Cain's Heart

Horns screamed and brakes squealed. Cain’s gut squeezed. Metal screeched as the sedan smashed into the Mercedes Benz’s bumper. The MB skidded and an oncoming car stopped in time to avoid a second collision. Breath rushed out of Cain’s lungs. Even as a witness, the impact shook his bones. Both drivers could thank ABS braking for avoiding serious injury. The MB’s owner struggled out and slammed the door, flushed and bald with a gut threatening to pop off his suit’s buttons.

Oh, here it comes, Cain thought from his safe zone on the opposite side of the street.

“You goddamned moron!” The stout businessman roared at the sedan driver, who yelled something back that drowned in the honking chorus from surrounding cars.

“Are you too colour blind to see the red light?”

There it was, the reason why Cain hated Petesville – why any self-respecting Cloverdale resident did. No matter how he scratched the floorboards, Dan insisted on dragging him along on their resupply trips because he worked faster than his co-workers.

“Hey you! No not you old geezer, the guy next to the pale-red Chevvy.”

Cain turned. Behind him in the wide space between Garden Warehouse’s corrugated doors stood a squat employee in blue coveralls with the company’s black-on-yellow logo.

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Your boss wants you when you’re done packing those tools.” He went back in, giving the old man on the corner who initially reacted a miffed, peeled-up lip. Cain sensed the waves of arrogance pulsating off him.

Likely he’d assumed Dan was going to reprimand him for lingering outside.

Sad world, Cain thought. Living in Cloverdale sometimes felt like turning a blind eye to humanity’s indifference, as if he were leaving the weaker ones to be torn up by the dogs. What could he do? He couldn’t save the world single-handedly. The old man hunched over his cane and woefully watched the street. Cain approached him and lightly tapped a finger on his shoulder.

He turned and jolted. Cain supposed being near two meters tall was intimidating, maybe he mistook him for a robber. Petesville had a reputation. Cain took two of four cards from his shirt pocket, easy to read in bright yellow and black sharpie. His phone lay in the truck because he didn’t think he’d have to do much talking – he was only the muscle, after all. Old people weren’t keen on phones anyway. Cain opened the card and displayed it to the man, who adjusted his glasses to read it.

Hello, my name is Cain and I’m mute. Nice to meet you.

His stiff posture eased, and Cain switched cards. How are you?

At the confused scowl, Cain gestured over his shoulder. “Oh, I’m fine,” he said, gathering that Cain was checking in after what happened with that offensive employee. “You get used to all sorts living here.”

Cain pointed East, made a thumbs-up with a questioning look.

“Yes, I’m waiting for my daughter to pick me up. She’s gathering her brood from school. Thank you for asking.”

Satisfied, Cain waved goodbye and left, leaving the man perplexed by his effortless kindness. Cloverdale changed a person; it had certainly turned him more amenable. Too quickly, perhaps. His roots burst out deeper with every passing month, and fed on every last ounce of patience he had with the stuck-up a-holes of the outside world.

The Garden Warehouse was huge and industrial with every inch of steel exposed, and lines of aisles the length of a football field. Here were planting pots in nude shapes, uncommon seeds of flowers that devoured living things, and tools that would make a landscaper weep with joy. Cain passed a display of disassembled garden fountains and wheelbarrows brim-full with outdoor workwear. He found Dan debating over organic fertilizers with a loud-mouthed salesman who bobbed on his feet in eagerness, while Dan himself inclined against stacked bags of mulch.

“I’m not splitting hairs with you over fertilizer. It’s pricier and I don’t know it. I can guarantee good results with the bone meal mixture; I’ve used it for years.” Dan insisted.

He had the watery blue eyes and laidback demeanour people claimed could pacify storms. In Petesville, there had never been a falser statement. He hardly ever raised his voice, and sometimes that drove people to murder, like it did the salesman just now.

Annoyed by the impossible task of convincing a man to buy what he didn’t need, he hotly disagreed. “Sir, this one has more nutrients and feeds the roots early. It guarantees bigger flowers. It will double your income easily, and is simply the better, smarter brand.”

But there was no sales gimmick in the world that could convince money-savvy Dan to spend a cent more than he planned. That’s why he had been cutting his own hair a dependable number nine with a clipper for twenty years.

Dan clicked his tongue over his teeth, something he did when food got stuck in them. He lifted his hand, pointed a lazy finger. “You see that man over here? His job is to research the ideal formulas for our most common plants, and mix them from the raw ingredients. There’s a new formula on the market every year. I prefer to rely on experience.”

The salesman shot Cain a scathing glare that ran off his back like oil from a Teflon-coated pan. “The customer’s always right.” The itty-bitty man sneered.

