Walking without the cart

I tried to go to a weekly writing group for a while, but I never caught on to the performance aspect of it: everybody writes in each other's presence for 20 or 30 minutes, then reads aloud and... then things are said.

Here's something I wrote then. It's loosely based on reality.

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Jimmy had a shopping cart. He kept it in the empty yard beside his house, and no one ever took it. Mostly he carried aluminum cans in it, sometimes glass bottles if they were pretty blue, then he’d take them to his sister-in-law over on Pine Street.

Every morning he’d shake the fog from his eyes and eat a bit of bread and peanut butter, then head over to Pine Street for some coffee with his brother, pushing his cart. Roger had a nice house and a clean old car; he was a deacon at the church. But Jimmy just somehow couldn’t do those same things Roger did, have a job, get married. He knew he wasn’t smart, he just didn’t know why. Things were harder for him. And recently his insides were hurting a whole lot. Roger’d taken him to the doctor once, but the medicine cost so much.

This old cart was getting pretty stiff and squeaky. Roger let him put some grease on it any time he wanted, but something gets so old, grease doesn’t help. But Jimmy never had to be anywhere fast, so he just walked slower. When he had a load of cans, they rattled around anyway, so it didn’t matter about the squeaks.

People all around the neighborhood would put their cans in a bag for him, tied onto their front gate or looped over a picket of a fence. Mike Wilton’s boys just threw their coke cans out in the yard. They just didn’t know it was getting harder for Jimmy to reach down and get them.

It wasn’t a big neighborhood, but it took Jimmy a couple days to get through the whole thing. In the summer, he also went down to the playground where kids hung out at night. Usually they just left 40 ounces, but sometimes he found a pile of cans. When his cart was full, Roger would haul him over to South-Central where they paid 42 cents a pound for aluminum.

One morning, early fall, Jimmy hurt worse that usual and he didn’t feel like eating breakfast. He left his cart in the yard and walked over to Roger's house. It took him longer than usual. He didn’t walk so much without the shopping cart anymore and he wasn’t so steady on his feet, first thing in the morning like this.

The dark criss-crossing of moss between bricks in the sidewalk looked like letters on a big sign, Jimmy thought. He didn’t usually see the sidewalk straight on like this. What would the sign say? Jimmy, you old man. Jimmy, what will they say about you when you’re gone?

He saw a Dr. Pepper can up ahead, but he figured he could leave it be until later, when he was feeling better. Or maybe someone else would get it, those other guys who came into the neighborhood with their big bags, picking up cans.

Just beyond the can, the sidewalk hit a new patch. The moss left off its scrawl. But Jimmy was still thinking about letters, and he was thinking that he wanted to write something. He thought he’d ask Roger to write down a few things for him, about how he appreciated people saving their cans for him. About how he still thought about his mother and the day she put her hand on the top of his head and told him he was God’s child. About his idea for a new shopping cart chassis that made it easier to get over curbs. Yes, he should get Roger to write that down.