East

East

Boots broke another needle, so Can carried me upstairs. I don't know why everyone called him Can, and I never asked why, so I assumed on my own it was a shortened version of another name. Can always removed me from the room when things were broken, like needles or bottles or jaws. Tonight, despite my request to not trouble him, he hauled me in his wiry arms to the upstairs vacancy.
"Y'don't needuh be around that junk anyhow," he told me as he set me down on the noisy mattress. "Broken glass is the leest damage it cud do to ya."
"What's broke glass gon do to a kid who can't een feel his legs?" I joked while I adjusted myself to lean against the drywall.
"Don't mattuh if ya feel it, all's matters is that it hurts ya, whether you's feel it or not." He dusted off the nearest cloth that resembled a blanket and tossed it over me with experienced ease. I learned not to offer him my blanket a long time ago; he never budged, and all arguing did was tense him up like a shaken soda can.
We talked about anatomy and about my paralysis, about walking and about running, about leaving and about arriving, about basically anything that could amount to nothing between us. I liked these talks, they reminded me that I was connected to the outside world. It's easy to forget your place in a reality that you're forced to hide from. Talking about grades in schools I didn't attend and the future of the country that didn't know I existed with Can was me calling out to the world, telling it, "Here I am! Come and get me, I ain't scared!". Even though these bluffs were always called, it still felt nice to me to pretend.
Two men suddenly interrupted Can's intriguing story regarding a Rottweiler and a paint bucket. They rubbed their red noses and motioned behind them, but Can held up his tattered glove and declined.
"Aw, cmon mane!" one of them complained. "Ju never wanna do anything, mane."
"Besides drink," the other one added in spoken cursive.
"I herd enoughuh dis," Can creaked to his feet and shuffled to close the door. "Get on, go. Go!" The men limped and shuffled away to another room, and in minutes their drug-fueled power could be felt in the paper walls.
"How comes you drink but don't do nothing else?" I asked Can when things got too quiet with us and too loud outside.
"Drink's different," he stated tersely. "All dat othuh crap, it'll fuc-oh, excuse me, it'll mess things up real bad. Real, real bad."
"And drinking don't?"
"Drinkin' only messes tha drinker up. I ain't boutta go and harm anothuh man 'cause I can't control whut goes up my nose or in mah veins. Drink stays in mah head, and my head only. That's where it belong." Can always got still and quiet after he talked of alcohol, as if he were patiently waiting for applause from a disappointed audience. I was the only audience he ever had, and I can't remember a time I was disappointed in Can, so I nodded and looked at the lantern-touched ceiling, and after a while I fell asleep. Can was there when I woke up, just like he always was.