chapter one - Brian Warfield Brian Warfield Home Publications Stuff You Can Read 1001 1. He woke up in his bedroom at 10:13 am. His left eye opened first and what it saw, the right saw a fraction of a second later. His eyes having opened remained so despite the fact that he was still vaguely tired and completely void of the desire to rise from the comparative warmth of his bed. Over his naked body was strewn a thin allotment of fabric that was twisted and sweat-soaked. To the right of his bed at the height of a head upon a standing person was a tiny octagonal window which closed with a clasp. The window was situated in a wall perpendicular to the wall which abutted the head of his bed. The other wall made an obtuse angle opening out slightly and allowing space for a chest of drawers which had the measurements 3’ x 4’ x 3’. When he stood up he had approximately three feet before the final wall of his bedroom. There was a doorway which led to his closet kitchen but there was no door. The bathroom was down the hall and he shared it with the other tenants although he rarely saw them as he scheduled his ablutions to coincide with their absence. He entered the small closet kitchen and reached into the mini fridge from which he removed the lunch he had prepared for himself the night before. He put the lunch on the stand by the door as he put his jacket on and removed his keys from the hook screwed into the wall next to his front door. He closed the door behind him and inserted the keys into the locks, turning them counterclockwise. He heard the sounds of voices permeating the thin walls around him. He turned and walked down the hallway, walked down the twelve flights of stairs and stepped out into the late morning air. There was nothing strange about that particular day as far as anyone knew. No one in the town had any expectations. They were not disappointed. No one was holding his or her breath except for those who were diving into water. And then, once they had swum their distance or dived their depth and had resurfaced to the air, the water dripping down their faces seeking to reconnect with itself, they opened their mouths and drew oxygen and other elements into their lungs. There was a clock that was not being looked at. He walked down one street, the street on which his apartment complex was positioned, and then another. He walked three blocks in such a manner before turning north (he was acutely aware of the points of the compass), and walked a block before turning west once again. The sun was roughly over his shoulder, rising to its zenith. He walked past an old, disheveled-looking person lying in the gutter. "I can tell you why a snail has a house," the crazy old person said. "That’s nice," he said and kept walking. He was not a man of strict routine but basically took the same route every day. He did not feel obligated to walk north three blocks and then west one block and so on. Sometimes he walked west first and then north. But whichever path he took, the destination was the same. It was twenty blocks one way or another to the wall that ran towards the edge of town. It was a length of unbroken wall that stretched for thirteen miles. It ran along the highway and the river before breaking off abruptly. Either end of the wall was reduced to rubble where it seemed the wall had once continued on. Rumor spoke of portions of walls cropping up briefly in other towns, but he had never seen them. Even if they did exist, none were so long as here in this town. No one knew how long the original wall spanned or who built it or what it was built for. By looking at the ends of the wall, you could glean a rough history. The inner core was of stones, like old stone walls of territorial delineation. And then there was a layer of brick. And then came the cinder blocks. And it was to this cinderblock wall that he was engaged in painting. The history of the wall, if scrutinized carefully would indicate that the wall had been painted many times. The paint over which he was painting was white. And the color of the paint he was using to paint over the white paint was white. Before approaching the wall, however, he must first stop in the office at 397 Spase St. The office was a squat, cubical building. Probably not exactly cubicle. Its roof may have been a little too high. But close enough so that a description as such would not cause confusion to a casual observer. The office had one window on each wall except for the one containing its door. Above the door was attached a small brass bell which jingled any time the door hit it which it did whenever it was opened so as to announce the presence of a newcomer. This precaution seemed completely unmerited as there were two desks in the office each facing the insides of the office with an ample and unobstructed view of the front door and no other place for the two employees of the desks to go to escape viewing the door. Aside from the two desks and the small brass bell and two chairs and the two workers who were working, there was a large filing cabinet and some other odds and ends that were needless to mention (such as a potted plant, an oscillating fan, a wicker basket, etc.). When he entered the office he walked straight to the filing cabinet where he opened the third drawer from the bottom. In the drawer was a bucket of paint, a folded pair of coveralls and a paint brush. There wasn’t always a bucket of paint because sometimes he would use all the paint in the bucket and have to go to the paint store and buy more. But then he would go to the paint store and buy another bucket of paint so that when he was finished with the day’s work he could return to the office and put the paint bucket in the filing cabinet. All of this had been