Little Bits of Soul

“S**t!” Lonnie Brewer said as the cardboard box he had been carrying tumbled out of his arms. Forks and spoons and knives and sporks flew into the air and, with a thousand tiny gongs, scattered throughout the gray concrete garage floor, waves of dust carrying them farther than the laws of gravity and inertia had been willing to go. For a moment, he considered leaving them there and letting fate and cockroaches do what they will, but then he sighed, squinting into the bright morning sun, and began cleaning up.

            Unwilling to take any more chances, he dragged the box of utensils out into the driveway, strategically placing them next to a box filled with a set of matching ceramic plates and bowls. He stood up straight, cracking his back and letting out a grunt, and surveyed his collection of unwantables: old worn clothes hung on a metal, circular clothes rack (the kind you find in department stores) in between blankets and towels that had been used and stained and lawn chairs that sat unfolded and inviting. There were toys, books, basketballs, coolers, hats, sunglasses, cell phone chargers, stuffed animals, floor mats, fish tanks, even a weight set complete with rusty dumbbells.

            Lonnie poked around in his right pocket and pulled out a purple folded piece of paper. On it was an advertisement for the annual neighborhood-wide garage sale that had become somewhat famous locally. The year before, the local NBC station had done a short minute and a half segment on it, interviewing sellers and buyers, showing footage of people haggling, and ending with a little girl proudly holding up a stuffed and smiling T-rex, saying something about how she loves dinosaurs, which set up the anchor for some kind of dinosaur-related pun that he couldn’t even remember. Lonnie had never participated; never felt the need to sit out in a punishing South Florida sun and argue with people who were trying to rip him off. He had decided to give it a try this year, though, when he spent a half hour maneuvering around a mountain of cardboard boxes only to have it come crashing down on him. All that for a hammer to nail a freaking picture to the wall. It wasn’t even a picture he was especially excited about, just some out of focus sailboat in front of a sinking sun.

            After taking a long look at that sailboat, Lonnie threw himself into organizing those boxes and pricing the crap in them. The next-door neighbor had volunteered to help when she saw him struggling with a huge knot of cords that were connected to cell phone chargers and computer speakers and microphones. “You need help,” was all she had said when he stood up and yanked the cords, creating a temporary puppet show of technological accessories.

            The night before the garage sale, she had shown up, wearing jean shorts and a plain white t-shirt that had specks of different colored paint scattered over it. “What happened?” he asked her, pointing to the shirt.

            “I was painting,” she responded, squinting her eyes and tilting her head, giving him the “Wasn’t it obvious?” look.

            They sat in the middle of the garage, Indian style, a circular wall of cardboard boxes and plastic bins stacked up high all around them, and priced the final few hundred thousand items.

            “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” she had said, halfway startling him. Before, she had just been asking the prices of different things—only occasionally though, as if the value of most items were intrinsically ingrained into her system.

            “What?” he had said.

            “I said I don’t know why you’re doing this.” She looked up at him.

            “You have to have a starting price or people’ll try to cheat you,” he said.

            “No, I mean why are you doing a garage sale?”

            “All this s**t,” he began, gesturing.

            “All this s**t is your life, though,” she said. “It’s like you’re selling little bits of your soul.”

            “Damn,” he said, slapping his forehead, “You’re one of those.”

            “What?”

            “Pack rats. Sentimentalists. People who can’t throw anything away because they think they’ll forget the memories involved, like those memories were somehow connected to the thing.”

            “They are,” she said.

            “Well I don’t need them anymore.”

 

            Lonnie dropped a box of paperback mystery novels next to his makeshift book display and found that a couple people were already browsing through his collection. An old woman wearing a sunhat was shuffling around haphazardly, picking up random objects, examining them, occasionally holding them up to her ear, checking the price and placing them back exactly in the position they had been before. An old man wearing short khakis and a yellow polo was moving slowly, almost gliding, sweeping his head around gracefully as he held his hands behind his back.

            Earlybirds, he thought. Nothing better to do than browse through other people’s junk.

            “Excuse me, sir, how much is this book?” the old woman wanted to know, holding up Goodnight Moon, his daughter’s favorite book when she was little.

 

            She was all tucked in under her pink Minnie Mouse comforter, quietly staring up at him while he was reading. “And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush,” he said, showing her the picture. She smiled, waiting for more. “And a quiet old lady who was whispering ‘hush.’”

