I said, \u201cIs this dumpster on fire?\u201d<\/p>\n
The fireman opened his eyes, looked down at me, and he said, \u201cYes.\u201d He was standing on top of his firetruck, holding his arms straight out from his sides looking like Jesus when Jesus himself was hanging from the cross. The fireman\u2019s lips were peeling apart from each other, and the whole area around his mouth and face reminded me of the time I filled a grocery bag with water and dropped it off a balcony. But that don\u2019t mean he wasn\u2019t a handsome man. His pants and jacket had those reflectors on them and the fire sure made them shine.<\/p>\n
I asked him, \u201cWell, are you just gonna stand there like a Jesus or something?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot too much to do other than let it burn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I thought that was pretty cool\u2014that the fireman was pretty cool.<\/p>\n
This whole night started when I was walking to Twoball\u2019s. There\u2019s not much to know about him\u2014we only called him Twoball cause that\u2019s exactly what he\u2019s got. He was my best friend, and he lived down on Pond Street. I was walking there because my girlfriend kicked me out again. I got into an argument with her, and she told me to fuck right off into the night. They say Pond Street was the oldest street in town\u2014something like two hundred years old. All the buildings on Pond looked like crap, all old and crooked, but I guess some people like that. People always like keeping things the way they were, but I never saw the point in having all these wooden buildings jammed up against each other, hardly no room between one another. Few of them buildings were empty.<\/p>\n
Anyways, I was walking down the middle of the street near 9th and Pond headed toward Twoball down on 2nd. Up to my right I saw the parking lot that sat next to a real piece of shit abandoned building. I reckon it might have been the oldest building in town. It stood two stories but seemed lower. Ran long against the street. White paint flaked off the wood siding. I smoked cigarettes outside the building pretty often. I would\u2019ve smoked inside of it too, but the door was bolted shut. No one seemed to care about that building. I threw rocks at the windows and smashed them out. Everyone did. Funny thing about that building was the dumpster that ran alongside it, and now it was burning.<\/p>\n
I think the fireman knew I took a liking to him because he looked down at me and asked why I was walking down the middle of the street in the nighttime.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came here so I could watch this dumpster burn down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not gonna burn down, kid\u2014just gonna char a little.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sucks,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019d like to see this dumpster burn straight down. I just got kicked out of my girlfriend\u2019s and I\u2019d really like to see this whole town burn down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t go around saying that or I\u2019ll know where to come looking if it happens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess you\u2019re right,\u201d I said. \u201cI didn\u2019t mean it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fireman stood up taller on the truck after I said that and neither of us said anything for a while. I tried looking for the wooden ladder that used to lean against the dumpster, but the ladder was gone. I figure it must have been in the fire. I climbed up the firetruck and the fireman didn\u2019t say nothing. We just watched the dumpster burn around inside itself. I was hungry and I thought the fire looked like my insides.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
People used that dumpster like their own, for leaving stuff or for shopping. You could find nice things too\u2014stuff was always coming and going, and I don\u2019t think the trash men ever came and picked it up. The dumpster was one of them big shallow ones, real long and low, almost like the building it sat in front of. While smoking cigarettes one time I found a wool scarf in the dumpster. That\u2019s the only time I spoke to the police.<\/p>\n
I knew that scarf, knew who it belonged to. The whole town did. I seen that scarf hundreds of times, but that was the first time I didn\u2019t see it around Footman\u2019s neck. Footman spent his days outside Mason\u2019s Bodega, holding the door for all the women and girls. He didn\u2019t get any pay from Mason, he just liked holding doors. Liked being a gentleman. He slept down at Eddy\u2019s Pond with all the other homeless underneath the gazebos. You rarely saw a homeless at the pond during the day, but at night they filled around the grass and in the water. They left their shopping carts and suitcases along the banks of the pond while they all took turns washing each other\u2019s feet in the waters, washing their own clothes and armpits, washing over their faces. Some of them smiled in the pond, others had faces like they was made of stone. Footman