The Changing Lives of Joe Hart Read online

  Joe shook his head. “Mom’s sick at home, gotta head that way.”

  JD nodded. They were used to Chandra being sick. She was often under the weather, but had always been great about keeping them stocked with pop and snacks when they were having their all-weekend Risk tournaments or Saturday night poker games.

  “Okay, man,” JD said, offering a hand for an “up high” hand shake and shoulder bump. “If you change your mind, we’ll be out at the beach. You know where I mean, right?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Joe lied. “I’ll think about it.”

  He didn’t think about it, but he did make it to the pizza joint in time to get his and Chandra’s usual order—a large pepperoni, bacon, and ham pizza—and made it home by 9:45. He walked through the front door and into the living room.

  “Ladies and... well, Lady, please welcome Middle Falls High School’s newest graduate, Joe Hart!”

  He held the pizza box high, but froze when he saw his mother.

  Chandra Hart had rolled mostly off the couch. Her eyes were closed and there was blood trickling out of her ears and nose.

  “Mom!” Joe kneeled beside her and lifted her onto the couch. He patted her cheeks softly, an unknowing echo of the slap the nurse had delivered eighteen years earlier. He stepped on the forgotten pizza box as he rushed for the phone to call Middle Falls’ newly installed emergency 9-1-1 number.

  JOE FIDGETED IN THE uncomfortable waiting room chair. It was a few minutes past 3:00 a.m., and he had been waiting to hear something for so long, it felt like the wait would never end. He waited alone, because he and his mother had always been alone. From the moment his father died, the Hart family had been comprised of only two people. Joe wondered if that number was about to be reduced in half.

  Finally, a man in a white coat walked toward him. He was not smiling.

  “Son, I’m sorry,” the doctor began, but Joe didn’t hear the rest of what he said. No matter how kind the words were, how comforting their intent, he still knew the truth of it.

  That’s it. I’m alone.

  Chapter Three

  Joe sat numbly on the couch—the same couch where his mother had lapsed into unconsciousness. The after-death details had been neither extensive nor difficult. Chandra Hart had not been religious, and effectively had no friends, so there was no need for a funeral, or even a memorial service, so she had been cremated. Joe had picked up her ashes and they sat in a plain box on the coffee table in front of him.

  “You didn’t ask for much, but you did ask me if I would put your ashes in your flower bed when the time came, so you could feed the plants. I guess I should get to that.” He walked to the living room window that looked out over their fenced back yard.

  When she had still felt strong, Chandra had loved to work in the yard. She had three beautiful rhododendrons in the front yard, a small rose garden in the back, and another flower bed where she had planted daffodils, dahlias, delphiniums, and tulips. She had not been strong for at least five years, though, and Joe had been focused on other things. The yard had been neglected. The roses were sad and covered in black spot, the beds were choked with weeds and grass.

  That’ll give me something to do, I guess.

  Joe was no gardener, but he was young and strong. He hoed and weeded, tore out grasses, and turned soil in the back yard for two days. When there is nowhere you have to be, time becomes irrelevant.

  The roses were a lost cause, so he pulled them out and made more flower beds. He drove his mom’s car—his car, he reminded himself—down to the nursery and told the nice woman behind the counter that he wanted to build a flower bed for his mother. He didn’t bother to tell her that it was literally for his mother, as in, her final resting place. Some stories don’t need to be shared with strangers.

  The kind woman was impressed with Joe’s attitude, and, as everyone was upon initially meeting Joe, a little shocked, then saddened by his birthmark. She helped him pick out a number of perennial plants that would be low maintenance, and loaded them in the trunk of his Oldsmobile.

  Once he had everything planted—he soon discovered that planting was easier than the preparation—he brought the box with Chandra’s ashes out to the yard. He set the box on the ground, then sat cross-legged beside it.

