Unforgettable Heroes Boxed Set

by James, Maddie

  He poked through my hair, moved my head gently to the side, then up. He looked behind my ears. Did I wash behind my ears today? Was my neck clean? What did I care? The guy was homeless. He probably slept on the curb last night.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay? Does that mean you’re finished?” I asked turning around to face him.

  Ten plastic bottles sat on Mr. Harvey’s desk. Eli picked one up and handed it to me.

  “Here. Go to the bathroom, and wash your hair with this.”

  I looked at the label. It was lice shampoo.

  “Oh, yuck. I have lice!”

  “Just calm down now. It’s a precaution. Everybody has to wash with the shampoo.”

  “Are you serious? I don’t have lice?”

  “Go.” he pointed to the door. I picked up my bag that had my clothes in it and glanced back at Eli as I left the office. He was taking his gloves off. Why did I need to wash my hair with lice shampoo if I didn’t have lice? Eww. My skin crawled. Lice. I could hardly stand it. My whole body itched as I walked to the girls’ bathroom. It looked clean enough, but I just didn’t think I could strip and take a shower here. Not with the possibility of lice in this building. I wanted to go home and boil myself just in case any of them might have thought about getting on me.

  I stuck my head in the sink under the running water and washed my head as thoroughly as I could. Why didn’t I bring my own towels, I thought as I picked a neatly folded one up off of a large stack on the counter. Because I didn’t know there would be lice. For heaven’s sake, lice. I wrapped my head in the towel and went back to Mr. Harvey’s office, closing the door behind me. Eli was there, leaning on the desk. He looked at me nonchalantly, as if lice were no big deal. I shivered just thinking about the parasites.

  Eli put on another pair of rubber gloves.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need to comb your hair out.”

  “Why? You said I don’t have lice. Why are you going to wear gloves, and why do you need to comb my hair?”

  “It’s just a precaution.” He took the little comb from the bag.

  “If you think you’re going to comb my hair out with that thing, you’re crazy. I’ve got really thick hair. We’ll be here all day.”

  Eli gestured to the chair. I stood there uncertain and confused. “You said I didn’t have lice,” I insisted. Okay. This was a trust issue. I didn’t know this man from Adam. I knew he kept the parking lot clean enough, but this was my hair.

  “Please, Ma’am. Mr. Harvey wants to make sure that we get this under control so he’s taking extra care. With everybody.”

  I sat down in the chair.

  Gently he began to comb.

  “Nothing personal, Eli, but I can do this myself.”

  “No. You can’t see the nits on your own head.”

  “Nits?”

  “The lice eggs. The louse lays the egg on a strand of hair. It is attached with some sticky substance. It’s very hard to see, so someone else has to pick out the nits. That’s where the term ‘nitpicker’ comes from.”

  I shivered from the grossness of all of it. “What makes you…I mean, why do you get to be the volunteer and staff nitpicker?”

  “I think, because I was available.”

  “What? Did you give up your sweeping job?”

  “Actually, someone stole the broom.”

  “Get out.”

  “Yep.” Eli tugged on a strand of hair lightly and resumed combing. Gee, this was relaxing, if I didn’t think about the reason why he was grooming me. No man had ever brushed my hair. Not even my dad. I could almost pretend that Eli was a highly sought-after hair stylist. Except for his horrible shoes and the wretchedness of his own hair. Oh, well, in my stylist fantasy, I’d just determine that he was eccentric. Most of the talented ones were, right?

  Eli moved to the left side of me and combed the hair back behind my ear. “You’ll tell me, won’t you, if you see anything? I just couldn’t stand it if I had lice.”

  “Why? It doesn’t mean you’re not clean. Lice love clean hair.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “Are you making this up? How do you know so much about lice?”

  “Public radio did a story on it a while back.”

  “You listen to public radio,” I asked in disbelief.

  “They play it at Harp’s.” Harp’s was a restaurant in the downtown district. “You can get an eighty cent coffee there with refills and they let you stay as long as you want, if it doesn’t get too crowded.”

  “Oh, yeah? I’ll have to remember that.”

  “It’s good to know when a person needs to get out of the rain or the cold.”

  What a life this guy must have. Here I was pitying myself because I couldn’t afford cable anymore, and this guy had to worry about a place to go to get out of the cold and rain. I spent a few minutes counting my blessings and in general feeling thankful.

  “Maybe I could buy you a coffee some time,” I offered.

  “Abigail, I don’t need saving. I told you that already.”

  “Who said anything about saving you? I just offered a cup of coffee.” Lord knows he deserved it as gentle and careful as he was being with my hair. He had combed through at least three knots so far. That’s what happens–I guess–when someone washes her hair in a sink.

  No response. Eli combed and combed and combed.

  “How long have you been on the streets?”

  “A while.”

  “How did it happen? I mean, you used to have a regular life, right?”

  Eli sighed. “What’s a regular life?”

  “I don’t know—a job, a family, a home. Is your life so horrible that nobody in your family would help you out? Give you a place to live?”

