Think With Love And Go Bravely Ahead

"HELLO THERE, MISTER PLUMBER!" boomed the jowly cashier scanning Howard's groceries at Marathon Mart, causing him to wince slightly. He'd overheard the same clerk tell a woman buying wine in line before him the previous week how he'd been sober twelve months and didn't miss it one bit. "Still got that drinking problem beat?" Howard might have asked him now.

But no. "What's YOUR last name?"

 

The man lowered his voice. "My last name? Pobbleton."

"Mister Pobbleton."

"But you can just call me Bucky!"

"No, if you're gonna call me Mister Plumber, I'm gonna call you Mister Pobbleton."

"Oh-well, okay, that can work also."

Where does that bungler get off calling me Mister Plumber? Howard fumed, pushing his cart toward the store's entrance and plugging it into a row of identical others before walking out with his water and food in the black Marathon Mart bag he'd been using the last few months instead of more plastic each time he went shopping.

Howard was a frustrated comic book artist and freelance writer who'd stayed in Denver since his father's death five years past in an inchoate gesture of loyalty to his widowed mom, and most of his friends had moved away to exciting places like New York or California. His heart slammed home watching the first ugly footage of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. He even choked up during a telephone call with a prospective client, alarming the former comedy host whose autobiography he'd been planning to ghost write into nixing the project entirely. "I don't think you're the man for this job."

"Maybe not," Howard agreed.

Had he passed up a golden opportunity? Oh, well. Something else would come along. It was all part of being a freelance writer.

After hearing about all the industrial waste in the tap water, not to mention all the fluoride, whose properties no one seemed sure of these days, Howard Plumber followed his feelings and started drinking purified water. He emptied another twelve bottles each couple of days, but his landlady didn't recycle, so he'd been dumping his empties in the next door neighbors' cans, always hoping there'd be enough room. He felt slightly guilty about trespassing like that, but it seemed like he was getting away with it so far.

Sure was a lot of plastic.

He'd also developed the habit of starting each day with a walk to Quick Stop for a couple of donuts. He knew those were fattening, so he drank still more water to counteract their potential effect on his gut.

A couple of magical women worked at Quick Stop. Howard felt charmed by delicate whispers after every exchange of money and goods with a beautiful brown-skinned woman in hoop earrings, and soothed by rustling wings after every commercial transaction with a gentle old soul in oval lenses with long black hair parted in the center flowing over her shoulders. There was also a dapper clerk who Howard thought of as "the owner" for his well-behaved mustache and efficiency of manner. Interacting with this colorful family of characters felt better than going to Marathon Mart, more human somehow. Or was he just kidding himself? There was a scientific term for that. Howard didn't understand science, but his father had been a molecular biologist, so he was always trying to deduce the hidden meaning of what happened to him and thinking in scientific terms without knowing their meanings. If he ever finished that comic book, he was planning to call his alter-ego "Son of Science," whose manner of solving crimes would be by blundering into the perfect solution using faith, spit, and a band aid. "Thanks again, Son of Science," all the grateful onlookers would peal, their hearts full of good cheer. "You really saved the day that time."

"All part of my humor, folks! Up, up and awaaAAAY!"

Whooosh!

One morning Howard woke up from a dream like this and a pair of shorts he hadn't worn for a few days felt newly tight around his waist when he put them on, so he decided to take a few weeks off from donuts. After dumping the latest batch of empty water bottles, he started heading down the alley toward Marathon Mart, the black bag swinging at his side. When he got there he walked up and down the aisles under beeping noises and coded messages on the intercom like "Floral Department - two zero one" collecting the items he needed, then went to the front with his cart.

Pobbleton wasn't his clerk this time. "MISTER PLUMBER!" he called from a neighboring lane.

"That's Mayor Plumber."

"I'm sorry?"

Howard turned to face his interlocutor, squaring his shoulders, all the other cashiers and customers looking at him. "Mayor Plumber, if you don't mind." Walking home with twelve more plastic bottles full of water and a few other things in his bag, he felt he'd won an abstract contest by refusing to comply with Mister Pobbleton's would-be folksy gesture of assumptive buddyhood. Next time I'll tell him to call me Commissioner Plumber. No, General Plumber.

