by Caio Driver
Harnan Samson has a bunch of socks and one eye. He works at a convenience store and gas station off the 21st South freeway in Salt Lake City. It’s a short, four-lane freeway that’s always trafficked, hemmed in on either end by bulky, rising mountains with snow-capped peaks.
It’s not a cool story, he tells people, I was just born weird. People don’t ask about the socks. But it is cool. It’s a rare condition: Anophthalmia. It makes the sightless side look like someone removed his eye and shrunk what was left into a pink mess of flesh and eyelids. So, he wears an eyepatch.
It changes the way I see the world, he jokes. Harnan wants to be a comedian–he goes to all the open mics in the area.
Between the high desert foothills and reaching mountains behind, there’s refineries with all their pipes and yellow lights, open-pit mines, and the city that spreads outward. Development is happening so fast, it seems like there’s new buildings every time he drives back from work. All the construction companies lease out the fronts of their sites for advertisements. It’s fun, for a while, to see the different billboards: INJURED? CALL 1-800-JOHN-LAW. WE GOT YOUR BACK WHEN INSURANCE WON’T.
Cars roar past the gas station on their way to the mountains of the West, past its hazy neon, kaleidoscoped by falling snow, past the sign that says FRECH PRESS COFFE NSIDE.
There is French Press coffee inside. There’s also carpet on the ceiling.
To save on heating, says his boss, Gustavo, since you assholes wanna be princesses. Harnan spends most of the day staring at that ceiling, following its patterns and studying its stains. Parts of the carpet are matted, as if windswept. Others have large brown sections, maybe from coffee exhaust.
“Hey—you listening?”
At the next register over, Jimmy has been talking. Jimmy is old enough that he looks ready to drop dead at any point and has a voice to match. He used to be Mormon, but now he’s just homeless.
“I was saying—the train. It picks up every other person before me. It never takes me. I try to take the green line from Central City, but the doors close every time. These new trains. Too fast. They don’t pick me up. They just hum and hum.”
Most days, Harnan drives his coworkers home, carpooling to save money. He always drives, so he can talk less, listen more. With traffic, it takes over an hour to drive into the city, and his stereo hasn’t worked in years. Today, Jimmy doesn’t say much, mostly looking out at the desert. Once they get into the city, he tells Harnan to drop him off there, pointing to a random corner, then just starts walking.
Harnan lives in a newer apartment building with competing cement and metal blocks, and colored like rust. He found his roommates on Craigslist, college graduates who work from home and ski and mountain bike and rock climb. He thinks it’s funny they call their coworkers their ‘team,’ but he’s thrown out every joke he’s written about it.
He checks his mailbox on the way in. Most of the time there’s something from his insurance company that has an URGENT—REPLY NEEDED stamp across the front. He used to ignore them—being born without one eye never seems like an urgent thing to him—but now they’re after him for something else.
Harnan has a heart wrapped in denim and when it gets wet it shrinks and he can’t get any blood to his head. He can’t think or talk and he forgets how to breathe. His heart’s tough, though—better than a normal heart, his sister used to say.
Today, Gustavo isn’t there, so he keeps his ringer on all through work, in case the insurance company calls. WHITE PEAKS MEDICAL INSURANCE doesn’t believe in his denim heart, so he’s on the hook for more money than he’s ever seen. It took longer than normal to stretch back out the last time. He had to spend a long time in the hospital.
He’s on shift with Florian, who walks in two hours late, shouting. “I have found a miracle in a pill!”
“Hey, Florian.”
“You wanna know?
“Sure.”
“It might make you see again.”
“I’m not blind.”
“You got a eyepatch on, what the fuck else are you?”
Harnan’s phone rings, and he walks outside. It’s February, forty-five, and raining. On the TV, it said the most winter rain in some number of years he can’t remember. Floods.
The gas station is stuck into the base of a mountain that overlooks the lake. Within the couple hundred feet between the mountain and the water, there’s the gas station, the power plant, the freeway, and the tailings pond. Every time he’s out back, he climbs up a few steps to try and see over the huge tailings pond berm, to the lake. Today, he’d like to see the rain fall in great gray curtains over the water. Instead, some trickles into his eye-hole.
“Hello, is this Mister Samson?” The voice is beautiful and icy, the smartest voice Harnan’s ever heard.
“Yes.”
“Policy number HGN197450274QZH9943OP?”
“Um. I don’t know—maybe. I can check.”
“There’s a long queue, sir. At least three hours long. People like you, waiting.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I have it, just—”
“I’ll put you back in the queue, Mr. Samson. That way you’ll be prepared next time.”
