ShantyLand

Originally published in BridgeEight. Finalist for Summer 2022 Short Fiction Prize.

TODAY WE HAVE A VISITING CLASS OF THIRD GRADERS FROM SIMPLE MINDS MONTESSORI ACADEMY. As their Educational Liaison, I lead them past the turnstiles and into the park. I show them Hooverville. It’s a row of decrepit shacks with bums sleeping outside of them. The shacks are made out of recycled polyurethane. The bums are at-risk youths hired through a Prison Pipeline Prevention Program. We do it for the tax breaks. Today’s event is a Bum Fight beneath the fake overpass. The kids get to throw garbage at each other. The trash is donated by the city. It’s all disinfected before being distributed. Whatever educational value this has, I can’t say. Then I go into my little spiel from the employee manual, which states: ShantyLand Is Dedicated to Recreating the Experience of Living in the Lower Echelons in a Fun, Safe Environment!

Then a little redhead with a bob tugs on my sleeve, says her partner is missing.

I call Teddy from security. We get in his golf cart and scour the place. Teddy used to work TSA until he developed PTSD and is afraid of suitcases. We eventually find the kid with his arm stuck in the Dust Bowl Generator. So we have to call repairs to come out and dismantle the entire thing. The kid ends up needing stitches. Their teacher blames me for this incident, swearing to never host an educational experience here again. Which is just great. Because I always get a commission from school trips.

Suddenly I get a beep on the walkie. It’s Fred from the Employee Commissary. Last night someone broke in and stole two hundred dollars in cash, along with a carton of American Spirits and multiple bottles of airplane-sized Jameson. Teddy suspects religious extremists. This could affect park revisitation rates.

So I go pay a visit to Mr. Sloane.

***

Mr. Sloane’s office is in the Arcade Castle. He once made a fortune selling kevlar-lined backpacks when the nationwide average of school shootings skyrocketed. Then he took that money and turned an abandoned miniature gold course into his little passion project. Behind his desk is a portrait of Herbert Sloane Sr., who went away for selling counterfeit war bonds in the forties.

I tell him about the robbery. I blame the new hires. I say they’re a bunch of thieving rodents who show up drunk or high and can’t even use the employee punch card correctly. He says he doesn’t care about that. Instead he points out the window at the Gated Gardens housing development. They started building it during the Cold War but ran out of money. Now it’s just a facade of empty houses with astroturf lawns and tape over the windows.

He says he bought it so he can finally expand ShantyLand. He’s ready to demolish the houses with a bulldozer and build ShantyLand II: Third World Extravaganza. But fucking squatters have holed up in there and won’t leave. I ask what he wants me to do about it. He recommends scaring them off with a crowbar. Sorry Mr. Sloane, I’ll probably get arrested for that. Mr. Sloane’s demeanor drops. He reassigns me to Boxcar Hobo for the rest of the day. Which sucks. You have to sit out in the sun all day and panhandle in nothing but a sticky pair of overalls.

I deserve more than this.

***

Lunch is at Pollo Dude again. Their thing is they give you an entire chicken and stuff it full of tachos. The old me would never eat this junk. The old me did two hundred sit-ups every morning and ate acai berries until I shit blue. Those were the Statutory High years. Who would’ve known after two short seasons we would be off-air and I would never be cast on a teenage dramedy again? I thought I would’ve been on a syndicated sitcom by now, maybe done a few indie films. Not looking after ex-felons and delinquents at a theme park in freaking San Bernardino.

I go out to smoke in the parking lot. A group of nuns arrive by short bus. One of them gives me a look like she has a stigmata up her ass. I get a call from the neighbor saying Aunt Matilda fell into the communal pool again. Three years ago diabetes took her eyes. So I moved in to be her help. And free rent. You’d think she would adapt to her disability, but no. Everyday I have to stop her from putting Arm & Hammer in her morning coffee. She mixes up the phone with the beard trimmer. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie together and I’ll say I’m one of the actors on TV. Not a speaking role, but super important to the plot. She smiles. This is a woman who devoted half her life to instructing inmates at San Quentin how to dance. They called her the Tapping Teacher. Once a month I cash in her disability checks and take half. I feel like I’ve earned it.

***

After lunch I pass by Ned and Candace outside their Section 8 Housing Unit. Today they’re a pair of junkie parents fighting over an unemployment check. Inside the apartment are prerecorded sounds of children crying. Stop. Please stop. Jimmy burned himself on the heroin spoon again. Ned falls down and convulses in a filthy puddle while Candace announces to front the crowd that he’s overdosed on Fentanyl. She administers Narcan, which is actually Flonase. Ned is revitalized and jumps to his feet, warning the kids about the dangers of schedule II prescription drugs. Ned and Candace do a little bow and the children cheer. What a great guy. The best. Once drove me to work and back for a month after my car got impounded for thirty-two unpaid parking tickets. His wife Candace is a great lay. We’ve been fucking in the Payday Loan Office ever since they both started working here. We do it at lunch or on breaks. I figure Ned suspects something is up, but he’s too toothless to confront either of us about it. Candace and I joke that he’ll probably hang himself one day and fall from the rafters.

