She remembered that she hadn’t called for a ride as she stepped off the plane. Humid air pushed past her face and she craved a beer. The airport was more than an hour from Parsley. She’d have to pay for a cab; another ding to her savings. Loading her bag into the trunk she tried to figure out how to tell Judith she was back for good. She should have called in advance but being organized was never one of her strengths. It was warm in the cab so she pulled off the sweater that made sense in a chilly airline cabin. The long flight and her comfortable rhythm of the car on the road made her fall asleep and when she awoke realized they were just crossing the border into town. They passed the Parsley Cemetery and she held her breathe. Old West Indian superstition about duppy possessing your body if you don’t hold your breath clung to her in spite of her education. ‘Don’t you know there aint no devil, there’s just God when he’s drunk’ croaked out of the radio. Watching the landscape float by she realized not much had changed in her old town. Welcome back to Parsley, Ontario, Cassidy Holmes.
Rather than being dropped off at the house she got the cab driver to drop her off at the intersection of George Street and Adelaide. She had one piece of luggage and the rest was being shipped back to town in a few days. Lifting the green, hard shell case out of the trunk, she banged the hood and stepped onto the sidewalk.
Just keep your eyes down and don’t make eye contact. It was advice she and her best friend would whisper to one another without looking at each other as they encountered an MDP: Mentally Disturbed Person. There weren’t that many mentally ill people wandering the streets of Parsley when Cassidy was a kid but they were there and their presence was obvious. Not like today where it was impossible to go a day without seeing someone eyeing you steadily from a shop doorway after midnight asking for change. Shortly before she left town she noticed the crazy uptick in her town. There seemed to be more of them. Or maybe she was just ignoring her friend’s advice and seeing what was in front of her. Very few people on the street. It was like a dry town on a Sunday night. In the far distance she saw someone stumbling, scraping his left leg along the ground towards her. She wanted to feel compassion. Girding herself, and throwing her shoulders back confidently strode down the sidewalk. As the bearded, dirty man came upon her he stopped. She felt his breath on her cheek but, rather than feed his curiousity, kept walking. She heard him snarl, ‘dirty niggers, why don’t you go back to where you come from…fucking make me sick’ and dragged his broken self towards whatever was drawing him eastward. Home.
The words shouldn’t have bothered her. She’d heard herself called all kinds of ugly things by perfectly sane people but this felt like a full force back handed slap. She strained to breathe normally, pulled herself up again after the verbal blow to the sternum and justified what happened to herself. He’s sick. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He could have said that to anyone. Anyone. No…no…she shook her head, stopped, turned around and screamed, ‘Fuck you, asshole!’ to the vagrant’s retreating figure, no more than a speck, now. How did he get so far so fast? Probably didn’t hear her anyway. She still felt good but knew it didn’t mean a thing. Are you sure you should have come back, Parsley seemed to ask while pushing her head first into a snowbank. She saw the local dive bar open and loud music pouring out of the open front window. She needed a drink. Just one, she promised herself, and then home. She glanced at her cell phone to see that it was 8:07pm. She could order, drink, and be home by nine.
Two young women with 70’s shag haircuts, ripped, acid wash jeans and cheap dollar store runners stood outside smoking. Cassidy only smoked when she drank but she felt like she needed the vapours in her lungs so she bummed one. The shorter one, who looked like a 5th grader from the back was eyeing her through heavily kohl rims. She had pale lips with strong liner.
‘Where you from?’ she asked in a voice belonging to a woman three times her age.
‘Here,’ Cassidy said using her luggage as a seat.
‘Really? Never seen you before and I’m down here all the time. Small town, you know.’
‘I know. I left. I grew up here. Public school, high-school, jobs at the mall. The whole package, you know. Left a few years ago to do some travelling. Thought I’d be gone for a couple of months and a couple of months turned into years.’ She inhaled and felt the nicotine go to her head, making her momentarily woozy.
‘What high school you go to?’ asked the second girl who ended up being a boy once Cassidy looked closer.
‘Borden.’
The smokers nodded slowly while staring at her intently through the smoke. ‘So, why’d you come back to this shithole of a town? There’s nothing here and it’s boring as fuck,’ he chuckled while lighting a second cigarette.
‘Ah well, I was running out of cash, the novelty of being away was wearing off and I figured I’d rather die at home than in some hostel in Argentina,’ she dropped the half smoked butt on the ground, rubbed it out and pulled a small bottle of hand sanitizer.
‘You’ll be bored to death here, for sure. My name is Crystal and this is Johnny. We went to Borden, too, and couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there. I can’t wait to find a job outside of this place and have a real life,’ Crystal said, drawing out each word with crisp precision while staring out into the distance of the main street desolate but for a few cars and pedestrians.
‘Good luck, guys. I’m Cassidy. Want to join me for a pint?’ she grabbed the handle of her suitcase and began heading into the bar.
‘Nah, we should get home soon. Things get weird out here after a certain time and besides, it’s a full moon,’ Johnny said while pointing up. ‘Don’t want to tempt fate,’ he smirked as they ambled away.
Cassidy checked her cell again. 8:23 pm. One drink and homeward bound. She parked her rolling suitcase by the door and looked around the bar. Phatty Angel Bar and Grill. It used to be Lloyds when she lived here, but now it was decorated with crude drawings of rotund, slutty angels holding stilettos in one hand and overflowing beer steins in the other; they peered at her with coquettish eyes. She sat at the bar and ordered.