Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

We went back every day for a week. Then another week. Rick said we shouldn’t ask about our cheques because they’d think we were desperate. I said, aren’t we? and he said, not yet we aren’t.

Our job was to wait in the room for them to call us. We got more used to our future costumes and didn’t even bother wearing our nice clothes anymore because nobody really cared, we were all the same anyway once we got dressed up. And some of the other extra people had worse costumes than us like heavy fur robes, fake beards, hats made out of scratchy sticks. It made us feel grateful for ours. I was eating so much at lunch mine barely fit me anymore and I was scared to ask for a bigger one even though they had hundreds more in the other room.

Those nights in our basement Rick didn’t talk, which was weird because before he was always putting different complicated plans together like a football coach. He didn’t even want to play cards, and usually he hated it when he didn’t have any beers to drink but now he didn’t seem to care. He did lots of push-ups and went to bed early.

Then one day right after lunch the important fat guy with the hat who I found out was the Assisting Director came into our waiting room and told us finally that they needed us. This was how the movie people talked, they always said they needed something when from as far as I could tell they more just wanted it. He said they were going to need to have this big explosion in the middle of a street that they had closed down. Then he said he was going to need some people to lead our charge and he started looking around the room. Rick made himself taller and put on his helmet. You, the Assisting Director said to Rick, and you and you, to some other people. Come with me, he said, and they went to the other side of the room. I was happy he didn’t pick me because I was worried about tripping over my rags and ruining the movie, but then I was scared I would do something even more stupid without Rick there to tell me it was stupid.

Then the Halifax guy came to the rest of us and told us our motivator which is like our reason for living. He said we were these hungry, starving people who were trying to get into where some space stuff was so we could take over the spaceships and get back to our planet where there was lots of food and it was also the place where our families lived. It made no sense to me but I looked over at Rick and now that he was one of the leaders he was taking it really serious. I need you to think starving, Halifax guy said to my group and I saw a lady suck in her cheeks. I’d been hungry lots of times in the past, like the time when Rick lost all our money on the way home from the bar or when we had to send money to Rick’s dying sister in Halifax or when we had to buy extra things like our bikes, which Rick got off this guy he knew and were really expensive because they are some of the best racing bikes you can buy. So I just tried to focus on those times but it was hard to believe in my motivator and think starving right after three plates from the lunch truck.

After somebody came to make sure our costumes looked good enough, they took us through some hallways then outside to a street that they’d made to look all burned and wrecked like something really, really bad had happened. There were trucks and movie stuff everywhere. I could see five different cameras and there were tons of people standing around like on the edges of a football field.

They had us wait around more. Then the Director started talking into one of those loud-talking horns. Okay everybody we are only going to do this one time, he said. He was sitting up high on a crane. Someone came and told me to stand in a place. There were lots of us and everybody got their own place. I tried to see Rick but I couldn’t see him.

Then all of a sudden I heard Action! and we were all running in a big pack and someone was yelling GoGoGoGo. I was trying not to fall down and my heart was beating like one of those loud things that breaks up the pavement and I started to get a cramp from all of the food that was bouncing around in my belly. A woman ahead of me screamed and tripped over her big stick that had a bird skull at the top and I had to jump over her because if I helped her up I thought I would ruin the movie. Then there was this loud boom behind us and I felt heat go on my ears. I turned and saw the whole front of a building go on fire and there was little bits of stuff flying everywhere and all I could think was that I hoped Rick was okay.

It was the farthest I ever ran and I was almost passing out because my cramp hurt so bad when the Director said cut and they brought us back to the waiting room. Then they got us to take off our costumes and said thanks very much for your time and told us they didn’t need us anymore. My legs were still shaking while I went looking for Rick. I walked around for an hour until I saw him still wearing his costume talking with the Halifax guy and the tall pretty lady and the fat Assisting Director over by the trailers.

You can’t go in there, a guy with a clipboard said.

In where? I said.

Over there, he said. So I just biked home.

It had been a few days and I was waiting for the sound of the back gate when Baldev came down the stairs followed by the smell of his country’s kind of food that Rick hates but as far as I can tell smells really good, like the lunch truck.

This has come for you, he said, holding out a letter with the government’s picture on it.

I opened it but I didn’t understand what it said because my disabled brain makes it so that I can’t read.

Is this from girlfriend? Baldev said, making his big boobs. Let me tell you Baldev loves big boobs. He puts his hands out in front of his chest to show just how big of boobs he means, which is really, really big. Then he looks down at the boobs and squeezes them. He admires them like he would even settle for having big boobs himself if he ever got the chance. This is maybe the one thing him and Rick agree about.

No, I said, but louder so that he could understand. Baldev, can you read this for me?

Baldev dropped his boobs and took the letter. He saw the government picture at the top and said, no, no, this is not near to my business. Then he went back upstairs.

I sat on a chair trying to make myself read. Once I got a letter from them saying they were going to send somebody to check out whether I was still disabled and see if I could work. After Rick read it out loud, he ripped it up and said there was no way in hell me or my brain was ever going to get better and that they were the ones who needed their heads checked. Then he said something like he always says about how mean the whole world is. Then we sat down and drank beers and felt better. But nobody from Welfare ever came, which was good because we didn’t want them to see the beers or that the basement was a basement. Now I was worried this letter was another one of those and that maybe this time they really were going to come. I stayed up all night listening to the furnace.

Rick didn’t come back the next day or the next. I got hungry and couldn’t stop my brain from thinking about the food truck. I wondered if it was still there, because if I could dress up in some old rags and furs again and sneak back, just once, I knew I could eat enough to last me at least a week. Or how maybe they moved the trucks to some other movie somewhere else, and I thought about riding my bike around looking for movie stuff, like cranes and things blowing up. But I was too tired. I could have got some emergency money from my worker, Linda, but the letter made me afraid they’d found out I was working as an extra person and they would kick me off like Rick or stick me in jail. I didn’t even know where the good dumpster with the doughnuts in it was because I always just followed Rick.