I heard the sound of a cigarette lighter being struck. I turned my head to see Lucas with a cigarette in his mouth and a flame burning at the end of it. His eyes glanced towards me. “What?”
I sighed and turned back to the mission trying to stay focussed on priorities. Directly in front of us was the rubbish bin. It was filled with pastry and all sorts of factory rubbish – empty cans, plastic bags, steel rods – all poking into each other and not making such a pretty sight for picking at. All of a sudden I wasn’t so keen on getting anything that had been dumped in there.
Voices could be heard from the entrance. Two men pushing rubbish trolleys came out of the building and stopped in front of the bins. They both began heaving the pastry and food into the bin. By what little light there was I could see a stack of jam tarts and other assorted items at the bottom of one trolley. They looked good to go and all of a sudden it seemed like such a waste to be throwing them out, especially when there were so many starving students in the world.
Lucas patted me gently on the shoulder. “It’s okay” he whispered in my ear. “I feel your pain.”
The man with the dreads propped a foot up on one of the trolleys. “Yo Phil. I’ll finish this last trolley if y’ want. I’m just gonna hang around and have a ciggy. Sweet as? I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
“No probs.”
The man with the dreads lit up a cigarette while the other overalled man left the scene.
I waited for Lucas to move first and then followed him out from behind the barrels as he walked briskly towards the dumpster, cigarette in hand.
“Jim!”
The man looked up at him. “Yo. What strange creatures present themselves from the shadows of night?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He turned to me, eyelids half closed. “Hey bro, what’s hapnin’?”
Lucas grabbed one of his shoulders, getting his attention. “Got the overalls?”
“Nah bro.” He waved his arms randomly in the air. “They’re over there.”
“Where?”
“You know bro.”
Lucas thought for a moment. “Are you high?”
“What!?” His face screwed up. “Dude, do you know what it’s like being high in this place?”
“No I don’t.”
I looked around at the building imagining what it must have been like with all those shiny lights and high ceilings…
“Man, it takes like forever to do anything. Shit, I made that mistake once when me mate baked some muffins before I went to work, and they kicked in when I was here, and man I swear I worked for twice as long at everything I did! Urghh shit. It sucks.”
“So you don’t have the overalls?”
“Nah, mate they still where they usually are. You want me to get them?”
Lucas took a deep breath. “No, Jim. It’s fine. You just keep an eye out and let us know if anyone is about to come out of the main factory.”
“Yeah, cheers bro, I can do that.”
“Sweet.”
“Grab some chocolate while you’re over there bro. It’s nice.”
I followed Lucas as he turned towards the factory entrance and began his brisk walk again, flicking his cigarette off to his left. I followed the glow of ash as it sailed through the air and landed somewhere near where we had previously been kneeling around the oil-stained barrels.
Lucas turned back to me. “Smoke-free area.”
“Ummmm…”
He took a quick glance back at Jim before we walked inside and turned left. “Fuck, if that guy ain’t an advertisement for why not to do drugs, then I don’t know what is.”
Or at least the aerosol can!
The blue overalls hung over some opened lockers. There were cute little white covers for your shoes if you wanted but I opted for the big black gumboots instead. We trotted back out to the dumpster where Jim was sitting on an upside down plastic rubbish bin. I looked over towards the barrels where we had been kneeling, looking for a flame, or a spark; any sign that I should run for cover before the barrels exploded and ended this mission prematurely, but there was nothing, just the darkness that had hid us so well.
I turned back to see Jim holding a finished roll of toilet paper stuffed with tissue at his mouth while the free hand brought up a can and started spraying into the open end of the roll. Jim took huge breaths, dragging the fumes into his lungs. I guessed that the tissue was to stop the liquid spray from going into the mouth, but still allow the fumes to pass through the roll and into the mouth where they were inhaled down into the lungs.
Lucas slapped on his thin rubber gloves. “Thanks for watching out for us.”
Jim lifted his head slightly, eyes half closed. “Yeah, nah, it all good mate. Coast is clear.”
He went back to spraying and taking huge breaths through the roll.
“Dude,” I said. “What is that?”
“It’s cleaning agent. Industrial strength. Man, way better than the standard fly-spray bro – that shit’s for juniors.”
I wanted to help him, I wanted to stop him, but I didn’t know how. I started to say “Jim, you don’t need to do this…” but Lucas cut in.
“Don’t worry about him David. Let’s just get these jam tarts and croissants in our bags.”
“I can’t not worry about him, though.”
“He’s fucked David. There’s nothing you can do.
But he could be helped if someone cared enough. I thought I did – or at least I thought I had. “Jim…”
Lucas grabbed my arm and moved me away. “You can’t help him. Just forget about him, okay. Guys like that are fucked and aren’t worth wasting your time on.”
Emptiness dissolved what I had been feeling inside.
“Bring the bag closer.”
