Tin Roof - A Short Story

Here is another short story I wrote several years ago.  I've been told it is funny, I think so too.

TIN ROOF

by Joseph Duerst

            “Fuck it’s cold,” Jake said as he dipped his frostbitten fork into the yellow soup on his flower printed plate.  I shivered as I watched him attempt to scoop up the bits of oily white egg, which slipped off his fork every time he tried to lift them to his mouth.  He then would proceed to duck his chin low and try to catch the egg in his mouth before it fell, but he would only accomplish this once every few times.  When he did, drops of the egg yoke would inevitably land in the tuffs of curly hair on the end of his chin, soaking in and freezing after a few seconds.  I turned my gaze from the yellow icicles hanging from Jake’s chin and watched the mist of my breath as I exhaled.

            “How can you eat them runny?”  I asked, not looking as he slurped in a bit of egg white.

            “It’s like a cold slug in your throat.”

            I laughed and scrunched up my nose in disgust, then kicked my boots against the tin roof, knocking off some of the snow that clung to the bottoms and causing a mini avalanche that disappeared beyond the roof’s edge.  The bare silver roof was now exposed in a trail below me.  The rest of the roof was still covered in 6 inches of snow, which remained untouched, except where Jake and I had crawled out to the center from the left of the house where our latter rested.  Shifting my weight to glance at this scene, I felt the snow mound I sat on slide slightly.  Jake took a sip from his snow-chilled Budweiser.  His hands were bare and white, but he didn’t seem to notice, because he gripped the icy beer in his hand as if it were warming his fingers.  Shit, the beers were probably warmer than the air by now. 

            I’d had too many beers last night, so I hadn’t opened mine.  Last night was the first night it snowed this fall so we celebrated by having a few too many beers, like we needed another reason to drink too much.  We drank all night and waxed our skis and when the sun came up we tried calling the SnowPack Hotline, but they don’t update their reports until 5 am, so we decided to climb on the roof and check out what the mountain looked like.  It took us a minute to see that the mountain was completely covered in snow, but we also noticed that the highway, just a block from our house, was also covered.  We thought we’d stay up on the roof a while and see if some dumb motherfucker would drive too fast and cause a crash.  Opening morning of snowfall usually caught a few unprepared victims.

            “So I met this English guy yesterday at the Powder House.  Fucking crazy ass guy.  He’s like totally English you know.  Teeth like a chipmunk, wild hair, bad breath, forehead like a bucket of nails, bug eyes, you know, just goofy looking,” Jake said, but he was one to talk.  Beneath this puffy blue North Face jacket and red beanie, he was scrawny, white and hairy.  He was wearing cargo shorts that exposed his hairy shins to the frigid air and his suede skate shoes were speckled with snow powder that clung to them.  He had dreadlocks and a patchy beard, both of which would freeze after a couple hours at the mountain and break off in pieces like peanut brittle. 

“So anyway, I don’t remember how we got to talking about it,” Jake said.  “I think he asked me how much weight the lifts can take or something.  But anyways, we got to talking about weight and this is what he said:  He said that where he comes from in England they measure everything in stones.”

            “Stones?  What do you mean?”

            “Like a stone weighs 14 pounds, so he’s all,” Jake used an English accent, “I weighed 13 stones last year, but I lost a stone, which is like 14 pounds, so now I only weigh 12 stones.  So I weigh like 168 pounds.”

            I thought about it for a second.  “I weigh like 14 stones.”

            “I think he was fucking with me though.”

            “Where would they get 14 pounds?”

            “I have no idea.  Maybe they got one stone and weighed it and said,” He switched to his English accent, “Alright mates, this here stone shall be the King’s stone and all measurements shall be compared to this here stone, cheerio.”

            “That’s Australian mate.”

            “Let me hear you do one then.”

            “Here comes one,” I nodded towards the highway.  A car appeared from behind the pine trees that blocked our view of the highway to the left and traveled across the open stretch.

            “Come on buddy, it’s straight, drive a little faster.”

            The car sped up a little, catching a patch of ice and its tail end sliding a bit.  Our eyes lit up, but the car regained its footing quickly and disappeared beyond our view.

            “Shit, stupid motherfucker!  Nobody ever crashes,” Jake said, his fork taking a dip.

            “Man, I’m fucking cold, let’s go down.”

            “You don’t think I’m cold?”

            “Exactly, let’s go.”

            “Just stay up here a little longer.  Wait till I finish eating.”

            I sighed.  “Yo man, where’s Macy been,” I asked.  “She hasn’t been around in a while.”

