NAME SEARCHING

BY THOMAS VAN GEMERT

Eric kept searching his memory for the name of the guy that had lived in a shack in the woods of the town he used to live in. It started with P but it wasn’t Phil or Pete or Paul. Maybe it didn’t start with a P. Eric even tried thinking about other things and then snapped his mind back to the name: a trick that often worked, but didn’t work this time. This guy’s name had fit his character. He had left home because of arguments with his parents, Eric recalls something about drugs being involved. Then he moved into a shack in the woods, only it wasn’t remote like people would think because it could be seen from the highway when you drove by the place that sold dirt, mushroom compost, etc. Eric had even mowed lawns with this guy one day when Eric’s friend Jacob had been desperate for workers. Eric remembers how the guy was very thin and had very sharp, intense features. He had a crew cut and pushed the mower in a frenzy when he was getting payed by the hour. He had an interesting story about how he could have gone to the naval acadamy but his parents wouldn’t let him. The answers to follow up questions after this were shady and Jacob didn’t believe any of it. Then the guy had to go home to his shack to inject some kind of anti-biotics between his toes with a syringe. Jacob said to Eric afterwards that it was probably heroine and not anti-biotics. But Eric had believed the guy. His stories seemed too genuine. But he knew there was more to the naval academy story. “You can let me out here,” this man had said and Jacob stopped his truck and Eric had to get out because the man had been sitting in the middle. Then Eric climbed back in and watched out the back window as Jacob drove off to watch the man dissapear into the trees. It was the only time he had ever seen him but the man would flash into his thoughts every now and then ever since.

While Eric was sitting on his small leaf littered porch four years later trying to remember the man’s name, his phone rang. It was Tram. She was a desperate Japanese girl that Eric felt very lucky to have met. He got her name and number from the ride board senior year at Allegheny college before Labor Day weekend and had been her only passenger. She was driving to Carnegie Mellon to be interviewed for a teaching job. Her ex-boyfriend went to Carnegie Mellon and it didn’t take long for Eric to realize that she wasn’t over him and that her getting an interview there had been an excuse to get near him again. Eric had soothed his way under her skin with his understanding and sympathy, being the perfect gentleman. At least to her he must have seemed that way. To a different girl, the things he said to comfort her might have been considered creepy. Two days after she drove him back to Allegheny he was getting laid regularly. After college, Eric went back home to live for a while and then moved out when his parents had bothered him enough to a shabby little apartment complex in the next town. He found a job selling and delivering stereo equipment. Tram had been given the teaching assistant job at Carnegie and lived about twenty minutes away.

She was very clingy and it got to Eric sometimes. Often he didn’t answer the phone and this also had its bad points for it led her to suspect him. Where were you yesterday at 5:30 when I called? You get out of work at 4:30 so you should have been home. Eric said that he had worked later or had run into traffic or had stepped out for a minute. One time he was drunk and told her that he had been pleasuring himself in the bathroom. Where you thinking about me? Certainly, had been his reply. But he knew that he would have been looking in a magazine at some caucasian girl with larger breasts.

But Eric felt that he was very lucky to have met her. She was so desperate and pathetic. Her face was round and plain, puffy sometimes, but she had an incredible body. He decided to answer the phone this time because he wanted her to come over so he could slam her in the kitchen. He had been having kitchen fetishes lately. But when he picked up the phone he could tell there was a problem right away by the tone in her voice.

“Effie Jenks said he saw you in CVS yesterday. You were buying cough syrup weren’t you.”

“Who’s Effie Jenks?” he said.

“The pharmacist. He said he saw you. You were there weren’t you.” Her voice shook and he pictured her thin, creamy fingers grasping the reciever and her thin lips working.

“You know the pharmacist at CVS?”

“I showed him your picture. The one I have in my wallet. He said he recognized you.”

“You showed him my picture? I can’t believe it.”

