Ordinary Sins

by Jim Heynen

  How many floors must he be sweeping to need so many keys? How many latrines must he be cleaning every day?

  Poor people smiled at the young man as if he were a brother, as did the rich, thus giving the poor rich young man the best of both worlds as he made his way through this difficult time in his life.

  MAN TYING HIS SHOES

  It was not about the shoes so much as the shoelaces. If they were soap, he would have been lathering his hands with them. If they were water, his hands would have been surfing them. He was cleaning their floppy ears! He was orchestrating the shoelaces! The shoes were quite handsome, black wingtips with a real luster, but they were not major players in the drama. It was the shoelaces that excited him and must have satisfied something that others would not understand.

  The abrupt quickness of his stooping suggested that he stooped to tie his shoes often. Did his mother not teach him to tie a shoe properly the first time?

  Others on the sidewalk swerved around the bulging smile of his buttocks.

  His efforts produced two impressive loops that hung down over his shoe like the floppy ears of a beagle.

  When he started walking again, his face showed he was not happy with his freshly tied shoe. It may have been too tight, or he might have sensed that it was too loose and would again be two unbowed strands after a few steps. He walked over to a bench near the bus stop, sat down, and retied the same shoe.

  This had to be about something more than shoestrings. He must have been trying to solve an invisible problem, perhaps mending a relationship that was unraveling.

  He gritted his teeth as he looped and pulled the shoestrings, then gave both loops a final tug for good measure.

  The man was in his fifties and should have worked through his problems by now—or at least found a more conventional means of dealing with them, but he was not hurting anyone, and who was to say how a man should confront the anguishes of his life?

  He stood up and was off again with his freshly tied shoe, but he was looking down. Something was wrong, but now it was the other foot. He stooped to tie the other shoe, and he grappled especially hard to get it right. Admirably, the man had chosen today to confront all of his problems at once.

  THE ARTS ADMINISTRATOR

  He had been an artist in his own right. Running programs and dispensing funds was now his way of making a modest living while staying close to what had always been dear to him.

  Other artists loved him the way artists love people who have their hands on the purse strings. They told him how good it was to work with somebody who understood an artist’s problems.

  Most people just don’t know what it’s like to deal with greedy gallery owners. Most people have no idea how hard it is to make a living writing unpopular literature. You have a heart, man, you really do.

  The arts administrator worked hard at convincing legislators and philanthropists to donate money to the funds he managed. He practiced sales pitches on his friends who were not artists. He noted how business people dressed. He learned to impress them by appearing to be impressed by them.

  Among artists he dressed more casually, though he tried to emulate some of the mannerisms of those who provided him with the funds he dispersed. Sometimes the funders felt like his parents and the artists like his children. The funders needed praise; the artists needed nurturing. Flipping from praise to nurturing became an art in itself, and he became a master at it.

  At night he went home to his stylish apartment. For half an hour he played the piano to relax. Then he took out his notebook, sat at his small desk overlooking the courtyard below, and wrote a few lines of poetry. After cocktails with a few friends, he went to his painting closet and worked on his unfinished watercolors. Then he prepared a light gourmet dinner, sat down at the table alone, and between bites, wrote a few notes in his journal. Sometimes before going to bed he stood in front of the mirror with one of his own paintings, held it up toward the mirror, and imagined himself to be a curious and objective observer.

  THE BOOK REVIEWER

  When the book reviewer finally wrote her own book, she imagined what other book reviewers would say.

  Her book was a strange and quirky collection of short prose pieces that she hoped reviewers would label “flash fiction,” though she knew some might call them prose poems, which would be all right with her. If anyone labeled them “snippets” or “vignettes,” she would throw an epic tantrum.

  A rainbow of earthly delights was what she hoped Publisher’s Weekly would say.

  But what if Kirkus said, If no one wished Milton’s Paradise Lost to be longer, no one will wish these anorexic snippets to be shorter?

  What if The New York Times Book Review wrote, If the author took any pains to write these weightless vignettes, they certainly were not labor pains?

  Would Library Journal say, Perhaps readers are witnessing the invention of a new literary form: it should be called Farts in the Wind?

  Still, she could see a respectable academic journal declaring, This collection is a banquet of delectable hors d’oeuvres, each with its own flavor so distinct that it needs no garnish. Something for every palate!

