By Dwayne Phillips
Short Story 2008-28, July 10, 2008
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1 PM Saturday, August
Karl squinted as he looked towards the sun at the book case on his patio. A bead of perspiration rolled down his forehead, between his eye brows and into his right eye. "That hurts," mumbled Karl as he turned away from the sun. "Should have started sooner." Karl stood, opened the sliding glass door, and entered the main room of his vinyl-sided, four bedroom home in suburbia.
"I should have started sooner," repeated Karl.
"Maybe so dear," answered his wife Sheila from the kitchen. "But take it easy a minute or two. We had a big night last night with the twins' birthday party and all. You have a good reason to be where you are at this time. All you have to do..."
Karl didn't hear the rest. He was running water in the kitchen sink and burying his face into his hands that were full of water. The water was cool and Karl could taste the salt from his perspiration. Karl grabbed several paper towels and dabbed them on his face.
"The bookcase is ready to be varnished. I'm done sanding."
"There is plenty of that on the shelf in the garage dear," added Sheila.
"Okay, I know where that is, the same place we put it away last fall, right?"
"Yes dear, the same place," answered Sheila.
The garage was only a few steps from the kitchen sink. Karl opened the door to it and stopped. Karl couldn't see the wooden shelves at the back of the garage. Cardboard boxes, four bicycles, a seed spreader, two chain-saws, and the assorted things that constitute middle-class American suburbia blocked Karl's view.
Time stood still. Karl didn't move; he didn't say anything; he didn't breath for what seemed like a day. Another drop of perspiration from the heat of the garage rolled off Karl's shaved head and down his temple. "Sheila," started Karl, "how am I going to..."
"What is it Karl?" asked Sheila as she entered and crossed the kitchen.
Sheila continued through the door separating the kitchen and the garage walking past Karl without saying anything more. She stepped over toys from the children's early years, wiggled between boxes, bumped the bicycles (two of the four fell over), and reached the wooden shelves against the back wall of the garage. Then she disappeared from Karl's view as she bent over to reach something on the lowest shelf.
"Here you go," said Sheila as she rose back into view. In her right hand she held a gallon paint can and in her left a dusty brush and a dirty wooden stir stick. Sheila wiggled her way back through the rubble of the garage to Karl. He remained still in the doorway standing in disbelief and mild disappointment. He would have rather gone to the hardware store and bought a new can of varnish. He preferred working with new materials than old, but Sheila considered that too wasteful and he had enough problems this day.
It took half an hour for Karl to start applying varnish to the bookcases. The lid was practically glued to the can. Karl broke the tip from one screwdriver and pounded another screwdriver through can before prying, tearing, and ripping the lid away. Stirring required ten minutes by itself.
Karl should have mixed some thinner to the can. He went back to the garage and tried in vain to find a gallon can that he knew was there. He found himself crawling on his hands and knees under cardboard boxes before he relented.
Now he was sitting in the afternoon sun on the patio carefully applying a varnish that was too thick with a brush whose bristles were worn too short. "There must be a better brush in the garage," mumbled Karl at least twice every minute. "But I'm not going back in that garage. No way I'm going back in that garage."
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3:30 PM
Karl sat on the one concrete step leading from the patio up into his house. The step afforded a small bit of shade at this time of day. Karl would have gone into the house, but his hands were sticky with varnish. He rested his forearms on his knees and held his hands out from him with his fingers spread wide so the varnish wouldn't glue them together.
Beads of perspiration rolled off his forehead soaking his eyebrows. Karl twitched his head several times a minute trying to shake the salty and dirty liquid from his face before it went into his eyes. He tried to dab his face onto the soaked sleeves of his red t-shirt.
"Done for the day," thought Karl. "This was a big enough mess for a weekend let alone an afternoon. Time for a shower and a nap."
Karl rose and was about to slide open the glass door. Sheila was there first and opened the door from the inside.
"That looks great Karl."
Sheila stepped outside and walked around the freshly varnished bookcase taking care not to step on the newspapers on which it rested.
"It won't stick to the newspaper, will it?"
"I don't think so. I was careful to move it about and place little wooden Popsicle sticks under it at the right time. It should be just right."
Sheila didn't hear Karl's answer. She had left the patio and was in the middle of the back yard some 20 feet away.
"I think I'm done for the day," said Karl. He saw that Sheila didn't hear him, so he raised his voice and stood. "I think I'm done for the day. I'll just..."
Karl's words didn't mean anything to Sheila. She continued to look at the small, malformed peach tree while she motioned for Karl to join her.
"This little peach tree just won't make it," she said.
Karl wondered how Sheila could face away from him yet still project her voice so that he heard her as if she were standing next to him and facing him.
"It never straightened out since that storm two years ago," she continued. "Besides, it blocks the morning sun from my flower bed. I think its time to remove it Karl. What do you think?"
Karl didn't think. He only ached. His back ached from bending low to varnish the lower shelf of the bookcase; his knees ached from crawling on the cement pebbled surface of the patio, and his head ached from squinting into the sun for two hours.
"I think it can wait for another day," answered Karl wishfully.
"Oh but Karl, its such a nice day today, and besides your already out here in the yard. It will just take a few minutes. Just chop away at it, dig around the bottom, and pull it up. This little tree won't be much trouble."
Karl surrendered.
"I'll use my Woodsman's Pal tool on this. It should be heavy enough for this tree."
Karl walked slowly around the house to the front entrance of the garage. Sheila opened the double car door from the inside. Karl stood and stared. The mess didn't look any better from this viewpoint. Sheila walked by Karl with her purse in hand trailing after their twin sons.