  “My life isn’t as bad as you think. I get by. Most people…most people, I’ve learned, are prisoners. They think they’re free, but they’re not. They have their cell phones and hummers and high definition flat screen televisions. And the bank owns them. People think they have to own everything, but the more they have, the more their stuff owns them. Nobody owns me. Nothing owns me. I’m more free than I’ve ever been. The streets taught me that.”

  Eli scooted my chair over and began to comb the other side of my head.

  “Are you finding anything?”

  “You weren’t lying about your hair being thick,” he responded.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Mr. Harvey just wants to be thorough.”

  “So thorough he’s making you do the dirty work.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t call this dirty work. Getting to comb through a beautiful woman’s hair? It’s the best job I’ve had in quite a while.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad to know I’m a step up from the parking lot.”

  “More than one, I think.”

  “Eli, you do know how to charm a girl.”

  “I think we’re done. You can go tell Mr. Harvey you’re clean and ready to do some of your own nit picking.”

  “I thought you said I didn’t have any lice. I didn’t, did I? I’d just die, if I did.” I shivered. The very idea.

  Eli smiled. “There’re worse things than having a few stowaways on your scalp.”

  “Ugh, I did, I did. I have lice!” I start scratching my head because it was really itching at this point.

  “Would you calm down? You’re free—you’re clean. You don’t have lice.”

  “Do you promise, Eli? Please tell me I don’t.”

  “I already told you. You’re fine.”

  I stood up and turned around to thank him and noticed he wasn’t wearing gloves anymore. When had he taken them off? I guess maybe it was a good sign—that I wasn’t crawling with lice.

  “Thanks, Eli. Maybe you’ll let me buy you a coffee some time.”

  He glanced at me before walking to the door. “I’ll let you know the next time I can’t scrounge up eighty cents. How about that?”

  “All right.”

>   Chapter Two

  On the way home, my cell phone rang. It was my mom. I had tried my best to keep Mom and Dad from finding out about getting arrested, but the judge had gone to law school with my uncle Fletch and still kept a weekly tee-time apparently. And, hoo boy, dear old Dad hit the roof and hadn’t spoken to me since. It was bad enough that I had disgraced the family, but I had disgraced the family, and they’d found out. Uncle Fletch had a big mouth, so now everybody in the southeast knew about it, too.

  Mom asked about me. How could I answer without letting her know how dismal my life was? I had just gotten treated for lice.

  “Everything is good.”

  Her silence told me she wasn’t buying it.

  “Really, Mom. I just finished at the community center. We…talked about good hygiene.” I was getting really good at putting a positive spin on my life for my mom. She didn’t deserve to have to worry about me or put up with my dad’s rants about their only daughter.

  “How is work?”

  “Great.” As of yet, I had been able to keep getting fired from them.

  “I…I couldn’t get a hold of you on your cell, so I called your office.”

  A set up.

  “I haven’t said anything to your father, yet.”

  I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Is there any hope that you’ll get your job back?”

  “Doubtful, Mom. Just so you know, they weren’t fair about it. I didn’t steal anything. And you know I’ve never done drugs. Not ever.”

  “You could have told me you lost your job.”

  “You’d just worry, and Dad’s blood pressure would just go higher.”

  “Are you working at all?”

  “Yeah, Mom.” I didn’t volunteer where, however. I hated to think that the money they spent at one of the top ten ranked private colleges was going to waste while I served people breakfast food at two in the morning. She was such a good mom. She didn’t sigh or cry. See, I get my eternal optimism from her.

  “Legal?”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Yes, it’s legal. I’m still on probation, you know.”

  “Do you need some money?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re not. I’ll send you some money.”

  “No. I don’t need it.” I insisted because I knew Dad would find out and get all Dad about it.

  ****

  Can one get fired from community service? This was a question I pondered as I covered my nose and mouth with one hand and looked in horror around the boys’ bathroom at the community center. It was one of the most disgusting places I’d ever been in, and I’d spent the night in the Clay County jail, so I knew disgusting.

  The door opened, and Mr. Harvey walked in with a bucket of cleaning supplies and a mop. He smiled at me as if this were a happy and grand occasion. Would his smile have been quite so big if I had emptied the contents of my stomach on his shoes? I was tempted, but decided it would just be more to clean up. Why make more work for myself?

  Was he serious? He couldn’t possibly mean for me to work in here. “This is horrible. Shouldn’t the person who made the mess be the one to clean it up?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, I haven’t caught him yet.”

  I tried not to gag. “Make all of the kids do it then.”

  Mr. Harvey shook his head. “That’s not fair to the ones who had nothing to do with this.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I had nothing to do with this. Don’t I get ‘fair’?”

  “You got community service, and today that’s cleaning feces.”

  “Very fitting for my life right now,” I grumbled.

  “When you’re finished with the bathrooms, why don’t you wipe down the walls in the hall? There’s some disinfectant and sponges in there.”

  “Are there rubber gloves?”

  “Of course.”

  “Great.” I tried to sound thankful and enthused. I had told Mr. Harvey I needed a break from working with the kids. I guess this was what I got.

  Crap everywhere.

  “I will say one thing. I think we have some artists in the masses. Too bad they haven’t found a better medium for expressing themselves.”