I turned away and held my bag open for Lucas as he climbed into the dumpster and began loading wrapped up jam tarts into my bag. I didn’t like the fact that they had been in the dumpster but I had to admit the tarts were still wrapped up and completely clean.
I turned my head to look at Jim. He was staring into nowhere space. Sadly, I knew all to well what that was like. I just found it astounding that he had opted for such a brain destroying chemical high.
I heard the sound of food hitting the concrete ground.
“For fucks sake David!”
The bag had moved out of place, and food had fallen right past the bag and landed on the ground.
“Keep the bag still and in the same place. Got it?”
“Sweet as” I said a little bit scared. I had never heard Lucas get that angry before.
Jim spoke up. “Yo, I think someone’s coming.”
A door slammed in the shed.
Lucas grabbed the bag, jumped out of the dumpster, ran for the barrels and dived in behind where we had first hid ourselves, sparks flaring up followed by the sound of his hands patting desperately against his legs.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I heard him mumble.
His quick reactions took me by surprise. I began to follow but my foot slipped on a piece of pastry that had fallen to the ground causing me to slide backwards and hit the dumpster. Just as the sound of my head hitting the metal thudded into the night, a man walked out from inside the storage area and saw me lying on the ground. I had no idea of what I should do – he looked like one of the posted guards we were trying to eliminate, yet here I was void of any weapons, and sprawled on the ground like a retard ready for him to come up and put a bullet in me. I panicked. My weapons had been detained in the previous mission, my fighting skills weren’t at an advanced enough level to deal with this situation, and my health was dropping considerably from the knock on my head. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do when faced with these situations: I moved my right hand from the mouse to the F7 button where I could reload this entire mission from the start…
Oh Shit! I looked at the concrete beneath my hands – real concrete! Not a pixelated image. I scrambled to get to my f
eet clutching at the very real pain in my head. There was no time to run. The man was beside me and staring into my eyes with an angry expression on his face.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“Ummm, ahhh…”
“Yo.” It was Jim. “He helping me to empty some rubbish. Got a bit tired so I sat down.” One of his hands was behind his back.
The man looked at him. “Ya fuckin’ lazy cunt Jim. Hurry up and get back to work.” He turned to me, angrier and far more expressive. “I’ve never seen your flat-face before. You new?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, don’t listen to anything this dumb motherfucker here has to say alright? He doesn’t know shit.”
“Sure.”
“As soon as you’re done here get back inside to where you’re supposed to be. I’m fuckin’ sick of dealing with you lazy shits on my shift.” He turned and walked away, shaking his head. “Fuckin’ part-timers.”
I looked down at Jim and said “thanks”.
He rocked a bit and nodded, staring into the distance.
Lucas peeked his head up over the barrels. “Coast clear?”
“Yeah.”
He raised himself up holding the bag in the air and pointing to it. “Alright!” he said with a big smile on his face. “We done did ourselves a sweet as theft!”
Part IV
– Debrief –
Lisa: [ had lunch? ]
Me: [ no ]
Lisa: [ wanna grab sub? ]
I wasn’t particularly hungry. I still had a tray’s worth of croissants and jam tarts to try to finish and Tinsdale and Martin weren’t that keen to help out after I told them where I got them from. The ‘how I got them’ impressed Tinsdale to no end – he was almost patting me on the back for being such a sneaky bastard; but the ‘where I got them from’ made them both turn their heads away, even after I explained that they had still been wrapped up when we fished them out of the rubbish bin. “I’m highly disappointed Martin. You of all people, a struggling student with a low income, turning down free food.”
I saw indecision on his face, a moment of panic in his eyes – what should I do? Eat or not eat?
“Oh, come on! This shit here is fresher than anything you could buy at the supermarket. These jam tarts have come straight from the cream-squirter’s hands!”
This only made the two of them crack up with laughter. “Yeah, what other cream were they squirting?”
“Is it that same ‘special’ cream that other fast-food places use?”
“Because that always comes straight from the cream-squirter’s hand!”
They both returned their attention to the TV. My attention went back to what I had to try to get through on my own.
unless…
[ jam tart? ]
[ what? ]
[ I hav fresh tarts an croissants if u want sum ]
[ nah, keen on da sub ]
Damn.
Lisa shone like gold. I thought it might just have been the sun reflecting off the rain soaked pavements as she walked across the square, but when she stood before me, I couldn’t help thinking about how I had once held her in my own arms; I couldn’t help thinking about everything that I had done for her since we first met. Today saw a smile on her face like the smiles I had started seeing after Jesus had entered her life and filled her with a love that was unconquerable. It was the kind of smile that had put aside all the problems of the past and was ready to take on life with new enthusiasm. I had seen similar smiles in others, they too had found the love that they had been searching so long for. Now I wasn’t so sure that that love was all that unconquerable. It was failing me, or I was failing it; either way, I was feeling like the proverbial atheist on the fast track to hell.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Not much.”
