The Roofer

Brianna liked baseball, believed in a god and was in the army infantry back when she was a dude. I didn’t believe in anything. Didn’t understand baseball. She was my manager at the bookstore I worked at. We became friends.

I’d been having some trouble. I didn’t know what they were at the time but I guess I was having panic attacks. You see: my last job was working debt collection for this lawyer, but he wasn’t really a lawyer, he was a crook. My family knew the lawyer. I’m the weird one in my family so my family always comes up with weird ideas about what they think I should be doing with my life. They did not care about my life. I did not care about my life. The debt collection job made me not care even more.

I was scoping out a house with this older guy Chuck, a coworker of sorts. We were supposed to repo this guy’s car when he went to bed. I was the driver while Chuck was going to take the car. The guy pulled a gun on Chuck when he tried to repo the car during the day.

But the guy saw us sitting in the truck across the street from his house and came out to fight us and Chuck got him on the ground and kicked in the back of his head with steel toe boots. He died.

Then one day I was driving into work when near the driveway of the law office I saw red smears all over the road before the entrance. I ran over something crunchy. I got out of my car to see chopped up body parts everywhere. I ran over a knee cap. My boss’s kneecap. They cut his leg off above the knee and right before the shin. Someone cut him into 20 pieces.

It was on the news. You can look it up.

I didn’t have a job anymore.

Until Brianna hired me at the bookstore a few weeks later.

I had a panic attack while being trained in shipping and receiving. I was opening a box of new releases with a box cutter and the blade nicked the tip of my thumb and I started bleeding. Not a big deal, but for some reason I got angry in a way that didn’t make sense. Then my chest hurt. I had to sit down. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like my mouth was full of rocks and I was too weak to spit them out. I turned pale, sweated and couldn’t hold my head up. The guy training me ran to Brianna. Brianna got me water and gauze and let me take an early lunch.

Later, when it was just me and her in the breakroom, she asked me if I was on drugs. I told her no. I told her I didn’t know what was happening. She nodded like she believed me.

“Its must’ve been the box of shitty poetry books that made you freak out then, huh?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I could feel my forehead crinkle.

“Well, you got some blood on this copy,” she said and flopped the book down on the breakroom table. “Its yours now, congratulations. Not sure if you read poetry but this is the worst shit ever written, I swear to god.”

I picked the book up and flipped through it. My blood had soaked into the pages. It looked really bad. The poetry, not my blood. Some pages only had a few words on them. It was the type of poetry that smart middle school kids read, and then, when they got older, were embarrassed they ever read it. You know the person who writes this poetry. They got famous on Instagram.

“Umm… thanks?” I said.

I brought the book home and read some that night. I’m no expert but I agreed with Brianna that it was the worst shit ever.

***

We worked the closing shift together most of the time. We got into this routine where we read the bad poetry to each other.

We read the poetry to each other like it was Shakespeare Opera and at the end of each poem we’d pretend to get shot with a gun. Like the poetry was so impactful that the only reaction was to get shot and die. After Brianna read a poem to me, I’d clutch my stomach and stumbled back until I fell into a big reading chair then do a death gurgle. I liked to pretend I got shot with a Sig Sauer P226. It was a great gun, .40 caliber. I imagined hollow points ripping my heart and lungs to shreds.

If I read a poem to Brianna, she’d stumbled into a book shelf and knock books on the floor, then fall to her knees and look up to the ceiling before falling to her stomach, bleeding out.

Sometimes I liked to get shot in the head execution style. Get off my block style. Trench warfare style. Navy Seal killing Somalia pirate style. All the deaths in response to the worst and highest selling poetry ever. Someone fake writing about feelings they pretended to know about. The only poet who was making any money. We got shot and killed to her poems a couple times a week. We got shot and killed to her poems in the back corner, by the maps and philosophy section.

It made me feel better. Like I could die and still be alive. I could leave work after doing this with less of a weight on my shoulder and neck and chest. I think Brianna felt the same.

***

I was working a slow shift. It was after dinner. About 7 O’clock.

This rough grubby guy walked in. He had Jim Harrison eyeballs, bloodshot, hunched over, wearing a dirty Carhart and hat. He got up to the register with nothing to buy.

“Hey man, can you do me a favor?” he asked.

“Yeah. What’s up?’

“Do I look drunk?

“I mean, yeah, a little.”

“Fuck, can you smell it.” He leaned over the counter to breath on me. His breath smelled like thick beer.

“I can smell it.”

“Shit.” He shook his head. “You mind if I just hang out here a while?”

“Dude, I literary don’t care what you do.”

