Sullivan - All We Want is Everything

Big Red was elbow deep in dead pigeon when he heard the crack like an ice-laden branch splitting from the trunk. He heard the shouts and the scream and that new kid with the ponytail, Barkwell, hollering over and over into the rafters. Big Red pulled his arms out of the heating duct and wiped the feathers and pigeon guts off on his Miami Heat T-shirt.

Hed stopped wearing good clothes to work after his manager, Kevin the Walrus, made him clean up a family of dead raccoons down in the receiving docks last September. Ruined his favourite shirt, the Harley Davidson one with the 1957 XL Sportster 883 on the front. His ex-wife had bought it for him down in North Carolina on their honeymoon. The little cubs had left a big yellow smear across the front. It was late December now. Pigeons had cooked alive when management decided to turn up the heat Monday morning. No one had bothered to trace the smell until Friday afternoon.

The younger temps yelled at each other as Big Red waddled down the deck. He spotted the glowing bald head of the Walrus hustling towards them across the liquor warehouse floor below, mouth buried into his shoulder mic. Red could see the crowd gathered around one of the hydraulic lifts, younger guys peering over the shoulders of the veterans.

One of the kids saw him walking towards them.

Yo! Yo, Big Red! You see what one of your white boys tried to do? Yeah, the Segal motherfucker with the ponytail. He all up on Irwin like Irwin took his newspaper, like Irwin steals his shit all the time, right? Fuck man, Irwin dont even know Segal, you know? Irwin went wild with the bottle man, chucked it right at that ponytailed shit.

Another voice began spitting in Big Reds ear.

Nah man, he took Segals smokes and then just lied to his face like a bitch. Irwin always doin shit like that just cause his Daddy drive a forklift on midnights.

Barkwell was lying on the floor with blood in his ponytail. Little Irwin nudged the body with a steel-toed boot. Hip-hop squeaked out over the concrete between them from a pair of bright red headphones. A shattered bottle of Gordons lay diluting the blood dripping from Barkwells ear.

Big Red pushed Irwin away and leaned down over the body. Barkwell probably weighed a hundred and twenty pounds. Big Red placed a bag of sawdust under the kids small head. Barkwells eyes stared up at the ceiling. Big Red breathed in deep, ready to apply mouth to mouth. Red was the only one on the shift with updated First Aid certification. His niece had almost drowned in the bathtub when he was babysitting her back in 97. He felt the kids wrist, the pulse flitting in and out. He placed his lips on Barkwells and the air filled his sinuses. Gin and copper and pine trees and pennies and a fork sticking out of his hand like a flag pole. The smell skipped into the receptors of his nose.

Christmas.

Barkwell smelled like Christmas.

The Christmas when Big Red and his two little cousins overdosed on Flintstones vitamins. A hazy blur of purple and orange puke all over the back of the living room sofa where they hid in wait for Santa. A string of pink and purple Wilmas and Dinos arranged on the window sill. Rations to help wait out Kris Kringle. The doctor in the emergency room warned Big Reds mother that the kids shouldnt eat any red meat for at least two weeks. He rubbed yellow fingers down her thigh and she asked him for a cigarette. Too much iron in those vitamins, he said and handed her a smoke. Big Red was only Little Red back then, but he still had a gut. The doctor patted his mother on the hip as they left and told her to watch the little porkers diet. Big Red watched her smile. The doctor waved goodbye through the glass of the emergency doors. His wide grin revealed a missing molar in the back of his mouth.

It was a Christmas when Grandma spilled gravy down her shirt and the dog tackled her into the Christmas tree. The same Christmas when Caleb Jackson smacked Big Red across the face so hard with his new baseball glove that Big Red saw stars. He sat on Calebs face for five minutes until he heard him mumble Uncle, you fat stupid fat ass! Uncle! A Christmas when he got another status report from Mrs. Vandervlooten in the mail and a request for a parent-teacher conference. A Christmas when his cousins learned the words bitch and dick from Grandpa talking in his sleep. They watched Raging Bull and Xanadu on stolen cable in the living room.

Grandma was scrubbing the puke out from behind the couch when Dad finally arrived. He slid on the ice, holding a box of art supplies that Big Red suspected was his Christmas gift. A collection of water paints and charcoal sticks. Maybe some colouring books with Chinese subtitles. Christmas was supposed to have good presents. It wasnt like a birthday.

The year before, Dad had hung a fleet of preassembled and painted World War II planes from Big Reds ceiling. An epic dogfight stretched across the room for three months before Mom tore half of them down after shed gone out one night with Aunt Shirley. Big Red stashed the remains of his fleet under the bed behind piles of Hardy Boys books and medical texts hed lifted from Caleb Jacksons garage. Calebs Dad said he didnt believe in doctors. You could teach yourself all that stuff if you put in the right amount of time and effort. Calebs leg never healed right after he jumped off the roof playing Indiana Jones.

Birthdays. That was when Big Reds Dad always came up short. Over his last ten birthdays, Big Red had amassed three velvet paintings of his father, two badminton sets lifted from unsupervised backyards, one stuffed donkey with Kiss My Ass branded into the polyester and four sketches of his fathers alternating cast of girlfriends drawn by Larry B., Dads oldest, wisest friend. Larry B. still had three months left on his sentence before hed be eligible for parole. Dad sent him some magazines for Christmas, but they never made it past the guards.

A Christmas when the Miami Heat finally won their second consecutive victory after a gruelling opening to their inaugural 8889 season that saw the team go 220 before Boxing Day. Always supportive of the underdog, Big Reds Dad walked across the icy driveway decked out head to toe in Heat gear. He had a ball cap on his head with all the tags still attached.