I show up for my shift as Boxcar Hobo. You’re supposed to panhandle but you can’t keep any of the tips. Instead the guests are given a questionnaire, and depending on your score you get a free soft drink at the end of the day. A father and his son pass by and recognize me immediately from television. They ask if I was the guy with the tiny belly in that BurgerDurge™ commercial. In the commercial I order a BellyBurster™ sandwich which I can’t finish because my stomach is digitally enhanced to look like a baby’s. I tell them I’m just a humble guy down on his luck after my family was killed by freight-hopping train robbers. They’re not amused. Just like acting class they give critiques. Wow, what crappy acting. Pretty convincing in the commercial, not so much in real life. They recommend I have more wrinkles from sun exposure, redden the eyes and darken the finger nails. Who the fuck are these Philistines? I tell the chubby kid and his dad to beat it. Before they leave the dad fills out a questionnaire. Believability? Negative. Educational value? Below zero. Recommendations? Fire immediately.

Then Teddy comes over in the golf cart with his bear mace holstered. Mr. Sloane wants to see me ASAP. I ask what for. He grabs me by the arm and throws me in the seat. We show up at his office again where I apologize for my bad score and remind him that the guests are entitled miserable pricks. Mr. Sloane dumps everything that was stolen from the commissary today on his desk. He says he found them in my locker. Apparently Ned was sniffing around for evidence of my extramarital philandering and found it. God damn narc. I’ve been stealing from this place for years and never got caught. Mr. Sloane looks more sad than angry. I trusted you. I was hard on you because you were like family. Tear up your employee punch card and get out. On the way out Candace shakes her head, saying how could I ruin her marriage like this.

I stop at 7/11 and buy Fireball and Tecates. I get sloshed in the parking lot and drive home. After scraping a few cars I park and find my cousin Gavin in our apartment. He threatens to beat me with a baseball bat. Leave and never come back. He’s been checking Aunt Matilda’s bank statements and figured out about my embezzlement. Aunt Matilda is in the corner feeling out Scrabble pieces. She doesn’t pay attention to me at all. When I go to grab my stuff Gavin bonks me on the head and I’m out cold. When I come to I’m lying by the dumpster outside our apartment. I’ve pissed myself. With nowhere else to go, I drive on.

The whole drive I’m swerving. I hit a raccoon and the car stalls. A police car approaches so I get out and jump into a dirty ravine. I sit there and wait. Why is the world shitting on me? What happened to the kid who was cast as young Richard Nixon in a high school production of I Am Not A Crook? I lie down in the fetal position and accept my acting dreams are over. Tonight I sleep with the rats. The blood dripping from my forehead might be a concussion. Maybe they’ll make movies about me when I die.

I end up in front of the park. I think about burning the place down. I look around for tinder on the ground. I stumble into one of the Gated Gardens houses to steal plywood. There’s crap lying around everywhere. Cans of Sterno. BurgerDurge™ wrappers. Skin mags. Then I heard a crunch behind me, and it’s some kid in overalls and Doc Martens. She yells run and we hear a house being annihilated. Out the window we see bulldozers run by goons. I’m guessing Mr. Sloane’s plan came to fruition. I should escape but I keep tripping on my own shoelaces. The kid helps me up and leads me to the basement. In the darkened room she clears a pile of plaster, revealing a big metal door on the ground. She opens it and we go down the ladder to God-knows-what.

Downstairs is something like a concrete living room. It’s full of dimly-lit Christmas decorations and army boxes. A trail of rabbits scamper by my feet. A dozen youths in patches and studded denim vests sit on lawn chairs around a sizzling George Foreman grill. I ask where the hell we are. The girl who saved me says it’s paradise. By paradise she means a bomb shelter beneath the Gated Gardens housing development. The builders never noticed it. They’ve been holed up here for over a year now. She says her name is Swirly and these are the Lost Children of the Valley.

These kids have all been through awful trauma. Wards of the state. Gay conversion survivors. Prepubescent meth addicts. They ask me about myself, and before I can answer this kid with a safety pin in his septum says, hey it’s the BurgerDurge™ baby-belly guy. The others recognize me immediately. They all do this baby cry-thing from the commercial. I’m beyond mortified. I try to climb back up the ladder but the door won’t budge. Swirly says the house probably collapsed on itself, blocking any way of escaping. I bang on the door until my hand is swollen, then I fall on my knees.

Swirly pats me on the head. There’s enough food, water, and electricity here to last us years. Tons of board games. A privacy cot for anyone who needs to get themselves or somebody else off. So I go sit with the others as they’re heating up canned rice and beans on the grill. None of them seem terribly concerned about being trapped underground, possibly forever. They might be crazy. Then they do that baby cry again, and I realize they’re not making fun of me. They actually find this little tidbit on my resume impressive. So I join them. And we sit there and cry, cry cry, etc.