If you ask anyone who knows Hector Campos to describe him in a phrase, they’ll probably say he’s a man of habit. They’ll say he is a 46-year-old son of a teacher and a house painter who has lived a life of blue-collar routine in the Bronx. They might even say that keeping his nose down is so ingrained in him that he ends up running into things because of it. In almost all cases these people are right.

~

            It had been just another day of work as Hector made his way to the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital by 8:30 am and stepped onto the scaffolding next to Johnny.

Johnny said, “Morning, Hec.”

            He smiled his trademark grin, a canine missing and skin pulled taught. Johnny looked like he had lived on the sun. He had caramel skin resembling the texture of a worn leather couch. Johnny showed up every day same as Hector. They’d become friends over the years, falling into a routine of working side-by-side.

“Morning Johnny, how’s it looking?”

“Grimey as always. But I can tell ya I’d rather be on this side than the other.”

            Hector looked through the window he was working on, something he’d been cautioned against his first day on the job. A little boy, no more than 10, lay in a bed on the other side. He was playing with Legos quietly, as if he had all the time in the world. Hector doubted his time was so long. The boy was bald, hooked up to various machines. It was a sobering picture, and Hector found himself wishing he hadn’t peered through the glass that separated both them and their reasons for being in this place.

            Suddenly, the sun cast a glare on the glass obstructing the view inside. Hector knew that was his cue to get back to work. He squeegeed soapy water downward. The long, straight strokes were familiar to him. Dirt fell away in neat little rows as he worked his way from left to right. He thought of nothing but the job before him, and that’s how he preferred it. There was no place for heavy thoughts on a scaffolding in the sky. He finished the boy’s window and pulled himself down to the next. But, as Hector passed below the lip of the window seal, something caught his eye.

            A man had his back to the window. He had thinning blonde hair and an unfortunate looking stain on the back of his pink dress shirt, but that wasn’t what grabbed Hector’s attention. No, what was startling about this guy was the way he was hurriedly shoving an orange prescription bottle into the back pocket of his chinos. The man appeared to be carrying on a conversation with the boy inside even as he was aggressively attempting to shove the bottle further down his small pocket. As Hector watched, the man seemed to give up the struggle and instead pulled up on the tail of his shirt before yanking it back down as if to cover his theft. The thing was, he didn’t do a very good job. In the slim amount of space between the top of this man’s pocket and the bottom of his shirt, Hector saw the name of the medication. And he recognized it.

“What are ya looking at, Hec?” Johnny mumbled, stopping work on the window to Hector’s right.

“Oh nothing. Just thought I saw something, but I must’ve been mistaken,” Hector replied.

            Johnny let it go, and they went about their business. They cleaned windows meticulously for hours, neither of the two breaking the silence that existed between them. The only sounds around them were the metallic rumbles of the traffic below and the horrid squeals of their squeegees as they made yet another pass down the windowpane. This is how they usually worked. The only difference on this day being that Johnny seemed to be in-tune to Hector’s racing thoughts. He could see them play out on his face. A heavy frown line had taken up residence above Hector’s browbone that morning and had only deepened as the time went on. As the sun started to lower in the sky, Hector could no longer ignore the sidelong glances Johnny had been shooting his way.

            “Why do you keep looking at me, man? Marjorie not giving you enough attention?” Hector asked, trying to simultaneously address the elephant in the room and cast-off Johnny’s suspicions of his foul mood.

            “You worry about your own woman. My wife adores me even though, I, for the life of me, can never understand why,” Johnny replied, a laugh in his throat.

            “So, you just think I’m a good-looking man then. It’s okay bud I won’t let the other window washers know.”

            “It’s not gonna work, Hec,” Johnny replied.

            “What’s not gonna work? Us working together under the stars when you’re feeling this way?” Hector said, his frown lines dimming.

            “No, you trying to distract us both from those heavy thoughts you’ve had looming over you since this morning. That’s not gonna work on me, friend. I know you too well,” Johnny countered.

