Lithium, Chptr 12 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

Mel woke up to something odd. Not ‘aliens were parked and having a barbecue’ odd; just that something wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He was dog tired, his adrenaline from yesterday long since gone. So it may have taken him extra time to notice the thing that was not like the others. Because it wasn’t a thing; it was the absence of a thing. A tent. Max’s tent.

Mel didn’t even try to come up with some logical reason for the tent to be gone. Burle, likely Casey, removed it. Max would get out of the ER and he wouldn’t be welcome there. It was wrong, and in a civilized world, Max could’ve sued the pants off Burle and the whole farm. But the most he could do would be lodge something in small claims court, where he’d have to show up, if he even could, in street clothes.

The town was in Burle’s pocket. So, of course, was the farm, and all the workers were nothing more than useful lint.

Allie walked out as Mel was standing by the space where Max’s tent was.

“Did you see the accident?” Allie asked.

“Yeah. I was painting, and he was one the side roof pulling shingles.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Mel said. “Did you see them take the tent away?”

Allie yawned, covering her mouth with her sleeve. “No. And I was up until at least midnight?”

Mel pulled out a stick of gum he got from Ulysses. “I thought Casey didn’t come up here?”

“He does if he’s evicting someone.”

“He takes their tent?”

“I don’t know,” Allie said. “Maybe they put it in storage for them to pick it up. And if they don’t pick it up, who knows?”

“I can’t believe they’re evicting Max because he got injured,” Mel said. “He did nothing wrong; I swear to you. I was watching him. That damned roof must’ve been rotted out underneath.”

Andy came out and joined them, stretching and yawning, which he did a lot for a kid. Then again, Mel didn’t know how being a drifter affected kids.

“That’s where Max was,” he said as he pointed to the empty spot.

“I know.”

“Is he gone, dad?” Mel didn’t want to answer that, largely because he only suspected the answer.

“I’m gonna talk to Burle, find out what’s going on.”

A pallor hovered over breakfast at the house. It was never energetic and joyous, but it was never free of small talk. Everyone knew that Max’s tent was gone, and everyone knew about the accident. And thanks to Mel around the fire the night before, everyone knew how Casey and Burle tried to handle it.

Mel waited for Burle to give Casey the orders of the day before catching his ear.

“What was wrong with Max?” He said. “How did the ER go?”

“It was fine,” Burle said. “Just cuts and scrapes, like we said.”

“Okay, so tailing on that, we have a problem up at the clearing.”

“You know, Casey’s the one you’re supposed to talk to about this, not me.”

“This one, I think, is a ‘you’ problem.” Knowing how easy Burle was to beat the crap out of made it a whole lot easier to be assertive.

“Okay, fine. What is it?”

“Max’s tent is gone. Did you kick him out because he got injured?”

“I didn’t kick him out.” Burle pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Mel didn’t know he smoked. “When we were in the waiting room, he told me he wanted to leave. So I gave him what pay he was owed out of pocket, and I told him I’d grab his tent and bring it to the shelter in Jamestown.” He flicked his lighter to spark up. “Honestly, I didn’t get back until two-thirty. So, no offense, I’m not going to be the ‘questions’ person beyond this.”

Mel went back out to work on the barn, which unfortunately put him in constant sight of the hole that swallowed his friend. He had been there long enough to know all the motions and stops on the grapevine. He had news of what Burle told him to everybody by lunch.

Lunch, like breakfast, was quiet. Everybody could sense a storm coming, but no one knew who the eye of the storm would be. Everyone had reason to lash out, or to harbor resentment, and the work was relentless. In fact, sometimes, Burle and Casey gave out work assignments that had little- or nothing to do with running the farm, and everything to do with keeping people busy. If it weren’t for the fire, life on the farm wouldn’t be life.

At the end of the day, about a half-hour before the sun went down, Ulysses came up to Mel and tapped him on the shoulder.

“You need to see something,” he said. “Up in the north field.”

“Can I go grab Andy? He just got back from school.”

Ulysses looked around with cool eyes. “Your kid can keep a secret?”

“Yeah, of course,” Mel said. “Stay here; I hear him, he’s not far.”