            Lonnie turned the book toward her one more time, then closed it, saying, “All right, baby, that’s all for tonight.”

            He walked over to the corner of the room and plugged in her cow-shaped night light. “Daddy,” she said as he was about to turn off the lamp by her bed.

            “Yeah baby?”

            “G’night.”

            “Night baby. Sleep well. You know me and mommy are just down the hall,” he said, stroking her soft brown hair.

            She nodded.

            As he was closing the door, he heard her whisper, “Goodnight room, goodnight moon.”

 

            “Doesn’t it have a sticker on it?” he asked.

            “I don’t see one,” she said, turning the book over in her hands, flipping through it, and knocking on it.

            “Uh, then how about a dollar?”

            “The corners are all peeled away, though, and some of the pages are folded or ripped.”

            One dollar is overpriced, he thought? “Ok, then fifty cents.”

            She pulled two worn quarters out of her purse and handed them over with her wrinkled, shaking hand.

Lonnie held his hand out as she dropped them in, then began rubbing and rolling them over with his fingers. “Thank you,” he said, turning his attention to a box of hats that hadn’t been able to stay on top of a smaller box of VHS tapes. “Who is the book for?” he suddenly asked, turning back towards her.

“My granddaughter,” she said, pulling out a picture. “She’s just five months.”

“Well, I hope she likes it,” he said. “I used to read it to my daughter once a week when she was little.”

The old woman smiled and turned to hobble away with her purchase. “She’s a teenager now, though,” he was still saying. “Lives with her mom. I don’t really get to see her that much.” She was ten feet away, now. Without turning around, she waved at him.

“Goes by so fast,” he said to himself.  

The sale was starting to attract more people as the sun rose higher into the sky. A middle-aged couple was poking through the pile of rugs, blankets and towels, the man occasionally lifting one out of the pile and holding it up, covering himself in the process, as the woman put a hand to her chin or stood back to see how the sun caught it. A few women were making their way around the clothes rack, smacking the hangers against each other as they went through each article of clothing. A young woman sat on the ground with a children’s encyclopedia in her lap, saying, “See, honey, you learn,” as her 8-year-old son stood over her shoulder examining the colorful pictures.

“How’s it going?” someone said, and Lonnie turned his head to the neighbor, Katie, whose brownish-blonde hair seemed to be communicating directly with the sun, sparkling, shimmering, glittering, as she walked through a row of chrysanthemums that he had planted a week earlier.

 

“Come on,” she had said, taking him by the hand and leading him to her bedroom. His wife had been gone two full months, but his heart was just as broken as ever. Now, this woman, his neighbor, was offering to begin filling the hole, at least a little bit. They were both a little drunk, just in different ways. She had been a part of the party, gulping down the fruity mixed drinks that men had offered her, smiling, laughing, flirting, touching and, occasionally, sneaking a look at him. He had been drinking hard liquor from a clear glass, sitting in a plush leather chair, only getting up when he needed a refill.

He was on top of her, concentrating, forgetting for once, finally. She was staring up at him, at those blue eyes that refused to look at her, instead looking past, at the brown hair streaming over his forehead, slightly tinged with sweat, at his lips, tense but expressionless. “Why don’t you smile?” she had said.

He ignored her, almost as if he didn’t hear, so she asked again, “Why don’t you ever smile?”

“I do,” he said, picking up the pace.

“You don’t, though,” she said, unconcerned with the process. “I’ve never seen you smile, not even when you were with Lanie. I was throwing myself at you tonight, and still no smile.”

He tried to smile, but really just bared his teeth. “There you go,” he said.

He closed his eyes, and she shook her head.

Climax.

 

“It’s going pretty well,” he said. “Sold a few things.”

“And how is your soul?” she asked, smiling.

He shook his head and focused on a middle-aged man who was heading straight for him. “Did you find anything, sir?”

“Just this coffee mug,” the man said, scratching at his bald patch.

“Ah, the coffee mug,” he said. “I used to drink cherry coke out of that and watch the Dolphins game with my dad.”

Katie looked at him, putting a hand on her hip.

“Good times,” he said. “That’s two bucks I believe.”

“Well, actually, I found this crack here,” the man said, pointing to a large crack in between the Miami Dolphins logo and the handle.

