Matt Love

The Writer opened the door to the room and set the leaf bag down. The girls bolted inside and dived on the two queen-size beds. The woman followed, unpeeled her backpack, cranked up the heat, and inspected the room. He’d booked the largest one, a suite, with a kitchenette, couch, a huge television screen mounted on a wall.

“I can’t wait to take a shower, a long hot one,” she said.

It was the first sentence she’d initiated with him.

“How about we go to the store and get some things, and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Okay,” she said. “’Girls, we’re going to the store.”

They girls burst into glee and scrambled off the beds.

Tinny Christmas music emanated from a speaker mounted over the entrance to the store. Inside, a clerk, an elderly woman wearing angel wings and a halo stood behind the counter barking out sales transactions and wishes of Merry Christmas to a line of the finest weird-looking holiday-attired miscreants assembled south of the North Pole. The clerk was assisted by a young man wearing a Grinch costume. Grinch served up corndogs, nachos and Upton Sinclair nuggets and ran the Lotto tickets and overhead cigarette bin.

It occurred to the Writer that not a single person in the store had driven a vehicle there because no vehicles were in the parking lot. How they got there and where they might be going on Christmas Eve in an ice storm dumbfounded him. Who were these people? He’d never seen them before but now they surrounded him.

Before venturing into the aisles, the Writer huddled together with the woman and girls and rattled off the game plan. He was making it up like a schoolboy drawing up a football play on a sandlot field. Invariably those plays called for the bomb, the long pass, the touchdown. They rarely worked. What always worked were short passes to move the ball down the field. Nothing flashy. Just consistent attention to detail.

The play the Writer drew up went something like this: you each get one of the carry baskets and have ten minutes to fill them with anything you want in the store (Mom gets final say, of course). Then you head back to the room and celebrate Christmas Eve.

The girls looked at each other, eyes like full blue moons, smiled, screamed, hugged. The woman brought over the baskets as the girls celebrated. She hadn’t said a word during the play call.

“You can only have as much as you can carry,” she said to the girls, “because that’s all you need.”

The Writer heard the words. They drilled into him. He picked up a basket, too. He couldn’t wait to get to it!

The Writer returned to the center. It was practically deserted. The woman was drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, and the girls were eating chips and watching a Christmas cartoon on television. She had changed the station. Just like that. Just got up and changed hate to joy with a push of a button. The world can work like that too, sometimes.

A sticky heat rushed up inside the Writer. He walked up to the counter and the man came over.

“I want to buy tires for that woman sitting over there,” he said gesturing. “The best you have. It can wait until after the ice storm but I’ll pay for it now.. She’s going to leave the Honda here until the day after Christmas.”

He fished out his wallet and produced a credit card.

The counter man shot him an odd, smirking look, a “you sucker” look. Then he rattled off some holiday all-weather specials and the transaction was completed.

A chorus of giggles emanated from behind the Writer. He checked its source: the girls were laughing at something on television. He began walking over and the woman saw him and stood up to meet him. The hood was off and all her hair was coiled over her right shoulder.

“I bought you some new tires for Christmas. They’ll put them on when the shop reopens and then you can hit the road,” he said.

She hesitated, then said, “Thanks. I’m obliged.” A cracked smile formed at the edges of her mouth.

The Writer still didn’t get that word. He vaguely recalled a poem by Pablo Neruda called “The Poet’s Obligation,” where the poet boldly announces his noble obligation to serve distressed humans by helping them hear the old, stirring sound of the ocean. It was the poet’s “destiny” to do so. It was such a heroic metaphor and absolutely worthless in a moment of crisis. The Writer wondered if Neruda was a phony. If every single writer alive was a phony.

“I have an idea,” said the Writer.

But really, he didn’t. He just improvised. And it went something like this: I’ll pay for three nights in the motel for you and the girls. I’ll buy you a phone at the convenience store and put a hundred minutes on it. I’ll give you some cash to buy some food. I can check on you later if you want or you never have to hear from me again.

She listened without expression and that unnerved the Writer. Was she capable of expression? Was she supposed to act a certain way?

He finished.

“Okay,” she said. She accepted his offer without expression. Was she supposed to act a certain way?

She left him, gathered up the girls, and explained to them they were leaving.

He watched her and thought: She’ll trash the room and run up a huge bill on his card. She’ll meet some meth head at the convenience store and they’llshoot up in front of the kids while watching Frosty the Snowman. She’ll steal. She’ll text him asking for more money.

He stopped himself. He remembered something his mother taught him long ago. She did more than teach him the lesson with words. She modeled it until the day she died.

Give without expectation of reward. You might get burned, You might save someone’s life. You’ll probably never know what transpires when you give. You just give.

Writing isn’t giving. Giving is giving.

A few minutes later, the woman and girls caried a few bundled possessions they’d scavenged from the Honda and struggled across the icy parking lot to the motel. The Writer brought up the rear and toted a black leaf bag full of clothing and blankets over his shoulder. It was all very Santa-like if Santa had shifted his priority to the homeless, as he well should.

The Writer stopped in front of the pile.

“Miss, are you okay?”