“He remembers you. He said you knocked things on the floor with your big jacket sleeve and didn’t even notice you were doing it. You were drunk weren’t you. How could....”

Eric tuned out. He wasn’t going to get laid. The carpet felt grimy under his toes and he had the sudden impulse to go for a walk. He put on shoes and his jacket and was soon down the steps and sauntering along the sidewalk in the direction towards the center of town. It was a crisp fall day, the kind he liked. Maybe the cold air would help him remember the shack dweller’s name. A squirrel stiffened its hold on a water spout attached to the brick wall of a building, its tiny claws scratching the aluminum.

It was turning into an obsession. He considered calling Jacob to ask him but then remembered that Jacob graduated from Hawaii University and decided to stay there. The name had matched the shack dweller’s personality so well. Eric’s head started to hurt, trying to remember what it was. He even thought ahead to the time when he would actually recall the name. What would happen then? He would have remembered the name but so what? Maybe he should back off a bit. Once he had the shack dweller’s name he wouldn’t have anything to think about anymore. He might then even be driven to track the man down after all these years. He might still be living in the shack. Eric doubted it. He probably had moved back in with his parents after that summer when it started to get cold. He imagined the shack dweller building a fire in the middle of his shack, inside part of a furnace that he had found discarded a mile or so away, with a pipe running up and out of the roof. The image made Eric feel cozy and he rubbed his hands together.

The way into town crossed a bridge. He stopped a few yards away from a black man fishing off the edge.

“Isn’t it out of season to be fishing?” Eric asked.

The black man didn’t look up but said “Nobody gives a damn” and slowly turned the crank which made comforting plastic clicking sounds. Eric enjoyed this sound and he crammed his hands deep into the pockets of his puffy jacket, watching the line where it met with the water and waiting for a fish to bite. Two minutes went by and the black man looked up. He had salt and pepper whiskers and intense, watery eyes.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Oh nothing,” Eric replied and grinned. “Just watchin’.” The black man shook his head and went back to fishing. Two more minutes went by and the black man looked up again, studying Eric’s forehead.

“You know your bleedin’?” the black man said.

Eric felt his forehead and looked at the blood on his finger tips.

“Oh. The dry air must have opened it up. It’s nothing.” Stuffing his hand back into his pocket he grinned again. The black man looked back at his line.

“Looks like you need some stitches for that. What did you do?” Eric said he didn’t remember how he had done it. He had just woken up this morning and noticed it. The black man said that he should go see a doctor.

In the grocery store Eric bought a loaf of bread and slices of turkey. Then he went to CVS and bought a bottle of cough syrup. But before he bought it, he went to the pharmacy window at the back and asked the woman if Effie Jenks was there. She said that he didn’t work weekends and studied his forehead.

“You should cover that with something sir,” she said as he was walking away from her. He decided to buy a box of bandaids too.

A sparrow flew onto the fence next to him while he was sitting on a park bench in the courtyard and he ripped off a tiny piece of bread and threw it. Soon he had a large congregation of birds at his feet and the old couple seated on the bench next to him got up and left, shaking their white heads. He leaned foreward as he bit into his sandwich, letting the blood drop to the concrete. He held a tiny piece of bread to the cut, relishing in the dull sting before dropping it amongst the birds. One of the larger ones hopped over to it and jerked it’s head a few times, considering.

“Come on bud, don’t you wanna be my blood brother?” he drolled, smiling. The bird flew away and he watched it perch on top of a green street lamp. He closed his eyes, feeling dizzy. When he opened them he stared down and felt better. Another drop of blood. The birds inched in closer around his feet, demanding more bread.

The black man was gone when Eric crossed the bridge on his way back. A tin can was on the railing where he had been. Eric peeked inside and found it empty except for a little bit of moist dirt at the bottom. He dropped a little ball of bread into the water. A second later there was a tiny thrash and it was gone. He would tell the black man about it if he ever saw him again.

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