Can #1

His mouth is dry, always dry. Gritty, lacking the needed saliva, like eating sand. Jerry Donaldson, a fierce and lonely middle aged man with pallid bloodshot eyes and the creased face of a factory worker, shifts his rusty pick-up truck into park and almost forgets to take the keys from the ignition as he rushes to open the door. The Wal-Mart parking lot is deserted in the late hours of the sultry summer night except for a handful of vehicles near the entrance and an obese woman, well over two hundred pounds, pushing her cart and wearing a pair of undersized stretch pants and pastel blue T-Shirt with a timber wolf howling at the moon graphic. This is the only time the Meadville Wal-Mart isn’t filled to near capacity with husky folks who work the dying dairy farms or sad faced families with their welfare checks laid off from the once booming tool shops near the river.

Aisle 4. He has dreams of aisle 4. They stack the Coca-Cola to almost the ceiling. Glorious towers of soda. Nobody is looking so he crawls behind the bakery counter to get there quicker. One time a worker caught him taking this short cut and said they’d throw his ass out for life if they caught him doing it again.

Jerry snatches a case of Coke from the shelf and immediately tears in and retrieves a red aluminum can. Standing in the middle of the aisle beneath the irritating rows of florescent lights he takes the first long anticipated sip and holds the sugary soda in his mouth allowing the carbonation bubbles to dance on his tongue. Sip after sip he lets the bubbles tango in his mouth until the entire can is empty. The sensation is heaven.

Can #2

There is a chewed piece of gum in the garbage can at the end of aisle 4. Jerry reaches in, grabs it, pops it in his mouth to soften it, then sticks it against the cardboard where he opened the case of cola.

At the register the 8” by 11” sheet of Xeroxed paper is still taped to the right of the cashier. It reads: All tampered with items will be assessed a $2 surcharge!!! Jerry sets his patched-up case on the counter and fidgets with his hands. They are stiff like weathered leather with dirt crusted under the fingernails.

“Christ, what is this?” the pretty teenage cashier with autumn leaf hair demands. The wad sticks to her flesh. She pulls her hand away leaving a long string of gum connecting her to the case. “Oh my god. Ew!” She turns her condescending gaze toward Jerry who is wearing a sweat soaked once-white-but-now-perspiration-yellow undershirt.

“Where did that come from?” Jerry says looking at the gum and feigns surprise.

“You tampered with the merchandise,” she points to the Xeroxed sign next to her head.

“I didn’t do it. I’m not paying a cent over retail. Let me speak with your manager.” Jerry reaches across the counter in some meager attempt to show his innocence, knocks the case and the can nearest the opening skips out of its confinement and tumbles to the floor spraying its contents on the cashier’s feet.

“It’s not a big deal. Not a big deal,” Jerry repeats.

“No, it is a big deal,” the pretty cashier says while chomping on her gum, arm cocked on her hip. “Because now you ruined my shoes.”

The cashier pages the manager on the intercom. “Manager needed for customer assistance at register three,” her voice pauses for an extra second. “And a janitor for a spill,” with a frustrated flash of her slender hand she slams the phone back into its resting place.

“Damn meth-heads,” she mutters, barely auditable under her breath.

Can #3

Jerry cracks open another can and takes a tremendous gulp. The cashier’s pretty young face reminds him of his daughter. Her bitchy personality reminds him of his ex wife. He thinks about how he has to meet with his ex wife tomorrow, how much he dreads it, how everything he touches in this dying town falls apart along with it.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” the cashier asks defensively.

“You remind me of someone.”

“Well stare and think the other way. It’s creeping me out.” She has her shoes off, scrubbing them with a paper towel.

The manager arrives. He’s a wiry, ghost-complected fellow with greasy matted hair combed straight back and thin wire framed glasses surrounding his large bug-like eyes. They are unconfident eyes, like those of a beggar, lost, tired, baffled.

“Jerry, we’ve been through this before. You know the rules, tamper with the merchandise then you gotta pay the surcharge.” He avoids eye contact instead probing Jerry with darting glances.

“But I didn’t do it.”

“Jerry, pay the surcharge or you are never stepping foot in my store again. I have half a mind to not let you back in after what you tried to pull tonight. This isn’t the first time.”

“I have half a mind never to come back,” Jerry says. Everyone knows this is untrue. Jerry will be back tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that.

“Jerry. Pay the surcharge.”

