Split Peas
Split Peas
Getting dizzy is easy to do in a dingy place like Half-Moon. All the streets coil and snake, spiraling into a seashell of asphalt around the city’s heart, the big pumpkin, as some locals call it. All the walls of the buildings are the same burnt orange. All except for a small neon-green bookstore tucked away in the downtown alleys. The only way to find the shop was a crooked sign weakly proclaiming, ‘Split Pea’s Used Books.’ Getting inside was no easier, two doors of glass rose from floor to the roof of the store, splitting the green facade in half. The glass had been painted black with rough, violent strokes to block out the light. No open sign hung anywhere, no hours of business were listed, no phone number, nothing. It opened and closed as it felt, the store ran itself.
I was of a special breed, one of the workers of the strange book store. I was supposed to come into the store everyday at 3:30 in the afternoon. The store opened late and didn’t close till 10. The store was nothing more then a long hallway, thin and crowded with seventeen bookshelves leaving room only for a single person to walk through. The shelves towered to the ceilings, filled with books. The books themselves were not arranged by author, title or genre. Instead, the books were painstakingly grouped by color, flowing like a misshapen rainbow through the store.
The blood reds reached to the upper-left corner and slowly faded into the intensity of sunshine, then to the full range of greens, from puke to grass. There was the blue of the ocean all the way to the blue of midnight, the whites of afternoon clouds, the indigo of freshly blooming flowers, every shade of violet in the sunset, from chestnut to shit, and finally along the back wall rested the shadow spines. Sitting among this darkness was the small child’s desk that Vivian Sanders could always be seen at.
The owner of ‘Split Peas’ wasn’t a newcomer to the town; in fact, Vivian Sanders had been my babysitter when I was still little. Her parents raised her, and a dog in a little house only three miles from town. She rode her bicycle with her dog, Paprika, everyday after school until the sixth grade when she left her old dog behind to go ride alone. He tried to keep up but lost his way when the truck turned too fast. They buried him in her backyard, a bicycle wheel on his headstone.
I took one last, long draw of my cigarette, letting it burn down to the tips of my fingers. An angry red color swelled. Cursing under my breath, I smashed the butt under my sole. Sighing softly, I pull back the black door and enter the store. A small wind chime announces my entrance and within a few moments Vivi is greeting me, “You’re late.”
Vivian, or Vivi, as I’ve called her since our first meeting when I was seven, is now a woman of startlingly average looks. She’s no taller nor smaller then any other woman in town. Her hair, a rusted red is cut short along the suicide slant of her jaw. Her eyes stay hidden behind thin wire glasses, their color obscured. Crows feet landed by her eyes years ago, and seem to have made it a permanent home. Her figure is slight, built for the sole purpose of fitting in the narrow aisle of Split Peas. Crammed between the books, she alone can move freely.
I shrug, “Got any new books?”
She slowly looks up at me, not meeting my gaze though, her eyes stay locked on my mouth. She’s a loon that way, trusting my words more than my face. “There’s a new shipment in the back, but I haven’t had a chance to sort them yet.”
I know that only Vivi can sort the new arrivals, only her sharp eye can distinguish the separate colors, “Guess I’ll just sweep up then,” without a conscious thought I move to the back of the store. I have to turn to fit through the narrow aisles.
The broom feels natural, the worn wooden handle molds to my hands alone. It’s been three years since I first started working for Vivi. Split Peas began the day of Dugan Sander’s funeral. It was an autumn day, crisp and bitter like a green apple. The funeral was in the morning, bright and early, the service beginning almost exactly with the rising sun. Only 20 people came to the funeral. Dugan Sanders was not known for his number of friends, but rather, he was known as the man who lived and died by the books.
The wind chimes whimper, and I look up to see a local high school student walk through the portal and into the store.
“Can I assist you?” Vivi’s greeting hasn’t changed in five years.
She rises from her desk, the steel bolts, bloodied with rust, protesting. Her gaze drifts over the books, as if they’re going to answer her. Perhaps the books did talk to her, how else could she know where each and every title rested its sick spine? Locals believe that Split Peas has every book there is. No matter the book’s title or rarity, Vivi can produce it from the color-coded shelves.
“Yeah, I…uh…. I’m here to…pick up a book….for my girlfriend,” the teen’s voice quivers as he begins making his way down the narrow aisle. He pulls his lettermen jacket close, to ward off the chill of the early spring breeze that followed him inside.
Vivi nods slowly, “The book?”
“Uh….uh…..” he coughs, hesitates, “Th…that…uh….Kama…Sutra book.”
A hint of a smile shadows across Vivi’s lips, “Of course. Just one moment,” she inches her way past the teen, and immediately to the cherry coded books. Even I know where that book rests. Vivi’s scarlet Karma Sutra always sells out around this time; prom is just around the corner after all.
