The Shoebox Trainwreck

by John Mantooth

  (James at 29)

  I first encountered James at the swimming pool. This was back in college, and I was sharing an apartment with three other guys. We had pretty much taken over the pool one Saturday, playing a rough and loud game of football when James jumped into the water. We played around him for the most part, trying to ignore him, basically being assholes.

  James was balding now, short, not muscular. He carried himself like a man waiting for the next blow. His body was tentative as he slid closer to the action, as if he were bracing himself, waiting for someone to splash water in his face, to shove him back, to tell him he was in the wrong place, yet again.

  His face, however, was bright and eager, hopeful even, in a tragic way.

  “Mind if I play?” he said to no one in particular.

  We ignored him. Somebody missed a pass and the ball landed near James. He picked it up and tossed it back. It landed like a dead duck in the water.

  “Mind if I play?” he said again.

  We called him Sanctus because that’s what the personalized tag on his Ferrari said. Next to the tag, he had a bumper sticker that read, “Pray the Rosary.” He told us he inherited a bunch of money when his father died and decided it would be his only shot to own a fine sports car, so he blew it all on the Ferrari.

  He lived upstairs from us, and after that day in the pool, he made it a habit of dropping by our apartment to chat. If he didn’t come over, he would catch us outside in the parking lot, on our way to class. He always wanted to talk, to hang out, to be included.

  We began checking the parking lot before we left the apartment, to ensure he wasn’t around. Sometimes we’d fall silent when we heard footsteps on the stairs, so he would think we were gone or asleep and not stop by for one of his visits.

  Once, in my haste to get inside and avoid him, I left my keys hanging in the outside of the door. I heard a knock, and a gentle voice: “Anybody home?” He pushed the door open. “Hey, man,” he said. “Your keys.”

  I thanked him and when it was apparent he wasn’t going to leave, I took a seat in the den. He sat across from me on the couch.

  I have forever had a hard time with people who don’t fit in. Part of me has always wanted to include them, to invite them in to the circle. But it was so much easier to let our group dynamic keep James at arm’s length. But now, without my friends, I had nothing to protect me from James, nothing to keep me from doing the right thing.

  We talked for a while, mostly about his father’s death. A little about his Ferrari. He asked me some questions about my own life. I can’t say why, but I felt uncomfortable. Yet, I couldn’t seem to give him the cold shoulder. Inside me, a paradox developed. I wanted to befriend him, but I didn’t want to leave the safe confines of my own circle in order to meet him out on the fringes of society.

  So when he invited me to ride in his Ferrari, I didn’t know how to answer. I knew I didn’t want to ride. I knew I wanted him to go back upstairs and leave me alone. I wanted him to quit trying so damn hard to be my friend. But I didn’t know how to tell him without sounding callous. And somewhere inside me, I knew what would happen to James if he never found a friend.

  So I nodded slowly. “Sure. I’ve never ridden in a Ferrari.”

  The Ferrari’s engine revved to life. James threw it into gear and we lurched out of the parking lot.

  I tried to seem impressed as we made our way down Green Springs and out to Lakeshore, but in truth I was too uncomfortable to be impressed. I realized I had made a mistake. Here in the passenger’s seat of his car, I was powerless. He could drive me anywhere, wreck the car on purpose, pull a gun from the glove compartment.

  I noticed a change in James on the road. He seemed more at ease in his own skin, talking to me about the Ferrari and how he liked to come out here at night and really open her up. It was almost as if this was the moment he’d been waiting his whole life for: another human being, in the seat next to him, a captive audience. He talked and drove faster. I pretended to listen, while I tried to control the conflict blooming in my mind.

  I wanted to be standoffish. I wanted him to know after this Ferrari ride he should never waste his time coming by again. I wanted him to stop speaking to us, to stop haunting the parking lot with those eager, unfocused eyes. I wanted him to drift away and leave us alone, so we could be assholes in peace, without having to worry about some social retard who didn’t have any friends of his own.

  On the other hand, I wanted to reach out to him, to listen to his stories, to engage with him on the level of a friend, an equal. I could see how badly he needed that.

  So I settled for the middle ground, nodding along to what he said, trying to appear interested, but also being sure not to give him any clear indication that I liked him, that I was willing to be a friend.

  Finally I said, “I’ve got some studying to do. I’d better get back.”

  “A little further. I’ll really open her up a little further down the road. She can really fly.”

  “That’s okay, man.”

  He shrugged and found a place to turn around. We drove back mostly in silence. It was getting dark by the time we returned to the apartment complex. I thanked him for the ride and went inside, locking the door behind me.

  A few weeks later, James stood at our door. I was the only one home again. It was the first time I’d seen him since the ride in the Ferrari.

  “What’s up, man?” he said. “Got a minute?”

  I told him to come in.

  “Listen, I was talking to one of your roommates the other day. He said you guys were breaking the apartment up, looking for a new place.”

  “Yeah. We’re talking about it, but right now we’re not sure who is going to go. Barry might get his own pad.”