Dan nodded, straightened. “I’m seeing the manager about ordering that new pest control formula,” he told Cain. “You know what we need, why don’t you take it to the front so they can start ringing up?”

He threw Dan a thumbs-up, and off he went with the salesman skittering along at his heels. Maybe he thought he’d look better at the customer’s side before the manager, or it scared him that Dan might complain about his behavior, Cain mused. Not that complaining helped. The owner shrugged away customer complaints like irritating flies. Even if he lost every customer in Petesville, Cloverdale would always come running. They didn’t have much choice.

Cain waited in line behind two other people at the cashier benches flanking the entrance. He took the mini notebook from his pocket and turned to a fresh page, then set his teeth when he remembered his pen lay in the glove compartment. Great.

“Have a nice day, Ma’am, come again!” The cashier enthusiastically waved at the prim lady before him.

When he came up, she ran her tongue over her lips, ogled him like he was meat. “Hey cutie, how you doing? Not many hunks in boring old Petesville.”

Cain ignored the annoyance scuttling over his skin and set his notebook on the surface. He made air scribbles, asking for a pen. Petesville was all about business and swindling people out of as much money as possible, in the shortest amount of time, yet she decided it to be prime time for flirting despite the line behind him. As if he wasn’t self-conscious enough at the slow interaction because of his mutism.

“What’s the matter? No need to be shy, honey. You’re totally my type.” She leaned forward now, squeezing her breasts between her arms to accentuate her cleavage and offering herself on a plate.

Why did asking for a pen have to be so hard? Everyone understood the air scribbles, didn’t they? With unravelling patience, Cain displayed his mute-card. The cashier read it, and all emotion drained from her face.

She anxiously glanced at the office, seeking an escape route. “Hang on,” she urged, patting the air with both hands. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Why the hell was she talking so slowly?

“Don’t go anywhere, okay?” She rushed off.

Cain glared at her. Behind him the people became restless and muttered their impatience. Cain inhaled deeply, held it, breathed out slowly, and reminded himself it wasn’t his fault. The cashier clung to the doorway of the office like dead weight and mumbled to the manager.

“One of those guys are out there.”

One of those guys?

“You know!” She whispered loud enough that a deaf man could hear. “One of those mentally challenged people. He can’t talk. Or he won’t, how should I know? You know I can’t deal with them.”

Cain’s ears bloomed bright red with shame at the sharp inhales behind him. God, he hated Petesville. In times like these he considered altering his note: I’m mute but intelligent, just to pull a reaction out of them. Old resentment threatened to breach the walls in his heart, but Dan’s voice, coming from the same office, pacified him.

He dared not look over his shoulder at the pitying faces. If any of them assumed a shred of his intellect was AWOL because his vocal cords didn’t work, they could all go skinny-dipping in the pits of hell.

Dan came out with the girl and waved Cain off. “Its fine, son. I’ll deal with it. Why don’t you start loading us up?”

Cain moved out of line. Temper’s combustion supplied fine energy for a man to lift 25 kilogram bags of mulch and fertilizer.

There were only thirty of them, and one of him.

The salesman watched him warily and stayed out of his way. Good for him. Cain felt inclined to crush him under his boot for the way he dealt with Dan. He hoisted a bag on his shoulder, carried it out into an afternoon sun that bristled on his skin, perched his boot on the tailgate, and pushed up bag and all before setting it down on the pickup’s bed. Rinse and repeat. The salesman pulled his head out of his ass late and brought him a folding nose trolley when only two bags remained.

Cain ignored him. He hadn’t lived in Cloverdale long enough to forget how to be a jerk when it suited him. When Dan came out of the warehouse, he was dabbing the sweat from his face with his shirt. Dan gave everyone a warm goodbye, while Cain shook his head. Hippy people. They slid into the pickup, Dan sent a cautionary look his way, and they finally hit the road. Cain settled back into the seat, willed his muscles to relax.

“Ain’t Petesville’s folks pleasant?” Dan asked after allowing Cain’s mercury time to drop. He hated asking him to accompany him to Petesville, but he was on the ball and got the work done quickest. “Such great customer service. I’ll give them that bright green smile next time they send me that annoying text message asking for feedback.”

Cain’s mouth tugged. He’d lowered the window entirely and rested his elbow on it. The road to Cloverdale spread out before them in a hard vertical line, clear of other cars. Tar roasted under the sun and created rippling waves of heat. Untouched grassland shouldered the road on both sides and some distant, secluded houses sat on the foothills. The road’s kinks and mounds that indicated they were well away from Petesville still lay far ahead, but Cain could already appreciate the welcome blue silhouette of Cloverdale’s mountains in the distance.

