I Will Return Your Memories

I arrive early in the morning, having travelled through the night. It’s quite true that the roads are dangerous after dark. But a secret of the road – even bandits have to sleep. The darkest hours of the early morning are safe, as long as you don’t trip into one of their camps. Which I have done, yes, but not in a couple of years.

Getting to town first thing is imperative. If I can be in the process of setting up in the middle of the public square as the locals are beginning their day it’s effectively free advertising. I used to try to be set up even earlier, sitting and waiting for customers before most of them had finished their breakfast. Terrible business, those days, and I couldn’t figure out why until finally a mechanic in a Amarillo with the correct combination of boldness and ineptitude told me straight.

“It’s fucking creepy is what it is. You ain’t there the night before, and then you is the next day? Ain’t nobody see you arrive and settin’ up its like you just appeared outta the void.”

And he was exactly right. God, how I chastised myself the entire day for not noticing sooner! It hasn’t been long since the end of the it all. People are still nervous. Suspicious. You can’t show up in town unexpected-like and get people to cotton to you any more than you can trip over a sturdy branch face first into a sleeping bandit camp and expect to keep the coin on you.

Now I wait. Even if I get to a town early, as I did this morning, I wait just outside, smoke a bit, watch the sky light up, give it some more time, and when I start hearing some bustle from inside then I head in. Ask directions to the public square, whether I need them or not. Chat a bit. Pick a spot, park my bicycle, ask anyone around if this spot is okay. It always is. Public squares are first come, first serve, but people like it when you ask permission anyway. Makes ‘em feel like they invited you, somehow.

My entire life is in the wagon trailing behind my bicycle. It’s a wooden thing, couldn’t tell you what kind, made for me by a grateful customer early in my post-end of it all career. He made me promise I would stick around Fayetteville for at least a week. That was five and a half years ago and the thing is still as strong as it was on the first day. It’s four feet tall, three feet wide, five feet long, and sits on sturdy wheels. It’s got a center wall, three shelves on each side, covered by wooden doors that swing out and up like that old car from the eighties, the one that was in those movies. I cried when I first saw it, having been carrying everything in a faded Jansport backpack and hell, weren’t my shoulders tired? That man cried right there with me.

“It’s nothing. Not compared with what you gave me.”

I think of him, as I always do, as I open up one side of the wagon and start taking things out. My little folding table. My little folding chair. My little sign, folded into thirds. My whole life, folded. Back before the end of it all, I lived in three bed, three bath house, rooms and rooms filled with stuff. I loved some of that stuff. I liked more of it. I’d say about half it I never interacted with at all. I keep thinking about the China cabinet in the dining room, filled with plates and bowls and silverware. We were supposed to use them during special occasions. Nothing ever felt special enough to warrant the risk of breaking or scratching them. So they sat there, collecting dust, in a dining room we hardly used. Never even looked at them. I keep thinking, why did we buy them? Why were they made?

Now my space is limited and I use everything I have. It feels better this way, somehow. Easier. Cleaner. Lighter.

That house burned along with a lot of other houses. Can’t say I miss much of it.

I take out my little sign but I do not put it up until I am ready. Another thing I have learned the hard way. Put the sign out first, I’m liable to have a line before I’m even ready for the first person, and nobody likes a line. Once I pull out my bright orange extension cord I don’t even have to ask. A local walking by carrying a couple of chickens in cages doesn’t even stop as he gestures with his head toward a nearby brick building.

“Grab it while you can,” he says.

Another reason to get to town early. Limited plug-ins.

Sometimes towns don’t have power at all. Depends on how badly the infrastructure was damaged, back then. I have a decent-sized battery at the bottom of my wagon, hidden under my blanket and pillow. When I find a town with a surviving power system I usually fill up the battery at the end of the day. After my services, people are grateful enough to let me.

I plug into an outdoor junction box at the back of this brick building that looks like it was once part of a strip mall. Half of it is squashed. The other half, the half with the plugs, has been turned into a cafeteria of sorts. Plenty of people inside getting some breakfast being going off to do whatever they do with their day. A couple of old fogeys sit next to the plugs, monitoring them. They stop gossiping long enough to get a good look at me. Remember my face. Make sure no one else tries to take my cord. Make sure I don’t try to take anyone else’s.

“Mighty appreciated,” I say. They don’t seem to hear me.

Extension cord runs to my own power bar, sitting on my table. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to function. Out of my wagon I grab my tool bag and, after some hesitation, my umbrella. It’s not exactly hot, but it is sunny, and this far up the mountains I fear sunburn. Better safe than peeling and itchy, my mom always said.

Finally, everything just where I want it, other travelling merchants filling in the square around me, I unfold my sign and put it front and center on my table. I used to have one that said something rather flowery: I Will Return Your Memories. Took too long to explain. Now my sign is to the point.

COMPUTER REPAIR

I don’t have the sign up for more than a couple of minutes before a woman approaches with soft, wavering steps. She’s staring at the sign more than me. I know that look on her face. She thinks it’s a trap. She thinks it’s a lie. She thinks it’s a dream, and if she looks away from the sign and then looks back it will say something else.

“Good morning!” I say brightly.

“Watchu mean, computer repair?” she asks. I am not offended. She is in the dream state. She is afraid if she gets off topic she will lose it.