  “Looks pretty good, doesn’t it, Mom?” He held his hands, still blackened with dirt out to the box for inspection. “Don’t know why I didn’t keep up the yard for you. Just never thought of it, I guess.” He turned his face up into the warm early-summer sun and felt it warm him. “I miss you, Mom. I don’t know what to do without you.” He laid a hand on top of the box. “I guess I’ll have to figure it out, though, won’t I?”

  He stood and dusted off the butt of his jeans, then opened the cardboard box. He had been afraid that the contents would be grisly, and in some ways they were. There were pieces of bone that hadn’t been consumed in the fire, but in the end it was still her, and Joe loved even this part of her.

  He sprinkled the ash and bone down into the soil until it was gone. He didn’t like the way it looked, laying a dusty gray on top of the rich soil, so he retrieved a hoe from the garden shed and worked it down in.

  “That’s better. Mom, I have no idea where you are, but wherever it is, I hope you and Dad are finally together. You deserve that. I’ll be there someday, so I can meet him, too.”

  Joe went back into the quiet house, took a shower and washed the dirt down the drain. He was too tired to cook, so he opened a can of Spaghetti-O’s, but didn’t bother heating them up.

  I can’t get into the habit of eating like this. I’ve got to keep on top of things. Stay active. Otherwise, what is life for?

  He sat on the couch, turned on the television and saw that The Carol Burnett Show was on.

  “Just what the doctor ordered. Thank you television gods, for providing a little comedy when it’s needed most.”

  Before he knew it, the evening had slipped away.

  A month.

  A year.

  A decade.

  His life.

  Chapter Four

  2004

  Forty-four year old Joe Hart sat on the couch. Not much had changed since the day he had spread his mother’s ashes, but at least he was sitting on a different couch. The first one had sprung a spring right into a sensitive area of Joe’s anatomy in 1986. Joe had called Coleman’s Furniture and had them deliver a new one. He had seen it in an ad in the newspaper the week before. He hadn’t particularly liked the couch, but he very much liked the idea of ordering it over the phone and not having to leave the house.

  Like his mother before him, Joe didn’t like to go anywhere. He wasn’t agoraphobic. At least, not by a strict medical definition. He just preferred to stay inside, where surprised eyes didn’t land on his face only to flit away.

  When he was eighteen, he had scattered his mother’s ashes and told himself, I’ve got to keep on top of things, stay active. He had meant it. He had every intention of making a lifetime plan. Continuing his education, maybe. Finding a job, eventually. Getting a hobby, at a minimum.

  The fact that the royalty checks from his father’s music continued to come in, and continued to be more than he needed to live, sapped his will to do anything meaningful.

  He did find hobbies, of a sort. Not long after Chandra Hart died, cable television came to Middle Falls, Oregon, which gave him many more programs to watch. VCRs came along shortly after, which allowed him to record one show in his bedroom while he watched another show in the living room. He had never moved into his mother’s bedroom, even though it had the half-bath off it. He had, however, put shelves up in there to hold his hundreds, and eventually thousands, of VHS tapes he’d recorded.

  When video games became popular, Joe jumped on board. It became the perfect entertainment for him. Something he could do alone that challenged his mind, or at least his reflexes.

  As far as any sort of meaningful relationship with a real human being went, though, there was none. He stayed in touc
h with Bobby and JR for a while. They thought it was pretty cool that they had a friend with his own place where they could bring beer and girls. They played poker on Saturday nights, or came over to watch a big game if it was on, because Joe was the first person they knew who had a big screen TV.

  In May of 1980, Bobby and JR had gone camping at the foot of Mt. St. Helens. They had done their best to get Joe to come with them. He declined no matter how much they tried to convince him it would be a crazy, fun adventure that they would eventually tell their grandchildren about. Instead of that adventure, they became two of the fifty-seven people who died in the eruption. Considering the mountain’s proximity to Portland, Oregon, and other populated areas, it was a minor miracle that number wasn’t bigger.

  The loss of fifty-seven people was a loss for everyone. It hit Joe a little harder. For him, it meant his last two connections with the outside world were gone, and he was truly alone.