explained to him on his first day at the job. Those who sat behind the desks now never spoke to him. He needed no further instructions and they were too busy to get caught up in the repartee of banal pleasantries. Their eyeballs hardly flickered upwards at the tinny call of the bell as its tongue clapped the metal sides announcing his arrival. As he slipped into the coveralls, he tried to remember what the last words either of the desk workers had said to him. He was pretty sure that it had been the slightly fatter, more attractive one who had said the words: "_____." No, he couldn’t remember what they had been. Upon exiting the office holding the paint bucket in one hand and the paint brush in the other, he turned left and walked the short distance to the wall. He could see it peeking its spinal cord over the low buildings like a cat’s arched back stalking in the weeds. When he was first employed he had to walk five miles down the length of the wall to reach its terminus. Now he only had to walk one mile. And soon he would be walking in the other direction. There was no beginning or end to the wall, as it was merely a part of the whole. Even if there was no whole and there were points at which the wall ceased to be and became not the wall. Still, you could not say it ever began or ended, even if you were speaking with reference to time. It was because of its incomplete nature that it was infinite. How could one add to or subtract from infinity? And so what he was doing as he pried open the paint bucket lid was not converting but conversing. He was taking part in the dialogue of what the wall had always been and what it was at all times becoming. The viscous liquid of the paint sat about three quarters of the way down the bucket, wet stalagmites clinging to the sides. He put the business end of the brush with its bristles caked in old dried paint down, reaching down into the waiting hopeful expectant paint. The paint was absorbed by the bristles collecting it unto itself, thickening and glistening. He took the brush out, pressing the side of it against the lip of the bucket where any excess paint was spat out. He lifted the wet brush to the vertical rise of the wall where he had placed a marker indicating where he had left off the day before. He raised his arm, the brush resting perfectly in his hand as if the two had been carved out each for the other. He placed the wet bristles against the dry wall and pressed with subtle pressure, drawing the brush downward, leaving a thick trail of paint in the brush’s wake. His actions consisted of repeated motions. Bending over to dip the brush in the paint, standing up to apply the brush to the wall, moving the brush down the side of the wall, lifting the bucket to move it down the line, replacing the bucket onto the ground. The wall was four feet high and when he lifted the brush out of the bucket, the height to which he lifted it varied. He started at the top, standing straight with his arm at a 45° angle and without bending his knees, straightening his arm for the first application of paint. The second application began with him standing and his arm at a 90° angle, bending his knees and moving his arm simultaneously. The third application started with him in a crouch, his arm over his head and bringing it down to the ground. In these three movements, he could adequately cover one strip. And then he would return to the top, repeating the process. He could paint about three strips before finding it necessary to move the paint bucket. Perhaps there was a better system for painting a wall, but if there was he didn’t know it. He didn’t actually think about streamlining the system of his actions because for him, this system worked as well as he needed it to. He was not a professional wall painter. That was obvious. He probably should have been using a roller or maybe there was even more sophisticated equipment specifically designed for painting the expanses of large surfaces. But he did not have that equipment and it did not occur to him to pursue the obtainment of such equipment. He bent over and inserted the brush into the paint. He worked slowly, not at a snail’s pace, but decidedly not hurried. There did not seem to be any rush. No one had expressed any urgency to his finishing the project by any given time. No one had complained to him concerning his work. And he had been painting this wall for almost six months. He did not have official hours which at first had indicated that his employers did not care whether or not he actually did the work. But over time he was grateful for the flexibility so that he could come and go as he pleased. He did not take advantage of their leniency and made sure to log in at least six hours every day and sometimes as many as ten. He could take his lunch break whenever he was hungry which he was at approximately one o’clock. He put the paint bucket lid back on and rested the paint brush on top. Now that he was working closer to the office he typically kept his lunch there. He walked over to the gas station next to the office and washed his hands in its bathroom. There was a girl reading a magazine behind the counter. She was also eating a candy bar. He had seen this girl probably thirty-two times before. She wasn’t always eating a candy bar but she was always reading a magazine. He left the gas station and walked into the office. One of the workers was gone and the chair had swiveled around from facing the desk and faced nothing in particular. He walked over to the filing cabinet and opened the drawer where his lunch was waiting. He picked up his lunch and carried it with him outside, there was a parking lot with pools of oil shimmering on its surface and a small yellow-painted kerb with swept up