The strut — no, what’s it called? — the ring, the rung, though maybe also the strut, or even the crosspiece, beneath my bottom foot feels loose. I climb a step higher and the next strut, rung or crosspiece is loose, so now both feet are on loose crosspieces, I’ll say. I climb a step higher and that one splits in two, so now one foot’s on a loose crosspiece and the other’s dangling in the air. I’m twenty feet up and have about fifteen feet to go and the crosspiece in my top hand is loose too. I climb a step higher and the crosspiece above the broken crosspiece splits in two and the next crosspiece my top hand grabs is loose, so now I’m dangling there, two feet in the air, hands holding on to two loose crosspieces I’m sure are going to split, and I don’t know what to do.
“Help, please, the ladder crosspieces are breaking or coming loose,” and someone yells “Hey, what’s happening down there? We know you’ve a bad ankle or two, even a broken one, but we got to get down our side of this thing one of these days too.”
“Do something, I’m about to fall,” and one of them says “Fall?
From where you are? You’ll be hurt. Look, you’ve fewer feet to climb up than down, so I’d advise, and I think I can say this for everyone here — yes, they’re all saying I can — that you just come on a coming, because there’s nothing else we can do for you now.”
“You can quickly pull the ladder up,” and one of them says “Okay, good idea, that’s what we’ll do, that’s really thinking, sorry we didn’t come up with the idea ourselves,” when the crosspieces I’m holding split in two and I fall to the ground, my feet breaking every crosspiece along the way.
“Hey down there, how do you feel?”
I’m lying on the ground, hurting all over, and for all I know I was out for a few seconds or even minutes.
“Hey, hello down there, I said how do you feel? Any broken bones? You alive? Answer us. Anything we can do?”
“I think I definitely broke a foot this time and I think also my arm which I landed on. Yeah, it’s limp, won’t move. What kind of ladder did you give me?”
“The best kind,” and I say “If it was the best it would’ve had secure crosspieces or rungs or whatever you call those damn bars.”
“Both will do. In fact, all three are good. And they were secure till you started going through them. How much you say you weigh? Less than two hundred? Don’t try to fool us. Anyway, you can’t do anything. Okay, you followed our directions and got yourself out here, but what have you done since? You can’t scale a wall on your own. You don’t know how to use a rope. We give you a perfectly good rope ladder a child could climb, a person twice or even three times your age could climb—”
“Nobody could be three times my age. And anyone twice my age who could climb it would have to be in extraordinary shape and have a ladder whose bars are strong. But the bars on my ladder were weak, once I got up around twenty-five feet—”
“Twenty at the most. Don’t exaggerate.”
“Twenty then. But after I got up that high, all the bars were either very loose or splitting the second I stepped on them, and I didn’t step on them hard, nor pull on them hard either. That ladder was defective.”
“If it wasn’t, it certainly is now. Look, I’m sorry, we like you and you’re a nice guy and all that — sincere too, which I think is what we said in our invite to you. And you come with good recommendations, though maybe in the future we’ll have to check everyone’s recommendations a little deeper, seeing what yours came to. But it just doesn’t seem you really want to be in here.”
“What are you talking about — I do.”
“You still do?” and I say “Sure, why not? I heard great things about the place, and it’d be a terrific achievement for me and I think a big improvement over what I have now. So yes, I absolutely still do.”
“Okay, then you’re in. We only wanted to see how much you’d take before you quit. But it doesn’t seem anything’s going to break you, which is just the kind of material we want and need, so come on in. Door into here might look like part of the wall from where you are. But if you look close about ten feet to your left, you’ll see it and a latch to pull, which will let you in easier than any other way. Congratulations.”
“You mean it?” and one of them says “Mean every word we just said,” and I say “Why thanks,” I get up, fall, my right foot is useless for the time being, and I say “You sure you have someone to fix a broken, or if that seems like an exaggeration, then a badly sprained foot and arm?” and someone says “Everything, just like we said. We have every kind of doctor and profession and healing art and all the other disciplines and arts and whatever you want and the very very best. But show us again how much you want to come in, by not having us come out to get you, though if you’re really that hurt, we will.”
“I’ll show you, don’t you worry,” and I crawl to the place they said the door was, but don’t see any outline of one or a latch. “Say, you said ten or so feet to my left, correct? So I’m here, looking at nine and eleven feet to my left also, and I don’t see any kind of anything that looks like a door or a latch, handle, lever, button or whatever it might be to open it.”
Nobody answers. I can’t see anyone on top, maybe because I’m so close to the wall, and I say “Any of you still up there?” Nobody answers. I crawl around, cover every inch of the wall I can see from one to twenty feet to the left and right from where I fell, but always crawling because of my broken foot, and I’m sure it’s broken. Crawling’s made even more difficult because of what I’m also sure is a broken arm, but there’s no latch, door seam, nothing but a wall.
“Say, I don’t see anything resembling what you said would be here, so give me some more instructions how to get in, though don’t forget to take into consideration my bad foot and arm.”
I yell and look for another half-hour. By this time it’s dark. I wouldn’t try to make it to the road to get the bus back the way I am, so I just sit against the wall, roll down the sleeves of my sweater and shirt, and to help keep out the cold, roll my socks up far as they’ll go and button the top shirt button and buttons of my shirt cuffs. In the morning I should probably be rested and strong enough to not only yell to those people inside what I think of them, but to limp or just crawl to the bus stop.
The Package Store
Larry said “Rose, listen, I’ve decided, something very important — we have to get out of the store. We can’t take it anymore. For once we have to do something like this for ourselves.”
Rose said “Go back to sleep. It’s too early. It’s still dark. The birds aren’t even chirping. I’m not kidding, Larry. I’m too tired to talk.”
“Okay, but tomorrow we’ll have to talk about it. Today — later this morning I mean. We have to get out of that store. Sell it for what we can get. Hopefully we can sell it for something high. The price. I’m also confused now because I’m sleepy, but you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. But you can’t be sleepier than I. You woke me up. Worse, you’re keeping me up. Sell it for high, sell it for low — right now I don’t care but I’m sure tomorrow I will. But that’s it for now — no poking me awake again — all right?”