Jack and Mr. Grin Read online

  Jack and Mr. Grin

  by Andersen Prunty

  Jack and Mr. Grin

  Copyright 2008 by Andersen Prunty

  www.andersenprunty.com

  Eraserhead Press

  205 NE Bryant

  Portland, Oregon 97211

  www.bizarrocentral.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is for Gretchen. Thanks for saying “Yes.”

  One

  A perfect fall day. Jack reclined in the seat of his car, watching the fluffy white clouds drift across the deep blue sky, dreading going back into work. It was always during lunch the dread set in. That was when he had the desire to just fire up the ignition and drive home. But he needed the money. Needed the money just to live and, having no college education or any sort of trade skills, this was the job he was forced to take. At least it was nine to five so he could spend his evenings at home with Gina.

  The windows of the car were rolled down and clean smelling air filtered through it. He’d like to just lay outside all day on a day like this. Find a nice green meadow somewhere and just lie on his back and stare up at all the clouds and how they would change and come and go all day. He looked at the digital clock set in the car stereo. Only fifteen minutes left. Classical music floated and tinkled from the speakers. He didn’t know the names or the composers of this music until the broadcaster told him but he liked the sound of it. It was relaxing, peaceful, beautiful.

  He didn’t have enough time to settle into a good nap so he moved the seat forward, looking at the wall of the building in front of him. There was a bit of lawn between the parking lot of his work and this building. A shirtless man in a long bandana did pushups in the grass. This man had been out there, doing the same thing, forty-five minutes ago when Jack had come out for his lunch break. He must be exhausted, Jack thought. But the man, heavily muscled and glistening with sweat, continued to pump away. Jack pinched the little roll that had developed on his middle section since he and Gina had settled into their comfortable domestic routine and the sex had stopped being a daily occurrence. Perhaps he could stand to do some exercise.

  He dismissed the notion.

  He was far too lazy for exercise.

  Taking a deep breath, he got out of his car, leaving the windows down, and began the long walk back to The Tent.

  Two

  He didn’t know why but the red and white striped tent was at least a quarter of a mile away from the parking lot. He always had to start back to work ten minutes before his break was over just to make it in time. Maybe, at one point, they had planned on expanding but, as far as he knew, there wasn’t a giant demand for dirt packing.

  By the time he made it back to The Tent he was breathing heavily and he had worked up a pretty good sweat. The building being a tent didn’t do a lot to alleviate the heat. It was nearly impossible to install central air conditioning in a tent. He was just glad the steamy days of summer were over. They did bring in a few space heaters during the winter so that had always been tolerable. But those mean, humid days of summer... It made him glad for the change in season.

  He walked through the open door of the tent along with a couple other coworkers. The foreman, John Briggs, stood by the opening, the lower half of his face covered in a dirty painter’s mask, and glanced at his watch, mentally making sure no one could forge their time cards.

  Again, Jack was filled with the urge to simply turn and walk out. There had to be better jobs than this. But he always managed to rationalize it until he stayed. The pay was better than average—more than he would get just starting out anywhere else. And the insurance, while inadequate, was not overly costly.

  In the middle of The Tent stood a giant mound of dirt. A man in a yellow jumpsuit hosed down the dirt. That was Carl. The reason he wore the jumpsuit was not work related. It must have been sweltering inside that plastic-type material. The dirt had to be hosed down because they had turned on fans due to the heat and, if not hosed down, it was like a dust storm.

  He reached his work station just as the afternoon horn sounded. He took a deep breath. A picture of Gina, covered in grime, was taped to the wall of his work station. The rest of the area was filled with small plastic bags, boxes roughly the size of hardback books, and a trowel. The middle of his work area was filled with dirt. Dark, rich, fertile-looking soil in a mound up to his chest. He would spend the rest of the day transferring this mound of dirt into plastic bag-lined boxes.

  He put on his painter’s mask and got to work. If he didn’t wear the mask he could feel the dirt running down the back of his nose. He would cough it up. It was bad enough to feel it all gummed up at the corners of his eyes when he woke up in the morning whether he showered or not.

  After working away for about an hour, Briggs came by to dump some more dirt into his station.

  Jack folded up the box he was working on and started another.

  “I noticed some of your boxes feelin pretty light,” Briggs said.

  “Yeah?” He didn’t really give a fuck one way or the other, as long as he got a paycheck at the end of the week.

  “Yeah. See, the key is to give the dirt a little spritz.” Briggs reached down and pulled a green squirt bottle filled with water and spritzed the dirt with it. “See there?”

  “That’s genius, sir. I don’t know why I wasn’t doing that.”

  “That ain’t all though. Then you gotta pack it in there. Really pack it, you know?”

  “I’ll pack it as best I can, sir.”