  Over the next twenty-four years, cable TV kept adding channels, the televisions got bigger and thinner, and the video game systems got better graphics and games.

  None of that really enhanced Joe’s life, but if he didn’t stop to think about it much, he could pretend like it did.

  Joe died on his birthday, December 1st, 2004. Not everything in Joe’s life was a bookend, but on three occasions, it had happened that way.

  He died a foolish death, as so many do.

  Joe had seen a special on television about carbon monoxide poisoning. He immediately ordered two carbon monoxide detectors, one for his bedroom and another for the living room. He ordered them in July. That December, the detectors still sat unopened on his cluttered kitchen table. They needed a 9V battery, which he didn’t have, so he had never installed them.

  He celebrated his birthday by ordering a pizza from Mama Z’s Pizza, which had taken over the Shakey’s building when it had closed down. Unlike Shakey’s, Mama Z’s delivered—a boon to shut-ins and recluses everywhere. Ordering the pizza wasn’t much of a celebration, as he did it at least twice a week, but he did splurge and add jalapenos, though he knew he would pay for it later.

  After devouring half the pizza, he made himself comfortable on his couch to watch a college football game. While he watched, his gas furnace—which he had neglected to maintain just like many other appliances in his home—stopped burning the natural gas properly. This resulted in carbon monoxide filling the house, including the kitchen where the uninstalled detectors were, and the living room, where Joe lay on the couch, becoming more and more drowsy.

  Joe fell asleep.

  Joe died.

  Chapter Five

  Joe opened his eyes, stretched, and sat up. His shirt clung to him and he was bathed in sweat. “Crap, it’s hot in here. Did I leave the furnace turned up that high?”

  For the first few moments, he didn’t notice anything was awry. Holy hell, how long did I sleep? It was already dark. Don’t tell me I slept all the way through the night?

  He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and gawked at the television set. His 55” plasma TV was gone, replaced by an old 27” set. Bright sunshine poured in through the living room windows.

  Joe closed his eyes, held them shut for a few seconds, then opened them. He closed his left eye, squinted his right and turned his head at an angle, like a dog hearing a distant whistle. No matter what he did, the scene remained the same. He was definitely in his own living room, where he had spent the majority of his life, but everything was wrong.

  Did I really sleep that soundly? Did someone break into the house while I was passed out and steal the television? No. No way. If they did, why would the bother replacing it with this old hunk of junk?

  The old television was on. The quality wasn’t nearly as good as what he had been watching as he had fallen asleep, but he could still see it was a show he knew—The Carol Burnett Show. It was the episode that parodied Gone with the Wind. Carol was making her entrance down a grand staircase with a curtain rod across her shoulders.

  Without a conscious thought, Joe reached out for the cable remote. His hands closed on a small black device, but it wasn’t the remote he was expecting. This remote only had five buttons—power, volume up and down, and channel up and down. The long silver cable remote with its dozens of buttons was nowhere in sight.

  He pushed the power button and the picture shrank down to a single white dot, which lingered for several seconds before fading to black.

  Joe stood and walked to the window where the improbable sunshine poured in. The backyard was right where it was supposed to be, but there was freshly-turned soil with beautiful blooming flowers planted in it.

  “Nope. No way. I stopped worrying about those flower beds twenty years ago. Not to mention that flowers don’t bloom in December. So, unless someone is pulling the greatest practical joke ever, something monumentally weird is going on here.”

  He turned around and saw that he had woken up, not on the couch he had bought from Coleman’s furniture, but on the old floral couch his mother had died on. An open can of Spaghetti-O’s with a spoon standing up inside was sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  Joe swiveled his head from side to side, looking for a camera, wondering who was punking him.

  Except, no one would punk me, because no one knows I exist.

  He walked down the hall to his VHS room to discover it was just his mother’s bedroom. All his mother’s clothes, which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot, were still hanging in her closet. His eye was caught by a white t-shirt with a green frog sitting on a lily pad.

