Shawn Huelle

Three Ton Coworker - A Coagulate

"I abandon the whole fucking enterprise, body weight, / work, money, health insurance, home improvement car / maintenance, relationships, f.u.c.k.i.t. give me to / bums, beggars, derelicts, down and outers," —Gordon Massman, "1477"

Someone, today, a man in his 50s with very tan legs and a tuft of white hair at his collar, handed me an eggplant in the grocery store. I put it in my basket, bought it, brought it home, let the dog sniff it, and then threw it away. I did not throw it in the compost. I do not think it would have been worth it.

As he was handing me the eggplant, I fantasized about grabbing that tuft of hair at his collar and yanking. I saddens me that both his shirt and his anger would have obscured from me the bloom of blood on his chest—the several small dots where his hair used to be—the tiny beads of dark red which would have coagulated and dried to an even darker red almost immediately. I would have carried those hairs all the way home. I would have put those hairs in the compost.

Last Saturday, as I was driving away from the unpainted furniture store. I caught a whiff through the car window of someone else's compost pile. The smell angered me. I beat the steering wheel while driving, and I did not pull the car over.

Then I turned on the radio. A voice said some letters, some numbers, and a song came on. It was not a song I had ever consciously heard before, but about halfway home, I found myself singing along with it. I liked it, but I can't remember the words now.

The man with the chest hair may have said something to me as he handed me the eggplant. In my memory, I can see his lips moving. What did he say? Or am I inventing his moving lips? Maybe he didn't say anything at all. Maybe he just moved his lips soundlessly. Maybe he said, Here is an eggplant; it's ripe.