            And damned if he wasn’t right. Johnny knew Hector about as well as anybody did, probably even more than Hector acknowledged. It’s hard not to get to know someone when you spend 3 years working side-by-side under the sun. Johnny had about 13 years on Hector, and Hector fancied him to be somewhat of an older brother figure in his life. They bitched about their wives, ate their sandwiches, had window washing races, and somewhere along the way they’d gotten to know each other in the way only two people that spent hours of every day together could. Hector wasn’t the least bit surprised that Johnny knew something was up or that he wouldn’t let it go.

            “It really is nothing you big sap,” Hector said. “I’ve just been in my own head today.”

            “Well if I know anything, I know there’s not much room in that head of yours so you might as well just spit it out and give your other thoughts some breathing room,” Johnny replied.

            “You’re really not wrong on that count,” Hector said. “Fine. I saw something funny happening in a room on the other side of one of my windows today.”

            “Funny how?”

            “There was a guy with his back to the window. He was talking to a boy in there, but he was also shoving a prescription bottle down his back pocket at the same time. It could be nothing. And even if it is something, it isn’t my place anyway,” Hector said.

            Johnny chewed on the information for a minute. He took a seat on a bucket and looked up at the sky. Hector stared at his friend and saw little drops of sweat racing their way down Johnny’s face and into his collar.

            Johnny broke the silence. “Did you recognize the drug?”

            Hector thought about how to phrase his response. “Yeah, it was one of those they do news stories on, some pretty heavy pain medication.”

            Johnny didn’t question that but said, “Well, it’s unlikely he needs to hide it in his pocket if it’s his prescription.”

            “Probably,” Hector replied.

            “If it’s that important to you, just tell the boss, or, hell, tell someone in the hospital,” Johnny said.

            But it wasn’t that simple. Hector didn’t want to meddle in other people’s affairs any more than he wanted people to meddle in his own affairs. And one would surely lead to the other, he thought. The man in the building had had on a pink dress shirt, preppy chinos, and shiny leather loafers. It was the kind of outfit only a person that was somebody would dare to wear in public. If Hector went in the hospital with his coveralls and sweaty neck and started telling the suspicions of a window washer, he had no doubt he would be either laughed off or investigated himself. Likewise, if he told their boss, Tom, he couldn’t be absolutely sure that Tom wouldn’t question how Hector knew the name of some random prescription he’d caught a glance of through a dirty window. No, that was too much the coincidence. The one thing Hector knew for certain was that dirty laundry breeds dirty laundry and that he was sure of the two of them, himself and the man in the window, he was the only one who had to take care of his own laundry.

            “Oh, I’m sure I’m just making up stories to keep myself occupied in this heat. I’m sure I didn’t see nothing,” Hector told Johnny.

            “I think you see more than most of us, Hec,” Johnny said. “But I won’t press it no more.”

“I don’t know about that; hard to see much when you’re keeping your head down,” Hector said with a jarring amount of honesty.

            Johnny looked at Hector with a curious expression before nodding. He seemed to know that Hector had said more than he’d intended. Johnny was like that – he knew when you’d let him in on a secret or told him something of importance. He was acutely aware of people in a way you wouldn’t think a greasy window washer would be. It was unnerving at times and had Hector thanking god that his friend was a vault.

            As he walked up the stairs to his apartment later that night, Hector knew his thoughts were still muddled from the events of that day. He missed a step and had to catch himself on the railing. Shit, he thought, his mind was so full that his vision was short-circuiting. Hector took a seat on the stairs. He wanted his mind to be clear, or at least marginally clearer, before he saw Lisa. He knew that his wife didn’t deserve the sour attitude he was sure he’d bring upstairs if he didn’t take a moment.

            The cold stairs bit into Hector’s skin through his pants as he sat. He put his head in his hands and thought back, to way before he’d seen the man in the window, to when he’d seen a similar man in the mirror. So much had changed and, still, so much was the same.

            Hector knew the prescription name because he’d had the same one. He’d thrown his back out a decade ago and spent a year afterward climbing his way back from rock bottom – from addiction. And no one knew. Hector had managed to hide it from everyone. And he couldn’t help but think that if he told on that guy in the hospital room, he’d out himself too.

            Hector scratched his head. He just knew that if he said something, he’d be inviting questions. How did he know that particular drug? Did he make a habit of creeping in on the windows he washed? What business did a window washer have accusing other people?

