His best friend these days: a human Ship of Theseus. Like the thought experiment—right? A man who’s replaced all of his individual components over the years to the point that philosophers sit and ponder whether he’s still the same man. Body, mind, spirit. Everyone does this, you say? Not like this man. His past components have no meaning for him. He does not recognize himself; his name and identifying documents change with the seasons. No self beyond what he decides to be each day.
Last week, he was a dishwasher who his coworkers called Ricky. Today, he’s a day laborer named Eddie, clearing a pair of fallen trees off a new build’s lawn and fixing up a large garden. Rotting plank ripped out, new plank inserted. All the parts of a personality that helped yesterday but have no place today excised completely. Anybody’s guess if the people he worked with last week would recognize him today. Looking around at the handful of other tired faces lounging around the job site, there’s only one face that makes him gesture warmly in recognition.
They get to work. Last week, our Theseus was fundamentally a sluggish kind of person, doing the bare minimum needed to keep the line moving, only picking up the pace when it was time to step outside with a back-of-house partner in crime to smoke a joint. Last week, our Theseus went for depressants over stimulants, light touch in conversation over anything remotely heavy, late-night winding-down over the early morning starting-up. Gone entirely: today, our Theseus has a Monster in his veins before the sun comes up and another waiting for him in his backpack. Today, he’s a steady hum of activity: lifting, bagging, sweeping. There’s a truck of mulch coming, someone tells him. Our Theseus says that’s no problem, that he can take care of it. Brief shining runways of slicked turf where Marston’s feet betrayed him trying to lift a large section of branch. Our Theseus went from a man who lives for family meal and prays for the last table to turn down dessert to a man who will work himself into the ground to finish the job. Nothing but grunts and bare minimum communication between the men working. Whole conversations in a raised hand and a head shake.
A tall, pale, hairless man comes out of the house to talk briefly and dispassionately with the site leader, then retreats inside behind large windows covered with heavy blinds. All around, new build mansions begin to stir. Husbands in various levels of businesswear leave flimsy houses in heavy cars. Expensive wives going who knows where follow an hour later. No sidewalks in this subdivision. Front lawns clip up against new asphalt; out back, the Chattahoochee Forest washes up to backyards like surf on sand.
The day goes on, men working to get the worst tasks done before the summer sun is out in full force. A mulch truck arrives, and our Theseus gets to shoveling and spreading. The unfocused eye can see halos of steam rising off the men. Wide-brimmed hats undulate in the humidity like fins in water. Hand towels are dipped in ice and placed on necks and shoulders.
At lunchtime they huddle in the leeward shade of the western side of the house. Marston is ringed on both sides by men sitting on coolers, backs against the wall. Last week, our Theseus had an aesthete’s appreciation for the culinary arts and would make passionate arguments for one family meal over another. That part’s gone, replaced by a total indifference to any culinary virtues beyond whether it can be put in his mouth with minimum effort. The limp white bread sandwich he brought the highest possible art.
The work moves slower in the afternoon. Our Theseus is now a lefthander due to some nagging irritation in his formerly-dominant wrist. Marston’s trailed by breadcrumbs of mulch tumbling out the wheelbarrow as he makes a final trip from truck to garden. One of the other men dunks his work hat in the icy junk slush at the bottom of a cooler. Things have just started to appreciably wind down to some final conclusion when our Theseus, fumbling around the debris in the bed of the work truck for a pair of shears, sees the bloodless owner walk outside to meet an elderly woman, dressed in a wide-brimmed hat and flowing silks, walking a white greyhound. Golden bracelets clink on her wrists. The tone of their greeting strips the dull incuriosity from our Theseus and replaces it with an old maid’s love for gossip.
“These workers,” the pale man says. They both take a glance at our Theseus, who lifts a plastic bucket and places it down in the same spot after a moment of what he hopes is convincing rumination. “I ask them to watch the sod out back best they can but I bet you it’ll look like a herd stampeded over it by end of day.”
