by James Ross
Owen squirmed as the cold ice sent an uncomfortable sensation through his foot. “D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad!”
“Every little boy has to grow up sometime. It’ll only hurt for a minute or two. We gotta git it to stop bleeding.” Owen, Sr. turned to his wife and watched as she threaded the strand through the eye in the needle. “You ready?”
Rayelene closed her eyes; the stress was giving her a headache. She wasn’t going to argue with her husband anymore. “I’m ready.”
Nada removed the ice pack from Owen’s foot. “Close it up.”
Rayelene steadied her hand. She looked into Owen’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Honey. We don’t have the money to do it right.” With pinpoint accuracy she pierced the skin and forced the needle through to the other side of the slice.
“Aarghhh! M . . . M . . . M . . . Mom!”
Chapter Nine
“Now, do you feel better?” Owen, Sr. asked. The boy had tears in his eyes. He had broken out in a cold sweat. Rayelene had gone back and forth nine times with the needle.
“It st . . . st . . . st . . . still hurts.”
“I’m sorry, Honey.” Rayelene rubbed her hand through her son’s hair then turned and glared at her husband.
“W . . . W . . . W . . . Was there any g . . . g . . . g . . . glass in there?”
“I didn’t feel any.”
“It’s not bleeding much anymore,” Owen, Sr. said as he looked at the bottom of Owen’s foot then turned and searched the drawer for a Band-Aid. “PBR, do you think we need to git some gauze and wrap it with tape?”
Rayelene studied the foot of her son. “A big Band-Aid might work. I’ll have to take it off twice a day to keep it clean.”
Owen, Sr. grabbed the box of bandages and gave them to his wife. “Pick out the one you think is best and git him fixed up. We’ve got a lot of runnin’ around to do.”
“We can’t go anywhere with him feeling like this,” Rayelene argued.
“He’ll just have to limp around a little.” Owen, Sr. paused. “Not put much weight on it.” He patted Owen on the knee. “Let’s give it a try.” He helped Owen off of the breakfast bar. The lad gingerly placed his foot on the floor.
“Ow, D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad. It hurts.”
“It’s gonna for a while. Put most of your weight on your heel.” Owen shifted his weight so that his toes were free of pressure. “If it gits so bad that you can’t stand it then maybe we can git some painkiller.”
“You need a prescription for that,” Rayelene interrupted.
“My ass. The medicine that we’ll use around here is in the refrigerator.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll give him a beer or two.”
“Nada! He’s not even a teenager yet.”
Owen wrinkled his nose. The very thought of drinking a beer seemed worse that the throbbing pain in his foot.
“You’ve gotta learn sometime, PBR. Better here than drivin’ around town with his friends.”
“He can wait at least until he’s got his drivers’ license then.”
“Let’s hop in the car and git our errands run.” Owen, Sr. headed out the screen door to his car.
The family car was a ’68 Chevrolet Impala. Nada’s M.O. was to buy a car for a hundred dollars and run it until the engine went out. He had gotten a couple of extra years out of the Impala despite the rust and mounting mileage. It was parked on the gravel driveway adjacent to the Peterbilt cab. The used Impala was his means of transportation when he was home. Rayelene got to keep her minivan in the garage.
“Can’t we take mine today?” Rayelene yelled as she and Owen fell fifteen yards behind.
“We need to start ole Betsy up and drive it some.”
“What happens if we git to town and it conks out on us?”
“It’s not like we live in a big city. We’ll walk home.”
“D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad! My foot w . . . w . . . w . . . won’t make it.”
“Come on. Betsy won’t let us down. She turned over three hundred thousand miles a few months ago. See what the constant maintenance does for motors?”
“Yeah, but it’s embarrassing to have the hood up in the parking lot adding oil,” Rayelene said.
Owen, Sr. raised the hood. “That reminds me.” He took a look at the dip stick. “It’s about three quarts low right now.”
“It’s a . . . a . . . a . . . always that low, D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad.” Owen limped over to the car, opened the door and hopped into the back seat. Rayelene jumped in the passenger seat.
