LOM Chapter 7: Travis
The illness left me with nothing to do and no energy to do it. I spent my days sitting on the couch watching television, or sitting in my room reading, or sitting on the toilet. Every week I spent sitting on my butt was $180 less in my bank account, and the loss of half a summer’s worth of income would make a serious dent in my lifestyle during the school year. Despite becoming well off, my parents kept their old rules about money and allowances for the kids. They called it principle, but I suspect it had more to do with avoiding any taint of favoritism between me and my older sister. Either way, I could not count on them to make up my lost wages.
One evening when I was nearly $500 in the hole, dad came to my room. He knocked on the door frame, even though the door was open. He stayed at the doorway. The room was a mess. I didn’t have the energy to clean it.
“Yeah?” I said. I was lying on my bed, reading a novel from my school’s summer reading list. Television had grown tedious, but the novel offered no relief. When dad knocked, I was wondering whether I had been too hasty and owed the television a second chance.
“Mom says she’s worried about you, that you don’t have anything to do during the day.”
“And yet I’m still exhausted,” I replied.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But Dr. kudafer will figure out what’s wrong, and you’ll be back to normal before too long. In the meantime, I’ve got a way that you might make some money. It won’t require much work, from what I understand.”
“What’s that?” I wasn’t really interested in the money, but I didn’t want to seem rude.
“Uncle Bill has a nephew, his sister’s kid, who sometimes needs some help during the day. It’d be sort of like babysitting, I think, but I’m not sure. I can tell him you might be interested, and maybe his sister will give you a call.”
Uncle Bill was not my uncle by any recognized lineage. The title was merely honorific, something my parents taught me to call him when I was just learning to speak. I think it was intended to convey the notion that Bill was an adult I could trust, which makes sense except for the fact that giving him a fraudulent title was a confusing way to establish that trust. Anyway, he was one of my dad’s best friends, and a nice enough guy.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
Dad seemed pleased, but I forgot about it until the next morning, when Bill’s sister called me. “I’d like to speak to Wesley?” she said when I answered the phone.
“This is he,” I replied. “This is him. Speaking.”
“This is Janet Snowden. My brother Bill says you might be interested in helping us out.”
“Oh – yeah. What exactly would I be doing?”
“Well, let’s see, mostly what I need is someone who can be available if my son needs anything. He has some health issues, and sometimes needs a little help getting around or doing things. I work an irregular schedule, so it would help to have someone who can come over if he needs help. He’ll probably never call, but, like I said, it gives me peace of mind. I’d basically be paying you to sit around for a couple of hours each day.”
“How old is your son?” I asked. I once babysat for a six-year-old, but I vowed not to go back after he decided that his most favorite game in the world was punching me in the nuts when I wasn’t looking. It wasn’t so much the crippling pain that pissed me off, but the fact that I couldn’t punch him back.
“He’s, uh–twenty,” she said. “Years. Twenty-years old.”
“Twenty years old?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So it’s not really babysitting.”
“No, not really,” she said. “Just someone to help out sometimes, if he needs it.”
“Okay,” I said. I could use the money, and it sounded like I would get paid to do almost nothing.
“Maybe you should come over and meet him. Are you free today?”
I was nothing but free, and told her so. Mrs. Snowden picked me up around lunch time, and drove us back to her house. She asked me about school and my summer and what I did for fun; it was a little creepy, as if she was trying too hard to get to know my seventeen-year old life.
We arrived, and Mrs. Snowden showed me into the house. When I heard that her son had health problems and was twenty years old, I assumed she meant he had Down’s syndrome or some other kind of mental retardation. But the person at the table in her kitchen was not retarded; his eyes, a hard blue-gray color, were far too alert to indicate any mental insult. I sat down across from him, and he watched me the way lizards in my parents’ back yard watch each other when they get too close.
He was taller than me by a couple of inches, but also thinner – if such a thing was possible at that point. He had reddish blonde hair and skin that was something like ruddy, except that it seemed irritated or chafed. His nose and cheeks were peppered with freckles. Two scars arced across the upper orbits of his eyes, like a second set of brows carved right below the first. His cheeks and his eyes were drawn and sunken, and the bones in his face more prominent than they should have been.
“Travis, this is Wes,” his mother said.
“Is she paying you for this?” he asked me.
