Tin & Spit

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Saturday, September 16, 2006

Toadstool



Toadstool


by Sam Ford




When he heard the window shatter he didn’t spring up in bed with his heart exploding through his chest. Instead, his eyes slowly cracked open and he gritted his teeth, a slight growl rumbling across his throat. Marsha, who slept like a corpse, only woke when she felt his side of the bed lose weight. She was still halfway stuck in a dream, but her sixth sense of him tingled as he pulled his work boots on.

“What is it?” she asked with someone else’s voice.

“Next door. They’re at it. Sounds like a window broke.” He weaved the laces through the rivets. All the way up. Military style.

“Be careful.”

He ran his hand through her long, wheat colored mane and she was fast asleep again.

He opened the safe and selected the 9mm Browning, his pop’s old gun. He checked the magazine and found it loaded with Federal hollowpoints. He thumbed the safety on and stuffed the pistol in the crotch side of his waistband. He was pretty confident he wouldn’t need it, but he liked having it close. It gave every situation a cinematic quality which he privately enjoyed.

Outside the western Massachusetts air was thick and cold. He wore his beaten-in Wranglers with the flannel lining and his favorite Harley Davidson sweatshirt, the black one with the eagle with the lightning bolt in its talons. He’d gotten it at the biker show in Middlefield along with his beloved ’65 Panhead which he passed as he walked across his yard toward the Nelson’s. He heard his pet turkey, Edgar, gobble frustratingly at him from his pen. He turned and gave Edgar a quick glance through the darkness and Edgar retreated into his turkey house with a grunt and a shake of his mighty feathers.

The moon was bold enough to throw shadows on the earth. He let it lead him toward his neighbor’s house.

They called him Toadstool, had always called him so, and while it was a nickname most might try desperately to shed, he wore it like a badge, even tattooed the name to his forearm with a cartoon-style illustration of the small mushroom beneath it. He had fifty-one years at his back, stood five feet, three inches tall and proud. His body was like a small tank, forged from a life of pure physical work. He could build a house. Fix a car. Mend a fence. Plow a snowdrift. Kill and cook his own supper. He had hardly a high school education. But he could see inside a human being’s heart like a falcon circling the highway. He could be silent, meditative one moment, and then break into a story that would make the whole room erupt with joy, reverie, and laughter. His goatee had grown into a slight fu-manchu. Wisps of deep grey dripped from his chin and his upper lip, and occasionally he’d give them a tug when his thoughts carried him someplace far away. Folks considered him the second mayor or the second chief of police in town. He knew everyone, knew their kin, knew their history. He emptied their septic tanks, drank their beer, attended their weddings, gossiped with them, bought their old vehicles, cleaned their chimneys. And he loved to ride that big old bike of his. And he loved animals. And his three kids were all grown-up. And his knees were slowly starting to give out. And he fought through those knees. In the winter when the snow was like an ocean. And in the summer when the sun was like a giant hand.

He reached the Nelson’s house. Frank was outside on the porch holding his forehead in his hand, his elbow propped against his leg. Blood was running through his fingers like worms sinking into a river. His clean hand held a half-smoked cigarette. He was in his late twenties with a crewcut. He worked in the sporting goods section at Wal-Mart. He didn’t even bother to look up at his visitor.

“She’s up and lost it again, Toady.”

Toadstool sat next to Frank in a snot-colored wicker chair.

“That’s a bad cut,” he said. “It’s a wound.”

Frank took a drag and winced. “Fuckin’-A. No hospital though.”

“Where is she?” Toadstool asked.

“She’s inside. She’s holdin’ the dog hostage in our room.”

“What’d she throw at you?”

Frank sighed. He stared up at the stars in the sky. Counted a handful. Sighed again.

“My fuckin’ gun. She threw my gun at me.”

“Which one?”

“The Ruger. Stainless.”

“What was it doin’ out?”

“I guess I just left it out. Took it to the damn range this mornin’. Forgot to lock it up.”

“What happened?”

