Word Jumble Junkyard

Inspired by the works of Raymond Carver 

Originally written June 2023

Carly was explaining to Martha how the afternoon went. They were in Martha’s apartment, Carly sitting at the breakfast table nursing a cup of black coffee and Martha over the stove prepping a box of Hamburger Helper for Tom, who was set to arrive home from the warehouse at a quarter to six. Martha poked and spread the log of browning ground beef around the skillet. She held the baby in her other hand, balancing him on her hip. When Carly suggested that she could hold the baby while Martha cooked, Martha had politely refused. “The second he leaves my hands for anyone else’s he just starts bawling his eyes out. I can manage, don’t worry, baby.” Carly had never held the baby before. She wondered if Martha was running out of excuses as to why she couldn’t. Carly didn’t mind, wasn’t offended, she was just trying to be polite.

She took a sip of the rapidly cooling coffee, smelled the greasy steam of the beef. 

Martha put her probing fork down and slid open the window above the sink.

“It was so weird how we just bumped in to each other,” Carly said, “easily must have been fifteen years since I’d last seen him.” 

“What? Did you go to high school together?” 

“Yeah, we were in the same art class, elective sculpting. I took it because I thought I could just coast my way though to a freebie ‘A’, a lot of kids were, you know, making ash trays and pots that only a mother could love. But I remember he took the whole thing so seriously. He was probably the first real artist I ever met. At least the first real one, that actually wanted to be an artist, and wasn’t just hoping knowing three chords on a guitar would get a girl’s panties around his face.” 

“So you ran in to him on the sidewalk?” Martha  said. A bubble of grease popped and a spit landed on her finger. “Shit.” She fanned the finger in the air and stuck it in her mouth.

“Yeah. I think it took both of us a minute to recognize each other, but when we did it wasn’t awkward or anything. You know how that goes with people from high school that you only kinda knew but weren’t really friends with? So yeah we talked for a minute on the sidewalk and then when I started shivering he asked me if I wanted to come over and have a cup of coffee at the new restaurant he was opening up.” 

“Ooh, fancy”, Martha said. She was measuring out cups of water and dumping them into the skillet. The pan hissed. The baby balanced on her hip stared curiously. 

“Well okay,” Carly continued, taking another sip of coffee. It had lost it’s taste but there was a feeling to sipping something while telling a story, she enjoyed the theatrics of it. Maybe because she was thinking about artists now.

“Restaurant is probably the wrong word to use. It was something like a diner or cafe. A casual kinda place for coffee, milkshakes, burgers and fries.

“So he takes me over there and it’s not open yet, we’re the only ones there. He tells me that the grand opening isn’t for another week but the staff is here and this would be the perfect time for a test run of the service. I tell him ‘okay’ and we take a seat in a booth along the window and we start talking again.

“It had been really cold out,” 

Martha shook her head and responded, “that’s why I’ve been inside all day,” 

“So I really wanted some coffee but he was going on about life since high school and I didn’t want to interrupt. Then he asks me if I’m seeing anyone.”

“Just a random question huh?, no intention at all.” Martha said.

“I say ‘no’ and ask him the same. He says ‘no’ too and then he tried to smile but I can tell he’s sad and he says, ‘I don’t have much to offer.’ I asked him what he means and he says, ‘I’m always too busy with work, sometimes I drink a little too much and I’m a really ugly son of a bitch. Who wants to date that?’ I told him not to be ridiculous. I told him ‘I would date you.” 

Martha was stirring the beef around the simmering water. She stopped and looked at Carly. The bug-eyed baby did the same. “What did you say that for?” 

“I don’t know, it just slipped out, but then he said, ‘well what if we called this a date then?’ and I said ‘sure,’ and he said ‘how’s it going so far?’ and I said ‘well we are at a cafe, the best thing to do on date in a place like this to get some food and something to drink.

“He snapped his fingers and clapped his hands, said ‘of course! How stupid of me! What would you like, coffee? A burger? Wanna share a big plate of fries with a mountain of ketchup?” I nodded and said that sounded great. Then he shouted out a name and shouted that it was time for their very first customer.

“The kitchen door swung open in the back and that’s when I got my very first look at the staff.” 

Carly took another sip of coffee, theatrics, and was slightly annoyed to see that Martha’s attention was focused on stirring in the flavor packet for the Hamburger Helper into the browned beef. Carly waited. Waited until Martha was satisfied with the mixture and put the lip atop the skillet to let it cook. Then she came up and sat across from Carly at the breakfast table, gently bouncing the baby on her knee.

“So what about them?” Martha asked. 

Carla set down the coffee mug. “You know when you go in to a department store and they have all the mannequins in the front window wearing all the dresses.” Martha nodded. “And you know how they’re life size?” Another nod. “Now think about a Ventriloquist dummy, the kind from magic shows, wooden head, wooden mouth that just goes up and down, wooden eyes, wooden hair, painted on face. Picture one of those dummy’s the size of one of those department store mannequins.” 