            Nothing about him made people want to trust him. Nothing.

            “Hector?”

            He looked up the stairs to see Lisa peering down at him. She’d probably been coming downstairs to grab the mail.

            “Hey baby,” he said.

            She grinned at him and the world shifted. It always did. He looked at her and his thoughts simmered down to a dull roar. Hector grabbed the railing and pulled himself to his feet. He mounted the stairs before stopping in front of her and grabbing her hand. He thought to himself that he couldn’t – he wouldn’t – risk this. Would he?

            After taking a shower, Hector was sitting in his recliner when Lisa brought over his supper. She sat in her chair and they ate in comfortable silence while watching the concluding story on the evening news. They never spoke until Wheel of Fortune came on.

            “How was work?” Lisa asked.

            “Same old. That hospital is a mighty tall building,” Hector said.

            “Oh, I know. I would visit my uncle there when I was eight or nine. About all I can remember from those visits is the time I spent watching the numbers on the elevator get higher and higher until we eventually reached his floor,” she said.

            “You’ve never mentioned that,” Hector said indignantly. “I didn’t even know you knew the place.”

“That’s because we never talk about your work, Hec. If you had brought it up, I would have shared. But you didn’t. You never do,” Lisa replied.

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

            “Just that you like to keep things separate and that’s fine, but don’t go getting on me for not sharing when you’re about as closed off as a dead-end street.”

            Hector didn’t know where this was coming from. He felt he’d been uncharacteristically open with his wife. If she’d always felt this way, she’d kept a pretty tight lid on the feelings for their 9 years of marriage. It wasn’t that he wanted to keep his work from her; it was just that it somehow seemed easier.

            “I dare say I’ve been pretty open, but how’s this for a rundown of the job today?” he asked.

He went on to tell her about Johnny, the little boy, and the man hiding a pill bottle in his back pocket. She didn’t say anything until he’d finished.

            “Well, who’d you tell?” she asked.

            “Tell what?”

            “Tell about the damn pills!” she said.

            He looked at her like she was daft. “Nobody, of course.”

            “Nobody?” she asked. “What if those were that poor boy’s pills or another patient’s? Don’t you think you have a responsibility to question it?”

            He looked at her seriously. “I’m a window washer. My only responsibility is to do my job, the job that puts the roof over our heads and the food on our goddamn tv trays.”

            She looked at him in a way she hadn’t since they first met. She looked at him like he was a different person than she had thought he was. It crushed Hector to see it.

            “People are more than what they do for a living. They’re what they do as a person,” she said before walking off into the kitchen.

            Hector sat in his chair and heard her puttering around the kitchen. He was upset at her for expecting something without knowing the cost of it. The ice in his glass melted as he replayed their conversation, and he eventually meandered his way upstairs and went to bed.  

            The next day Johnny and Hector were still at the hospital. Hector found himself taking great care to look only at the glass and not through it as he worked. By lunchtime both men were quiet as they unwrapped their sandwiches.

            “Something new on your mind today?” Johnny asked, taking a bite of his standard bologna and mustard.

            “Not really,” Hector said.

            Hector had a turkey sandwich on rye. He hated rye. They didn’t even buy rye because he hated it. This sandwich was a message from Lisa; he knew it. The same thing had happened when he had forgotten their anniversary and she made him tuna on rye to take for the next two weeks.

            Johnny hid a grin at Hector’s disgusted face eating the sandwich. “That good, huh?”

            “Even better,” he mumbled.

            They ate in companionable silence for a while before getting back to it. They worked

until the sun was low in the sky before deciding to call it. You couldn’t see the dirt to clean it

once it got late enough.

            As he grabbed his jacket and keys, Hector looked towards the entrance of the hospital. A blonde man in a white dress shirt and chinos was leaving the building. The man could have been anyone, but Hector found himself wondering if it was the man from the window. He got his car and waited for the man to head off.