She rings up the stammering teenager, places his new scarlet bible in a plastic bag, and quietly bids him, “Have a good day.”
He rushes out of the store, almost knocking into the blue section. I shake my head, chuckling to myself. I glance over to Vivi, but she is already gathering her things just like usual.
“Please come get me if anyone comes in,” she tells me as she disappears into her closet-office in the back.
I sigh; I can count the things she says to me on one hand. She prefers to save her words for her writings instead. Stacks of unfinished manuscripts sit on the concrete floor beside her miniature desk. Brutal red slashes through the works, circles and lines that only Vivi can understand. Late into the night, when I stay to add up the books, the sound of pen scratching paper fills the halls of Splits Peas, there is never really silence in the store. Vivi pauses in her writing only when a customer enters the store, and only resumes once the customer has left. She never writes in anyone but her books presence. Even after three years, she’s never written at her desk in plain view with me in the store.
I glance at the old grandfather clock in the corner. “Damn, only 4:45,” I grumble to myself. I’m anxious to get off work, to get out of this place. There are pebbles in my soles, and I need to kick off my shoes and stretch my legs. This job is all I have anymore; everything else is gone, already out of this hole. It’d been too long with nothing but this job and the piece of shit 450 square foot apartment I come home to each night. It’s empty now. No one’s there anymore.
Perusing Vivi’s desk, I notice that, just like every other day, there is a pile of manuscripts, crudely written pieces about her obsession with Half-Moon. The stack grows each day, even if by just a few pages. I run my fingers along the bent edges of the yellowed paper. I’ve read some of it before, it’s actually almost a daily ritual now, and today was no different. Skimming through the pages, the words are barely legible through her red marks, when I squint I can make out an occasional word or phrase but they don’t seem to make any sort of sense to me. The words are random, the syntax spackled and warped. Noun, noun, adjective. Verb. Verb. Just like in this God-forsaken town, there is no action. There is no conclusion. There is no real story.
The wind chimes whine again. I look up, shaking my head at the cookie-cutter image of the ‘usual’ for Vivi’s store. Young, excited, eager, stupid, arrogant. They’re all like that. Preparing for college, these students come to Split Peas for a taste of sophistication, the only option Half-Moon could offer.
I set down the manuscript, and softly tap three times on the door to the closet-office. Within seconds Vivi has appeared.
“Can I assist you?”
“Yeah…uh….I….I was wondering…..would you sign this Ms. Sanders?” the shadow student holds out a blue-grey book. It is the same book that all these cookie-cutters bring for Vivi.
Copies in the store rest at the intersection of the blue and the white sections. Engraved gold letters softly entitle the story, ‘Angel of the Streets.’ It’s a simple children’s storybook about the tale of a mutt dog that has a litter of puppies. She keeps her pups with her at all times, never letting them leave her side. The puppies never can leave; they are unable to fend for themselves. Their mother grows weak, grows old and dies. The grown puppies can’t live on their own. One by one, they all perish. Worthless, listless dogs, just like everyone in this damned town, trapped to the bitch that never taught them how to survive outside.
Vivi graciously moves to sign the book, her script is elegant and flawless in her trademark bronze ink, “Is there anything else?”
“N….no….I….I just wanted to come by…I…I’m graduating soon…and-”
“Then you can show yourself out. Have a good day,” Vivi returns to her closet-office without another glance.
The student turns to me, “You work here?”
“Yeah, I do,” I muttered, “Why else would I be sweeping up in here?”
“Do you know then?”
“Know what?” I lean against my broom.
“Why? Why is…is this what everyone does? I mean…why the tradition?”
“Like I give a damn,” I shake my head before returning to my work. The student stands there for a few moments, waiting for an answer. When the kid finally realizes I have no answer, she goes to leave.
“Hey,” I glance up at her as the chimes sound.
“Yeah?”
“Why’d you buy that book?”
She pauses, looks down at the book, “I don’t know,” she gives a weak smile before she’s gone, out of sight behind the black screen.
I thought it was stupid, a tradition of coming to the store and buying Vivi’s book before you graduate. It was ridiculous; no one is even sure where the idea came from. Rumor has it, that it came about in 1963, the summer when Vivi herself, threw her cap in the air with the 30 other soon to be alumnae at the ballpark two blocks away. All the students now say that she had written the book then, right after she graduated and missed her chance to get out.
I see them on my way to work, conjugating at the “Orange Peel”, a coffee shop a block away. Sipping on lattes and thinking themselves kings and queens of the world, they discuss the book endlessly. Already off in the day dream of college where intellectuals live, they strive to reach for that academy reverie. Their lattes make them feel older, powerful, intelligent, and suddenly Vivi’s book makes sense they all say.
