Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

"Obviously, if I'm asking."

"If you've seen it, I've seen it, remember?"

"Do you have to antagonize me right now?" I said. "Can't you see I'm a little rattled?"

"You were saying," he said, faking an apologetic tone.

"Poltergeist is about a housing project that's been built on top of a graveyard. But the land developers only removed the headstones and left the bodies in the ground. The bodies got mad and haunted the houses."

"There aren't any bodies buried here."

"I know that. What I'm saying is that the ground might be contaminated. The ground might still be haunted."

"With what?"

"I don't know. All I know is that the sidewinder's bite told me the only way to end all this was to burn the place down."

"How are you going to burn down a concrete building?"

"I'll need an explosion." I got out of my car.

"Right now?" he yelled after me. "You're going to blow it up right now?"

First thing I noticed when I walked in the automatic doors was a young woman wearing an orange vest, her hands in front of her bellybutton, folded into a prayer position. She smiled at everyone who walked in, which right now was just me, so she and I had a moment where we stared at each other, and it was hard to read her face, but I think she looked concerned.

"Twenty percent off area rugs today, sir," she said. "Are you thinking about purchasing an area rug?"

"I might be," I said, trying to fold my hands, too, but because of my bent arm, they didn't fit together like they were supposed to. A flip of the switch and furtive electricity wormed its way through my good hand. I put my fists in my pockets, fingered the book of matches.

This orange-vested woman and I kept staring at each other. She looked at my crooked arm, my eyes, crooked arm again before she said, "Area rugs are an instantaneous way to transform a room, sir.

Saying, "Sir, it turns something old into something new"

And finally, "Sir, you won't even recognize the place!"

I couldn't believe that most of Home Depot used to be open desert, couldn't believe that I used to hop over the fence in our backyard and spend hours trudging through the sand, shooting doves with shotguns. Bruise on my shoulder. Mark of a man. Letch pushing on it and smiling, proud of me. I couldn't believe that the sand took over our house, as the rooms moved away from one another, as they couldn't stand to be this close to us, the rooms splintering and leaving me alone to fend for myself.

Now I'd give the house what it deserved.

I decided to track down someone who worked here and ask some questions. I meandered down an aisle; its sides were displays of different drapes and curtains. I was surrounded by all the different shades of purple. Walking toward gray. Off-white.

About thirty feet ahead of me, there was a store clerk talking curtains with another customer. I lagged there, waiting for him. I touched the different fabrics. I wondered what was behind all these curtains. Lifted one up, expecting to see something unexpected, expecting to see Letch, but there were just hundreds of drapes, rolled up, waiting to be taken to houses and hung up in windows, to keep all the lewd secrets trapped inside.

"Can I help you?" The guy had snuck up on me.

"How long has this place been open?"

"Don't know," he said. "I've been here two months. Are you looking for new drapes?"

"Has it been here longer than five years?"

"Still don't know," he said, checking up and down the aisle, if anyone else needed his services.

"I used to live here."'

"In Home Depot?"

"Home Depot was built on top of my house. I'm trying to find out when my house was knocked down"

I wondered if I was in the exact place where my bedroom used to be. The bikini girls. All the love I yanked from myself. Or maybe I stood where the bathroom used to be. The smell of hydrogen peroxide. Mom rubbing soaked socks or cotton balls or coffee filters on my shiners and singing one of her John Lennon songs in the softest voice in the universe.

"Has anything out of the ordinary happened here?" I said to the salesman.

He smirked, leaned in close to me, close enough that I knew he had barbecue sauce at lunch. "Got a lady's number last week. Took her to dinner." He flicked his eyebrows. "Then took her home."

"What about the floor?"

"Sir?"

"Has the floor ever moved? Stretched? Have the aisles ever gotten longer?"

My good hand got attacked from the inside, felt smothered in gunshots, like there was a tiny me and a tiny Letch walking through the desert, walking with our shotguns and aiming at the doves but missing, bullets imbedding into my hands.

"I'll be right back," the orange-vested salesman said, scurrying away.

I was all alone, the book of matches still in my pocket.

If they were here, hiding somewhere, maybe I should smoke them out. I mean, there I was surrounded by rolls and rolls of drapes and curtains, which was basically a huge cache of kindling, and I had a book of matches and I could feel the snake's venom bloating my veins, percolating, searing, ordering me to complete my mission, to find my mom and Letch and finish this.

I ducked behind one of the hanging curtains and sat on a stack of extra drapes, all rolled into thin tubes and covered in plastic casings to protect them. I struck a match. The first one lit the edges of four different curtains, and the second lit six, tried to stretch the next match to light eight and ended up burning my finger, a black smudge across my fingerprint.

It all started to take.

To smoke.

The burning plastic produced an awful smell, like singed hair, like old lady Rhonda's couch. I shimmied across the stacks of curtains, lighting the next group, and that was when the sand cracked the floor, pushing up through the concrete's slits. Sidewinders wiggling through the cracks, purring, purring.

And then I saw Letch. Sitting about twenty feet away from me. Sitting next to little-Rhonda, but he wasn't wearing his miner's helmet. Sitting on some rolled-up curtains.

Letch had antifreeze all over the front of his white shirt.

Me, Rhonda, watching them.

Suddenly they weren't sitting on the rolled-up curtains anymore. Suddenly they were sitting on the amnesty bench. Rickety wooden thing with a plastic red and yellow awning. Letch said, "You've got sixty seconds," and the kid said, "I think you're a bastard."

I ran over to them and tried to grab Letch, to scream at him, but they couldn't hear me, and he couldn't feel my hands on him.

He said to the kid, "Forty-five seconds."

He said, "You never were very good at this," laughing at the kid, laughing at me.

I leaned over so our faces were only inches from each other. I said, "Why won't you leave us alone?" but he still couldn't hear me. I shut my eyes. My good hand fingered the matches in my pocket. I could hear people in the store saying things: "Where's that smoke coming from?" and "I think something might be burning!"

Finally, Letch looked at me, not the kid, looked right in my eyes and said, "Nice arm," and he ran his fingers up my arm's bend, and I wanted to do something to stop him, but I have to tell you that I liked the way his fingers felt on me.

The fire alarm went off.

'Where is she?" I said.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

I peeked my head out into the aisle, noticed the customers stampeding toward the exits. The orange-vested drones, scattering in every direction, tried to locate the smoke's source.

I grabbed the kid's hand, helped him off the amnesty bench, told him, "You better get lost." He took off running toward an exit, looking over his shoulder at me, all confused, a look that seemed to ask if it might be better if he stayed around to help, but I had to do this on my own.