Mel found Andy gabbing about class with Allie, sounding excited for once. He told him they needed to fix the tent, which was a lousy lie to tell in front of Allie, but it was all that came to mind.

They joined Ulysses in a trek to the north field. It was uphill and a far walk, and no one went up there because there was no actual part of the farm there – just uncultivated land.

“You sound excited about school.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “We have tomorrow off. Teacher thing.”

“Oh, well, that’s something, I guess.” Mel took a deep breath as they started the ascent. “Is it getting any better for you?”

“Yeah. Turns out those kids that beat me up couldn’t beat Zombie Master. I beat that whole game, so I gave them the cheats. Now they like me.”

Mel felt bittersweet about that seeing as how temporary their address might be.

They walked into a small clearing with a multicolor tree line. Ulysses pointed.

“That’s it right there,” he said. “See it?”

Mel squinted. “What am I looking at?” He said.

“Take a good look.”

Mel squinted, and it took a minute before he could catch the angles and stripes, and square patches of color. It was tents, all collapsed and mashed up. And standing on the edge of the tree line, a slightly less dinged up tent, grey with orange stripe.

Max’s tent.

***

Mel realized he was lucky among the workers, at least for then, because he had a minivan. And it was great that he could ride the other workers into town, or even to Jamestown, but he could also depart from the farm as time and gas allowed. He found a spot a mile-and-a-half down the road, where a parking area was cleared off at a section of state park. He liked to take Andy there after he finished work, and Andy got off the bus. They wouldn’t stay long, maybe ten minutes if they lingered. If Mel were being honest, it would’ve been a satisfying bone cruise when he was in his twenties.

He didn’t know why he chose to leave the north field to talk with Andy that afternoon. It was desolate, and if they just stayed there, likely no one would’ve intruded. But Mel needed space. He needed distance of mind from the graveyard of tents. He didn’t want to have to face what all those people were to Burle and Casey. What he knew they now were.

“Andy, we can’t stay here now. Not for long.”

“Do you think they killed Max?” Andy asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t,” Mel said. “But their story is obviously made up.”

“We should go find him. Or find his body.”

“I’m not against it, kid. But we don’t have money and we don’t have the gas to go looking. My plan right now is to grit my teeth, get paid tomorrow, and make my move.”

Mel adjusted his rearview mirror, more than half expecting to see the headlights of Burle’s pickup, but the road was clear.

“I’ve been working for two weeks, so, minimum wage in New York is fifteen an hour. Max told me he pays minimum. But let’s assume he’s going federal minimum wage, cause we’re under the table, so that’s seven-and-a-quarter.”

Mel lifted his eyes beyond his lids and tapped the tip of his thumb against his fingers, not with tardive dyskinesia, but with numbers in his head.

“So seven and a quarter times ten hours times six days times two weeks, minus a half day for the trip to the pharmacy, that’s… eight hundred and seventy bucks.”

“Minus room and board,” Andy said. “Even though the food is donated.”

“Well even if room and board for the both of us is half that, which would be a ripoff, that’ll leave us four hundred and thirty-five bucks. That’s a bit less than what was on the EBT card.”

“That’s go money, right, dad?”

“That’s absolutely go money.”

Andy opened the glovebox and pulled out the atlas. “But where to go?”

“Good question,’ Mel said. “Not back home. Not back home for a while.”

A stack of fresh pallets stood by the fire pit that night, including scrap wood. Mel knew that Max’s blood was on part of that scrap wood. Everyone else did too because it would lay there unburnt all night. Mel had the morbid thought that if they did burn it, at least Max would’ve gotten cremated. They could’ve had a service, even gone up to the north field and retrieved his tent, also to burn.

Allie rubbed Ulysses’s shoulders. Marcus and Maria were drawing in the dirt with sticks. Kevin, Will, and Sam, three workers who Mel barely knew, were breaking up the pallets to throw in the fire. And Andy was in the tent with a flashlight, still doing homework, even though he had no real reason to. Mel figured he needed the distraction.

“I can feel it,” Allie said. “In the vibe. Max’s vibe was primo when he was good.”

