I left towards the end of happy hour, about seven. On the way back to my room at the Lost Dutchman, I always walked by a construction site. There had been a Circle K there before; now it was slated to become an overflow parking lot for the university. Although I doubted that the world would miss one little convenience store, I was kind of annoyed that it wasn’t still there; that meant I had to walk an extra block in the opposite to the am/pm on the corner for any last minute groceries, rather than just stop on my back from the bar. Distance was no one’s friend. Even though it was a short walk from the bar back to my room, the late summer heat made the walk feel miles longer than it was. In heat like that, the sidewalks and streets stretched out in front of you; your feet get heavy and your back aches and your knees are tired of moving up and down. You sweat, but it’s so hot that even the sweat evaporates. Sunset helps, but only slightly, and sometimes at night, I could look out at the pavement and see the waves of heat rising up like old demons from the pavement.
Naturally, I was busy walking and looking at the construction site, and I trusted my feet to carry me back to my bed without any problem. That was my first mistake. What I didn’t count on was the cracked sidewalk; and while I was strolling along thinking about the larger injustices of the world and how small business always gave way to the monster bureaucracies that ran everything, I tripped on a broken piece of sidewalk.
I have a lot of experience when it comes to falling down. It doesn’t take much. My feet, despite the faith I put in them, have been working against me since I took my first step and I’m certain they won’t stop until I’m in a wheel chair or dead. I once fell I stepped on a pebble the size of a pea. One time, I stepped off a curb to cross the street and fell just because of the way my foot hit the concrete. I’ve fallen going up stairs more times than I can count. I’ve nearly sprained or broken almost every bone in my body. My ankles are shot. The cartilage in my knees is scraped almost to the bone, and the left one always hurts when it’s going to rain. My arms and torso are littered with scars from falls I barely remember. Once, at a party in Louisville, I fell down two flights of stairs and came out relatively unscathed – I thought. The only thing that saved me was the large quantities of bourbon that I’d been drinking. The next morning, there wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t sore, and the girl who hosted the party was convinced that I broke my neck and didn’t know it.
The thing that saved me this time was the fence. One of the things about falling is that you learn pretty quickly to go limp. When the ground is rushing towards you, the natural inclination is to tense up. This is a mistake. By going limp, you run a better chance of not breaking any bones or sustaining any serious damage. Stunt men and race car drivers know this. It’s part of the art of falling: knowing when to let go. I’m pretty good at letting go. What I’m not good at, though, is fixing the other mistake that people make when they fall – the very natural inclination to try and catch oneself. When a person falls forward, he instinctively put his hands out to try and catch himself and stop the fall. This never works. Physics and the law of gravity are working against you.
My eyes were closed, braced for impact. When I opened them, I wasn’t on the ground looking up, like I expected. But I wasn’t standing either. I looked over and my hand – specifically the meaty part of my right thumb, had caught on a piece of the construction fence and been impaled. I managed to pull my feet under me and, once I was supporting my own weight, I took a closer look at my hand. It was a single piece of metal that had somehow become separated from the link and was sticking out – and that had been what caught me.
My fucking savior. I stood there for a couple of seconds wondering what to do. First of all, I looked around to see if there was anybody around who might help. I was the only person on the sidewalk, and the late rush hour traffic sped by me without noticing. I had my cell phone, and I considered calling 911; but I tried to imagine that call.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“Yeah… I’m, uh, stuck. On a fence.”
“What did you say, sir?”
“I said... my thumb is impaled on a chain link fence. I was walking home from the bar and I tripped and…”
“Impaled, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Is it bleeding?”
“Not yet.”
“Have you tried pulling it off?”
“Huh?”
“Are you intoxicated, sir?”
Fuck that. I’d end up with a hole in my thumb and I’d probably get arrested for public drunkenness. What a crock of shit. If I was one of those rich assholes who lived in a gated community and had a gym membership, I could just drive my drunk ass home and nobody would say anything. So long as nothing disturbed the appearance of peace and tranquility, nobody gave a shit about anything. I looked at my wound again; there didn’t seem to be anything else holding me. I tried to wiggle my thumb. It didn’t hurt. I looked around again. I was still alone on the sidewalk. So I took a deep breathe and carefully pulled my thumb up and off the protruding piece of link fence. The hole in my hand was about the size of a navy bean, and it looked black. That couldn’t be good. I decided to beat it back to my room and clean the wound.
On my way down the sidewalk, my hand started to bleed. A lot. I wrapped it in my shirt and put pressure on it to keep from bleeding all over myself and the sidewalk. I could feel my thumb starting to swell up. It wasn’t as easy to wiggle as it had been when I was still stuck on the fence. While I was keeping pressure on my hand, I was watching my feet to make sure I didn’t fall down again. That was all I needed.
