Garf and the Purple Pickles by Landon Galliott

When Garf opened his refrigerator, he saw a jar of purple pickles beside the carton of expired milk. This was strange as, only yesterday, they were green. Garf stood in his itchy annoyance before the refrigerator, his red, black-striped robe hanging off his slumped body like an old, worn-out curtain.

Scratching his hairy belly, burdened with fat, determined to remain in the reserve barracks, Garf looked hard at the purple pickles. The idea seemed to be to stare at them until they returned to normal. Garf grumbled, as the pickles stubbornly remained purple. The flesh of his stubble-infested face twitched. After brushing a bundle of tough, dry hair from his eyes, he huffed in disagreement with this new state of reality. What right did a pickle have to be purple?

With a yawn strewn together with fraying threads, Garf closed the refrigerator. He went to the bathroom and contemplated the shower, simmering in the restless silence of his basement suite. A human being, or something like one, stomped around upstairs and Garf dreamed of murderous revenge. A cockroach poked its head out of the shower drain, looked into Garf’s grey, dried-out, pebbly eyes, then returned to the deep. For the 30th consecutive day, Garf decided showering was an inefficient use of time.

He returned to bed.

#

When Garf opened his refrigerator, he saw a jar of purple pickles beside the carton of expired milk. This was irritating, as only the day before yesterday, they were green.

After scratching his belly and farting, Garf took the milk carton, opened it, and smelled. Past its prime, sure, but good enough. Garf drank and slimy, lumpy white liquid oozed down his hairy flesh. Garf burped and regretted his decision. As bad as the milk was, the purpleness of the formerly green pickles bothered him more. He sneered at them and his haggard face twitched.

Closing the fridge, Garf noticed the calendar. After a little mental calculation, feeling the jerky turnings of the rusty gears of his recollection machinery, Garf determined what day it was. Today was his monthly visitation to his mother.

#

“If you see your father, tell him I hate him,” the frail wisp of personhood said, wrapped in a clean white robe on the couch. The burly nurse behind mother smiled as he brushed her long white hair, which was so dry it sounded like matches being struck and Garf wondered if a fire would start on mother’s head, and if he’d have the requisite compassion to extinguish it.

Sitting on a chair opposite to mother, Garf said, “Father’s dead,” as if he were pointing out that a cloud looked like a bird to no one but himself.

“When’s the last time you’ve been to a circus?” mother asked; “They just don’t do circuses like they used to. The culture’s rotten. The infection’s deep. It’s gotten into everything good and cheerful.”

Mother scowled, looking past Garf, at an antique, owl-shaped wooden clock arrogantly measuring the time of decrepit existence. There was so much fierce, antsy, pointless vitality in mother’s eyes. It appeared mismatched with her aging face, that reminder of mortality, that signpost for imminent death. It was as if nothing existed, but whatever fiery, hateful nonsense protruded from her soul. Garf, the perpetual spectator, only stared at mother, wondering why he bothered to come.

“Gabriel,” Garf said, “is there anything to eat?”

“I’ll prepare a cracker and cheese plate,” Gabriel said, his voice deep and strong and simple. Gabriel laid the brush down, patted mother’s head and kissed it, then strolled to the kitchen.

Mother’s eyes flitted around, inventorying her collection of things to hate, to be disgusted in and feel contempt towards. Garf watched her with dull eyes and a weighty stone sat in his belly, a black stone of a cosmic nature, the opposite of a black-hole—accepting nothing, pulling nothing in, only bouncing everything off through the power of Dull Distaste. It didn’t have the decency to distort, to twist the light to its own purposes; it saw everything with sickening clarity and was only interested in pushing it all away. The sounds of metal against glass, glass against countertop, Gabriel shuffling on the kitchen tiles, the fridge and cupboards opening and closing paraded with gross pointlessness and Garf wondered why it needed to be so.

In the old, cigarette-flavoured home, Garf stewed in the stilted air, the heavy hum of dusty, dying couch fabric worming into his nose, surrounded by clown memorabilia and knickknacks mother began accumulating when the sickness struck.

“Your father’s cock is small, did you know that?” mother asked, using her thumb and forefinger to demonstrate how small.

“Unfortunately,” Garf said.

“And crooked!”

A slimy glass slipped into Garf’s hand.

“Iced tea,” Gabriel said.

Without taking his eyes from mother, Garf sipped the iced tea. “It’s terrible,” he said.

“That’s because it’s real,” Gabriel said. “Homemade.”

After sipping again, the ice clinking like delicate chimes in the quiet, dry air, Garf said, “Why not buy the fake stuff if it’s better?” His voice drifted from far-off, barely able to make the effort.

“Because it’s real. I made it myself.”

Gabriel placed the plate on the coffee table, then returned to his post behind mother, where he resumed brushing her hair, the infinite duty he stoically executed, day after day, awaiting death like a worker ant toiling away on the mound. Garf let his eyes fall off mother and they plopped with grey ooze essence onto the assortment of sustenance. Garf scoffed with spring-loaded disgust and his face contorted.

“Your father was a clown, don’t you remember?” mother said, and it seemed a demand, almost an accusation. “But the worst kind. He didn’t even know he was a clown! And his cock… It’s crooked, did you know that?” Mother’s face was a sentient security camera, looking about restlessly for people to catch doing something contemptible.

“Why are those pickles purple?”

The risen, beastly voice awakened something inside mother. “Fredrick? Is that you?” she screeched. “I’ll kill you, you damn dirty bastard, you pathetic clown. I’ll rip that small, crooked cock right off your body!” Mother made claws, readying herself for animalistic action against phallic intruders.

