in a long stream and scratched at his chin with a big-knuckled hand.
“What brings you here, kid?” he asked.
“I’m aiming to see him.”
“He ain’t right.”
“I heard.”
“Not all of it, you didn’t.”
“Guess I’ll see.”
“I guess. But just so you know.”
“I heard,” the kid said.
The fat one rose and waddled to the door. He was tall but equally rotund and the boards of the verandah sagged and creaked with the weight of him. When the kid stepped to pass he blocked the kid’s view of the street. He had a sour smell of old tobacco, stale whisky, and unwashed feet. The kid moved back a step and the man grinned.
“You get used to it,” he said.
“Don’t expect to.”
“Your pap’s no better.”
The fat one unlocked the door and pushed it open with one wide arm and held it for the kid, who looked at him and nodded. The man nodded back and when he eased the door closed behind him he farted, loud and wet, and the men on the verandah laughed and the kid strode quickly to the shabby stairs across the small foyer. He stood there a moment and looked around. It was drab. There were low lights in the ceilings and they served only to add a level of shadow to the murk of the decor. The walls were panelled a cheap laminate brown and the threadbare carpets had faded from pumpkin to a sad, mouldy orange and the newel of the staircase was split and cracked. He could smell cooking and hear the jump of fat in a fry pan. Spiderwebs. Dust. An old cat slunk out of the corner and eyed him warily, and when he turned to the stairs it hissed and arched its back and the kid shook his head at it and began to climb.
There were men sounds coming from every room. Belches, curses. The pale blue light of televisions seeped through the cracks of half-closed doors and it gave his movements a spooky, out-of-time feel. He could hear a man’s raised voice. It was something addressed to a woman and the kid was embarrassed to hear it and when he came around the corner he tried to creep by but the door was open and the man who spoke turned to look at him. He kept rambling loudly. He stared straight at the kid and his eyes were crazed and the bush of his beard was mottled with tobacco and he had no teeth so the words were garbled some and crazy-sounding. As the kid eased past he saw into the room and there was no one else there. The man laughed suddenly, sharp like a bark, and he stood and shook his fist at the kid and stepped forward to slam the door.
He came to his father’s room. The door was shut. Across the hall a tall, skinny man stood at a hotplate, turning baloney in a fry pan. He looked at the kid flatly and eased a foot up and pushed the door closed. The kid pressed an ear to his father’s door. He could hear murmuring voices and for a moment he thought it was a television or a radio but there was a guttural laugh and then a woman’s voice and the glassy thunk of a bottle set hard on the floor and the complaint of bed springs. He knocked. Silence. He heard whispers and scurried movements.
“Well, come in, dammit.”
The kid turned the knob and eased the door open. The room was bare except for a dresser, a wooden chair, and the bed, where his father lay with a woman leaned against his chest. There were empty bottles lined along the dresser mirror. Clothes had been flung and were scattered every which way along with empty fast-food boxes and old newspapers. There wasn’t a square foot of open floor in the entire room. The closet door dangled off its hinges and there were tools hung on nails and piled on the shelf. Saws, hammers, wrenches, a chainsaw, a rake and a shovel, and looped yards of electric cable. There was an old bicycle sitting up against the far wall partially disassembled with the wires and gears of it strewn around the back wheel and a rusted scythe with its hook bent up to the ceiling. The hot plate was crusted with grease and dribbles, and a coffee can overflowed with butts and ashes and a few jelly jars stuffed full of the same. A black-and-white television was tuned to a snowy channel. The man in the bed just stared at him and the woman eased her chin down and looked at the kid through the top of her eyes and batted her eyelashes.
“Well?” the man asked and raised a bottle to his mouth.
“I’m Franklin,” the kid said.
“Jesus,” was all he said and took another pull at the bottle. “Got big, didn’t ya?”
His father’s face was slack, the skin hanging off the bones like a loose tent, and there were lines and creases deep with shadow. There was stubble on his chin. His hair was weedy, gone to grey, and curled at his neckline, with bangs combed over one eye. He grinned and the teeth that remained were stained and crooked. When he raised an arm to wave him in it was rail-thin, the bones of it stuck out jarringly, the hand large with long, splayed fingers that told of the size he once owned, gone now to a desiccated boniness. But the eyes burned. They sat behind the twin fists of cheekbones hard and bright as marbles, and the kid was struck by the coyote amber of them, going to hazel but wild, intent, and suspicious. He stepped into the room, kicked a sweater out of the way, and shut the door behind him.
“The old man said I should come,” he said.
“Grab a chair,” his father said and pointed.
The kid pulled the chair away from the wall. He spun it and sat with his arms folded across the back of it, looking at his father and the woman.
“Drink?”
“Got no use for it.”
“Smoke?”
“Got makin’s.”
“These are tailor-mades.”
“Makin’s smoke better.”
His father laughed. It came out raspy and hoarse and he coughed a few times and the woman laid a hand on his chest and looked at him, worried and protective. The cough eased and his father leaned up on one elbow and pushed himself higher in the bed and looked at the kid.
“This here’s Deirdre,” he said, hooking a thumb toward the woman. “She’s a whore.”
The woman slapped playfully at him and blinked at the kid girlishly and it turned his stomach some. She pushed herself up in the bed to sit beside his father, smoothed down her lank blond hair and raised the bottle to her mouth, and the sheet tumbled down so that her breasts bobbed openly and the kid felt himself stiffen and blush.
“You could have some. She’s okay with it.”
“Thanks. No.” the kid said.
“Go on. It’s free.”
“Not havin’ to pay don’t make it free.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
They looked at each other and the woman eased the sheet up. They could hear the raving man down the hall and the sound of someone’s radio playing an old country waltz. The room was directly over the verandah and he heard one of the men shout at someone passing in the street and a woman’s voice let go a string of curses and the men laughed and hooted.
“Well, I’m here,” the kid said.
“I can see ya.”
“So? What is it you got to say?”
“I gotta have a whattaya call . . . agenda?”
He shook a cigarette loose from the pack behind his pillow and lit it and blew a series of smoke rings and then raised the bottle to his face and drank. The kid waited.
“Don’t like me much, I guess,” he said and set the bottle on the floor.
“Don’t know you much is all,” the kid said.
“I’m your dad.”
The kid looked at him blandly. He took out his makings and rolled a smoke while his father and the woman watched. He lit up with a wooden match and when he blew it