Martha nodded and Carly saw her eyebrow raise. 

“That’s what came out from the kitchen door,” said Carly.

“A Ventriloquist?” 

“Nuh uh, just the puppet.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“A puppet as tall as me came out from behind the doors, strings like thick fishing line coming up from all the joints in it’s arms and legs. It was dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and black tie. It’s face was painted with a little bit of a tan and it was wearing a orange hair piece, with the kind of cheap fake hair you find on Halloween wigs. I know that look Martha but that’s what happened. It came right up to the table, walking like it was it’s first time ever, like it was walking under water. The strings tightened and loosened around with each step. Came right up to the table and he tells this puppet that we’d like a couple cups of coffee and a large order of fires. This puppet stares at me. It’s eyes were painted white, the middle brown and black. It’s just staring at me and he says ‘he wants to know if you want anything else, haven’t gotten the voices down just yet.’ I say ‘no thanks, I’m fine,’ and the puppet bows and starts back towards the kitchen.”

“Hmph,” is all Martha says.

“I watched that thing walk away and I followed the strings around it’s arms and legs up to the ceiling but they seemed to disappear somewhere before reaching the top. I don’t know how the thing moved Martha. There were no holes in the ceiling. I couldn’t hear any foot steps above me from someone that might be controlling it. I swear the puppet just moved on it’s own.

“He must have seen the look on my face because he asked me if I wanted to see the inside of the kitchen. I told him ‘yes’ and we got up from the booth and he lead me through the empty cafe, towards the double doors where I could already hear the sounds of frying grease and wooden feet scraping against a tile floor.

“And wouldn’t you know it, soon as I open those doors I see the kitchen is full of them puppets too, same as the waiter, an entire kitchen staff. All wooden bodies, the one throwing raw patties on the grill was carved to be fat, like his stomach was almost a perfect circle. The one pouring frozen fries into a pool of grease was a thin as the twig he’d probably been carved from. There was one in the back washing dishes and one cutting up lettuce, onions and tomatoes. All of them had those same fish line strings in their joints that rose up and seemed to disappear in thin air before reaching the ceiling. I swear Martha, I don’t know how they moved. But wanna know something weird?” 

Martha had been casting glances to the clock over the stove and paying attention to the rise and fall of the bubbling skillet, bouncing the baby lightly on her knee. “So now we’re getting to the weird part?” 

“There was a radio in the corner playing music. Why? They have ears carved in their heads but they can’t hear anything right? They can’t even speak. When I walked in to the kitchen they all just stopped what they were doing and stared at me with their painted wooden eyes. Not a word, just the sound of the grill and some jazz. The strings at the tops of their heads loosened and their heads dipped down in a little bow, but then they just went right on with the cooking. That’s when he took me by the shoulder and told me we shouldn’t bother them while they work.

“After that we went back to the booth and I couldn’t sit still. I kept asking him questions about how he’d done it but his answers never came close to anything direct. He liked to sculpt, he liked to make things with his hands, isn’t the creation of art wonderful? It’s just one living soul away from the creation of life.

“Then the waiter came out, doing his little dance of a walk over to our table carrying the tray of food. I couldn’t eat. It didn’t stop him though from shoving in fries by the handful, dragging ketchup from plate to mouth, with that red goo hanging down the corner of his mouth. I had to get out of there, so I told him thanks, good luck with the new place and that I hoped I’d see him around.

“ ‘You know where to find me,’ he says. Then I left and across the street I could still see him in the window eating those French Fries. The waiter was back at the table, if it’d had a voice, it’d probably be asking if there was anything else it could do.” 

The timer went off on the stove and Martha bolted up from her chair, baby back on the hip, to turn twist it off. She lifted the lid of the skillet and a thick cloud of beef and cheese filled the kitchen. The smell of the meat twisted Carly’s stomach, reminded her of cheese burgers.

“So are you going to see him again?” Martha said.

“No. I don’t think so.” 

“When did you say his place was opening?” 

“Next week.” 

“Hmph,” says Martha, “ Tom and I are always looking for new places to try.” 

Outside the kitchen window comes the sputtering sound of Tom’s truck, a bucket of metal barely clinging to life with the cough of a lifetime smoker. There’s the squeal of the door opening and the gunshot of it slamming shut. The baby starts to cry. Martha kisses it’s bald little head.

“Stay for dinner?” she asks. 

“No thanks,” says Carly, “I think I just want to go home.” 

–

Upon arriving home Carly had neither the energy or appetite to prepare anything for dinner. Instead she started the shower, stood in the middle of the bathroom, shed her clothes and examined her body in the mirror. The hot water steam quickly fogged the mirror. Carly watched her self grow more and more out of focus until all human characteristics morphed together in to a pale blob. Before stepping in the shower, Carly thought the color of her body looked something like the trunk of tree, stripped of it’s bark.