“Exactly that!” I say, keeping my voice calm and friendly. You can’t be too friendly, or people think you’re selling snake oil. “If you have a broken computer, I can try to get it fixed. Probably succeed, too.”

She pauses. Blinks a few times. Finally looks away from the sign, at me. Studying me. It’s the ‘probably’ that does it, every time. The dream state is broken. It can’t be a dream if I can only probably fix it.

“Any computer?” she asks.

“Yes, ma’am. Well, just about. Before the end of it all, I worked at a place called Circuit City. You remember them?”

She gives me a single nod. “They went out of business way before, though.”

“They did, but I didn’t stop. I worked for a bit with the Geek Squad – remember them? – and then I opened my own shop. That was back in Toledo, doubt you would have seen it. But I worked on everything. PCs. Macs. Android and Apple phones, too.”

“Phones?”

Ahh, yes, I can see it in her eyes. I’ve answered her most important question before she can even ask it.

“Again, ma’am – probably. But I can take a look.”

She doesn’t say another thing to me, just takes off across the square. Again, I am not offended. Others are starting to stare in my direction, will probably approach with the same questions. But she was there first, and now she has to bring me whatever device she wants fixed first. It’s only fair. But it’ll only happen if she’s quick.

I’m still answering questions for others when she comes running back, face red, sweat beaded around her hair, out of breath. She muscles her way through the small crowd and shoves something in my face.

It’s an iPhone, the last generation before the end of it all. The screen isn’t just cracked, it’s smashed. It almost looks like it was shot with a BB, a circle toward the top of the screen and then a web of cracks radiating out.

I take it from her gently. The screen is a complete loss, yes, but from a quick look it doesn’t appear the damage went much farther. I tell her I’ll start on it right away, she can go about what she has to do and come back. But she doesn’t leave. Of course she doesn’t. Neither do the five other people who have been asking questions.

It’s time to see if I’m the real deal.

I open up my tool bag and get to work. A lot of people hesitate giving me these newer phones. Those old companies made such a fuss about having to bring everything in to them, that no one else could fix it, well, people believed it. And sure, the newer things can be a little harder what with all the proprietary tech in there. But only a little.

Twenty minutes later I’m affixing a new screen to the front of the phone while a breathless crowd of six hovers over me, leaving me with just enough sun to see what I’m doing. Once it’s on I pull the appropriate cable out of my bag and plug it in.

These long dead things always take a few seconds to get enough charge to even start coming back to life. I know this. Most people don’t. So when I plug it in and it doesn’t immediately start glowing the crowd starts backing off, trying to keep the disappointment off their faces.

“Now, now,” I saw, holding it so we can all see the screen. “This thing has been asleep a long time, I reckon. It just needs a few…there we are!”

The little empty battery comes up on screen, blinking as it sucks hungrily on the juice. I give it another couple of seconds and then press the power button.

A lock screen. A much younger version of the woman stares up at us, surrounded by three kids and a man her age. I hand it to her gently.

“Don’t unplug it,” I say as she takes it. “It doesn’t have enough charge yet to stay on by itself.”

She nods as she takes it from me, cradling it as though I’ve just handed her a bird’s nest filled with eggs. The whole public square is quiet. There are more than six people now, a little ways back. The only words are whispered. What’s going? Computer repair. He’s fixing something for Asha. Did he do it? I don’t know, I can’t see.

Asha hesitates, and then brings the phone up to her face.

Nothing happens.

“I think the camera might be permanently damage,” I say before she can panic. “Face ID won’t work.”

Her eyes are watery, her hands now trembling. I’ve already brought this picture back, it’s staring her in the face, but it’s not enough. There’s something else on this phone she’s desperate for, and this won’t be considered a success until she can get to it.

Like she never stopped using it, her thumbs fly over the screen, putting in a password she likely never forgot. I can’t see the screen anymore, but I can see her face.

She’s in.

Faster, somehow faster, her fingers fly over the screen, moving on muscle memory, searching for whatever it is she’s been dreaming of.

And then, a tinny voice comes out of the speaker. It’s scratched all to hell, but we can still hear it.

“Asha baby, why do you insist on the newest phone if you’re never around to answer it!” It’s a man’s voice, perhaps the man on the lock screen. The man keeps talking. We can’t hear it over Asha’s keening. She’s fallen to her knees, tears freed and dripping off her chin, trying to stifle her wails so she can hear above them, still holding the phone ever so gently in front of her.

The crowd disperses. Not for Asha. For themselves. I have done it. I have proven myself. Now they’ll all be running home, running for that computer tower full of pictures they haven’t seen in years, the laptop with the thesis they never got to finish, and, yes, some of them will have more phones with more voice mail they haven’t gotten to listen to.

As I work I want for nothing. The people bring me sandwiches and lemonade from the cafeteria. They find a bigger umbrella to keep me in the shade. I have multiple offers of rooms for the night, which is good because I quickly realize I will be here for a few days. They ask over and over about payment, but I tell them I only want one thing: any electronic parts they don’t want to keep. Phones, computers, speakers, monitors, whatever they still have that does nothing but gather dust. They ask why.

“I only had another screen on hand for Asha’s phone because the last town gave me one,” I say.

They understand, and before long next to my table is an embarrassment of riches, more spare parts than I can possibly carry. Once I’m done for the day I’ll sort through it all, see what’s worth taking.

But for now I carry on. These people have memories with them, locked inside some plastic case or another, and my aim, as always, is to return them.

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