acted like the governor of the homeless I guess. They all listened to him, looked to him for hope. He made friends with the lady at the bakery and she took all the old bread at the end of the day down to Eddy\u2019s Pond. When the police sent the baseball team down with their bats to kick the homeless out of the gazebos, Footman was the first beaten. The homeless never went to the pond again, but Footman still showed up every day at Mason\u2019s and held the door. No one knew where the homeless went at night after that and I don\u2019t think they much cared. The last time anyone saw Footman was when he held the door for Centerfield\u2019s girlfriend. Centerfield told Footman he was going to kill him the next time he saw him. It don\u2019t make much sense that the cops cared about Footman\u2019s disappearance after they kicked him out of the pond, but they still wanted proof of Footman\u2019s whereabouts. I showed them the scarf. In school they taught us that Pond Street got its name from Eddy\u2019s Pond.<\/p>\n
A couple of days before I got kicked out of my girlfriend\u2019s, I found a red bike inside the dumpster. The bike had flames painted all over the frame and the flames made the bike look pretty slick. Seemed in good condition, too, just needed a little grease on the chain. I rode that thing to Mason\u2019s and traded it straight up to my friend Jim for three forties. I\u2019m saying here that Jim was my friend, but he really wasn\u2019t. Just some guy I traded stuff with. He had this big, stiff neck. Reminded everyone of that Frankenstein monster. You say Jim\u2019s name to him and he had to turn his whole body to look at you. I thought that was funny sometimes. Caught a few good laughs from it.<\/p>\n
I chugged the first forty quick in the employee bathroom after I broke the lock off. Mason never let us use his bathroom\u2014don\u2019t know why and he never answered us when we asked. I chugged the second on the bench outside the shop and then I guess I fell asleep in the sun for a few minutes. When I woke I saw that my last forty was gone. Had to have been Jim, because the bike stood all leaned up against the store and Jimmy wasn\u2019t around. He must\u2019ve been drinking my last forty in the bathroom just like I did. I got mad thinking about Jim drinking my forty with his big, stiff neck, so I rode Jim\u2019s new bike back to the dumpster and threw it right back in. There was the ladder leaned against the dumpster, so I climbed up the rungs and opened up my pants. Pissed all over the bike. Happened to get a little piss on my pants too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you the only fireman here? I thought there was at least two of you in a truck,\u201d I said to the fireman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a big fire over in Marion\u2014the old hotel is burning down. Every fire company in fifty miles is there,\u201d the fireman said. \u201cJust me and this truck in town tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to help you\u2014I\u2019d like to be a fireman,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re just in high school, kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNope, not true. I got my GED after I dropped out in the tenth grade.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fireman didn\u2019t say nothing after that. I started to feel like I didn\u2019t have much interest in being a fireman anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what,\u201d I told the fireman, \u201cmy girlfriend said tonight she\u2019d like it if I caught fire and burned down to ash because then maybe I\u2019d have a chance of coming back as something better. She said that\u2019s called reincarnation and that I need to be reincarnated. That I got all this stuff wrong with me and I need to burn it all away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe sounds like something,\u201d the fireman said. He pulled out a toothpick from his shining jacket and put it in his mouth for a second. Then he said, \u201cHell,\u201d and pulled the pick back out of his mouth and chucked it in the fire. \u201cI think all women are something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell that may be so, but maybe she\u2019s right. I took a bike from this dumpster a few days ago and traded it for some malt liquor. Ended up stealing the bike back and then just threw it right back in here. I even pissed on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMust be why this fire smells like piss,\u201d the fireman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI accidentally pissed on myself when I did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fire was burning pretty good. Sometimes the fire got real big for a second, and it came pouring out the top like it was overflowing. I was thinking about jumping in.