Lithium, Chptr. 14 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.
The pale light of dawn slid through the tall pines and slapped daylight across the minivan, doing what it usually did, waking Mel up. Not that he got much sleep to begin with. The cabin was an echo-chamber of snores, with he, Andy, Max and Coop confined to it until morning.
They met the property owner when they got there the night before, but he wasn’t forming a welcome wagon at midnight. He told them to pull off into an open space by the entrance and not to go anywhere until he talked to them in the morning. Mel wondered if they should’ve stayed in the shelter in Nashville with Coop that night and come in the morning. If they soured their reception, they’d likely end up at that shelter.
Mel got out of the car, opened, and shut the door like it was fine china. It was early, but it wasn’t quiet. Whispers and stirring mixed with birds calling out the melody of the day. Even in strange lands, Mel was comforted by the time before alarms went off.
He didn’t want to break the rules by walking into the camp, but he had to walk somewhere. He turned toward the flag at the front of the road in. Couldn’t hurt to do a little walking back where he came from. He took a chance opening the door again to grab his ice-cold coffee before trekking the dirt road.
The road, like the camp, was surrounded on each side by a tree line skirted by thick brush. If they hadn’t seen the flag, it would have been impossible to find the place. The road that went in had was neighbor to housing developments, and he wondered how they felt about having a tent city so close to them.
The only sign of habitation was a row of garbage bags, black plastic. They were lined neatly on each side of the road, and they extended about fifty yards.
As he walked, his eyes became adjusted to the light, and it triggered his nose to become adjusted to the smell of pine pitch and garbage. It was potent, both smells. In taking it all in, he almost didn’t see her.
She was sitting on a tree stump in a lotus position, her hands around a tall, fat candle in a glass container. Mel had one just like it for Saint Michael; well, he did have one. The candlelight illuminated her face, porcelain, almond curves, and plump cheekbones. She had brilliant wavy crimson hair, the color of which was obvious even in the low light of dawn. Her eyes were shut, and she was whispering, even as he stepped gently towards her.
“Come pray with me,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Don’t be sorry.” She held out her hand. “Come sit here and pray the morning in with me.”
Mel swiped his hand across his backside as he went down, a pointless gesture. He was level with her; the stump gave her a lift. She reached over with her hand open and he took it, closing his eyes and feeling self-conscious before the Creator. Mainly because his father was an atheist and raised him so. But he was, at best, agnostic, figuring if a chili cheese dog could exist, so could God.
But he soon felt her hand. Her pulse: it was thirsty. It was searching for another heart to join it for a visceral game of hopscotch. She would squeeze and release, barely enough to notice, and it was language. He became filled up with a transcendent idea, as if he were seated before a canvas and the vision of what he saw encapsulated in memory gave way to the vision of what he’d make it. He wanted to run to the car and grab his paints and paint their faces the colors and patterns of a long-extinct Celtic race. Then he realized he didn’t have paints anymore, and he felt a beat weaker.
“What’s wrong?” She said. She felt that?
“Nah, I was just realizing I don’t have something I used to have, that’s all.”
“In you, or a thing?”
“A thing,” Mel said.
She got up and pulled him up, surprisingly strong for her lithe frame.
“Things come and go,” she said. “In fact, you are at the cosmic repository of things. Most everything you can think of is here, if you can find it, and you don’t mind cleaning it off.”
“Oh, and bartering for it,” she added.
“Paints?”
“Probably, but they’re hot ticket. Any art and music supplies, they’re kind of like money. But if you can do work, work is money too.”
She guided him back toward the camp entrance. “Come on, I’ll take you to where someone has paints. It’s way too early to talk to anybody right now, but you’ll know where to go at least.” She was walking at a good clip. Mel was keeping up, but his strides held hesitancy where hers held confidence. They hadn’t even been accepted in yet.
“I’m Hope, by the way.”
“That a metaphor or your name?”
“My name. Also, maybe a metaphor. But it was my mom’s metaphor when she named me.”
They walked past the minivan and down the main path. Mel was glad that it was big enough for the minivan, and that cars were parked in spots. He wouldn’t have to park away from the tent like he had to at the farm.
They took a left on a fork in the path and walked a minute or so. Hope was humming something that Mel couldn’t place, but it was in key and melodic. Mel tried to hum, but all he could think of was “When the Saints Come Marching In.”
“Right here,” she said. She pointed to a tent two spots further. “I’m over there, for your knowledge. But you can get paints here. Her name is Betty, and she needs some stuff done. Her rig is falling apart.”
Hope slung her arms around Mel and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Better come see me when you get settled in, or I’ll come see you.”
“I’m a stranger, you know,” Mel said as she walked away.
“You’re in good company,” she said.
