I’ve got a pocketful of Lemonheads, just in case. A carton of cigarettes, a case of triple-distilled vodka, three bottles of Nyquil, and enough Oxy to sedate something prehistoric.
My heels are on the floor and against the foot of the bed both. If you were hiding under the bed, if there was room for you there, you’d see a pair of filthy socks behind the torn black canvas of my shoes where the rubber heel supports have shredded and worn. These shoes, when I first got in to town, they weren’t the only thing to set me apart, but sitting on a sawdusty stage at Micke’s Saloon and Tackle, tapping my feet to the rhythm of my Ovation 12-string, they’re the first things that get noticed.
People here, the locals, they wear Laredo boots with twisting rows of stitching through tough, tanned leather. They’ll tell you how you can tell the quality of a boot by the rows of stitches holding the inlays in place. They wear wool-lined rubber boots still stinking of saltwater and shellfish. They wear hip-waders and steel-toed Carhartt’s. They don’t wear tattered Chuck Taylors with mismatched laces.
In a mom-and-pop motel in a town with a name you don’t pronounce, I’m not alone. He’s there in the corner, his fingers tangled in a cat’s cradle. He’s grinning through skin like leather boots, gray whiskers stitched in twisting rows across his cheeks and chin. His fingers, playing the loop of string like a marionette, they’re all knuckles and yellowed nails. In case you’re wondering, his feet, they’re not wearing shoes or boots or waders of any kind. His bare feet are curled beneath him. And he’s grinning.
Light another cigarette. Pour another drink.
Even the music doesn’t make sense anymore. All the songs were about her anyway. In some way or another, they’re all about her. With her gone, what’s to make sense of? When the chorus goes, “doo do doo do doo do do,” it’s just what it sounds like.
She’s the kind of girl who makes all the others before her just another bit of useless trivia. Another answer to a game show question. Karen Whatsherface for $200, Alex. Bridget Somethingorother for $400. Who is the past? Who is nobody?
She’s the girl who turns everything upside down. She’s the one who makes today better than yesterday and tomorrow too terrifying to dwell on for long.
Like a good song, a great song, at first she’s a lot of unsteady beats and a melody you can’t quite remember when it’s over. After that, every time you need to hear a little bit more. Just a little more to remember how it goes. What was that rhythm? Did I hear that right? Every time she’s more and more a part of you. You can feel her inside where all those notes, all the harmonies and scales, they’re more than music. You can feel her where it all makes sense.
Pop another pill. Pour another drink.
His eyes are focused on nothing. His pupils never moving, not seeing anything. Not watching his fingers move. The string, it’s an insinuation. It’s a symbol of foreboding. It’s curled around, under, through, and past. It’s telling me what I don’t want to hear.
The smile, it’s an hourglass. It’s each little fine grain of sand pouring through the gap between his rotten teeth. It’s the ticking of a clock. It’s a decrescendo. It’s telling me what I already know.
And the chorus goes, “doo do doo do doo do do.”
When you first see her, she’s too skinny, too tall, too pale. There’s not enough or too much of everything. But every time after, she’s more of everything right. She’s the perfect height, the perfect weight. She’s the new paradigm. She’s beyond the symbols and the metaphors. Her eyes are the color of eyes. Her hips are the definition of hips. Her legs and fingers and mouth, without them as a model, there are no legs. There are no fingers. No mouths.
I was never much for dancing. I could never make my body move with music. I could tap the beat with a foot. I could strum in perfect time, but for dancing, that’s another language. To see her dance was something else. To watch the way she moved. The way her body toyed with the air around her in an endless motion. A perfect circle, she moved with no beginning or end.
Sip a little Nyquil. Pour another drink.
In Italy, there’s this dance called the tarantella. Centuries ago, if someone was bitten by a tarantula, they’d start to convulse and shake and go in to fits. The way they cured this, they played music to the rhythm of the convulsions. And this person, the victim, they’d dance for sometimes days. Filled up with poison, dancing in fits to the music playing to their dance. Music as a cure.
Now, if you’re bitten by a spider, all filled up with poison, they just shoot you up with more poison. Now poison is the cure.
I’ve got a little orange bottle of Percocet with one refill left. I’ve got Morphine in an old bottle of eye-drops. I’ve got some acid in another eye-dropper bottle and I can’t remember which is which anymore. I’ve still got that Ovation 12-string under the bed where there’s no room to hide. I’ve got poison and music. I’ve got the disease and the cure.