  “I’ll be checkin back with you.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find much improved results, sir.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  Briggs strolled back amongst the other stations, leaving so many questions unanswered. It had been nearly three years and still Jack wondered, Why? Why the packing of dirt? Where did the dirt come from? Where did the dirt go? What made this dirt so special? It couldn’t be used for gardening in such a small quantity. All of the boxes in his station were pre-labeled. He looked at the one he picked up. It was headed for some country called Grisnos. Where the fuck was Grisnos? He would try to remember to look it up on the Internet when he got home but he knew he would probably forget. He forgot nearly everything about this place the moment he left. Most days, he tried to forget he even had a job.

  Three more hours, he thought, looking at the picture of Gina, wondering how she was getting along at the cafe. At least she worked with interesting people.

  He looked at a beefy lady in the station across from his. She lowered her painter’s mask and snorted the dirt, leaving a smear across her upper lip. If Mr. Briggs saw her do that, she’d be fired, Jack knew. She put her mask back into place and hiked up her lavender sweatpants until the seam lodged firmly between her gargantuan buttocks.

  Three hours. Three fucking excruciating hours.

  Three

  Their bellies full and their libidos emptied, Jack and Gina lay on the floor, a cool breeze blowing in through the open windows. Now that it was dark, the air was almost chilly. Jack brushed a strand of her black hair back from her forehead, curling it around her ear. He smelled the top of her head. He liked the smell of her sweat. It was like an exotic spice. Something he couldn’t quite place. He thought about the surprise he had for her and hoped she would like it.

  Earlier, he had brought dinner home and, after washing up to his elbows, they sat on the living room floor and ate. He had planned to take a shower after dinner but Gina had advanced on him before he had the chance. H
e hadn’t minded in the least but still felt compelled to remind her that he was filthy.

  “I like it,” she had said, nipping the hollow of his throat with her full lips, licking some of the dirt away.

  “We’ll get the sheets all dirty.”

  “Who says we have to go to bed? We can stay out here and you can get me all dirty.”

  That was all the initiative he needed. It had been quick and ferocious and wonderful.

  Now it was over and he felt even dirtier than before.

  “I think I really need to take a shower.” He stared at the ceiling.

  “I might join you.”

  He took another deep breath of her scent. If they took a shower, it would be gone until the next time they did this.

  “Stop huffing me,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  They continued to lie there, both wanting to shower but wanting to be there in each other’s arms even more. They had all night to shower. Today was Saturday and tomorrow would be their only day to sleep in. Jack would be glad when he didn’t have to work six day weeks anymore even though he didn’t have any idea when that would be.

  Four

  Jack sipped his coffee and stared at the viney plant hanging from the ceiling. Green and growing nicely, its fist-sized leaves caught the early morning sunlight. It was Sunday. His favorite day of the week. No work and he and Gina were able to lounge around the house or go out to eat and shop or, really, whatever else they wanted to do.

  Gina was on the floor, on her stomach, wearing a tight black t-shirt and black underwear, her lower legs raised and crossed at the ankles. She lay in front of an old childlike record player, listening to a 45 by the Mailboxes. Jack looked from the plant to her back, her ass, her legs. He loved everything about her. He didn’t care if they never went anywhere. He was perfectly content right where he was, sitting in a recliner and staring at this girl in front of him.

  But he was hungry.

  His stomach grumbled.

  He took a sip of coffee and put the cup down on the end table. Coffee didn’t do anything to curb the hunger and, while he would much rather sit there and watch Gina manipulate the record player, he knew the refrigerator and kitchen were completely bare. Unless he wanted to eat coffee beans.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  She turned her head and said over her shoulder, “A little... you?”

  “Yeah. Think I’m gonna go get some breakfast. Want anything?”

  “Yeah. The usual, I guess.”

  “All right. I’m gonna put on some clothes.”

  “’Kay.”

  He got up from the recliner, undoing the belt on his thin coffee brown robe he’d found at the thrift store a few months ago and headed into the bedroom. Stripping off the robe and his green flannel pajama bottoms, he pulled on a pair of well-worn jeans (also from the thrift store), deciding the white t-shirt he had on was fine.

  Going back into the living room, he grabbed the keys from the same end table where his coffee cup rested and said, “Love you. I’ll be back.”

  “Love you too,” Gina said, flipping the 45 to the b- side.

  Stepping out into the morning sunshine, he walked across the lawn to his cheap Japanese car parked on the curb. He glanced to his left. Mr. Moran stood stiffly, his forehead pressed against an oak tree in the middle of his yard. Jack waved to him but the man paid no attention, lost, as he was, to the bark of the mammoth tree.

  Jack opened the passenger side door, sliding over the middle console and positioning himself behind the wheel. The driver’s side door had been inoperable for quite a while. He made decent money at The Tent. He could probably even afford a better car but it seemed like they never had time to go look for one and he didn’t really have any idea how long his job at The Tent was going to last. Best not to enter into any long term financial arrangements.