“I come home. I was down at the Home Club havin’ a few. Maybe a few more than a few. It was me, Eddie, Gracy, y’know, everybody was down there. We were just swappin’ some stories. Eddie got his ass out on the dance floor. Just goofin, havin’ fun. But Sally, she swears I’m runnin’ around on ‘er. Says I come home smellin’ like somethin’. Flowers and shit. Sweetness.”

“You been foolin’ around?”

“Well…Shit, Toady, what’s the difference?”

“Difference is you gotta’ try to make it right with Sally or you gotta’ let her go. Not fair to keep her here waitin’ for ya’ while you’re out carousin’.”

“Hell, I know that. I mean I love Sally. I love ‘er, I do. I just…I mean let’s face it, I’m one a’ the better lookin’ fellas around here. Women find me attractive, what can I do? I get a few vodkas in me, I get a little frisky. Girl comes up: ‘Hey, Frankie, how are ya’?’ ‘Just fine, just fine.’ I know it ain’t right. She puts her hand on my leg…near my…y’know…and hell, I’m at ‘er mercy. ‘Where’s Sally tonight?’ And see that just gets me angry. Gets me all stirred up. ‘Cause I mean I want Sally to be out with me, but she don’t ever wanna’ come out. Just wants to sit at home watchin’ Idols or whatever.”

“What happened tonight?”

Frank looked back up at the night sky. There seemed to be a few more stars up there.

“Goddammit, I come home. Just like a half hour ago, musta’ been. I walk in the house and she’s standin’ in the middle of the room. On the carpet. Just right there. Got my gun pointed at me. Now I’m a bit tipsy so, y’know, I’m feelin’ a bit bold. Couldn’t remember if I unloaded it once I got back from the range. So there she is with my gun and maybe it’s loaded and maybe it’s not loaded but she’s got it aimed right at my…at my balls, y’know, and I say, ‘go ahead y’dumb broad, it ain’t even loaded.’ Now she coulda’ called my bluff and pulled the trigger and maybe it fires and she blows my balls off, who knows? Or maybe I’m right and it’s empty and we end up tumblin’ in bed for a while afterwards. ‘Cause you know sometimes after a big argument…you…Anyway…It don’t really matter, ‘cause she don’t pull the trigger. She wheels back and chucks the gun at me. Boom! Hits me right in the head.”

Toadstool stroked his fu-manchu. “I heard glass breakin’. But I guess that wasn’t the gun if it hit you.”

“Naw. She threw my African drum out the window.”

“You’re gonna’ need stitches.”

“Aww, goddammit, Toady. It’ll be fine. It’s just bleedin’ so much ‘cause of all the booze I drunk earlier.”

“I’m gonna’ take you to Pittsfield.”

“I said no hospitals, Toady. I don’t like those machines. The ones with the lines that beep.”

“They’re gonna’ stitch you up in no time. You’ll be outta’ there before you realize you were there to begin with.”

“Shit, okay. I’m cut bad, huh?”

Toadstool pointed down at Frank’s feet. His Tony Lama’s were sweating blood.

***

Frank got out of Toadstool’s ’87 Oldsmobile 442 right in front of the emergency room entrance. He head an oversized beach towel with the image of rainbow in it balled up and pressed against his head. He turned and gave Toadstool an uneasy grin and walked toward the mechanical doors which slid open like an alligator’s jaws. Again he glanced back at the Olds. Toadstool waved at him. Frank waved back and then disappeared into sharp glow of bright white fluorescence. Toadstool put the car in drive and headed off.

As he eased through Pittsfield’s Main Street he admired its emptiness, its quiet. It struck him that an area so constructed, with so much built on it – hospitals, parking garages, churches, storefronts, restaurants – could feel so completely barren and desolate. He wondered if there were hours in the day when cities like New York or Chicago got that way. He sometimes got himself locked into thoughts of a bigger town. Thoughts of people stacked on top of people. A thousand faces a day. Every one of them a stranger. He’d been down to New York once when he was a youngster and the only thing he remembered about it was how good the pizza was.

