David Sedaris - Barrel Fever and Other Stories

"Human waste is, above all, human," I told myself. "I am a human, they are humans." Together we are a humanity who might take a moment or two to clean up after ourselves.

The women were just as bad as the men, sometimes worse. Frightened of germs, many women would use hand towels and toilet paper to fashion a nest upon which to sit. The bathroom floor was a fire hazard. I found quite a few articles of clothing in the women's bathroom. It is I who was responsible for organizing the lost-and-found box at our station. So far, nobody has stepped forward to claim anything so I am considering donating these clothes to the needy. A newborn baby was found at a Sunoco station on Glenwood Avenue last year. It was a baby girl, still alive. She was taken to the hospital and named for a letter of the alphabet. After a month, the mother stepped forward to claim her child.

The mother said that it was a misunderstanding. She said she would never again ask her boyfriend to baby-sit. So how did her boyfriend sneak a baby into the women's rest room? That is what the public wants to know. I have been following the case closely, which is a coincidence because I thought I had discovered a tiny baby in the women's rest room of our station just last week. I followed my instincts and called the police, an ambulance, and Pastor Holden. The moments passed like hours and, in my impatience I reached into the toilet and pulled the baby shape out, thinking it might still be alive, praying I might save it. Thank God I was mistaken. It was not a baby after all. (But it certainly was big enough!)

Following that episode Carlton decided that Taylor should clean the rest rooms, seeing that he has a family to support and is in need of the extra hours. He also assigned Taylor the job of carrying in the beach balls and quarts of Pepsi we offer as premiums to customers who spend twenty dollars or more. In all honesty I felt slightly envious. Here Taylor was, getting all of the good jobs (so I thought). While it was true that he had a child to support, it is also true that the child is twenty-seven years old and currently resides in Feeny State Penitentiary, where he is serving a five-year sentence for armed robbery. It turns out that he robbed a service station. Carlton knows nothing about it. He has been told that Taylor's son is a five-year-old in need of costly rhinoplasty, which will hopefully correct the child's breathing disorder.

"How's the boy?" Carlton might ask.

"Not good, not at all good," Taylor will answer. "Had me up all night long for the past three days. Sounds like somebody scraping a shovel against the pavement. That's exactly what it sounds like, listening to that baby try and grab a breath. It's a sound to break a man's heart."

Taylor told me later that a shovel striking pavement is the sound his sister makes as she snores beside him in bed. It is wrong to lie to Carlton, and I have spent many long hours mulling it over in my mind. If Carlton should come to me and ask, "Is Taylor's son an infant or is he a convict?" I would feel honor-bound to tell the truth. So far he has never asked but, should he, I am prepared to deliver the truth and pray that Taylor will understand.

My next job was to clean the area around the dumpster and to carry in the tubes and tires at closing. That is how I got my picture in the newspaper. I was carrying the inner tubes in a stack around me when someone took a snapshot of it. I had memorized the path from the pump island to the garage and was used to walking in the dark so it was no problem for me. I was right there in the evening paper but you could not see my face, just my legs.

Now Carlton wants me to do this every day. I come in at four-thirty and stand in front of the station wearing tubes until six or later. Canton says that it is an eye-catcher during rush hour and is good for customer relations. While I pace back and forth I can often hear Carlton's loud voice as he jokes with the customers. He says, "I hope it doesn't tire him out," and "Folks, you are looking at the original boob tube." I wish that I could see the people's faces as they look in amazement at me, a man made of inner tubes, a dark tornado that can save them from drowning.

WE'RE washing down the kitchen in the vacant basement apartment, my mother and I. She opens the cabinet beneath the sink and acknowledges the mildew huddled in the damp corners. "I will destroy you," she whispers, slowly fingering the trigger on the can of disinfectant. "You're scum, do you hear me? Scum."

Personally addressing each stain is a telltale sign that my mother is entering her vengeful stage. I turn on the radio hoping to distract her. "Please, no," she says. "Not that, not now." She says it as though I were a suitor trying to work my hand beneath her apron on the first date. That's when I slam my fist against the refrigerator door and say, "Ma, I'm lonely."

It's something I saw someone do last night on TV, a hand-some, sunburnt pioneer boy heading west in a soiled Conestoga wagon. In the movie the mother gathered the boy in her arms and stroked his head, offering words of comfort and staring off into the bright horizon that suddenly appeared before her.

In the basement apartment my mother wrings out her sponge and says, "Lonely? You'll find out what lonely is if you don't quit acting like a goddamned monkey and get on the stick. Then you'll see lonely."

A monkey? Bless her heart, my mother thinks I would be lonelier without her.

"You're the man now," she said to me after my father died, "you're the man." Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, "You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat," as if she'd always worn a veil over her face and had never known we were men and cats all along.

The night after his funeral my mother smashed the Pontiac windows with a golf club. I was in bed watching TV when I heard the noise and came running out barefoot in my robe thinking it was someone, some kids maybe, and there she was standing beside the car with this golf club. The windshield was webbed and sagging, and she stepped back to take another crack at it. There was a moth on her forehead. I took the club from her hands and said, "Mother, listen to me. This is our car. Why not the Dinellos' or the Ablemans'?" She said she preferred the Pontiac as she was within the rights of the law to destroy her own property.

Another moth, this one brilliant and spotted, lighted on her shoulder, and we all watched as the windshield heaved and collapsed, raining chunks like crushed ice onto the dash and front seat.

We replaced the windshield with plastic as a temporary measure. I ride shotgun, my head out the window like a dog, while my mother drives slowly, cursing, the cigarette poking out of her mouth like a fuse. The drivers behind us grouse and honk their horns.

"Listen to them," my mother says, tightening her grip on the wheel, "all in a big hurry to meet some big stinking heart attack." It embarrasses me that she cannot recognize herself in others. "The trick is not to allow yourself to be consumed by your anger," she whispers between clenched teeth, her knuckles white. She says she would like to have his body exhumed so she can spit on it.

"That'll cost money."

"We'll go there at night with shovels, just the two of us," she says. "What'll it cost?"

I say, "He's rotting flesh now, and long fingernails. You don't want to see that."

"I would pay dearly to see a thing like that. Name your price."

That was months ago, before she developed her theory that he wasn't really dead at all. During the latter period she spent a great deal of time behaving in a clairvoyant fashion. Placing her index fingers to her temples she would pronounce, "Right this minute he's sitting beside a puddle no, a pool. I see a swimming pool and a. . checkered bathing suit, a wet bathing suit. I see a diving board and. . what's this? I see a cocktail napkin that reads. . 'Fort Cheswick' no, I take that back! It reads 'Port Selznick. . Country Club.' There's something written beneath it. . something in very tiny letters. . I'm seeing the letter H. . and the letter V and. ." At this point she would surrender her head to the tabletop. "Goddamn you," she would say. "I've lost it. I was this close, Dale, and then I lost it when you cracked that ice tray."