DEATH BY STYROFOAM

by Michael Preston Parker

That big old crazy thing known as the ozone layer is a billowy, largely-unseen entity that hovers silently over our heads. Thin at the equator; it grows thicker at the poles, except for that one little nasty spot at the south end of the planet. Hollowed out by our addiction to hairspray and air conditioning, this ever-growing gap
lets in all the evil, deadly stuff from outer space to do damage to our skin and DNA. Chester was positive it was the source of his problems.

"Say what you want, something just ain't right with the world," he said one day as he was washing out his underwear in the sink. "It's hotter than it used to be and people are crazier than ever."

After sharing a room with him for three months I certainly couldn't argue about that last point.

"But it ain't just that." He gave his drawers that one last wring and threw them over the windowsill to dry. It was a beautiful early spring day, which meant they would be ready in time for him to make it to class by early afternoon--if he decided to go. He was going to class less and less these days.

Though some of his thinking was out there, I admired his ability to come up with the most God-awful theories on why our home planet was in constant decline. He swore UFOs were the cause of most major hurricanes and he believed men had never set foot on the moon. He said the whole Apollo program was a conspiracy by the military industrial complex, in cahoots with a large multi-national food company, to sell Tang breakfast drink.

"You mean they just wanted to sell orange juice?" I had asked after hearing him spout off about it one evening. Most of his tirades seemed to take place at night after he had been stewing in his own juices all day.

"Well, it ain't _really_ orange juice, strictly speaking," he had said, slurring his words slightly. "It's really a chemical mixture that makes you think you are drinking orange juice. Plus, it's a fact that it lowers your I.Q. It's a technique they learned from the Communist Chinese--dumping chemicals in food to dumb down the population. Think about it: every time these so-called moon-men fellers talked about drinking Tang they were really trying to work their way into that soft tissue right up here." He had tapped his finger on his shaved skull. " 'Buy Tang, buy Tang.' That's what they were really saying. Man, before you know it you're a blubbering, drooling, zombie agent of the government."

I'd shaken my head. Yikes, was all I could think of at the time.

Chester grabbed another pair of skivvies and went to work scrubbing them with the bar of Ivory soap I had used to wash my face with earlier.

"You know, they make detergent for that, and even little machines that swish 'round and 'round and do the work for you," I reminded him.

"Nope, it releases too many phosphates into the ground water."

Now don't get me wrong, I am a firm believer in saving the earth. I recycle and do the things other people do so my children and grandchildren might actually have a piece of ground to stand on. It's not his crazy thoughts about things that worried me about Chester. But rather how his mind twisted something positive into something diabolical and shadowy. Recycling drives became recruitment tools for some vast left-wing--or was it right-wing--conspiracy. A petition urging the reduction of pollution was actually a way for the IRS to collect names for future audits. The list went on and on.

It's not that he showed any real political preference one way or the other for anyone or anything, and in fact had never even voted in his life. He would never take part in a process where people go into a booth, pull a curtain closed and punch a preference into a computer. The very act of doing that might send him over the edge. The way he saw it: there was something out there and it was big, ugly and mean and it was out to get him.

"What did you mean before?" I asked
.
"What did I mean...what?" That was another thing: he had the attention span of a gnat.

"You were about to say something about how things were amiss in the atmosphere," I reminded him.

"Oh yeah...that. Well, it seems to me that we used to have a whole lot less things to worry about before the ozone layer got dinged. It sure makes you wonder who really runs Dow Chemical, doesn't it?"

"Huh?" I asked, and then wished I hadn't.

"You know who Dow Chemical is, don't you?"

"Well...sort of. I mean, they're some big company that makes chemicals, right?"

"Yeah, they do, but they also make one of the world's biggest pollutants..." He walked over to my desk and picked up the Starbucks's coffee cup I had left from yesterday morning. Without even looking I was sure there was some pretty foul stuff growing inside already. "Ladies and gents," he said, "I give you exhibit number one--Styrofoam."

"Styrofoam?"

"Yep, damn sure 'nuff. This little work of modern science--principally made by Dow Chemical, I might add--is the very reason I'll probably flunk out this semester."

"Uh... What?" He had lost me and it wasn't the first time. Chester had a way about him that often led you one way and then quickly jerked you in the opposite direction--mental whiplash. I think it was a personal evasion technique he used to throw off his so-called enemies.