And all the while he’s still there, crouched in the corner, telling me what I don’t want to hear. What I already know. He’s all a bunch of symbols. He’s a dripping faucet. He’s a dial tone. And he’s still grinning.
And the chorus goes, “doo do doo do doo do do.”
Like a great song, she challenges you. She dares you to listen closer, look deeper. She’s always changing. Always another layer under layer. She never slows down. Never stopping. Always dancing. Always moving.
You want nothing more than to just sit with her. Just listen. You want to be the only one who understands, or at least the one who understands most. You want to be tied to her the way a great song needs an audience.
The way she moves, she dances. You just want to play along. You pray you can keep up. Spinning, always spinning. She makes you dizzy. She makes you feel good and bad in all the right places. She’s the poison and the cure.
Choke down another pill. Another eye-dropper. Another drink. Another cigarette. Another pill. Another capful. Another drink. Another pill. Another pill.
And that’s when he stops grinning. That’s when the string and the teeth and the yellowed nails, that’s when the grains of sand, the dripping faucet, the decrescendo, that’s when you know it’s all over.
And that’s when I pull out the guitar and start playing a cure.
And the chorus goes, “doo do doo do doo do do.”
And the chorus goes, “doo do doo do doo do do.”
Sunday, April 20, 2008
"A drug-addicted musician must escape from a lunatic in Alaska."
Saturday, April 12, 2008
"A vampire tries to reunite with her family in the suburbs."
Little Dougie Parks slit his wrists with an exacto knife that he used to build model airplanes. When he came home from the hospital, his mom gave him a Playstation 2. You know, to keep him busy while he was "recovering."
The day before she took her ACT's- well, she was supposed to anyway- Carla Phoebick took twelve vicodin, washed it down with a bottle of Maker's Mark and chased that with one of those baby-blue, plastic compacts of birth control pills. The whole thing. Who knows why? Anyway, after she got her stomach pumped and after the charcoal stains around her mouth finally washed off, well, her uncle pulled a few strings and she got in to Carleton after all. She didn't even have to take the test.
Then, and this is the real kicker, my brother Paul, all he had to do was mention to Doctor Webb that he was planning to park his new Corolla in the garage with the door closed and he got to skip his second semester and live at home, rent free for the whole ten weeks. It was like a total vacation. He just bombed around the house all Winter watching Law and Order re-runs and made sure to look extra mopey whenever mom was around.
My mistake, I guess, was where Little Dougie, Carla, and Pauly failed, I succeeded. So, yeah. I didn't get a Playstation or a free pass or a hot meal every night in bed. I didn't even get a funeral, really. Not with the casket and flowers and all that. Because they never found my body, all I got was a crappy memorial service. I figured they'd at least put up one of those oversized portraits with a silk ribbon across the front, but I peeped out the church after everyone left and nothing. Grandma Barrett, that's mom's mom, she put a locket on my grave marker, but it left a toxic, green stain all over my middle name.
And if that wasn't a bad enough, guess who's living at home again, rent-free with all the leftover turkey sandwiches he can eat? Poor, distraught boy lost his little sister. Christ. I've got half a mind to rip his throat out. I bet I could still taste mom's chicken kiev flowing through his cry-baby veins.
The big joke about the Chasers is, they always ask what death feels like. And the big joke between us is to say, "Come a little closer, sweetheart and I'll show you." It's the boys more than the girls who ask. Boys always want to know. If I was real honest, I'd say that dying is like waking up on a Saturday morning and just watching the same channel on tv straight through Sunday night. But the Chasers, they want romance and mystery, so you tell em it's cold at first, then you get real warm and your nipples get hard and tingly. You tell em it's scary, but then it's like the best sex you ever had. You tell em every time you feed- they like it when you call it "feeding"- when you feed, it's that same feeling again. Like the best sex you ever had.
The only rule with Chasers is that you don't turn em. Just like you don't let a groupie sing back-up or call some shirtless drunk out to pitch the ninth inning. It's just not done. You do that and all the mystery is gone. The other Chasers, they get a good look at how it really is and all that fantasy fades away. It won't live up to how they pictured it in their heads. It can't. It's just death. Boring, stupid death.
My problem with all this is, the Chasers are pathetic. They're like Little Dougie and Carla and even my big bro. Forever chasing after that elusive unknown, but too shit-scared to go all the way. But the ones like me, they can be worse. They really play in to that elitist sort of thing. Without the Chasers following em around, they'd just be a bunch of cold, dead bodies. So they feed off that superiority thing as much as the blood and all that.