Owen, Sr. finished adding the oil. He closed the hood, jumped into the driver’s seat and after a couple false starts finally got the car to turn over. He put his right arm on the top of the seat behind Rayelene’s head and looked over his shoulder to back out the driveway. In the process he glanced at Owen. “Hey git your feet off the seat!”
“D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad!”
“Nada! Where else can he put them?” The rust had eaten away the floorboard in the back seat. Owen could look straight down and see the gravel driveway. “You know as well as I he can’t put his feet down for three days after riding back there.”
Owen, Sr. opened the driver’s side car door. “Hold on.” He exited the car.
“Where are you goin’?”
“To git a beer. I need one for the road.”
Chapter Ten
It was Saturday morning. The parking lot at MooseMart was filling up rapidly. Nada, the name that Owen Sr. had come to be known by, drove up and down the aisles looking for the closest spot to the door. “Why don’t you let us off at the front door? That way he won’t have to walk as far.”
Nada turned and glared at his wife. “That’s why I’m drivin’ around lookin’ for a spot closest to the front of the store.”
“If you dropped us off at the door then you could park farther away.”
“You know, PBR, I don’t need a backseat driver.” Nada made a turn and went down another aisle. “I do this for a livin’.” Several minutes went by as he looked for a parking spot.
“I thought . . .”
“You’ve been thinkin’ a lot lately, haven’t ya?” Nada made another turn only to get further away from the storefront. Rayelene closed her eyes, counted to ten and once again pressed her temples with the palms of her hands.
“D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad, my foot still hurts.”
Nada made a few more turns and eased the car to the front of the store. It came to a stop. “There. I’ll let you two out here.” Both doors flew open on the passenger side. “I’ll park it and meet you inside.”
“See, we could have saved ten minutes . . .”
“PBR! I’ll see you inside.”
Rayelene and Owen headed for the front door. Rayelene grabbed a shopping cart and steered it through the door. Owen limped behind. The sight of the electronic door opening automatically when weight was applied to the black rubber mat fascinated Owen. When he got inside he noticed that the exit door flew open in the opposite direction. He limped over to the rubber mat on that door. The exit door flew open.
“Owen! What are you doin’?”
“W . . . W . . . W . . . Watching how this th . . . th . . . th . . . thing works.” He hurriedly limped through the door and was outside.
“Come back here!”
Owen put his weight on the rubber pad. The entrance door opened. He hobbled through the opening. “Th . . . Th . . . Th . . . This is n . . . n . . . n . . . neat, Mom!”
“Owen! Stay inside.”
The boy got on the mat that opened the exit door. It flew open and he shuffled through the doorway again. “Th . . . Th . . . Th . . . This is fun!”
“Come back here!”
The entrance door opened when he put weight on the rubber mat from the outside. Because his foot was hurting his movements were labored. Owen stumbled. He fell onto the exit door side of the double doors just as the electronic door was closing. His head got pinned between the door and the jamb. “M . . .
M . . . M . . . Mom!”
“Help! Somebody help!” Rayelene shouted as she hurried to the doors. The force of the door wouldn’t allow Owen to escape. Rayelene stooped but wasn’t strong enough to pry the door away from her son’s head. The constant pressure was choking Owen.
A cautionary alarm sounded a repetitive noise through the store similar to the sound that a truck emits when it is backing up. A crowd congregated to assist. The store manager arrived on the scene. Nada craned his neck to see over the shoppers as he walked toward the front door. Seeing that it was Owen he pushed his way through the swarm. “PBR! What happened?”
“What’s it look like happened?”
“I leave you alone for two minutes . . .” He pushed against the door in an attempt to take the pressure off of Owen’s head and neck. “Can you get out of there?”
Owen could barely swallow. His face was turning red. “N . . . N . . . N . . . No.”
Rayelene was hysterical. She yelled at anyone that would listen. “Do something!”
