The Story of Carbon (Part 1)

Chapter 10: The Baker

That dusk, the whole apartment was filled, yet quiet. The nonexistent windows gave off the amber glow of the sunset as time lethargically crawled over the horizon, leaving a hazy perfume that seemed to give its victims a meditative paralysis. The two brothers were laying on the couch cradling the dreary crepuscule, their reminiscent eyes recognizing each other simultaneously, then asking, "what?" in offputting giddiness. They laughed themselves awake, and then soon fell back asleep in a warm, deep reverie of complete and ineffable understanding.
On the perpendicular couch, Kooper laid on his stomach with his arms propping up his head, his legs kicking to the wistful croon of the acoustic Ranchera. Pablo hugged his guitar as he prayed that someday he could return it and bury it in Spanish soil. You could tell that Kooper's dumb eyes felt nothing but love. Every word Pablo sang cut right into his heart as his longing for somewhere...something...pried open the doors to his soul. I even felt that prying, in every single indecipherable word. I shoved the feeling away, telling it to stay put for just a while longer.
But it pulled harder when I looked at Jadine sitting in her chair and Milo straddling her perfect, existent legs. They kissed with a certain feeling of ambivalence in their animation, yet they gasped to stay afloat with their love. Jadine's book cradled his back as if she could never let it go. They touched each other with such exactness as if too little or too much vigor would shatter the other into thousands of tiny shards.
Their love wrenched my gut and heart.
And of course, Grover was nowhere to be seen.
As I looked around the room for my love, Kooper waved me over to the couch.
"I told Pablo that you knew how to play guitar too," he said with a sleepy smile. "I told him that you should play us a song."
Pablo held out the guitar reluctantly as if it were his beloved child.
"Oh no, that's okay. I'm pretty rusty on guitar. I usually play ukulele," I said, trying not to encroach on their relationship.
"Pleeease?" Kooper tilted his drowsy head. I glanced over at Jadine and Milo, still immersed in each other. I took the guitar and sat between Pablo and Kooper, and Kooper laid his head on my shoulder—and of course, Pablo followed him. Trying to think of a song, I looked at the two brothers, the exact symmetry of Pablo and Kooper, and somberly imagined the love behind the couch. I imagined Kez, and my distant, evanescent brother Kooper. I imagined what my mom looked like, and I imagined a father who loved.
The song that I picked told a love story. It encompassed all of the love, the impossible, unfamiliar love that I desperately needed. It vicariously gave my soul an imaginary sustenance to keep it alive another day, or it only tantalized it from the outside of an iron cage. There was that prying feeling again.
The guitar gave the air a palpable amber buzz, and my voice that started out timid projected into far away places. In those places I saw all of the love that I had ever known.
Images flashed before me: Jadine touching my cheek. Kooper saying he loved me up on the water tower. Kez's letter. My brother's bruised face after he tackled my father trying to beat me.
I remembered the countless late nights Kez would listen to me complain about my terrible life. I would always tell him that I had to get away from this place, but every time I said something like that, he would start freaking out. He'd say he couldn't live without me, and I believed him. But after my father pushed me over the edge, I couldn't stay any longer. I remembered Kez's scared, green eyes as I left him there tied to that one-way sign. He practically turned that sign around trying to get free to stop me.... Oh god, did I kill Kez? I hoped he would send another letter soon.
As my song disappeared with the sun, I looked to see the whole gang, including Grover, sitting around me with an astonished look. They applauded me and praised me for my playing, and Pablo felt cheated on, grabbing his guitar back, looking it up and down. In a moment, I forgot all about Kez and my distant love, replacing it with warm pride. Jadine even cheered for me with shimmering eyes. They were all astounded that someone like me had this talent, and I felt appreciated in that moment. I told them that I had played ukulele since I was five, and it was my passion, but it burned in the fire that sent me here.
The praise stopped, and everyone's faces fell when I told them this. They exchanged sad glances but I assured them that I was happy here, with or without my ukulele.
I supposed I had never told them what brought me here. I decided to tell them about my past, and why I chose to run away. I told them about the demonic school I attended. I told them about the long journey to JumpTown, and the poverty that I faced for a month and a half before I came here. They were each taken aback about everything I disclosed. Even I was appalled at how my life sounded in a nutshell.