The first of three or four purple recycling trashcans on the other side of the regular dumpster was empty the next afternoon when Howard looked in, so he dumped the latest batch of empty plastic bottles and started walking down the alley back to Marathon Mart. This time, his cashier was a middle aged woman with blonde hair and a pleasant expression, one arm in a green cast.

"I'm sorry you hurt your wrist."

"Oh, I didn't really, it's for support. Carpal tunnel."

"Oh, okay."

"But thanks."

He broke his fast and went back to Quick Stop the next morning for a couple of donuts, and the owner seemed pleased and surprised to see him again. "Hey, man! Haven't seen you in a while!" His mustache was a short, straight line over his lips.

Howard knew it was more than just him in the world, but he spent so much time in his own thought cloud it was hard being present for others sometimes. "Yes, it's been a little while."

"Good to see you again." The owner added Howard's bills to the register and handed back his change in a single swift move. "Have a good day."

"You too, thanks."

He thought about it walking home. That Quick Stop clerk had recognized him without using his name, which had more to do with his natural self than goods or services, but had seemed less intrusive than that bungler at Marathon Mart yelling out, "MISTER PLUMBER!" It was the same thing with that carpal tunnel woman, their exchange had felt very smooth and natural, and neither knew the other's name. After lunch, Howard fell asleep and went into a dream about Son of Science infiltrating the G20 Summit in Toronto, dedicated to humanizing the proceedings by reminding everyone about love.

"I don't believe in this CRA-zy madness!" he sang joyfully, stomping down the street full of protestors and cops, lost in the swirl of chaos. "Doot doot twee-dely, DOOOOOOO-dely!" He stumbled over a formless mound of gelatinous gunk lying right there in the street, causing him to pitch forward slightly. "What is this, some form of 21st century secret technology for crowd control or something?" He frowned and sniffed the mound of gunk. "Doesn't seem to be giving off any fumes, though. Not yet anyway."

Son of Science decided he would deposit small samples of whatever the substance was in the soil of his garden, testing the effect of incremental doses, thereby determining its bio-molecular properties, and slipped the mound into his pocket. Later on in the same dream, he found himself crouching beneath a news truck as a squad of storm troopers goose-stepped right past his hiding place looking for protestors.  Ha ha, you people, he thought. He was in a good mood. After the commotion's epicenter relocated a few blocks away, he slipped out from under the truck and started wending his way home through the stragglers, a new song on his lips.

When Howard logged in to assbook the next day, someone had posted a link about a group of protesters called the Love Police who'd gone to the summit in Toronto on a mission just like the one he'd dreamed for Son of Science, so he  posted the link to their website on his own profile. He walked back to Marathon Mart for another twelve bottles of water that afternoon, and that jowly clerk was bringing in carts from the lot and pushing them into their rows just inside the entrance when he got there. "Bucky," he said, walking up. "My name is Howard. I just took offense when you called me by name since you've never talked to me before, so it felt like a telemarketer was talking when you did it."

Pobbleton smiled. "Oh, okay, I just remember people's faces, that's all!"

"No hard feelings, then."

Howard got his daily water and a few other items then stood in line waiting to check out, looking around for that woman with the green wrist support. She'd had a sweet face. After paying, he started walking out of the store, and Bucky attempted pushing one of the yellow carts into the long row of more yellow carts from a few yards away as a gesture of frivolity, shouting, "Kablam!" The cart hit a bump in the rug and fell on its side and Howard moved to pick it up, but Bucky, who seemed drunk with happiness after Howard's informal pardoning of him, said, "I've got it," before righting the cart himself and adding it to one of the rows, humming, "Whooopsie-daisy!"

Howard walked away through the parking lot across the street, and started heading toward Speer down a sidewalk lined with square brown houses, sprinklers on in the yards. About a hundred yards ahead of him, a woman in a straw hat with dark hair knelt planting a garden in the patch of dirt between the sidewalk and the street, and Howard tried catching her eye as he passed behind her, but she didn't look up. At first that seemed like a strange place for a garden, all the cars rushing past right beside it, then using every available piece of the earth for more flowers and plants seemed like the perfect experiment in this age of the last minute miracle or bust.  He waited for the light to turn green then walked across Speer and back to his apartment.