            “We broke up man.”

            “Your idea?”

            “Nah man.”

            “Really, that’s surprising.  What’d she say?”

            “Man, I don’t know, she’s a bitch.  She says I’m not doing anything with my life.  She says that she wants someone who’s like a doctor or a lawyer or something.  I said good luck.  She works at fucking Wal-Mart.”

            “I didn’t want to tell you this while you were together, but she’s annoying as hell.  That voice, my god!”

            “Thing is I only started dating her because she said she could get me 50% off anything there.”  We both laughed.

            “Jesus man, it’s too cold.  Let’s go inside,” I said.

            “What are we gonna do?”

            “I don’t know, but I can’t take it anymore.”  My face was numb, my skin was pale, and while I was wearing jeans, my jacket was not North Face.  I stood up, nearly losing my balance as the snow slid from under my boots.

            It was pretty dangerous on that tin roof.  We had always joked about turning it into a sick jump, but the drop was too extreme, unless it snowed a lot.  Our house was a carbon copied two-story dump with plaster walls that wouldn’t hold nails, because the plaster would break and turn to white dust, which made hanging my X Games shots impossible.   Needless to say our place looked pretty empty.  A few competitions had paid the rent for the next few months, so Jake and I could focus on skiing without having to hold down jobs.  At least this was true as long as Jake didn’t overspend on new equipment and random shit, like the 2^nd X-Box he bought for his room.  I really couldn’t complain though, because Jake had won the bulk of the money that paid the rent in the competitions we went to.  He was carrying my ass last year, so I was ready to get out there and earn my keep this year.  However, I really only had one thing over Jake when it came to skiing and it came about, because Jake is just crazy.

            Two years ago, Jake was playing drunken ping-pong, and to impress some girls, he did a sidelong dive to hit a stray ball.  He made the play, but went head first into our porcelain Elvis bust, a going away gift from Jake’s mom (don’t ask me why).  Elvis was destroyed and Jake cracked his scull.  Three things resulted from this incident.  First, Jake had to wear a helmet all day, every day for two months.  Second, Jake’s mom disowned him for destroying her gift, because she saw it as a personal insult and finally, the reason for this story, Jake developed a susceptibility to fainting.  It wasn’t like he was narcoleptic or something, but he would faint at random times here and there, which was good for me if it happened before a competition, because often our coach would force him to drop out.  I began to pray for Jake to faint and at times, I attempted to cause him to faint, which I do regret.  But with Jake out of the way, I had a chance of placing in the top three usually.  Competing against him is impossible, because he is so crazy that he’ll do the most dangerous shit and usually to pull it off.  He has no fear of getting hurt.  People like that are unstoppable.

            “Shit, it’s so slick up here,” I said, attempting not to slide off the roof as I headed towards the latter.  “You coming?”

            “Yeah I’ll be there in a sec,” he replied, taking a whole fried egg in his mouth.  “Damn I gotta take a shit!  I’m gonna drop a stone’s worth!”  He began to laugh hysterically, barely keeping the yellow drool from seeping from his mouth.

            I shook my head, stepping tentatively on the ladder, testing it with my foot.  Jake continued to laugh, attempting to hold it in.  His snicker moved upward into his nose until his nose was spitting yellow. 

            “Jesus man,” I said, watching his display.

            Suddenly his face froze in that hysterical state, lips still wide, teeth clenched, holding in the laughter, eyes teary.  The egg yoke escaped the corner of his mouth, leaking down his cheek and mingling with his whiskers, then dripping to his plate, where it made a hard clinging sound as the almost frozen drops hit.  Jake’s grip on the plate loosened and at that moment, I realized what was happening, but I had both feet a few rungs down the ladder.  The plate crashed to the tin roof, shattering instantly and sending yellow splattering across the roof.  Jake’s body drooped forward, hitting the roof and sliding.  In seconds, Jake had disappeared beyond the edge of the roof.  THUMP.

            Jake’s chin hit the curb and his forehead hit the blacktop.  This force alone was enough to snap his neck, not to mention shatter his teeth and crack his scull again.  When I got down there, his mouth oozed orange goo, which freaked out the paramedics when they arrived.  His left shoulder took most of the impact, and his collarbone shattered.  Amazingly, Jake wasn’t dead and though he couldn’t talk, he was able to draw a picture of a stick figure dropping a stone’s worth with his good hand, while we rode to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. 