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think my girlfriend is right, that I need to burn myself away? I think I\u2019d like to jump into this fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHell, kid, there hasn\u2019t been a fire I\u2019ve seen that I didn\u2019t want to jump into. But every time I get real close to doing it I start to think of what there is and what there will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fire picked up again and came out the top like horses running. All the horses had no hair and their skin was made of maggots. That\u2019s how I remember it. I had a piece of paper in my back pocket\u2014a list of groceries that my girlfriend gave me in the morning that I forgot to buy. She had this little drawing on it, three gulls flying over a ship at sea. I threw it in the fire and watched it burn for a little. Corners of the paper curled up and blackened and then it all lit up bright until it was gone. I spit close to where the paper last burned and my spit sizzled. I started to feel like I was already dead. I felt like that sometimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay, I really have to pee and I\u2019d really like to piss all over this burning dumpster,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell you what, kid. I\u2019m gonna run down to Mason\u2019s and get a coffee. I need you to stay here and watch this fire. You can piss all over it or whatever as long as you don\u2019t leave it, you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n
I said yes and got down from the truck.<\/p>\n
The fireman paused while he climbed down the truck. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s tough for me to leave the glow of a good fire,\u201d the fireman said. I didn\u2019t know what he was getting at, but as I started to unbutton my jeans the fireman laughed. I think he was thinking I was gonna wait for him to leave, but I had to pee real bad and I didn\u2019t mind him seeing nothing. Plus I thought he might be impressed if I could stand on the pavement and arc my piss up over and into the dumpster. The fire was warm over me and my penis felt long in my jeans from the heat, but maybe a little skinny. I held it in my fist when I pulled it out to cover it up a little. The fireman saw me holding my penis in my fist and laughed a little more.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour cock looks all right, kid,\u201d he said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t worry about a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He finished getting down from his truck and into the cab and then he took off down the street, leaving me as I stood squirting into the burning fire.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like I said, I only had seven blocks to Twoball\u2019s. You could smell Eddy\u2019s Pond all the way down Pond Street. You could smell the pond most anywhere around here. It always smelled like leaves or worms or something. My girlfriend said it smelled like vanilla and air and running water through a warm hose, but I don\u2019t know about any of that. When I walked into Twoball\u2019s, I saw his roommate sitting there on the recliner facing the couch. He was just gazing. Booster was always gazing. Sometimes people gaze and you can tell they are thinking something through, but Booster never looked like he was figuring much out. I said, \u201cBooster, are you gazing again?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell what are you gazing for?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo reason I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Booster was gazing like nothing I\u2019ve seen. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen you gazing quite like this before,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t speak for a second. Didn\u2019t even look at me. But he opened up his mouth, muttered out a little, \u201cgazing like I never gazed before.\u201d I saw he was gazing at a wet spot in the sheetrock, which I thought was something.<\/p>\n
The apartment was okay. It had one big room that was both the kitchen and the living room. I liked seeing that\u2014one big room that acted like two rooms. The kitchen part had a tile floor and the living room was carpeted. Twoball moved in here after he dropped out of high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought you was supposed to be here an hour ago,\u201d Twoball said when he came out of the bathroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was planning on it but I got caught up talking to a fireman.\u201d Twoball laughed when I said that. Sometimes I was jealous of the way he laughed, like his whole body was laughing. He got them teeth from his mother and they showed right out of his mouth when he laughed. His eyes squinted up and almost disappeared and I knew the girls liked that. But I had a girlfriend, and he didn\u2019t, so I guess I wasn\u2019t too jealous at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy\u2019d you get kicked out of your girlfriend\u2019s apartment this time,\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
