Kulinski Coal Company

Skinny, chapped-lipped little Michael Pekart used to stare at me with those scary, beady, crust-cornered eyes of his.  He would drink his white milk with great gusto when everyone else wanted chocolate, and he would stare, except I could tell that his gaze was aimed about six inches above and to the right of my head.  I remember the time he flipped out while we were all playing in those fields behind the coal company.  Michael started throwing clods of earth at everyone and that raspy, raspy breathing came out like grunts - grunts that mixed with a mournful cry, a cry that probably began when his old man came home from the factory by way of the tap room, drunk and stinking of beer and far too many cigarettes.  Michael would get the back side of his old man's right hand any time he tried to talk when that dirty, filthy presser of seamless rolled rings was looking at the damned idiot box and waiting for Mrs. Pekart to shovel out another hot, fatty dinner framed with instant mashed potatoes.  Mr. Pekart was such a dried-up little turd of a man, sunburned and drunk and stinking and with a grubby, scowling, unshaven face that always seemed to cry out "I'm a pointless bastard of a human."

"Don't bother your father, Michael," his mother would say, "he's had a long day."

Michael would slink off to his room and tear the wings off of flies that he trapped against the window pane.  He kept a metal band-aid box full of wings that he had torn off of flies, and when the summer nights were hot and he had trouble falling asleep, he would take that little metal box out of his night stand and give it a little shake, just to remind himself.  He would feel better, and sleep would come more easily.

So he would stare at me with those scary, beady, crust-cornered eyes of his and when he spoke of how his dad would kick the ass of anyone else's dad, little bits of white saliva froth would collect at the corners of his mouth - the mouth that had those lips that looked like they were twice as thick as they really were, owing to the chapping.  When he got all crazy and wild like that, everyone would back down and go away, even the biggest kids in class - they all thought he was crazy, I think - which he probably was - and they were scared of getting little flecks of spit blown at them.  So we would all scatter, leaving Michael Pekart to shout at the school building until one of the teachers would come out to try to calm him down.  That usually took only a few minutes and the teacher would lead Michael back inside.  A box of white milk and the skinny, chapped-lipped little devil was ready to go again.

The day Michael Pekart put his arm through a glass window on a door near the school gymnasium was another story.  He had rushed up to the door and missed the little brass hand-plate.  His hand went right through a glass pane about eight inches square, and his arm followed - right up to the elbow.  Michael made the mistake of instantly wrenching it right back out again, shredding the inside of his forearm on the glass shards and exposing veins and tendons for all the world to see, including me, as I stood about five feet away and received a little drop of the sacrificial blood on my gym shirt.

I should have known what he would say, what he would start crying out the moment the pain registered in his brain - maybe even before it registered.  That skinny, chapped-lipped little Michael Pekart started crying out and thrashing around, in no way that a teacher and a box of milk would ever settle down. And he shouted at the top of his lungs, crying bloody murder and screaming himself hoarse until the paramedics arrived.

"I want my momma!! I want my momma!!  Momma!!"

(Appeared in "Dreamscapes 3" at hackwriters.com)

Tesco Was Out of Assam...Care for Some Badger?

I remember hearing the zzzzzzz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...of the milk-delivery float outside my window early one summer morning.  The day had not yet fully broken, and the smell of something burning in some farmer's field drifted in on the breeze, mixing with the regular smells of rural Somerset. I could hear Trevor, the skinny fellow from down the lane, making his way back home with Max, his yellow lab. From the cussing and harrumphing I could tell that Max had probably found his way into a pile of badger poo out in one of the fields, and Trevor was going to have a bit of clean-up work when they returned. Trevor had been helping David lay hedges at his farm, and had developed a grand familiarity as well as a great hatred for badger poo. He had told me this over a pint just last night, and my only profound early morning thought on that perfect Somerset daybreak was of poor Trevor and the greasy badger poo that he would be trying to clean out of Max's coat in a few minutes.

I pulled the duvet up close around my nose, took another sniff of something burning in the field, and thought about going down to start the water boiler and getting a brew going. The milk was fresh on the doorstep, and just waiting to be in my cup.