For me, even in death I don't fit in. It's still all a bunch of follow the leader bullshit. I just want to go home.
I should clear up, before you get all, "Careful what you wish for," that I never asked for this. That's the same mentality that makes guys think a girl is begging for it just because she looks good in a spaghetti-string tank top. It'd be a funny story if it weren't true.
Funny because the thing with the big feeds is that it's more like a dance than anything else. Like a big dance, but no one brought a date, so everyone's dancing with each other. We can't die anymore than dead, so sometimes things get crazy and everyone goes home with a few bite marks here and there. No big deal, unless you're not one of em and you get caught in the middle of their big, bloody dance-orgy. Funny because I've always been pretty fair-skinned and even though I was sick as hell, I'm a sucker for Jill's big, doe eyes and went out all cold and clammy anyway. Funny because it's the same mentality that makes guys think a girl is begging for it in a spaghetti-string top, but there I was, pale as a ghost, shivering cold, and sweating. I fit right in.
The other thing they all ask is what's it like to feed for the first time. You tell them it's spiritual. You tell em your heart jumps when the blood begins to pump through it again. You push your hair over your ear, bite your lip, and you say, "It's so..." and you just let it hang in the air like that. You say it all to keep the fantasy alive. Maybe as much for yourself as for them. Maybe every time you say this, you're tricking yourself just enough to keep going. Really, though, you can't even remember. Do you remember your first taste of stewed carrots?
It's only been six months, but already I'm sick of all this. Sick of the Chasers and all the false mystery, sick of all of us feeders and our stupid inside jokes. I'm sick of playing monster. I'm going home.
I hopped a bus from the city on a Saturday morning. If dying is spending all weekend on the couch watching an endless stream of infomercials and fishing shows, this bus ride is like being reborn. I'm watching office buildings pass like birch trees, the sunlight strobe-lighting between them, stinging my eyes and I'm feeling nauseous. The crosswalks, taxis and billboards thin as the bus carries me away from the city and on to the four lanes back home.
In the seat across from mine there's some kid staring at me. I can tell he's tall even beneath the hooded sweatshirt, slouched shoulders, and scruffy whiskers. His drowsy, upside-down smile eyes are fixed on my mouth. I can tell because he doesn't blink until I bite my lip like I'm about to deliver my line.
"It's just so..."
That's when he pulls the headphones away from his ears, leans over kind of slow and he asks me, "What's it like? You know, being dead."
The sun is strobe-lighting again, only now it's flickering between power lines, water towers, ten-acre reserves stocked with Balsam Fir and Norway Pine.
At the next stop, the kid stands and says to me, "Another time then," and he plugs his head back in as he shuffles to the door.
Another 12 blocks and we're passing Little Dougie's old neighborhood. The next right turn leads to the pharmacy where Carla Phoebick picked up her mother's prescription. I know the next stop is a three-minute walk from the garage door that my poor, big brother mentioned he might leave closed.
The brakes make that sci-fi movie door opening sound and my stomach really drops for sure. An old woman holding a glass dish covered in tin-foil, she leans forward and pats me on the shoulder with a shriveled-up hand that looks deader than mine ever will. She says, "Go on, dear."
Outside the bus, I feel the sun on my cheeks and nose, on the outside of my eyelids, for the first time in weeks. The Chasers would always ask, "Don't you ever miss the sun?" To keep the fantasy alive, romantic, we're supposed to say, "In death, the moon is warmer, brighter than the sun ever was." To ruin it all, you could tell the truth. You could say how, for us, the sun isn't really all that dangerous. It's like when you were a kid and to get to the car on a winter morning you'd have to walk through a cloud of exhaust, so you'd hold your breath and puff out your cheeks real big and run through it real quick with your eyes closed.
This morning, I'm standing in my parents' driveway with my eyes open, staring in to the sun. I'm not holding my breath. My cheeks aren't puffed out. I'm breathing exhaust, just to see what it tastes like. To see if what Paul mentioned he might do to kill himself, I could do to live again.
I'm so caught up in all this living and dying and being reborn that I don't hear the garage door open. I don't see my dad in his cut-off sweatpants, old high-top Reeboks, and "Watts Up?" t-shirt that he won at his Bodin's Electric company picnic two summers ago. I don't notice him faint and trip over the lawn mower either.
Paul sits with his elbows on the table, sculpting a mound of rice in to a perfect replica of his Corolla. For the first time I can remember, Dad hasn't touched a bite. Mom, she just stares at me, her eyes all full of tears. I don't know if it's because she finally has four plates to fill again or if it's the third glass of wine, but she's strangely giddy.
