Callback

Thursday, June 10, 2010

I lost my job a little more than two years ago after Castelia Financial went under. In my last few months there, that company worked me to the bone with fifty, maybe sixty hour work weeks. In the morning, I’d catch my reflection in the mirror while brushing my teeth, and staring back was an increasingly gaunt 30-year-old man with bigger rings around his eyes than a Dunsparce overdosed on Adderall.

At last when I got the email thanking all the employees for their hard work and dedication, but that there would be no need to come to work anymore, I felt nothing but a sigh of relief as I sank back into my pillow and hibernated for the rest of the fiscal quarter. I knew that when I woke up, I’d have to find another job to trade my precious time to for rent, but that’d be a problem for a future, more well-rested me.

A couple years and a few thousand rejected job applications later, my bank account had started to look a little barren, and I could barely afford to look my landlord in the eye anymore. It hurt my pride, but there wasn’t I could do but call my mother and ask if she’d take me back.

It had been about eleven years since I’d talked to her last, when I told her I’d be leaving for the big city. She was opposed to me leaving, you see. She said that the city is where folks go to put on ties, develop an obsession with money, and become miserable when it all falls apart. She begged and pleaded for me to stay in the country, and after I slammed the door on her on my way out, I would always feel awkward about phoning her afterwards. So I didn’t.

Years went by. The longer we didn’t talk, the easier it became to forget. I’d think about phoning home occasionally, oh yes. But when I dialed, my finger would hover over that last digit, and the image of her lecturing me for being a terrible son and not calling all these years would suddenly flash through my mind. Then I’d put the phone back down.

Now, having run out of options, I steeled my resolve and picked up the phone once again. I could feel my pulse quickening with every digit I pressed, bracing myself for whatever she might say when she picked up. 2-3-1, I dialled. 4-7-8-…

As always, my finger lingered over the final 5. But this time, when a few seconds had passed, I really pressed it. In that moment, jumbles of apologetic phrases started to course through my head.

I hear my phone ringing my mother. “Sorry, it’s my bad,” I thought about saying. Would that be too nonchalant?

The sound of the receiver being picked up. “I know I should have called more.” Would that make it more sincere?

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi, it’s me, Jake.”

“Oh, how wonderful to hear from you, dear! How have you been?”

She was happy. Happy to hear my voice. Happy, even though I hadn’t called in eleven years.

I almost wish she weren’t happy, because you never feel like breaking bad news to a happy person. I bit back my tongue before I started to explain, because for a split second I considered just hanging up the phone and sparing her the depressing news. But with my livelihood on the line, I closed my eyes and told her the real reason I was calling her.

The train arrived at my old hometown precisely on time at six in the evening. The station was small, hosting just a single platform and the station master’s hut right next to it with boarded up windows. In front, the clock had been so clouded by dirt that you could barely make out the hands beneath the glass. Even though it had sat there abandoned for such a long time, it inexplicably still ticked along.

The train chugged away from the station, taking away my last chance to turn back. I watched longingly at its shrinking form as it faded into the distance. When at last the horizon had swallowed it completely from view, it finally hit me that there was nothing for me to do but get ahold of myself and carry on. I clutched the suitcase of my last earthly possessions and turned towards the familiar country road to my childhood home.

Each footstep I took felt heavy with guilt. No matter how friendly and happy to hear from me my mother sounded, there was no doubt in my mind that she was secretly disappointed in me. In the end, she was right about becoming miserable in the city, but I didn’t listen, and here I come, crawling back.

When I came to the Poké Mart on the side of the road, eager for any distraction from my unease, I decided to take a detour and stop by.

My first memory of the Poké Mart was when my mother was buying food for Buster, our family’s new Growlithe pup, and I had wandered into the snack aisle. Being a little brat of three or four years old, “commerce” was still just a word I couldn’t pronounce. All I understood was that I was hungry, and that there was a big box of mini donuts on the shelf. And so I tore into it like a Gulpin at a Poffin House, face stuffed with powdered sugar and floor strewn with a field of donut crumbs.

When the owner found me gorging myself on unpaid merchandise, his face turned red as a Darmanitan and he yelled at me for what felt like an eternity, until I burst into tears. I can’t really remember what happened after that, except that my mother carried me home on her back and tried to reassure me that if I promised not to do it again that everything would be okay.

From then on, I was scared of the Poké Mart, until I was about eight-years-old, when I got lost during the village festival. Of all the people to find me, it was the Mart’s owner. I hid behind a tree when I saw him approach, but I was never good at sneaking around. He put on a reassuring smile, and remembering the incident from all that time ago, gave me a packet of mini donuts as he helped me find my mother.

When you get to know him, Steph’s actually a pretty nice guy. He gave me a job at the Poké Mart when I was a teen, where I learned that he liked to tell weird stories and collect rocks. He’d sometimes wander around the woods after closing up to see if he’d come across any evolution stones. “I usually don’t find any,” he said, when I asked him about it, “but that just makes ‘em all the more precious when I do.”