The doctors put Jake in a neck brace, did reconstructive surgery on his teeth and collarbone and Macy had to look after him for close to six months while he recovered.  Despite all this, Jake never showed distress over being physically deformed, disabled for several months or over listening to Macy talk his ear off, while I had free reign at all the competitions.  I placed 1^st in the Pepsi invitational and paid the rent for a couple months with the winnings, though I never did as well after that.  After his recovery, Jake went on to win regionals and came close to winning nationals.  I placed 12^th at regionals and received a complimentary fruit basket.  Jake always did have the talent.

Package - By Joseph Duerst

A short story I wrote a few years ago.

Package

            The sawdust on my fingers became a nuisance quickly.  I had not noticed the brown powder film that clung to my knuckles and palms, nor had I seen the splotches of gunmetal gray lead salt that had collected underneath my nails.  In the light, I could see them clearly and so could the heavy-set girl behind the counter, whose nametag read ANNETTE in bold white plastic font.  As I handed my Discover card to her, my fingertips left gray smears on the dull, scratched, blue plastic surface.  Damn it, why did I use my card?  I tried to take it back and I had already raised my eyebrows, formed my mouth into an O and adjusted my hand’s position so that I could pluck my card from her plump fingers, but the printer had already begun spitting a receipt.

            “Here you go Mr. Collins,” she said as she tore the receipt off and held it out to me.  I took it with my thumb and index finger, pinching the corner of the paper.  Turning, I headed away from the counter.

            The room was much different than I had imagined, except for the aroma of spice and coffee beans.  Rounded wooden tables filled the center of the room and four tall black metal stools with red and white checkered cushions surrounded each table.  On the back wall were shelves, made of the same light skin colored wood as the tables and stretching the length of the room.  They held up a display of different plastic and metal mugs, tall and short, with pouring spouts and lids, blue, gray, red and black, espresso machines, coffee beans, key chains and any other merchandise the manager could have packed on that wall.  All this you could not see if you were looking through the large glass window in the front, from a car across the street.

            The stool cushion was covered in slippery plastic, which had white scratches all over it, probably from customers’ keys and clothes scraping it hundreds of times a day.  I glanced down at my receipt.  It rested between the swirls of the table’s wood pattern.  A gray oval of loops and whorls had stuck to the paper and was easily recognizable from a distance, because of its glaring contrast to the white surface.

            “Caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles.”

I stood, sliding the receipt off the table, pressing it to my side and rubbing it against my sweatshirt.  They had put my coffee in a white cup, so I picked it up with my fingertips around the lip of the cup, where the foamy whipped cream formed a mountain that nearly graced my palm.  Glancing at the receipt, I saw that the print was smudged, but still readable, so I crumpled and balled it with my free hand.  Nearby, a foot-activated, flip-topped steel garbage can stood on the floor, white straw wrappers hanging from its jaws like escaped paper snakes from an April Fools gag.  Pressing the lever, I dropped my balled receipt on top of the mound of garbage, which rose nearly to the top of the can.  I stared at it for a moment and then released the lever, allowing the lip to slam shut.

The Venetian blinds in my living room were closed, but sunlight managed to seep through and cast horizontal bars across the stale pizza from last night, which sat unfinished on my coffee table.  I could not keep the food in the kitchen, where I worked, because the fumes would leave an acidic taste on everything.  My nostrils burned red and I wanted to crack the window, but the steel screen prevented the window from being opened from the inside and I did not want the neighbors to smell the fumes anyway. 

Instead, I would take periodic breaks on the front porch until the headaches subsided.  I would smoke Marlboros to mask the stench of methane and gasoline that seemed to coat everything, including my clothes.  This did not help my appearance though.  My clothes, face and hair were clumped with sawdust and my hands and fingers were streaked with lead.  As neighbors passed they gave odd looks, but this did not worry me because I had seen their oddities too.  What did bother me was I thought I used too much sawdust.  The instructions did not explain whether the sawdust should be tightly packed or loose when measuring.  I had to guess.

I waited at my table, trading glances at my brimming coffee cup with glances at the steel can in the corner.  An old man with a white beard spotted with pastry crumbs stepped on the lever and my balled receipt rolled off the mound as he dropped his napkin.  At that moment, I heard the jingle of the bell that hung over the doorway and my eyes turned to see the newcomer, though I knew who it was.  She wore her charcoal gray business suit, which was made of wool and had padded shoulders.  A solid black leather belt was wrapped tightly around her waist in order to form that wavy curve she flaunted and her black high heels matched her belt and came to a rigid point at the bottom.  Her bright red lipstick matched her red blouse that showed through the top of her suit jacket.  As she walked to the counter, her heels tapped the floor and her straight auburn hair swung at her shoulder blades.  Her wide hips weaved from side to side like a boxer and her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and powdered to hide this.  She looked like something I imagined female Nazis would aspire to be.

