Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

Earl realizes he has lost his appetite and stands to toss the chicken back into the dumpster. Light-headedness forces him to sit for fear of falling. “You want some cake? There’s a whole cake in there,” Kyle says with a full mouth.

“No,” Earl says, “I’m stuffed.”

Kyle rises shouting, “Lookat this thing!” He rushes over to the schoolteacher’s desk. “What a beauty.” He runs his hand over the wood and opens the drawers.

“This thing is worth money, I can smell it, look at this wood, this is solid wood — oak, you know, that’s why it’s heavy, particle board ain’t heavy — it’s probably an antique, that’s what it is, definitely an antique, somebody didn’t know what they had, just threw out a good thing that they had, you believe that? I bet we could get at least forty for this thing if we can get it to Harold before he shuts down.”

“It’s too heavy for the two of us,” Earl says.

Kyle scans the alley and walks to a moving truck that’s parked in the adjacent lot. He pulls a large pin that’s attached to a chain and unlatches the side door. He disappears inside and returns with a rolling carpeted dolly.

“Look, buddy, if you can just help me get this thing up this hill, I’ll be able to get it to Harold myself.”

Though the alley rises in only a modest slope, with the heavy desk it will be gruelling, and after his stint in the dumpster Earl doubts he is up to the task. But when Kyle begins to flip the desk over and the cupboard doors swing open and the drawers all come sliding out, Earl can’t stand to watch him do it alone. When they finally get it over, Earl’s breath comes in tense, shallow gasps. Then Kyle lifts one end of it and has Earl slide the dolly underneath. “Wait,” Kyle says, and goes to stash his cart behind a parked car. Clouds are sweeping overhead and it must be later than Earl thought because the windows of the office towers have darkened except for a few. If he hadn’t fallen into the dumpster, he would have been asleep hours ago. It is turning into a fine evening, warm and fresh-smelling. They find that the desk rolls easily enough, but when they reach the hill, the going slows, and Earl’s knees grind and his calves throb with stagnant blood. Earl stops again to chase his breath.

“Come on, push, you bag of bones,” Kyle says, and Earl lowers his head and puts his shoulder to the desk, offering up all of the little strength he has left.

Purpose

I’m lying on a sheetless mattress in my room, watching a moth bludgeon itself on my naked light bulb. Over near the window sits a small television I never watch, beside it a hot plate I never use. I spend most of my time here, thinking about rock cocaine, not thinking about rock cocaine, performing rudimentary experiments, smoking rolled tobacco rescued from public ashtrays, trying to remember what my mind used to feel like, and, of course, studying my science book. I dumpstered it two years ago and ever since it has been beside my mattress like a friend at a slumber party, pretending to sleep, dying for consultation. I read it for at least two hours every day; I know this because I time myself. It’s a grade-ten textbook, a newer edition, complete with glossy diagrams and photos of famous scientists who all look so regal and determined, it’s as though the flashbulb had caught them at the very moment their thoughts were shifting the scientific paradigm forever. I like to think that when they gazed pensively up at the stars and pondered the fate of future generations, they were actually thinking of me.

I excavated the book in June. The kid who threw it out thought he would never have to see science again, that September would never come. What an idiot — I used to believe that.

My room is about the size of a jail cell. One time, two guys came through my open window and beat me with a pipe until I could no longer flinch and stole my former TV and a can of butts, so I hired a professional security company called Apex to install bars on my window. I spent my entire welfare cheque on them, just sat and safely starved for a whole month. I had to pay the guy cash up front because he didn’t believe I could possibly have that kind of money. It felt good to pay him that kind of money, he did a good job.

Someone is yelling at someone outside, so I go to the window and look out into Oppenheimer Park, which is across the street from my rooming house. There I see only a man calmly sitting on a bench, smoking. Everyone says this park was named after the scientist who invented the nuclear bomb. It has playground equipment, but it’s always empty because no parent would ever bring their kid there, on account of it being normally frequented by people who are like me or Steve or worse. The park is infamous, an open-air drug market, they say. From my window, I’ve seen people get stabbed there, but not all the time, good things happen in the park too. Some people lie in the grass all day and read. The people who are reading don’t get stabbed. I’m not sure why that is.

I’m finished studying, so I go out and cut across the northeast corner of the park, walking west up Powell. I approach a group of about six Vietnamese men. You can always tell the drug dealers because they are the ones with bikes. I purchase a ten rock with a ten-dollar bill, all of my money until Wednesday. Eye contact somehow seems to make things more illegal, so I stare at the ground while one of them barks at me. He is cartoonish, his teeth brown and haphazard like tusks. He shifts side to side on his toes like a warmed-up boxer and aims nervous glances to the street. “Pipe?” he barks. “No,” I say, “I have one, thanks.”

Crack melts at a tepid eighty, and if you heat it too fast, it just burns off with minimal smoke. Smoking it is one thing I’m good at. I don’t really feel the crack craving people talk about; I would describe it more as a healthy interest than anything else, like I’m fine-tuning a hypothesis, or conducting a sort of protracted experiment. I know it sounds strange, but I feel if I could get high enough one time I would quit, content with the knowledge of the actual crack high, the genuine article. Unfortunately, a paltry approximation is the only high I have been able to afford so far.

In an alley, my brain has a family reunion with some long-lost neurochemicals, and I crouch beneath the party, not wanting to disturb it, shivering and euphoric. A seemingly infinite and profound series of connections and theories swamp my mind. It is a better-than-expected stone and it makes me long for my room and my book.

A man and woman are suddenly five feet away, arguing. I am unsure how long they’ve been there. I have an urge to explain something complex and scientific to them, to light their eyes with wonder. The man is talking.

“Hey bro.”

“Hi, are you guys doing okay?” I sputter, feeling sweat rim my eyelids.

“Oh yeah, she’s just being a harsh bitch.” The last word he turns and yells in her face, actually puffing her bangs back with it. After an emphatic pause, he turns back. “Hey bro, how about you give us a toke and make us feel better?” he says to my clutching hands with a smile and an assumed entitlement. I’m briefly embarrassed for being so absurdly high and unable to share it with them or anyone else.

I tell him, “It’s all gone. Sorry,” with what I feel is a genuine sincerity, my high already beginning its diminuendo.

“How about giving me my pipe back then?” he says, steps closer.

I’ve been on the receiving end of this type of tactic before. I tell him sorry, there is only one, careful not to combine the words my and pipe, a pairing that would no doubt signal the commencement of my probably already inevitable beating.