The wide-brimmed woman clucks in sympathy. The greyhound, keeping four feet on the very edge of the lawn, sniffs vacantly at the base of a brick mailbox.
“But they should be done by end of day, at least,” he says. “I’m not paying for a second day.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “We have a crew who get our lake house ready before we go every summer . . . they tried to raise the price twenty-percent this year and we simply refused.” The greyhound whined slightly from the grass.
“Ridiculous,” he murmured. “You’ll be going down this weekend?”
She nodded. “Tomorrow. Which reminds me—we forgot to request a mail change until too late. Can you grab it tomorrow? There might be a package, but it’s nothing important.”
Our Theseus jumps down from the bed of the truck and starts walking back as the pale man nods. Back at the base of a tree, he turns and watches the woman and her greyhound walk back into a house three doors down. “Hell you lookin’ at,” one of the other men asks. “Come help me grab this.”
The workday winds quietly to an end with the sun still high in the sky. The site leader and the pale man walk together around the yard, the former gesturing with an open hand, the latter pointing with a closed fist and extended finger. Finally, they complete their lap and money changes hands. A final handshake. The site manager comes over to men gathered around his truck and distributes out the daily pay. All around Marston, exhausted men give quiet grunts of approval. The site leader says something about plans for next week as everyone’s heading away. Our Theseus has replaced his quiet openness with a tendency for introspection so deep the site manager has to repeat his goodbye for him to hear it.
As the men shuffle back to their rides in groups, our Theseus veers away to Marston’s side. Leaning in he speaks quietly, words lost in the shimmer. Only a moment, then the slyness is replaced by weary amicability and he peels away back to his ride to end the day. Three pickups piled high with men head out into the sunset.
❦
At the table later that evening, Marston is surrounded by a small asteroid belt of beer bottles, fast-food debris, and our Theseus orbiting like a satellite. Out goes the nimbleness that lets a dishwasher dance around a crowded kitchen. Our Theseus is now a marcher, feet born to wear steel-capped boots. Floor and table thrumming rapid trills from Marston’s feet between base drum kicks from our Theseus’ steps. Out goes law-abiding meekness, replaced with a criminal verve. Our Theseus is a schemer, driven by the knowledge that there is something out there and the belief that he is the man who can have it.
Someone watching through the window of the double-wide might think an interrogation is going on: there’s no need to hear what exactly our Theseus is saying to get the gist. Out goes the total uninterest in words beyond the bare minimum needed to get a point across. Our Theseus beseeches. He implores and then goads. Out with a compact, dense frame, well-suited to manual labor; our Theseus is tall, commanding, mesomorphically barrel chested––a body built by years of lifting with eyes only for himself in the mirror. Marston’s chair tilts back in a futile attempt to establish some distance, as if the words leaving our Theseus’ mouth hold less power with an extra eighteen inches. Out goes any ability to work under others: in front of the limp cool breeze from the window unit, our Theseus becomes a commander. Iron spine reverberating through the centuries; the same stuff in him that led Caesar across the Rubicon. In the bathroom, an oval smudge where Marston’s damp forehead was pressed against the mirror.
❦
Late Sunday night, a pickup truck pulls into the cul-de-sac and parks at the far end of the street, the block silent dark save for a few porch lights and one warm window blind a few houses down. Our Theseus watches it for a moment, eagle-eyed. Garbage bags, a crowbar, and a pair of flashlights at Marston’s feet. The night on the milder side of humid but still a Rorschach blot of sweat on the back of his seat.
Nothing else moves. Out with the heavy-footed commandant’s walk, our Theseus is now a cat burglar, feet and hands light and graceful, innately attuned to the materials they touch. Only Marston leaves footprints when walking around the backyard to the paned exterior door; when our Theseus touches the frame and lock, it’s with a surgeon’s care and precision.
“Bolted,” Theseus says. “Gimme the crowbar.”
He knocks out the pane of glass closest to the door handle with a single precise blow. A sharp crack flies out as the pane shatters and is swallowed up quickly by the heavy night air. Our Theseus carefully reaches in past the shards, turns the bolt, and opens the door from inside.
