Four Floors, Nine Lives

Fiction

The shout outside, short, loud, desperate, was either about meth or a missed bus.

Cal didn’t care, just knew he’d be embarrassed of the neighborhood when the woman arrived to interview him.

The calendar on the wall, the one they always gave at Mac’s Market, with pictures of home state sports heroes, held the square with the anniversary of the accident.

Cal didn’t highlight it, didn’t have to. He would swear to you he didn’t dwell on the date, but it was on his mind, like a loose bumper you promise yourself you’ll get fixed one day.

He liked his little apartment, first floor, no steps. Especially liked that no one was above him. Just a roof.

At the old place--Cal had lived a bunch of places, but the one where the accident happened was forever the “old place”--he hated the stairs, three floors of them, creaking, always faintly smelling of smoke and urine.

At the old place, he didn’t really know the woman who lived above him, just knew she had a cat because he could smell that sometimes, and about once a week some pine freshener she tried to mask the cat smell with.

He imagined the litter box was next to the vent that led to his living room, and he guessed that since the woman was old and frail she was always cold and never opened a window.

Cal had been grateful to his nephew for getting him a job at Performance Heat Treat, second shift, afternoons, and double grateful that Kerry had found him a place so close to work, block and a half, never be late. Back then he didn’t mind having anyone or anything above him.

A couple guys at Callahan’s kept saying they ought to shut Performance down, said OSHA was paid off, called it Poor-formance.

Those guys didn’t have much to back it up with, he thought, didn’t know much about the business, he was just a Hi-Lo driver. He grabbed stuff and moved it from one place to another, color and letter coded, easy, just the rumble of the seat under him as he drove from one end of the plant to another.

He might have been dreaming that he was on his Hi-Lo that morning, the morning of the accident, because he remembered the rumble, the shake, the hum, but then a hiss and a roar and he was falling, like he had fallen in dreams dozens of times, but this time he hit his head and it was real.

The blood was real, it flooded his left eye, and the dust, holy mother of the devil, the dust was ungodly and thick and felt more than it tasted, like his aunt washing his mouth out with sandpaper instead of soap.

There was light, thank the heavens, swords of it poking in at odd angles, but welcome angles.

Performance had blown up. He knew it. They were in a plains state with no earthquakes, they weren’t near an airport.

The guys at Callahan’s, the guys he ignored, were right, and he’d buy them a beer if he ever got out of here, as he watch concrete and rebar slowly slide like a kid playing with spaghetti and meatballs on an angled plate.

The sirens were the most deafening gift he had ever gotten. 

Someone knew, but of course they did, the whole building was demolished, eight crappy apartments turned into a monster movie set, and he was inside it.

The dust hung until it hurt his eyes, well his right eye, anyway, the left one was covered in blood and bloody hair and his left arm was pinned.

He had tried to reach with his right…

Standing in his kitchen in his little west side apartment, right now, years later, he flexed his elbow at the memory, dangling concrete and brick and chunks of underlayment preventing his right arm from reaching.

Cal heard voices, firefighters probably, somebody who sounded clearheaded and helpful and confident, though their words were hard to decipher.

He heard moans sometimes or thought he did. Maybe it was the wreckage settling.

More lights shone in, electric ones, high powered, slipping through cracks like a rock concert in a corn maze.

Everything hurt and nothing hurt, because adrenaline and something close to almost... joy swirled inside him. He was alive, he could breathe through sandpapery air, and he could move, at least partially.

Hours later, a claustrophobia Cal didn’t have before began to taunt him.

He shifted nervously, and dust cascaded.

In his little apartment, the one he would clean up before the anniversary interview, he cracked a window open.

The meth voices outside got a little louder but he loved the air and welcomed it.

When the claustrophobia had become his cellmate, he glanced around. There was no way he could get himself out. The knowledge was more blessing than curse.

