Jack

wake

An ordinary day; a slow day; a goddamned Tuesday and this Tuesday Melantha has picked up an extra shift. The lunch rush is well-over and the evening has not yet started and the tables are cleared and there's what, two tables lingering over some in-between sort of meal, requiring nothing more than occasional refills of draft beer and iced tea.

There's work, there's always work. Silverware to be rolled and stations to be cleaned. Ketchup bottles and salt cellars to be filled and cleaned and refilled, ice to be churned and coolers to be cleaned but it is slow take-a-smoke-break work grab-a-refill-work, slide-in-to-the-stool-at-the-register-work and watch the street visible through the front doors.

When the front doors open.

A young woman, sunblind, blinking in the darkness, takes a moment just inside to let her eyes adjust. Walks up to the counter, a reuseable bag in her right hand.

"Hi," to Melantha, " - uhm. Can I talk to the manager?"

She could, perhaps, if she waits. The manager's on a bank run.

Melantha

Melantha is worn out. She works fast, in comfortable sneakers and jeans that are a little looser than they were a couple of weeks ago and a belt that is a bit tighter and her 'uniform' t-shirt. Overhead around the stage there are bras hanging, which always makes her mad, but she figures one day she'll just steal a bunch on her way out of this job and burn them in front of the saloon or something. Mostly she tries to ignore them. She's tired.

The dreams tire her out. Work tires her out. Sometimes she and Erich go pretend-camping in her Jeep and that tires her out but it's a much better tired-out than the dreams or the work. She is filling salt shakers at a table off to the side since it's slow, but she looks up when someone enters, glances around, notices no one is at the counter.

She starts to say Welcome to -- but stops, when the woman speaks. Asks what she does.

Melantha, eyes dark-ringed, gives a tiny wince. "Sorry," she says, shaking her head. "The manager stepped out for a few. She should be back, if you want to wait, or maybe I can try and help you."

wake

"Sure, uhm," the young woman is perhaps not as worn-out as Melantha, but there is a sort of wearing written into the lines of her body and the shadows of her face. The dim light does her some favors but when she turns and is illuminated by a shaft of sunlight from the sweeping arc of the door opening into the saloon the wear is evident.

It is made from care.

And something about her seems apologetic and rote, two things in confluence, not opposition. She is winding herself up and winching herself away from some question she has asked so often and so regularly, which still - somehow - so often seems such an imposition.

"I don't know your policy on this but I was wondering if you would put out a collection jar for a week or two or a month. My cousin? I know it sounds scammy but I brought clippings about it. We have a sign and stuff that we put up, and you can confirm that everything's legit with the Gold State Bank branch in Breckenridge."

There are tears in her eyes.

"I know I'm terrible about explaining it but - "

She's sliding a picture of a boy across the counter.

Blue eyes, blond hair. Smaller than you'd think. Smiling at the camera, the sun in his eyes. She takes in a deep breath, exhales it, managing not to shudder. That's good, that's good. That's so very good.

"His parents were killed in a house fire last - last year. He's still in a coma. We're just trying to raise money for some of the co-pays and some extra therapies that Medicaid won't cover. They're experimental or something. Anyway, we just leave the box out for a couple of weeks. You can send whatever comes in straight to the bank.

"I'm sure you get lots of requests like these so - "

Melantha

Her first thought, instant and perhaps uncharitable, is that this is yet another woman who apologizes for existing. It's not exactly unusual, in Melantha's experience, but she never ceases to find herself somewhat annoyed by it.

She doesn't let it show, because she doesn't want to be an asshole, and tips her head as the woman goes on. A collection jar? Her cousin?? 'It' doesn't sound scammy in part because at that point Melantha has no clue what she's talking about. By the time the woman starts to tear up, Melantha is frowning, a tight little furrow to her brow that makes her lips actually pout a bit by habit and simply the way her facial muscles work.

At first, she doesn't look down at the picture. She looks at the woman, whose cousin's parents died in a fire. Melantha almost flinches, and her face pinches, and she has to fight some tears of her own -- they are coming suddenly these days, unwanted and nonsensical. He's in a coma.

Melantha looks down at the picture and the pinch leaves her features. She stares. She reaches and lifts up the boy's photo, and the woman's voice becomes nothing but a dim buzz for a few seconds, tears or no tears. Melantha finds she is not breathing, then exhales in a long, slow sigh.

He's in a coma.

"Not a lot," she says quietly, regarding the last thing the woman says. She's frowning at the picture of the boy, then looks at the woman. "What's his name?"

wake

"I mean, you see them everywhere, you know. Some animal shelter or a kid with cancer or a family that lost everything in a fire or a Sunday school teacher without insurance. You know? The March of Dimes. These boxes full of quarters.

"Triton." The other woman says, relaxing into a breath that sounds like a long and slow unwinding. Like something somewhere inside being loosened. Like the relaxation of a too-tight vise. She smiles at the edge of it too, not a full smile but the sort of smile that comes tightly tinctured with tears but the ones in her eyes stay in her eyes and the laugh deepens.

"Triton Galax Johnson. We called him Jack, though."

Easy to see why. Triton's a ridiculous name.

Melantha

Triton.

Galax.

Johnson.

Oh, sweet Christ. Melantha looks the way most people look when they hear that name laid out. There's no part of it that isn't a bit horrifying. That poor kid. Even without being orphaned and in a coma, that poor kid.

But then she remembers: he was orphaned. She was orphaned, too. Fire came into play in both their lives. She got out. He never woke up. Melantha blinks rapidly, sighing, looking down at the photo again. "What about that experimental stuff you mentioned?" she asks. "Like. What is it? A drug, or what?"

wake

"It's like, adventure therapy. Sorry, that's not the proper term. But see, they'd take him out to the baseball stadium or the zoo. Horseback riding. He has to be hooked up to all that shit, the monitors, and have attendants and all that, which is why it costs so much.

"So it's just like. Taking him out of the long-term care facility. Getting him exposed to things that might... pull him back from wherever he is.

"Anyway," a quick and narrow shrug, she probably is one of those women who is always apologizing for the space she takes up in the world. "Medicaid says it is experimental and we couldn't afford to COBRA his dad's insurance when it ran out. So yeah. Boxes.

"That has all the information though, references and everything. I can leave it so your manager has the chance to look at it and swing by later, if it's a no."

Melantha

Melantha is staring at her, and at the photo. She nods dumbly. She doesn't want to ask too many more questions. She feels her heart pounding in her chest. She exhales and just nods, and nods, and swallows hard.

"Yeah, totally, it's... I'll just like put it out and... can you leave your number or something?"

wake

"Sure, absolutely. " This quick smile, small but genuine. The sense of weight, lifting. The brief erasure of a burden she will soon have to assume again, and yet:

sometimes that is all one needs. Respite of some sort, no matter how brief.

Her name is Ann. Ann Johnson, and she leaves her name behind and a number scrawled on a napkin and the box with its picture of a smiling boy, blond-haired, blue-eyed, being held up to the camera by a white woman with a full set of hippie dreadlocks, what looks like a small, mountain-high A-frame beyond her, both laughing, delighted. She leaves behind clippings about the tragedy and the name and number of several references, the bank branch, everything.

She leaves, and the slow afternoon continues.

There is still salt to be poured.