“You just get it all of a sudden,” one senior, told me after Vivi had just signed his copy, “This book is life man. You just get it.”
I move to the back of the store, putting away the broom. I pause again by her stack of manuscripts. Only today’s entry has escape Vivi’s red pen. ‘May 16th- No one can ever leave Half-Moon and survive.’ I roll my eyes at her dramatics. It use to be that way. Now it seems no one can get out of Half-Moon fast enough. It doesn’t matter what kind of run-down, piece of shit town you get to, as long as it isn’t Half-Moon, people seem happier. Only people like Vivi and me are trapped here. We can’t escape that burnt orange, the waxing and waning of the days.
The color drives people mad. The orange consumes them until there is no escape. Some days, I can feel the colors beginning to close in on me with every word I read from Vivi’s manuscripts. Half-Moon lives forever in her words, watching everything, slowly moving closer. That trapped feeling, that’s why none of the older people can leave. They’re stuck here. Trapped in the words, the color, the sound, their eyes are too accustomed to the burnt colors of Half-Moon to ever survive anywhere else. ‘Split Peas’ is the only escape. The only color their eyes can handle, Vivi’s eyesore to the town is the only escape she can manage. Madness contained within the walls of the familiar orange.
I jump as the clock chimes 10:00 pm. I carefully put the broom back in its spot by the small desk. I knock on Vivi’s door twice, “I’m leaving now Vivi… I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Have a good night.” Her reply is rehearsed, like an actress stuck in a play whose curtain fell years ago.
I return home to the empty apartment that use to be ours until the orange color devoured everything. Until it was impossible to survive and I was the only one left. I couldn’t take the easy way out like that. I couldn’t let the color smother me, couldn’t quite tie the orange sheets around my throat and jump. The night passes in silence, just like every other night, and when the morning comes, the cycle begins again.
Walking to work, I can tell it’s near graduation now. I know from the way the air clings to my skin. The students shuffle aimlessly in and out of the store doors. I feel miles away from them. My own graduation was just 15 years ago. I still remember the itchy robe, sticking to my back as the June sun flashed through grey clouds. The air had been damp and burnt with the smell of smoldering ambitions as we all anxiously twisted in our seats, waiting our turn to rise and walk across the field to accept what we had worked for these long years. A piece of paper. The whole town was there, watching us cross the stage.
“You’re late.”
I shrug at Vivi; it’s only a week till graduation now. I can’t help but notice that the closer it gets to graduation the more that stack of papers on Vivi’s desk grows. It’s only a matter of minutes before once again she has gathered her things and retreated out of sight. I casually approach the desk, reading over today’s additions to the stack.
‘May 23rd- This is Half-Moon, nestled between heaven and hell. Where prostitutes are the moral center of life and the roads all lead to the heart.’ I read this line over again and close my eyes, pondering if there ever is an escape for someone trapped by the orange without giving in.
Some tried to escape with sin, with booze, with sex. I had tried that once, when I was young and stupid and first alone. The parties of my younger days were like nothing else. Learning the fine art of beer pong, learning how to dodge red and blue solo cups and amber stains scattered across the house, figuring out how to unclasp a bra with just one smooth flick of my wrist. Those nights were my first real sample of life, an intoxicating cocktail of puke, piss, and booze. Those nights were when Half-Moon claimed me, trapping me in the alcohol bottles and pipes of the past.
When that didn’t work, some like Vivi tried to escape with love.
It rained the day she got married. Not just a summer sprinkle, but a raging hellish storm that stole the power in the church. The service had to be completed by candlelight, casting an orange glow onto Vivi’s flowing white gown. That was when the orange haze overtook Vivi. Past the candles, she proclaimed “I do” to Dugan Sanders, a man whose family since his great, great, great grandfather had been a part of Half-Moon, one of the founders and defenders of the town. “Till death do us part,” they proclaimed together. I remember wondering why they always bring up death at weddings. I could almost see the reaper standing in the corner, plucking the petals of the bride’s thrown bouquet, counting down the time they still have.
She and Dugan moved into her little apartment on the edge of town. The two eventually moved closer to the heart of the town so Dugan could be near his work at city hall, building the laws that constrained us all. No one ever saw the happy couple out and about together; they existed only within the orange walls of their apartment. Things stayed that way for half a year, until the newspapers broke the news. ‘Local Man killed in Accident,’ Dugan Sanders was dead. The victim of a drunk driver who forgot what the yellow lines meant. Vivi had been in the car with him, but she wasn’t hurt, she stayed overnight at the hospital before returning to work the next day and giving her notice. That was when she hired me, when Split Pea’s was born.