“I’ll have to cut off the power source,” the store manager said. He turned and ran to the back of the store.
“Then do it quick!” Rayelene yelled. Owen’s face was as red as a tomato.
Nada tried his best to put weight against the door to keep it from choking the life out of his son. “Hang in there, boy. We’ve got help on the way.” Owen’s eyes appeared to bulge out of their sockets. It looked like his head was going to explode from the pressure.
“They need safety features on these things!” Rayelene yelled to no one in particular. Forty to fifty people had congregated.
“You almost have to make an effort to git pinned like this,” Nada said. He had wedged his entire leg in the opening assuring that the door wouldn’t close any further.
Finally, the lights in the store flickered. Then the power went dead. All of the muscle went out of the electronic door. The throng of spectators started their applause. “Thank goodness!” Rayelene yelled as she ran her fingers through Owen’s hair. “Are you alright, Honey?”
Owen was more scared than hurt, but the incident did put a bit of mortality into his thought process. He shook his head up and down. “It w . . . w . . . w . . . was fun for a . . . a . . . a . . . awhile.”
“Oh, Honey. Don’t run away from me like that again.” She pulled her son close to her body.
“D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad, I have to g . . . g . . . g . . . go to the b . . . b . . . b . . . bathroom.”
“If it’s not one thing it’s somethin’ else.” Nada shrugged his shoulders. “Come on, let’s go.”
“I’ll be over there.” Rayelene pointed to the racks and racks of clothes.
Nada rolled his eyes. “I would have never guessed.” After shaking hands and thanking the store manager, father and son walked off to the restroom as the crowd dispersed.
“L . . . L . . . L . . . Let’s hurry.” Owen moved through the aisles. “I . . . I . . . I . . . I’ve got to g . . . g . . . g . . . go bad.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“N . . . N . . . N . . . No.”
Nada stopped and asked for directions. The public restroom was located in a far corner. When they reached the facility Nada said, “Go ahead and go.”
Owen tried the door to the stall and it was locked. “S . . . S . . . S . . . Somebody must be in th . . . th . . . th . . . there.”
“Just use the urinal.”
“I have t . . . t . . . t . . . to go n . . . n . . . n . . . number two.”
“For Pete’s sake.” Nada went over to the stall, bent over and peeked under the door. “Nobody’s in there.” He rattled the door. “For crying out loud. It’s a pay toilet.”
“I h . . . h . . . h . . . have to p . . . p . . . p . . . pay to p . . . p . . . p . . . poop?”
Nada searched his pockets. “Yeah and I don’t have any spare change.” He double checked his jeans’ pockets.
“I h . . . h . . . h . . . have to g . . . g . . . g . . . go now.”
“Crawl underneath the door. Do your business and try to open it from the inside. If it doesn’t open you’ll have to crawl back out.”
Owen was on his hands and knees then on his stomach sliding under the door. The tiled floor was littered with toilet paper fragments. “D . . . D . . . D . . . Dad, its st . . . st . . . st . . . sticky. He wiped his hands on his shorts. “Compared t . . . t . . . t . . . to my head, m . . . m . . . m . . . my foot feels b . . . b . . . b . . . better.”
“Good. Maybe you won’t need that beer after all.” Nada looked into the mirror and plucked a hair out of his nose. “Whewee. You stink. I’ll wait for you outside.” Nada left the restroom.
After a minute or two Owen joined his father. “I h . . . h . . . h . . . had to crawl b . . . b . . . b . . . back out.”
“Did you wash your hands?” Owen nodded his head. “Good, let’s find your mom.”
Nada walked and Owen limped through the store until they found Rayelene in the young men’s department. “Come here, Honey. I want to see if this size still fits you.” She grabbed a shirt. “Turn around.” Rayelene held the shirt up to Owen’s back matching the shoulder seams with the curvature of his body. “Maybe for one more summer.”
Nada peered downward. A dozen shirts from every color of the spectrum were in the shopping cart. “What do you have there?”
“I’m gittin’ him some shirts for the summer.”
