When I first created this blog, my goal was to write about writing and to include some of my own short fiction. But then 2020 happened.
Now that we’re into 2021 with the Odious Orange One relegated to the sidelines, there are several good reasons for hope. So at least for a while, I plan to return to my original intent.
Starting today I’ll be posting a few original short-short stories having nothing to do with politics. These are little bite-sized works of fiction, much shorter than typical short stories. Today’s story is called “Maslow’s Basement.” I hope you enjoy it.
Maslow’s Basement
Don Thompson
At least the dreams were gone. Nightmares, mostly. But yes, it was true, the dreams had also disappeared. Roger Carrington pushed aside the cardboard flap of his makeshift shelter and peered into a drizzly, gray Seattle morning beneath the freeway overpass. A seagull flew in with a raucous cry, banked and landed on the dirt a few yards away, looking toward Roger with one eye. Water dripped from the sides of the roadway above and formed several muddy pools naturally marking the boundaries of the little village which hosted two other cardboard shanties and a dark green army surplus tent. The hum and whish of wet traffic overhead was more effective than any alarm clock Roger had ever owned, not that he needed one anymore.
What he did need were basic things. He needed to pee – that would have to be first. Finding something to eat would be next. The deli down on Second Avenue was always a good bet around two or three after lunch cleanup, but mornings were tougher. Along the way, he could fill up the water bottle at the park and maybe stop at the bench to check in with the speechless old man he’d nicknamed Tex.
Roger crawled out and struggled to his sixty-year-old feet. They were okay. Legs and knees were fine, too. It was just the back. His lower back rebelled against the hard sleeping conditions. Roger straightened it slowly and winced with a sharp catch as he came to his full six-and-a-half-foot height. He ran a hand through his long gray hair and thought about a shower. That would be outstanding. A long, hot shower. A good goal for the week.
Goals? What a joke. Can’t get a job without a mailing address, not even as a dishwasher at the deli, and can’t get an address without a job. As he peed against the concrete freeway support, Roger shook his head and felt a laugh escape in a single snort. He used to structure his whole life around goals. Measurable ones. Tough but achievable ones. Strategic goals and objectives for the whole damn company. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re liable to end up there. He’d spouted that and similarly vacuous platitudes a hundred times in executive staff meetings. He had to laugh; he’d ended up there anyway.
Roger drank all but the last ounce of water and splashed that on his face. He rubbed it in with both hands and dried off with his pulled-up T-shirt. The corporate logo on the bottle seemed to mock him and he’d nearly thrown the damn thing away more than once but stopped himself because it was made of stainless steel and would last a good long time.
Time was the most valuable possession he had now. In fact, Roger mused, it always had been – he just hadn’t seen it. Friends were a related regret. There hadn’t been time for them, so now, predictably, they were nowhere to be found. There had only been time for business allies, board members and investors. But Roger no longer had what those people needed, so they were gone too.
But he wasn’t alone. There was Ted over by the parking lot, Carlos standing on the corner, and Mary, sipping coffee outside her tent under the overpass, a rough green blanket drawn up over her knees.
For the first few weeks, Carlos barely acknowledged Roger’s presence. Mary was suspicious, and Ted, like old Tex over at the park, was too mentally impaired to hold a conversation. But Ted smiled at Roger every morning, and Roger returned the favor by bringing him extra discarded food from the deli. Before long, he began to share with the others too, and a family of sorts began to take shape. Mary was the last to join in, but it took more than food to earn her trust.
One bitterly cold day in November, someone in a Jeep handed Roger a new down jacket. It looked warmer than the old cotton-lined thing he had, and when he put it on, he felt like a new man. But later that day, when he got back to the overpass, he noticed Mary sitting just inside her tent, wrapped in her coarse wool blanket, smoking a cigarette and staring straight ahead. Roger knew she wasn’t moving because she didn’t want to lose any of the warm air she’d managed to trap under that blanket. He guessed that Mary was somewhere in her mid-forties but she looked twenty years older that day, her long stringy hair already graying as it hung out from under her blue wool cap.
He approached her tent directly so she could easily see who was coming. When he got within a few feet of her, he stopped and nodded. Mary nodded back, unsmiling. Roger took off his new jacket and held it out to her, feeling the icy breeze once again. “Here,” he said. “It’s too small for me.”
Mary looked up and squinted. “What do you want?”
The question surprised Roger and it took him a moment to answer. “Nothing,” he said. “You looked cold.”
Mary glanced down at her feet, then back up. “Thank you.”
Roger thought he saw the beginnings of a smile as Mary took the coat from him. He smiled back and walked over to his shelter on the far side of the overpass.
Roger was thinking about that day as he passed Mary’s tent on this cool, wet spring morning. She wore that same down jacket with her blanket over her knees. No surprise. Roger couldn’t remember a time in the last few weeks he’d seen her without the jacket, even when the temperature rose into the fifties. That made him smile broadly as he waved to her. She smiled back and motioned for him to come sit with her.
“Hey, Rog.”
“Hey, Mary. How’re you doing this morning?” Roger sat down slowly with a hand on his sore back.
“Okay. Guess I’ve been better.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. My mother died yesterday.”
“Damn. I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“No, but still.”
Roger nodded and stared off toward the downtown office buildings. “Yeah, still. I get it. Your father?”
“I haven’t seen him since I was five or six. He’s long gone.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“A brother. That’s how I heard. He drops off a note every now and then, sometimes with a few bucks. Hands an envelope to Carlos from his car.”
“He doesn’t just give it to you directly? Stop and talk for a minute? Get you the hell out of here?”