After Dugan died, Vivi emerged with several gallons of paint, a painter’s smock, and a bared finger. After she hired me, she ripped down the ‘For Sale’ sign from the run-door store, and we began gutting the building. First she painted the glass doors, starting at the top and letting the paint run down until she had covered them. That was when people began talking.
No one would say anything directly to her. That was the way with Half-Moon. After all, here she was, a widow for only three days. “She’s only coping. The phase will pass,” everyone whispered, secretly thrilled that the color appearing on the door was something new, but no one would, or rather could, admit it.
She sanded down the old wooden exterior. I had shuddered when the first coat of neon green went onto the building but, just like everyone else, I said nothing. We all just watched, hypnotized by her as she slowly turned the little store green, seven days and six coats of paint was all it had taken to completely erase the orange stain on the walls and open ‘Split Peas.’ The only spot of color in the face of Half-Moon.
I rub my eyes; the words are beginning to blur together, an orgy of letters. I sigh and look up, and around the store. I’m here for the night, it’s storming and I’m not walking home in the rain. Vivi has settled into her office, the dull scratching of pen to paper audible over the pounding rain. I’m nearing the bottom of the manuscript and now the words are making sense.
Suddenly it clicks the chains of Half-Moon, the twisted shape that never leaves. The shape whose shadow has kept me here all these years, even when I have nothing. Vivi has been collecting, limb by limb, the body for her story, the binds that join us to Half-Moon. The orange color that runs along the twisted streets, slitting every rebellions throat with a razorblade smile. I can see the burnt shades coming in closer. I can see the chains wrapping around my ankles with Vivi’s words. She has Half-Moon contained, ready to release onto the world.
My head is reeling; Vivi’s words are wrapping those chains around me, crushing me, destroying me. The colors in the store are becoming too much. Holding my head, I stumble for her office. I knock twice, “Vivi?” I groan, “Vivi? What is this?”
She doesn’t answer me, the door doesn’t open. The store is silent. The pounding in my head is overcoming my body. My skin is on too tight. My whole life is a shirt that’s been worn too small, and is finally ripping. The color. The color is everywhere. I pull the door open. Vivi is not inside.
Sitting on her desk is a new book. Its cover is burnt-orange, the title engraved with red foil letters, Half-Moon. Her words are now real, those chains reaching out to strangle me, reaching out to cover the world. Half-Moon, that damned laughing shape, is poised to leave, to strangle and claim even those who have escaped its grasp. Even those who have never experienced it. No one can escape it now.
The book burns my hands as I grab it from her desk, the orange like acid on my skin. Rushing to the child’s desk, I knock the remnants of paper from the top, and throw the book down. I’m shaking. My hands are numb. The world is spinning. It’s been too long. I can’t stay here.
Quivering, I pull a cigarette from my pocket. The thin roll shivers between my twitching lips. The light won’t stay still. It jumps and moves, fighting to escape.
Click. Click. Click.
“Light you son of a bitch…” my voice is searching for something I can’t quite grasp.
The flames flicker, breathing, the orange glow consuming the rolled up tobacco. I jump. The color. The color is everywhere.
The cigarette dives onto the open pages of the book. Seconds, in mere seconds, the flames have consumed the book. The town is leaping and jumping at me. Trying to consume me. I can feel the scream echoing in my chest long before I can hear it.
My panic is too high, I can’t act. I can’t move. It is Vivi who appears to defeat the demon. Bursting forth from the storage room, I can only stare as she throws her winter jacket over the fire, the orange smothered by the now smoldering blue of her jacket.
The sound of the demon’s dying sputters is the only noise in the shop now. Vivi stands cold beside me, before picking back up her jacket. The book, those words of bondage, is nothing but ash now. Vivi’s head falls low, her chin to her chest.
“Vivi, I-“
There is a soft sound, choking, gasping, and then…
Laughter.
“…Vivi?” I can only gape. Her thin shoulders are shaking, her chest rocking, her voice twisted.
“Ha…. ha-ha…it…it’s gone…”
I glance at Vivi and then back to the ashes. I can feel the sounds swelling in my blood, coursing through my body, an expulsion of laughter, “…. it is…”
She glances at me, the laughter lingering on her lips, “I’m free.”
She grabs her burnt jacket, and bag. She tosses them to me.
I hear the cry of the wind chimes over the door, Vivi glances over her shoulder at me, “…It’s gone. It’s really gone…”
“…It is…” Suddenly can breath, can see, can think.
“Are you coming?” she asks.
My body knows the answer long before my mind. I am walking to the door, meeting her, “Yeah…I’m coming.”
Published 2008 The Peacock’s Feet Literary Magazine
Do not distribute without permission.