And then I told them about my father. I vomited everything. I told them about his incessant beatings, his drunkenness, how desperate for his love that I felt; I told them about how I almost ended my life one day, and Kez had to pay for my medical bills because Father was too drunk to realize what I had done to myself because of him. I told them about how selfish he is, how cheap he is, how me and my brother had to go to others for school lunches; I told them about my scar, how he hit me there with a broken beer bottle because I couldn't figure out how to tie my shoes; I told them about his anger, his two-sidedness, so he looks normal in public; the terrible, pungent, alcoholic smell of the house. I told them that he was the reason I ran off, and why I never feel safe despite being so far away. I said it all. It was like vomiting uncontrollably, I couldn't help it. And after it was all over the floor, all over them, I wanted to take it all back and swallow it and keep it inside because now he was in their minds forever, and I could feel him so much closer now. I knew I messed up badly.
There was a long and loud silence, and then Milo spoke up. "Each of us has been through some shit. Sometimes, things happen, and you just have to learn to deal with it. At least you ended up here with a roof over your head." Everyone glared at him, and Grover left as if he had been reminded of something.
"Listen," said TJ. "None of us knew you went through that. Why didn't you say anything about it before?"
"What would it have mattered?" I said defensively. "My father and all the rest of it is in the past. It's long gone, and I'd rather not dwell on it." Jadine looked to the floor.
"Well if you ever need anything," said JT, "you better tell us. You deserve a better life. Your dad sounds like a terrible man."
"Don't call him that! Don't call him dad." I shouted. I got off the couch and sighed, trying to clean up my vomit. "Guys. I'm fine. Really. All that is in the past, he's in the past. I don't want to be defined by him. Forget about him." I was shaking. "Oh god. I shouldn't have ever told you. I should never ever have told you. J-just don't—we all have enough pain of our own and—it's all in the past but..—just please forget about him!"
I ran up stairs and to the bathroom to look for a new band aid. I should never have let them into my past. Milo was right. Why burden them with my struggles when they have their own? My father was out of my life. My past was a hundred miles away, and I would never go back unless I decided to kill my father. He's probably the reason mom left, not me. He's probably the reason why my brother Kooper left. He is why I left. He's the reason my heart was dead, and why I didn't know how to love.
As I laid in bed that night, all I could see was him. As high as I was on my bunk bed, he was still looking down on me with that familiar, drunken condescension. The ghastly shadow towered high and laughed gruffly as if it were mocking me for being so foolish, coming here. What was I doing here? What was I waiting for? I had to get away. From him. I could feel him drawing nearer, especially since he was in their heads, and my scars stung from reminiscent glass shards, sensing his approach.
I tried to fall asleep, but when I closed my eyes, he was there. But when I opened them, he was there. And if I were to dream, he'd always be there. He always is. He always will be. Unless I killed him... then he'd probably still be there.
I laid there, paralyzed with fear. I wanted to glance over to TJ for some reassurance that I was with someone not father, but what if father was looking over the banister? I could swear there was a cool breath in my ear.
I prayed to some distant being, feeling desperate for any help, because there was no help on Earth that could save me from him. I prayed hard, hoping someone was listening, hoping someone would end my pain. Because if there was a God, I needed him now more than ever.
I had to get away. Tomorrow, I would find a job, make some money, and go as far away as the taxi could take me. The relationships I'm building here would be scoffed at by father. I have to say goodbye soon before he finds me and beats me. I will never be far enough away.
And so I turned off my mind in spite of my cowardice, in spite of my weaknesses, and just hoped that this time I would follow through with my efforts to escape him; for this is what goes on in my head every single night.
I didn't neglect my ambitions this time. The morning finally came, and the minute I woke up, everyone had their eyes on me, but then they looked away. And then they looked at me again with a sympathetic smile, but my glare made them repent.
Jadine and Milo got up earlier to make me breakfast, and for what reason they responded, "We just thought we could take a burden off your shoulders." That's what Jadine said; Milo seemed offended that he had made me breakfast. I was too. I tried to appreciate it, especially since Jadine had shown that she cared for me, but she was only sympathizing about my scar, and nothing more.
And when I was in the ring that day with TJ, I could tell he was holding back. My first win over him ever didn't feel like I had earned it. And everyone's excessive celebration made me feel like I had just learned how to tie my shoes.