“Travis,” his mom said, in the same tone of voice my mom often used on me.
“You can take her money, but it’s bullshit. I don’t need a babysitter. I can take care of myself.”
I said nothing.
“Travis, stop being so difficult,” said his mom. “Wesley is just going to be available if you need him. You can call – he doesn’t have to spend any time over here unless you want him to.”
“I won’t call.”
“Well, I’ll keep paying him anyway, just in case you change your mind.”
The argument sounded well-rehearsed; this was not a cold read of whatever script they had. I minded my own business and picked at the tuna salad sandwich Mrs. Snowden had put before me.
“Wesley, is the food okay?” she asked.
“Oh – yeah, it’s fine. I’m just – uh, I’ve had a little stomach thing for a while. They’re still trying to get a handle on it, but I’m not supposed to eat stuff that… tastes good, I guess. ”
“How long have you had it?” Travis asked.
“Maybe a month or so?” I said. I had lost track. It felt like forever.
“They gave you antibiotics already?” he asked.
“No—my stool sample was negative,” I said. “My doctor put me on a special diet.”
“Has it helped?”
“Not so far,” I said.
“Your doctor doesn’t have a clue,” Travis said. “You need to see a gastro.”
“Travis,” said his mother, “do I have to remind you that you don’t have a license to practice medicine?”
“Whatever,” he said. “But can I point out the irony that you hired a sick person to look after another sick person?”
“I’ll get better,” I said.
“Right,” said Travis. “Good luck with that.” He stood up and walked away from the table, towards the back of the house.
“Sorry about that,” said Mrs. Snowden. “He’s really a sweet kid but he hates the idea of someone looking out for him.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I tried to change the subject: “Can I ask what you do?”
“I’m a librarian,” she replied. “I just started at the downtown branch, so I have to take the odd shifts – evenings, weekends, whatever they give me. That’s why it’s nice to have someone who’s flexible to do this. Can you take the job?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You can start today, if that’s alright. I’ll pay you at the end of each week. How is twenty dollars a day?”
“That’s great,” I said. It was about two-thirds my wages at the pool, but at least it was easy money.
Travis came back into the room with a white plastic stick poking out of the corner of his mouth. It looked like a lollipop stem.
“Travis, I need to go to work. If you don’t want Wesley around, can you take him home?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We got into his car, a little compact with “sport” after the model name. It was painted black, with tinted windows and a spoiler.
He unlocked it and I got in. “Nice car,” I said, not entirely serious.
“Yeah – I bought it from this Hispanic dude,” he said, starting it. “I wanted something a little bad ass, which this is, but every time the windows get fogged, the Puerto Rican flag magically appears in my rear window. Where do you live?”
I told him. He turned on and up his tape deck, then backed the car out of the driveway and headed towards my house.
“What’s in your mouth?” I asked, trying to make myself heard over the blaring ’80s rock.
“This?” he said, taking his hand off the stick shift to pull it out of his mouth. It was, indeed, a lollipop. “It’s a fentanyl sucker. It’s for pain.” He popped it back into his mouth.
“Like aspirin?”
He turned the radio down. “No – like morphine, only more potent. This is the most powerful analgesic you can get outside of a hospital.”
“Should you be driving?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “it doesn’t really do anything for me anymore. I’m just weaning myself off of it. Trust me – I’d be a worse driver if I wasn’t taking it.”
“What was it for?”
“See these scars?” He pointed to his forehead. “I had a bad sinus infection – kinda painful. Finally they had to operate, but meanwhile I developed a really high tolerance for most painkillers, and wound up addicted to these things. If I just quit, I’ll go into withdrawal, which sucks – so I’m stepping down my dosage until I can stop.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s good.”
“Thanks – your approval means a lot to me,” he said, making clear that he did not care at all what I thought. We turned onto my street.
“I’m right there” – I pointed to my house.
He pulled to a stop and I got out of his car.
“You can take my mom’s money if you want to,” he said to me. “but I’m never going to call you, so you’re basically ripping her off. Don’t take it personally – it’s just that I don’t need your help. Actually, it’s not even her money, so it doesn’t really matter anyway. So – enjoy it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “See you later.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Take it easy.”
I shut the door to the car. The tires chirped as he dropped into gear and sped away.
League of Mortals by Duncan Cross is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.