I was late again, but in no hurry. Spring was finally here for real - winter would not be creeping back as it so often does in late March - and I was taking the scenic route on my walk to work. It was already warm this morning, and was supposed to get up into the seventies by this afternoon. Two fat robins sliced through the air right in front of me: an argument over territory, no doubt. I could already smell the aroma of burnt bread in the breeze. After a couple of quick detours down some wooded avenues, I headed directly for the bakery.
I loved the old screen door, looked forward to it every time I came here. The old red and green paint was peeling, and the ancient screen was a little rusty and bulged a little here and there from the times it had been walked into.
The first thing you notice when you step foot into the bakery is the noise of the fans. Several of them, placed in strategic locations throughout the bakery, going at full speed, trying to circulate the hot dry air of the oven with the cooler air from outside. And that's the second thing you notice: the heat. It feels almost like walking into a wall; it will stop some people in their tracks. I liked that - standing behind the counter, watching customers get backed up and walk into each other on the hot days.
"You're late," the owner, Rick, said to me. This has pretty much replaced "Hi" as his standard greeting to me.
"I know, " I replied, quickly slinking back behind the counter. I took an apron from the rack and tied it behind my back as I walked back to the dough station. Some of the loaves have already proofed, and I shift them to the oven and get started shaping the sourdough and cutting the english muffins. It's hot already, and I get to pull the bread from the oven once the loaves have all been made. The last one in in the morning gets to pull from the oven, that's the rule. I end up in front of theoven a lot.
I talk with the other bakers about what we all did the previous night. They are friendly enough to me, but I sense an undercurrent of resentment sometimes, becuase of my lateness, I suspect. Today, they're not upset with me and we have a good time back there with the dough. Soon enough, everything is rolled out and shaped and all that's left is the proofing, so I go up front. I take the big wooden paddle with the long handle and start shoving in the raw loaves.
Within seconds I'm sweating, and before long beads are pouring off of me, some hanging on the end of my nose, which is so gaddamn annoying. These times in front of the oven I vegetate; thinking is a useless endeavor. Just pull out the dark loaves, scoot in the light ones. Waves of hot, dry air billow out into my face, catching small tendrils of my hair and levitating them into the air along side my face, eventually sticking to my drentched cheeks and forehead. And during these times my consciousness would wander aimlessly until it wound up where it always did. The dark thoughts.
I don't think there was ever a day I stood in front of that oven that I didn't think about crawling into it. Just curling up in its toastiness, this warm womb from which I pull the stuff of life. Some days my thoughts were realistic, thinking about the physical process of my body burning, the pain and screaming, the torture, and then, finally, the release. But mostly these were romantic thoughts that ignored the ugly facts of self-immolation; the muddled logic of the suicidal.
One time I held my hand against the metal body of the oven, just to see how long I could stand it before the primitive instictual brain would overrule my willpower and force me to remove it. Quite a while, it turned out. It hurt instantly. The pain only grew in intensity, and was a more different kind than the shallow smarting of scrapping a knee or hitting your thumb with a hammer. This must be, I thought, why hell is full of fire.
I looked to the ceiling, trying to ignore my hand. Ancient beams were exposed, so old that gaps had formed between the grains in the wood. I think the parts between the beams is plaster or something; it has grown dark over the years from the smoke particles given off from the little crumbs of bread that fall to the floor of the oven and bake down to little bits of carbon.
At last I could stand no more and removed my hand. It was a bright red and almost alien-looking. I looked up from my hand and saw Rick was looking at me in disbelief. I ran to sink in the back and turned on the cold water full blast, testing it with my unburnt hand until the hot water from washing the dishes had cleared the pipes. I stuck my hand unter the ruhing stream of cool water. Just the force of the water stung, and I turned the knob counter-clockwise until the stream was gentle. The relief was immediate, almost magical. I pulled my hand out of the water and the pain returned instantaneously. My entire right hand was a throbbing agony. I hadn't even had the sense to try this with my other hand - the one I don't write with. Fuck.
I placed it back under the water. The cool water was as good as morphine, as far as I was concerned. Rick came back and asked to look at my burn. I reluctantly removed it from the water and showed him, after a few more seconds of savoring the relief. There were already large blisters forming. Rick ran to the freezer and came back with some ice. He wrapped it into my hand and told me to go home and rest. He added that I should probably go to the doctor. I just stared at him. He stared back at me, and for a long time we jsut stood there silent.
"Are you OK?" I could tell he wanted to ask, but he said nothing more. I could hear the other workers gathering behind him, asking what had happened. I left by the back door so I wouldn't have to face them.
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Listening to: Atmosphere - Smart Went Crazy
via FoxyTunes
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