"I've got to go. The twins have a play date across the neighborhood. Back in an hour or two."
Silence followed as Karl turned to watch his family climb in the Toyota mini-van and leave. He opened his mouth and pointed back into the clutter of the garage. Nothing, not words, not a groan, not even an sigh. The only noise was the hum of the Toyota as it backed away and went down the street.
Karl turned to face the garage. "That tool. That tool was on the shelf second from the floor in the back left corner. That's where it was the last time I saw it," said Karl.
"Say what?" came from Karl's left. "What did you say Karl? Say, isn't it amazing what we accumulate these days?"
It was Dave, Karl's neighbor. He had wandered down the small hill separating their mirror image, blue vinyl-siding houses.
"Looks like you've got some garage debt," described Dave.
"Garage what?" asked Karl.
"You know, garage debt," repeated Dave in a "everyone knows what that is" manner.
"Dave, I've got more varnish on me than on that stupid bookcase, I hurt, I have sweat in my eyes, and my wife just gave me another 'honey do' before driving off to sit pool-side with half-a-dozen other mothers sipping ice tea. I don't need some suburban slang or riddles. What are you talking about?"
"Garage debt," repeated Dave as he stood next to Karl with the two of them staring into the mass of a stuffed garage.
Dave continued his speech, "You see Karl, we start out life in the 'burbs with an empty garage. Four hundred square feet of empty space under a ten-foot high ceiling. We move into the house and put a few things on the shelf in the back. We don't have many things as the movers won't move half-filled paint cans and other toxic chemicals. So we roll in a couple of bicycles, a lawn mower, and hang a shovel and rake on the wall."
Dave walked a few steps and sat on the single step leading up from the garage to the kitchen entrance. Karl followed, sat on the garage floor, and leaned his back against the only piece of wall that wasn't occupied by some object.
"Everything is easy to find. A place for everything and everything in its place. What could be better?"
Karl was about to answer, but before he could, Dave started again.
"Then," said Dave while leaning over towards Karl and cocking his head to the side, "time happens. Time brings one little thing here and another little thing there into the garage. They fit in so easily because the garage is still mostly empty. You can even park two cars in it just he way the architect intended. But, little by little the garage fills. It's a simple matter of statistics Karl, the more items in the garage the harder it is to find any one item."
"I follow you so far Dave, but what is this about 'debt?'" ask Karl.
"Debt, Karl, well you know, debt robs you of choice. As you have more debt the choices you can make dwindle. That's the way it works in economics, and that's the way it works in garages."
Karl didn't interrupt. He didn't understand what Dave was talking about yet, but Dave was an accountant and he knew something about money and debt, and besides, Karl was too tired to start a conversation that required much thought.
"The more you put in the garage, the more debt you accumulate. That's the only way to describe it Karl. Each thing in the garage means you have less choice about where to put the next thing. Pretty soon, you don't know where to put the next thing, so you just toss it in and let it fall where it may."
Dave stood and moved to the edge of the pile of things in the garage. He reached out the toe of his right shoe and tapped the bottom of a couple of cardboard boxes.
"Now," said Dave, "you aren't sure where those things lay. You tossed them, they landed, and you just don't know where they are."
Dave's voice trailed off as if he were presiding over the funeral of those last things lost for good in the garage. He pursed his lips together and nodded his head slightly from side to side. Then he sprang his head back to an upright position, turned to face Karl, and clapped his hands together.
"And then you have it. Your garage is full of debt. Any ten minute 'honey do' takes an hour because you have to find your stuff before you can do the job. Once the job is done, you try to put things back in place, and that takes another hour. Some days you spend the time and accumulate more debt. You know, time is money, but other days you write it off and toss the stuff into the pile."
Dave stepped outside the garage and onto the driveway. He turned back to face the garage and Karl.
"Only one thing you can do Karl when you accumulate so much garage debt."
On cue, Karl asked, "And what is that Dave?"
"Declare garage bankruptcy Karl."
Karl really didn't want an answer, but something compelled him to ask, so he stood, walked over to Dave, and asked, "And how do I do that?"
"Well, one way is to burn it down. Burn the whole thing to the ground, but that tends to ruin your house at the same time, so a fellow rarely does that. The other way is to empty it. Take everything out onto the driveway, make a pile of trash out here, and place the good items back into the garage just like new."
"Okay Dave, the first method is out as Sheila wouldn't like to see a melted vinyl-sided house. I guess I'll try the second way. This time of year I should have four or five hours of daylight left."
The two neighbors stood side by side silently for a moment.
"You wouldn't mind helping me declare bankruptcy on this garage, would you Dave?"
"Don't do bankruptcy Karl. Goes against my policy."
"Oh," said Karl. "I should have guessed that with you being an accountant and all."
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7:30 PM
Sheila pulled the mini-van back into the driveway. She didn't stop in the middle of the driveway as she had for several years. Instead, she slowly pulled into the right side of the garage. The twins hopped out and ran around in little circles in the left side of the garage.
"Mom!" shouted one of the twins. "What is this room. Did we get a new room in our house?"
"Yes," answered Sheila, "it looks like we did."
Sheila walked out of the garage, around the house, and back to the patio. Karl and Dave sat in uncomfortable white plastic patio chairs. They sipped ice tea from frosty glasses and gazed across the yard to the spot where a twisted peach tree stood a few hours before.
"Well," exclaimed Sheila. "What have you two been doing?"
Karl raised his glass of tea, but stopped it a few inches from his mouth. "Paying off some debt," he mumbled.
Go to
Dwayne's Home Page
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org