            I watched her as she tossed her hair back and smacked her gigantic lips at Annette.  “I’ll have a grande caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles, and a blueberry muffin.”  This was Margo, not Margaret, not Maggie, Margo.

            She paid for her order and took two steps towards the overflowing trashcan and my eyes sunk to my paper ball as she nearly kicked it.  Her right toe turned 180 degrees and her other followed.

            “Jake Collins,” I heard her voice crack as I looked up and found her hazel eyes trained on me.  She held her blueberry muffin in her left hand and had already picked a bite-sized bit from it with her long red fingernails.  Her heels tapped over to my table.  We said our hellos and our how you beens.  I could not take my eyes off that ball of paper.  “Golly, it must be five years since I’ve seen you,” she said.

            “Six,” I said and folded my hands in my lap, out of her view.

            “Still doing maintenance?”  She asked it with that tone, as if she cared, but I knew she did not.  “My husband William, oh did I tell you I got married?  He owns the firm I work for and he’s been looking for a maintenance man, someone to take out the trash.  Well, you wouldn’t be interested would you?”

            “I’ve got my house and my job as a surveyor.  It’s a technical job,” I lied.

            Her eyes surveyed me from head to toe and she said, “Well it looks like you’re doing well for yourself.”  The corner of her mouth snaked up her cheek and formed a smirk.  I hated her.

            “Caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles,” the man said as he slid Margo’s coffee across the counter.  She grabbed it then turned back to me.

            “You’ve got dirt on your hands,” she said as she clicked her heels on the tile floor and sipped her mocha with her smug lips. 

            “See you in another six years,” I replied angrily, but long after the bell had jingled and the breeze from outside had passed. 

She was on her way to work at Getty’s office.  She did not even have to say it, I knew.  Every day she came to the same cafe in her red BMW Z3 convertible and bought a caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles.  Then she went to work in a large glass building with the prestigious sign that stated GETTY & PARSONS, P.C.  At around 12:03, she would emerge from through the swinging doors with a young blonde and they would go to lunch at any of a dozen restaurants downtown.  From one to five she would be inside the building again and then she would drive to North Churchill where she lived at 1402 Washington Lane, in a white, three story house with white pillars.  The mailbox was located at the front entrance of the neighborhood, where a video camera and kept constant observation.  It was a key locked box and measured four inches high by four inches wide by about eight inches long.  No packages were ever delivered to the box, because those were brought to the door. 

For an upscale coffee house, the bathroom was substandard.  One toilet, which was backed up and held a pool of yellow.  One sink, which featured a dirt-speckled bar of soap that sat in a cold, foamy, primordial soup of bacteria.  I used the bar of soap to scrub my hands rapidly.  Drops of black water fell from my fingertips as I foamed them up and massaged the soap under my nails.  I scrubbed and scrubbed harder, until my skin was white and my joints were sore.

            Bill Getty was an asshole; a gray haired lawyer who wore a black leather jacket over his white office shirt and black tie, as if he were some kind of biker businessman.  He wore sunglasses to improve this persona and slacks to satisfy the business part.  His cell phone was clipped at his waist, with a cord that ran up to his ear, so he was always connected.  Each day for Bill was similar to Margo’s, except he drove a Lexus to work and always stopped off for breakfast at a four-star restaurant called Marcello’s downtown.  For lunch, he would meet with clients at various restaurants and then after work he would head for his twelve year old son’s baseball games.  Afterwards, he would return home and would always make sure to pick up the mail.

            The blueprints I found on the internet called for sawdust mixed with stainless steel ball bearings, which were difficult to find.  Besides that, I chose a more fitting packing agent and spent the latter part of the evening sifting through my can of rusty nails.  Tetanus can be fatal if it is not treated quickly.  As I poured the orange juice concentrate in with the gasoline and brought it to a boil, I thought of what the newspapers might say the next day.  Words like police baffled and genius came to mind.  Nobody had ever attempted to combine two constructions in one and it took some creativity to combine the blueprints I had researched.  I chose a glass jar in lieu of the recommended plastic jug and decided to use an electrical firing mechanism instead of a chemical one.  This was going to be great.  The thought of it sent a chill up my spine, despite the warmth of the boiling mixture I stood over.  I had to light a cigarette to warm myself up.