Jerry takes a wadded-up ten from his wallet and tosses it over the counter making the cashier pick it up from the ground. He lifts the case from the register and tucks it under his arm imagining it a football, protecting it just like he once did in ‘74 when he played half-back for Meadville High, racing for the end zone crashing headlong into the defensive-line. Those were the days; back when things around here were something special.

“I ain’t never coming back,” Jerry says.

The casher rolls her eyes and exhales loudly.

Can #4

Pulling out of the parking lot and speeding away Jerry thinks about the manager’s little speech. Half-a-mind-this, half-a-mind-to-do-that. What bullshit. The manager is a pussy and that’s that. Jerry had half-a-mind to come back here later with a tanker of gasoline and burn the entire building to the ground. That would show’em. Jerry opened another can and smiled.

Can #5

Jerry tosses an empty can out the window of his speeding truck and watches it cartwheel into a ditch through his rear view mirror as he opens another. Route 322 is deserted except for the ember glow of tail lights from a solitary car rumbling ahead of him in the distance. Sturdy farmhouses nuzzle the road, mostly dark with the occasional spectral blue glow of a television in a second floor bedroom window. The neon sign from a roadside tavern at the junction with Route 19 calls to him but he drives on. He stopped drinking a year ago, but during these hollow hours past midnight he sometimes feels lonely and longs for companionship with the other forlorn souls over a drink. He pulls into his driveway; the sullen dark windows of his empty house stare back at him like wounded black eyes. He had built it for his family with all the money he was making in tool and die back when things were booming. But times change and nothing ever works out the way you envision it. Maybe he can’t help but make a mess of everything.

Can #6

Jerry sets the case of Coca-Cola on the coffee table next to a stack of half empty Styrofoam take-out containers with the remnants of General Tso’s Chicken and the end of the burrito soaked with too much sour cream, a half-dozen dirty plastic forks, and a pile of empty Coke cans. The television glows mindless blue and speaks to no one. It remains on even while Jerry isn’t in the same room, a voice to break the silence, to stuff in to the emptiness, like someone was in the house, an old friend perhaps, or his mother when she was still alive humming to herself while she cross-stitched with colorful threads in her favorite comfy red chair. He brings a can of cola—already half empty—to the bathroom and drones through his pre-bed rituals. He prefers to ready himself for bed in the dark, especially while brushing his teeth. He splashes water over his emaciated face while finishing the last few sips of soda. With a burp he presses his knuckles into his weary eyes and heads to bed.

Can #7

During the depths of the night, long after Jerry drifted into sleep and the only sound radiating in the still house was the dull chatter of a late-night infomercial explaining how their new cleaning product guaranteed to “Wipe clean the competition!”, Jerry’s German Shepard and Collie mixed breed mutt named Millie takes notice of the case of Coke on the coffee table. She puts her sloppy wet nose into the open case and sniffs about with great panting huffs. Opening her mouth Millie grabs a can between her teeth, pulls and drops it letting it clatter towards the floor. She scurries back to her spot at the foot of the steps—Millie is a cowardly and sensitive sort of dog. All the barking and fuss when strangers knock at the front door is all a façade. She peers from the shadows at the can rolling along the floor boards. With cautious movements she approaches not sure if the crashing sound would radiate again from its metallic shell. She reaches the shiny container and with a curious flip of her nose rolls it about the hardwood floor before biting into it with her pike-like teeth. A dark sugary substance fizzes out with a hiss like an industrial boiler all over the ground. Millie enjoys the taste and laps up most of the contents with her tongue.

                                                                            Can #8           

“Millie! You damn mutt!” Jerry cries as he groggily steps on the sticky mess on the floor. Millie sulks in the corner, head sagging, and tail tucked limply between her hind legs. Jerry had planned for a busy morning and cleaning up Millie’s mess wasn’t on the schedule. There is a dentist appointment, but before that he intended to stop by his ex-wife’s dilapidated house among the grim tenements of Kertown with its crippled homes, and their scabby clapboards and faded peeling paint along the sleepy current of French Creek drifting on in its basin near the Mead Avenue Bridge. She insists that there is something important to discuss involving the kids.

The odor of Jerry’s sleep-soaked body rises around him. He doesn’t have time to take a shower. Instead, he grabs a damp rag from the kitchen, which reeks of the distinct sour smell of mildew and tosses it down on top of the spill. He should have known better than to leave it within Millie’s reach at night, she noses into everything. He grabs one can, opens it and empties its warm contents into his mouth. There was no time to let it chill. Millie’s mess, that puddle of sticky coke on the floor, would wait until he returned later in the afternoon.