Poor Paul. He's pissed because that free room and board is as good as gone now. "So, what? You just faked being dead? That sounds pretty shitty to me. Mom?"
Mom, still staring at me through those eyes swimming in tears and Merlot, she says, "Just eat your rice, dear. Before it gets cold."
It feels so good to finally say something honest about myself, so I tell them everything. I tell them about the feeding orgies and how they're like big dances where no one has dates. I tell them how eating people, well, it's really no worse than killing chickens and I hold up a big fork-full of Mom's chicken kiev for emphasis. For Mom's sake, and Dad's, I tell a little white lie and say how being dead isn't all that bad. It's peaceful, I say. I tell them the truth and say how sorry I am that I took this long to come around.
I notice Paul's mouth spreading in to a sly grin, but just as soon, he works up a pathetic frown and says, "Mom. I can't go back to school like this. Not with a sister who eats people, Mom."
Little Dougie Parks slit his wrists with an exacto knife and got a Playstation. Carla Phoebick emptied a medicine cabinet and got in to college. My stupid, big brother almost could have maybe taken a nap in his car and didn't have to grow up. They chose to flirt with death and got their consolation prizes.
I'm choosing to flirt with life.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
"Feuding neighbors discover a shocking secret over the Winter."
He's the kind of guy likes to hold hands, Jimmy. Saturday nights, Rose and me, we're eating dinner and there they are walking on the street out front, holding hands. Rose says she thinks he gets a lot of ear infections because he's always digging at his ears with his pinky finger. Me, I don't think about that at all. Pretty wife, though.
He could be my son. He's age appropriate, I mean. I bought this house at 32 years old. That was back in '68 and houses were cheaper then, even. So, a couple summers ago, I'm working out back and I hear this beep-beeping like a truck backing up and when the beeping stops, out of the cab hops Jimmy with a big grin across his face. Shit-eatin, if I can say that.
Rose tells me I ought to go welcome him to the neighborhood, so I invite him over for a beer and show him my workshop. Instead of a garage, I have a woodshop. Spend the winters making furniture in there now that I've got the space heaters. The look on his face when he seen it, though. Priceless, they say. Looked like he was trapped. Like a scared rabbit or something.
Robert? We got off to a rough start. Look, I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but he's old. Okay? I don't know exactly, but old enough to have fought in wars. That's plural. It's not that it's a problem or anything, but when we moved here, we're just looking for a nice neighborhood to raise the kid, so it could be worse. The last apartment we lived in might as well have been a college dorm with all the noise and everything. So, it's not that the age is a problem, but I know Heather was looking to meet some other younger couples and this neighborhood- well, it was like going from a college dorm to one of those old folks communities like you see in Florida. Just wasn't what we're expecting was all. To be honest, it didn't bother me all that much, though. I work in the city, sixty hours a week minimum, so coming home to block parties and baby showers, I could really care less.
The woodshop was something else, though. I know how it sounds, so don't take it the wrong way, but you know in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when they go in to the house and there's that room all full of animal bones? Like squirrel skulls and armadillo shells all over the place? That's the way it feels when you go in there. Humid and the air's thick with sawdust. And everywhere there's circular blades and router bits and all kinds of half-finished parts of chairs and tables. It's like furniture skeletons all over the place. Creepy, in a way.
I tried to be neighborly and humor the guy, but like I said, I work so much, when I get home I just want to grab some dinner and a spot on the couch. I don't get to see the wife and kid much as it is, so listening to this retired old fart talking about lathes and belt-sanders all night, I just didn't have much interest. Look, I'm sorry if I offended the guy, but I've got a 30-year mortgage. I want to enjoy the place a little bit, you know?
Parents anymore, they don't let the kids out to play in the summer. Afraid of every little thing. I'd see him out in the yard once a week or two, mowing the lawn or taking the dog for a walk, but that was it. Good hunting dog by the look of it, but I never saw so much as an air rifle in his hand. Point is, at my age, I got the bad knees and the arthritis and I'm out there taking care of the garden and thatching the front grass. I told Jimmy once about thatching the grass when he asked why mine was so green and his all yellow and he just looked at me like I'm speaking French.
I guess when you've got the fancy car and a job in the city, you gotta have a big TV and all that to go with it, but all I'm saying is kids need to get out and stretch their legs. Learn baseball with a bat in your hands, not on cable tv. When we was kids, the old folks in the neighborhood, they were the shut-ins. Now, things are switched up, I guess. Different generations.
