Читать книгу The Onus of Man - Damian Bouch - Страница 3

All of mankind knows the bite of inadequacy; the sensation of our somersaulting guts, our hearts skipping, and cold sweat bubbling from our pores. Our societal and financial circumstances close in on us with tidal force and verticality, stretching ever upward and out of sight, and the dreadful cognitions of our minds manifest in tremulous vocal intonations. Neither the trials of our years nor the skill of our hands can match that which bears over us. Tomes of wisdom as imparted by our elders are rendered obsolete whilst confronting concrete, unyielding reality. Meanwhile, we find ourselves in the chasm to drown in irrelevance. The fortunate and blessed among us will learn peace, meekness and humility as they yield to grace; the rest of us either find mundane ways to cope with our new paradigm, or take drastic measures to conquer it. Peter had a mind to emerge a victor.

Hauling his backpack and hiking boots, he crossed the driveway to his car. Tucking the boots under his arm, he used his free arm to get the keys from his pocket and open the trunk, where he placed his gear with the debris that had been accumulating. Among the mandatory food-service visor and slacks, the extra jeans and laborer’s gloves, a bound stack of manila envelopes full of old financial documentation, and a bundle of sports-related paraphernalia, the backpack and hiking boots fit well within the confines of the trunk, if snuggly.

Peter’s car provided him with effective, if humble, transportation. A worn, gold-colored sedan, which nearly matched him in age, this vehicle has been in his possession since he had earned his driver’s license years ago. The seats and floor had become nearly bare, notwithstanding that they were quite worn down when he first drove it off the lot. Along with naked seats, which felt something like an artist’s canvas in their aged texture, the steering wheel had lost much of its outermost layer, revealing the foamy innards that Peter kept wrapped up in replaceable, camouflage-designed, bargain-bin steering wheel covers. From the ceiling, which regularly shed its lint fur onto the driver and passengers below, hung the light in the middle of the car, suspended in midair, clinging to its natural home by a bit of wiring; it doubled as a dangling ornament and source of humorous discussion. His internal gas gauge was also worn out, which, despite its constant nuisance, was also a great ice-breaker. Just behind the rear driver-side door, was the remnant of a radio antenna. Showing its age and wear, the car obliged Peter to manually lock and unlock the doors, roll down the windows, cover the seats and steering wheel, externally check his gas level, and provide his own source of music or traveling entertainment otherwise. In a word, the young man’s car was “functional.”

After shutting the trunk with ease, he crossed back over his driveway back towards his house. Born and raised in the same town, living in the same house, and with the same family all his life, the routine of packing up vehicles had become a familiar one. Mom always kept the family busy with short-term excursions; overnight camps or visits to relatives, trips that lasted the day entire to nearby forests, rivers, and amusement parks. Occasionally friends or family would tag along, and the obligatory family minivan would be packed to the proverbial gills with acquaintances old and young alike, along with all their cargo. This particular voyage of immeasurable utilitarianism, however, only had one guest: Hoagie.

Hoagie was equal measures of family pet, comic relief, pest control, pillow, arm rest, confidant, greeter and doorbell. Despite, or perhaps because of, the unnaturally distant placement of his eyeballs to one another, poorly annunciated barks, and obnoxious grooming habits, he earned his place in the family years ago when Peter was still interested in trading card games. The beast was lying dormant on the back porch when Peter beckoned him over to the car with a whistle. Any other member of the family would have called him with a shout of his name, but Peter found the act of speaking language to animals stupid. Speaking to animals was a harmless habit, sure; but a habit whose practitioners looked needlessly silly. Hoagie did not retain the springing bounds that he had years previously, but still moved with vigor and enthusiasm towards the car.

Mom emerged from the back door of the house onto their porch. She called out to him, “Where are you going again?”

“Taking Hoagie out to the trails on Route 22. We’ll be about halfway to Uncle Tim’s,” Peter explained one time too many not to show slight signs of impatience. He maintained a downward glance at his car keys, pretending to fiddle with the keyring so as not to show his inconvenient disposition.

Mom looked at him aghast, exclaiming: “With all that you have going on tomorrow? That’s an awfully long trip to take if you plan on staying out there for more than an hour, and you’ll certainly be needing your rest for all your projects tomorrow.” Peter, since his adolescence, dreaded the lectures that were preceded by a cocking of the hip and counting fingers. She raised her index finger, “First off, you’ve got breakfast at the E-Z Omlette, and we both know how Mr. Cranston gets when you mope around all day because you didn’t get enough sleep.”

Mom’s thumb joined her index finger in listing Peter’s responsibilities the next day, “After that, Gramma says she’ll pay you if you go landscape her yard.” “Landscape” was Mom’s flattering way of referring to labor that usually involved gathering sticks and leaves out of an elderly woman’s yard, and dumping them into the nearby woods. “…and you know you’ve got another payment coming up.” Peter internally assured his mother that he was quite aware of his payment schedule for student loans.

A third finger joined the for-hire choir, “Plus tomorrow’s Sunday, and there are certainly going to be some new job ads in the classifieds. If you plan on actually working the jobs, you certainly need to prepare some resumés and letters.”

The teeth of disappointment were sinking into Peter’s heart, and her poison crept into his mind.

Unexpectedly, the ring finger sprang up to display a fourth unresolved issue due tomorrow; Peter experienced a brief apprehension. “And you’ve got to get ready for Trini’s recital!” He relaxed. Trini, his sister six years his minor, acquired a bizarre affinity for public speaking and oratory in her young age. While her friends joined sports, dance classes, art clubs and the like, Trini became quite involved with an oratory club whose members, every few weeks, recited famous speeches or addresses to an auditorium which, save for a few loved ones and underemployed school newspaper reporters, was otherwise empty. He conceded that now that she had just finished her junior year of high school, some of her speeches were quite impressive, and she delivered with the force of a woman with a lifetime’s worth of experience battling the many manifestations of social injustice. For Trini, this was a weeks-long affair of preparation, practice, and memorization; for Peter, it was semi-formal attire and a fancy cheese tray. Still, he liked to show his support for the little bugger.