The phone clicks and the rain comes down harder. He hopes the same woman will call him back when it’s his turn again. Inside, Florian is talking to a college student buying some sort of flavored electronic nicotine.
“It’s science, girl, I’m sayin’. Have too many of those, and your heart will get sick and won’t love me as hard.”
All the way back home Florian talks nonstop about his girls. Harnan gets lost in the names. It seems like he’s dating at least seven women.
“Nah, you sound old when you say ‘dating.’ It’s like—I’m talking to these girls. You make it sound like I’m—” he puts on his best English accent, which is not good at all—“courting these suitable young ladies. ‘Hello, M’Lady, how do you do? Would you care to take my hand and accompany me to the tea garden?’”
Despite the accent, Harnan laughs.
Florian continues, accent-less.
“What about you? I bet the eyepatch plays.”
They pass an oil pumpjack going round and round, mechanically, not ever stopping. It looks tired, rusted and with tumbleweeds gathered around it, but robots are tireless.
“I guess,” Harnan says. “Not after it comes off.”
When he gets home, Harnan checks his watch and realizes they’re not going to call him back.
All of Harnan’s socks come from his sister, birthday and Christmas, every year. He always has a pair on, bright colors and stripes and patterns that slip out between his faded jeans and old Nikes. He’s been her sock model since they were young, him five and her eight, when she first started knitting. He’s loved every pair she’s made. As she got better, he encouraged her to start selling them. And though he protested, it was his name she used when she created the company: Harnan Samson’s Armful of Socks.
“You’re the one I make them for,” she said. “Every pair is for you. Other people just happen to like them, too.”
The next day, when he walks in from the lot, there’s Ezzie, complaining to Gustavo about her nametag again.
“I told you five hundred times, it should say ‘Ezzie.’ Everyone calls me that. It’s more normal than his name, anyway.” She points at Harnan.
“Esmerelda is fancier,” Gustavo says. “Like a Disney princess at the register. Better that way.”
Harnan’s phone buzzes and he ducks outside. He’s still got four minutes until the start of shift.
“Mr. Samson?” It’s the same voice again.
“Yeah?” he says, stupidly.
“You’ve reached the front of the queue.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.”
“Do you have your policy number ready this time, sir?”
“Yeah, uh—yes, ma’am.”
“Please read it to me when you’re ready.”
That’s strange, Harnan thinks, don’t they have it in front of them, too? But he takes the card out of the wallet and reads it out anyway.
“H-G-N-1-9-7-4-5-0-2-7-4-Q-Z-H-9-9-4-3-O-P.”
“I’m sorry, at the beginning, was that N as in November or M as in Mike?”
“November.”
“Okay—I have H as in Hotel, G as in Golf, N as in November. Could you continue from there?”
Gustavo comes outside to give him a threatening look.
“Is there any way you have it already in your system? My shift is about to start, and I really want to see how things are progressing with my claim.”
“I’m sorry, sir. This is an essential part of our five-step verification.”
“There are four more steps?”
“Oh no—only three more. The first was completed prior to calling. I’m sure you understand—it’s your confidential information, after all.”
Harnan holds his phone away so she doesn’t hear him sigh. “I have to go. Can we schedule a call-back time for when I’m off work?”
“I can put you back in the queue. The wait time is currently two-hundred and five minutes.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
When he walks inside, Gustavo and Ezzie are back on friendly terms.
“Apparently people are putting Botox into their armpits now,” Ezzie’s saying. “To stop from sweating.”
“People used to just sweat, you know,” says Gustavo.
“I mean, I don’t wanna sweat either. But that doesn’t sound healthy. Maybe you’ll get a heart attack, it’s so close.”
Ezzie points under her armpit, which is ringed with sweat, towards her heart.
“Yeah,” says Gustavo. “Or Down’s Syndrome.”
They’re back to arguing when Harnan walks outside for lunch. He looks back into the store at their two figures gesticulating. He tries to compose a joke about it.
“My coworker the other day was telling me—”
“So my boss, Gustavo, right—”
“You guys seen this new thing, about people injecting—”
He climbs up higher, to see over the tailings pond. But a new billboard has just gone up, blocking his view. CREDIT LOOK LIKE SH!T? GET A CAR THAT DOESN’T! VISIT GETLOANS.COM – NO CREDIT SCORE NEEDED!
When Harnan first started working at the gas station, the coal power plant next door was supposed to shut down for environmental reasons. But it’s still running, same as ever, powering the massive mine that owns all the land around the station, humming to itself in a high pitch.
