J.T. Warren - Remains

“My parents live here,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, paused, then asked, “You hear about that set of bones they found out here?”

“No,” I lied.

“Yesterday’s paper says they think they might belong to a little boy, maybe. Found ’em over near Eukiah. Was in all the papers.” I closed my eyes and felt like someone had hit me in the stomach. After a while, when I didn’t say anything, Ed said, “They don’t know for sure, though.” He went back to driving. I dozed some more.

I thought about the first day I’d worked at the Y. They had me sweeping the halls. I didn’t mind, but my arm got really tired. I switched off. Working back and forth like that, I made my way down the hall and then to the smaller offshoots leading to the locker room and pool. I went back to the main room they’d shown me so I could put the broom away and that was when I met Mr. Roger.

I opened the door and he was sitting at the round table in the middle of the room. He was watching something on the television. I couldn’t see what it was, but it was in black and white. As I opened the door, he looked over from the screen almost lazily. He was smoking. The patch on the left of his dull gray jacket said ‘Roger’. I’m not sure, but I think that Mr. Roger was the first adult I’d ever seen smoke. That’s the kind of town we lived in.

“Shut the door,” was all he said, then looked back at the television screen. I stepped in and then shut the door behind me. I didn’t move any further into the room. I stared at him. He turned from the screen after a moment, when the commercial came on. He inhaled from the cigarette, then exhaled, his eyes squinty. “You got a name?”

“Mike,” I answered before I could think.

“Mike, huh?” he said. I knew it was one of those times when something sounded like a question but wasn’t, so I didn’t answer. “You the new kid they told me about, Mike?” I nodded. He barked a short laugh, then stubbed out his cigarette. “Well, come here, boy. I’m not going to bite you.”

I stepped closer to him. He was wearing the grey overalls that I would come to think of as his skin. I never saw him without them on. I walked to the edge of the table. His eyes never left mine. I felt like I was supposed to say something, but I didn’t know what. “Step around here,” he said and I inched around until he and I were face to face. He smelled like soap, and I felt sad. I wanted to look away from his eyes, but something told me I shouldn’t.

“I’ve seen you here. In the boxing class, weren’t you?”

He had me dead to rights. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded to himself as if I’d just answered a bigger question. “Let me see your hands,” he said, gesturing toward them with his own. I didn’t think I wanted him to touch me, so I didn’t move. He reached forward and grabbed them, holding my wrists. He inspected each set of knuckles, then turned them over and looked again. Then he stretched my arms out to full length. “Not a bad reach. Good knuckles; square. Why aren’t you in boxing anymore?” I shrugged. He let my hands drop.

“I don’t mind the help, boy, but you should be in boxing.” He paused as if he was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what, so I didn’t. “Your father okay with you not being in the boxing class? He know you’re working with me?” He was like some sort of superhero. He knew all my secrets. I looked away.

“I see.” He reached into the pocket just over his heart and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped them against his palm, then pulled one out. He set it between his lips, then put the pack away. He reached into the other pocket and pulled out a lighter, the whole time the cigarette dangled from his mouth. I felt like it was going to fall at any minute. He cupped one hand forward, the lighter just behind, and with a click, the cigarette lit. It was like magic. I couldn’t look away. His eyes were on the end of the cigarette the whole time. He clicked the lighter closed, put it down on the desk with a ‘thunk’. The metal was dull and heavy. He puffed twice, the smoke coming out the sides of his mouth, before he reached for the cigarette, taking it away from his lips. He held it with all five fingertips.

“Well, look here,” he said, pointing at me with his index finger, the cigarette pointed at the floor. “I won’t lie to your father. I don’t lie to anyone, not for anyone, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He nodded again. “If your father comes up here, I’m going to tell him that his boy dropped out of boxing class to push a broom around. I don’t know why you did it, and it ain’t none of my business, understand?” he said. I let out a small breath of relief. I thought he’d figured that part out, too.

He put the cigarette back, puffed twice more out the sides of his mouth, then pulled it out again. “Get a piece of paper and a ruler from the front desk,” he said and I almost ran to do it. I didn’t realize until that moment I wanted him to like me. I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted to show him that I was a good worker.

I came back, setting the ruler and the paper in front of him like an offering. He immediately took out a small pencil, like the kind I’d seen at bowling alleys. He drew seven perfectly straight lines from one edge to the other. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then drew five straight down. On the far edge he wrote the days of the week. His handwriting was precise, tiny. It almost looked like he’d typed the words. In the top boxes of the five columns, he wrote ‘sweep halls’, ‘vacuum front carpet’ and a few other odds and ends type jobs.

“Every day you come here, you come to this room first. You get this list out. You do the things in this order, understand?” he asked. I nodded. “After each job is done, you’ll put an ‘x’ next to it, in the box. At the end of the day, you and me will go around and I’ll check. I’ll initial behind you. Got it?” I nodded. “Now, go take this list to the girl at the desk and ask her to make twenty copies for you, and ask her nicely if you can have a folder.”

I’d never had an adult talk to me like that. I did exactly what he asked me to do because he wasn’t using a pet name for me. In a limited way, he wasn’t talking down to me. He was treating me like I’d seen adults treat each other. I was his worker.

He never treated me as a kid, either. He just knew how to talk to me, I guess. Dr. Bledsoe says I transplanted him for my own dad in some ways. I felt bad when he said it, but he said it was normal and necessary. Mr. Roger became my hero, and I idolized him in ways I could never idolize my father, he said. Mr. Roger went along behind me every day, like he said he would, and checked each thing in order. When he found it done, he grunted and made a small checkmark beside my ‘x’. If it wasn’t done quite as he wanted it to be, he just motioned and then spoke one or two quick sentences. There was no yelling. Somehow, he knew exactly what I’d done and how to make it more like what he wanted. He’d gesture that the way I was holding the brush for the hallway bricks wasn’t right, or he’d make a motion of how to get the mop into the corners further. At the end of the list, he initialed it, handed it to me, and then went back to his own work. There were no words or pats on the back, yet I preferred this. Somehow, I knew that his silence meant more than a thousand ‘good jobs’ from anyone else. I worked hard to make sure everything was done exactly right. I even started to go behind myself and double check things before getting him to check my work. I wanted to be someone he thought of as good.

Even though he came into my life abruptly, and left it so suddenly, he seemed to have always been there. I still think of him whenever I’m thinking of how to behave in a situation. How he was the one who taught me to tie a tie, how he was the one who noticed the bad rash after the first time I tried to shave. He took over where my father disappeared. It was Mr. Roger