 

Nat Moore, a year away from retirement, catches a 6 yard pass from Dan Marino, Marino’s fourth touchdown of the game. 45-21. The Steelers would score once more, but it wouldn’t matter.

“Superbowl!” Tom Brewer yells, shaking his smiling son, who drops the coffee mug he was holding, spilling cherry coke all over the floor. “We’re coming! We’re coming!” Lonnie yells, holding tight to his father.

“This is it right here, boy,” Tom says. “Enjoy it, because moments like these don’t come too often.”

Lonnie looked up into his father’s eyes, the same eyes that would close for good just a couple years later. Heart attack. A combination of cholesterol and genetics.

He focused again on the TV, and smiled. “This is it,” he said.

 

“Ok, how about a dollar then?” he said.

The man handed him a crumpled, grimy bill. “Nice doing business,” he called after the man.

“You want some help?” Katie asked.

“Could always use some help,” he said.

She started circling the pile, dusting things off and reorganizing them. The garage sale was really starting to get busy now. People were pulling up in shiny coupes and hybrids, dirty minivans, beat-up pick-up trucks, and even a couple motorcycles. They were all parking where they could, on the street, on the grass, on the sidewalk, in people’s driveways. It was like a huge block party, with men, women and children moving from house to house, talking, laughing, smiling, arguing, yelling, spilling out onto the streets.

Lonnie noticed a woman placing a silk, spaghetti-strap dark blue dress against her body, fitting it as tightly as she could without actually trying it on, looking to see how much of her legs it covered. “Could I try this on?” she called to him.

 

She slipped the dress slowly through her legs and up her body, wriggling just slightly, as if she knew he was watching. He stared at her back, just the right shade of flesh, watching her shoulder blades protrude and rotate as she moved. “Lonnie, could you help me with this?” she asked.

He walked over to her, and placed his hands on her hips. “Come on, honey, we’re going to be late,” she said.

The zipper climbed up her back easily, until the final few inches. “Suck in,” he said.

He wrapped his left arm around her stomach and pulled the zipper with his right hand. “There we go,” he said, and she turned around.

“Let’s go,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

 

“Sure, just go through that door right there, and there’s a bathroom right inside,” he said. She walked towards and past him. Not at all like Lanie, he thought.

 

“Actually, could you call me Katie?” she asked a man with a crooked bowtie who was holding out a drink to her. “It’s my middle name.”

Lonnie looked at her. The blue dress looked almost black in the dim light. “What’s wrong with Lanie?” he asked.

“Lanie and Lonnie. Lonnie and Lanie. Sounds a little ‘ugh.’”

“I like how it sounds,” he said. The man turned away and handed the drink to someone else.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What? You don’t want to identify with me?”

“Not here, Lonnie.”

 

“Here you go,” the woman said, handing him a ten dollar bill.

“Thanks,” he said. “Hope you enjoy it.”

She moved away, the dress draped over her right arm. Lonnie sat down on a foldout lawn chair, the first time he had been off his feet since he got out of bed. A little girl was standing about 10 to 15 feet away; he saw her testing out a stuffed pink teddy bear with black button eyes: poking, squeezing, hugging, kissing, twirling and dancing. He watched as she ran with the bear to her mother, who was a house away, chatting up a friend. The girl tugged on her mom’s pants, the movement causing her little curls to bounce up and down. She held up the bear with both hands.

 

The fancy restaurant was almost over-decorated with different sizes and colors of hearts. Hearts hanging low over tables. Hearts pressed up against the walls. Heart-shaped pins on the servers’ shirts.

He had held out the bear over the dinner table with two hands. “Oh my god, Lonnie, it’s so adorable,” his wife had said, taking hold and then leaning over to kiss him on the forehead.

“Happy Valentine’s day, honey.”

 

The door was cracked and he peeked in as she held out the bear with both hands to their daughter. He frowned, but smiled when he heard his daughter’s shrieks of delight.

“I love him so much, mommy,” she said.

“What are you going to name him baby?”

“Benny!”

“Why Benny?”

His daughter shrugged her shoulders. She began to sing, “B-B-Be-Bennie and the Jets!”

“Ah, mommy’s favorite song.”

She nodded.

“You didn’t want the bear?” he asked his wife later that night.

“Well, honey, it’s a stuffed animal,” she said. “Who’s going to enjoy it more, me or a 4-year-old?”