***

The porch light of the Nelson house was still on when Toadstool eased by. Sally was sitting out there in a rocking chair with the dog beside her. She was smoking a long, slim cigarette, wearing a crocheted sweater that read: “Stop Staring at my Teddies” with two embroidered teddy bears right where her breasts were. She worked as a manicurist in a salon called Viva La Hair. It was only open four days a week.

Toadstool cut the engine and got out. He could see as he approached the porch that Sally’s face was wrought with tears stains and pouted lips. The dog had its head pressed against the floorboards, and it wore the same expression on its face. Its ears arched back slightly at Toadstool’s approach but its eyes didn’t blink.

Toadstool took his seat in the wicker chair.

“I hate that chair,” Sally offered. “It’s the color a’ snot.”

Toadstool looked at it for a moment, then back at her.

“You take ‘im to the hospital then?” She asked.

“I did,” he said.

She exhaled a plume of smoke that seemed to form a pair of scissors before it dissipated. She let out a little chuckle and thumbed at the corner of her mouth.

“He hates hospitals. Reminds him of bein’ born.”

The dog got up and fumbled toward Toadstool. It was blind in one eye and a dull snaggletooth jutted out from its mouth like a nipple. It sniffed at Toadstool’s boots. Then it looked up at him, its tongue sticking out from beneath the protruding tooth.

“Have you met Lancelot?” Sally asked.

“I think so,” Toadstool said. He reached a hand down. Lancelot hobbled off the porch and out into the yard. Sally and Toadstool watched as he curled his back. His body shook like an alarm clock as he shat amongst a pile of fallen leaves.

Sally drew from her cigarette. “How bad was his head?”

“Bad. You musta’ thrown a fastball.”

Sally shivered. “All that blood. I hate blood. I hate that.”

“Love does some strange things,” Toadstool said, wiping a crusted piece of mud off his boot.

“I know it. I just want somethin’ beyond me and him, y’know? Do y’know what I mean…I want somethin’ that sets me free. I want it like a movie or somethin’. Bigger than this house and my job and him and his beer and his big white ass and everything.”

Toadstool sat back in the chair. He pulled his hands up over the back of his head and stared out into the dimly lit dark. Once, at the Home Club, Frank had been drinking tequila and he happened to mention that Sally couldn’t have kids. He said she hadn’t told him until they were already married.

Sally took one last tug and then dropped the butt into a can of Diet Sprite. Her eyes started to leak a bit and she sniffed quietly to herself. Toadstool turned to face her. She looked five years-old to him.

“Do you have any money saved?” He asked.

“Whaddayou mean?” She said, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

“You oughta’ leave him, Sally.”

“What?”

“Maybe move to a big city. Someplace where you can be outside a lot and watch things happen.”

“You think I should just up and leave him? I mean I love him.”

“Why?”

Sally stopped. She shook her head and smiled to herself. Then she paused again. She grimaced. Then she lit another cigarette.

Toadstool stroked his fu, rested his hands across his perfect potbelly.

“Wait…I have an answer,” Sally said. She searched. “It’s ‘cause I know him.”

“That makes sense.”

“He’s cheating on me, isn’t he Toady?”

Toadstool exhaled deep. His breath pushed through the air and fell apart just as fast.

For Sally it was as if someone pulled out her heart, showed it to her, and it looked like a dead kitten. She started spewing tears like a fire-hose, her wails of grief tumbled through the air and echoed across the gravel. Toadstool pulled out a bandanna from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to her. She dipped it into her cheeks.

“I’ve gotta’ leave him,” she groaned. “I can’t be with him if he…if he doesn’t wanna’ be with me.”

“Can’t love someone who hates themself. You lose a lotta’ years. Tryin’ to push a truck up a mountain.”

“I gotta’ little money saved,” Sally whimpered. “I don’t have a car though.”

Toadstool handed her the keys to the Olds.

“Now you do,” he said.

“What?” She stared at the keys. A plastic keychain held the ignition and the trunk key together. It read: Live Free. Ride Free. Follow Nobody. Toadstool gave her a gentle smile.

