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H ear the podcast of Eric reading from his story "Animals Here Below" on KQED's Writer's Block.
Read an interview with Eric Puchner discussing Music Through the Floor.
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| Children of God |
The ad said they needed someone to model “patterns of survival.” At the interview, a woman with an E.T. poster on her door told me about the job. “You’d be working at their house,” she said, “taking care of two clients with special needs."
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I couldn’t even take care of myself, but I needed a job. “Are they retarded?"
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“Okay, yeah. We don’t say that anymore.” She coaxed herself out of a frown, in a way that suggested I was the only candidate. “There’s a new name: developmentally disabled.”
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| They gave me a new name, too: Community Living Instructor. This was in Portland, Oregon. I started working at a home for people who couldn’t tie their shoes, helping two grown men get through the day. |
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| Jason was worse off. At twenty-eight, he was afflicted with so many diseases that his meds were delivered in a garbage bag. He made Job look like a whiner. Enlarged by hydrocephalus, his head drooped from his body, which twisted in his wheelchair as if it were trying to unscrew from his neck. His mouth hung open in a constant drool. His hands, crippled from dystrophy, curled inward as though he wanted to clutch his own wrists. Among other things, he was prone to seizures and cataleptic fits. He had chronic diarrhea. Every evening, after dinner, I was met with a smell so astounding I had to plug my nose with cotton. I’d wheel Jason, besmirched and grinning, to the bedroom to change his mess. “I made a bad, bad meeeesss!” he’d yell, flapping his arms. “Now we’re cooking with oil!” For the most part, his vocabulary consisted of clichés he’d picked up from former care workers, many of them bizarre or unsavory to start with: “cooking with oil” was one, as was “you said a mouthful when you said that.” Other times, he was capable of surprising clarity. He loved action movies—particularly ones in which nature avenged itself on humanity—and would recount the death of a dinosaur hunter as if it were a sidesplitting joke. |
The changing of the mess, though, was the high point of Jason’s day. He giggled uproariously when I lifted him from the wheelchair, his arms kinked around my neck as I carried him to bed. He never failed, during our brief walk together, to burrow his tongue deep into my ear
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Dominic was more serious. Brooding, treacherously off-balance, he staggered around the house like a drunk. Down’s syndrome had smudged his face into the flat, puttylike features of a Hollywood gangster. He was beautiful in a way that startled women. He was thirty-two years old and owned a bike with a banana seat and training wheels. The bike was supposed to be impossible to tip over. He’d strap a helmet on his head and wiggle into an armature of pads and then go for a ride down the street, returning ten minutes later covered in blood. I cleaned his wounds with a sponge. About ten times a day, he’d sneak into the bathroom to “fresh his breath.” He always left the door open and I’d watch him sometimes from the hall. He’d nurse the faucet first, sucking on it until his mouth filled with water. Then he’d pop up suddenly and arch his back in a triumphant stance, face lifted toward the ceiling. Sometimes he’d stay like that for thirty seconds—moaning, eyes shut tight, arms outstretched like a shaman receiving prophecies—before puking his guts out in the sink
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| His voice, when he spoke, was sleepy and far-fetched. He preferred the middles of words. “Abyoola!” he liked to say, meaning “Fabulous!” When he told a story, it was like Rocky Balboa channeling a demon. |
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| I’d moved to Portland after a month of sleeping in my car, driving aimlessly around the West and living off my father’s Mobil card. The driving had to do with a frantic feeling in my stomach. I felt like Wile E. Coyote when he goes off a cliff, stranded in midair and trying to crawl back to the edge before he plummets. In the glovebox, sealed with plastic and a rubber band, was a Dixie cup of my mother’s ashes that I’d nabbed from her memorial when I was twelve. I kept it there for good luck. Before my month of driving, I’d taped Sheetrock in Idaho, sold vacuum cleaners in Missoula, Montana, worked as a baggage handler at the Salt Lake City airport. |
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| To pass the day, I took Jason and Dominic on field trips. There was a special van in the garage, and I’d load Jason onto the lift and strap down his wheels so he wouldn’t roll out the window. The van had been donated by a traveling magician and was painted purple. We’d drive to cafés, outdoor fairs, movie theaters. They liked easy-listening stations—“I Write the Songs,” “Send in the Clowns”—and I’d crank the old A.M. stereo as loud as it would go. I’d roll down the windows and listen to Jason scream words at the top of his lungs, naming the passing creatures of the world like Adam on a roller coaster. “Dog!” he’d yell. “Girl! Pizza boy!” Dominic would stick his head out the window of the front seat, his hair exploding in the wind. Someone had taught him how to flip people off and he’d give pedestrians the finger as we passed. It was a good test of character, and I liked watching people question the simplicity of innocence. |
Once, at a stoplight, a guy in a fraternity sweatshirt returned the gesture and then strode up to Dominic’s side of the van, his girlfriend sloping behind him. The guy’s arm was outstretched to better advertise his finger, which he was following like a carrot
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| “What the fuck, man,” the guy said to Dominic. “You looking for a new asshole?” |
| Dominic wagged his finger at the guy’s face, enjoying himself immensely. “We’re going to get some ice cream,” I explained. |
| The guy took a closer look at Dominic and turned red. He dropped his hand and glanced at his girlfriend, who was regarding him with distaste. |
| “You should teach them some manners,” he mumbled. “This isn’t the goddamn circus.” |
| At Baskin Robbins, we waited in line while the customers ahead of us sucked on little spoons. Dominic ogled the women. He was a pervert only because of his IQ; otherwise, he’d have been concealing his interest like the rest of us. It was more metaphysical than sexual. Sometimes I’d find him staring at a lingerie-clad model in a magazine, struck dumb with fervor, his lips moving silently as if in prayer. |
| While we waited, Jason slumped in his wheelchair and I wiped the drool from his chin. The woman in front of us kept glancing back at him. It was always the same expression, a coded kind of smile directed at me as well, like we shared some secret knowledge about the afterlife. |
| Finally, she couldn’t resist any longer and squatted beside Jason. “What’s your favorite flavor?” she brayed, as if she were speaking to a foreigner. |
| He seemed to study the case of ice cream. “Like trying to sell Jesus a jogging suit!” |
| “That’s right, dear,” the woman muttered, but didn’t talk to him again. |
| When it was Dominic’s turn to order, he staggered around the counter before I could stop him and stood by the cash register. The girl behind the counter laughed. He stared at her breasts without speaking. I might have done something to ward off disaster, but I wanted to see what would happen. |
| “Show me what you want,” she said. It was the wrong thing to say. Dominic grabbed one of her breasts. “Hey,” the girl said, laughing. She tried to pull away and he held on, clutching at her shirt. He wore an expression of deep, incredulous despair. “Hey!” the girl said. Finally, I ran around the counter and pulled Dominic off with two hands, leading him back to the customer side, where he seemed unembarrassed by his conduct, |
| It was always like that: the world scorned them, but they were freely and openly themselves. I admired them greatly. We tried to order ice cream, but the girl was shaken and refused to serve us. |
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To read the rest of this story, buy the book.
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