“I do roofs. I’m a roofer.” He put his hand out and we shook hands and I told him my name and he told me his.

He said, “Alright, cool brother.”

He said he was supposed to meet up with his girlfriend but needed to get sober first.

He got a free glass of water from the café then sat in a big reading lounge chair. He fell asleep. I had to wake him up when we closed.

I don’t think he had a girlfriend. I don’t think he had anybody. We had a few homeless regulars that hung out until close and The Roofer was one of them.

***

One night Brianna and I were reading poetry and getting shot and dying horribly in the back corner. I left the new girl I was training at the cash registers. We’d just locked the front doors. I told her I had important shit to do before closing time.

Brianna was flipping through the pages of my bloody stained copy, telling me about this one poem she found that was “seriously so bad.”

Brianna started reading first. With the book extended out like she was on stage, her free hand splayed out on her chest. She had a booming echo voice. The new girl probably heard her but Brianna was the manager so who cares.

At the end of the poem I got shot in the forehead, then envisioned my brains blowing out the back of my skull. I whipped my head back and did my classic stumble-fall into the reading chair. But I landed on something bumpy. Another person. Another smelly dirty person.

The Roofer yelped and threw his hands in the air. He must’ve passed out and we forgot about him.

I rolled off him and plopped on the floor.

The Roofer stood up and said, “Ahh! What the fuck, man. Jesus.”

“Shit, sorry bro. We thought no one was here.”

He was standing there swaying and hiccupping. “Well, I’m still here motherfuckers. Ya’ll can’t get rid of me that easily.”

He asked what we were doing. Me and Brianna exchanged looks. Caught reading poetry, Brianna confessed to him.

The Roofer said he wanted to try reading a poem to us.

We looked at each other again. The Roofer with his hand extended out waiting for the book. Brianna gave him the book. The Roofer flipped through the pages. Stopping to read. Murmuring the words under his breath. Skimming more pages. Not noticing my blood.
We looked at each other more while he did this. Impressed looks. We operated on the same plane of existence. We could have entire conversations with eye contact.

He stopped flipping pages. He stood there silent. The whole store silent.

He started reading. The poem was so fucking bad. Probably the worst poem ever written in human history. The Roofer was screaming at the top of his cigarette lungs. His crooked yellow teeth showing in an angry mouth. Spit flying, red faced as he spewed out the words. A body shaking in rage.

The poem was about love but the poem had no love. The Roofer seemed to be screaming the words like he was trying to force some kind of love out of them.

When he was done reading, I felt like I just got blasted point blank with a Shotgun. Right in the chest. I flew back and landed on a table full of buy 2 get 1 free classics. The books flopped on the floor and so did I.

I stood up. The Roofer’s head hung low. His hands at his side, the book dangling in his hand. Like a powered down robot, deep shadows in his eyes. Everything so quiet I could hear the electric buzz from the lights above.

Then he slurred something about us being pussies and puked. A stream shooting out his mouth a few feet. He dropped the book.

“Ahh fuck,” said Brianna.

I looked behind me to see the new girl I’d been training standing in the middle of the store looking frightened.

I left Brianna with The Roofer.

I showed the new girl how to lock up the shipping and receiving doors. I could tell by her eyes she had questions. Not job questions but questions about what she just saw. But I worked frantically and talked nonstop so she wouldn’t have a chance to ask any.

I taught her how to mop. It was going to be a late close but I didn’t have a life so I made late night closes my life.

I brought the new girl into the break room to show her how to clock out.

She opened her mouth to say something before clocking out. She only got out a croak. The power went out. It went out with a snap. Pitch black in the breakroom. I turned on my phone flashlight. I made sure the new girl was still beside me. She was. Her eyes squinting in my light.

Brianna’s voice came over my earpiece.

She said to meet her by the big windows overlooking the street. Near the overpriced art books.

We traveled to Brianna in the dark, my cellphone leading the way.

I saw Brianna overlooking the street. Arms folded. Blazing orange fire reflecting off the glass.

We approached. The Roofer drove his car through the intersection. He ran into an electrical transmission box underneath a telephone pole. The telephone pole sloping. His car was in flames, black smoke going into the clear night sky below a full moon. The Roofer had gotten out of his car and walked to the middle of the intersection where he collapsed in flames. Laying face down like a deep-fried star fish. The traffic had stopped. People calling the fire department. Filming with their phones. I could see the giant movie theater across the street had lost power too. The Walmart lost power. The gas station at the corner. I looked beyond. Everything night black except The Roofer.

It was on the news. You can look it up.