After lunch, Harnan’s phone buzzes. He shoots a look at Ezzie, she nods, and he runs out the back door. Gustavo is smoking a cigarette next to the propane tank. Harnan ducks to the other side of the station to answer.
“Hello, is this Mr. Samson?” The high, clear voice.
“Yes,” he replies, breathless. “I have my policy number ready.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ve got it right here in front of me.”
“What? But last time—” he swallows it.“Is there more to be done on my claim? I’m supposed to have full coverage, and—”
“Yes, sir, full coverage of medical costs related to emergency services, hospitalization, pregnancy, maternity and newborn care, ambulatory patient services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventative and wellness services, pediatric services, and medical management programs.”
“Okay. Wouldn’t that cover my ambulance and hospital costs, then?”
“I’m looking at the notes here, and it says… hmm… yours was a case of a self-induced mental episode.”
If Harnan was someone else he would yell and shout but instead his breath gets quick. He starts to sweat. The wind makes his sweat icy on his skin. He holds the phone away and breathes and breathes. She keeps talking, since he’s quiet.
“And I’m not actually the case manager, sir, so if you like I can go ahead and create a help number for you and push this on along to that department.”
“Okay,” he says. He’d better go back to work anyhow.
“Alright, your help number will be HN-35650164931. Just give them about a week to process, and they should reach out. Have a lovely day, Mr. Samson.”
Harnan forgets the help number as soon as he walks back inside. And halfway through the drive home with Ezzie, his car breaks down. A bunch of lights pop up on the dash and the engine starts rattling and the gas pedal stops working. On the side of the highway, with sound reverberating between a subdivision’s cement wall and the whipping cars, Ezzie starts to call him names.
“Sorry I’m late,” the tow driver says when he arrives. “One of the storage pond things where they keep all the shit from the mine leaked, and they shut down half the highway.”
Harnan pays out of pocket, because his insurance only covers the first five miles. He should’ve asked the distance when he got the insurance, but he didn’t do his research properly.
“You need to do your research properly,” Ezzie says.
For the last week he’s been taking the train and bus to work. It’s usually a two-hour journey, but today it takes him four. After the train, he gets on the wrong bus—at first, the bus follows the same route, so he falls asleep against the vibrating window. When he wakes, the driver is calling out last stop. Harnan looks around and sees housing developments and a distribution center and the wrong gas station. Mountains rise up behind it all with a big, tanned bite taken out of them. It’s the first time he’s seen it—the copper mine. It looks neat and orderly, with little ant-sized trucks driving up and down. The driver grumbles and shakes his head and turns the bus around to retrace its steps. Harnan looks out the window the whole way back, following the mountains from the mine to his work. The same route, he thinks, that the mine waste takes to the tailings pond.
Later that day his phone rings loud, and Jimmy gives him a disapproving look. He’s old, but he’s done life wrong, so it’s not really his place to give that sort of look. Harnan walks out of the store to answer. These days, he answers every time his phone rings, strange number or not. Most of the time, it’s just sales calls, surveys. No thanks, I can’t afford it. No, I wouldn’t be interesting to talk to, sorry. This time he hears her voice.
“Mr. Samson?”
“It’s you, uh, yes, hi.” He feels stupid as the words come out of his mouth. “I just thought it would be the case manager, or whatever.”
“I am the case manager.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He realizes he’s been walking straight out towards the billboard, and he keeps going, skirting the thick metal poles that hold it up so he’s able to look out over the lake again. He’s close to the power plant now, enough to feel the humming, same pitch as her voice on the phone.
“Your case is a tricky one, Mr. Samson. See, it’s a bit amorphous. In terms of—well, how to cover what you claim to have.”
Through the smog, he can just make out the peaks of two mountain-islands in the lake.
“All that is to say, Mr. Harnan—your case is above my paygrade, I’m afraid. I took this time to reach out because I feel for you. I really do. I’ve elevated your case, so I’m afraid you’ll have to do just a bit more waiting. But I’ve passed on your case to the best people.”
Harnan takes a slow breath and shrinks with the exhale. He looks down at the crushed gray rock under his feet.
On the bus ride home, Jimmy and him sit side-by-side the whole time, neither wanting to talk. His legs dangle off the high seats in the back. If Jimmy wasn’t there, he’d let the bus take him wherever.
In his mailbox, the usual slips and flyers. Among the pizza promotions and nail salon coupons, a slip offering to buy old cars—STUCK WITH A GARBAGE CAR THAT WON’T RUN? I’M BOB BEETICLES AND I BUY BROKEN VEHICLES. Another that reads: GET AN UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF MEDICAL NECESSITIES THAT WILL TAKE YOU TO YOUR GRAVE IN COMFORT FOR ONE LOW PRICE (COFFIN NOT INCLUDED IN BASIC PACKAGE).