 

“How much for the bear?” the mother wanted to know.

“How about three dollars?”

The woman handed the cash over, then patted her daughter on the head and walked away to find her friend. The little girl, though, still stood in front of him with the bear.

“I hope you like it,” he said.

She kept looking up at him. “He was my daughter’s favorite.”

She smiled, showing some half-grown teeth, and turned to skip after her mother.

“That was cute,” Katie said, stepping up next to him and rubbing his back once. Lonnie stood staring after the little girl, his arms on his hips. The crowd began to swallow her up. He wiped at his forehead, which had developed a thin layer of sweat. That Florida sun was high, high up, smiling and sadistic in its punishments.

“What’s wrong?” Katie asked.

Lonnie kept looking for that girl, though, like he forgot to tell her something.

“Starting to feel it, huh?”

“What?” he asked, not hearing.

“Your soul, all these memories being sold, and at such low prices.”

“Let me tell you something,” he said, turning to her. “Memories are just shadows, and once the night comes, shadows disappear.”

“You’re wrong, Lonnie,” she said, using his name for the first time. “When night comes, everything becomes a shadow.”

A few hours passed. The neighborhood-wide garage sale began to quiet down a little bit, mostly it was the neighbors themselves who were searching for treasures now, moving from house to house, chatting with each other, staring at cars driving past. Lonnie stayed put on his lawn chair, watching the bustle of the neighborhood slow down, like someone had pressed the slow motion button on a TV remote. His pile had shrunk significantly; all the boxes were still there, but the items in them were gone. He could see the sun hit the street in between the gaps of the clothes rack, and the shadows crept closer and closer to his feet. One young woman in scrubs was examining a crystal lamp, holding it up to the light, twisting it in her hands, fumbling with the shade. “Looks like you have another customer,” Katie said, getting up from where she had been sitting in the back of the garage and walking towards him.

The woman took a long look at the lamp and nodded to herself. She turned to him, and said, “Excuse me, I think I’ll take this lamp.”

 

“You’re an a*****e! You never think about anyone but yourself!” his mother screamed.

“Me? What do I do all day at that f*****g job, then? Is that all for myself?” His father said.

“Yes!”

“You’re ridiculous! You want me to leave? Fine. Go ahead, try living like this without my help!”

Lonnie sat in the dark living room, listening to his parents rail on each other beyond the wall. Shaking his head, he turned on the lamp, admiring its crystal base, and turned his attention to the comic book sitting in his lap. He wasn’t really that into comic books, but his mom had bought it for him a couple days ago at the supermarket, and he didn’t really have anything else to do. He certainly couldn’t go to sleep.

“You f*****g prick! Go find some little w***e who’ll put up with your s**t! I’m done with it!”

“Maybe I already did find someone, you b***h!”

“I bet you did, I bet you’ve been sleeping around while I’ve been slaving over that damn stove and raising your son!”

The light kept hitting the comic at the wrong angle; no matter how he adjusted it on his lap, he couldn’t keep the glare off.

“Maybe he’s not even your son Tom! You weren’t the only one back then!”

“You f*****g w***e! You f*****g w***e!”

Lonnie could hear the tears in his father’s voice. Closing the comic book and letting it fall, he laid down and stared up at the light bulb. When he closed his eyes, he could see little blue and green and red shapes floating around in the darkness, hovering but slowly losing shape and fading away.

“I don’t even know why I married you,” his father said loudly. “Oh wait, that’s right, you were pregnant.”

“Because you couldn’t keep your hands off me you sleazebag!”

“Seems like you didn’t care whose hands were on you.”

He stared up into the light bulb, squinting hard, trying to catch the dancing going on inside. Opening his eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, he turned off the lamp, hoping for the mellow shapes, and for quiet.

 

“You want the lamp, eh?” he said, taking hold of it as she held it to him. “That’s a good lamp. Family heirloom. My grandfather brought it with him from Poland. Shade’s been replaced a few times.”

The woman reached out to take it back, but he offered some resistance.

“Lonnie, she wants the lamp,” Katie said, poking his ribs.

“Yeah, of course,” he said, handing it back to her. “That’ll be twenty bucks.”

The woman fished around in her purse. “I only have ten,” she said, holding up the bill.

“But it was a family heirloom.”

“And you’re selling it,” she said.

