Our Daily Bread

by Lauren B. Davis

  Everything was a question of degrees and Albert had been trying to teach this to Bobby. In town, you had the fat cats who lived on Washington, in the big houses, like Pataki, looking out on the river. Then folks like Mrs. Carlisle, who had a real nice house, but no mansion, and then people like Bobby’s family, doing all right for themselves, working class, and finally, people like Stan Mertus who were scrambling pretty close to the “mountain line.” The mountain was like that too, only in reverse. Erskines at the top, which meant exactly the opposite of what it would in town. People like Gladys and the other Corkums, close to the bottom, living in houses on a web of roads just off the highway, neither here nor there.

  “I’m cool,” Bobby had said.

  “I’m counting on it.” Albert glanced over at the younger boy. He had pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head. Bobby never wanted to go home, kept asking if he could hang out up at Albert’s cabin. Albert thought it must be rough, thinking you had a normal family, and then finding out it was just as fucked up as anybody else’s. He wasn’t ready to bring Bobby up to the mountain, although he was eager to see how he’d handle himself at Gladys’s.

  “You know where that guy lives?” Bobby said.

  “What guy?”

  “The guy, Albert. The one my mother took off with.” Bobby kept his face turned to the window.

  The houses here were not like the houses in town. The houses here were more or less just shacks on little pieces of land, yards scattered with car parts, broken furniture and tires filled with the dried-out skeletons of geraniums and snapdragons. Some of the shacks were wooden, painted bright colours: pinks and blues, and one purple. Most were unpainted, and one or two were tarpaper over ragged insulation and wood frame. One was burned out, just a couple of walls and some black earth. Every year, in the deep freeze of a dark winter night, a shack or two burned down and people died—the culprit generally being a short-circuited and untended electric heater, or a wood stove with a faulty chimney. The bright colours made Albert think of the three pigs and the big bad wolf. They looked like they’d blow down with even the mildest of huffs, the most inconsequential of puffs. At least trees surrounded his place. Even if it was a lie, they offered the illusion of protection.

  Albert knew where the Corkums lived. Knew Larry Corkum, Patty’s lover, to see, anyway. Larry was younger than Bobby’s mother, a nice enough guy, but not too bright. The kind of guy who could be talked into things. Albert had sold him a lid once or twice and overcharged him. Larry didn’t seem to mind. “Yeah, I know where he lives. You want to go by and see it?”

  “No.”

  “Good choice. Won’t do no good, young Bobby and I can guarantee that his people aren’t any happier than yours.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He turned to Albert, a slight flush of emotion on each cheek.

  “Still protective of Mom, huh?”

  He turned away again. “No.”

  A scrawny deer hobbled out into the road, one leg dragging uselessly. Albert swerved around it and then looked back in the rear-view mirror. “I should have hit that thing, put it out of its misery. Would have busted up the truck, though.”

  “If you’ll take me here, how come not up to your place?”

  Albert looked over at Bobby. “So, what’s the big attraction at my place?”

  “I don’t know. Curious, I guess. And—”

  “And what?”

  “Well, you’re up there. You’ve got your own place. I hate being at my place. All that silence and moping around. Ivy thinks she’s my fucking mother now, trying to bake cookies and shit. What’s that about?” He shook his head and picked at a hangnail. “Anyway, I just thought it might be kinda cool, you know. I could come up there sometime. Maybe get a bottle of brandy or something from my old man’s cabinet.”

  “Jesus. What am I going to do with you? We’re here,” said Albert, and they pulled up in front of a tiny tarpaper-and-board house. Plastic covered the windows and parts of the outer walls. Scraps flapped in the wind like thin shavings of dead skin, ragged and frayed.

  “Come on,” said Albert.

  Bobby’s hand went to the door handle and then hesitated.

  “Nervous?” Albert grinned at him.

  “Maybe. A little.” Bobby blushed under his hood.

  He looks about twelve, thought Albert. “Don’t be. Gladys’ll like you.” He reached over and punched Bobby lightly on the shoulder, then got out of the cab and waved at Bobby to follow. The younger boy got out of the truck and shuffled across the dirt.

