Hansel and Gretel, Ch 2

Chapter 2

“So, I got the job?” The owner of a small pawn shop stares at me with his eyes barely opening amidst fits of drunken discourses, I guess you could call it laughter. The owner, I think his name is Ted but his end of the conversation has been nearly inaudible, mostly slurs, burps, and hiccups, tries to compose himself but he can’t keep that moronic condescending smile off of his face.
“Well, ya look strong enough, son,” Ted says, burping the last word. “How old are ya, anyways?”
Ted’s breath reeks of whiskey and stale nicotine and he’s breathing right into my face, having leaned not but eight inches from my own with the conversation taking a turn from drinking banter to business. “I’m eighteen, sir.” Lie. I’m actually sixteen, but two years comprised of wielding axe and chainsaw as a logger in my hometown (I use the word home loosely) have given me broad, muscular shoulders and muscle tone to my arms that appear to belong to a man a decade older than I. I run my hand through my mane of dark curls, a habit of mine when in situations of discomfort, waiting to see if Ted can see through my prevarication. I shouldn’t be so nervous, though; Ted can’t even sit on the barstool without swaying with the minute movements of the boat, let alone read between the lines of such a subtle lie.
“Well, shit, son! I’d be a downright buffoon not to let you work in my shop! I gots some business to attend to in the city, so I’ll be out for a couple days.” Business to Dwellers (that’s what Maggie and I call the city folk) such as Ted probably means gambling, drinking to the brink of death and miscellaneous other disgusting acts. Yet despite how I despise Ted and Dwellers like him, this couldn’t have worked more swimmingly. Now Mags and I will have a place to stay, to sleep, and we’ll earn some money in the process. Well, I’ll earn the money for Mags and I. I don’t want her to be subjected to any harm that comes with labor. If she even knew how many times I’ve escaped death in the form of a falling tree gone awry or a drunken fellow logger losing control of his chainsaw with me in the vicinity, she’d have another meltdown, and that is exactly why I work so hard: to spare her the pain of having that happen. If only our mother wouldn’t be such a masterful inflictor of pain and disappointment. Ugh. I don’t even want to think about her right now, I have business to attend to, myself.
“Okay, Ted, buddy, let’s talk money. My sister and I will be working, maintaining and cleaning your shop for a week, so how about five hundred bucks all together? That seems reasonable, no?”
“Huh?” Ted guffaws. “Hell, boy! I’d say three hundred at the most! Its hard times in the city.” I hate a lot of things. For instance, my hometown, the people who live there, my fellow loggers, my nonexistent father, and my mother, to name a few (oh, yes, the list continues), but I exceptionally despise these Dwellers who speak of hard knocks and their inability to cope. Any of them would be embedded into the forest floor if they tried doing what I do every day, dismantle giants in their domain one-by-one. And all to provide the only source of income for my family, if that’s what you’d call our trio.
“Look, Ted, I need to make at least four hundred fifty dollars while I’m in the city. And if you can’t do that, then I bet any other shop-owner would jump at the opportunity of having me for the week for that amount. So, the way I see it is either you have me on your team for the week or you have me as an enemy. Your call, sir.” Yeah, I learned how to be condescending much earlier than is healthy. But with a worthless mother and a frail sister, that leaves me as the one with dirty hands and rolled up sleeves.
I can tell Ted isn’t of the highest social stature amongst the other ferryman. He’s already sweating and I haven’t even threatened him yet, well, not really. “Okay, kid, four-fifty it is.” says Ted, his index finger now pointing at my chest. “This shop is all I have, so if anything happens to it, well, I’ll let you figure that one out.” I guess Ted and I have something in common, then.
Painting a rueful, fabricated smile across my face, I rise and shake his hand, finger still pointed at me. “Nice doing business with you, sir.” I turn my back and head out of the tourist bar where our meeting took place and head up the steps onto the observation deck, leaving Ted in my wake. Nice try, Ted.