He looked at the lamp, tried to look through the crystals, but everything just came out colors. “Alright. Ten dollars.”

He watched the lamp shade bob up and down with her movement as she walked away.

“You can’t forget them, can you?” Katie said.

“All of it is s**t,” he said.

“But you can’t control your memories.”

“Would you stop?”

Another hour passed. The sun grew tired and started sinking gracefully down. The air loosened up and became cooler. A small breeze curled around the neighborhood, zigzagging here and there. It was dusk, and most other neighbors had packed their stuff away. He could see lights on, and the blue glow of TVs. Lonnie hadn’t made a sale since the lamp. A few people had come up and browsed, but they were gone in a matter of minutes.

Katie was sitting next to him, leaning her head against his shoulder. A middle-aged man was flipping through Lonnie’s CD collection, occasionally holding one up in the air and turning it over. “You ready to call it?” Katie asked.

“There’s still someone here,” he said.

She looked over at the man, then put her head back on his shoulder and closed her eyes. The man seemed to make his choice, and came over to them. “I’ll take this CD,” he said.

“Sure,” Lonnie said. “You’re lucky. You’re the last sale.”

The man smiled. “Good timing, I guess,” he said.

“So what’ve you got there?”

The man held up the CD.

 

Elton John was singing something about Bennie and the Jets, but Lonnie was completely lost in her dark green eyes. It was their second date, a dinner and movie affair.

She was smiling, staring back, obliging. No one was paying attention to the cold food or the sweating sodas.

“Your eyes are perfect,” he said, and her cheeks flared up slightly.

“What time does the movie start?” she asked.

Oh Bennie, Elton was pleading, she’s really keen.

She’s got electric boots

A mohair suit

“9-ish. I don’t think I’m ever going to forget your green eyes, you know that?”

You know I read it in a magazine

B-B-Be-Bennie and the Jets

She laughed, almost scoffing. Under the table, he reached out and took her hand.

Bennie, Bennie and the Jets

Bennie, Bennie, Bennie, Bennie and the Jets

 

“Elton John. Good choice. That’ll be two dollars.”

The man handed him the money, then smiled and said, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Lonnie said.

Lonnie looked at Katie, patted her on the back, and started clearing up. The empty boxes were easy to stack and carry, and they finished carrying everything into the garage in about 15 minutes. A few things were left, but it had been a wildly successful sale, like people had been waiting all this time just to get their hands on his stuff.

The night was firmly in control and the neighborhood had become a ghost, a shadow of its daytime self.

“Thanks for helping me,” Lonnie said.

“How much did you make?” Katie asked.

Lonnie pulled out the thick book of cash and counted. “Looks like just over 200,” he said.

“Not bad for one day’s work, although it won’t get you far in this economy.”

Lonnie shrugged. “Everything’s a shadow, I guess. Even the economy.”

Katie smiled. “I’ll see you later, Lonnie.”

He nodded. As she walked away, he sat back down on the lawn chair, cracking his back and grunting in the process. He looked at the money in his hand.

“This is it,” he said. “That was it.”

 

 

Reviews

[Gabriela]

The year before, the local NBC station had done a short minute and a half segment on it, interviewing sellers and buyers, showing footage of people haggling, and ending with a little girl proudly holding up a stuffed and smiling[no comma needed] T-rex saying something about how she loves dinosaurs, which set up the anchor for some kind of dinosaur-related pun that he couldn't even remember.

He had decided to give it a try this year[no comma needed ]though, when he spent a half hour maneuvering around a mountain of cardboard boxes only to have it come crashing down on him.

"All this s**t is your life[, no comma needed]though," she said.

She was ten feet away[no comma needed]

A young woman sat on the ground with a children's encyclopedia in her lap[,no comma needed] saying, "See, honey, you learn," as her 8-year-old son stood over her shoulder examining the colorful pictures.

"Not here[, I'm not so sure if the comma is needed or not]Lonnie."

poking, squeezing, hugging, kissing, twirling[you need a comma here] and dancing.

Lonnie kept looking for that girl[, no comma needed]though, like he forgot to tell her something.

This was probably one of my favorites or my favorite. I felt like I was connecting with the character, that's a great step up you've made. You could even develop this theme into a novel if you'd like, it's very interesting. I especially loved the part where Katie talked about shadows, I'm very keen with them.
Also, I'm sorry that I couldn't review before, I was extremely busy!