“What kind of shirts?”
“Golfin’ shirts.”
“No, no, no you aren’t. Put them back. We’re leavin’.” Nada moved his head sideways. “MooseMart isn’t doin’ it for me today.”
Rayelene balked but after viewing the look on Nada’s face she complied. Two shoe boxes remained in the cart. “Can I keep these?”
“What are they?”
“Shoes for me.”
Nada grabbed a box and looked at the style. “There’s nothin’ on the front of them.”
“That’s because they’re peek-toes.”
“No. Put them back. We don’t need to be gittin’ somethin’ that ain’t finished.”
“But . . .”
“You heard me, PBR. Put them back. We’re leavin’. I’ve had enough for one day.”
Chapter Eleven
“What are you doin’ now?” Rayelene asked Nada. Two large pieces of plywood were on the grass in the backyard.
“What’s it look like?”
“I’ve got no idea, but the last time you were fooling around with wood we had termites.”
Owen was stirring a can of green paint. Nada was using a tape measure to get the accurate dimensions for a cut line. A cooler of beer sat close by. “No bugs this time.”
“Then I’ve got no idea what you’re doin’!”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
“After we got married.”
“Yeah.”
“We lived in that trailer park.”
“Sure. What was the name of it?” Rayelene’s curiosity was piqued.
“Clearwater Creek.”
Rayelene didn’t have a clue where he was going with his conversation. “So.”
“You don’t remember?” Nada was hurt that she had forgotten.
“Yeah, I remember the place. It was a dump. Trash all over the place. Mosquitoes.”
“No! I was the ping pong champion over there. Remember the clubhouse and all the beer drinkin’ we did?”
“For goodness sakes,” she laughed. “And the roof leaked.”
“W . . . W . . . W . . . We’re making a p . . . p . . . p . . . ping pong table, M . . . M . . . M . . . Mom!”
“Why do that? I can git one from a garage sale somewhere for five bucks.”
“We ain’t got the money.”
“When it comes to buyin’ beer you’ve got enough.”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Hey, who asked you anyway? Me and the boy are doin�
�� some male bondin’. Why don’t you git on up there around the pool and work on your toenails.” Nada drew a line across one piece of plywood. “And while you’re at it, get a little sun on those legs.”
“I th . . . th . . . th . . . think it’s r . . . r . . . r . . . ready.”
“Pour it into the pan and grab a roller.” Nada pointed toward the other sheet of plywood. “That one can be painted.”
Owen did as he was instructed. Rayelene climbed the steps to the wooden deck that surrounded one side of the pool. She watched the two at work. “How are you going to put the lines on it?”
“With tape,” Nada spat back. “Go on up there and let us be.”
Rayelene persisted. “What are you goin’ to do for a net?”
“I’ve got brackets that I’ll mount and we’ll stretch some twine across the table. Maybe cut some screen and put under it. Just let us finish.”
The guys worked for the better part of the afternoon until they were reasonably pleased with the finished product. It wasn’t a professionally done ping pong table but it was good enough to be used by Owen and any of his friends that wanted to perfect their shots.
Rayelene had on a two-piece bathing suit. She unbuttoned her shorts and let them fall to the deck. A gold-plated belly chain was around her waist resting gently on her pelvic bone. After grooming her toenails Rayelene dozed poolside.
Nada had nothing but empty bottles in the cooler so he went to the kitchen to get more beer. He came back outside with a pair of shears and a vinyl table cloth. While making his final snip Rayelene woke up. Surprised at what she saw she gasped, “Nada! What are you doin’ now?”
“What’s it look like?” His words were beginning to slur.
“You’re cutting up my tablecloth!” She barged down off the deck and ran over to snatch the red and white checked cloth out of his hands. “What do you think you’re doin’?”
Surprised, Nada blurted, “You don’t remember.”
“Here we go again! Remember what?”
“High school.”
“Yeah, and what happened during high school?”
“Mostly we drank beer and I got pregnant.”
“No, what else?”
“I haven’t a clue.”