And so after practice, I tore myself away from their unrelenting puppy-eyed stares and left the apartment in search of a job.
I felt like I was tiptoeing down the sidewalk, as if the surface of this earth were a thin egg shell, and beneath was a slough of putrid, black sludge. At every heavy passing vehicle, every carefree pedestrian, I flinched at every movement, cursing them for their selfishness. The whole town was completely and irrevocably known by him, and soon the signal flares would be noticed, and he'd come crashing into the fragile land, dragging me into that black desolation where I find myself so often, drowning, convulsing, until I am my body, and my soul escapes me: an amorphous countenance of nothing more than dead, black weight. I swallow hard to keep what's left of it down.
I stared blankly at the "Now Hiring" sign, and walked into the bakery.
A waft of white powder projected into the dull, subfusc city behind me as I entered, and when the cloud subsided, a counter with thick glass was revealed, which displayed many perfect cakes and baked goods. They presented themselves with pride, with their white crowns and their perfect structure and their glittering embellishments. Each one seemed to have been crafted from the most meticulous, deliberate hands: every sprinkle was exact, each cherry was centered with unfaltering precision like it was placed on a frosty minefield. From the entrance you could see the sugar radiating, but not reflecting. And so my heart presumed too much sugar.
The old man behind the counter, hunched over a single cupcake, stood up from examining his perfect creation. A cloud of powder seemed to encapsulate his very being. He looked over at me with one sharp eye—the other seemed to droop, looking back behind him. And you could tell it was looking, somehow, though it didn't move. His forward, piercing eye stared at me for a while, as if prompting me to state my business.
"Ummmmmm, hi," I said timidly, feeling like he hadn't heard me. I cleared my throat, but he responded.
"What can I do ye for young man?" he said. He had a warm, amiable voice that seemed to fill my entire skull like cider in a cramped kettle. It was a familiar voice, but I was sure I never knew him.
I felt like breaking down and answering truthfully, but he certainly couldn't do anything about that. "I-I saw your sign out front, and I was kind of in need of a job."
"Oh, is that old thing still out there?" He laughed heartily. "I almost forgot. Nobody in twenty years's ever regarded that antediluvian piece a cardboard." He laughed again, causing it to snow.
"Does that mean you aren't hiring?" I said, familiar with that green, sour feeling of disintegrating hope inside of my stomach.
"There weren't ere a young man such as you come in to work in a dusty ol bakery of all places."
"It doesn't matter to me. There aren't many other options around, and I'm in need of anything that will pay." I hoped I didn't sound as desperate as I was.
"Well if it's the money you're after, you ain't gonna find much here. Business is pretty slow nowadays."
I felt like he was challenging my willingness. "It doesn't matter to me."
And he seemed intrigued at my adamance. "Well alrighty then. You seem pretty sure of yourself. I'll give you the job; I could use somebody to talk to for once."
My heart leapt and he waved me back behind the counter of perfect cakes and bread, and he took me through the powder-white door into the kitchen. I hoped his droopy eye didn't catch me celebrating behind him.
In the kitchen, the walls were caked in white, and hundreds of golden cakes and loaves of kneaded bread, even more perfect than the ones in the glass counter, dotted the perimeter of the room atop the lofty white cabinets. Silver utensils gleamed upon the walls and white countertops, alive with potential energy. In the corner of the room, a bulky, burgundy, wood-fired masonry oven was an eye-sore among the white walls of the kitchen. Even the gray smoke billowing from its hot mouth was in fierce combat with the white cloudiness that the warm air diluted: an enemy in its midst, yet salvation to my mortal eyes.
His hands old and scarred shakily gave me an apron and led me to the counter.
He obtained two great white globs of dough from behind a cloud and laid them very gently on the counter, like they were his children. "Ye know anything about baking?" he asked plainly.
I shook my head. "I can make toast though."
He cast a white layer of flour on the frosted counter and he put the white globs on top of them. "Then let me show ye how to knead dough. Just a-follow me!"
As I watched his deft movements, I touched the dough with care, as if he'd call the police if I was too rough.
