“Interesting,” I say. “I’ll avoid it at all costs.”
He shoots a finger gun at me and clicks out the side of his mouth. “She’s a quick one, I tell you.” He says it like he’s talking to God, or an imaginary friend.
“So why you here? School tell you I quit?” I lay the guitar in my lap and make chord formations with my fingers, but don’t strum.
“Naw, didn’t tell Irene about work yet. We’re supposed to buy the kid some Nintendo thing for Christmas. She’s gonna be pissed now.” Ash falls on his shirt; he brushes it off before it burns through.
Last Christmas, Irene and my dad gave me a card with five scratch-off tickets tucked in the envelope. I won three bucks on one, but I couldn’t even get the money because I’m not old enough. The card had Merry Christmas to you and yours printed inside. I made my own card for them out of a folded up piece of loose leaf. It said Merry Christmas on the front, and on the inside, Up yours and yours. I drew every letter alternately in green and red crayon. Irene went in the kitchen after I gave it to her at Christmas dinner. She stayed in there a long time and when she came back, her mascara was runny and she smelled like Peachtree, so the card was a success.
“You’ve just been hanging out here when I’m gone?” I ask. I don’t like the idea of him in my space.
“Here or the duck blind. Depends on the weather.” He picks at a callus on the side of his finger until the skin comes off. He just leaves it on the table, this little round piece of skin.
“How long?”
“Week or so.”
“And you didn’t ever wait for me to get home or leave a note?”
“Come on, Ape. I already got Irene on my case.”
“Whatever. You got to go now. I’m writing for my gig.”
“It’s my motorhome.” He gets up and walks into the bedroom at the back and slides the accordion door shut.
I use a piece of notebook paper to pick up his callus and throw it in the garbage.
* * *
My dad won the motorhome from Molly Walker in a poker game. It wasn’t even high stakes.
On the outside, Molly seemed pretty damn close to perfect. She was in church every Sunday and sewed costumes for all the pageants and school plays. On Christmas she’d drive the three hours to Syracuse to volunteer at a soup kitchen. She had sweatshirts for every holiday, even Arbor Day, and put a coordinated flag on her front porch too. And she won first place in the Fourth of July bake-off every year （except for an unfortunate experiment with crepes three years back）。 Molly tried so hard to be perfect, but she wasn’t, and everyone knew it. All that other stuff—the sewing, the volunteer work—was a cover up, like penance to make up for the fact that she would bet on anything. Margo always said Molly would bet on which way the toilet water would swish down or how long it would take for the stoplight to change. She’d bet on Little League games, how many fish her husband, Hank, would catch on his next fishing trip, or which of the Newton kids would crack their head open skateboarding. She had bets of every size going all over town, and then there were the poker games. If Molly could round up a full table, they’d go through a whole weekend, and by Sunday night everyone would be propped on their fists, looking like hell, hopped up on coffee boiled down to syrup. At the end of those games there was a massive rearranging of who owned what and who wasn’t talking to who. Sometimes property lines changed.
Molly almost always ended up on top, until the losing streak. It started with a bet on the Gary’s Tap Room bowling team, which seemed like a slam dunk, but Gary spent the day before in Buffalo gorging himself on Chinese food. His fingers swelled so bad they got stuck in the bowling ball and his team tanked the tournament. After that, Molly couldn’t seem to get anything right.
The problem was, losing didn’t slow her down any. She’d stop for a few days or a week, but then she’d start up again, and lose just as bad. And since it’s impossible to hide anything in Little River, everyone knew about it.
One time, Margo had a two-for-one coupon and brought us a whole bag of name-brand cheese puffs and they were the best thing I’d ever tasted. My dad and I ate a few handfuls, and then he went out on a job. I put the bag away on top of the fridge, closed up with a twist tie, but I just kept thinking about those cheese puffs. I couldn’t pay attention to the TV. I didn’t even want to leaf through Margo’s hand-me-down catalogs. All I could do was think about those cheese puffs. I went back again and again. At first I closed the bag up after every handful, but then I just gave up and went whole hog. I ate until the bag was empty and the roof of my mouth had strings of skin peeling off. I even turned the bag upside down and poured every last bit of cheese powder in my mouth. I think that’s the way Molly Walker felt about gambling. When she wasn’t doing it, she just couldn’t think about anything else. And when she was all out of every other last thing to gamble, she bet the motorhome.