  The only decent thing about the car was the CD player that had, mercifully, gone unstolen since moving to Alton nearly a year ago. He cranked the ignition and Ben Folds blared from the speakers. He thought about changing the disc because he had heard it so many times but decided to let it play because it reminded him of when they had moved into this house on Stokesbury Lane. While they had painted before moving all of their stuff in, they had an ancient boom box (it had to be one of the first to play CDs), and this was the only one it would play.

  The car belching exhaust, he pulled away from the curb and headed toward downtown, to Granger’s, home of the Granger Ranger Breakfast Sammich.

  Five

  “What’ll it be, pardner?” the tinny voice came through the speaker.

  “Can I get two Granger Ranger Breakfast Sammiches and two hashrowns?” Jack said, feeling stupid. He hated saying ‘sammich,’ but they would totally fuck up your order if you called it anything else. At first, he had thought this was just some kind of urban legend. Trying it one day, he found out it was completely true and if you went inside or back through the drive-thru, they would pretend you were never there in the first place.

  “I reckon you can, pardner,” the voice said from the other end of the speaker. “Please pull yer hoss around.”

  Jesus, this place was so stupid. If their food wasn’t so good he would never come here. But there weren’t a lot of places to eat close to his house and even fewer had drive-thrus. He really hated to get out of the car. It was embarrassing, having to crawl over the passenger seat. It was like announcing to the world that he was uneducated scum, quite possibly doomed to the packing of dirt for the rest of his life. He considered himself lucky the driver’s-side window actually rolled down.

  He sat in the line, hoping his car wouldn’t die. There were three or four cars in front of him.

  Hunger wasn’t the real reason he had offered to get breakfast. His hunger pains probably wouldn’t have really bothered him until early afternoon.

  He had a secret in the glove compartment. It wasn’t until now that he thought about how stupid it was keeping it in the glove compartment. Anyone could have come by and stolen it. But it was so small they would have probably missed it. Opening the glove compartment, he pulled out the ring. It was white gold, a single solitary diamond set in the middle. It wasn’t anything fancy but it had cost him nearly two weeks of pay he’d had to sock away a little at a time so Gina didn’t know he was planning anything.

  He wanted his proposal to be a surprise.

  He didn’t want her to have to prepare to say ‘yes.’ He wanted to see the look in her eyes when he popped the question and he would know—just from that look— if she wanted to marry him or not.

  It would be out of the blue, too.

  This was the third year they were together. They had talked about it a lot the first year and then decided they shouldn’t rush anything— it was just a piece of paper, right? And so they had agreed to wait two full years before bringing up the subject.

  Gina had been nearly married once before. She had lived for five years with some guy named Tim Fox. Jack had seen pictures of him but he had never met the guy. It was Gina’s theory that, by the end of the third year, if you still want to be with the other person, then maybe it had a chance of lasting. Tim Fox had proposed to her during their second year together and Gina had said yes because she was only twenty-one and didn’t know any better. She had stayed with him for the next four years, she said, simply because they were engaged.

  He supposed he could buy that but he couldn’t help thinking there was something else there. Like maybe she really did care for the guy. But thinking about that made him mad. He couldn’t exactly explain it. Maybe some things didn’t need explaining. He just didn’t like the thought of her being in love with someone else. Someone who had come before him. Jealousy, he guessed. Probably nothing more.

  He pulled forward and slid the ring into his pocket.

  Today was the day.

  Six

  He was so focused on the ring in the front right pocket of his jeans he nearly forgot all about the bag of breakfast
sitting in the passenger seat. He nearly sat in it as he went to slide over and get out of that side of the car.

  His heart pounded.

  He was almost certain she would say yes but what if she didn't? That would certainly put a damper on breakfast. Perhaps he should wait until after they ate. But he didn’t think he could do that. He didn’t think he would be able to eat until he knew her answer to his question. They hadn’t really talked that much about it recently. He just had the feeling they both knew it was going to happen.

  But what if she didn’t want it to happen? What if she was perfectly happy with things the way they were? Would his proposal ruin it?

  How could it? It wasn’t like they were going to get married on the spot. It was basically just his way of saying she was the one he wanted to marry. The rest he would leave up to her. If she wanted to go to the courthouse tomorrow and do it, he would be there. If she wanted to wait five or ten or twenty years, he would wait for her.

  The ring tucked safely in his pocket, breakfast in a splotchy white wax paper bag clutched in his left hand, he bumped the car door shut with his hip. Mr. Moran was still out in his front yard, staring at that tree. Only now, thankfully, he sat in a lawn chair.

  Strange fucker, Jack thought, glancing over at him.

  Oh God, Mr. Moran was actually waving him over. Briefly, Jack thought about ignoring him, pretending he didn’t see him and just moving on into the house. But he had made eye contact with the old man. Now he couldn’t really avoid him without the old man knowing he was avoiding him.

  Jack seized up, walking quickly into the neighboring yard. Maybe if he just assumed this air of hurry then the old man, prone to unholy lengths of rambling, would realize he had something else on his mind and let him off easy.

  “Hey there,” Jack said.