Bring Back Dr. Excitus! Part 1

BRING BACK DR. EXCITUS! -- Part 1
by Steve Geick

A man with a jet-black beard removed a damp Ernie Elephant washcloth from the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt.  He used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead as he wondered aloud whether the gas station convenience store had ever been "introduced to the magic of air conditioning."

The man had been in a rather bad mood to begin with.  His boss had sent him out on an errand earlier that morning.  It was the first time he'd done so in a very long while. 

The man with the jet-black beard despised leaving the office.

He stood in line behind two women, one young, one old, both of whom ordered gasoline.  When he got to the front of the line he said, "Water bottle."

"Bottled water?" asked the cashier.  "In the back."  He pointed toward the wall directly opposite from the counter and watched curiously as the man with the jet-black beard performed a rigid sort of about-face.

He navigated his way through narrow aisles stocked with cheap alternative groceries.  He found the refrigerators and reached in for a bottle of water.  The brand certainly didn't matter.  He was buying it more for the container than for what it contained.

The cashier rang up the purchase.  The man searched a small white envelope for the correct amount of money and paid. 
"What's with the hood, brother?"  asked the cashier with a chuckle.  "That chill is finally on its way out.  For real this time, I hope.  Anyway, today you must be dying in that thing."

"No," said the man.  And with that he left the store.

Outside he opened the water bottle and poured most of it out onto a patch of dirt beside the parking lot.  He left a mouth full or two inside the bottle.  He then removed a flask of his own stuff from the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and proceeded to empty its contents into the water bottle.  He screwed on the cap, tightened it, and shook vigorously.  The resulting compound was pale yellow and it bubbled just slightly from the shaking.  Satisfied, the man pocketed the bottle and began to wait for the bus.

He thought about work.  He thought about the jagged ache in his knees and the sweat stinging the back of his neck.  He thought about the pounding heat of that miserable day.  The nosy cashier hadn't been entirely inaccurate. 

He would have given up the rest of his small stipend for the chilly bliss of an air conditioned room.  Such was his discomfort, and such was the present contempt he felt for his employer.  His fingertips dug deeply between the bones in his palms as he stared at the empty sidewalk before him.  He grew more irritated with every passing minute.

A homeless old woman stopped and asked a question, but her question was not heard.

"You got the time, fella?" the woman repeated.  Now her voice registered dimly in the mind of the man with the jet-black beard.  He became aware that somebody was trying to speak to him.  Supremely annoyed, he hooked two fingers on the inside of his hood and removed it slowly, revealing the homeless old woman in his periphery.

His face grew redder with every passing breath, and his throat began to shake as he faced her. 

She looked at him strangely, for his hood had been concealing the goofiest old set of headphones imaginable.  He must have found them in a dumpster.  She wouldn't have even fought him for those odd, rectangular technological relics. 

Perhaps he too is homeless, she thought.  Perhaps he is even homelesser than I.

The man with the jet-black beard freed one ear out from beneath his headphones and squinted at the woman to receive her question.

"The time?" she repeated once more.  He closed his eyes and shook his head and returned the black rubber cup of the left headphone to its rightful place on his ear.  He wondered why a homeless person would need the time.

When the bus arrived, the man with the jet-black beard longed only to relax.  He sought the relief of his legs and his back so intensely that he scarcely believed sitting would even do the trick.  Nevertheless, the bus was a welcome sight, unlike the homeless old woman before it.  The man with the jet-black beard climbed aboard and found a seat.  As the bus began its ascent from the city, he drew the water bottle out from inside his pocket and began to sip away at its pale yellow nectar.

He no longer thought about the sun and its heat, or irritating cashiers and homeless old women.  He no longer hurt.  He no longer hated his boss.  In fact, he loved him deeply.  He no longer hated the world around him, as he recognized that such hatred was not his right.  He sipped and he sucked at the bottle's green plastic nozzle.  And he listened.   

At the end of a thirty minute ride, at a gas station on a faceless suburban street, the bus rolled slowly to a halt.  The man with the jet-black beard still had a little ways to go.  His destination was a twenty minute walk from the bus stop, but it wasn't so bad now.  He kept himself occupied by thinking about work and draining the precious last drops from his new container (decidedly a good purchase). 

His destination awaited him on the other side of a rolling concrete hill.  He told himself that he'd soon be back at the office, and he pushed his way through to his objective.

A portly old lady in her sixties had been tending to a vegetable garden in the front yard when the man with the jet-black beard arrived.  He compared the numbers on the mail box to the numbers on the folded index card in his envelope.  They matched.

"Ma'am," he said, as he forced himself to remove his hood and his headphones.  He held the ancient device at his side and tried to recreate a polite smile.

"Do you like it?" asked the woman without looking up from her work.

"Ma'am?"

"My garden.  I've been working on it all day.  So very thrilled that the weather is starting to turn up."

The man with the jet-black beard only ruffled through some papers in his envelope.

"Heavens," the woman continued.  "You must be baking alive under that sweatshirt!"

"No, I'm not," said the man with the jet-black beard.  The woman had now managed to separate herself from the garden.  "I'm looking for-"

"You're just a warm dresser," she laughed through grinning teeth.  "My boy is the exact same way.  Always with a jacket or a sweater or hat.  Never a thought about the time of year or the time of day."

The man tried to force a laugh and was unsure whether that attempt was successful.

The woman continued on, "But he's a little on the chunky side, so I guess it helps to shed some of the extra heft." 

She laughed again.  "So how does it look?" she pressed.  "I've been trying to get my boy to help me with it all afternoon, but he's been so tired these last few days.  It must be the change of seasons."  She blinked at him, expecting a response.  He wasn't sure what a vegetable garden was supposed to look like in its earliest stages.

The man with the jet-black beard made his way across the woman's lawn, looking down at the as-yet lifeless patch of dirt that would one day, presumably, produce vegetables of some sort.  On this criteria alone, the man issued his appraisal, "It looks very good, ma'am."

"What is that sound?" she asked.  Her eyes shot questioningly around the lawn.  "Sounds like motors or machines or something.  Like a dump truck but much smaller."

"I don't—"

"Shhh," the woman interrupted.  She held up an index finger as if feeling for the noise on the air.

"I'm looking for Leonard Gunn," the man cut in.  "Is this his home?"

"Oh!  My son.  Do you boys know one another from school?"

The man sighed and began to regret not saving some of his drink for the ride home.

"I represent the Pachyderm Corporation.  There was an incident last weekend—"

"You!" the woman blasted.  She slowly leveled her arm, now pointing an extended index finger at the man with the jet-black beard.  A look of all-encompassing contempt began to wash over her entire person, affecting her face, her posture, and the way she spoke.  "You, I hate.  You are the reason he sits inside all day, sweating into that computer keyboard and not caring about anything!  I told him he can't keep going there.  I tried to teach him about all that he's missing by living the way he does.  Living once every month and then dying again until the next visit!" She was screaming now and the man with the jet-black beard began to fear for his safety.  "You took him from the real world, the real world of growing up.  He had a future back then, y'know.  He was a regular kid, but you don't care.

She drew a deep breath and a tear tumbled out from behind her motherly glare. 

"You people have driven my boy insane."
_____

Continued in Part 2