That third-acre he's got and the one behind it, those were part of my land back then before the city divided it all up. Just a shame to see it like that after all this time. Back then, this whole area was forest and good hunting land. I've walked from here to where Kentucky Street is now and back more times than I can remember. Used to be good land. Now it's just dirt for all these air-conditioned boxes to set on.
Don't get me started with all that. The guy hasn't worked a full-time job for a decade, at least, right? So of course he's got all the time in the world to thatch his yard and prune the trees and everything. And I'm supposed to feel bad that I don't have this manicured lawn? Look, back when he bought his house, it cost what, thirty-thousand? Tops? Even with inflation and salaries back then, you could pay that up in ten years. I paid 210,000 dollars for this house. I'll be lucky to retire at 65. So, no, I don't feel bad about it. Things are different now.
And I grew up in a city, to be fair. This is the first house I've ever lived in. I didn't even have a lawn mower when we moved in. I bought one third-hand from a garage sale and it took me an hour to get it started the first couple of times. I offered him thirty bucks to cut it for me if it meant that much to him, but I think that pissed him off more than anything. What can you do?
Well, when we first heard about it, Rose and me was finishing up dinner and it came on the little tv in the living room. Said some girl from across the river went missing. They showed that picture of her on the news every night for the rest of the fall. I kept telling Rose it was morbid, putting her picture up like that. You see it all the time these days. Every day some kid's got himself kidnapped and everyone all over the place gets all worked up about it. Then one day you stop seeing that picture anymore and they've got a new one. No one ever says what happened to the last kid. They just find another grade-school picture of some poor, smiling, young thing and they move on.
I spent a lot of time indoors that fall cause of my fingers here. See how they don't straighten out all the way? I was working out in the shop and had my mind on something else I guess and then, zip. Just like that. Cut across here and that tendon just went right back up in to my wrist. This one here, doctors said I just nicked it, but the fingers don't straighten out all the way, like you can see. Had to give up the woodworking for the whole rest of that fall and in to the winter. So, I saw the picture of that little girl every night for weeks.
I've got a dining room set that still isn't finished.
Yeah, the fingers. I saw him a couple times that fall and every time I see him he tells me the whole story again. I could tell you the doctor's name that did the surgery. Did he tell you how it went back up in to his wrist? "Like a rabbit zipping back in to its hole," he told me that on at least three separate occasions. I felt bad for him, sure.
The first time I saw the girl, Heather told Eric to go get ready for his bath. She didn't want him seeing it on tv like that and asking questions. He's a sensitive kid, so stuff like that really gets him worked up. The whole state was looking for that little girl, so there wasn't much we could do to keep it from him. I guess it's sort of ironic how it all turned out. I remember seeing that picture on the news, though, and I didn't really think too much of it at the time. I try not to watch the news because it's always something. Kidnapping, rape, war, gas prices, hurricanes. It's just too depressing. I just stay away from it. Pretty ironic, I guess. Looking back at it now.
You see those Dateline shows where they catch the child molestors in the act and at first, you think, well maybe that will be some sort of deterrent, but they run that show every week, so I don't know how much good it does. It's more like entertainment than anything else. Just another cop show or tabloid journalism stuff. Dateline is locking up pedophiles, Extra is doing their top-ten celebrity nipple slips. It's all the same. I hate to say it, but they gotta sell ad space to Colgate and Pepsi or whatever. So, as long as the predators are after the kids online, Tylenol is going to keep selling aspirin.
About the only place to get real news anymore is ESPN. At least they stick to the facts. Scott Baker went twelve and eight with a 3.86 ERA last season. Try and get facts like that on channel 11. They can't even tell you who won the election.
I heard him yelling is why I went outside in the first place. It was cold as ever and he's out there yelling at nine in the morning like a crazy person. I thought he cut his foot off with a snowblower or something, but when I looked out the window, his driveway was still white, so I got my coveralls on and went out to see what all the fussin was about. When he said the dog run off, I chuckled a little and he didn't like that much, but I offered to help him look anyway. I hadn't got out much that winter cause of these fingers here, so I didn't mind stretching the legs a bit.
The dog, he says, isn't ever off a leash outside. Runs off, he says. I thought to say, "No shit," but we went off looking anyway.