“Burle should be shot,” Marcus said. “Casey too. Both of ‘em. Lined up. Shot.”

“They’re gonna’ find theirs in the pit,” Allie said.

“Yeah, if hell exists,” Marcus said.

“Hell’s here. Right here. Right now. We livin’ it.” Ulysses coughed into his fist.

“Yeah, hell exists. Real pitchfork cloven hooves hell. H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. I saw it.” Allie said.

“Get out of here with that shit.” Marcus said. “You was high or crazy. Can’t see hell and live to talk it up.”

Allie wrung her hands. She was prone to fantasy, and no one challenged her proclamations because they were fun. She wasn’t used to the skepticism. And Mel figured about this time Max would smooth out the vibe. But he wasn’t there.

“Look guys, I’m out of here tomorrow,” Mel said. “I’m getting paid and that’s it.”

“Do you have a specific journey in mind?” Allie asked.

“No, just… out of here.”

“What about Nashville?” Ulysses said. “You heard about the tent city there?”

Mel hadn’t considered leaving the state, much less leaving the whole northeast. “What is it?”

“It’s a tent city,” Ulysses tossed a pebble in the fire. “It’s on private property, so it’s safe. The cops can’t just move you if you have the guy’s permission to be there, which I heard he lets everybody stay. And there’s a whole artist thing going on there. It’s pretty cool.”

“Okay, how come you’re not there?”

“I’m not into that hippie commune shit,” he said. “Rather just tuck my head in and do some work, get paid, keep to myself.” Ulysses looked around. “Present company excluded.”

“Of course,” Mel said. “So is it in Nashville, or near it.”

“Near it.” Ulysses said. “It’s just west of Nashville. If you can figure it out from there, you should go. You’ll fit right in with your art.”

Mel sat with the rest of the crew all night, celebrating Max’s life, though Mel hoped beyond hope that Burle and Casey were just general grade scumbags, and not murderers. He knew Max wouldn’t come back for his tent, because it would mean having to ask to come on the farm, hat in hand. Max had more pride than Mel figured men in their position had a right to. Max might come for his paycheck because it was owed. Mel would have to see the next day, assuming he stayed long enough.

Mel went to bed, wrapping his arms around Andy. He missed his boy to the school, making it a mixed blessing to pull him from it.

***

The clouds were thin and sparse, and once Mel could see it eye to sky, instead of through the tent’s mesh, he knew he would be able to see the pre-dawn constellations. And it would make him feel so small, and yet so important, that he could be a cosmically miniscule being on an unremarkable rock in the vast upon vast universe, and with but a glance, he could connect with it all. He could see the past of the starlight as he contemplated both present and future, and if he stayed long enough, he could see that cosmic presence fade to the rise of their own star.

But Mel had something personally cosmic to attend to in the tent. He had the flashlight in his phone turned on and away from where Andy was sleeping. His pillbox sat in his lap, and the bottles were surrounding it in a fold of his sleeping bag. He was making decisions with determination that two weeks ago would’ve terrified him. And it wasn’t because he had grown as a person; it was that he was suppressing the terror.

Ever since he had gotten diagnosed with bipolar 1, he split himself into two people: the law-abiding, present, practical, logical community citizen, and the shameful, wild, pitiable, and dangerous-under-the-wrong-conditions lunatic. The meds he held in his pillbox formed the wall in his head separating the one from the other.

Lithium. Valproic acid. Risperidone, Trazadone. Diazepam. These were his shield from the great abyss that he could at any time fall into. They made him whole, but they exacted their toll. He was fatter than he ate for. He had restless legs that made getting a comfortable night’s sleep a challenge. He couldn’t drink or do drugs or skip a night of meds without two days of feeling lousy in a way that was tough to describe to a doctor, even a shrink.

He stared at the pillbox. Every other day the slot was empty. He would have liked to cut down his dosages to keep taking them daily, but he would need new scripts, and scripts were a problem in the first place. He didn’t dare chop the pills in half without a foolproof method of not crushing them beyond use. He knew he couldn’t take the meds as is, even after he got paid. They needed that money for food and gas. He didn’t know what lay ahead, and the experience on the farm had rubbed the polish off his hope.