cigarette butts and broken glass and other debris lined at its base. He sat down on the kerb and pulled out a plastic bag from the brown paper bag. Inside the plastic bag was a tuna fish sandwich on white bread. He pulled open the ziploc of the baggie and rolled it down around the edges of the sandwich. Some of the pale meat of the tuna was squeezed out of the sandwich, held on by the coating of mayonnaise. He opened his mouth which was already starting to salivate. He placed the sandwich in his mouth and bit it. The taste of the tuna hit him beside the tonsils and then rolled forward over his tongue as the food was masticated within his mouth. He swallowed and then reached into the paper bag for his thermos of water of which he drank some while still there was food in his mouth. The water washed over the tuna as it once had in life when the tuna swam in the depths of the ocean. It swam again on the tide poured down his throat, swept into the murky subaquatic regions of his digestive track. After his lunch he continued to sit on the kerb, not that it was the most comfortable or enjoyable of places to be. It certainly did not have a very pleasing view of anything. He just wanted to relax a minute and there was nowhere else for him to do it. The office worker returned to the office and then shortly afterwards the other one left. While the other worker was gone he went into the office and put his lunch bag back in the filing cabinet. The thinner, less-attractive worker was at the desk opening a drawer and looking inside. He exited the office and the door hit the brass bell. It was time to get back to work. He’d been back at the job for an hour, bending over and straightening up, applying the brush. He wasn’t thinking about anything. He picked up the paint bucket, moved a few feet to the right and set the bucket down. There was some kind of store directly behind him. He didn’t know what kind of store it was. He dipped the brush into the paint and applied it to the top of the wall, drawing it down. He dipped the brush into the paint again and when he put the brush to the wall there was a small sound and then as he pressed a louder sound. He pushed on the brush and suddenly a final sound accompanied his hand going through the wall. The sound that he had been unable to identify as it occurred became obvious as he realized what had happened. There was a fair-sized hole in the wall that someone (the last to paint the wall, perhaps) had taped a piece of paper over and then painted over the paper. Now he had punctured through the paper and gotten paint on the back of his hand. He put the brush down and peeled back the paper with his thumb and forefinger. The hole was just larger than the diameter of his head and not perfectly circular. It looked like the shape of a small tropical island or a tumorous liver. The hole went all the way through the wall and he put his hand through it, imagining a cold shiver as if he were reaching through some kind of portal. He took his hand out and put his head in looking at the shards of the striations of the wall, each layer disintegrated to different degrees. He did not want to put his head all the way through but he was curious as to why there was no paper or some other masking device on the other side. He began to feel a bit queasy so withdrew his head quickly from the hole, the torn edges of the paper scraping at his neck. He wondered what his responsibilities were. Should he report the hole so that it could be properly repaired? Or just slap another piece of paper and paint over it like the previous person had done? He decided to report it. After work (he had decided to stop after the sun went down even though the street lamps gave adequate light and he had been known to work after dark, sometimes not even starting until after the sun set), he carried the paint bucket to the office and put it back in the filing cabinet. He took out his lunch bag and jacket. He slid off his coveralls and folded them on top of the paint bucket. He looked at either of the workers looking busy behind their desks. And then he looked at both of them. He tried to speak into the air somewhere half way between them, not knowing to whom he should make his report. He told them about the paper and the hole and the state of the wall and his unsurety as to how to proceed. And then he was silent as he stood there. While he had been talking the workers had put down their pencils and had looked up at him. When he was done they looked at each other and then the thinner, less-attractive one stood up and went to the filing cabinet and opened a few of the drawers before pulling out a thick book the cover of which was coarse canvas. The worker took the book back to the desk and began to look through it one page at a time. And then the worker told him not to worry about the hole. He stood and waited for something else to be said but nothing was. The thick, canvas book stayed open as the worker copied something out of it onto a ledger and then looked up at him. He walked back to his house, walking south and east on various streets, his feet preceding each other to the place they would take him. He felt tired even though it was fairly early. He thought about what he would have to eat for supper and it just made him more tired. Before he knew it, he had arrived back at his apartment. He sat on his bed and watched the lights of passing cars through his small octagonal window. The cars turned and stopped and drove away, their lights turned on and off and the movement of them and their variety and the soft susurration of the cars’ engines lulled him into a trance so that he did not even realize it when he fell asleep. next Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Get Started