heaved a couple of desultory coughing laughs at his little joke (my mailbox downstairs had the name Smart Pig, a small play on words based on my last name of Cunningham). I see you reading alla time … books everywhere. My friend Jeanie at the Library says you read more books than any other five people in town.”

  “So you’re hoping that brains prevail where brawn (or more accurately, speed) failed? I don’t know, Maurice. Sounds like a long shot, and a wasted drive, and I could make things worse.” I countered.

  “Oh, no Tyler. I don’t see it like that. You head out there, see what you can do, and maybe get her to come home, away from there … it’s a favor to me … a favor to a friend.”

  I don’t have friends, never have. I tend to bother people in the long run, and miss social cues that everyone else understands from the age of five. In this instance, I felt as though I had a part of the picture, and that last focal adjustment was just out of my reach … then Maurice tweaked it for me.

  “A friend who does me a favor like that, he never needs to worry about where he spends the nights in wintertime. That’s maybe the difference between a tenant and a friend, Tyler. Friends do favors for friends … and maybe overlook their friends’ shortcomings or essentricities (which I assume are like eccentricities, but with more sibilance).” He ended this last piece with a combination shrug/wink/head-tilt/smile/guilty-grimace that I took as his closing argument … part threat, part promise of gratitude, all implied … and all largely beyond my comprehension.

  “I’ll take a run out there tomorrow morning, if that’s soon enough Maurice, and see what I can do.” I said to an empty spot on the couch … he was up and out of the room, shouting thanks back down the hall over his shoulder before I knew what had happened.

  I gave up my plans for a night out at Follensby Clear in favor of a quick trip to the Saranac Lake Public Library before it closed, for a bit research about Maurice’s hippies (hopefully, I could bring something better than a tire-iron).

  I sent Cynthia an email on my way out the door, explaining in brief my wishes, knowing that she would get started, sifting and sorting data into useful and useable chunks for my digestion.

  Saranac Lake Public Library, 5:23pm, 6/4/2002

  Cynthia Windmere dumped another two inches of tax-maps and news articles onto the long table that I was working at as the after-school crowd emptied out of the library for their suppers (I was long past ready for some mediocre Chinese food and apple pie, but as always, I’d been seduced by the flow of information, and made due with fiv
e nasty cans of Pepsi from the library vending machine).

  “I think that’s it for now.” Cynthia said as she dropped into the chair beside me. “See what you get out of that pile, and maybe we can re-direct before closing.” Her leg bumped into mine as she stretched out her toes … I jumped and she gave a little grumpy noise, part surprise/anger/sadness.

  “For Fuck’s sake Tyler!” she hissed at me. “I’m not going to jump you. I’m pretty sure that I can control myself even though we’re all alone back here, and you’re wearing those sexy water-shoes.”

  Cynthia had been my research assistant (her salary paid by the taxpayers of Saranac Lake, not me though) for nearly six months, ever since I had moved to the Adirondacks from New York City in the aftermath of the devastation (both personal and national) wrought by the attacks of 9/11/2001. Although she was employed by the library (as a somewhat-paid library tech), she generally cleared her desk and calendar to help me whenever I came in with a focused research challenge for her.

  We had initially connected because I needed/ requested some research help, and she was available; we had continued the relationship through the early awkward sessions because we both loved mining data, and were roughly the same age … in library terms (she was a young-seeming 20-something, and I’m a mature, if different, almost-20-something). The other people working in the Saranac Lake Public Library were decades older, and had no time for, patience with, or interest in my diverse and un-Adirondack-y (-esque?) research … not to mention the amount of printed paper, computer bandwidth, and inter-library loan requests I generated through my ongoing education/research.

  We’d had a tense pause in our working relationship roughly ten weeks ago, when she had told me to ask her out (she had been between boyfriends at the time, a rare occurrence), and as we had been spending so much time together since my arrival in town, she mistook the tenor of my interest in her. I had ‘fled the interview’, and avoided her (and worse, the library) for weeks afterwards. I would have been hard-pressed to explain my fear/anger/disgust at her advances (and my lack of understanding about them), but we managed to work things out when she cornered me at SmartPig, and forced a confrontation that allowed us to recommence our working relationship. We were still settling into our improved/enhanced/defined relationship, and because of that, I was more than ever aware of her physical presence and the implicit sexual tension between two adult humans of the opposite sex working alone after most people have left a building.