  “I wanted to let you know that I’ve got some room at my apartment. I mean, if you need somewhere to stay until you find another one.” He waited, obviously expecting me to say something, to offer some sign of what I thought about this idea.

  “Isn’t your apartment a one bedroom?” I said.

  “Yeah, but that’s no problem. I could sleep out in the den on the futon.”

  I looked at the door, really wishing one of my roommates would walk in. But the door mocked me, standing silent, waiting for my answer, too.

  “I couldn’t make you give up your bed.”

  “It wouldn’t be a problem. I sleep out there most nights anyway. Hey, you’ve never seen my place before, anyway. Isn’t that something? I’ve been here dozens of times, but none of you guys have been up to my apartment. You want to go up and check it out?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m supposed to meet Barry in a few minutes at the library.” There, I had lied. That should stop him.

  “It’ll only take a few minutes. You’ve got a few minutes, don’t you?”

  “Yeah . . . but, listen man. I don’t think it would work out. We’ve pretty much already found a place.” Another lie.

  “You guys need another roommate?”

  “Huh?”

  “I just thought you might need a fourth if Barry is getting his own place.”

  “No, we’ve already got somebody lined up.” This was true, at least.

  “Oh.”

  I do not recall how I finally got rid of him that day. But what I do remember is he never convinced me to go up to his apartment. I also recall a sadness about him, almost as if—crazy as it sounds—we were his last shot at rejoining society, re-entering the world of friends, the inside.

  Back then I hadn’t seen James’s face at twelve. Hadn’t seen it crack like a dropped egg. At that time, I didn’t know what it would be like to have a son, to know some people are born on the outside. Back then I didn’t ask, what if. What if it were my son? What if it were me?

  Barry and I were halfway out the door when he said, “Wait. Better check first.”

  “Right,” I said.

  We closed the door and went over to the sliding glass that opened up onto the porch of our littl
e apartment. Pulling the blinds back slightly, we scanned the parking lot for signs of James.

  “Looks like the coast is clear,” Barry said.

  I scanned once more to be sure. Since his offer to share his apartment, I had been diligent about avoiding him.

  “Hold on,” I said. “He’s sitting in his car.”

  Barry’s eyes jumped to the Ferrari, which was empty.

  “His other car.” I pointed. “There.”

  James sat in his Grand Prix, the one he owned before his father died. He seemed to be talking to someone because his lips were moving. We watched, fascinated.

  He was the only one in the car. He had no phone.

  “Who the hell is he talking to?” Barry said.

  I shrugged. “Himself, I guess.”

  “Must be mad at himself,” Barry said.

  I saw what he meant. James wasn’t just talking now; he looked like he was screaming. His neck was tight, his jaw jutting out, his lips curled back. And he was moving them fast, like he wasn’t just yelling, but yelling rapid fire. He began to convulse, his body rocking back in forth.

  “Is he having a seizure?” Barry said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He might have been, of course. I was no doctor, and honestly had had little experience with people suffering seizures. But it didn’t look like a seizure. It looked like a man in the midst of a rage, a tirade aimed at no one. Or maybe it was meant for everyone. Maybe it was meant for me.

  I remember being scared at that moment. It was a deep kind of fear, the kind I have rarely experienced. It came from inside me and pulsed out to my skin, my fingers, my toes. What could make someone behave like this? Why wouldn’t he stop?

  I let go of the blinds, and they fell back into place.

  “Hey,” Barry said.

  “I can’t watch anymore,” I said.

  But when Barry pulled the blinds aside again, there I was, looming over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of James. And despite the raging contortions and the silent vitriol coming from that Grand Prix, I recognized his face as another one I’d known. One I’d known as a boy, when I was no older than James had been when he was in my class. This other face, the one from my boyhood, was expressionless and void of any emotion other than the vague longing in his eyes.

  (James at 47)

  I lied earlier. I said I first met James in my seventh grade English class. That’s not true. I first met James when he was an adult, a grown man in his forties, and I was a boy living in Montgomery, Alabama.

  As you can imagine, life had not been kind to James. His hair had darkened and then grayed around the temples. In his forties, he’d taken to wearing dark slacks and long sleeve button downs. Even in the hot Montgomery summers, he never wore shorts. He ended up taller than I would have expected, nearly six feet, and somewhere along the way, he must have sold the Ferrari and downgraded to an old brown Buick. There was nothing unique about James as an adult. He wore his hair short as most men did in the eighties. He kept his shirt tucked in and his eyes to the ground. When I did see them, which was rare, I couldn’t help but think they were his most memorable feature. He might have been a retired drill sergeant if not for the softness in his face and those vague uncertain eyes. They were the eyes of a man who has spent most of his life on the outside, straining to see what the rest of us were doing and wondering behind those sad pupils, how he too might join the fray.

  By the time James was forty and lived across the street from me, he had given up his tactless advances, his desperate attempts to join the circle of life. He had settled in on the periphery, accepting in his status as outsider.

  In our southern suburb, everyone waved; everyone greeted each other as a matter of course. These gestures were involuntary, like breathing or sneezing. Yet, the first time I saw him—the real first time—he refused to wave at me, even after I waved and shouted, “Hey,” across the street. Instead, he continued on to his mailbox, eyes down, arms self-consciously stiff by his side.