Dan would’ve understood if he chose to be quiet, but his gut unknotted more with every passing minute as distance racked up between him and that hovel. He removed his phone from the glove compartment and opened the text-to-speech app. Sign language or writing were preferable, but so was Dan keeping his eyes on the road. So Cain tolerated the nerve-grating robotic voice.

He’d set the voice to a generic Australian one, as it was closest to what he sounded like prior to the illness that changed his life.

He typed his reply and the app sounded out, “One day when I win the lottery, I’ll open an identical supply shop on the same street, and sell everything for cost price plus ten percent just to run them out of business.”

Dan’s pudgy beer-belly shook with laughter. “Son, your head would blow off before the week’s over. You’ve been out of that world for too long. I’d never let you go back either, neither would your mama.”

“She’d rather lock me up than leave Cloverdale. Martha’s visits are too important, and Sunday choir.”

“You wouldn’t really leave, would you? Where am I going to find another hard worker like you?” Dan asked, shooting him a nervous glance.

Dan knew Cain’s life hadn’t always run smooth, but Cloverdale eased out plenty of kinks. Dan was sure his eyeballs would roll back if he ventured into that big, mean world now. He had his doubts in the beginning; the man seemed too broken to be of use. But after he’d proven himself, and grew more human before Dan’s eyes with the passing days, he grew attached. Dan rooted for all his employees. He cared too much about Cain to let him crack again. Maybe he’d help Emily tie him to the bed posts.

The problem with TTS apps was that they didn’t have a sarcastic tone. Cain could no longer imagine living elsewhere. Cloverdale trumped therapy and healed him as much as time and peace could heal an ex-soldier. It taught him how to use both oars in the water again when those outside its borders further alienated him. It was home, comfort, and family. Here, nobody thought him daft simply because he couldn’t talk, and patience for reading a few words on a screen or a note was plenty. People were hooked to their phones all the time anyhow, but it became an inconvenience when it wasn’t for their own agendas. Petesville harbored less hostility than most large cities. If he could barely tolerate it there without being a pent-up ball of frustration, how would he elsewhere?

He typed a response into the app. “I’m old, Dan. Old people are resistant to change.”

Dan barked a laugh. “Old my foot. You’re hardly past thirty. What am I supposed to say while I near the dreaded fifties?”

“I believe they call it the flirty fifties, or something along those lines.”

“I start flirting with my wife now, she’ll think I want something. Maybe digging for that new fishing rod I’ve been eyeing. We’ll be late. As soon as you’ve offloaded these in storage for me, you can go on home. You’ve put the weed eater on charge, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Tabitha has been barking down my neck for a week now about tidying the guesthouse’s gardens. Those Rosemary and Lavender bushes we got in are hers. It’s not the park, so you can come in at nine.”

Cain typed as Dan spoke. “I’ll be there by seven. I promised Sed I’d rearrange storage.”

“Why on earth must you do it man-alone?” Dan asked. Cain pulled more weight than his due on some days. He didn’t have an extra dime to give the man, not that he’d ever asked for more. It made him feel downright guilty. But the work pulled Cain out of his own head sometimes, he knew. It didn’t feel right prying, but Dan hoped it wasn’t one of those times.

Cain lifted a cheeky brow, then typed again. “You’ve forgotten about Friday?”

“Oh shoot! I forgot you’re off. I did sign your request.”

“Sed’s covering my appointments. That’s why we agreed I should tame the dust bunnies before they devour our tools.”

Dan relaxed back into his seat. He appreciated his employees’ sense of responsibility, especially now that middle-age dictated half his brain cells roll over and die.

“What are you going to be doing at home anyway? Tell me you’ll actually be turning on the tellie and watching some sport?”

Cain shook his head, despite Dan’s attention being on the road. “I have to treat our walls. Wood hasn’t been painted in a while. And I promised my mom I’d repair the chicken coop. Her chicks keep escaping.”

“Women,” Dan grumbled. “We work to earn a paycheck, then go home to more work. But do we get fishing rods for our efforts?” He nearly pouted.

Cain grinned and pocketed his phone. Seeing he was done talking, Dan switched on the radio. The Dale’s Buzz was still out of range, but the music didn’t suck. It probably wouldn’t last long before some news anchor cut in to trail off all the latest murders and political squabbles.

Cain enjoyed his work. His hands absorbed beneficial microbes from the soil that turned into good vibes. So said Yana and his best friend, Adam. Being of service made him feel valued. The military had taught him that, even if he hadn’t chosen it for himself. No matter Jack’s views, carrying a gun wasn’t the only way of making a difference in people’s lives. Besides, a paintbrush fit his hand just as well as a weapon.