A Fentanyl Tree

A Fentanyl Tree

This guy’s stumbling this direction. He’s got his neck screwed, forehead to his chest, but he’s managing to stay upright. Typical on this corner, a zombie-looking husk falling forward a few inches at a time, guided by instinct. It’s like… if a walk was a dialect. Lets you know what side of town you’re on.

This guy’s got one foot with an old shoe on it and one foot with only half a shoe, and his foot is sticking out of it and he’s only got three toes on that foot. He smells like garbage, I can smell him from over here. Not that I’m a rose.

I’m cross-legged on the ground in my pale jeans and my beanie with my hoodie pulled over, and I was here first, a long time. Some people don’t want to respect your space. I’m hunkered down at the edge of the sidewalk where it meets the grass. There’s a telephone pole to lean up against. Behind me, there’s a gas station. There’s always traffic, and it’s fruitful putting a cup out here, some days.

Across the busy highway, in an abandoned lot, there’s a tree growing. I never learned all the types of trees. I know oak and pine, but this isn’t one of those. It’s a squat thing, bet in the Summer it puts out some shade. There’s some cardboard pieces underneath it, scraps someone left, and empty bottles. And up high, there’s a sweatshirt tangled in the branches, flapping rhythmically. Makes a little jam with the traffic, something to rock to, back and forth. Perfectly good sweatshirt. When I get woke up, I’m going to go over and get it.

Some crazy bastards want to fight you for your spot on the ground. This chick’s all messed up, I can’t even understand what she’s saying. There’s intention for this being my corner. One reason so many junkies die out here’s they hide behind a dumpster or some dark place out of shame and they overdose and no one sees them turning blue and purple. I’m not ashamed. This world made me. I’ll look it square in the face. 

A thousand cars a day stop at the traffic light. As many people pretend not to see me out of the corner of their vision. But their children stare, out the back windows. Soak it in, kid.

Shelters force you out at daybreak. Coffee, biscuit, and a shove in the back. I don’t care how I got here or how long ago. Sun goes down, sun comes up. Life’s more blackout than existence. The new designer drugs, it used to be the sickness didn’t come on till after a day, but now it’s down to a few hours. You get your hit or you feel like you die. Someone said the supply out of Cambodia’s laced with smart-virus and nanobots. They use it to harvest our Chi. Probably bullshit, but sounds about right.

You put fire to the tin-foil and take a hit and pass out sometimes before you’ve exhaled. Best you ever feel is not longing. Everyone here has long forgotten what feeling “good” feels like. And you wake up robbed sometimes. Someone stole my knife I had. How are you supposed to protect yourself without your knife? It’s a joke.

I notice the arms of the sweatshirt in the tree across the highway looks like they’re waving. I’m going to go get it. It’s blue. It’s perfectly good clothes and people want to waste. I’ll dodge traffic and scamper across the street. I’ll pull myself up on a low limb, climb up high, and snag the sweatshirt and bring it down and give it to someone who needs it. There are plenty of people can use some clothes, and there ain’t a thing wrong with it I can see.

I should eat. The thought of food is repulsive, food tastes like paste, and sometimes it doesn’t stay down, worse than not having eaten at all. Later then, some broth if there’s some broth.

The highway is six lanes wide, counting the turn lanes. Last week, I think it was last week, I saw a bus smash into some poor kid. An ambulance came, and two cops, and a fire truck, but the fire truck left pretty quick. That was somebody’s son, covered up for a couple hours dead cold in an intersection.

I have a son, Gerald. He joined the Navy, that was years ago, he showed up in a dream the other day, and he was doing good. That boy had light in his veins, and if he was here right now, I’d tell him I was proud of him. “Your old man is proud of you, son.” Every son should hear his father say he’s proud, so there’s no wondering about it later.

At my job, I used to fire people. Now I can yell and people still don’t pay attention. Blue sweatshirt on a branch in the breeze, I was going to get that down. Was that yesterday? 

Some woman came with socks for everybody, that was good, there’s a few good people in the world, but not many. I’m going to ask her if she comes back what kind of tree that is. I’m going to march across the street and call the tree by her name. I’m going to climb up and look down at everybody like a bird. In a little while.

A steady stream of cars and trucks wheels in and out of the gas station. If you listen, you can hear clicks and pops from under their hoods, and drip-drops as oil leaks onto the pavement. At night it rains, and that oil washes downhill onto the berm beside the sidewalk, mixes with dirt where dogs have relieved themselves, see? And that sludge flows into the cracks in the concrete. 

The sun comes up, goes down, comes up. I’ve sat rocking in place a lifetime on just this patch of exhaust and drainage. See there? In a crack in a gray square of concrete, a little green tendril is pressing up from that crusted cake of filth and feces like a majestic middle finger.

Neil Oldman for the Daydream Misfit blog

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