Can #9

Jerry stands at Maria’s door, head hanging, bracing for her wrath. His baleful eyes stare at the ground with one hand plunged in his pocket the other trembling and clasping a can of Coke.

Maria flings the door open muttering nasty words under her breath. Jerry was supposed to be there at 8AM sharp. It’s 9:15. She remains motionless in the doorway, studying him coldly, dark eyes smoldering, tearing him to pieces from behind the black uncombed hair tumbling over one side of her face. They are powerful sorts of eyes, small and green like shards of broken glass, and she squints with feral intensity, which means, unequivocally, she might pounce at any moment on the target of her gaze.

She slides out a cigarette and lights up. Her slender fingers tremble slightly as she drags and blows a plume of smoke like she blew him away from her life all together.

“Dammit Jerry, you’re late again. Acting like the world should schedule everything around your whim. Probably never thought I might have somewhere to be this morning, “she speaks in a tone that says she is just getting started. She looks down at the Coca-Cola in his hand. “And why are you still drinking that crap? Your teeth look like shit. You’d think after looking in the mirror every morning and seeing a rotten row of teeth you’d stop.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Jerry’s hands try to explain.

Maria stands firmly pointing her little nicotine stained finger in his face. Her five foot two inch frame a grenade with the pin pulled.

“Sure, it wasn’t your fault,” her voice sings heavy with contempt and her chin juts with rehearsed defiance. She cocks her eyebrow and wrinkles up her resolute little face. “Just like losing the business. You are just big ideas full of bigger excuses.”

“Maria, I didn’t come here for a goddamn motherly lecture.”

“Well, you sure as hell could use a motherly lecture, you fuck up. You ruined my life when you lost the business.”

“I didn’t lose the business. It was this town’s shitty economy. All the jobs are going over seas, what else could I have done?”

“Jesus, another fucking excuse. Now you are blaming Chinks and Spics. Go on, how bout blame aliens, dinosaurs, and wizards while you are at it. Bottom line is you ruined my life and you ruined your kids’ lives. I don’t know what you did with all the money but when my lawyers find out I’m taking you for everything you have left. And I had my lawyer file for full custody the other day. Your kids can’t see you like this. I mean look at you, you look like a dirty bum.” She stabs her Winston Light between her heavy, chapped lips, and takes a full drag not waiting to hear any more of his half-brained excuses.

“No. You can’t do that to me. Not now, not when I’m right at the brink of getting the shop back from the bank. I’m trying to get things right,” he pleads, just like a little boy endlessly begging his mother for the candy bar in the check-out line at the supermarket. It is the exact pitifully soft voice, eyes tearing with surprise and bleak betrayal, when he begged Maria not to leave him when they separated.

“Know what I think?”

Jerry didn’t answer.

“I think that’s the problem. You are always trying but you are never doing. You miss your visits with the children on a regular basis; you’ve lost all your friends, the tool shop, and you are going to lose the house.”

“I haven’t lost—”

“Now wait a sec and let me finish. Don’t kid yourself, you’ve lost almost everything. The children can’t see you like this. Get yourself some help because Lord knows I can’t help you anymore.” she tells him straight.

“I don’t need any help,” Jerry tries to keep his voice from falsetto. He presses the Coke can between his hands and the metal begins to give then throws the crinkled mass down on to his ex-wife’s weedy lawn. His face burns and flush crawls up his neck. The embarrassment is fierce.

“Sure you don’t,” Maria bangs shut the front door. “Don’t even think of coming back here until you get yourself cleaned up and have the business back,” she yells from inside, “And pick that damn can up off my lawn!”

Out of spite Jerry kicks the crumpled can giving him a feeling of childish satisfaction.

Can #10

Engrossed in his own brooding thoughts Jerry doesn’t realize he cruised through the red light until he hears the frantic cry of rubber skidding across asphalt and the incessant blare of a car horn. He looks up, cast from his trance, and sees a rusty blue sedan in his path. There is less than a foot of space between them. The quick reaction of his foot to his break petal saved an accident but the fresh can of Coke in his hand wasn’t so lucky.  It shoots from his grip, hits the dashboard, and spirals to the street cascading cola into the air in streams like a great geyser. It sizzles on the steaming hot pavement.

“Watch where you are going asshole!” yells an elderly purple haired lady with a fresh perm from her sedan window.

Jerry thinks about flipping her the bird and yelling something from the putrid backwaters of his vocabulary, but can’t bring himself to do something so lewd towards somebody’s grandmother. 