I had needed to get out of the flat anyway. “Where’re your friends today?”
“Oh, they’re just hangin’ out at home. I kinda wanted to do some stuff by myself.”
“Right.” And you couldn’t eat lunch by yourself?
We walked into Subway and ordered our meals, sitting down in the corner at Lisa’s suggestion.
I began chomping away on my food, though Lisa was a little bit more reserved.
“So, what have you been up to?” she asked.
“Not much. Just doing some work here and there.”
“Cool.”
I didn’t think it was cool. It fuckin’ sucked. “What about you?”
“Yeah, I haven’t been doing much either. Just looking into some things.”
I didn’t want to know what she had been looking into.
“How’s y’ mum?”
I didn’t want to answer this question. Not honestly anyway. “She’s okay.”
“Do you still talk to each other?”
“Of course.” I must have looked annoyed because she went back to eating her sub as though it was a welcome distraction. I started picking out the olives that I had made a mistake of ordering. They had a tangy flavour that stuck on my tongue and ruined anything else that was put in my mouth. I wish I had remembered not to order them but Lisa had stood beside me making me nervous and all of a sudden I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted to eat, but what we were going to talk about after we sat down. Right now I didn’t like where it was heading.
She watched as I scuttled the olive slices to one side of the wrapper before taking in a sudden breath and saying “I don’t really talk to my dad anymore.”
“Congratulations” I said without any enthusiasm. “I haven’t spoken to or even heard from my dad since they kicked me out of church.”
“They didn’t kick you out of church David.”
“They did everything but. I felt like I had no choice left but to leave. They couldn’t tolerate me the way I was.”
“How did your mum take it?”
“She started drinking again.”
“Oh.”
I thought Lisa would have known that, but I guess she had only talked to her once recently, and knowing mum, she would have done her best to act as straight as possible when Lisa had come to visit. She used to be all smiles when my friends had come to visit me while I was still living at home: whiskey glass hidden in the cupboard under the sink. After they left out it came again, only this time she had to make up for the time spent not drinking, so ended up guzzling the whole glass, topping up moments before she collapsed on the floor from taking down so much at once. I used to freak out when she did this, but eventually I got so used to it that I just left her and walked out the door leaving her to either pick herself up later on upon waking or wait until Dad arrived home to find her. Not that Dad did much to help. He did take her to the hospital a couple of times, but got so tired of dealing with it that even he began ignoring her and instead of helping her up, simply stepped over her and went on with his day.
“She must feel terrible.”
“Who?”
“Your mum.”
“Why? For raising a crap son like me?”
“No, I mean because she’s an alcoholic.”
“She’s sick. She’s not a bad person.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Dad drank a lot as well, but he never felt bad about lashing out at the rest of us. Does your mum ever… y’ know…?”
“No. Mum never gets violent. Her alcoholism is all about herself, all about drowning some part of her that she can’t seem to escape from.”
She looked up at me. “Your dad?”
“Yeah.” And her prodigal son.
“We have a lot in common, David.”
“My dad never tried hitting me.”
She dropped her sub and looked away.
I regretted saying it. “I’m sorry.” I rubbed my eyes. “It doesn’t make you a bad person because you try, or even do, drugs; it doesn’t even make you a bad person if you’re addicted to a drug; it just means that you have allowed yourself to be controlled by a false god, a god who does not care for you,
a god that wants to subdue you to its every whim. That’s what substance abuse does to a person. I’m not one of those people that smokes pot every day, two or three times a day; for me it’s just about enjoying the escape from reality, the same buzz that playing computer games brings, except with weed there’s no control. I can drift away and let go of all the problems. Playing games is fun. I can launch into a completely different world, switch off from the one around me and focus entirely on the one in front of my eyes, but getting high means that I can walk through the world that my body exists in without any of the worries that I would have if I wasn’t high. Some people think that’s a bad thing. I need it, but I never abuse it. Most of the time I just stay in my bedroom while getting high, or go outside and lie down on the lawn. Being outside is great when you’re high.”
“Is that the sort of stuff you told your youth groups?”
“No, that’d be stupid. No, I just told them that God loved us unconditionally and to give God back that same amount of love would make His path for you so much clearer and easier to walk along.”
“Simple as that, eh?”
“It’s never as simple as that. You know that.” I shook my head and looked out at the random people walking past the window, resting on the seats in the square. “None of us are perfect. We can only try to gain perfection through the example of Jesus.” I felt like I was reciting something I had once read. “So few care to actually pursue that. I thought I was one of those who would be strong enough to try, but I have failed. Everything about me is a failure. Everything about my family is a failure. I simply can’t do what I once did.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t help people. I can’t pretend to be some sort of guiding light to troubled teens anymore.” I could see part of my reflection in the window. “I threw a stone once. I threw it so hard that it bounced off its target, came back and hit me in the face.” I turned away from the window.
It seemed so much easier turning away.
I Am The Local Atheist Page 13