***
The first thing he noticed as he made his way back to the minivan was that it was emptied of its passengers. The second thing he noticed was a very large man, maybe six inches taller than him with the physique of an ox, also standing by the car. He was the very same man they met the night before, who told them to stay by the minivan. He didn’t need dirty sheets to know he was fucked.
Mel double-timed it over to the minivan. The owner’s arms were crossed as he talked to Coop. Max was kicking the tire, and Andy was sitting on the bumper.
“And I take it you’re the owner of this minivan,” he said. “I was telling them just now that unless we, unless I allow you in, you’re not to enter the camp. I believe I said that to you last night?”
“Yes sir, I’m sorry, sir.”
“People don’t enjoy strangers wandering around. People may be homeless, but they have possessions, and if some stranger walks in and steals stuff, then people come to me thinking I can’t keep the place safe. You see the problem here?”
“I do,” Mel said. “I needed to stretch my legs this morning. I went out to the road, to follow your rules, but I met a girl out there, and she took me back in there to find someone who sells paints. Also, I wanted to make sure she got home okay.”
The man sighed. “Hope doesn’t need any help getting home, I can assure you,” he said. “Did you tell her you weren’t supposed to be in there?”
“I didn’t think of it,” he said. “It happened so fast.”
“I’ll bet.” The man uncrossed his arms and polished his bald spot. “If, and I say ‘if’ I let y’all stay here, you’d do well to mind Hope. She’s a real sweet girl and she breaks hearts. And you wouldn’t get very far out of here if you broke hers. Dig?”
“I dig.”
The man walked around the minivan, inspecting it. “Stolen?”
“No sir,” Mel said. “It’s mine.”
“Good,” he said. “We have a policy here; we police ourselves, and the cops don’t have to. They’d rather not come to dinner, and we don’t set a plate.”
“Now,” he continued. “Do you have enough basics for everybody? I mean sleeping bags, tents?”
“Mel and Andy do,” Max said. “I have money if anyone’s willing to sell some gear. And I got Coop covered too.”
“Okay,” the man san. “Now you said you were in here looking for paints. What are you, a painter? Do you do it professionally?”
“You should see his work,” Max said.
“I’d rather hear it from him.”
Mel walked to the back hatch and opened it. The hydraulics were louder than normal, something he hoped wasn’t the lead of a problem now that the minivan would be doubling as a house. He pulled his painting out and brought it over.
The man held it, tilted it to catch different angles, something Mel recommended people do as part of the experience.
“Wow,” he said. “This is pretty… inspired. How long you been at it?”
“God, kindergarten?”
“Lifer, huh. Okay, well, there are people who sell or barter paints. But they’re precious commodities, and once people figure out how good you are, you’ll be better off bartering for a ride to Nashville to go to an art store, or a chain store, whatever.”
“I’m Clifford, by the way,” he said.
Mel shook his hand. “Does this mean we’re in?”
“We have a council, mostly people who’ve been here for a while. Really, it’s anybody who shows up. We vote on it. And if anybody comes in with an objection, we hear them out. That’s part of why I said to stay here. You could’ve pissed someone off and have them show up at the meeting.”
“Hope’s the only person I talked to.”
“Be that as it may, I need you to follow the rules.” Clifford handed back the painting. “Okay, show of hands,” he said to the group. “Drugs?”
Coop raised his hand. Mel half raised his.
“What’s with the hand?” Clifford said. “You do drugs or no?”
“I have meds.”
“Are they opiates?”
“Nope, and I’m weaning myself off them.”
“Are we gonna’ have a medical issue?” Clifford said.
“No.” Mel didn’t want to mention it, but he needed Clifford to trust him. “They’re psych meds. I’ll be okay without them. They’re just too expensive for me right now.”
“You should talk to Marybeth, she’s a social worker that comes here once a week. Maybe she can get you some meds.”
“I’ll be okay. Meds are always going to be a problem if I’m on the street. I’m just going to wait until I have us set up somewhere and go back on them.”
“And you don’t think going off them will get in the way of you getting yourself set up?”
Clifford poked at a philosophical sore that was festering in the part of Mel’s mind where he kept uncomfortable truths.
“I really hope not.”
Clifford was a battle-weary man, but he was warm and genuine once he opened up.
“It’s hard to be soft here,” Clifford said as he walked them all around. “Picture a guy begging on the street, getting harassed, beaten up, told to get a job when he may actually have two jobs that don’t pay for a studio. And by the time he gets here, he’s defensive, he may be going through withdrawals, he doesn’t trust anybody. That’s a lot of people who show up here. And then we get people like Hope. She’s been all over the country. Full of positivity. She probably won’t be here in a month, off to some other adventure.”
“So I guess you all have to choose what kind of people you want to be here,” Clifford said. “We won’t judge you either way so long as you keep it to yourselves.”
They made their way back to the minivan.
“Sit tight,” he said. “Wait for the council vote. And if you see Hope again, tell her to Kumbaya with you here this time.”