Can #11

“Has my 9:15 patient arrived?”  Tardiness is exactly the reason why Dr. Kerosaugh hates to make exceptions to his posted office hours to accommodate a patient.

“No, he still hasn’t arrived yet—” the receptionist’s voice cut off.  “Wait, someone is coming up the stairs, this might be him.”

“It better be,” Dr. Kerosaugh mutters under his breath. He puts a smile on his face highlighting a perfect row of whitewashed teeth and walks to the waiting room to greet his tardy patient. “Good morning Jerry!” he says with a peppy bravado he hopes doesn’t sound too phony. Though a few of his employees thought his happy demeanor was a veneer, he truly cared about his patients and their oral health. “Are you ready to come back so I can take a look at what’s going on with your teeth?”

“It’s my whole mouth doc. My whole damn mouth is a mess,” Jerry explains and sips from the can of Coke cupped in his hand.

“Just come on back to my office. We’ll take care of it. You can toss that can of pop in the garbage can over there. You shouldn’t be drinking that stuff before an appointment.” Dr. Kerosaugh can’t quite remember what Jerry looked like the last time he came in for a check up. It had been a number of years, but he is sure the man standing in front of him looks nothing like the Jerry of years before. He remembers him as a thicker man with a full face and brighter eyes.

“You can have a seat right there,” Dr. Kerosaugh waves of his arm toward the leather dental chair. “Just lay back and relax.”

He pulls his stainless steel tools resembling medieval torture devices with their spinney twisted points from the sterilizing unit and takes his seat at the head of the patient and adjusts the overhead lamp.

“Open up.”

It was all Dr. Kerosaugh could do not to gasp. The last cleaning Jerry had a near perfect set of teeth, but now all that is left was mostly a mangled mess of tartar and decay. The molars hardly visible, decayed practically to the root. The bicuspids, not so bad, only a tarry black discoloration. His incisors are the worst, the decay had got so out of control that all that remained of his front four teeth were jagged outcroppings where the tartar had calcified like stalagmites in a dark moist cave. Jerry’s bite was nearly vanished.

Dr. Kerosaugh recognizes the problem immediately. It is a crisis he was seeing all too often as of late: Meth-mouth, at least that’s what the local dentists were calling it. Ever since the speed epidemic hit rural western Pennsylvania in the mid 1990’s patients have been coming into his office with meth-mouth practically on a daily basis.

“These teeth look really bad Jerry. What have you been doing to let them get like this?” he asks, wondering if Jerry will allude to some sort of chemical addiction problem.

“Nothing Doc. I try my best to brush them every night. It’s just that sometimes I forget from time to time.”

“Jerry, this is a lot worst than forgetting to brush every now and then. This is full and complete decay of all of your teeth. You are going to have to make an appointment at the front desk and come back for a complete extraction and get you sized up for some dentures.”

“Could it be because I drink a lot of pop? My mouth is always dry and it’s the only thing that seems to quench my thirst.”

“How much do you drink?”  Dr. Kerosaugh asks halfheartedly. Dryness of the mouth is another symptom of methamphetamine addiction.

“A case.”

“A week?”

“No, a day.”

“A day!?”

“Yeah doc, a case a day.”

“Well golly, that’s a lot of soda pop.”

“So do you think the decay could be from all of the pop I drink?”

Dr. Kerosaugh never had a patient admit to drinking so much cola on a daily basis. He figures it is possible such corrosion could occur from prolonged contact with sugary substances such as soda, but it usually progresses at a slower rate.

“Are you sure you aren’t doing anything else that could be hazardous to your oral health?” the doctor prods with an impersonal professionalism.

“No sir, only the Coke. Not the white powder stuff from Columbia either,” Jerry laughs at his own joke. The doctor doesn’t find it as humorous.

“Ok Jerry, just head on out to the reception desk and we’ll get you scheduled to have your old teeth extracted and fit you for a new set of pearly whites,” he says with a reassuring grin.

Can #12

Jerry saunters out to his pick-up in the parking lot. In the tint of his truck’s rear window he peers at his reflection. He opens his mouth, ever so slightly, revealing an awkward toothless grin. He imagines what his new smile will look like after his brand new set of pearly whites. Jerry gets in his truck and drives towards his home in Vernon Township whistling a few notes of nothing. He reaches down and grabs the last can snapping it open. He figures he will stop by Wal-Mart to buy some more Coca-Cola.  His mouth is dry.