He got Andy up, and they disassembled the tent. He knew it was too early for Burle or Casey to be up and about, even on a farm. They left the very early morning tasks to the workers. So they took the tent and the sleeping bags to the car, unnoticed by anyone but Ulysses.

“You out, huh?” He said.

“Yeah, after we get paid. We’re just done.”

“You’re smart. Good thing you have a car. You gonna’ go to Ark Church Mission?”

“What’s that?”

“Homeless shelter in Jamestown,” he said. “It’s alright. Not too crazy.”

“I was thinking we go to that tent city in Nashville.”

“Alright, alright,” he said. “But let me say, watch yourself out there. The country is all different in how it treats homeless folks. What could pass here won’t pass there, you know?”

Mel nodded. It was food for thought. But they couldn’t stay in New York. Mel had heard horror stories about shelters, and even if they were able to stay, Debra could find them in New York. She’d likely weaseled her way into some Family Court judge’s heart by then. Not to mention that Mel didn’t exactly pull Andy out of school in any official way.

Thinking about staying made Mel realize that, at least in New York, he might be wanted.

Payday was after breakfast, and from what Allie told him, it was the only day that they got paid time off, basically the amount of time it took to pay ten people. It was also the only day it was fun to work. Burle paid everybody with a white envelope. People would get their envelope and move over to count it.

That should’ve told Mel something.

When he got his envelope, he opened it.

“Over there to open and count it,” Burle said. “Don’t hold up the line.”

Mel sidestepped, opened it, and it looked light. No way it was four-hundred dollars, even. He counted it out; two hundred.

“Burle,” he said. “There’s only two hundred here. I think you made a mistake.”

“No, that’s it. Two hundred.”

“I worked two weeks.”

“You worked two weeks minus a half-day, minus the half-day you took with Max, minus the gas money and expenses to get him to the ER, which I told you you were paying for. Plus the cost of getting Andy in school. So, two hundred.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Mel said.

“You want to swear, you can get out of here.” Burle handed an envelope to Allie. “I have rules.”

“It’d be nice if one of your rules was not ripping off your workers.” Mel felt himself becoming more animated in his movements. He was gaining steam.

“And oh yeah, about that painting,” Mel said. “You sold that to a gallery in Jamestown for five hundred bucks. You gonna keep that too?”

“I told you, that’s on commission.”

“So let’s go back to the gallery and take it off commission, and I’ll go take it back. If it’s on commission, we can do that, right?”

“I’m not going back there.”

“No? Then how will you get the money when it sells?” Mel used finger quotes for the word ‘sells.’

“If you don’t like the way I do things here, you can leave. You and your kid.”

“Sure. Better leave alive than have you pretend to drive us the hospital but leave us in a ditch. Or did you kill Max outright?”

“I don’t like what you’re suggesting,” Burle said.

“We saw his tent in the north field,” Mel said. “All the tents. How many workers have you killed?”

By that point, the workers were gathered around Mel, mainly because they were in awe that someone would speak to Burle in that way. But Ulysses saw something coming.

“What are you gonna do, call the cops?” Burle said. “You’re nobody, here or anywhere. They arrest folks for trying to feed you people ‘cause you’re vermin. And you think what, you’re gonna lead an uprising here? These people are going to go right back to work when I kick your dust from my boots.”

“You ain’t nothing,” he said. “And your kid ain’t nothing.”

Mel lunged without having any sense that he was doing it, or any plan to do it. Just a muscle in him that twitched because it was poked. He felt hands grip his shoulders. Rough, black hands. Ulysses.

“Chill, it ain’t worth it,” he said.

As soon as he said it, Mel felt pressure against his eye socket, and a brilliant flash of light. Burle had punched him, but aside from the shock of him doing it, Mel wasn’t on his way to the mat.

Burle snatched the envelope out of Mel’s hands and immediately walked back to the house. If Mel hadn’t already emptied the envelope, Ulysses wouldn’t have been able to stop him.

“You guys gotta go,” Ulysses said. “He’s gonna call the cops.”

“Good, let him call.”

“Bad. For all of us,” Ulysses said. “Thank you for standing up to him. Now please go.”

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