Craig Davidson - Sarah Court

I stockfor Vend-O-Mat Incorporated. Class-A Vending Machine Technician. Member of Vending Machine Union Local 104. At my other job I am, at best, a hobbyist.

I restock claw machines at bars. The key: place a plush teddy bear in the centre of the cube surrounded by cheap trinkets. The claw is too weak to pick it up, but fixated drunks waste many coins trying. I service Hot Nuts machines, too, but the only place that has one stopped paying their maintenance fee.

Machines are logical. When I twist my multiuse flat barrel skeleton key on a Beaver 970 gumball dispensing unit — same insides as every Beaver 970 dispensing unit — I instantly spot the problem. Usually a torn-apart gumball in the ratchet mechanism. Or if I open an Aaxon frontload dualcycle washing machine, I will usually find a 3/4-inch washer stuck in the coin slide. You can look into any machine to know exactly what is wrong. How to fix it.

Weeks ago I was at a school, stocking a Slim Line Mark X — voted Most Reliable Dispensing Unit by the Independent Vendors Association — when a boy interrupted me.

“Vhat are joo do-ink, blah?”

“I’m a stocker.”

“Zee Night Stalker?”

Gym shorts. A cape. Fat. A short, fat vampire boy. “I stock vending machines.”

“Do joo stock Nerds?”

“I do not stalk anybody.”

“Nerds zee candy.”

“Products in boxed form do not vend well. Also tube form. Certs vend poorly.”

“But, blah!” Fists clenched. “ Neeeeerds !” He says this the same way Marlon Brando shouted “ Steeellla!” in A Streetcar Named Desire . The fat vampire boy chin-pointed at the Slim Line Mark X.

“It ate my dollar last week. So I kicked it.”

“Never kick them. This one weighs a thousand pounds. That is how much a female grizzly bear weighs. Five people a year die from vending machines tipping on them. Squished.”

“Whoa.”

There may be some Nerds in my truck, I said. He tagged along.

“Should you be in gym class?”

“Jeem eez strictly for zee blood bags.”

“Us alone in a truck full of treats. I could get in trouble.”

“Vy?”

“I could be a molester.”

The fat vampire boy squinted at the sun. Pulled the cape over his head. Wind goose-pimpled his bare legs. There was a case of Strawberry-Lime Nerds stashed under a box of Mallomars.

“Seriously? Wow, thanks.”

“Do not eat them all at once. You are fat already, as I imagine you must know. You risk hyperphagia. Childhood onset diabetes.”

I checked my pulse. The boy asked what was I doing.

“Your pulse is the most reliable indicator of overall health.”

I showed him my wrist. The radial vein popping through tightened skin.

“Check here.”

Instead, the boy clutched his crotch.

“I don’t feel anyzing. I yam zee valking undead!”

I helped him locate it properly. On his wrist. He looked DISAPPOINTED.

The dayI arrived at Mama’s she baked angel’s food cake. Aside from Cappy, I cannot recollect who was there. Cases — when angry, Mama called us by our Social Services case number — came, went. I ate plentiful welcome cake. She took in cases other systems would not abide. Social Services paid a premium. We dressed alike: tan trousers, hush puppies. Flowbee haircuts.

“Built like a brick shithouse”: Cappy’s term for Mama. Legs thick as Japanese radishes. One night a big case, Gothia, experienced an episode. Mama weathered his ravings then slapped him. A skullrattler. She pounced on Gothia’s back. Her callused hands on Gothia’s head sounded like sledgehammers breaking open a cement sack. Her pet expression was “Gadzooks!” The night she beat on Gothia, every time she rained down a blow she yelped, “Gadzooks! Gadzooks!”

Mama was also prone to what she called “spells.” During one she came out of the bathroom with dental floss wound round her fingers so tight her fingertips were bloodless.

“Who left this? I’ll have a DNA test done, so help me God! This is not the brand we use in this house! ”

How did she identify used dental floss by brand? She was convinced somebody, a stranger, had broke into her home to floss their teeth — also, they would have had to bring their own floss. One of Cappy’s whores , in all probability.

“Three wolves and three sheep deciding what to eat for supper,” said Cappy Lonnigan, regarding life in Mama’s house. “Who says democracy works?”

He was her on-again off-again boyfriend. When he found work at the Port Weller dry docks—“I’m hell-on-wheels with a riveting gun, kid”—they were on. When contracts were scarce, so was he. My understanding of human behaviour is that people fall into one another’s orbits out of an inability to exist alone.

“Type of woman you’d call brassy ,” he said of her. “Way a cabaret torch singer is brassy. Big teeth, big hair, big… overall. Throwing herself out there not giving a sweet tweet. Except she isn’t really pretty enough to pull it off.”

Cappy would be around two months, gone six. Mama sniffed his itchy feet. A Sarah Court ritual: Cappy Lonnigan on the lawn in his boxers while Mama flung his possessions down.

“Rotten-ass bastard, heave-ho! Come round here, I’ll bust your nuts off!”

“Crazy bitch — you threw my record player out the window!”

The Divestment was followed by The Reconciliation: Cappy would show up hat in hand. Eventually he stopped coming round. Last I saw of him for years, he stood in long johns while Mama hurled his belongings out-of-doors.

“Limp-dicked goat! See you again I’m chopping it off!”

Cappy shoved his property into a sack he’d stashed under the porch for this eventuality. He sat beside me on the stoop.

“Shrink your world. Pin everyone under your thumb. Every minute of every day, assert control.” He brought his thumb, forefinger together. “If your kingdom’s small enough and everybody owes, anyone can be Queen.”

The girlwith the Blade Runner haircut dances like a robot.

I drink a Shirley Temple. My employer sits with Nicholas Saberhagen. I am not sitting with them. I see them across the strip club. Another woman, her name is Diznee, asks may she dance. On my lap. Asks: am I a conventioneer? For fifty she will take me to the motor lodge to “suck on it.” No, thanks.

My employer is joined by Wesley, Colin Hill, a dreadlocked fellow. I order a five-dollar steak. It arrives with tiny green potatoes.

I head out the back exit. Ignite the cube van. My employer exits the front door. Into a cab with Nicholas Saberhagen. I tail them down Bunting onto the QEW. Their taxi curls along the Niagara river past the hydroelectric plant. Into a warehouse lot lit by security lamps.

I park beside the gates. Cross the road to a bench overlooking the river. Check my pulse. Log it. My employer reconnoitres. Transparent molasses flows from his pipe.

“You?”

“Yes,” I say. “You?”

This is all we say. I know what I am supposed to do. Inside the warehouse is a box. The leaden cover draped overtop is of the same material as X-ray vests. I roll it into the cube van, drive to Coboconk. Halfway there I veer into the breakdown lane. I crack the hood to find the source of the persistent hiss. Before long I reach the understanding that it is emanating from inside my skull.

Cappy Lonnigantaught me to hotwire a car.

“I spent six months in a Tallahassee lockup for car-nicking,” he told me. “Roaches big as matchbooks chewing my toenails. A southerner, Muddy Phelps, taught me. I’m’na shew yew tuh hut whirr a vay heckle, son . Muddy’s what you’d call a recidivist criminal. One time I’m bending elbows with Muds — some bum tells ole Muds his mother wears army boots. Well! Muds tells that bum he’s gonna come to where he slept, creep in a window, and slash his weasel throat. Slaysh yer way-zaal thrut . A man was able to get his point across, those days. Anyway, you find yourself an unlocked car. With a flathead screwdriver bust open the wheel collar. Pop the steering lock and touch the red wires. Easy as a beagle bitch in heat.”