I don’t make it onto the deck, though. My worst, mightiest fear confronts me on the top step, shadows cast from the entryway’s awning enveloping me. Who the Hell is that? There’s a greasy Dweller in a sweat-stained shirt and mismatched tie standing inches from my sister, speaking something through a toothy grin. We’ll see how many teeth that smile bears when I’m through with him. “Don’t what? I’m afraid I missed the punchline.” I say as I step out of the shadows and into the meager sunlight being emitted from the gray sky. Before Maggie was quartering herself away from the boy, who appears to only be a couple years older than us, her face obscured by her curtain of dark, wild hair, face fixated on the floorboards. Now, I am not looking at my sister. She can thank me later.
“Hey, man, I was only talking to her,” backpedals the Dweller with his palms exposed either in fear or defeat, I can’t tell which but I’m content with both.
“Exactly. Come on, Mags, the company is better below.” Margaret, with her face still fixated downward, scurries to my side and latches onto my bicep. I give the Dweller one last pointed glance over my shoulder before leading my sister to safety. Another successful venture in securing my sister’s purity, and my sanity. I look back over my shoulder once more before stepping into the darkness of the doorway, but I don’t see the Dweller, only the gray backdrop of the seemingly everlasting lake.
I do not like the lake. With the vast, unknown world that resides beneath its surface, nothing can be certain down there, and that meddles me. I would certainly prefer death than to live there in the water; such an ambiguous beauty needn’t be stained by my presence. I bet I could be a damn successful fisherman though, reaping the life from a world unfit for man. Come to think of it, that’s not all too different from what I currently do, anyways. I deconstruct natural fixtures of an unnatural world, all to keep Maggie’s and my head above the surface, and hopefully to push my mother’s head below it.
The thought of my sister pulls me out of the mist of my reverie. Lately Maggie has been getting irritable with me for making such a grand spectacle of her protection, even though it is completely necessary, so I attempt to lighten both of our moods. “Good news, Little Sis, I found us a job.” She doesn’t return my lightheartedness, for Maggie knows my heart may as well have roots ensnaring everything that could possibly weigh it down, nothing that bears the slightest semblance of alleviation. She just shrinks into my side as I encircle her lithe, bird-like frame in my arms that seem to devour her entirely. “I got a job at a pawn shop while we’re in the city. Our itinerary consists dealing with filthy Dwellers and reselling most definitely stolen shit. Sounds fun, right?” Another smile, this one actually sincere, beams down to be soaked into my sister.
“You didn’t have to go berserk like that, Hunter,” Maggie, with her snow-white skin glittering in the fluorescent lights and her dark hair eclipsing her eyes like nightfall, says in a down-trodden voice into the fabric of my shirt.
“Come on, Mags, you’re better than these Dwellers. And besides, I need your help finding our darling tramp of a mother.” This she laughs at, her wind chime voice reverberating softly like birdsong amidst the discordant music and drunken profanities that litter the air of the packed tourist bar. But we both know that it wasn’t a joke, for if I were in charge of keeping track of our junkie mother as she gets loaded and disappears behind darkened doorways with grotesque men, I would end up snapping my tenuous grasp on my temper and breaking her jaw. No doubt.
That may have been a dramatization, for I’ve never laid a finger on mother for two reasons: 1.) I despise her for being so dehumanized and 2.) I’d probably catch a disease from her. If it weren’t for Maggie, I wouldn’t have a problem with my mother and her persistent attempts of withering herself away into a pile of dust, or possibly coal (its darker, like her soul), for I would have no qualms with leaving her behind. The thought of being on my own, fending for myself and myself only, of fashioning a new start out of this bitter heart, it’s all pretty liberating to contemplate. But Maggie does exist, and don’t get me wrong, I love her. She is the anchor that keeps me fastened to the Hell wherein we reside, but Maggie emits the light that I have found in no other place, even amidst our abyss of a home. How could I abandon that? I couldn’t, and so here I am, scouring the most immoral of dwellings for the most immoral of people. Sometimes while on these trips I wish that our mother wouldn’t return, to disembody from us the burdens that she bears. Who knows, maybe she’ll find the Beast that validates her thinking of herself as a Beauty amidst the sleazy streets of the city. I can only hope.