I think about that then ask John what he wants, what he needs.
He says, “Jeans,” and laughs.
I ask him if he needs any food. He asks if we have any peanut butter. I tell him we do. We have peanut butter but it’s in a cabinet and, for some reason, we are not supposed to give it out. The peanut butter stays in the cabinet, even when people want—no, need—peanut butter.
I leave John and go to the pantry and go in the cabinet I’m not supposed to go in. The cabinet is full. All the shelves are full. I fill up three bags with groceries, lots of bread and peanut butter and jelly, and bring them back to John.
He says, “I can’t carry those,” and he lifts his arm, his helpless arm, like a tiny bird without wings trying to fly from his shoulder and getting stuck and falling down to his lap.
I tell John I’ll take him home. I tell him to wait and I go back and ask my boss if I can take John home. She says she wouldn’t but I can. I tell her I want to. I walk around to the front of the hospital and find my car. I load in the groceries and pick up John at the back door.
He says, “Thanks for this.”
I say, “Not a problem.”
We drive over the bridge and down below us is McKees Rocks. A famous boxer is from there. I can’t remember his name. Billy Mays, the TV guy, the guy who used to be in all the infomercials, the guy who pitched OxiClean, the guy in a blue denim shirt with a nice beard, the guy with the great voice, grew up in the Rocks. When he died, when his heart exploded from years of cocaine abuse, it was all over the national news. Billy Mays. Pittsburgh. Heart attack. Cocaine. But not John, he never makes the national news. Construction, ripped off, broken arm, hungry, depressed. They don’t loop that on CNN.
But now John has groceries and we are driving, driving and talking.
Years ago, when I was twenty-two or twenty-three, I started to read Walt Whitman and I found these lines in one of his poems: “Despise riches, give alms to every one that asks.” He said, “Stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others.” He said, “Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God.” Whitman was a poet but he was also a nurse in the civil war.
He said, “Have patience and indulgence toward the people.” He said, “Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men.” He said, “Go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families.”
He said, “Devote your income and labor to others.”
He said, “Stand up.”
My brain aches sometimes from how much I want to be better, from how often I fail.
John and I drive to his apartment. The bricks of his apartment are yellow, some crumbling, some no longer present so there are open spaces and dusty concrete. I park out front but he doesn’t get out. He leans on his door. He sighs. I lean on my door. He wants to talk and I want to listen. He wants to talk about bridges and jumping from them, and he does, naming bridges, naming heights, until he wants to talk about other things, better things, small things, steaks, hamburgers, french fries, New Orleans, about the food down there, fried fish, fried clams, fried shrimp, about sandwiches and cold beers. We do that until we circle back to bridges and jumping and falling and dying and how bad that would be, to die before his settlement arrives, to die before he can prove those fucking doctors wrong, before he can work again, before he can build something again, or at least paint it, something, some job, any job, some kind of work because he can still do work, he doesn’t need an arm, he doesn’t need a hand, he could paint a room with a brush in his teeth, and then John’s like fuck bridges, and I’m like fuck bridges, and he’s like fuck death, and I’m like exactly, no death, no dying, not now, and John promises me he won’t kill himself, and we shake on it, we are men who love to shake, and he promises to make a sandwich, because if you’re going to be alive you have to eat, you have to make a sandwich, maybe not a po’boy, maybe not shrimp, but something, you need to start somewhere, you start with food.
I carry in John’s groceries. I wave hello to his roommates, all adults older than me, dressed worse than me, looking more exhausted than me, all happy to see John, all moving to the kitchen to see what John has brought, to see what’s in the bag.
Outside the sun hides behind the trees, and I have kids at home, and a wife, and so much homework, so much homework I do not want to do.
I start my junky car and I am starved.
ERIC WOODYARD
Fresh to Death
TAY STEPPED INTO ARLENE’S NIGHTCLUB fresh to death on a chilly Sunday night in October.
He was clean as hell, rocking a pair of flashy True Religion jeans and burgundy Bally sneakers, with a tan sweater trimmed in matching burgundy. The words “Trouble Man” were stamped across his chest.
A flock of fine-ass chicks trailed his smooth cologne scent. From the outside looking in, he was a true baller.
He mostly stood near the bar, with his homie Duke, sending shot after shot to the loosest females in the building. By the end of the night, he was setting up a play for the baddest of them all.
Duke and Tay were the local