I said I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen are you gonna tell us her name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell you when I can get around to remembering it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twoball laughed. \u201cI don\u2019t buy that you don\u2019t know her name. You ought to tell us before I beat you to death.\u201d He looked over at Booster. \u201cBooster, wouldn\u2019t you know your girlfriend\u2019s name?\u201d Booster didn\u2019t move. Didn\u2019t even blink. He fucking offered no response.<\/p>\n
Twoball and I sat down on the couch. Both of us just stared at Booster for a few minutes, and I don\u2019t think either of us knew what we were doing. Twoball snapped out of it and turned the television on. It was the eleven o\u2019clock news. The volume was low but I knew what the people on TV were talking about. They showed pictures and videos of that hotel in Marion burning.<\/p>\n
The hotel was bigger than what I pictured in my head when the fireman told me about it. Ten stories high, by the looks of it. Whole damn thing was burning, flames just ripping out all over the place. A lot of the walls were caving in, whole floors crashing through. Must\u2019ve been thirty firetrucks there, just spraying that building down. The words on the television said the whole block was shut down and a bunch of people were trapped in the building. I reckon the firemen didn\u2019t want to go in there, and that all those people inside were dead or dying. That made me sad, but then I got to thinking that all those people dying might get to come back as something better. A few more words scrolled across the screen. Tomorrow\u2019s baseball game was cancelled on account of most the players being firefighters. I looked over at Twoball and he wasn\u2019t even paying attention. I asked him if he believed in reincarnation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah I guess I think I do,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t take to thinking too much.\u201d I think he knew what I was getting at, because he started to watch the television too. \u201cDamn,\u201d he said. \u201cThat hotel sure is on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the commercials came on I stood up to get some water out of the kitchen faucet. A commercial was for I Can\u2019t Believe It\u2019s Not Butter! brand butter substitute. Booster spoke up. He said, \u201cBoys, what is the true nature of butter?\u201d When I turned the spigot, the pipes moaned before the water came out. The water was hot and I drank it. I felt like I was burning. Twoball asked if I brought any forties like I said I would, and I told him again I got caught up talking to a fireman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sucks,\u201d he said. \u201cI wonder if Stiff Neck Jim has any we can trade for. We should go find him and ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both of us got up and just left Booster sitting there gazing. Outside, the smell of the pond was different than I remembered. Smelled like grease or smoke, not leaves or worms or even vanilla. At the time I reckoned I was just thinking about the hotel burning in Marion\u2014figured that the smoke was on my mind. We started walking towards Mason\u2019s Bodega, figuring that would be the best place to find Jim. The farther up the street we got, the more the air smelled like smoke. I asked Twoball if he could smell it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And then I said, \u201cMe too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thick smoke filled the air by the time we got up to 5th. I could see that the firetruck was back outside the dumpster a few blocks up. I could see bodies spread out on the road, and I could see the fireman running his hose from his truck. I slapped Twoball\u2019s shoulder and started running up that way. He followed.<\/p>\n
The firetruck didn\u2019t have its lights going and the siren was silent. Only sound was the fire cracking out the wood of that abandoned building, and the people out in the street screaming and crying, their hands holding up their heads, covering their mouths. The whole building was on fire\u2014flames leapt straight from the dumpster. Some men and women watched, huffing and puffing, hunched over holding on their knees, their tongues hanging out their mouths. Guess they grabbed some stuff from the building; saw a few suitcases, but not many. Saw a few shopping carts full with junk. Everyone wore stained clothes, all ripped up. Seems the homeless all took refuge in that abandoned building. Don\u2019t know how they kept it a secret from us. Probably a bad idea looking at it now.<\/p>\n