"Yep. This stuff right here is the biggest cause of ozone layer depletion. You got any idea how much of this crap gets churned out?"

I shrugged. I didn't have a clue.

"Thirteen-hundred tons a day that's how much. Go to any landfill in America--hell, any in the developed world and see what's piled up. It's scary." His face was becoming flushed. I could tell he was about to get really worked up."It chomps away ten percent of the ozone layer every year," he said. "The UV rays reaching good old terra firma have doubled in the past twenty years. When you walk outside, especially on a warm summer day, you can just feel it eating away at your person. It makes it difficult to focus sometimes." He rubbed his forehead. "You know what I mean?"

Well actually I didn't, or at least I didn't think so. But given the purple tinge in Chester's cheeks I wasn't about to disagree with him. Sometimes it was best just to give him what he needed and let him run his course. It would all be over soon enough. Kind of like a cold.

"Yep. This right here is real evil stuff." He took a deep breath, sat the cup down and went back to his laundry. The storm had blown itself out, at least for the moment.

As time wore on he took to expressing himself in a journal, which he kept under lock and key not unlike the one my teen-aged sister owned. Hers had pictures of bunnies on the front, while Chester's had a unicorn and shiny stars. It was very sad.

He also wrote weekly letters to the school newspaper. They published the first one and then politely asked him to stop. I think they were afraid. He ignored them, of course, and kept sending them anyway.

I caught him lining his mesh John Deere cap with aluminum foil one afternoon after I returned from a library study session. I asked him what was up.

"It's to keep out the microwaves," he said as he eyed my little Kenmore over in the corner. I knew he wouldn't be hanging on much longer. I called his advisor on the sly, fearing what Chester might do if he found out. As fate would have it, he flunked out anyway before any action could be taken.

I'll never forget the last time I saw him. He was climbing into his father's rusty pick-up. He saw me and smiled and gave me a tiny wave goodbye. He was a shadow of the guy I had known just a few months ago.

He was gaunt and pale. The rope he was using as a belt--having sworn off leather--could barely hold his jeans up. He looked like a demented Jethro Bodine. I felt a deep sadness as I saw him ride away down the street and out towards the interstate. I wondered if I had done all I could do to help him. Maybe not.

As I was packing to head home for the summer I found his journal. I considered sending it to him, but realized that might only make his situation worse if anyone got their hands on it. I put it in my bag thinking I might meet Chester again under different circumstances.

A mutual acquaintance saw him over the summer and said he was doing much better now that he was living with his family and "back on his meds," as the saying goes. I remembered the journal and decided to give it a look.

The cheap little toy lock popped off easily enough. I felt a twinge of guilt as the little clasp went airborne and flew across the room.

I began to read through the crisp little pages, one by one. I got so caught up in it that I ended up reading until late into the night.

For all of his flaws Chester was an amazing writer. He interspersed whatever he was thinking about at the moment with in-depth scientific research. Fact after fact marinated in his brain and spilled out, forming a beautiful synergetic work of art. Some of it was beyond insane, of course, but some of it was incredibly lucid and on-the-mark.

I spent the better part of the summer reading through the thing time and time again, trying to reach a better understanding of Chester. As time progressed, a different view began to emerge.

Global warming--check.

Multi-lateral armament build-up--check.

Increase in mammalian aggression--check.

Widespread epidemics--check.

Increased surveillance of the general population--check.

It was all true and getting worse. Much worse.

When I returned to school in the fall I stopped eating tainted meat. I took to wearing hemp and cotton clothes and wearing sunshades at all times to protect my eyes from UV rays and retinal identification software. Some of the people I used to know I don't see so often anymore. Maybe that's for the best.

I saw an article on the internet last week that said the hole in the ozone layer was actually getting smaller because of our reduced use of CFCs. I'll never believe that and I'm pretty sure it's not the only thing they're lying about.

* * *

Michael Preston Parker  lives in Columbia. SC with his lovely wife and daughter. He works at the University of South Carolina and is a long-standing guitarist in the Stanleys, a local band, whose current tour takes them on the road to nowhere. He is hard at work on a novel that he hopes to finish before the decade is out.