Three Stories

I. Silly One

I had a bunch of shit to mail. My main lady was there. Maggie. She looked upset. “How’s it going,” I said. “Oh, just dandy,” she said. There was a long pause. “Are you sure,” I said. She sort of ignored me and took my packages and asked how I wanted to send them, media? I watched her weigh the packages and type things. Her nails were done in a black and orange pattern. “I like your Halloween nails.” She smiled and laughed through her nose. “Oh, yeah.” She checked her nails. After some quiet, she said, “One of my dogs died last night.” Her eyes were glassy. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Yeah . . . Daisy. I lost my Daisy last night. Out of nowhere.” “Man, that really sucks.” “Yeah, she just fell over all of a sudden, and then she got up but something was off. Then it kept happening so I took her to the vet.” “Man.” “Yeah, Daisy was the silly one. I have three dogs. Or had. I got Elle, who’s my Doberman, a rescue. They’re all rescues. She was the protector. Then Lyla, she’s a coonhound, she’s the baby. But Daisy, my terrier, she was the silly one. She was just so goofy.” Her eyes were red, but she was smiling. Because it’s just so sad when the silly one goes first. She tossed one of my packages into a bin. Weighed and labeled another. I said, “Well at least you got to give her a good life.” This was something I used to comfort myself in the event of a good thing ending. Not that it was gone, but that it wasn’t even there until I knew it. “I know,” she said, “She was twelve, so not young, but it happened so suddenly.” “Did the vet know what it was.” “No, he said I could spend all kinds of money to draw blood and tests and stuff but I don’t know. She was just having seizures, and they happened closer and closer and then she was gone.” She printed out a few more labels and asked me if I needed anything else. I said no. Paid. As I went to leave, I said, “Sorry again.” And she waited there, as if to keep talking. We both sort of halted, staring at each other. But I just walked out. Feeling like I should’ve offered more. Like Earth is the holding area for something else, and maybe we’re all nurses. Me. You. Daisy. Everybody.

II. Spaceship

We were drunk and having sex in her car, parked on Division Street. 10 p.m., raining. A Tuesday. She wanted to get wings. Before we went in, she asked for a kiss and then got in my lap in the passenger seat. She had this IUD, a piece of copper to keep the babies away. Shaped like something in a modern art museum. She called it her Spaceship. Said she wanted to take it out soon. I came inside her and we relaxed, breathing. She put her face in my chest, and I looked out the windshield at the rainy night, down Division Street westward, a long corridor of lights. Felt endless. Nobody else out. Wings. This was the place she found on her phone. Mostly empty inside, Blackhawks game on the TVs. Our cute waitress. My girl told her how cute she was right away, then told her we’d just had sex and wanted to eat a bunch of wings and get drunk. They were arm in arm already, on the way to the table. The waitress laughed and offered some general encouragement. We ate a bunch of wings and drank a bunch of beers. My girl was smiling at me across the booth. Said she wanted to make it again. She had a single, thin braid in front. Some of my come got into her hair the other night. And she braided it. Kind of crispy. Like something out of Braveheart. Things were going well. She’s gonna take her spaceship out soon, she said. “Oh hey,” she said. “Would you be interested in, maybe, moving to Florida for a little bit?” We could stay at her brother’s while he’s in New York. Save some money. I didn’t have to answer right then. But yeah, think about it. I could meet her family that way too, etc. I was staring at hockey highlights, thinking about her spaceship shooting down my invaders like Missile Command.

III. Sloppy Joes

I was pissing in the bathroom right next to the shoe room. Getting ready to go to the store with my brother and his three-year-old daughter. We needed stuff for dinner and snacks for his pregnant wife, who was sick.

“Hold still, sweetie, we gotta get your boots on.” Could hear them just outside the door.

In a hushed tone, my niece asked him if I had a wiener. I laughed.

My brother said, “Did you hear that. She’s on to you.”

She had been asking everyone lately. Or about them. It was like she was a journalist trying to uncover a huge scandal. Who has a veenoh, who doesn’t. Where does it even end. And who’s behind all this anyway.

The store was packed. It was six degrees out, a week before Christmas. People wandering around in sweatpants looking tired. Deals everywhere. We passed 85-inch TVs. Electronics. A girl at the end of an aisle smiled, wearing a Santa hat. My brother said they always got that one aisle where it’s like mafia guarding it. And just what exactly what were they hiding. And who has a wiener here, raise your hands.

I told my brother, “We can go down that aisle if you want. We can just do whatever.”

My niece said, “I yuv meatballs,” kind of staring off. She didn’t take a nap today. Her sweatshirt had a cat on it and her hair was tangled like one of them grunge rockers.

