Footsteps

When Carly Tubbs got home from swinging with Missy that first night, he turned on the TV and stood before it a few minutes challenging it with a dinner fork.  This time the machine remained silent.

 

 

 

 

Cartly watched a lot of television, especially all the courtroom shows.  He made a habit of scanning the rows of unfocused faces behind the plaintiff and defendant while they testified, a whole other level to the program usually ignored by the audience. It occurred to him that if people paid more attention to the background, they would notice everything in a whole new way, and started training himself right away. The more he swung, the more his mood improved. The recurrent motion felt great.

 

Carly looked back on his life before Missy. After finishing high school, he'd left town, moved into a crappy apartment three hundred miles wwest near the center of Denver, Colorado, and found employment breaking down and reassembling cars. The pay was lousy. He hated his job.  All the stupid coworkers.  His boss.  His cousin Ked sent him a TV set  for his birthday. On his days off, Carly sat around in his stupid apartment watching shows he hated all day long, numbing himself to his hatred of everything so he could keep going back to work over and over again without feeling much pain.  I'm becoming immune, he told himself.

 

One day the television started yacking at him.  You ARE what your whole stinking history adds up to, it seemed to be saying.

"Hey, what's going on here." His first feeble attempt. He couldn't even form a questionmark.

This country churns out self-fulfilling ego accidents like yours in binfuls, the set continued.  Making blazes of blistering blue dollar bills off each deal. The money for when you get headaches or backaches. The money for when you watch movies.  How many bottles of shampoo you buy in a year.  Dental X-rays.  Dollar bills covered with symbols you pray to symbolically, whether you know what they stand for or not!  Ha ha, yeah you!  The whole postmodern headache!

 

"Wait a minute, I-"

 

Shut up!  railed the piercing electronic voice.  You've gotten used to your hungry mind now. In a way wanting more keeps you going.  Better hope you're not starving yourself to stay hungry, though, ha ha!  Maybe I'm  watching you too.  You‘re just staring right into the screen.  You're not really paying attention.

 

"Wait a minute, how do you know so much about me!"  protested Carly again, but the impertinent appliance went right on diagnosing and downgrading him with the unrelenting confidence of a cold steel wall.

Without any hands on the wheel any eyes on the road, just television rays like me programming your sympathetic styrofoam living room, the air conditioner, the hat-rack.  We'll see how this tragedy ends!  Ha ha ha!

 

"That's enough!"  Carly shot to his feet and switched off the TV.  Lifting his green windbreaker off the hook beside the door, he went outside and started walking down the street.

 

Carly Tubbs was always sort of childlike in a way and folks in Culchack thought it was lovable. Folks out here are less tolerant, he reminded himself, stumbling away from the third or fourth night watchman's flashlight.

 

At last he came upon an unguarded elementary school and walked behind it through the shallow gravel to the playground.  Carly was out there swinging long after midnight when Missy Teed slipped into the swing right beside him with a summery whisper like a sweet black ghost-"Hey kid." She wore a black straw sun hat and a black sun dress Carly smiled at her, backing up in the playground sand to launch himself again.

 

 

Before long he'd tapped into a whole subculture and unsung social network spanning the globe. Besides Missy, there were the Coccolucho brothers, Johnny and Cuco. They traded their leather jackets for bunny ears after dark.  Then there was Teeno Tartino, Monty Climus, and Lou  "Monkey Bars"  Butterlew.

 

Carly kept his job at the Auto Repair Hut.  It's not that bad, he figured. For long periods, he was the only swinger in town while everyone else was on the road.  He always did it in the middle of the night, when no children were out, not so much out of a sense of guilt as a sincere desire not to impinge on the children's divine right to the playground in question.  Some things you had to pass along. A joyful thrill rose in his chest as he pumped his legs then kicked upward into the stratosphere. It felt so good zipping up into the universe like that. AAAAAaaaaaaaaah!  He kicked his legs again and swung still  higher.

 

But what does it mean that the TV has spoken directly to me?  He frowned. None of it made any sense.  Why me?  What the hell does it mean? As the swing neared its apex, Carly Tubbs was stricken by an overpowering sense of urgency.  That woman in the third row with the knowing smile right before it happened, on Judge . . . W alker? No, Judge . . .  Walter, that's it. Judge Walter. Carly let go of the chains and sailed off into the air before landing with a crunch in a heap of sandy gravel, then broke into an easy jog homeward, sunshine creeping in the sky overhead.