            Emerging from the bathroom, I bent over, grabbed my balled up receipt, and shoved it in my pocket.  Next, I grabbed my paper cup, which was covered in gray splotches and carried them outside.  I poured the cold grande caramel white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles into the rain gully and pulled out my silver Zippo.  Holding the flame to the cup, the remnants of coffee sizzled and the paper caught fire.  Unfolding the ball of paper, I tossed that into the cup and set it on the sidewalk.  Why did I use a credit card?  It was a repeated and self-destructive impulse, started by that she-devil Margo.  She always said that credit was a man’s way of showing his worthiness.  From now on I will use cash, I thought.  I will always have cash on me and I will make sure to buy each ingredient at separate stores and on separate days.  I vowed this to myself as I watched the cup burn.

            Getty never realized how vulnerable he was, especially on that thirty-foot walk from his car to the elevator in his office’s parking garage.  The video cameras do not cover that area and if someone were hiding there for Getty with a shiny new Black & Decker hammer, they would not catch him.  I stood in the shadows where a steel column blocked the light next to the elevator.  When Getty pressed the UP button, I stepped into the light, the hammer behind my back.  He stared at me through his shades. 

            “Bill Getty,” I said.

            “Yes?”  He raised his eyebrows and I could tell he was scanning me up and down.  “Who are you?” 

I prepared to strike, but as I fingered the sweaty handle of the hammer, I felt a sticky bit of paper rise up from the rubber: the barcode.  I remembered I had used my Discover card at the hardware store.  Mentally, I cursed myself.  They can trace that back.  In my moment of epiphany, I hesitated.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are,” Getty said as the elevator doors slid open.  He pressed the button for his floor and stared back at me.  I stood frozen, my right arm cocked behind my back, holding the hammer and I had nothing to say.  The doors began to close.

“I had her first!”  The doors closed and Getty was gone.

            For the final touches, I wrapped my package in red Christmas paper with little green reindeer on it and tied a blue bow around it.  If a package is wrapped, people do not open it right away.  They wait until they are in their home and can show their whole family the gift.  On the card, I wrote Getty and Family in as generic handwriting as possible.  I smiled as I admired my creation.  Pulling out a cigarette, I imagined the look on Getty’s face as he opened the miniature oak chest I bought at Ross for two dollars, charged to my Discover card.  I hoped that Margo would be sitting right next to him as he creaked the lid open.  That bastard doesn’t even know who I am.  He had asked for what was coming to him.  Bill Getty was going to get his.

            Lock picking was something my old friend from high school taught me and I had become an expert in the craft.  It only took me thirty seconds to pick the lock on old Bill Getty’s mailbox.  I wore a long, black, hooded robe, so the cameras could not identify me.  Swinging the four by four inch metal door open, I peered into the mailbox.  There were several letters.  I had not counted on this.  Pulling the package from my robe, I aligned its rectangular shape to the box’s frame.  A perfect fit it seemed, like a child’s blocks fit in that specific hole.  This package was made for this mailbox.  I pushed the package slowly.  The sharp metal edges of the box caught the wrapping paper and tore the heads off the reindeer.  I pulled back quickly and examined the damage.  The paper was ruined, damn it.  Tearing off all the wrapping paper and discarding it on the ground, I held the bare wooden box to the slot and pushed.  This time the metal dug into the wood, tearing the first layer of skin from each side of the box.  The light brown skin curled up around the edge of the metal mailbox, like coiled pencil shavings.  I pushed harder and the metal edges dug in deeper.  It did not fit.  I must have measured the mailbox incorrectly.

Disappointedly, I stared at the wooden box, which was now lodged halfway inside the mailbox.  What now?  For a moment, I did not move.  I could not move.  Then, sadly and slowly, I tugged the box from the mailbox and examined it.  Deep grooves had been plowed into the surface of my package.  It was not perfect anymore.  My eyes burned and my nose stung as if I were still standing over that boiling pot in my kitchen.  I turned and hurled the package as far as I could.  The package clunked on the pavement a few feet away and I heard the glass jar break.  It lay there on the side of the road, its contents leaking into the storm drain nearby.  I hunched my shoulders over, tucked my arms into the robe’s pockets and set off into the darkness.  On my way home, I passed Margo’s car, which was parked in the driveway of her mansion.  My fingers still covered in sawdust, I wrote her a message on her shiny windshield.  I do not have to tell you what I wrote.  Bitch.