Something advertising class action law services for those who may be among the population affected by the refineries and mines in the valley, and then, one even stranger: LIFE SMELL LIKE WET CAT FOOD? CALL 1-800-GET-MORE TO GET MORE FROM YOUR LIFE. NORMAL MESSAGING AND DATA RATES MAY APPLY.
He imagines one that reads: STILL BUYING THE SAME EYEPATCH? TRY A SLEEK NEW LOOK TO DISTRACT FROM YOUR UGLY FACE. He touches his eyepatch. It sticks out like a baseball cup.
There’s one at the bottom that’s definitely for him: PAYMENT PAST DUE, it says, in a big red stamp across the front. Even their fonts are mean.
He opens the notice, which says the medical bill he’s been fighting has been unpaid for too long and gone to a collection agency. There’s a phone number to call for DESERT CANYON COLLECTION AGENCY. He tucks it into his pocket and throws the rest away. He wishes the world wasn’t so accusatory. He decides to accuse it back–when he’s less tired.
The next morning is his day off, and he wakes up resolved. He’ll make breakfast, and then call the collection agency to put a stop to it all.
“Good to hear from you, Mr. Samson.” The same voice.
He wants to throw his phone, but he’s still paying it off. How’d she—“How’d you know?”
“Your caller ID has your name. Am I not speaking with Harnan Samson?”
“Yes, but I—”
“Well, that’s good. How’s your morning going?”
“So it is you?” To make sure he’s not imagining things, on top of everything else.
“White Peaks Medical Insurance operates under the same umbrella as Desert Canyon Collection Agency. To make it easier for customers like you, not having to go through different people to do the same job. Ease of access.”
“You do remember me?”
“I think you’re missing the point here, Harnan Samson. Unfortunately, at the collection agency, it’s just our job to collect. We don’t know the history of your case. Just that you owe a substantial amount which has remained unpaid.”
Harnan Samson has lost all of his energy and sits on his bed. His window looks out over a construction site, where a hole in the ground lies open and rough.
“What’s your name?”
“Mr. Samson?”
“Do you have a name?”
“It’s company policy not to give out personal information.”
His walls are an undecorated white save for the one picture of him and his sister.
“I’m Harnan, but you already know that. Did you know I was born without an eye? I guess it probably says so in my file. Or maybe not, since you say you’re only responsible for collecting my money. Well, it’s true, I only have one eye. And a denim heart. Maybe you don’t believe me, but that’s why I owe money, because of my heart. A little while ago, it shrunk down too small, after my sister died. She was my sister, but we weren’t related exactly. We grew up together, and then she died. About a month ago. When I heard, it shrunk down in the denim, and I couldn’t get blood to go anywhere. I’m sure that’s never happened to someone like you, but it’s scary. I blacked out and fell over and hit my head. I guess the ambulance came and took me away—I don’t remember much until I was in the bed covered in blankets. I didn’t have anybody they could pawn me off on, so they kept me at the hospital for a bit. That’s why I owe so much.
By the time they said it was okay for me to go, there had already been some sort of public health funeral for her. The county clerk said so. They couldn’t find family to contact. We don’t have the same last names, so it makes sense. It wasn’t their fault. It’s not like I’m bad with money, or something. I’m not buying a bunch of stuff I can’t afford. I didn’t want to stay, I told the doctors. But it’s hard to convince them. They know more about me than I do. Sorry. I usually try not to think about her, because I don’t want to end up back in the hospital. She was really loving. To everyone, not just me.”
Harnan walks over to his window and the mountains shoot straight out of it, turning to snow halfway up. He’s only been up into them one time, with his sister, years ago. He’s lived minutes from them most of his life, and still, just once. Looking up at the white peak, he hadn’t believed they could get to the top.
The woman finally responds. “I’m so sorry, Harnan. That sounds really hard. I can’t say much, but—”
When they were up there, they hiked to a lookout to see the whole valley. His toes feel wet and cold now, remembering. They stood up there, and she said you can see the whole world from up here, even where we grew up, Harnan.
“I guess all I can say is that I do believe you, Harnan. And I’m sorry.”
Better to stay down here, he thinks.
On his way to work the next day, the car mechanic calls and says he’s finally been able to get to Harnan’s vehicle. The motor is totaled, he says. Wasn’t any oil in it.
“Not worth spending the 2,500 dollars to replace it on that rust bucket. But on the bright side, you only make that mistake once, eh?” He laughs.