“K sweetie you gotta hold onto the cart or I’m gonna put you inside.” My brother had his hand on her back to keep her moving.

I lifted her into the cart and sat her on her winter coat. Lights went off in the soles of her shoes. She stared off.

We walked the aisles. Looking for Wheat Thins. There was Christmas music playing. Tires for sale. Crab legs. Tins of popcorn. They had everything. At one point, I caught myself staring at a bag of frozen French toast sticks in a freezer. Captured by it, even. I was.

Oh wow. There it is.

Such bliss. Such possibility. I mean look at all this shit. It’s all here. You can do anything.

It’s never over. It’s all right here. Frozen French toast sticks in a bag for fuck’s sake.

We passed an older lady at a sample stand, in apron and visor, handing out little plastic cups of gingerbread flavored popcorn. She asked if we wanted one. My brother asked his daughter. She said, “Oh yes peez.” The old lady smiled and handed her a cup.

Yes.

Secrets everywhere. Handed to you like so many small treats, and you don’t even have to ask. It’s all here. Yes yes.

I asked my niece if I could have a piece. She nodded while staring off, piece of popcorn in her cheek. She focused again and bit the popcorn and asked my brother if Grandma had a wiener.

“Where the fuck are the Wheat Thins,” my brother said, looking into the distance and squinting.

Later on, when my nephew got home from school, he asked if I’d go to his Cub Scout meeting that night. Shit, he practically insisted. So that’s where we were going. In the cold dark. Heater blasting. It was me, my nephew, my brother, and niece. My brother said she always comes with, and they color together, and she collects the end-of-meeting snack. It was a whole thing. Hadn’t missed a meeting yet.

She kept telling me to look at the Christmas lights we were passing. In her car seat facing backwards. Like a Mafia Don. I asked my nephew what he wanted for Christmas. He said uhh another box like the one I’d just given him. From a bullet company in Wisconsin. They send their stuff in a jigsaw type box they make, and I knew he’d love it. And it’s like, man, I’m such a clutch uncle.

The Cub Scout meeting was in the basement of a church. A scorching, burnt-dust smelling basement. With some nutcracker decorations. And a flag. Small stage and a P.A. system.

My nephew joined his pack, Brother and niece and I took a spot at a folding table, where we got out the coloring supplies.

The Cub Scout troop did their pledge and the mom leading the meeting reminded people next week was the last meeting before winter break. And it was gonna be a sloppy joe night.

“Does everyone like sloppy joes?” she said. There was no answer.

“OK, put your hand up if you DON’T like sloppy joes.” Nobody raised their hand.

One kid excitedly said, “Who doesn’t like sloppy joes, that’s the question!”

An old lady in cub scout vest, holding a cane, said yes, that’s what they were asking.

One kid confided to the pack mom that he didn’t love sloppy joes, but he’d eat them if they were there.

“That’s fair,” said the pack mom, both eyebrows up, hands folded against her chest.

The first activity the scouts did was an exercise where they were supposed to dance according to the tempo and feel of various songs. Fast and crazy to fast and crazy songs. Slower and more at rest to the slower/calmer songs.

After they did that, they gathered at a table, where they were gonna go over handwashing and the food groups. I was never a Cub Scout, but it seemed like this was definitely not what I thought it’d be. No, not at all.

My brother pointed out this kid hovering around my nephew. Said he’s basically his sidekick, always looking for his attention. And that this was endearing to him. Which, as such, was endearing to me.

My niece colored a picture of a cartoon dog in police uniform. Asked me to draw her a kitty, then a roh roh (dog). My brother said he simply can’t draw and showed me his last effort, which they’d tucked into the back of the coloring book. Looked like Snoopy after some very hard times.

“Oh man,” I said.

We started laughing.

Niece stopped coloring for a second and pointed at my brother’s sweatpants and asked if there was a wiener in there.

“Why don’t we draw mommy, can you draw mommy.”

So my niece drew a big circle of scribbles and said that’s the baby. “Is that Baby Knuckles,” I said.

(When asked before about potential names, she’d suggested Knuckles.)

“Oh, check this out.” My brother took out another piece of loose paper tucked into the coloring book. It was a drawing a classmate had given my nephew.

Noble Hofstedter. That was the kid’s name. I had never met him but asked about him routinely after hearing his powerful name called at the kindergarten graduation.

What news of Noble Hofstedter, I’d say, talking to my nephew about school.

It was like the name of a roaming monk, or knight in olden times. And here he was, paying tithes to my nephew in the form of a drawing. He’d drawn a lizard breathing flames onto buildings and it said (pretty much): “Godzilla, king of the monsters.”

My eyebrows went straight up. “Shit, that’s badass,” I said.