A Small Gray Dot

It got to be October, and the schools remained closed. The government kept promising but by January, with it having been a year and a half since the world went to shit, it became obvious that there would no longer be a need for middle-school English teachers at all because as time wore on, we realized the schools were never going to reopen. This was an indication that for the foreseeable future, public schooling was a thing of the past.

Some of my colleagues left for other regions, hoping to get work at a private school somewhere. For most, it didn’t happen, and for the majority of us, our careers as teachers were over.

Part Two: Tracking

Chapter Eleven

I OSCILLATED BETWEEN APATHY AND RAGE.

Most days I plodded home from one or the other of the jobs I worked, where I would sit dry-eyed and alone in my flat drinking too much and staring at the little brown elf magnet I’d kept, or at the paintings of Missy’s and Jon’s I hung on my walls. I went through the images on my laptop that I transferred from my cellphone of family and friends. People that no longer existed. I read that last note from Zoni countless times. I tried to write but the day I found myself repeatedly typing nothing but “Zoni” for an entire page, I put my laptop aside and didn’t try again.

In my quest to forget, or at least to not think, sometimes I’d go out and find a woman. I never brought one to my flat. We’d go to her place or I’d rent a room in a cheap motel. Sometimes they wanted pay. I didn’t mind. Everybody had to make a living. They were always surprised that I wasn’t as old as I looked.

There were times when I’d get drunk and take my gun and lurch through an abandoned section of the city taking potshots at lampposts, signs, vacant buildings, and old cars, or throw rocks and smash windows. This went on until one night, after one of those excursions, I awakened with a nearly empty bottle of cheap rum in one hand, spraddled out on the stairs that went up to the apartments. Lowell was standing over me shaking his head.

The only thing he said as he got me to my feet, was, “Come on boy. Let’s get you to your room.”

He helped me up the stairs and I staggered my way to the john. My bladder was so full it was a wonder I hadn’t pissed myself. My stomach churned and I became so queasy that when I leaned over the toilet it was a race between the urine and the vomit as to which would hit first. I have to say they hit the floor and the back of the wall at about the same time as I missed the commode on both counts.

When I stumbled my way back out, Lowell was in my bedroom sitting at my fold-up desk. He said something, which I didn’t catch because the room was spinning like an out of control drone. I flopped down on the bed, fell back, and whirled off into blackness.

And then I was waking up. Light streamed in through the tiny curtainless back window, and a little imp with a big hammer was inside my head in the process of demolishing my brain.

I rolled from the bed. I was in my underwear and I wondered when I’d taken off my shoes and gotten undressed but my head wasn’t allowing me to remember much, so I stumbled into the bathroom. Immediately, the odors of piss and puke whacked me in the nose. My stomach protested and I tasted bile but I managed to keep it down. I vaguely recalled having made the mess. I used the toilet and dragged myself back out where I spotted a small white bottle sitting on my desk. A note accompanied it: “Take a couple of these. It’s something for your head and stomach. Come down when you feel better.”

It floated into my rum-fried brain that I hadn’t been the one to undress myself, that it was Lowell who removed my shoes and clothing. I sloshed water into the chipped mug sitting on the side of the small sink in the corner of the front room – the space I called my kitchen – and downed three of the pills, then I slumped down in one of the two chairs at the tiny table near the sink. I stared at the wall for a while, until the ache in my head and the nausea in my belly began to ease up then I got the bucket I kept under the sink, and went to clean the bathroom.

After I got dressed, I went down to the smoke shop. Lowell was leaning on his counter with his pipe in his hand. There weren’t any customers but that wasn’t unusual for early Saturday morning. He straightened as I came in from the stairwell, and eyeballed me as he stuck the pipe into a pocket.

“You’re a mess, Tenn,” he said. “You’ve got to quit doing this. You’re too nice a guy.”

My sluggish brain couldn’t come up with anything to say about that.

“Well, you feel better now?” he asked.

I shrugged. My headache was gone but mostly I just felt numb. I lowered myself down at one of the tables he kept for customers who wanted to relax and smoke – or vape since he also sold nicotine and cannabis in liquid form.