Pig Iron

I didn’t see him until after, when I went for coffee. They had a machine on the front desk because for sharing. Actually the machine was broken. What they had was one of those black and silver pumps like at a gas station, a sort of really big thermos that spits brown blistering water all down your arm.

Actually it wasn’t after but during, maybe halfway through. Somebody told me it would be another fifteen minutes, and there was coffee on the desk if I wanted some. Right then I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes had come and gone already, and I was getting pretty tired of waiting, but I just smiled and nodded and went for coffee.

Anyway then I saw him. He was heading toward me, and if he owned any expression at all, he did not wear it on his face. The first thing I noticed was his arm, which hung irregular from the socket, like he was dragging something awkward and heavy. The arm was foreign to him in the way that adolescence is to middle age. His whole body sagged that way, and when he walked he thrust the dead arm forward and used its momentum to propel across the choppy cement. This might have been a defense mechanism, to ward against would be name callers and fun makers. What’s clear is that he wanted no sympathy, for he wore that arm as a brick wears mortar.

Actually the first thing I noticed was not his arm. What I saw, I’m not very sure how to put it, so I’ll just tell you outright. I’m not going to butter it up. There was a foot on his head. And it was not someone else’s foot. And it wore a tennis sneaker.

I watched a program once about congenital malformations on Dateline. Maria Shriver hosted; I think Stone Phillips took vacation that week. Anyway the guy she interviewed, they shook hands and I about died when I saw it. His right arm was like a chicken wing bone with five knobby gumdrops tacked along one side. Probably he could wiggle them but I don’t remember. In the interview he talked about how lousy it was growing up and what a problem he had keeping it warm in winter. There wasn’t money for amputation and one time he tried lopping the whole thing off at the library with a paper cutter. It was really pretty sad.

Another time on Ripley’s there was a girl with backward knees and it was more or less the same story.

But this guy in the place, the way he carried on, you’d think he was quite sure everybody and their uncle had one of those things sprouting from their cowlick. His skin was the color of rust, patchy and uneven like sunburn. He looked hard enough, but I suspect he was all mushy and brittle inside. It was strange, him taking coffee at the front desk. I figure they had a machine in back for the workers. Maybe it was broken like everything else.

Anyway I stumbled and very nearly froze. Then I remembered the chicken wing guy, how he crumpled at the part about everybody gawking all the damn time. Then I remembered the girl with backward knees. Then I bit my lip and made like my hesitation was to allow him dibs on coffee. I held out my hand but he shook it away. The sneaker on his head was loose around whatever twisted thing lay beneath it. The laces came undone and dangled in his eyes. He brushed them into the fold of an ear.

Are you the Civic? he asked.

I told him I was.

You should be using synthetic, he said.

I swallowed hard and made a colorless face. I’m far less dynamic in person.

He told me his name was Calvin, and he pointed to his shirt where it was stitched in blue thread on a thick white rectangle.

Michael, I said. And then I jammed my thumb into my chest like I was king of the jungle or something.

The sneaker on his head matched the two on his feet, and I was curious how he went about purchasing them. Probably he buys three pairs all at once. I imagine it’s pretty hard to get a nice knot upside down like that. Anyway I didn’t bother with cream or sugar. Before I went back to my chair I tipped my little Styrofoam cup in a neighborly way. He smiled and nodded and turned for his coffee.

I sat down feeling pretty good about everything. The waiting room smelled like grease and the walls had fingerprint stains. The coffee was tough to drink so I set my cup on one of the magazines. A feverish woman sat reading from a little beat up Ginsberg paperback, underlining whatever passages plucked her strings. When she wasn’t making notes in the margin she was clicking the pen against her lower lip all breakneck.

One thing I couldn’t figure out was whether Calvin had toes on his head-foot. Another thing was about toenails. Clipping them would be a terrible bitch. I imagined him trying to get it removed. Probably no doctor would touch it. Probably he could do a pretty mean headstand. Anyway I didn’t have the heart to ask.

What really got me is, four people came and went, I counted the bell above the door. All four clearly saw Calvin and not one among them so much as widened their eyes or loosened their stride. Maybe this corner turned somehow into a better place while I was waiting. Maybe I ought to get my head checked. I sat there and thought about it. Right then Calvin called me to the front desk.

Mister S, he said.

I looked up and he jingled my keys. He told me I was all set, and to keep an eye on my brakes, and someone called Nick would bring it around. Then he nodded at some papers on the counter.

Maybe I’ll eventually be able to do this myself, I said. I mean it’s just oil.

He made his eyes into little black slits and said, build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day; set him on fire and he’s warm the rest of his life.

I signed my name and thanked him and got the hell out of there.

Outside the air crumbled and in the distance a garbage fire roared. Joe Niekro died earlier that day. I don’t know if you follow baseball. He threw a pretty hot knuckleball. They said it was a brain aneurysm. I might have been thinking about that. Anyway I heard a sound like metal screaming and then I was on my back and sort of twisted and looking at the sky.

I closed my eyes and smelled barbecue mixed with rubber and all I could think was my mother washing dishes in a pair of those yellow gloves people sometimes wear. She turned and smiled and she was talking but I couldn’t make it out what she said. Only my mother doesn’t wash dishes anymore on account of she’s at Briarwood. Then it hit me and my eyes opened and there was Calvin hunched over with the sun behind him and looking a lot like a dream I once had, except for the head-foot and all. His mouth was going but like everything else it was on mute. He didn’t look too sad either.

My lips opened and spilled words across the blacktop and it was my mother’s voice and she yelled, “Hijo del Dios Eterno, tiene la misericordia en mi!”

And then everything went all red and black. Anyway I’m not lying.