Peter reassured his mother that he had made his plans for the day with full consciousness of his responsibilities which began early the following morning. Mr. Cranston would be just fine, because Peter would be home in time to get plenty of sleep. Gramma’s yard should not take too long due to the lack of rains and winds the preceding week; although he would never admit it in front of Mom, the labor was basically a welfare payment from his grandmother, although she always asked him to do something easy before bestowing upon him a payment that he did not work nearly hard enough to deserve. Gramma caught on years ago to the terms that this was the way the contract must be laid out, so that Peter may never be accused, whether by his conscience or the scorn of another, of accepting her money outright, without having done anything for the poor old widow. This timeframe, Peter explained to his mother, would give him plenty of time to get cleaned up and lay out his clothes before the recital. Lastly, the Sunday paper would be there all week, so that the application process is nothing to worry about, and no place worth working is open Sundays anyway.

After one final recount of his duties, his mother bid him have a pleasant trip and to drive safely along the winding, unpredictable roads of Route 22. Luring Hoagie around the side of the car, Peter then opened the passenger side door and his loyal companion faithfully jumped into the passenger’s seat, making himself at home almost immediately. He shut the door, circumnavigated the car, and sat himself down behind the steering wheel. On top of the console, alongside the emergency brake lever, sat the lockbox that he so meticulously, though scarcely, packed. He reviewed the files and pictures within, and was reminded of an article over which he deliberated as to whether or not he ought to bring.

Fine. Fine! Peter thought to himself, If it is giving me this much grief, I ought to bring it. He rolled the window down a crack so that Hoagie would not be discomforted in the late summer summer sun, and hustled inside the house, up the stairs and towards his room. As he opened the door to the only bedroom he had known throughout his entire life, he was reminded of the time, some ten years ago, that struck him as supremely bizarre. He had heard of Aunt Marjorie, his mother’s derelict sister, hiding stashes of drugs in the light fixtures, under loose floor panels, inside heating grates, and other generally inconvenient places. For so long, he wondered why, if she was to go through the trouble of hiding herself from what she knows she will use ultimately to hurt herself, would she not just dispose of the harmful materials altogether. As Peter’s experiences in life matured and become less like mazes and more like spiderwebs, he began to sympathize with his deceased aunt. Though what he came to get was in a very inconvenient place, he knew exactly where it was, and he thought about it regularly: in the closet, all the way to the left in the left breast pocket of an old winter jacket, was his desired article. A picture of days long passed, he placed it gingerly in his pocket and headed back out to the car where Hoagie awaited.

He started up the car, and faithfully as ever it hummed up to speed. This neighborhood was a staple all his life; aside from a few neighbors’ alterations to their landscaping over the years, the streets always looked the same. Peter was fond of familiarity. Merging onto Route 22 about fifteen minutes into his drive, he was reveling in his opportunity to bathe in the late-afternoon sun, and to breathe the fresh air of the forests that now surrounded him in innumerable acreage.

This region of the country which Peter called home was experiencing the aftermath of an economic implosion of sorts. Where once had stood great foundries and breweries were now locales of ill-repute and danger. Some called it consumerism, some blamed it on the Chinese, some blamed the unions, and some withdrew from the discussion to await the Rapture. Peter himself was uncertain what it was that replaced jobs and families with hopelessness and fear, what put food stamps where there used to be a garden. What he thought he knew was that a college degree was a one-way ticket out of the mess that made the front page, and into a stratum where the most taxing decision was where to go on vacation.

Peter has found himself, just like many of his contemporaries, caught halfway between the tail-end of the prosperity into which he was born, and the haughty achievements for which he was born. Unfortunately for him, some abstract, nameless boundary was repressing him from achieving that icon of abundance which he had always been under the impression was eager to meet him along the road of labor and industry, as was the case with the generations preceding him.

In a culture that prided itself on jargon, Peter wasn’t quite sure how he could identify that which denied his generation its own manifest destiny. Interest rates… Collateralized Debt Obligation… Derivatives… Mutual Funds… Exchange rates… He was swamped and drowning in a flood of technical words with incomprehensible definitions. That the “Information Age” has become the “Disinformation Age,” or the “Over-Information Age,” was a rant he was too-ready to administer to any listening ear.

One term he was quite familiar with was “debt.” Debt, according to the dictionary, is when a person or party, a “debtor,” owes under contract a certain amount of money to another person or party, a “creditor,” usually plus interest. “Interest,” according to economics, is the cost of borrowing money, and is how creditors make a living. “Credit,” though it is a bit more abstract than the aforementioned terms, is the liability risk of a creditor to invest in a person or party. Peter acknowledged his indebtedness.

According to Peter, “debt” is the cost of making misinformed decisions at the behest of a cultural paradigm. “Interest” is the rate which a debtor’s life and prosperity become closer to serfdom. A “debtor” is a serf. “Creditor” is a person or party who commits legalized fraud in the name of acquiring serfs. “Credit” is, for lack of a more appropriate definition, a measure of a person’s value as a human being.

Peter had only partially lied to his mother; while it was true that he was going to be on Route 22, near Uncle Tim’s, and he may spend some time in the woods, such was not the main motivation behind his travels today. He had, in fact, discovered a solution to his debt problem! Driving along the mountain-skirting roads of Route 22, Peter could not imagine a more effective solution to his dilemma.

Hoagie began grooming himself; he didn’t much mind debt.