Rotters Read Online Free PDF Page A

side, and he strapped them to his shoulders. He took a step forward, halted, and focused his eyes on my chest, as if he would rather wait me out than continue speaking. Wood crackled and snapped. We stood six feet from each other, both of us planted to the ground with added weight.
    He drew snot through his nose and spat, presumably into the fire. Head down, he came right at me. I stumbled backward, outside of the cabin once more. Wrenching a ring of keys from his hip pocket, he passed me, the rotten smell briefly intensifying. His fingers nimbly isolated a key as he walked. I noticed for the first time the outline of a pickup truck at the side of the house. He was leaving. I had just arrived and he was leaving.
    “Dad,” I said, realizing too late that it was my first word. In a way, it was also my last: it was a name I would never call him again.
    He reached the truck. His right arm fell; the key ring jingled. After a moment he turned his head halfway, the fingers of light from the house barely kindling his cheek.
    “You want someone to blame? Blame me. I killed her.”
    His chest expanded, daring me to draw out the moment. I just stood there, gnats bumping against my face and neck. Satisfied that we were finished, my father tossed the cloth sacks into the truck bed. I saw a glint of keys, a hint of his clownish hair, and the moonlight shimmering from the opening and closing door of his truck. The engine coughed and headlights gave acute dimension to the trees. Tires turned. Branches snapped. I was left in dissipating exhaust lit by brake lights of diminishing red. He was gone.
    A gnat made contact with my naked eye—only this woke me from my trance. I lunged inside and shut the door, releasing my green backpack and duffel bags to the floor. I closed my eyes, rolled my aching shoulders, and took deep breaths. The odor was persistent. He was a garbageman, I kept telling myself. Stinks were part of the job. So were odd hours. Maybe right now he was picking up an extra shift in the next town over. That bag he carried was his gear: pokers for loose refuse, shovels for scraping Dumpster bottoms, sanitary jumpsuits, plastic gloves.
This is normal
, I told myself, while my heart hurt itself against my ribs.
This is exactly how a father and son interact
.
    There was indeed a fireplace, and I sat down where my father had been sitting. The seat was still warm and I shifted, disturbed by his alien temperature. I looked around. The cabin was dominated by this single room, anchored at one end by the ashy hearth and at the other by a sink, a stove, and a refrigerator. Between the two ends was a random topography of cardboard boxes, half-zippered bags, buckets brimming with trash, and mountains of books. Overwhelming everything else were newspapers, stacks upon musty stacks.From a glance I could see that each pile consisted of a different publication; I saw headers with words like
Journal, Sentinel
, and
Herald
. Mixed with the cabin’s odor I could detect the ancient ink.
    I reached down to remove the shoes from my aching feet, and my knuckles grazed glass. It was a bottle of whiskey. I picked it up. It was empty. I remembered my father’s red eyes and imagined his hunched figure emptying this bottle while I arrived at the train station, as I stumbled helplessly through town.
Irresponsible
was the word that settled in my mind. My mother had been far from perfect, but irresponsibility was something I had never had to deal with, much less live alongside.
    All at once I was exhausted. I dragged myself to my socked feet and shuffled across the cluttered floor. Behind one door were a toilet and a tiny sink shoved against a curtainless shower. Through the remaining door was a bedroom barely big enough for the mattress wedged between its walls. The sheets were knotted. Filthy clothes wove a strange carpet across the floor. This room belonged to my father.
    I dragged my bags to a far corner of the main room, near the sink, and with aching