Nothing. He waited. On TV, a Fox News blowhard said Democrats trucked with the Devil.

“Can I help you?”

He surprised himself by saying it. He hadn’t asked the question in…years? Ever?

The woman arched and pulled the hood tight around her head, smashing red hair to both sides of her face. The Writer noticed a tattoo of a cobweb on her neck that trailed down her sternum and disappeared.

“I need new tires and don’t got no money. I just came in to get a flat fixed but they wouldn’t fix it.”

She was crying out the words in almost a whisper from the floor of the tire center. The girls never moved.

“Why?” said the Writer.

“They said it was too dangerous. The tire was too worn. All of them are.”

“Let me take a look. Where’s the car?”

What? The Writer didn’t know anything about tires! He surprised himself with his pretense of tire knowledge, but recognized he had to do something.

“It’s right out the door in the handicapped spot. The green Honda,” she said.

He headed for the door but turned around.

“C’mon let’s get you up to the chairs. The girls, too.”

He held out his hand. She took it and he winched her up. She whispered something to the girls and the pile lumbered to the chairs.

“There’s coffee,” said the Writer. He dug into his wallet for a few dollars and gave them to the woman.

“These are for the vending machine, for you and the girls.”

“Thanks. Much obliged.” She withdrew the hood when she spoke.

Obliged? He hadn’t heard the word used in years, if ever. It was certainly out of favor in American speech. It sounded strange, but not unpleasant. He thought about what the verb oblige really meant.

“I’m Stephen,” he said.

“I’m Calista.”

She said her name without intonation.

They shook hands. She barely exerted grip. One of the girls shrieked and she let go of his hand and turned around sharply to attend. As she turned, he heard cracking and it seemed as if her body might snap in half.

A crackling announcement came over the PA: The center will close in one hour because of freezing rain. Only vehicles still being serviced in the bays will have repairs completed. Everyone else should leave and drive safely. The center will reopen the day after Christmas.

A collective groan rose up from the customers. Some bolted to the counter. Others left.

The woman eased around and faced the Writer. Her face had registered the announcement. “I don’t have nowhere to go,” she said.

Her eyes met the Writer’s eyes. He couldn’t read an atom of nuance in them. There wasn’t a hint of a suggestion of an inner life within her that the Writer could detect but what did he know about a woman like this in such a precarious situation. Can a marginalized American have an inner life while struggling to survive? Surely, they need one. Don’t we all?

He walked over to her. “Where were you going?” he said. His curiosity jolted him. He had forgotten the last time he was genuinely curious about something directly in front of him. Was he ever curious about such matters? Was he truly curious about anything outside of the need to access the Internet to craft an essay that would reveal what a profoundly curious person he was.

She delayed in responding. “I was driving north and left Coos Bay this morning. I used to know some people in Tillamook but I don’t know if they still live there. Shit.”

“Can you call them?”

“I don’t have no phone.”

He almost asked about her family, but caught himself. He didn’t want her to have to explain the absence. Sometimes, too deep a dive into backstory undermines the ability to move forward. That’s not what the therapists say, but then again, they say those things for money in an office and not a tire center on a freezing night.

She slumped down on the floor. The girls came over and they formed the pile.

“Let me go check the car,” said the Writer.

What he really wanted to do was check himself. He didn’t know what to do. It would all be so simple if he could sit down and write up an ending where it all turned out well, or at least poignant. They call it fiction for a reason.

The Writer walked to the door. He stepped outside and almost lost his balance. Freezing rain stung his face. Everything looked sheathed in glass.

A vibration in the pocket of his Western shirt alerted him to an incoming text message. He pulled out the phone and read that his Yoga girlfriend wasn’t coming. The Coast Range was impassible. They could Skype later and wish each other Merry Christmas.

He didn’t respond and stashed the phone. He saw the Honda: scratched, sagging, passenger side window covered in cardboard and duct-taped to the frame. It was coated with ice and he could barely see through the window, but could see enough clothing, blankets and pillows crammed inside to know they were living out of of the car. It was a familiar sight along 101 these days, with men and women of all ages and makes of vehicles, but it was the first time he’d noticed, although he had written some blurb about noticing the homeless for a special edition of an Oregon humanities magazine that appealed to less than half a percent of the Oregon population.

The right rear tire was flat, flatter than he’d ever seen a tire. He slid toward the vehicle and braced himself against its side. He inspected the front tire and it wasn’t really a tire, just strands of fraying steel and rubber that somehow clung to the rim.

A siren wailed in the distance. He glanced at Highway 101 and saw vehicles inching their way forward. A few had been abandoned in the shoulders. Customers were leaving the parking lot. The sky was darkening with almost hostile speed.

The Writer looked up from the Honda and surveyed the immediate area. The Shore Pine Motel was adjacent to the center. On the other side stood Ocean Quik Mart, a convenience store. Both appeared open. Both had holiday displays twinkling as distress beacons. Both had gulls on the roof, angled into the sheeting ice.

He had to act—now—and that meant doing something other than phony writing and calling that action, like the city poet who composes a poem about the obscenity of clearcutting (yet has never stepped foot in a clearcut) and concludes her outrage over clearcutting with a single fake poem.