William Meikle - The Hole

“There’s nothing wrong with that man that a hard day’s work wouldn’t cure,” was the first thing she said as she closed the door behind her.

“That’s your medical opinion, is it, Ellen?” Janet said, trying, but not completely succeeding, to keep exasperation out of her voice.

“Don’t need no medical opinion to know a slacker when I see one. You’re a soft touch, Doc. And everybody knows it. Why, just yesterday, Mrs. Ellinson said…”

And that was the start of a litany of perceived slights and scurrilous gossip that Janet had learned a long time ago was best ignored. She only started to pay attention when the woman mentioned waking up in the night.

“It was terrible. At first I thought it was an earthquake. The whole room shook, and two of my best china figures fell off the dressing table. I’m not even sure glue will fix them. I had them off my Frank’s mother for our first anniversary. Did I ever tell you…”

Janet gave the woman a verbal prod, otherwise the story she actually wanted to hear might never get told, lost in a labyrinthine pathway of Ellen Simmons’ stray thoughts made verbal.

“What time was this?” Janet asked.

The older woman looked none too pleased to be interrupted, but gave in when Janet raised an eyebrow.

“Around one,” she finally said. “And it got worse right quick soon after. I thought my head was going to explode. Like having a dentist drilling into my skull. Then the nosebleed came… all over my best nightgown and down across the quilt. I’ll never get the stain out. I said to Mrs. Hewitt out in the waiting room, ‘Who’s going to pay, that’s what I want to know?’ and do you know what that bitch said?”

Janet tuned the woman out again. Ellen Simmons was in her early fifties, but she had the dress code and mannerisms of someone twenty years older. She reminded Janet of one of her own aunts, a widow from the age of twenty who reached eighty-five without having a good word to say about anybody, her face as dry and sour as her heart. Ellen had tried over the past few months to get Janet involved in what she called the life of the town —needlework classes, baking classes, Bible readings. Each time Janet had refused, politely but firmly, and each time Ellen Simmons got a little colder and a little more cutting in her tone. Janet guessed that she might be the subject of some gossip on her own behalf outside the surgery.

But that’s where it is, outside the surgery. It’s of little importance.

She’d lost the train of the conversation in her reverie; her hands had been working in a routine of dabbing and cleaning while the older woman talked. It was obvious that Ellen Simmons was waiting for an answer to a question Janet hadn’t heard. She made a noncommittal ‘ um,’ hoping that was enough to satisfy the woman. It seemed to do the trick. Ellen Simmons left, but as ever, she had a passing barb to fling.

“It’ll be something to do with that damned trailer park. You mark my words.”

The morning got steadily busier, mostly nosebleeds and headaches of varying degrees of severity. She sent some of them next door to the pharmacy for pills and cotton swabs, but others needed closer attention, particularly the elderly and the young. Two in particular gave cause for concern; old man Parks was white, his eyes fluttering and pulse racing, while young Joshua Timmons bled both nasally and rectally. By the time Janet got an ambulance organized and got them headed at speed up the road to County, she had thirty more people stuffed into her small waiting room and spilling out into the parking bay outside.

Over the course of a manic morning she was to hear many more tales of splitting headaches and nosebleeds, strange vibrations and worries of earthquakes. She didn’t see the pattern until she got a break at lunchtime, and by then the source was all too obvious.

Fred had been up for the best part of an hour. The nosebleed had obviously stopped of its own accord overnight, but he stood at the washroom mirror for a long time before he could bring himself to clean up the mess. He was frightened that if he touched the coagulated blob below his nostril and dislodged it, he might let loose a flow he couldn’t stop.

Is this it? Is this the first sign?

He’d been drinking constantly for months now. Tony at the bar had warned it was all going to catch up to him one of these days. But one of these days hadn’t come, and Fred had kept at the booze like a man on a mission.

And now here it is.

He found that it actually worried him. Not enough to get him to stop, but enough for him to think that he might do so… sometime. That thought was enough to get him moving. He dabbed at his nose, gingerly at first, then with more intent when he saw he was in no imminent danger of bleeding out. He was relieved to find that he cleaned up nicely, the blood washing off and leaving no trace behind apart from a still-raw tenderness in each nostril and a taste of copper at the back of his throat.

If only everything could be wiped so readily.

He had finished his third smoke and had just fetched the first beer of the day from the fridge when someone knocked on the trailer door. He ignored it to start with, and turned up the television, but the knocking got more insistent. Whoever was there knew Fred was inside, and wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

“Come on, lad, get your shit together,” a well-known voice shouted. “I got a job for you. Cash in hand, no questions asked.”

Fred knew Charlie Watson’s kind of jobs. Shit shoveling, garbage collecting, septic tank cleaning—all the crap nobody else wanted to deal with.

Except those that don’t have any other choice. Those like me.

Charlie knocked again.

“Fuck off. I’m not here,” Fred shouted.

He heard the old man laugh.

“A hundred bucks says you are.”

A hundred bucks would cover his booze bill for the coming weekend. That got him out of his chair. He rose and put the beer back in the fridge.

“Later, baby,” he whispered, and opened the trailer door.

Charlie spat out a thick clump of tobacco and squinted up at Fred.

“You look like warmed-up shit, boy,” the older man said. “You need to cut down on the booze.”

“You’re one to talk,” Fred replied, and lit up another smoke, making sure he kept upwind of Charlie. Some days the stench was enough to make you gag. It wasn’t so bad this morning, but the odd-job man still smelled like a wet dog that had rolled in a cow pat, and he looked like he’d been soaking in shit and piss his whole life—which wasn’t too far off the mark these past few years. Charlie was Fred’s main drinking buddy, a man who could be relied on for company at any bar in town, and a willing ally in the quest for oblivion after a bad day. When he wasn’t doing that, he was trying to find enough dirty work to pay for his nights. It looked like he’d found something.

“So what’s the job?” Fred asked. He spotted that Charlie had a red stain in his moustache, to match the yellow nicotine streak in the gray. He remembered his own nosebleed, and the futile efforts to clean a shirt that was now consigned to the garbage bag.

“Something’s going on in Hopman’s Hollow,” Charlie replied, heading for his battered pickup, expecting Fred to follow. “Ain’t too sure what yet, just that there’s a shitload of clearing up to do, and the money’s there, if you want it?”

“I want it,” Fred called after him. “Give me a second.”

He went back inside the trailer and changed into his work gear—a denim shirt and Wranglers that might last out the year if he didn’t put too much effort in. His work boots were in a similar state of disrepair, the left one starting to come away from the sole.