Gabriel continued to brush mother’s long white hair with a patient smile, a garland of delicate stoicism, a bracelet of loving indifference, adorning his hard, thick, tanned face. Garf eyed the purple pickles which sat on the plate with cheese cubes and crackers aligned in a circle, the illustration of a clown staring up from the centre.

“Mother, why are these pickles purple?” Garf asked, itching hotly all over, stirring on the chair.

“Fredrick, I hear you, you son of a bitch! Don’t talk to me like that anymore. I’ve kicked you out, remember? You and that small, crooked cock of yours. You’ve always been such a barbarian, talking like a damn alpha male, some ruler of the animal kingdom you are. Get out, you unconscious clown, you unvocational entertainer. Garf, honey, did you know your father never knew he was in the circus? He never even knew! He could’ve been paid this whole time. This whole time! He didn’t realize he was watched. All those spectators munching on popcorn and slurping soda and clapping their greasy, grubby little hands, went absolutely unseen by your idiotic father. The worst kind of clown, I tell you, the worst kind.”

Spit spun into the air from mother’s mouth, disorganized streamers in a decrepitly moist parade.

“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Garf stood, looked hard at the nurse who hummed a gentle, wordless hymn, and pointed at the pickles. “Gabriel, why are these pickles purple?”

“Because they’re real,” Gabriel said.

This was too much for Garf. It was all too much. He scoffed, throaty and thick. After waving the nonsense away with his arm, he stormed out of the house. The door slammed.

After a minute, the door opened again. Garf stomped into the living room, where mother still sat, looking at all the contemptuous items of her disorganized mental catalogue, where Gabriel still hummed, smiling in his mocking way, brushing the old woman’s hair. Garf went to the table, grabbed a cracker and cheese cube, and put them in his mouth. He scooped a handful of cheese and crackers into his unwashed hands and thundered once more out of the house, slamming the door.

Mother and the nurse remained in the dusty silence of the aged living room, surrounded by reminders of clowns and circuses. Gabriel hummed his dreamy tune, a delicate undercurrent flowing with the intentionality of a river. He brushed mother’s hair, never faltering in his rhythm. The mother scanned and inventoried. The purple pickles sat untouched and neat on the plate, beside scattered cheese and crackers, beside the face of a clown.

Mother said, “They just don’t do circuses like they used to. The culture’s rotten. The infection’s deep. It’s gotten into everything good and cheerful.”

“Because it’s real,” Gabriel said, staring at the owl-clock with his slight smile and stoical eyes.

#

Garf stood before the shelves of pickles in the grocery store. Life was a mangled mass of writhing fluorescent light and pop music and voices and squeaky shopping carts and screaming children. Garf appeared a man waiting for death.

Everything had changed. The only thing Garf knew for certain was there was nothing wrong with him. Reality was the problem. It subverted the rules. Things would be better if Garf was in charge. He’d do reality better than reality does.

A squeaky voice sliced with insect-multiplicity into Garf’s world, coming from behind: “Why is that man wearing a robe in the grocery store?” the little girl asked her mommy.

Garf cringed and stomped out of the store.

#

At home, Garf removed the jar of purple pickles from the refrigerator. The carton of expired milk rested, waiting for another experiment of regret to be conducted with its contents.

“Pickles are supposed to be green,” Garf asserted with the gruff justification of the old and dissatisfied.

He was about to throw them in the trash, but stopped. Contemplating them, he stewed in the formless stirrings their image created. Taking them to the table, he sat and contemplated them further. He stared hard into their essence, trying to penetrate them, attempting to twist into the fabric of their Being.

The purple pickles only sat there, announcing nothing, claiming nothing, indicating nothing, gesturing nothing—only existing.

This “only being” lit scratchy little flames throughout Garf’s flesh and they flared with ethereal insanity throughout the pseudo-spaces of mind. The audaciousness these pickles have to be purple, when formerly they were green, when they should be green, and then to only sit there, existing. These pickles must justify their purpleness. They must reason out their existence, must explain it, must formulate and present its meaning. These pickles must be put on trial, and the jury—consisting of Garf—would find them guilty of… of… of what?

Of something, surely. Guilty of something, there was no doubt. It was as certain as mother’s insanity. As certain as Gabriel’s self-satisfied face. As certain as that antique owl announced its ongoing measurement of life. As certain as his dead father’s tenure as an unconscious clown, an unwitting madman who pranced around the simultaneously attended and unattended circus of life, of the world, of history, that perpetual madhouse and parade of insanity.

Garf stumbled to the couch with the jar of purple pickles. He was tired. But in a different way than usual. Not the dull, unmotivated, itchy greyness of the past 10 years, but something else. A load had lifted and he realized how tired he was from what he was doing. Though Garf couldn’t quite articulate what he’d been doing all these years. A decision-making process had been churning in the background and now it was paused. Garf could breathe. He could feel space. The easy air on his skin. His shoulders loosened and he felt the after-sensation of released tension.

It was the fatigue one feels after a day of busying oneself with urgent activities, when one finally sits and breathes, doing nothing in particular, becoming aware of their body, their mind, for perhaps the first time in the day. It was as if he spent 10 years in toil, never resting, never letting himself recover, never caring for the body, never asking what it needs, never listening to it. Garf wondered if he ever rested during the past decade, since his father’s death and his mother’s insanity.

There was something that should maybe be mourned. Lost time, perhaps. But maybe not. Garf would think about that later. For now, he needed rest. He needed sustenance. He needed to listen.

Garf opened the jar of purple pickles. He removed one and inspected it. Then he took a bite. He chewed and tasted, savoured, experienced. There was nothing about its taste that announced its purpleness. It tasted like an ordinary pickle. In fact, it was the best pickle Garf ever tasted.

 Landon Galliot

Image by Kasjan Farbisz from Pixabay – Jar of Pickles looking down on the open top. (These ones are green)!