News of Deliverance

by Christopher Wayne
Photographs by Madi Tarbox

I drew a map of my town sitting on my Walmart bike, traversing the streets and displaying my prepubescent obesity atop an impossibly heavy frame, carrying a cloth bag which digs into the folds of my neck and causes me and my bike to list to the right, both weighed down by the news I deliver through the hot stench of dinners behind closed blinds of houses that explosively hiss as doors crack open and accept the interruption of my due diligence, giving me a nasal and visual glimpse of their world: a sour stench clings to me as I move along to the next customer in another old factory-house which has long since been abandoned by humanity, instead occupied by the forgotten, who wish only to forget, and inside I can hear all manner of animals: dogs, and cats, and lead-painted children—little ones unkempt, unclean, with heads of matted hair, and soiled cloth diapers that dig into flesh like the bag noosed loose around my adolescent neck—their echoed screams burrow into me as I become their daily deliverance, and now I get off my bike and walk a short distance through the forest and feel the water flow over the dam in its torrential fashion and watch the turbulence create a frothy foam that lethargically floats atop the Hershey brown river—reminiscent of root-beer floats—so I sniff to see if I can taste the sweet-soda-syrup, but quickly exhale the feral air of cats who recently littered there, spoiling my respite once again, and so I am forced to turn on stilted heels and walk, head down, to the next house where the Fat Man resides, immobilized by his size, yet he remains unmoved by his circumstance or his tilted residence, which slants toward his too small bed blanketed by him, but his modesty is blanketed by a crusted yellow towel, one I ignore as he welcomes me inside and the treat I deliver, from aisle 5 to me and from my hand to his, the caramel candies that match his caramel smile, which he flashes and breathes a hot hello, so I smile back and wade through his ocean of loneliness and debris-filled waves of a purposelessness which I nearly drown in but have somehow managed to tread with every visit; nonetheless, I feel as though I’ve been dipped in wax while I converse with my friend, the Fat Man, who thinks he has tipped for time, but my presence is a present I’d have given for free, so I sit prostituted and listen to slick lips smack and pocket the two cents he has given me before I say, goodbye friend, and proceed on my route: up and toward the painted yellow hovel, a brightness that stands juxtaposed to the elderly waited upon to die inside, who subsist off tins of tuna and Campbell’s soups and the pained smile of the newspaper boy that they welcome into their rest stop apartments, which are furnished like waiting rooms where they sit, wait, read, and pray that the news I deliver is of their children who have long since been raised and are now free to remain unseen, save for the pictures that stare down at me and saddle their wasting kin with hope-topped disappointment, which leave their eyes to fill with the former, heart smothered in the latter, and after bearing witness I climb out of my chair and accept a cheek-marring kiss, knowing it has been planted on an ill-suited stand-in, then I move on, onto the next door, then the next, and up to the second floor and to the fourth door, where I find the woman with hoof-like hands, fingers big and thick—there are only three per hand, each with nails that need tending, though I am not brave enough to touch, I am cowardly enough to steal a glance, one she pretends not to notice—and she hands me a glass of water which I have to muster courage to drink while she tends to her jigsaw which I am puzzled at how she can solve because there are dog accidents carpeting the floor, which she waits patiently to dry, as that makes them easier to clean, but still are much larger than the puzzle pieces she deftly places time and time again, and from time to time she asks me to walk her dog, which this time I do, because despite my daily delivery of news I cannot deliver my own and say I don’t want to or your hands confuse and frighten me, or that me thinking this makes me feel bad as a human person—and beside her deformities, her eyes are normal, actually more than normal, better than normal, they are warm and welcoming and kind and beautiful and they have seen the world and the cruelty that persists in its timeless bounds, of which, for now, I have run out—so I finish walking her dog and I wave a guilt-gilded goodbye with my perfectly normal hand and she smiles with her wonderfully abnormal eyes that gently pierce and release me, and I leave, hopping on my bike happy to revel in my trip back, as it is all downhill and I no longer have to struggle under the weight of my route, so I let loose a yelp of my own and coast down the road, eyes watering in the wind, because upon the cracked black pavement I paint my own lines and find freedom—freedom to sway, freedom to swerve, and freedom to stand and dance as I snap the day’s final glance of a town that only I truly know—so I use my breaks to prolong this trip, but gravity wins, as it always does, and leads me to the green-brown lawn under the yellow-hued street lights that turn my flesh jaundice as I drop my bike and walk toward the house and onto the lightless porch where I strip the scratchy sack from around my neck and allow the darkness to wash over me; it fails to clean, so I stand at the door of a house, a house which smells of too many hotdogs with too few buns and which houses too big a family for too small a space and holds too many tears for too few eyes, but also has too much love for too few hearts, an abundance that always restores my emptied stores as I open the door and enter a house brimming with those kept blind to those shut behind closed blinds, blinds I see behind with those that puzzle, pray, lay, and wait for news of deliverance: I stand beyond another door of another house: I’m a dusty collector of all these things which together make

—my home.