Help Wanted

Jackson is in the basement of the home he grew up in. The TV is on, and as always, there is a constant background chatter of voices. He is pulling on his black lace-ups after having rubbed them clean with his bedsheet. Are the shoes too formal?

“Nah,” Duke says, “they’re good.” 

So Jackson ties them up. He walks to the sink in the corner of the open room, a porcelain number that shows off the plumbing underneath, and stares into the small mirror suspended above it. He straightens the collar on his solid blue shirt, the kind of shirt that his dad wore to work every day at the shop, trying to convince the customers that he was a successful businessman. Maybe the shirt had been Dad’s; he wasn’t sure. Somehow Dad’s old clothes seemed to keep finding their way into his laundry basket.

He hears the door at the top of the stairs open, woefully crying out for a squirt of W-D40. Jackson doesn’t mind the squeal. It’s good for a twenty-six-year-old living at home to know when someone is coming.

“Jackson?”

It is his mother’s voice, so he can answer.

“Yeah, Ma,” he says.

“You ready to go?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he calls back. “I guess so.”

“Okay,” she says, “you don’t want to miss the bus.”

“I’m coming,” Jackson says as he deliberately ascends the staircase, hand on the railing.

Duke says, “Pussy.”

Jackson ignores him, emerges from the basement into the glaring daylight streaming through the kitchen window. His mother is a few feet away, her round body just a little too far left to block out any of the blinding light until she steps forward and becomes a featureless silhouette, wiping her hands on a towel. 

“You got your bus pass?” she asks.

He pats his pockets, identifies the rectangular card in his back left one, and says he does.

“Good,” she says, “you want to be on time, you know?”

“Yeah, Ma, I know.”

Jackson wants to leave, but Duke is talking again, something about worthlessness and stupidity, and Jackson has trouble moving his feet.

When he stands there too long, his mother says, “So, go. Go on.” She waves her towel toward the door. “Come back with the job, okay?”

He gets out the door and starts the four-block walk to the bus stop. Today he is taking the Red Line all the way to Main Street, where he’ll get off and walk to Fourth to catch the Green Line the rest of the way to the mall. Then he will walk the half mile to the warehouse that is looking for someone to pick stock for shipments. The bus comes at eight-thirty and his interview is at ten, so he knows he is cutting it close. The next bus won’t come until nine, so if he misses the bus he’ll miss the interview. Again.

“You’re walking too slow,” Duke says. “Come on, pick up the pace.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Leo, who is never far away, joins in. “He’s not getting it anyway. Who’d hire this loser?”

Jackson grimaces, and keeps walking, head down.

“Yeah,” Duke echos. “Loser.”

“Hopeless,” says Leo.

“Stupid and hopeless,” says Duke.

“Worthless,” says Leo.

“Stupid and worthless,” says Duke.

Jackson has picked up the pace and is almost, but not quite, running. Running looks weird when you are wearing black lace-ups and Dad’s old shirt. He knows he can’t run. 

“FUCKING LOSER!” yells Leo.

Jackson is nearly to the bus stop. He is within striking distance of the enclosure, a poster telling him to “Get Tested” flanking its wall. There are people there. A big woman with a rolling cart stuffed to the brim and a short man all dressed in black. There might be someone sitting on the bench behind the big woman, he’s not sure. 

I can make it, he thinks. 

“LOSER, LOSER, LOSER,” Duke repeats, then Leo chimes in and they are both shouting, “LOSER, LOSER, LOSER…”

Jackson can’t take it anymore. Just a few feet from the shelter, already drawing attention because of his almost-running, he halts abruptly, grabs the sides of his head and yells.

“STOP!”

And for a few precious moments, there is silence. He dares not move. He squeezes his eyes shut and keeps his hands clasped over his ears, waiting, breathing. He hears the bus, motor slowing, brakes engaging, door hissing open, yet still he does not move. Does he think that Duke and Leo will get on without him? Could that possibly happen? He wishes for it with all of his might, squeezing the wish right out of his head as if it were a pimple ripe for popping.

He hears the bus doors hiss again, this time to close, the brake disengages and the motor speeds. He opens his eyes, slowly, cautiously. The bus stop shelter has emptied and no one is watching him.

But then, 

“You should just kill yourself,” says Duke.

“Yeah, seriously,” says Leo. “can’t even catch a fucking bus. You should kill yourself.”

Jackson hasn’t left his neighborhood, but that’s okay. He decides where to go from here, and he doesn’t need a bus. He turns, Duke and Leo in tow, and walks, taking the next left and heading toward the hospital that he passed every day on his way to school and where he went to see his father dead of a heart attack two years ago.

“Where are you going?” cries Duke.

Jackson doesn’t answer.

“You can’t go there. Don’t go there,” Leo insists. “You know if you go there, they’ll kill us, you know they will. Then who will your friends be? You got no one but us. You want to kill us? Kill yourself.”

“Yeah,” Duke says, “Kill yourself.”

He doesn’t wait long after he tells the people out front in the ER about Duke and Leo, though he doesn’t call them out by name. They put him in a corner room and there are no windows, and he likes the basement feel of it. He rests, Duke and Leo unusually quiet, save for an occasion whisper of “die, idiot, die.”

The doctor enters the room, a woman probably close to his mother’s age but not nearly as round and she doesn’t look like she could block out much sun. She asks a few questions, but he isn’t ready to tell her everything yet, so he tells her his chest hurts, and that he thinks he might be having a heart attack like the one that killed his dad.

She considers this, and moves forward to examine his body. She places an instrument on his chest, the other end in her ears, moving it around to several places.

“Your heart sounds normal,” she says. “That’s a good start.”

“Wait,” Jackson says, realizing the significance of what she has just said. “You can hear inside my body with that?”

The doctor hesitates, looks at the instrument in her hand.

“My stethoscope?” she replies. “Yes, I can hear the sounds that your heart makes, and your lungs, and your intestines.”

“Can you put it here?” asks Jackson, hopefully, pointing to his forehead. Could this be real? he thinks. Could there be someone who could really understand?

The doctor points to her own forehead, needing confirmation.

“Yes,” he says, “If you put it here, can you hear the voices, too?”

The doctor pauses, ponders this, as if it is something she has never considered, so he thinks maybe there is a chance. But then, sadly, her face drops and she gently shakes her head. 

No.

There is a chair by the wall, a wire-framed one with a plastic seat, meant for visitors or family members. She pulls it over by his bed and sits on it, which Jackson thinks is fine since neither Duke nor Leo use chairs and his mother doesn’t know he is here.

“Unfortunately,” she says, “this instrument just isn’t that good. Will you tell me about them? About the voices?”

He wonders if he should go back to his chest pain story and just drop this altogether. He knows how people look at him if he answers Duke or Leo on the street and he doesn’t want her to look at him that way.

“Leave,” Duke says.

“Die,” Leo says.

But he doesn’t want to hear them anymore. He wants to only hear voices of people he can see, so he looks at her, knowing she is real, then musters his words and starts to tell.