The Lost Dutchman was a cheap thirteen room motel that rented by the day and the week. Some of the room had kitchenettes. Most of the inhabitants rented their rooms by the week. It was right next to an adult book store, so there was quite a bit of shared foot traffic and commerce. If you knew what doors to knock on, and if the people inside didn’t think you were a narc, it was a free market for anything you might want – whether it was drugs or pussy or something a little more on the exotic side. My room was on the second floor. I made my way upstairs without falling. My hand was throbbing. I managed to get the door open, and I rushed in to clean my wound.
My room was one of the ones without a kitchenette. It was small, single bed, the usual plywood motel furniture, a small table and chair, a television that worked most of the time (so long as the owner paid the cable bill) and the bathroom. The walls covered with a wallpaper that had long since lost any color. The central air rattled like an iron lung. On the wall above the bed, there was a painting of a country scene – one of those third generation impressionistic paintings by somebody who had probably never even been anywhere near the natural world. a border of trees opened up into a footpath, a small brook that looked like a miniaturized version of the Grand Rapids, and a pastoral green field littered a bit too neatly with indefinable pink, yellow, and purple flowers. In the sky, high above this roughly brushed scene was what I guessed was a bird. It too was indefinable. The clouds were puffy and white like flavorless cotton candy. The sky was clear blue. Underneath the painting, attached to the cheap faux wood frame, there was a small plaque that may have once been gold plated. The title of the painting, Entrance to Paradise, was inscribed in badly done and nearly illegible cursive. I hated the painting. I hated it because there were no fields like that anywhere; and even if there had been once, there sure as shit weren’t any more. They were plowed under and covered with condominiums and industrial complexes.
But I didn’t take it down. The absence, I think, would have been worse.
I unwrapped my hand. My thumb was throbbing more, and the shirt was ruined. I turned on the cold water and placed the wound under it. Despite my shirt and the pressure I put on it, it was still bleeding, and starting to look more and more infected. The redness was starting to extend up my thumb and down onto my wrist.
“Fuck.” I thought about going to the hospital. But that would mean either walking, which would take too long, or calling an ambulance, which I knew I couldn’t afford. The only time I’d ever seen an ambulance at the Lost Dutchman was when the junkie in Number 9 overdosed. I knew I had to clean the wound properly or the infection would spread. What a way to go, I thought. Death by tripping. I wrapped my hand again and left the room. My only other option was to walk to the am/pm and but the necessary supplies. I still had a little money left that I was saving for food the following day… but what would that matter if I bled to death during the night?
The walk to the am/pm was short, but I was in a hurry. The hole in my thumb had more or less sobered me up, and I was careful to avoid any breaks in the sidewalk. When I got there, I picked up a bottle of peroxide, a bottle or rubbing alcohol, and some band aids. As I was checking out, the girl behind the counter looked at my shirt.
“Are you ok?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’m ok. Just a little accident here. No worries.”
She nodded and put my purchases in a plastic. Then she looked at me. “You know you’re not supposed to drink that stuff, right? The rubbing alcohol?”
What the FUCK? I wanted to ask her if I looked like the kind of dumbass who would try and drink rubbing alcohol; but then I realized that I was the one stumbling in with a bloody shirt and a bleeding thumb. And on top of that, I probably still smelled like booze, even though the effects had long since worn off. I nodded, grabbed the bag, and left.
I rushed back to my room. The throbbing was getting worse, but the bleeding was slowing down. As I was digging out my key, the door two down from mine opened. A man stepped out. He was putting on the jacket to what looked like an expensive suit. He had a full face, chubby flushed cheeks, and buzz cut. He was looking around; at first I thought he’d say something to me because I was watching him. But he didn’t seem to care at all. He rushed by me, not bothering look at me, jogged down the steps, got into an expensive looking silver car, and sped off. I didn’t look to see if he was wearing a wedding ring. Just then, Loyce, the hooker who lived in that room, poked her head out, looked at me, nodded, and closed the door. I heard the dead bolt and chain lock click in place. Then I went into my room, straight to the sink, and started pouring the peroxide on the hole in my thumb. I poured it until the wound stopped bubbling up, and then I cleaned it out more the alcohol. Then I washed the area with soap, dried it off carefully, and put the band aid over it.
The throbbing had stopped, but I knew I’d have to clean it again tomorrow. I sat back on my bed and turned on the TV. I flipped around. There was nothing to watch. I stopped at a commercial. It was one of those anti-drop house commercials put out by the Sheriff’s department that encouraged people to beware of any strange looking brown people in their neighborhoods. That was when I saw him – the john who left Loyce’s room. Only in the commercial he was wearing a Sheriff’s uniform. I changed the channel and left it on one that ran old TV shows from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. It was an episode of Father Knows Best.