  Albert knocked and walked in, calling out, “Hey, Gladys, how you doing?”

  Along the left wall was a kitchen of sorts. A stainless steel sink with a piece of yellow cloth stuck around it with double-sided tape, drooping, only half-hiding the cleaning products below. A battered stove, a small refrigerator painted a streaky pink. An assortment of milk crates, upended to form boxes, stacked one on top of the other, acted as shelving. Several boxes of macaroni and cheese, a box of cereal, a glass jar of rice, another of dried peas and five or six tins of soup. There was a green-topped chrome table and four chairs. A brown plastic door, folded back like an accordion, divided the main room from a small back room in which stood a crib, a cot and a set of drawers. The air smelled of cigarettes and diapers.

  Against the wall opposite the kitchen a thin woman reclined on a legless, spring-shot and stained blue sofa. A cluttered white plastic coffee table stood in front of the couch, and a small television in the corner was tuned to a game show. An electric fan was plugged into the same extension cord as the television and a lamp, the wires a threatening snarl. A large square of brown speckled linoleum served as a rug. The woman on the couch twisted her neck toward the door. “Close the fucking door, Albert! You wanna let all the bugs in or what? Who’s that?”

  “Hey, Gladys,” said Albert. “This is Bobby.”

  Gladys was in her thirties. Her hair was unevenly dyed blonde, frizzy and flat at the back where her head had rested against the arm of the couch. She had pouches under her pale eyes and her lips were thin, her teeth small and grey. She was still pretty, though, in a washed-out and worn sort of way. She wore jeans, an oversized man’s cardigan (even though the evening was warm enough to warrant the fan) over a black T-shirt and large greyish-pink fuzzy slippers.

  “Bobby who?”

  “Evans,” said Albert. “And yeah, he’s Tom Evans’s kid, so don’t go there.”

  “Huh,” said Gladys, looking at Bobby without smiling. “What brings you boys here?”

  “Been a while since you left an order at Maverick’s. Thought maybe you might need a delivery.”

  “I wanted a delivery I would have left word. I’m busted. You giving it away?”

  “Have I ever given it away?”

  Gladys snorted. “Well, then. You want a beer?”

  “Yeah, all right,” Albert said. “Maybe we’ll do a little something-for-something.”

  “You know where they are.” She turned back to the game show. Celebrities sat in cubicles built to form a large tic-tac-toe board. They answered questions posed by the game’s host and the contestants had to guess whether the celebrities were lying or not. “They got Whoopie Goldberg in the centre square now,” said Gladys. “I heard that woman owns the show.”

  “You only got two beers,” said Albert, his head in the refrigerator.

  “Yeah? So split one with your friend. You sitting down, honey, or what?”

  “Thanks.” Bobby pulled a chair around so he sat on the other side of the coffee table.

  Albert opened a cupboard and reached for a glass. “Fuck, Gladys, you got mice turds in here.”

  “I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me. No roaches, though. I can’t stand those little fuckers.” She shivered without taking her eyes off the screen.


  Albert handed Gladys a beer bottle and poured some into a glass he then handed to Bobby. “So, what you been up to?” He took another chair and straddled it, his arms on the back. He peeled the corner of the label off his beer and then smoothed it back down again.

  “Playing Florence Nightingale. Jake’s sick again. That kid is always sick. I wasn’t never sick when I was little, but he gets every cold, every barfy bug that goes around. He been puking all day. Only been asleep the past hour.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Bobby. “How old is he?”

  “Jake’s four.”

  “Gladys’s got a boy my age, too,” said Albert.

  “Really? Wow,” said Bobby.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t look old enough,” said Bobby, shifting on his chair.

  Gladys laughed, swung her legs off the couch, and looked at him. “How old do you have to be?”

  “You just look so young.”

  “Aren’t you the sweetest thing? Hell, I was fourteen when I had Ricky. That’s how I met this sorry sack of skin,” she said, waving her beer bottle at Albert. “They ran together for a while.” Gladys leaned forward and slapped Albert’s thigh. “You remember how you used to come sniffing round?”

