Alphabetic Karma, Part 4

Over the next few weeks, we're going to serialize Alphabetic Karma, a short story originally published by Hawkshaw Press. Sign in every Wednesday and Sunday to get the next paragraphs. When we left Kimmie last, she's been thrown out of her McMansion home again and has travelled by bus across town to Uncle Zacks's trailer, to seek refuge.

***

Zach peered at my face, dropped his gaze and brought it back up. “Huh. So thatʼs how it is. You better come in.” He rolled backwards into the scant living room and gave me the space to slip past him into the kitchen.

I glanced around. The air was tainted with the death of a hundred cigarettes. Stuff was heaped all over the kitchen counters. The floor was clear—it had to be for the chair to roll around. A living room with one chair—a rocker recliner. A small TV was bolted to the wall, covering the window by the door, its cable connection stapled to the oak veneer and leading down to the floor. A giant can of popcorn waited in the chair. “Nice place, Uncle Zach.”

“Fits me like an old shoe. The old girl and I will probably finish about the same time. Now whatʼs this about your folks?” He gestured to the easy chair in the postage-stamp living room. “Sit. Sit.”

I heard a tock-tocking sound in the trailer and gazed down at a metal-wrapped hose on the floor. Uncle Zach held a mask in his lap; it pumped out a breathy ooze. O2, and a compressor somewhere in there.

I waited for him to tug at the joy stick on his electric chair and spin it around. I squeezed past to dump down in the recliner and settled the popcorn on the floor. A handful of cigarette ash sprang up, drifted across the room to settle on other flecks of gray. A full ashtray lurked on the chairʼs fold-out shelf. “Uncle Zach. You promised them youʼd quit smoking.”

“Yeah, well, what are they going to do? Kill me for breaking my promise?” He leaned forward, a slight gesture, but like moving a mountain towards the valley.

“Youʼre here because?”

“You know Dad.”

“I used to think so―he is my brother. Thought I knew you too, but youʼve grown up a lot. Whatʼre you, fifteen?”

“Hm.”

“I know your old man is a stickler. I know he donʼt like me. And I know I left home at fifteen—and look how well itʼs working out for me.”

I gave him the narration, didnʼt even lie about what was my doing as compared to my fatherʼs. But not the deep truth. “Thatʼs why I need a place to stay.”

“Stay. Thatʼs tough. Iʼm living here on Social Security—pretty tight. And thereʼs not much room in the trailer.”

“Please, Uncle Zach. Iʼll do nearly anything.”

“This the first time theyʼve kicked you out?”

I wiggled in the chair, a fish suddenly caught in the shallows. “Not exactly.”

Zach scratched his rough, ugly beard. “Thatʼs bad. The more practice they get, the more serious they get about it.” He held the mask to his nose and mouth and took a hard drag on it. A rumbling cough, full of desperate phlegm. “I gotta go pee. You stay here, and Iʼll think about it while Iʼm in the back.”

I studied his back as he rolled away and the chair hummed in a high whine. Momʼs sister is in Wisconsin. How would I get there?

When he rolled back, I saw he had forgotten to zip his pants, but I was okay with it. The oxygen mask covered most of his lap and his belly rolls pressed down on any explicit evidence.

He rested his forearms on his knees and even took off his ball cap. “Okay. Okay. See, weʼll try it for a couple of days. You can sleep on that foldout bench, under the front window.”

I felt the world open like a bright new place. I shocked myself—the salt of tears scorched my eyes.

At the sight of my crying, he looked away, clear to heaven through the tin roof, and said, “Maybe itʼll work, maybe it wonʼt. Maybe your dad will come around to regret it and come around to a love for his kid in a couple of days.”

Right.

# # #

I watched Zach jerk the chair over the threshold onto the platform outside. He dragged the door mostly shut, but the hose trailed after him. With the mask strapped to his face, he fished out a silver whip, the antenna off a car. The button at the far end had been snapped off. Lighting a cigarette, he wriggled the filter into the antennaʼs butt end and extended it. Huffing on the oxygen mask, he inserted the skinny end into the corner of his mouth and sucked.

“Whatcha doing, Uncle Zach?”

His voice was muffled by the mask riding his face and the tube stuck under it into his mouth. “Smoking out here. This shit is no good for a kid.”

“No, I meant with the shiny cigarette holder.”

He shook his head. “I gotta keep the butt away from the oxygen. Started a small fire last year, burned myself under the ear. Still canʼt grow a beard on that patch.”

“Really clever.” About as clever as living with a time bomb.

“Thanks. I thought so myself.”

“You have a vacuum cleaner? I might sweep up, some.” I couldnʼt see his mouth, but his forehead wrinkled and his chins quivered. Uncle Zach was laughing. At me.

“Knock yourself out. Itʼs one of those stick kinds—in between the refrigerator and the wall.”