  Mr. Harvey laughed and left.

  I bent over to look in the bucket as I tried not to touch anything in the bathroom. In fact, if I knew how to levitate, I sure as heck would have been doing it. These shoes were going in the dumpster in the parking lot as soon as my hours were done today. There was no way I was putting them in my car after walking into this.

  I put on the gloves and looked for a mask. No such luck. So, I went over to the door and propped it open. What I really needed was a hose and a high powered sprayer. There was a drain in the floor so spraying down the walls and the floor might be just the thing for this room. I left the room with gloves still on and went to see what I could find.

  After I had rummaged through the outside storage room, I saw Eli as I exited and locked its door.

  I hoisted the hose over my shoulder and waved as I headed back toward the main building.

  Eli ambled over to me at the entrance to the center. His gaze moved from the hose to my face. “What are you doing with that?”

  “I’m about to clean out the elephant cages. Do you have a gas mask I can borrow?” I propped open the door by leaning against it.

  “Not on me.”

  “Well, if you come across one in the next forty minutes or so, bring it to the boys’ restroom.”

  I crossed the threshold letting the door shut without waiting for a response. It wasn’t up to Eli’s standards as far as exit lines went, but it wasn’t bad. And maybe he’d take the great big hint and help me.

  With a bit of duct tape, I attached the hose to the sink faucet and turned it up as high as it would go. A few geysers sprayed out from in between pieces of tape, but I figured more water could only help things in there. With the hose, I sprayed every surface I possibly could including the floor. I went crazy with the Bon Ami cleaner; then I sprayed some more. Before I got in trouble for jerry rigging the faucet, I unhooked the hose and took it back outside to the storage house. Eli was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was looking for that gas mask. I went back into the bathroom and tackled the stalls, sinks and toilets.

  I began running the mop along the wet floor and saw a dark trail where the mop had been. I thought I needed some clean water to mop. Now, the mop bucket was too big to fit in the sink, and I had taken the hose back before I realized I might need it again. So, I stood in the bathroom trying to decide how I could get water to mop with.

  And it came to me—the perfect solution.

  I went over to one of my sparkling clean toilets and dipped the mop in the bowl. When I brought the mop back up, the water was completely black. Uggh. The mop was disgusting. They wanted me to clean the floor with this? And just look what it was doing to my beautiful toilet. I flushed, went for the Bon Ami, poured some on the mop and dunked again.

  “Please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing.”

  I jumped a foot. “Eli, you scared the daylights out of me.”

  “Are you cleaning the floors with toilet water?”

  “Clean toilet water. At least, it was until I put this filthy mop in there.”

  “You cannot clean the floors with water from the toilet,” Eli declared.

  His blue eyes glittered at me from under the bill of a dirty Atlanta Braves ball cap. Though his full beard hid most of his face, still I noticed that he had a nicely shaped mouth with a full lower lip that curled in a hint of a smile. Could this guy be good looking, if bathed and groomed? It was an intriguing thought. I left the thought there and got back to the business at hand.

  “Why not? The toilet is clean. In fact, you could drink from it.”

  “I could. Could you?” Eli challenged me.

  “Theoretically I could.”

  Over the s
mell of Bon Ami, I detected the aroma I had smelled before on Eli, burnt caramel. The guy smelled like burnt caramel. I wondered what the story was behind that. Turning back around, I dunked the mop, poured more Bon Ami, flushed, and studied the water. It was a little cleaner. Perhaps I had invented a new way to clean mops.

  “You wouldn’t mop with toilet water at home, would you?” He questioned.

  I didn’t answer immediately because I was still working on getting the mop clean. When I determined it was passable, I took it from the bowl, wiped it around on the floor in the stall and backed up, I moved to the next stall.

  “This isn’t my home. Why should I care about the floor if the hooligan who did this doesn’t?”

  “Because you are an adult, and you know better.”

  I stopped and stared at him. Darn it. I did know better. My mom would be horrified if she knew I was mopping with toilet water. “I just want to be done with this.” This bathroom. This community service. This entire episode of my life.

  “Will you give me five minutes to find a clean mop so you can be done with it?”

  I shrugged and handed him the mop. “Sure. It’ll give me a chance to get some fresh air.”

  We walked out together, and I waited in the hall while he took the mop outside. In a few minutes, he came from the kitchen with a new mop, its head still wrapped in cellophane, and a big plastic bucket full of steamy water.

  I clapped my hands and laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Yes. Abigail Benton’s life, ladies and gentlemen. A new mop makes me happy.

  Eli grinned as he passed me, and we entered the bathroom. Once inside I unwrapped the mop and got to work.

  “Here. You’re doing it wrong,” Eli said as he came over and tried to take the mop from me.

  I held on. “Thanks, Eli. But I think I know how to mop.”

  “Look down. You’re missing spots.”

  He pulled on the mop. I pulled on the mop. What was I, crazy? He was trying to mop, and I wouldn’t let him.

  “It’s mopping. I don’t need lessons.” I continued working.

  “All right, you stubborn woman,” Eli said. “Then let’s do this.”