I snapped out of my memories and walked up to the door. There stood a faded notice, peeling away at the edges. “Going out of business. Thanks for 33 great years! ―Steph”

I tried to take a look inside, but the windows were all cloudy with dirt, caked on from years of neglect. I pulled a napkin out of my pocket and polished off a little section of the window, just big enough to peer into. The shelves were exactly where they used to be, and I know because the layout had been burned into my mind after stocking them thousands of times. But now, there were no more mini donuts and no more Pokémon food. No more 2-for-1 deals on Super Repels.

My gaze lingered on the Poké Mart sign as I pulled myself away and continued down the street. Where is Steph now? He always said he wanted to visit the Orange Islands. There’d probably be some great rocks there.

Further down the road was the playground where me and my older brother Marty used to play. We’d bring our plastic tanks and toy soldiers and pretend the jungle gym was Castelia City with all its towering skyscrapers. We’d wage war for supremacy over the land and, even though it was all make-believe, he somehow managed to win every time as the older brother. Those war games were always rigged.

One summer, while pretending we were having a aerial dogfight, Marty threw a toy plane into a tree on the edge of the woods by the playground. We spent hours trying to get it down, even as the sun set and my mother was sure to worry that we weren’t home for dinner. That night, I tried one last time to climb up the tree. I’d even gotten pretty far, when suddenly an angry Hoothoot swooped straight at my face to defend its perch.

Our mother found us just as it happened, with Buster in tow. Buster came charging in, barking madly, and leapt up a tremendous height to defend me from Hoothoot’s vicious attack. In the moment, all I could see was a black and orange blur of fur, but according to Marty, Buster “Soared through the air like a Moltres” and looked “Totally awesome!”

The ensuing tussle between Buster and the Hoothoot ended with the Hoothoot getting scared away, but not before it had ripped off a gruesome chunk of fur on the back of Buster’s neck, and we had to rush him to the Pokémon Center. He made a full recovery afterwards, but that patch of neck fur never did grow back.

Looking up at the tree now, you’d never know anything so exciting happened there. The leaves rustle and sway as gently as the leaves on the tree next to it, and the trunk stands just as solidly as the all the rest of the trees in the woods.

At its base was a little swing set, a lot more worn down than I remember. Much of the paint had chipped away, its rusty chains squeaking quietly as it jostled to and fro in the breeze.

I used to lay belly-down on the swing, and have my brother push me with my arms outstretched, pretending to be Superman flying to whoever needed my help next. One day, I learned that Kryptonite was to Superman as gravity was to ten-year-olds when I came tumbling down from the seat and spent the night getting x-rays and fitted for a cast. Buster refused to leave my side for the next three months. Wherever I went, he would follow, trying to keep me safe from myself, even though I was older than him.

Now the swing barely fits me just sitting down. It creaked and groaned in protest as it bore the weight of a grown man, its every molecule screaming for me to leave it alone. I remained seated as a form of petty revenge for sending me to the hospital all those years ago.

The sun started to set behind the fields in the distance. If there’s anything that’s nice about the countryside, it’s how quiet it is. In the city, a grown man sitting by himself on a swing attracts dirty looks from parents and passersby. Here, there’s nobody to bother you, only the thoughts that keep you company.

I wonder if the toy plane is still stuck up there. When I got back from the hospital with my new cast, I’d sometimes head to the playground and stare up at the tree, thinking about how if it weren’t for that darn Hoothoot, I’d still have a Messerschmitt 109E to play with, not to mention intact bones. Weeks passed and my cast came off, but the plane remained stuck in my head like the catchy bass riff in Roxie’s Venoshock Dustox. I couldn’t believe Marty of all people would just be okay with leaving it up there either. Maybe he went back to get it with a ladder and he just didn’t tell me, so that he could play with it all by himself in secret. That would be a classic Marty move.

How is he doing these days anyway? We haven’t really talked since he got married and moved to Galar. I’d always wanted to go, maybe pay him and Anne a visit while I was there, but never could find the time.

Now that I have the time, I don’t have the money. Funny how life works.

I sat there wallowing away for about a half hour when something fiery orange caught the corner of my eye. The heat from its body could be felt even from several yards away, and the air grew hotter and hotter with every inch that it drew closer. The creature’s bushy white tail and the mane around its neck billowed in the air as it crept carefully across the playground. Its towering figure loomed over me, and all I could do was sit there, stunned, with bated breath.

It was, unmistakably, an Arcanine.

It stopped just in front of me and sniffed the air. Even in the middle of June, clouds of steam wafted to the sky with every exhale. Its fur was patchy and matted up close. Looking up, its eyes were a cloudy white, like smoke behind clear glass.

After what felt like an eternity, it sat down beside me, and finally nuzzled its head into my lap.

I moved my hand to the back of his neck, but in my heart I already knew exactly who it was.

“Hey Buster,” I said, hugging him as tight as I could, as if it would make up for lost time. “Let’s go see mom.”