  Albert grinned but said nothing.

  “Yessir, little big man he thought he was. So I said one day, ‘Bertie, darling, you want to come over and park your car in my garage?’ And this fool looks at me all innocent and sweet and says, ‘Gee, Gladys, I don’t got no car. I ain’t even got a bicycle!’” Gladys threw back her head and laughed. Albert laughed, too.

  “Yeah, well, maybe it wasn’t me sniffing round. You were only too happy to see me later when I came back looking for parking space—once I’d learned how to drive.”

  “Nice try. I was your first driving teacher.”

  “You wish,” said Albert.

  Gladys leaned back on the couch and drank from her beer, then lit up a cigarette from a green and white menthol pack. “Yeah, Ricky’s in the Navy now. Has to support that baby-mama of his. He’s a better man than his father, I’ll say that for him. So Bobby—it’s Bobby, right? How are things at your place?”

  “Gladys,” Albert growled.

  “I’m just asking.”

  “All right,” said Bobby.

  “Well,” said Gladys, “don’t let it get you down, kid. More assholes in the world than angels. Might just as well get used to it.”

  “That’s what I been telling him.” Albert pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket then and rolled a joint and they smoked it, laughing at the game show for a while, until Jake began to cry in the back room, calling for his mother. “Shit,” said Gladys and went off to tend to her son, who’d begun retching.

  “Let’s go,” said Albert.

  “Shouldn’t we stay and help?” Bobby said. “I mean, she’s pretty high, we all are.”

  “You think this is high? This ain’t high. I’ve seen Gladys drive a truck down the highway doing ninety after drinking a case of beer and smoking enough dope to knock out five full-grown men. Believe me, she ain’t high. Hey, Gladys, we’re leaving,” he called.

  They heard a car pull up and moments later the door opened. Bill Corkum stepped in, wearing a 49ers jersey and baggy shorts that fell to below his knees. He saw Albert and Bobby and stopped in his tracks. “What are you doing here?” He sniffed the air. “Right,” he said.

  Jayne Miller stepped in behind him. “Hi, all,” she said, and then, “Oh.”

  “This is pretty,” said Albert, glaring at Jayne as though there had been something between them she just wouldn’t admit.

  “You on your way?” said Bill.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” said Albert. Just looking at Jayne, standing there with her hand on Bill’s back, made him want to break something. She looked good. Hair all black and shiny. Her fingernails painted a pale pink. She wore a white miniskirt and a T-shirt that showed her belly button. She had a little silver chain around her ankle.

  Gladys walked back into the room, a little boy clinging limply to her neck, perched on her bony hip. He had stains on his pyjamas and he gazed dully from caked and swollen eyes. “Hey, Bill. Don’t you ever call first?”

  “I would have, but your phone’s out again.”

  “What?” Gladys grabbed the phone off the wall and held it to her ear. “Fuck!” she said and slammed it back into the cradle. “I paid that fucking bill. I know I did.”

  And with that, the little boy vomited weakly, spilling a yellowish trail of bile down the front of his mother’s cardigan. “Jesus Christ!” she yelled, and held the boy at arm’s length, his stomach still twitching, his cheeks puffing up with the effort not to vomit on his mother again. Gladys bent him over the sink, his legs dangling in mid-air, the stainless steel digging into his belly. He retched. She slapped him on the back of the head. “You gonna puke you say something first, you little shit. Don’t be puking on me, you hear!” The child whined something unintelligible. She held him there with one hand on his back, the other swiping at her clothes with a tea towel.

  “For fuck sake, Gladys, it’s not his fault,” said Bill.

  “Fuck off,” said Gladys.

  Jayne stepped around the men. “Give him to me,” she said, her hands reaching out. “Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up? I’ll deal with him.” She grabbed another towel, which lay balled up on the counter, and plucked the child from the edge of the sink, holding him on her hip. She wiped his mouth with the towel.

  “Thanks, honey. Goddamn stink,” said Gladys, and she disappeared into the back where the bathroom was, muttering under her breath.