The crew with the sirens and lights would rescue him. Hell, people had rescued miners buried deeper than him before, he knew that.

But he couldn’t help but shift. Just a little, here and there. And once, when his right leg moved, he heard a noise he could not identify.

It was a piece of plastic, hard plastic under his right knee. His did not belong to him, or to any structure he knew of.

He slipped it free, giving his leg more room.

A cat toy. 

A plastic circle with a ball embedded in it, surrounding a cardboard scratching pad.

Cal had heard shouts and sirens and moans, but he had not heard any cat noises.

He pushed the ball with his middle finger, flicking toward himself

The ball spun and rolled.

He laughed. The movement kicked up very little dust.

He flicked again, the ball rolled.

When he had driven the Hi-Lo in a building he knew --he was certain--no longer existed, he told himself not to count the loads. Just enjoy the ride, Cal, he told himself, move the loads from one side to another.

Blue C full, picking up Green B empty. Don’t count them Cal, just move them or it will drive you crazy.

He spun the little cat ball, don’t count the spins Cal, it will drive you crazy. They’re going to rescue you. Just keep spinning the ball.

He spun the ball to ignore the pain, he spun the ball to chase the claustrophobia.

He even scratched at the cardboard grid in the middle.

More lights had appeared through the groans of machinery, and he spun the ball in better light.

Then, they had called his name, his full name.

He didn’t answer at first because he thought he might be hallucinating.

Then they called again, Calvin Michael Pistrowski, and in his stupor, he had almost answered “present.”

When he realized it was real he screamed  “I’m here I’m here I’m here”, though he wasn’t sure where here was, exactly, but he was alive, and he spun the ball on the cat toy in triumph.

There were more lights now, and the scrapes and groans of concrete and brick and chunks of porcelain and lives.

And past him, two of his own body lengths away from him was a baseball book his mother had given him for Christmas, partially on top of the body of a short-haired orange cat.

Someone shouted, “Carol Marie, get me a Tahitian Treat with the change.”

Cal paused.

He had been in full flashback and the neighbor’s shout brought him out of it.

Cal opened the fridge and got a pitcher of tea, drank right from the pitcher, and put it back on the shelf.

He walked into his living room, glancing at the ceiling and feeling grateful no one was above him.

Cars turned left and their running lights darted through the windows into the house, like the helmet lights of the rescue crew.

A paramedic had tried to take the cat toy from him. Cal’s right fist had clenched like the beak of a raptor on a rodent, and he saw an older firefighter shake his head. Let him.

They placed an oxygen mask on him and strapped him to a back board and still he gripped that cat toy.

There were more lights now, and he was in the natural twilight, and some of the lights were news cameras and people applauded.

No one had ever applauded for an adult Calvin Michael Pistrowski and he wasn’t sure why they were doing it now.

 Firefighters shouted and one of them pushed a cameraman and then suddenly there was the neighbor lady. Cal didn’t know her name. It was on her mailbox but her mailbox was gone now.

He looked at her and he didn’t know how she knew, but she did. He released the spinning toy. It fell at the woman’s feet.

By the time he got to Good Shepherd Medical Center, the old woman’s eyes were all he could see.

Someone else shouted outside. Calvin let the old woman’s eyes drift away.

The interview wouldn’t be for days, but Calvin started tidying up his apartment. He threw a sock in a hamper and pulled a glass off the shelf with the wrestling DVDs.  Then he picked up his cat toy, the first thing he had purchased after the hospital, years ago and sat down on the couch.

He spun the ball with his right middle finger, scratched an itch where his ear used to be, just mangled cartilage and one graft that a Callahan’s pool tournament had paid for.

Don’t count the spins, Cal, it will drive you crazy.

He saw the old woman’s eyes, looked up at the ceiling, no one, nothing but wood and plaster and shingles above him.

He flicked the ball in a circle again, scratched at the cardboard center, and promised himself that one day he’d have the courage to adopt a cat.

***

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