  She loved that shirt. I always kind of regretted giving that one away.

  “But I did give it away,” he said aloud. His voice sounded hollow and lifeless in the quiet bedroom. He repeated himself. “I did give it away. So, how is it hanging right here in front of me?”

  The room, which was stiflingly hot, still smelled of the thousands of cigarettes that had been smoked there.

  He hustled himself out of Chandra’s bedroom and down the hall, straight to the kitchen table, where he kept his laptop.

  The laptop was gone. In fact, all the clutter that had been on the table when he had sat down to watch the football game was gone. Two placemats, still set for a dinner that would never be eaten, were there, but the rest of the table was empty.

  He ran his hands through his hair. What the hell? I went to sleep in my living room and woke up in The Twilight Zone.

  His hair was long and shaggy, hanging down across his face. He reached behind him and found more hair cascading over his collar. That’s not right either.

  He sprinted through the house to the bathroom and shoved his face into a mirror. The reddish-purple birthmark was the same, but that was the only thing. Forty-four-year-old Joe Hart stared open-mouthed at his teenage face. He ran his hands through his hair in a characteristic gesture that he had forgotten as he gotten older and cut his hair shorter. It fell back over his face.

  He poked and prodded at his skin. The wrinkles around his eyes were gone. His skin was firm again. When he had hit his mid-thirties, Joe had begun to put on a few pounds—an inevitable result of a diet that often included pizza and cereal for dinner and no exercise to speak of. Now, that weight was gone.

  Come on. Come on! This is absolutely impossible.

  He turned the water on and splashed it on his face.

  I’ve gotta be trippin’.

  Slowly, he backed away from the impossible image he saw in the mirror and walked down the hall. Now, he walked softly, like he didn’t want to disturb a fragile image that he was living inside. He picked up the wall phone and dialed 9-1-1.

  “Middle Falls 9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

  “I think I’ve gone crazy. I went to sleep and when I woke up, someone had come in and replaced all my stuff with old crap.”

  “Are you reporting a burglary?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess so. Someone stole my laptop and my plasma TV, and I don’t know what all else.”

  “Excuse
me, your what?”

  “My, uhh, TV, and my computer.”

  “You have a computer in your home? Sir, this number is for emergencies. Making crank calls to this number is a crime, and can be punished by up to a year in jail.”

  “Sorry. I’m just not sure what to do.”

  “If you are in need of mental health counseling, I can send an ambulance to pick you up.”

  Of course. Rubber room. Straight jacket. Sunshine piped into me. No thanks.

  “Sorry, I’ve made a terrible mistake.” Joe hung up the phone and looked around the strange-yet-familiar surroundings. Crap. They can trace those calls, can’t they? I should be expecting a wellness check from the cops in a few minutes. And what, exactly, am I going to tell them?

  Joe sat on the couch, not moving, not making a sound. Thinking. It wasn’t productive thinking, where he took a set of facts, digested them, and arrived at a logical conclusion. It was the type of thinking that most resembled a dog chasing its own tale.

  Fifteen minutes later, right on schedule, a sharp knock sounded on the door.

  Joe sighed and stood up, smooth and easy. Haven’t been able to stand up without saying ‘oof’ in a long time. Everything is out of whack.

  He took one step toward the door when it burst open and two gangly teenagers came piling into the living room.

  “JD? Bobby? What the hell?”

  As soon as they saw Joe, the two boys sobered up. “Hey, sorry, Joe. Didn’t mean to surprise you. We knocked!”

  “Surprise me? I’d say so. You guys are dead.”

  Chapter Six

  Bobby comically reached over and pinched JD’s arm, then his own. “Nope, sorry bud. Not dead. Slightly stoned, maybe.” That cracked him up, which in turn elicited a semi-stoned cackle from JD.

  Joe remained unmoved. “I’m not joking. You guys are dead. You died in 1980. What is this, like A Christmas Carol, and you’re coming back to get me to change my ways?”