The dough was easily malleable in my hands, and I marveled, laughed at how easy it was to ball the dough up or lay it flat. I started to knead it quicker, feeling like I had it down. But he said to take it slower, and give the dough enough time to react to the folding and absorb the flour. After a while my hands started to cramp, and I wondered how the old dude didn't have arthritis.
Once the kneading was done, he shaped both globes of dough and put them on the oven rack above the hot fire. He stared at them for a while, but then he walked over to the coffee table I was sitting at.
"So what makes a feller like you want to work at a place like this?" There was something in his voice. I've definitely heard it before, long ago, or every day even; it made me feel like I could tell him everything. But I know I've never talked to him.
"I just need the money. I'm almost an adult, so it'd be nice to have some cushion before I leave the house." For a moment, I thought both of his eyes turned to me, and I quickly looked away in fear that he could see right through my eyes and into the truth.
"That makes some sorta sense," he finally said. "Your parents plan on kicking you out er somn'?"
"Y-yeah, well, let's just say I have to get away from them. They never leave me alone and... and they are all up in my business and stuff like that." I tried to convince myself that I wasn't lying, but a strange conviction told me otherwise—it might've been his other eye. But he was still smiling as if he knew nothing about my life. He shouldn't have known anything; I've never met him. But yet there was something in that voice....
"Well I doubt there's any good in runnin' from them. If they love ye, they'll sho find ye. You can't get away from that—"
"But if they don't love you, they won't find you. Right?" I said it without thinking. "I mean, that's what would happen in theory," I muttered.
"I spose so." His voice had a tinge of concern to it. "But I wouldn't force that to happen, if what you're sayin is true."
"I won't."
"That's a relief," he laughed. I couldn't. "Er you from around here? You got yellow in yer face, but you ain't been in the deep sun like the rest of us."
"I...I just moved here. From Petalburg."
"And yer just now lookin to move away again?"
"N-Not any time soon! I'll be able to work here for a while," I said in defense.
"I nary mean nothin' about that. I don't expect you to be here for more than a day. You got a whole life to live; you don't gotta waste it here," he said shrugging. "Where are you planning on gettin away to?"
"I have no idea. I'm looking to go farther East."
"That's smart. The Mushroom Kingdom ore there has a little more heart than this place."
I looked at him as if he confessed a felony, but he didn't bat his eye. "I don't know if I'm planning on going as far as the Mushroom Kingdom, but I don't know.... My brother works over there. It'd be cool to see him."
"Smart man he is. One of the few that's actually got an own sense of judgement."
"What do you mean?" I said, sitting taller.
"Some people are told what to believe, some people choose what to believe. That's what's wrong with society. There are so many paths, yet everyone just follows the person in front of them without thinkin for themselves."
"What brought you here?" I challenged.
"Ohh I've been here my whole life. Someone's gotta make bread." And just then, an invisible timer went off in his mind, and he went to the oven.
The one on the left had a perfect shape like all of the others in the bakery. The one on the right was mine, and you could tell. He sat the bread on the coffee table.
He broke open his loaf, and you could hear each and every fiber throughout it snap perfectly, making my mouth water. "See how this has a nice texture all the way through? The color is constant, and there ain't no burns or nothin." Then he picked up mine. The bread had no response to gravity as if it were a dry sponge. He broke it and the sound was awful, like singed velcro; and dry crumbs littered the table, gasping for air. The interior was charred ash black, ridden with obscene, gaping craters.
He knocked it on the table like a rock. "It's dry because ye kneaded it too fast, and ye didn't allow the moisture to settle or absorb."
"Oh," I said quietly.
He took my loaf over to the wood-fired oven and opened the base of it where the fire was. The flames reached out violently as if grabbing for his apron.
"You're gonna throw it into the fire?" I said desperately. "Are you sure you can't add more flour to it or water or something to fix it?"
"I'm afraid not. It's too the point where it's all ash anyway. It's not bread anymore." He threw it in, and the flames violently clawed for the bread like ravenous, starving lions. He closed the door. "It was too far gone."
And I watched helplessly as it's ashes floated, very slowly, to the floor like dead crow barbules. They never had a chance to make it out the chimney.
"Come by on wednesday if you feel like it. I'll show you more. You seem to have a lot on yer mind, I know it's a lot to take in."
"It's only bread though," I said, upset for no reason, because it was only bread. Nothing more than bread. He knew he didn't have to respond.