11.2 – Broke and Broken

Academically, Marty was doing quite well at school, but his teachers couldn’t figure him out.  They saw a grungy kid who dressed like a refugee from a failed commune, but who could not only pass their classes with ease and style, but find creative new ways to do it.  Owing to his penchant for cartoons and poetry, Marty was regarded as a rustic variety of artistic savant, but the teachers who couldn’t appreciate alternative lifestyles judged him solely on his appearance.

Christmas was a short reprieve from the raucous fraternity of unemployed hoboes.  Lenny had moved on, and Darby was staying with a sister he suddenly remembered he had in San Francisco.  Rabbit spent a week with her mom in Minnesota, and Otter was on an extended binge – or a vision quest.  (One never knew where that sly old Inuit would be shape shifting.)  Pippin borrowed bus fare from Tim, and was visiting family back in Pennsylvania.  That left Marge, her three kids, a black cat, and a surly dwarf to celebrate the holy night in peace.  Tim had been drinking more, and fighting with Marge recently, and petulantly insisted on reciting the entire “Twas the Night Before Christmas” poem, which Marty thought was kind of corny, but better than the stupid variety shows on TV.  Julie sat by the phone hoping for a call to rescue her from the misery of hanging out with her family, while Susie cut out paper snowflakes for the windows.  Krishna paced the floor near the front door, wanting to go out from long habit, but being a bit confused about her motives.

They all agreed not to give any presents, because nobody could afford them.  The repairs to the house, propane refills, and other expenses were shared by anyone who worked.  Whatever was left over after paying the bills was spent on bare necessities like beer and cigarettes.  Only Susie got a small allowance, which she spent on candy with Tillie down at the store.  During the darkest, shortest, and “brokest” days around Yuletide season, there was little to be merry about at the ol’ Rusty Bucket Ranch, except that they were alive, and they had each other.  They went through the motions of celebrating the season out of sheer habit.  Tim moved out the day after Christmas, as soon as he could get one of his cars running, and left without saying goodbye.  Marty could see a pattern developing, and deduced that his mom was a little difficult to live with.

Julie took the opportunity to get back together with her boyfriend, Ron, and move out – packing her things without emotion or second thought.  She was nearly 18 anyway, and considered herself emancipated.  Marty thought he should be sorry, but didn’t have the emotional tools to communicate his feelings.

“Bye,” he said finally, in case the silence was so awkward that they didn’t say anything at all.  He and his sisters loved each other, but were made wary by the undependable bonds demonstrated by the adults they knew.

“I’m not leaving the country, you know.  You can visit us in Fairfax.”  Julie was acting tough, but he could see the emotion behind her mask of bravado.

“Can I have your room?” Susie asked brightly, knocking over the house of cards made of unspoken affection between siblings.

“Look on the bright side,” Julie offered sarcastically, “You’ll be able to use the bathroom sooner.”

“Yeah, and we’ll finally see the phone again.”  Marty responded, wanting to hug her but not knowing how.

Rain added to the dismal outlook for the New Year, and two skylights started leaking.  Marty slept next to a bucket in his room, with a towel over it to absorb the sound of the drips.  The living room had two more buckets underneath the big plastic bubble skylight.  The only way to get out of the mold and darkness was to escape over the hill somehow.  The kids were actually glad when school started again.  Marty had to match Marge’s driving schedule to catch a ride into Fairfax or San Anselmo.  She ran as regularly as a bus, and if he missed her, he had to hitchhike in whatever weather came his way.  One day, he was riding in the back of a random pickup truck, hoping he’d get home before it started raining.  The driver had to stop in Fairfax, so he hopped out to catch another ride.

Marty was puzzled when his foot landed strangely on the sidewalk, and that made him sit down and look. The ball point pen he used at work, which was normally clipped to his shirt pocket, was sticking straight out of the bottom of his foot!  Apparently, it had slipped out of his pocket when he vaulted from the bed of the truck, beat him to the ground, and stood straight up in the exact spot where his foot would land.  There was no pain yet, due to the shock, so he grasped the end of the pen in disbelief, and felt it moving inside of his foot!  Yikes!  That totally creeped him out, so he pulled his sneaker off quickly, and the writing instrument came out in one piece, but remained impaled through the rubber sole of the shoe.  Marty took off his sock, hoping for the best, but of course there was a hole in the bottom of his foot, and dark blood was seeping out.  He was dumbfounded to find another hole at the back of his ankle, next to his Achilles tendon, where the pen had gone all the way through his flesh like an arrow!

The driver of the pickup saw him fall in his mirror, and got out. “Dios mio, a pluma got stuck in your foot?  How did that happen?”  He was a Latino construction worker on his way to a job, and he probably thought the injury was from a tool he left in the back of his truck.  He worriedly offered Marty a ride to the hospital, but drove away quickly after he was waved off.

Marty tied his sock around the wound to stop the bleeding as much as he could, and limped to a nearby pay phone.  I should have taken that ride, he thought.  It hurt like hell now, and was throbbing.  Marge was flabbergasted, and thought he was joking, so he had to repeat the story three times on the phone.  “Yes, as impossible as it sounds, my own pen went through my foot.  Uh huh, that’s right.  I think I need stitches or something.”  She and her new boss Jerry drove over in his van and they took him to the ER.

“Your pen went through your foot?”  The nurse at the hospital was incredulous, and Marty had to repeat the story for her, and the doctor who arrived later.  He was getting pretty good at telling the amazing tale of the evil kamikaze pen, and he showed it to them.  It was still in one piece; just a little compressed at one end.  It wrote perfectly, however, and Marge used it to sign his admission form to accentuate the irony.

It turned out to be a gruesome flesh wound, but one that didn’t bleed too much if he kept his foot elevated.  Asa result, Marty lived upside-down for a week, until the stitches healed and he could put some weight on it.  Jerry came home one night with his mom, on the pretense of giving him some old crutches to use, and he stayed with them for a few days.  Marty fell a couple of times, on the rocky cascade down to their house, before he got the hang of using those “stupid contraptions.”  He hobbled clumsily around the halls at school with his briefcase banging against the crutches, flaunting his disability in case it might gain the attention of a sympathetic young lady.  He tied a string from his pen, and through the buttonhole of his pocket, showing off its new “safety tether.”  The Drake hallway crowds parted around this spectacle as a herd of sheep around a border collie; not wanting to collide with the nerdy gimp and cause a scene.  Marty enjoyed repeating his evil pen story to anyone who would listen, but his classmates got tired of hearing about it, so he left the pen and crutches home one day and rejoined the herd.