He looked more lost than the dog until I showed him how to follow the tracks. We followed those tracks for about twenty minutes through the snow and the whole time he's hollering. I tried to tell him to keep quiet and listen instead, but damned if he was going to listen to anything I was gonna tell him. When he's not yelling for the dog he's going on and on about the dog. Saying how he never wanted the damn dog in the first place, but the wife and kid talked him in to it and how upset they're gonna be if he comes home without it. I try to tell him how a dog like that needs good training so they don't run off, but he wasn't hearing that neither.
I saw her first, I guess. We followed the tracks across the new highway they're building up behind the house and followed them down towards the creek. I barely saw her with the way Robert was yammering on about everything, but she was there by the side, just her arm and her face. The rest of her was all covered up by the snow and ice. It was just horrible. I kept seeing that picture of her on the news, smiling with a ribbon tying her hair up in to a ponytail and those white, square teeth. But here, she's got a blue-gray arm across her eyes and her lips all chapped and bloody. I'll never forget it. I guess that's an understatement.
I wake up every morning at three o'clock now. Most of the time, I get back to sleep, but I still see those chapped lips behind my eyelids. Except now it's all darker and kinda blurry. That day, it was so stark and clear. But now, when I wake up, it's hard to make out her skin from the snow. It's all just murky and dark, but I know it's her. I'll never forget the way she looked.
It was like a nightmare. The footprints went right up to her and I could tell the dog had found her before we did. The way the tracks circled around her, you could tell the dog had sniffed at her. A dog with good training would have stayed right there with her, but I'm guessing he found a squirrel or something and run off again.
I have to say I didn't recognize her right away. I saw that picture on the news every night, just like everyone else, but I still didn't recognize her. I've seen more than a few dead bodies during the war, but never a child. Never a little girl like that. I just had to think how I hoped that her parents never would have to see her like this.
The worst part was, you could tell from the state of her that she hadn't been there long. It was like she just went to sleep there the night before and never woke up. It's the worst part, I say, because they stopped showing her picture on the news over a month ago. I hate to think where she'd been before that.
I left my phone back at the house, so I couldn't call right away. I had to run back, so I left Robert there with her. I'm ashamed to say I was relieved when I turned around and started running back. I just wanted to be as far away from there as I could be and I didn't envy Robert for having to stay there with her alone.
It took some thirty minutes before the first car came. The red and blue lights were flashing on her face and her arm and everytime they flashed red, the blood on her lips disappeared. When they flashed blue, her skin looked right again, but the blood would come back. Every flash hid something and revealed something. If you could get them lights to flash red and blue at the same time, maybe she'd look okay. Maybe she'd look like that little girl on the tv again. Blood. Cold, blue skin. Blood. Cold, blue skin. Everytime I see a squad car on the side of the road now, my stomach drops and I get sick.
Jimmy comes out of the car with a couple police and leads them over the hill to where I'm standing with my hands on the back of my head and my fingers are getting stiff and cold.
That was the last I saw of her. That was the most I could bear to see her. I don't watch the news anymore. I know they'll be showing that picture again and much as I don't want to remember her that way she was in the snow, I just can't bear to look at it again.
After that, Heather and I talked about selling and moving on. It was just a horrible thing to have happen right there and for a long time neither of us could sit at the dinner table like a real family. Sometimes she'd start crying and put dishes in the washer before she'd even had a bite.
I'll see Robert out in the yard from time to time, thatching the grass or cutting limbs off the tree out front, but he spends most of his time inside or in his woodshop.
Last week he brought over a rocking horse for Eric. Beautiful piece of work. We didn't say much between us, but I thanked him for the horse and asked him how long it took to put it all together. He sort of just shrugged and said how he hoped Eric would like it. I told him he would.
Heather said we should put the horse in the basement to keep it safe. She thought how it'd be a terrible thing if Eric broke it playing too rough, but with all the work the guy put in to it, I thought it should be used.
We decided to stay, after all. It was mostly a financial thing, I guess, but if you really stop to think about it, these days there's not a lot of places you can go where stuff like this isn't happening right in your backyard, so to speak.
They're good people. Just young. The wife, she'll bring over a frozen lasagna a couple times a month and Jimmy collected the mail when Rose was sick this Spring. I think the house feels different for them now. I think it's not the same as when they moved in.
Every once in awhile, Rose will see them walking on a Saturday night and they're holding hands. For awhile, they'd walk with the little boy, Eric, holding hands between them. More these days he runs off a little bit ahead and they hang back, but Rose says their grip isn't as tight as it used to be. She says it's more like they don't want to hold too tight in case the boy gets in trouble and they have to run after.
I've seen a lot over the years, but something like that- well, it's just hard to talk it out of your head. I guess that's all I got to say.