“He stopped by my tent once, over a year ago. But his wife, the bitch, made him promise never to do that again.”
“And he just follows orders?”
“I know, right? But he’s always been like that. She’s got him by the balls.”
“What’s his name?”
“Tim.”
“Hmm, if Tim’s got a car, he’s probably got enough money to get you out of here. Find you a place to stay – at least a room or a couch at his place.”
“Not gonna happen as long as the bitch is breathing. What about you? You got any relatives?” asked Mary.
“Nope. Don’t have any siblings and both parents are gone. My dad died of a heart attack when he was fifty and mom passed a couple years later. Cancer.”
“I’m really sorry. Any friends out there?”
“Hah! Not anymore. Actually, I’m not sure I ever had any. Business partners, employees, competitors, enemies, but nobody I’d call a real friend. Well, maybe Jolene; she was my admin assistant.”
“Uh-oh.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. Not at all. It’s just that she was the only one I could talk to honestly about the business. She was a good listener. And she knew how to pull ideas out of me. I really miss her.”
Mary took off her wool cap, ran a hand through her hair and put it back on. “Ever been married?”
“Once, a long time ago. It didn’t last more than a year. I just wasn’t around much – always confused urgent things with important things. You know what I mean?”
“Not really, no.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past.”
“The past, yeah. I try not to think too much about that,” said Mary. She pulled her blanket tighter around her knees and glanced around their little encampment under the freeway. “It’s too depressing. You ever wish you could change something back then? Something that would make all this go away?”
“All the time. I made a stupid mistake. Ended up in prison after I tried to dump a bunch of stock in my own company a year after we went public and just before we lost a huge contract. I knew the loss was coming. I made my move and the SEC caught me.”
“So you lost a lot of money?”
“Everything. Money, cars, house, boat, reputation. Nobody’ll hire a felon. The company went down and hundreds of people lost their jobs because of me.”
“You were kind of a shithead, sounds like.”
Roger laughed and nodded. “Yeah, kind of a shithead. Still am, I guess. The good thing is I can’t do much damage here.”
Mary smiled. “Well that’s something. Want a cigarette? I found a full pack yesterday down by the park.”
“Thanks, but that’s one good thing I managed to do – kicked the habit a long time ago. You should too, you know.”
“Nah. I can’t do that,” said Mary. “It’s my one and only pleasure in life. And besides, maybe it’ll kill me. Sometimes I think sooner’d be better than later.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“Yeah, I do. Some of the time. Maybe most of the time. I mean, look at me. Look at us. Living in the fucking basement of Maslow’s triangle.”
“You know about Maslow?”
“I have a psych degree from UW.”
“Really?”
“I know. Hard to believe, right?”
“What happened?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Actually, yeah, I do.”
“Hmm. Maybe another day.”
“Sure, okay.” Roger got back to his feet and turned to leave. “And I’m really sorry about your Mom,” he said over his shoulder.
“Thanks.”
Roger ambled over to Carlos’s corner. “Buenos Dias, amigo,” he said.
“Hey, how’s the old man?” said Carlos.
“Not dead yet. You?”
“I’ve been better, been worse. Made ten bucks already and only been flipped off once.”
“Yeah? Not too bad. That same jerk in the white seven-series?”
“That’s the guy.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah. Hey, light’s changed. Here comes the next batch,” said Carlos.
“Okay, I’ll leave you to it. It’s your corner.”
“Thanks, man. Good luck today.”
“You, too.”
Roger had learned about territories a few days after he first came to the overpass. A man’s corner is like his bank account. You don’t mess with it. He crossed the street, heading for the park with water bottle in hand.
It’s funny the little things that matter the most, he thought. The little essentials you hold in your head. The drinking fountain in the park, for one. The locations of public restrooms around town. The few hotel bathrooms you can sometimes sneak into – those are the best. The dumpsters with the cleanest food and the best times to check them. The guys to stay away from.
Roger paused at the drinking fountain and took in the morning park scene as he filled his water bottle. Wet grass, dripping trees, Tex asleep on his bench and covered with black plastic trash bags against the rain. Roger had tried to talk to Tex a couple of times before, but all he could get was a questioning stare from the brown wizened face under the tan cowboy hat as if the poor fellow was trying to remember something or someone important. This morning, Roger decided to keep moving. He’d bring Tex something to eat on his way back.
He walked on, passing people in the street who seemed to be in a serious hurry to get to their offices, to nurture customers and kill competitors. It was pretty much that simple, Roger reflected. He avoided eye contact and kept moving; he had an agenda, too. The breakfast place down on Pike was sometimes good for a handout if he happened to catch the right busboy in the alley at just the right time.
Later than morning, Roger finished his rounds and made his way back toward the overpass. He’d managed a pretty good haul, enough to feed the family for a couple of days and something extra for Tex. Even a discarded paperback for Mary. But as he approached the park, Roger picked up his pace at the sight of flashing blue lights painting the trees against the cloudy sky. A medical examiner’s van blocked the path and someone was moving a body on a stretcher. A tan cowboy hat sat alone on the park bench. Black trash bags lay on the ground, now nothing more than trash themselves.
Roger stopped. The man on the stretcher had a story, and like everyone else’s, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And here was the end, the only part Roger knew anything about. He didn’t even know the man’s real name. What about the rest of the story? Had it all been about survival or had the man picked up a few unique bits of wisdom along the way? If so, had he passed those along to anyone else? Had he made a difference of any kind? Or was his legacy nothing more than a freed-up park bench, now available for someone with a similar fate?
Roger shook his head slowly, picked up the cowboy hat, and headed home.