            Hector had been following the same black sedan for 16 minutes. He tried to keep as much distance as he could to not look creepy. After all, he wasn’t a stalker. The car made a few turns before entering a residential area. The area didn’t seem all that nice to Hector, certainly not a place for a well-to-do fella, but Hector continued following the car anyway. A short time later, it stopped in front of a small house. There was no driveway and the driver parked in the yard, if you could call it that. Hector parked on the street just down from the house and turned off the ignition

He was slumped down in his seat when he saw the driver open his door and step out. The man was virtually indistinguishable in the late hour and at such a distance, but Hector thought for sure that he must be about to make a deal or some other illegal act. Why else would he be dressed like that in this part of town? At first, Hector didn’t notice the toys that littered the front stoop, the stick figure family on the black sedan, or the bike carelessly propped against the house.

As the man got out of his car, the light turned on over the front door and a little figure came darting out. It was a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than 4. Hector sat and watched as the little girl jumped into her father’s outstretched arms, and he swung her up onto his shoulders. It was only then that Hector noticed all the toys and childhood baubles that littered this house. He then took a closer look at the man in question, noticing that the guy had too dark of hair and was much larger than the man with the pill bottle had been. It wasn’t him. Hector realized this and left. The whole ride home all he could think about was who did he think he was chasing after some stranger. He didn’t know what had gotten into him.

             Lying in bed that night, Hector couldn’t help but wonder what he would have even done if, by some off chance, that had been the man from before. Would he have approached him? Probably not. Would he have looked closer, maybe taken a picture? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know what had possessed him to follow the man in the first place. It was a Friday. Hector should have been in a hurry to get home and start his weekend, yet he was dawdling around town as if he were some kind of detective.

            Hector got out of bed and padded his way to the kitchen. A glass of milk in hand, he sat at the kitchen table and remembered why he didn’t do things like what he did today, why he didn’t get involved. 

~

He had come home from school one day to find his parents sitting at the kitchen table. This was strange because his mom nearly always stayed late at school on Tuesday afternoons to catch up on grading. Knowing something was off, Hector carefully dropped his backpack to the floor and pushed the backdoor to – he didn’t latch it for fear his parents would hear. Hector crept to the kitchen door and placed his ear against its cool surface.

“Mary,” his dad said, “I just don’t understand how you could be so stupid.”

“What do you mean stupid? I had to speak up. My job is to look out for my kids,” she said.

His dad looked at her, seeming near to tears. “But those aren’t your kids, Mary. Our kids are the ones who aren’t going to have food on the table because of your choices.”

She said, “I couldn’t have faced our children if I hadn’t spoken up. You know that, Rob.”

            “I know that what you did was good, baby, but good doesn’t matter when it comes to us versus them.” Hector’s dad had said.

            It was only years later, when Hector was old enough to understand, that he found out what had happened that day and why his mom had been forced to homeschool them for the six months that followed his parents’ fight, why she’d been out of work until they moved school districts in late summer.

            Mary had been a teacher at Hillcrest Elementary down the road from their house. Hector thought that she had to be a good teacher because she was always such a great mom. In her class that year, she had a quiet student named Tommy. She would often come home, and Hector would hear her telling his father about how she worried for the boy. Mary had noticed Tommy’s sadness, the fact that he wore long sleeves year-round, and that he too often moved very gingerly. Hector’s mom knew people. And, her being the good woman that she was, Tommy showed her the bruises one day.

            Mary had called Child Protective Services on a Tuesday and was let go on a Thursday. Tommy’s daddy had turned out to be a prominent lawyer and donor to the school. Her good intentions hadn’t mattered and hadn’t made any difference in Tommy’s life. The world kept on moving. Hard times became harder. Hector’s parents fought. Hector learned quickly that people in positions like his and his parents weren’t paid for their opinions, and they certainly weren’t thanked for sticking their noses out. No, it was better to do the work. You could put your twenty bucks in the offering plate on Sunday if you were feeling moral, but there was a separation of church and state, so to speak, in the world he lived in.

~ 

            When Hector got up the following morning, he felt a bit better. He got up early and made his way to the Ridgeway Nursing Home as he did every Saturday.

Hector knew his Mom wouldn’t have known the difference if he had forgotten or come a different day, but he went all the same. Hector walked in the front door and was assaulted by the lingering smells of cafeteria trays left out too long and old people that couldn’t wash well anymore. It struck him how old people become very similar to young people in the end. They dream. They depend. They even eat applesauce cups and paint by number. Aging was a sorry process.

