3
Friday, August 27, 2009 5:37 p.m.
There comes a time during summer in the Midwest when everyone sort of looks around and agrees that summer ought not to let the door hit its ass on the way out. A time of sweaty palms around the morning coffee, of bedsheets laundered thrice weekly, of hot pavement in the morning echoing with the meaty slap of flip-flops. A time of cold showers when even the rain won’t cool you off.
It had stopped raining when Niklas left his apartment on Milwaukee’s east side. The hot kind of rain, the kind that riles people up when it thickens the air and wafts upward from the concrete in an odor that might be pleasant if it ever came at a time when your underclothes were dry. At five in the afternoon the sun was well on its way back down, and the light came shallow from the west; the light was a haunting blend of yellow-amber, breaking through the pregnant clouds, somehow simultaneously dark and golden. Niklas nearly missed his bus drinking in the sky with closed eyes, his haste forgotten, head cocked as though photosynthesis were really possible if only you tried hard enough.
The hiss and sigh of the Green Line’s air brakes brought him back to earth. He slung a backpack over his left shoulder and his guitar case over his right. Three people got off the bus; one massively obese old woman with a walker, one flinty-eyed guy with a garbage bag full of empty cans, and an elderly lady who stopped to chat with the driver. Niklas waited for a moment on the concrete for the woman in front of him to finish. Once he’d fed two bills into the machine, his hands were empty but for a single soiled envelope stuffed with three letters. Filthy untied boot laces danced around the ankles of his paint-splattered jeans as he made for the rear of the bus. He took his blue backpack off and set it on the seat next to him, put the letters in the breast pocket of his damp t-shirt, and rested his guitar against his knees. He looked out the window and saw himself in the plexiglass. He was six feet tall and trim, with thin, straight blond hair that was shaggy around the ears, a thin, fuzzy beard, and perennially ratty clothes. His manner reminded people in some indirect way of a puppy.
Immediately after sitting he began to feel around and unzip his backpack to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything: the hard cylindrical lump of his water bottle; a hardcover and a paperback, both novels; his knife, sharpened last week; a glass pipe, a cold metal grinder, a lighter, and a double zip-lock with a few grams of pot (procured from a coworker at the lumberyard, actually the same one who’d sharpened his knife); a few Clif bars; a phone charger; glasses that he sometimes wore, but usually not, preferring to just squint; his orange bottle of antidepressants. He sniffed the area of the bag where the pot was—barely a whiff, all clear. Once satisfied that everything was there, that what was forgotten was truly forgotten, he zipped everything up tight and took a deep breath.
Out the window, a decrepit Brady Street slid by. Torn awnings, unrepaired from the previous winter’s damage; patio tables and chairs that were fully occupied perhaps twice a week during this peak summer season; neon signs in the windows of the barrooms which were flickering or almost out of juice. Niklas wondered how much of this was normal Brady Street grittiness, and how much was actual damage done by the recession. An abandoned newspaper on the bus floor sat face up. The date read Friday August 27, 2009. Niklas took the letters out of his breast pocket and thumbed through them to make sure they were all there. He caught a glimpse of the corner of the last one. The date read March 2009. Niklas rubbed at a raised lump of dirt next to the return address on the envelope. He worked it long after it was obvious the spot wasn’t coming all the way out.
The bus driver chatted with a bent old man up front. Niklas couldn’t hear much beyond their tone, which was familiar. The bus driver had a thick Northwoods accent, which reminded him of old Jim Markham, their neighbor and friend over in Liminga, not five minutes from Uncle Jussi’s farm.
Niklas’ chest and gut clenched as he remembered what he’d forgotten—not an item, fortunately, but one of the most important things nonetheless. He flipped open his phone and found the name in his contacts. As the bus crawled down Brady Street the phone rang in his ear and his pulse quickened. He prayed he would say the right things.
“Hullo?”
“Jim! Niklas Kinnunen.”
“Nik! How are ya bud?”
“I’m real well, Jim,” he lied. “You holding up OK?”
“Oh yah, I’m fine.”
“Cynthia doing well?”
“Oh yah, she’s good. Wit da kids in town now. They’re having dinner at Gino’s.” The recorded bus voice announced Brady and Water Street, Niklas’ stop. He pulled the cord and cast around for a question that would buy him some