When I saw the fire, I ran right up to it. Couldn\u2019t believe what I was seeing. The fireman was there, trying to spray down the building with his hose. Homeless people were still crawling out of the windows, throwing clothes over the broken shards of glass. The dumpster sat along the middle of the wall\u2014the fire started right there and spread out both ways like burning a candle in the middle. I don\u2019t know why the fireman wasted all that water on the building when it seemed useless. He could\u2019ve been helping all those people choking on the smoke. I ran over to him and twisted him around so he could see me. I shouted at him, pointed to all the people on their knees choking and praying. He hit me so hard I died right there. Cracked my head open on the pavement when I hit the ground. I bet you could see my brains.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I suppose there are a few things I regret having happened on the night I died. I reckon most of all it might be leaving that dumpster on fire without waiting for the fireman to get back after I pissed all over it, or maybe I regret even leaving my girlfriend\u2019s in the first place. Her name was Yomi, and I always knew that. Guess I just didn\u2019t much like telling people her name\u2014didn\u2019t like having to explain how her daddy heard the word Yomi<\/em> when he was a merchant marine. Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean someone told him a story about a place called Yomi, some kind of love story or something. I guess he liked the story so much that he named his daughter after the word. After his service he took work in the mill, but after the paper mill closed up he couldn\u2019t find any steady pay. Ended up hanging himself with his belt when he was left to dry out overnight in jail, and I don\u2019t like having to say that.<\/p>\n Yomi had this skin\u2014soft and white and fragile, and it always dried around her eyes. Before she slept she rubbed the corners of her eyes with Vaseline, and I would look over while she slept and them corners would always glow in the moonlight. She talked about my eyes too. She said she saw a lot in them\u2014she said she saw all my hopes and desires. But whenever I looked at my eyes in the mirror all I ever saw was myself. Yomi had this habit of drawing all over everything\u2014not just her notebooks but on any piece of paper. She always wrote different words next to each drawing, words that didn\u2019t much relate to the picture I thought. Words like shell, or snow, or spring. I\u2019d say she was a pretty good drawer, real good at drawing ships and gulls. And I always knew she was smart, way smarter than me, but I didn\u2019t ever know what to make of it when she talked about all that reincarnation stuff. But here I am, waiting to be something again. She was always right, but she was wrong about one thing. My body didn\u2019t burn, and it didn\u2019t have to either.<\/p>\n Turns out that abandoned building was where all the homeless moved into after they got beat out of the pond. They kept it a secret for a good while until the whole thing burned down, even tried to keep quiet as the building started to burn\u2014guess I am to blame. I feel bad being responsible for all those people losing their place to sleep, but most people weren\u2019t hurt too bad, only a handful died. Mostly older people, they died a few days later from all the soot in their lungs. They was on their way out regardless.<\/p>\n Jim died that night too. Turns out he wasn\u2019t even at Mason\u2019s, so we left the apartment for no good reason. He was home at his own apartment, which was above his parents\u2019 garage. He saw the fire from his window and ran down the stairs. He tried to peek out the window along the staircase by looking over his shoulder, but you know about that neck of his. His whole body followed his eyes and he tripped over his feet and fell down the stairs. He cracked his Frankenstein neck on the concrete garage floor. Nothing funny about that.<\/p>\n After the fireman punched me, he went right back to work. I guess he didn\u2019t even notice I died\u2014just went back to spraying the fire down. That old building eventually collapsed on him and he died all right, not knowing he killed me\u2014I suppose that was best for him. Twoball dragged my body out in the street before the building collapsed. He sat with me while he watched the building burn and crumble. He knew there was nothing he could do but watch.<\/p>\n I remember that I liked watching that hotel burn down on the television, and I bet Twoball took some pleasure in watching that abandoned building burn down\u2014something about that old paint boiling and disappearing and all that cracking the wood was doing. It feels good to see something fall down, I always thought, because you can just put it back up later with a little more prospect. I don\u2019t know what happened to Booster, or where all those homeless people started sleeping again. And I don\u2019t know what happened to Yomi or her glowing eyes. Seems I\u2019m still waiting to get back.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cYour cock looks all right, kid,\u201d he said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t worry about a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1164,1161,171,1157,1158,1160,1162,1163,1159,1165],"class_list":["post-13494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-afterlife","tag-apathy","tag-death","tag-dumpster","tag-fire","tag-fireman","tag-frankenstein","tag-homeless-people","tag-reincarnation","tag-urination","writer-john-patrick-mcshea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13691,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13494\/revisions\/13691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}