BAGGY CLOWN PANTS and t-shirt are Mr. Troll Man’s uniform of the day, every day as far as I can tell. The t-shirt stretches tightly over his obese gut revealing a prominent outie. Too much information!

He always looks like he just crawled out of bed in a panic, as if he’s overslept and woke up almost sober. He’s playing catch up on a binge, like Ray Wylie Hubbard sang about: “them old hard boys from the Double A . . . how they ain’t gonna be drinking just for today.” I don’t think Troll is ever coming down. At some point there was probably an outlaw vibe to the process. Now it’s just wretched street theater about how long this suicide attempt is going to take.

I don’t know how he supports the lifestyle. It’s got to the point where he’s too disgusting to successfully panhandle. He was amusing (in a very disturbing way) when he first started working the pavement. He’d walk up to a car and ask: “Got any spare change?” If anybody actually handed him some coins, he’d always follow up with: “Got any of that folding change?”

But then he started heaving up all over cars. Velita had a cow when it happened to her. “You don’t know what’s in that vomit!” she howled. “It’s got to be some kind of corrosive shit in there, like Sterno or Green Lizard aftershave. A bum like that isn’t particular about what he drinks.” Word gets around in a town like this. Most folks give Troll an extra wide berth when they can.

Down at Willard Park, there’s a foot bridge over the drainage arroyo that runs through there. That’s part of how Troll got his name. He crashes under that bridge most nights. He hauls in scraps of wood and cardboard and builds him a little shelter. The city keeps tearing it out, but I guess Troll is more persistent than they are. Some people call Troll a homeless guy, but he seems pretty well dug in out there.

.

“DON’T EVER let them put you on one of them enhalers. Ya know why?” he says.

“Inhaler?” (Just because I don’t know what else to say.)

“Yeah. You know what they do to ya?” He gives me a cockeyed look and slowly pats his index finger on his temple. It sounds like a rhetorical question, but he’s looking at me like I should guess. I got nothing. He nods, smirks and says: “Short term memory loss.”

“Wow.”

“It’s got so bad, it don’t take much to get me out of breath. Plus, I got to carry around this nitro with me.” He pulls an old, metal, 35mm film canister out of his shirt pocket. He shakes it at me. It rattles. “Total disability. They told me to come down here and they would fix it up that I wouldn’t have to pay taxes anymore. Because of the disability, see?”

I guess that’s one thing he can remember pretty good. I don’t say that out loud. I say: “OK. Like I told you,  the Tax Commission building is north about a half mile up this street on the right hand side.”

He takes a couple steps, stops and turns back like he forgot something. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the directions. It don’t take too much to get me out of breath anymore.” He rattles the film can again and walks off in the right direction.

I’m staying away from them enhalers!

.

The Red Bull Incident:

Eddie Arnold singing Cattle Call is playing in the background. It’s a hayseed tune, but Merton knows it without having to think about it. He also recognizes the aroma of horseshit tinged with urine soaked mud and silage, even though it’s masked by decades of maple syrup, frying bacon, burnt potatoes and spilt coffee permeating the olfactory ambiance of the place.

It’s an unexpected sense memory brought to life. Six hours of interstate driving has him in a Twilight Zone frame of mind. Midnight at Denny’s is an iffy reality, but chain restaurants have their own air of normalcy. The rest stop is meant to be a partial return to earth. It’s a cruel ambush. He’s taken back 30 years to agrarian roots he’s trying to deny.

As his eyes adjust to neon illumination, Merton feels like an interloper in his baggy cargo shorts, Ramones t-shirt and fluorescent high tops. The place is packed with people in fancy Western wear. Some have white sheets of tyvek with black numbers printed on them safety pinned to the back of their shirts. “I guess, the rodeo is in town,” Merton mumbles to himself.

A pudgy uniformed teenage girl approaches, which is more in line with the expected. “We’re kind of full up. Would you like to sit at the counter?”

“Perfect!” he says.

She sidesteps, places an arm akimbo, stretches the other towards the barstools like a carnival barker and announces: “Anywhere you like.”

After ordering pancakes and downing a barrage of warm ups on his coffee, Merton starts coming out of road trance. He slips into people watch mode. The place is feeling less like the setting for a bar fight out of a 1970s rodeo movie, and more just like the only place open for the after party crowd. Merton is the invisible man. He’s already exploring story possibilities of the situation.

The waitress working the counter is a disheveled 60ish looking woman. She sports an oversized, rhinestone encrusted peace sign on a chain around her neck. As she tops off Merton’s already full coffee cup, she says: “I don’t know what to do with these girls!”

He thinks perhaps she is talking to somebody else, or to herself, but she has a determined glare locked right in his face. Not knowing what to say, he smiles and waits for a follow up comment. After a beat, she walks off mumbling.

It is a frequent experience for Merton. He doesn’t know why they pick on him. It’s like someone is locked in an internal dialogue and shares some it aloud, as if he could hear what their brain was silently processing in the prior sentences.

She’s coming back. He notices her nametag is blank. He wonders what name her character will have in the inevitable fictional narrative he will write about this encounter. “Maybe Verlene?” he asks aloud.

Verlene stops in front of him, poises the coffee pot over his already overfilled cup and asks: “Why would they give her a Red Bull?” Merton is unsure whether she is continuing the livestock motif of the evening or referring to the popular energy drink.  “I mean, she’s already on diet pills!”

“Ah,” says Merton.

Verlene looks at him as if she just noticed he’s there. She turns and puts the coffee pot on an electric  burner.  “I mean, she was just talking and talking and talking! She just wouldn’t stop! Duh! Let’s give her a Red Bull!” Verlene walks away, waving her arms and mumbling incoherently.

Had Merton left St. Louis a half hour earlier, or not made so many restroom stops along the way, perhaps he would have been here for the Red Bull incident. He sips his coffee and tries to visualize the scene.

The girl who seated him appears with pancakes. He notices her name tag: “Verlene.” It’s kind of a jolt, but he writes it off to the surreal nature of the midnight shift at Denny’s. “Hey, where’s the other waitress?” he asks.

“Oh. She’s on break.”

“She seemed a little upset about some girl hyped on Red Bull.”

“Well, maybe she was a little more hyped on some homemade diet pills.”

That’s another twist Merton hadn’t thought of. Maybe the cops got involved too. “Ha. Homemade diet pills? I’m sorry I missed that.”

“No, you’re not,” says Verlene. “Is there anything else you need?”

Merton looks out the window and contemplates the 4 hour drive ahead of him. He smiles at Verlene. “Nope. I think I got about all I need right now.”

.