  The three young men stood, shuffling uneasily from foot to foot, jingling coins in their pockets, looking at Jayne and Jake, not meeting one other’s eyes. Jake began to cry. It was as though, with his mother out of the room, all the tears he’d kept in leaked out of him—large glossy tears fell without sound, dripping from his chin. His eyes were huge and glistening, looking out on the world with an expression that said he expected no pity and no help. He turned his face to Jayne and gazed at her as if he didn’t know what kind of a creature she might be. And still, the tears kept falling. Then he turned and looked at Albert.

  The sick child and Albert locked eyes. The kid just stared, soul-dead and hopeless and horribly patient, utterly undefended by any normal survival instinct to hide something of himself. It was all just there, the kid’s entire sorry soul, sliding out of his eyes. Albert imagined the child’s body transforming into a desiccated husk, as though he was constructed of nothing but tears and now that they had begun to leak away they wouldn’t stop and there would be nothing to hold him together. He’d just leak and leak until he began to implode, crumpling inward in a crinkled mass. Albert wanted to break away and couldn’t. He wanted to wipe those tears off the kid’s face and tell him to cut it out. Crying wasn’t going to get you anywhere. But the tears just kept coming. Albert’s fingertips tingled, and his vision speckled as his breath grew thin.

  Jayne reached up and, using her thumb, gently wiped the tears away and the child turned to look at her again. She shifted Jake on her hip. The weight of him had pulled down the neckline of Jayne’s T-shirt and her small white breast lay squashed against him. She wore a bright pink lacy bra. She ran water and dampened the towel, trying to clean his vomit-spattered face. Jake laid his head against Jayne’s neck and began to suck his thumb.

  “Poor little kid,” said Jayne. She touched his forehead and then said, “He’s really hot, Bill. I think he needs a doctor.”

  “Gladys don’t have health insurance.”

  “Gladys,” Jayne called, stepping into the doorway that led to the back of the shack, “do you have any baby Aspirin? Jake’s got a fever.”

  “I know what he’s got. You don’t have to tell me,” G
ladys called back. “And no, I don’t have any fucking Aspirin. He’ll be fine. He always gets better.”

  “Well, I still say he needs a doctor,” Jayne said, turning to the men again. She looked from one face to another.

  “Here,” said Bobby. He reached in his pocket and pulled out three crumpled ten-dollar bills. “Take this.”

  “Where’d you get that?” said Albert.

  Bobby shrugged. “My old man.”

  Bill looked at him like he’d never seen him before. “Yeah, all right, then.” He, too, reached in his pocket and pulled out some bills. “I got a bit.” He looked at Albert. “What about you, man?”

  “Not my kid.”

  “Oh, it’s like that, huh?” said Bill.

  Jayne stepped forward and took the money from Bobby. “You’re a sweetheart, Bobby. A real sweetheart.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and colour mottled his skin.

  “He’s just a little kid,” said the boy.

  “Shit,” said Albert. “Here.” He pulled some bills out of his pocket and gave them to Jayne. “At least get him some fucking Aspirin. I’m out of here.” He tossed a small bag of marijuana on the counter. “Tell her she don’t owe me anything.”

  “Mr. Big Man, huh?” Bill smiled at Albert and, seeing the look on his face, said, “Hey, I’m kidding, man. Just yanking your chain.”

  “Try and do the right thing and see?” Albert said to Bobby. He turned and headed for the door, looking as though he’d walk right through Bill.

  Bill moved out of the way as Albert stepped into the night, with Bobby following.

  “Come on, Albert. Just trying to lighten the mood, you know,” Bill said.

  Albert ignored him.

  “Thank you,” Jayne called. “Thanks, both of you.”

  The little boy retched again.

  “Not your kid, either, Miss Nightingale,” Albert tossed over his shoulder and heard Jayne ask Bill who Miss Nightingale was.

  Albert stalked back to the truck and got in, slamming the door. Bobby scrambled in after him. A mosquito buzzed in Albert’s ear and he swatted at it, leaving a smear of blood on his neck.