“Yeah. Sorry,” says Harnan, and hangs up. He did take it for an oil change, a month ago, but he knows how these old cars are. He should’ve checked again.
At work, it’s a Saturday, second of the month, so everyone’s collecting their paychecks. Harnan is the only one on shift, but everyone wants to hang around and smoke 27s outside because it’s the first sixty-degree day of the year. He’s at the counter, ringing people up and looking outside, imagining.
Florian waves his cigarette around like he’s directing traffic, telling a story everyone thinks is hilarious. They’re ringed around him, letting their cigarettes burn down to their fingers because he’s so funny. And because he looks great in the sun and the wind.
Anyway, he’s saying—
What is he saying?
He could be telling a story about his recent date, how her dating profile just said Christian but it turns out she was a devout Mormon, and then why would she even want to go on a date with a guy like him.
Or maybe he’s making fun of Jimmy for saying that the train never picks him up, when all that’s really happening is this old-ass dude Jimmy just stands there, like right up close to the doors, but when they open he just waits and waits and doesn’t get on, with people moving around him all confused. You a funny dude, Jimmy. And even grumpy old Jimmy laughs at that.
Probably it’s something about Harnan, though, who’s looking out at them with his good eye, pretending to wash the window. I mean, think about this poor guy’s life: he can barely afford a new eyepatch for his fucked-up head, what do those cost, twenty cents? And look at his heart, how it’s not normal like all of ours. It’s already gotten him into this much trouble. When’s it gonna give out completely?
On Harnan’s lunch break, there’s an overhead sun like a white-hot headache. He walks out the back door and under the billboard. The power plant’s hum draws him near. The thing is making sounds like it’s speaking. The sound ripples, reminding him he knows where there’s a hole in the gate. He ducks through it and walks to stand in the middle of all the wires leading up and away in thick bunches from the hulking building and its smokestacks. They all harmonize and find perfect pitch inside his head.
He lies down on the bare ground and feels it vibrating through him. Flat on his back, he can feel coal becoming electricity. Everything is below and above, through plastic earth and air. He takes off his eyepatch and tosses it away, letting the sun soak through the hole and fill his head like melted copper. When he gets up, his head is still cooling.
He steps over the freeway barrier and walks across. Would the driver who killed him be on the hook for his medical bills? On the other side, there’s a huge banner put up by the mining company that says in big letters: IT’S YOUR SAFETY—THINK ABOUT IT.
He starts to climb the berm. It must be five stories tall, all uneven rock and dirt. He crawls to the top and looks over. In front of him, the reservoir of poison leftovers, split in two: one dry, one wet. An industrial, gray beach surrounded by walls so huge, he can feel them breathing in the wind like waves slowly crashing. He looks back across the freeway and has a perfect angle to see the mountain where all this came from. It’s a steep, high desert mountain, dotted with sage. It dwarfs the gas station at its base. A bus ride away, the terraced hole stretches down a mile. Trucks carry bits of the mountain’s heart out with them.
Below him there’s a tunnel that feeds overflow out to the lake. He scrambles down to it, and it’s so big he could stand inside, deep black, leading down like an artery. He could follow it, underneath the tailings pond, all the way to where it meets the Great Salt Lake.
He walks in. It’s cold in there. He can’t see, but his heart doesn’t change. It just keeps on beating the same, dull pace.
* * *
When Harnan opens his eyes, the only thing he can see are his blue and red socks, somehow catching the invisible sun and glowing. He shivers. When his head shakes, he can feel on his cheek that he’s been crying.
See, this is what happens when you put off thinking about me for too long, he imagines her saying. The punchline comes into focus as his eyes adjust to this human-sized drain and he wipes orange-gray slime off his back. He lifts his body up, turns his head to the opening: “Cheaper than a hospital bed, at least.” His voice is deep and echoes around him as he walks out of the drain and into the sounds of the world. There are rushing cars, muffled by winds tumbling down the mountains. A machine beeps and crunches over ground.
He scrambles back up to the top of the berm, breathing easily now. When he gets to the top, he stays for a minute. He looks back at the steep hills reaching out of the lake, green after all the rain. He looks back across the freeway, and he can see everyone still outside in the sun. Harnan looks back around one more time. The lake, the city, the mountains–all feel close. As he tilts into a two-footed slide, down towards the gas station, Ezzie’s laughter bounces across the freeway to reach him.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Caio Driver splits time between the city and El Dorado County, where he works as a wildland firefighter. He has an MFA from the University of Wyoming. He’s published in the North American Review and is working on a novel.