Free Kenneth Tingle - Strangeville by Kenneth Tingle

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Chapter 10
    I must have had the same dream 100 times. After my parents died, the bank took our home, so I had to get a room in a rooming house in downtown Lawrence. It was on the corner of Haverhill Street and Broadway, a rough neighborhood that got even rougher after dark, with prostitutes and drug dealers taking over the corner.
    Some of the drug dealers had rooms there, too, so they had a pretty short commute. The rest of the people were either mentally ill or transients down on their luck, like me.
      It was just a room about ten feet by ten feet with cracked plaster and beat-up woodwork. I covered the mattress with three fitted sheets, one on top of the other, because God only knew who had slept here before me or what they had done. There was no way to cook and no bathroom, just a common bathroom out in the hall with a shower.
    There was often a line to use it. Sometimes I could hear an argument out in the hallway. Someone would say, “Yo, how long you gonna be in there?” Then a muffled voice was heard from behind the closed bathroom door, “None of your business, asshole!” In a few minutes, there would be scuffling and yelling in the hallway, another fight, and the police would show up.
      For some reason, I dreamt of this place often. There was a crazy woman, not just mentally ill, but completely insane. She would come slowly down the hall in her crumpled clothes or pajamas, her hair all frizzy and sticking out in all directions, and she’d be walking right towards me.
    “Hello,” I would say to her as she passed. But she would just slowly shuffle by with a wide-eyed blank gaze, oblivious to my presence, like she was seeing something I couldn’t see, or was hearing sounds no one else could hear.
      In my dream, I was always standing in the hallway as this woman passed. I would go in my room and there were my parents sitting on the bed. In excitement, I would yell, “Mom, Dad…thank God you’re okay. I’ve missed you so much!”
    They would hug me and say, “Johnny, we can’t stay. But we want you to know that we love you. Love never dies, Johnny. We’re looking out for you. We’re allowed to do that. Everything is going to be all right.”
    Then I’d wake up. Sometimes I cried because they weren’t really back. I missed them so much.
      And I was in the middle of this same dream when Biff shook me and woke me up.
    “John, git up an git ready.”
    The lamp in my room had been turned on because it was still dark outside. Biff stood towering over the bed, hollering, “John, git up. Ya can’t be late fer work at the mines. Theys real strict about that.”
    I sat up, and managed to mumble, “Sure thing, Biff, let’s go.”
    Biff threw an old denim jumpsuit across the bed.
    “Ya can wear this. Ah gut me an extra. It’s the required uniform.”
    “Thanks, Biff,” I answered as he left the room and clomped down the stairs.
    I put the denim uniform on quickly, zipped it up, and looked down at the body and legs. It was a little baggy, but no one in this town was ready for a fashion show, so I really didn’t care.
      Biff was waiting for me in the kitchen. He poured some hot water onto some oats and pulled some toast from a big clunky toaster.
    He spread strawberry jelly on the toast, poured two glasses of milk from a bottle, and said, “Dig in.”
    The jelly was sweet, the toast crunchy, and the oats were warm and fresh with brown sugar on top.
    “Thanks again, Biff. I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” I said, swallowing my last bite.
    “Aw shucks, ya don’t gut ta thank me all the time. One feller is supposed ta look out fer another feller when he needs it. That’s jes the way it is.”
      “Jeez, Biff. The world would be a great place if everyone thought like that.”
    Biff looked a little confused, and warbled, “Ah don’t know what world ya comin’ from, John. Ya ain’t told us much since ya gut here. But here in Strangeville, that’s the way