            Mary was sitting up in bed when Hector made his way to her room. Mrs. Grigsby was asleep in the next bed over. He looked at his mom and saw her how she used to be, with obsidian hair and a rosy flush that never seemed to leave her cheeks. She’d always been lovely. She was still lovely then even with pudding crusted in the corner of her mouth and hair the color of a January snowfall. Mary had lost a lot of her memory, but not her character. Most of the time she didn’t even recognize Hector, didn’t know him as her son, and yet she still treated him the same as she would have knowing. She was unfailingly good.

            “Well, hello young man,” she said, “it’s not polite to dawdle in doorways.”

            “My apologies ma’am,” he said.

Hector never reminded her that he was her son on the days that she forgot. It made her confused and upset. He’d rather be a kind stranger than a son she resented herself for not remembering.

            “Now, I know you probably thought volunteering here was going to be reading to some old bat, but you’ve got another thing coming. I’m resigned to playing checkers in the garden today,” she said. “Got to keep what’s left of my mind intact, you see.”

            The nurse got Mary into her chair, and Hector wheeled her out into the small alcove she had generously called the garden. He wheeled her up to a tattered, off-white plastic table before taking a seat across from her.

“Now,” she said once they were settled, “white or black?”

“Black,” he said, knowing she’d always preferred white but would have let him have either.

 They played for over an hour, and, as they played, they chatted like old friends.

“What is it you do when you’re not babysitting?” she asked him.

He lied and said, “I’m a teacher.” He wanted to be able to share in something she loved.

“Myself as well,” she said. “Not many men wanted to be teachers in my time, but I always thought they were perfectly capable.”

“It’s what my mother did,” Hector said by way of explanation.

“Oh, how I enjoyed working with so many children, seeing them grow,” she said.

He asked, “You never regretted it?”

“How could I?” she asked, “I was a part of something so much bigger.”

            Hector wondered if she remembered – if she had the slightest inkling – of what had happened with Tommy, of how doing the right thing hadn’t mattered in the end. She wasn’t part of something big. She was small. She was a single checker being passed over by double pieces. Mary had lost for nothing.

“I’m sure you were a great teacher,” he told her.

“I could have been better,” she said, “I could have spoken up more, made more change.”

Hector looked at her curiously. “Nobody would have thanked you for it if you had.”

            She laughed the quiet sort of laugh that means you’ve missed something. Mary said, “It wasn’t about the thanking. Most of the right things to do get you in a little trouble.”

            Hector mulled over this as they finished their game. He let her win, like he always did, before taking her back to her room. Before he left, Hector squatted down and kissed his mother on the cheek.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“For making trouble,” he responded.

            When Hector got home that afternoon, he found Lisa reading at the kitchen table. He pulled out the chair next to her and took a seat. She looked up at him, surprised he hadn’t immediately gone to his recliner to watch the game.

            “How is she doing?” Lisa asked.

            “Oh, same as always,” he said. “She’s getting to be a real pro at checkers.”

            “You’re turning into quite the liar,” she laughed.

            Hector sobered. He said, “I don’t want to be a liar, not to you.”

            Lisa looked at him curiously but waited to hear what he had to say next. She stayed silent as he told her about his addiction and about how scared he’d been that it would come out if he spoke up. He even told her about his mom. Through it all, she kept a tight grasp on his hand. It was only after he was finished and had rested his head on the table that she let go.

Hector first thought she was leaving him, but he heard her begin to putter around the kitchen. He wondered what she was doing. Still, he refused to raise his head out of both fear and shame. After at least 5 agonizing minutes had passed, Hector felt a tap on his shoulder. He lifted up and Lisa put a plate down in front of him. On it was a turkey sandwich on white.

——————————

Cristy Dodson is a recent graduate from the University of Tennessee with a BA in Creative Writing. She is an avid reader and a lover of poetry readings. Dodson's nonfiction has been featured by Cleaning Up Glitter.

ART
Barnburning
Ard Su, MA
Class of 2020
Maryland Institute College of Art
Baltimore, MD