then the chain and pulls the door open.
Through the screen I see the blue workpants with the creases and the tarnished belt buckle and the blue work shirt with the white patch with the blue letters over one pocket and the scratchy black and grey whiskers and the stubby, pitted nose and the metal eyes of the Hardware Man.
“Hi Daddy,” Carol says.
“Why are the lights out?” the Hardware Man asks as he comes in, his boots on the rug in front of me where I’m still kneeling, even though Carol let go when she saw it was her own father on the porch and left me to rub the memory of her grip from my wrists.
“We were just playing,” Carol says. She grabs my hair, twists it around her fingers. “Get up off the floor, Ror. What are you doing down there?”
recoil
G randpa John Gunthum rarely came through the Calle and always only in hope of connecting to a family who would have none of him, but his reappearance the last winter he was here cut a path between Mama and Grandma the same as he’d done years before, when Mama was a girl herself. Mama never explained her anger when she left work that night to find that I wasn’t being babysat at Grandma’s, that I wasn’t there and neither was she. Grandma was at the Comstock in the throes of a gambling fit and I was waiting in a pickup on the Calle, the cab lit up so that Mama saw me immediately as she turned her worried headlights toward home, Grandpa saying, “Go on now, child, get,” as soon as he saw them.
I was jumping out of the truck even as Mama’s tires squealed to a stop behind us, and before Grandpa had barely turned the corner Mama was squeezing my chin. “Look at me,” she said, ripping the new doll he’d got me out of my hands, squeezing her too. “Did he do anything to you? Tell me!”
I couldn’t keep my eyes off the doll, her dress fluttering, and I said no no no no no no until one of my no’s traveled down her arms and into her hands, and she let both of us go. The doll went into the ditch and when I leaned down to get her Mama’s voice came out hard and dry, “Rory Dawn Hendrix, I’ve never been so close to slapping you as I am right now. Leave that doll.” And so I left her there in the dirt, left both of them, and ran on home.
babysat
T he metal flash of a pair of wire strippers, the unexpected shine on a Phillips head, these things cause the same fear in me, the same gut-tightening, ass-puckering panic as the midnight gleam of a switchblade. Chain locks have the same effect. And lightbulbs. You can find all of these at your local hardware store.
Sometimes Carol goes with Tony to Guido’s Pizza and leaves me at Ace. Tony is her boyfriend and he says having a six-year-old around all the time cramps their style, but I don’t like him anyway, because when I’m with them he either hogs the Close Encounters game or he hogs Carol and I never get a chance at either one.
Ace smells like orange hand cleaner and WD-40, and I pretend not to hear the adult talk that passes across the counter between the men of the town about certain women of the town as they pay the Hardware Man for their wood screws and drill bits. I also pretend like I never have to go potty. Because I don’t need help, but the Hardware Man will want to help me anyway. And when he helps me, the lights go out.
bandages and how to use them
T wo girls are separated by a wooden fence from a double-wide trailer. The next lot has a single-wide and a boy climbs the steps of its porch, his leather jacket looks wet in the sun. The girl with long, white-blond hair lies flat on her back and her corduroys have hiked up her legs revealing that her socks don’t match. The girl in a gingham dress and loafers crouches in the weeds. The fence vibrates and is still.
“You knocked your wind out.”
When I open my eyes the bird’s-eye picture rushes away, but what takes its place still feels like a dream. A girl’s face is above mine, her smile almost hidden by the
Through the screen I see the blue workpants with the creases and the tarnished belt buckle and the blue work shirt with the white patch with the blue letters over one pocket and the scratchy black and grey whiskers and the stubby, pitted nose and the metal eyes of the Hardware Man.
“Hi Daddy,” Carol says.
“Why are the lights out?” the Hardware Man asks as he comes in, his boots on the rug in front of me where I’m still kneeling, even though Carol let go when she saw it was her own father on the porch and left me to rub the memory of her grip from my wrists.
“We were just playing,” Carol says. She grabs my hair, twists it around her fingers. “Get up off the floor, Ror. What are you doing down there?”
recoil
G randpa John Gunthum rarely came through the Calle and always only in hope of connecting to a family who would have none of him, but his reappearance the last winter he was here cut a path between Mama and Grandma the same as he’d done years before, when Mama was a girl herself. Mama never explained her anger when she left work that night to find that I wasn’t being babysat at Grandma’s, that I wasn’t there and neither was she. Grandma was at the Comstock in the throes of a gambling fit and I was waiting in a pickup on the Calle, the cab lit up so that Mama saw me immediately as she turned her worried headlights toward home, Grandpa saying, “Go on now, child, get,” as soon as he saw them.
I was jumping out of the truck even as Mama’s tires squealed to a stop behind us, and before Grandpa had barely turned the corner Mama was squeezing my chin. “Look at me,” she said, ripping the new doll he’d got me out of my hands, squeezing her too. “Did he do anything to you? Tell me!”
I couldn’t keep my eyes off the doll, her dress fluttering, and I said no no no no no no until one of my no’s traveled down her arms and into her hands, and she let both of us go. The doll went into the ditch and when I leaned down to get her Mama’s voice came out hard and dry, “Rory Dawn Hendrix, I’ve never been so close to slapping you as I am right now. Leave that doll.” And so I left her there in the dirt, left both of them, and ran on home.
babysat
T he metal flash of a pair of wire strippers, the unexpected shine on a Phillips head, these things cause the same fear in me, the same gut-tightening, ass-puckering panic as the midnight gleam of a switchblade. Chain locks have the same effect. And lightbulbs. You can find all of these at your local hardware store.
Sometimes Carol goes with Tony to Guido’s Pizza and leaves me at Ace. Tony is her boyfriend and he says having a six-year-old around all the time cramps their style, but I don’t like him anyway, because when I’m with them he either hogs the Close Encounters game or he hogs Carol and I never get a chance at either one.
Ace smells like orange hand cleaner and WD-40, and I pretend not to hear the adult talk that passes across the counter between the men of the town about certain women of the town as they pay the Hardware Man for their wood screws and drill bits. I also pretend like I never have to go potty. Because I don’t need help, but the Hardware Man will want to help me anyway. And when he helps me, the lights go out.
bandages and how to use them
T wo girls are separated by a wooden fence from a double-wide trailer. The next lot has a single-wide and a boy climbs the steps of its porch, his leather jacket looks wet in the sun. The girl with long, white-blond hair lies flat on her back and her corduroys have hiked up her legs revealing that her socks don’t match. The girl in a gingham dress and loafers crouches in the weeds. The fence vibrates and is still.
“You knocked your wind out.”
When I open my eyes the bird’s-eye picture rushes away, but what takes its place still feels like a dream. A girl’s face is above mine, her smile almost hidden by the
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