“Let’s go.”
Faint streetlight seeping through curtain edges just barely illuminates a room filled with new-smelling furniture. Carpet so thick it takes two heartbeats for their weight to fully settle into it. Pale gleam off the frame of two large landscapes on the far wall. Lime-green indicator lights flashing weakly on a block of consoles in between two speakers about waist high. The air so chill that the glasses on Marston’s head fog slightly as he steps into the room.
“Okay,” says Theseus. “Follow me.” Light steps around the living room; fingers running up and down the weighty stem of a standing lamp. Out goes internal satisfaction; our Theseus wants. Not for anything in this room, though: nothing’s the right combo of portable and pricey. The kitchen is gleaming stainless steel and vinyl laminate cabinets. The den has a flat-screen TV and a leather recliner far older than the rest of the house.
“Upstairs,” says Theseus. “She’ll have jewelry up there.” The stairs are lined with more paintings, these ones smaller, in wooden frames. Our Theseus pads across to a closed door at the far end of a wide landing lit by a single nightlight.
Right as he arrives, the door opens. In the split second between the knob turning and the door beginning to move, our Theseus becomes an assassin. Out with the light steady hand that knows caratage and the tumbling click of a lock by feel; our Theseus has hands of stone and a body built to pummel. Violent motions as natural and reflexive as catching a ball. The crowbar in his hands––a hero’s sword. As the door opens into a dark room, he stops standing and starts crouching, feet planted, ready for action.
A mountain of a man finishes pulling the door open and steps out into the landing. Bleary-eyed in nothing but tattered basketball shorts, he takes one step forward and stops, pectorals to Theseus’ face. For a moment, nobody moves. Our Theseus tilts his head up slightly and makes eye contact with an enormous face slowly emerging from sleep haze.
“Wha!—”
A tree trunk of an arm begins to rise. Our Theseus becomes a coward. Out with the body and mentality of a stone killer; our Theseus has the soul of a man built to turn tail and run for the hills. A man who prioritizes his own survival above all else, including the wellbeing of those around him. A yellow-bellied soul who begs for mercy a thousand times before standing his ground once. He turns and runs, getting clipped in the back of the head by something that could’ve been a missile. Even moving away the punch throws him into Marston arriving at the top of the stairs with a garbage bag. They make a dark tumbleweed of plastic and limbs descending to the first floor, the giant bounding down the stairs in hot pursuit. Our Theseus disentangles himself and tries to rise but slips on a garbage bag and collapses again. Marston gets all the way up just in time to get annihilated by a textbook-form tackle, his soul expelled from his lungs as he collapses to the floor under a weight several times his own.
Our Theseus looks over as he rises again and sees only a giant body on all fours like a lion over its kill; console lights glinting off the glasses several feet away. Double greens now double reds. The carpet darkening as a giant fist pumps like a piston. Whatever’s under there is… ah. Complete obliteration of negative space; a vase under a hydraulic press. Still a sound coming from that nothing space somehow. Out with the tensile bonds of friendship; our Theseus has never heard that man before in his life. A voice he does not know calling a name that is not his. He gets back up and runs as fast as he can for the doors.
Once outside, he doesn’t look back. He keeps running directly out and away, across the lawn into the rough woods beyond the boundary of the development, blasting through undergrowth, dodging trees not seen but felt, a different shade of night in front of him. The only light an ambient urban glow that can’t make it all the way down past the canopy. Our Theseus was born to run.
❦
After some indeterminate time, our Theseus slows to a walk. Distant hum of a highway faint through the trees. Who changes what and why and how. He could stay here, he thinks. Our Theseus could become a mountain man. No fear of any consequences; the actions of the last day are a mystery to him. Nothing to do with the man standing at the base of an oak. Marston will shortly be surrounded by men in uniforms, cared for by men in different uniforms, then surrounded again for a length of time. Our Theseus knows nothing of this. Out with the adrenaline of the chase, with knowledge of a town beyond the trees, with a body recognizable to anyone and anything. A stranger starts moving towards the highway.
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