“Why’re you doin’ this?” She asked.

“I don’t like it when broken things stay broken,” he said. “And then they get worse when they’re ignored.”

“I used to think I could change him,” she said.

“Not yer job,” Toadstool said.

“What is my job?” She asked.

“I’m not sure about that one,” he said. “Maybe to create somethin’ I guess.”

He got up and walked to the Oldsmobile. He pulled the title from the glovebox and signed it over to her. He returned to the porch.

“I’m gonna’ take the dog with me,” she said.

“Okay,” Toadstool said.

“And I’ll go to Florida for a while. My sister’s there. But I may come back. I’ll probably just give it a little time and then I’ll come back. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. That’s a good plan,” Toadstool said.

***

He drove his beaten-up ’85 S-10 back to the hospital. It was around 2 in the morning when he parked and got out.

The waiting room was like a giant aspirin. He stepped to the admittance desk. A heavyset black woman with her hair pulled back sat there reading a book on Alzheimer’s disease. She felt Toadstool’s presence and looked up.

“Can I help you?”

“Is Frank Nelson here?”

She turned to her computer. Punched a few buttons and drew her mouse across the screen, clicking once or twice. Toadstool had never used a computer in his life.

“Room 34A. Down the hall and to your left. You can see him but he might be asleep.”

“How many did he take?” Toadstool asked.

“Fifty-one,” she said. They both acknowledged the severity – she by raising her eyebrows, he by shaking his head. “And they’re keeping him overnight for cranial tests.”

Toadstool nodded and began walking away. The nurse called out after him.

“He said he fell down some stairs.”

Toadstool looked back at her. “You believe him?”

“It’s what all the wives say.”

They both chuckled.

***

Frank was sleeping. The top of his head was wrapped in heavy gauze. The machine with the lines that beep was next to him beeping. Toadstool stood next to the bed looking down at him.

“I’ll come back and pick you up tomorrow, Frank,” he whispered.

Frank didn’t budge.

***

When Toadstool arrived back at his house, the Oldsmobile was parked in the yard. A piece of paper was tucked underneath one of the windshield-wiper blades.

Dear Toady,

Its Sally. I’m gunna stay around I think and see if I can work it out with Frank. It wood just be rong I think just to leev him and not say anything to him. Cuz he wood get worryed and wouldnt no wear I was and everything. I was waching TV and they said that maybe you can try to tawk out your problems. I think thats what we need to do a little. I reelly appreesheeate everything you said. But I ackshually think that its rong to run away from things. And thank you for the car but its really to much. And I dont think it wood make it to Florida anyway. C U soon.

Love,

Sally



He folded up the note and put it in his pocket. Then he walked to his house. The night sky was lightening. A slow sapphire blue was starting to creep over the horizon. A chorus of crickets had given way to a lone dog barking in the distance. Toadstool turned to see if Edgar was out and about. He was nowhere in sight.

Marsha was still asleep on her back, a soft whistle of a snore falling from her nose and mouth. Toadstool lifted his sweatshirt and pulled the Browning from his waistband. He turned and looked at his sleeping wife. Her brow twitched slightly, caught in the throws of an intense dream. Toadstool ejected the magazine, flicked each cartridge out one by one. He put the gun in the locker, the clip in the closet, and the bullets in an old coffee can.

He crawled into bed beside Marsha and kissed her on the forehead. She stirred briefly and turned on her side.

“Is it alright?” she mumbled.

Toadstool stared up at the ceiling. He was resigned to the fact that he probably wouldn’t catch anymore sleep. He decided he’d get an early start on the day. He had to go by Bernie’s place and see if he could borrow the backhoe. And he had to cut down those two big elms on the Wilder property. And of course he had to pick up Frankie at the hospital. He decided he’d take him by Ozzie’s for lunch. Toadstool liked the Reuben sandwich at Ozzie’s. They slow-cooked and hand-carved their own corned beef.






for Tony



Brooklyn, NY (9/17/06)