  I soon learned James treated all of his neighbours the same way, flatly ignoring them when they spoke, turning the other way when they waved, always, always focusing those eyes out instead of in.

  I woke up in the middle of the night once when I was thirteen. I don’t remember what woke me, but I do remember hearing the low hum of a car on the street outside my window. From the sound, I thought the car was stopped, the engine idling. Going over to my window, I saw a long dark car easing slowly down the road. Recognizing the car as James’s Buick, I watched, expecting to see him pull into his driveway. But he kept going, his car creeping phantom-like along the road until the taillights disappeared like tiny cinders.

  The night went silent again. I returned to bed and was almost asleep when I saw the headlights canvassing the walls of my room.

  Out of bed again and over to the window, I watched James slide by, his brown Buick meandering down the silent neighbourhood streets. I felt like I was witnessing a secret ritual, one I could not explain or comprehend, a silent spectacle, a statement of sorts, a lonely man’s prayer when there were no more words to offer up.

  Mesmerized, I watched him—so unhurried, so without purpose—just driving, round and round the block.

  I do not know how many times he circled the block. What I do know is other nights filled with this same lonesome ritual followed. Sometimes I only noticed them in the dregs of sleep and barely woke at all; other times, I went to my window and wondered at a man who had traded the prospect of human contact for the solitude of the night.

  I think there was a time when I was young, that I forgot James, or maybe didn’t understand him, his past, the way a person blooms like a tree and the wind and the sun and the ground feed it or starve it by turn, and it becomes rotten and it becomes strong, growing deep roots in the soil through no fault of it own.

  Of course I was twelve and wouldn’t understand such abstractions. And even at twenty-two, living in that little apartment, I had only a vague notion of what might become of a human neglected. It took me seeing James as a boy in my class, and then remembering his life to understand how James became an adult.

  (James off the grid)

  As the years passed, and I grew older and began to get caught up in the struggle of defining my own life, James became to me just another neighbourhood landmark—a mailbox, an old car that did not run, a fencepost in the back of the yard untouched by the feel of human skin—until I had no cause to notice him anymore.

  I believe now, this is what he wanted. I believe this is why his eyes never focused on any of his neighbours, why they always drifted away to the horizon, that place outside of us; he had once raged against it, but was now only too glad to let it suck him away because trying to fight against the pull had hurt too much, and there comes a time to stop fighting and stop hurting and just let the world have its way.

  Or perhaps, James did not go so passively. Perhaps he defined himself outside of us all? Perhaps he was a man apart, a man who found the opening in the fence, nudged his nose in the gap and found there was nothing holding him back from a place where the rest of us could never follow. I like this version better.

  I did not learn the rest of James’s story until I was in my thirties. After James with the Ferrari, but before James in my class.

  Both my parents died in my mid twenties, so I hadn’t been back to Montgomery for several years when I ran into a guy, Andy, who had grown up next door to me. I wasted little time asking about James.

  “Whatever happened to that guy?”

  Andy, who always reminded me a little of Robin Williams, smirked slightly and said, “Now that’s funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “Yeah, Mom and Dad were just talking about him the other day.”

  He went on to tell me a story I will never forget. After years of living in our neighbourhood in absolute solitude and silence, James walked across the street to Andy’s parent’s house and knocked on the door. Andy’s parents were surprised to say t
he least, but they invited him in, eager to see what had brought about his visit. He got to the point quickly, telling them he would be going away for a while and asking them to pick up his mail while he was gone.

  “Did he say where he was going?” I asked Andy.

  “Wouldn’t say. Just told them he had to go away for a while.”

  “And?”

  “And, he did. He went away. Dad went over and got his mail every day. That was over a year ago. He’s never come back. Never called. Nothing. Dad’s filled up an entire plastic trashcan full of his mail. They haven’t heard one peep from him.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this. For the next few years, this mystery haunted me, held me as much as I held it. I wanted to know where he’d gone, when he was coming back, but lately, at least since meeting James in my class, I have realized the real question is not where, but why. Why did his roots slip the soil? Why did he resign himself to the horizon? Why did he drive away from the world in a big brown Buick?

  But like all great mysteries, this one has no easy answers. I can piece together fragments from my own life, call them James. I create a chain of events that is not there. I can do this and make some sense out of James. I can add some causality to his life, force the pieces together, ignore the missing ones, and admire the half-formed creation.

  James.

  Perhaps I never knew you at all.

  Maybe I only thought I did.

  In my mind, I still see him. He’s behind the wheel of that big Buick, or he’s in his Ferrari, the top down, easing down a dark road. Or maybe he’s on the bus now, a sole passenger, riding cross-country at a snail’s pace, windows down, night breeze across his face, tangling his hair. I see him happy and free from whatever demons drove him to the periphery of life, beyond the circle of family and friends. He’s out past the fence now, the one that holds us all. From here on, the road is clear. From here on, he can really open her up and fly.

  Litany