By Garrie Fletcher
Zack isn’t his name. I know his name, but Zack will do for this. Zack’s a measurer, a pattern follower, a routine keeper, a stickler, a people person who doesn’t get people, a character from the wrong play, an enigma begging to be understood, but for most people he’s harmless, odd, just another white man in grey clothes who’s soon lost in the crowd. Only now, there are no crowds.
Zack has been around for years. I’d see him in the indoor market, just off the high street, long gone now, guarding a cup of tea, talking to shadows. I’d see him over Kings Heath Park in a woollen jumper on a hot day, ice cream melting. I’d see him on the High Street mid-conversation, the other person long gone with their words of goodbye yet to reach him.
I used to get my hair cut at a place down York Road – it’s long gone now, turned into a pretentious barbershop where beards take their humans for a sit-down. It was run by a lovely woman, let’s call her Stacy. Stacy was chatty, put you at your ease and had the knack that all good hairdressers have: the ability to pretend they give a shit about your life, but Stacy did. It was through Stacy that I found out Zack’s real name. Zack would call at Stacy’s every morning around ten. He’d walk in, stop in the middle of the shop with his eyes cast on the floor and say good morning. She’d return his greeting and ask if he wanted a cup of tea, which he always did. He drank tea like a man with an asbestos mouth and cast-iron throat, gone in two gulps, and then he’d be off. Once he’d gone, Stacy would tell you all about him and how she was one of his regular stops.
I must have had a habit of going at the same time of day to get a trim because over time I got to know a little bit more about Zack. He lives somewhere off Vicarage Road, maybe somewhere down in the rabbit warrens off Kings Road. He has no television, or phone, or computer, but he watches Coronation Street at the Chinese Take-a-way. He’s on first-name terms with many shop keepers, store managers, only the friendly ones, and he breaks his day down into tea stops. He doesn’t measure time as we do. His days are not broken down into months and dates, they’re looped around the magical seven, the incantation of stability: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sundays are the hardest for Zack as most of his regular stops close. It’s on a Sunday that you’ll see him in the park breaking his time down between the small play area with the slide, the zip-wire, bowling green, basketball area and the café if it’s open.
The last time I saw Zack was two weeks ago. I was in the queue at the post office, two meters between me and the next person, our world now measured out for us, but when I got to the window Zack appeared beside me. He greeted the man behind the screen and received a disinterested reply in return. He didn’t stay long. Long enough for his presence to burn through my imaginary protective shield. Long enough for my spider-sense to be screaming, ‘back off!’ Long enough for me to start forming words of caution and explanation in my head, ‘Zack, you need to step back. We don’t do this now.’ But, being British, not long enough for me to actually say or do anything. After exchanging a few solitary words with the man behind the counter, who, like me, teetered on the verge of saying something but didn’t, Zack left. My imaginary protective shield slowly expanded back into place and I tried to calculate how long he’d been stood there – a minute at most.
As I walked away from the post office, the line from ASDA stretching up the high street, I started to think about Zack and not myself. I imagined him in his maisonette, or rented room measuring his life out by counting the flecks of white in his beard, balancing his routine against the days of the week. He’d always struggled with social contact. He knew the mechanics of it from watching soaps in the China Garden but not the art; he always stands too close; his words robotic, recited. What does Zack know of viruses and social distancing when he doesn’t get social? I go home and hug my children. Thankfully, I can still do this and, while hugging is not something that Zack would initiate or even enjoy perhaps standing too close to someone is his equivalent of this precious human contact that is now synonymous with fear and even death?
Garrie Fletcher is a writer, whose two books, Night Swimming (2017), and Submerged (2019) are published by Mantle Lane Press. He has also had short stories in a number of anthologies and magazines, most recently in Wannabe Dostoyevsky Cities: Birmingham (2020).
His blog can be found at https://fletchski.com
Twitter: @Fletchski