Costs and Bargains by D McDonald – Barbara Bretting Fiction Winner-
He smells of sweat and graphite, the silver renegade particles from his pencils collected on his unwashed flannel shirt. This past spring he found a set of art supplies in a dumpster, the kind of set a distant aunt gifts to a niece or nephew they don’ t know anything about beyond their vague artistic interests. The cheap wooden box, with a pleather handle that had torn on one side, contained rows of small water color tubes, crayon-like oil pastels, colored pencils, and felt-tipped markers, all offering the same basic rainbow in different mediums. There was also a pencil sharpener— a surprisingly sturdy metal one— an unopened grey kneaded eraser, and three drawing pencils, 2H, HB, and B respectively.
This discovery was made during what Johnny calls June Christmas— the week when the students from Ohio State moved out for the summer and stacked the curbs with dorm necessities that they( or their parents) would rather buy again next fall than pack and haul home. Johnny balked at the wastefulness of the youths, and wanted to stand up on a box at the corner of the block where the majority of student housing lay, shouting and shaking his fists, warning them to be more mindful about what they tossed out, because you never knew when you’ d be wishing your hand had paused over that trash can. Stained couches, boxes of clothing, half-used notebooks and bottles of shampoo, yogurt just past the expiration date— a smorgasbord for dumpster divers. Every year Johnny and other homeless people from around the city competed for the goods with a group of young anarcho-punks whose patches on their denim were stitched out of fashion rather than necessity.
That year he had been hoping to find a pair of jeans because the fabric of his current pair was nearing threadbare at the knees and would need to be replaced before winter. But his hopes had been low, for it was rare for him to stumble upon trash pants that weren’ t several inches too short. Johnny scored several“ new” shirts, an almost full jar of peanut butter, a stick of Old Spice deodorant( not the original overpowering scent, but a newer variety that he didn’ t recognize, named after a mountain range, that smelled nearly floral), a Nalgene water bottle with a lid whose seal wasn’ t perfectly aligned so it leaked slightly( it wasn’ t bad enough that Johnny minded), and the art set.
The pencils were his favorite find. The markers were long dried out and he never had a taste for water colors, but when Johnny was a child he spent hours doodling in the margins of worksheets, and the love of drawing had stayed with him. He’ d taken all available art classes in high school and several courses at Columbus State Community College in his twenties. He had started using drugs because a couple of buddies told him that LSD would help him be more creative and speed would help him stay awake longer so he could produce more pieces.
Johnny often went scavenging with his friend Cindy— a woman in her forties who had been on the street for almost three years. She struggled with a heroin addiction, and met Johnny at an NA meeting about a year ago. He had taken the vulnerable woman under his wing; he didn’ t like the way that some of the men at the soup kitchen looked at her, calculating, and with a hunger that extended beyond the void in their stomachs. Despite the sallowness of her skin and the frizz of her unconditioned hair, Cindy was a beautiful woman and had no doubt been a vision in her youth. But Johnny never thought about touching her. It took a few months to convince her that his friendship was genuine, that he didn’ t have some base ulterior motive with his kindness like so many men from her past. She was a perpetually nervous woman, always tapping her leg or chewing her nails. She was prone to fits of paranoia( from some of the stories Cindy shared with Johnny about her past, he reckoned that some of it was justified). Her thin figure flitted around whatever room she was in, too anxious to remain still in any confined space( the confined space of her mind sometimes enough to provoke her neurosis) which inspired Johnny’ s nickname for her, Little Bird.
Johnny and Cindy sat together on a stone bench in Bicentennial Park, facing a bubbling brass fountain in the shape of a carp. Three other benches were situated around the fountain in an unclosed circle. A few other people were milling around the square, but as it was mid-afternoon on a Thursday, the usual summer throngs had yet to gather.
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