  There simply was no way of knowing what reviewers would say. That was the torment. What if one of them was someone whose work she had reviewed harshly? But, no, she had never been gratuitously harsh, only painstakingly honest. At any rate, it was all a matter of taste, anyhow.

  I don’t really care what they say about me, she finally consoled herself, so long as they’re talking about me.

  JOHN DOE

  This man wanted to be anonymous. He wanted to be as inconspicuous as a flyspeck on a black car, but the world conspired against him. One day he received twenty e-mail advertisements, six telemarketing calls, and a piece of junk mail from an insurance company that began with the words WE LOVE YOU! The same day, when he bought a new pair of walking shoes with cash, the sales clerk asked, Could I have your zip code, please?

  This is driving me crazy! he shouted. I do not want to be identified by name, by address, by telephone number, by Social Security number, or serial number. I do not want to be known by zip code, by area code, by color code, or by secret code! Enough is enough!

  He started erasing himself by changing his legal name to John Doe.

  A person to whom he wrote a check was the first to talk: The first odd thing about him is his name, but then just watch him. He’s like a deer foraging in a forest; every few seconds he lifts his head and looks quickly in both directions.

  Word of John Doe’s pursuit of anonymity spread like a flu virus quietly and inconspicuously around the town. It wasn’t long before a stranger on the street walked up to him and said, You’re John Doe, aren’t you?

  It was time to mutate once more: he researched the most common names on earth and changed his name to Muhammad Smith.

  It evidently was a curious combination and soon, someone pointed at him and said his name as if it were a delightful curiosity that everyone should enjoy.

  Anonymity will have to start at home, he finally realized. If I stay in my house, I will become invisible to the world. But what to do with himself alone in his house? The answer was obvious once he picked up his pen and started writing. Of course! Writing! Why hadn’t he thought of this before?

  Anonymously, Muhammad Smith wrote and wrote poems and short stories, wrote and wrote until he became curious about what others might think of his writing. He sent off samples. Editors loved his short stories. Editors loved his poetry. He published in magazines and newspapers all over the country. Hundreds of publications that he kept in boxes around his house. To his amazement and deep satisfaction, within three years, no one recognized his name or knew who he was.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Some of these stories originally appeared in the following publications:

  Clover: “Children’s Play” and “The Checkout Clerk”

  Fifth Wednesday: “Who Loved Animals More Than People” (as “Little Darlings”)

 
Georgia Review: “Sad Hour,” “What’s Candy to an Artist?” “Good Riddance,” “The Good Host”

  Great River Review: “Who Loved Combustion Engines,” “Be Careful What You Wish For,” “Who Jingled His Change” (as “Spare Change”), “The Hoarder”

  Jeopardy: “Three Women Were in the Café”

  Opus 45: “The Wondrous Quiet Life”

  Shenandoah: “The Hardware Store Man,” “The Poor Rich Young Man” (both in different form)

  Sleet: “The Love Addicts,” “Man Tying His Shoes,” “Daycare”

  The Southeast Review (formerly Sundog): “The Escapee” (in different form)

  Water-Stone: “The Boy Who Couldn’t Conform”

  Wigleaf: “The Boy with the Boom Box and the Old Farmer”

  Zero: “Who Talked to His Bees”

  JIM HEYNEN was born in a farmhouse near Sioux Center, Iowa; attended a one-room schoolhouse; graduated from Hull Western Christian High in Hull, Iowa; and attended Dordt College in Sioux Center before transferring to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he graduated at age twenty with majors in English education and speech/drama. He taught at Hull Western Christian before four years of graduate work at the University of Iowa, concentrating in English Renaissance Literature. He taught three years at the University of Michigan–Flint and one year at Calvin College before moving to Eugene, Oregon, and earning his MFA in creative writing at the University of Oregon. After several years in Artists in the Schools programs, arts administration at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington, and residencies at the University of Alaska and University of Idaho, he taught in the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. In 1992, he moved with his wife Sarah T. Williams to St. Paul, Minnesota, served as writer-in-residence at St. Olaf College for fifteen years, and is currently writing full time and teaching in the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

  Interior design by Connie Kuhnz. Typeset in Dante by Bookmobile Design and Digital Publisher Services.