***
Southern red oaks sucked up daylight for breakfast as the morning sun poked through the spaces between them and into the camp. Mel had gotten only a pale impression of the camp during his pre-dawn walk with Hope. A full daylight view was, admittedly, stark.
His first impressions were of a garbage dump. There was trash everywhere; it reminded him of video he saw from Hurricane Katrina, where people had emptied their flooded-out houses into the sidewalks, and piles reached six feet. The piles at the camp didn’t reach that height, but they were pervasive. It was hard to tell where the garbage piles ended, and the camps began. Mainly he could tell by the paths between the two.
Mel, Andy, Max, and Coop were by the minivan, working on Mel and Andy’s camp. Max decided to make his own camp somewhere else, and Coop knew someone there who offered to put him up. Mel was glad to have their help, and their company. Not to mention, Coop learned the place quickly enough to give Mel the lay of the land,
“The garbage isn’t considered garbage, first off,” he said. “It’s raw materials, like a pile of lumber on a construction site. The real garbage is the shit that stinks, and you gotta put that stuff outside the camp.”
Which explained the bags out by the front path.
“Clifford has bags for real garbage at the front camp,” Coop said. “He charges fifty cents, but if you’re broke, you can owe him, and if you’re really broke, you can get one for taking out someone’s trash, cause we got disabled people in here who can’t get around.”
Mel lifted a disembodied table leg that Max and Coop had fished out of the garbage. “I feel weird just going into the garbage piles to get this stuff, but I need more.”
“You do gotta watch out taking stuff that looks like garbage,” Coop said. “The piles by peoples’ camps generally belongs to them. You gotta ask, but it’s cool; it’s basically how people get to know each other.”
He pulled out a section of tarp with a rip in the middle. “There’s a community pile a few yards up, right around the fork. It’s basically where people bring stuff then they get overloaded at their camps. It’s free-for-all there.”
Max popped the final piece in to set up the tent. “Where does all this garbage come from? I mean, how does it get in here?”
“Scavenging out in Nashville, mostly.” Coop sat on the ground and pulled out a bag of rolling tobacco. “There’s a small truck on the property, it’s Clifford’s. He goes out with people and hunts the curbs on garbage nights, and he brings what he finds back.”
“That’s it? He just brings garbage in?”
“He sells it,” Coop said. “He sells the stuff. If you’re here till Thursday, you’ll see furniture, clothes and stuff on the side of the path near the front of the camp.”
“How can he sell the stuff?” Mel said. “People are homeless here. How can they pay for it?”
“A lot of people in here work.” Coop said.
Mel was surprised to hear that except for the fact that he was homeless and working just two days prior.
“Well, I’m broke,” he said.
“But you got a tent and a car,” Coop said. “You’re doing better than most.”
They spent the morning trying to construct an awning between the entrance to the tent and the side door of the minivan. Mel and Andy didn’t need an awning per se, but he saw everyone else’s hybrid camp construction, and he didn’t want to stick out. He also wanted to be outside working so that, should Hope be wandering around, she might see him. And he knew that he was being stupid. She showed him where her camp was. And he had enough money on him to at least pretense going to that woman Betty’s camp to ask about paints.
Andy was pointing to the raw materials Max, Coop and himself had collected, directing Max as he sorted through it. Max would hold up a piece and angle it through the air and Andy would shake his head and make gestures with both hands. Mel would have a hard time explaining Hope to him if something were to happen between them. He was having a hard time explaining why he thought something might happen after only a prayer and a short walk.
Mel decided to get out of his head and join the rest of the cast. Andy and Max were trying to construct a toilet, which Mel hadn’t even thought of. Of course, thinking of it, he suddenly felt the drop in his gut. It would soon be go time.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “I mean that literally, I gotta shit. Now.”
“Hold on, we almost got this figured out,” Andy said. “Max, do you think we can hollow out the seat on this chair?”
“Sure, but you’d fall through,” Max said.
Andy pointed to Mel. “Would he fall through?”
“Nah, don’t think.” Max started ripping the seat apart.
Coop chuckled. “You could use the Porta-Potties up the road,” he said. “Clifford had to put them in to have the camp. But I’d keep on building. You could always use a ‘just in time’ thing.”
Mel got the directions and half-walked, half-shuffled to the Porta-Potties. There was a line, and by the time he got through it he thought he was holding back an anchor. When he got into one of the stalls, he realized that Clifford had to install Porta-Potties, but he maybe didn’t have to have them cleaned. The smell was both biological and chemical warfare. He had to breathe through his mouth, and as he did, he could feel the fetid odor touch his tongue, which made him wretch. And when he was done, he realized that he didn’t have a shred of toilet paper. He would’ve used his hand to wipe; that would be the most economical, but he didn’t know if there was running water, which would be a damn good thing to find out.
He walked back to camp with one sock.
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