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)

With #3 You Get Egg-Roll

I remember running around in that big green back yard of the neighbors' - the yard  loaded with summertime scenes of grass and dandelions and creeping charlie and a huge, hollowed-out lilac bush that my cousin Steve and I turned into a fort for our six year-old adventures.  I remember the scary, crazy man who lived two doors down from the fort - the man who would stand in the alley and stare at you when you walked past...for some reason the most vivid thing I remember about him was his stubbly chin and the bags under his eyes.  We always told stories about him chasing other kids with a baseball bat - fueled by the true story of my own brother being chased by the guy; the crazy old man driving his Vespa scooter, swinging the baseball bat and my brother running away from him with the Frisbee that had landed in his yard.  Years later I thought about that Vespa scooter and what it might be worth today - a beautiful relic of Quadrophenia and invested with memories too strange to tell.

Thinking back to the yard I see myself in a pair of brown Garanimal trousers - was it the monkey?  A brown bear?  A badger?  Who knows?   I ran around and got into all kinds of six year-old mischief in those trousers, I am sure...grass-stains on the knees, mud on the seat, the usual.  The unusual was the white lumpy stuff into which I knelt one day while Steve and I were having some imaginary adventure in the big green grassy yard.

Mrs. Vilviotchky  had cleaned out her ice-box.

The smell is still with me.  I think the stuff was old rice that had some sort of oil in it - well-aged butter or well-aged vegetable shortening - who knows what some freaky old Polish lady was making in her freaky old Polish kitchen? It was rancid smelling, and had a cloying property that settled in my nose and stayed there for some time.  I carried it around on my trouser knee for a little while, as well, and I had it on my hand, and like a strange little six year-old kid will do I kept taking a sniff of it...I did this all the way home, distractions and all...until I was able to wash it off and as a little kid will do, I didn't change my trousers - I just wiped the crap off my knee and went back to playing.  I ended up touching it again later and the smell was back on my hand again.  Walk...sniff...walk...sniff...play around a little bit...sniff...throw the ball for the dog...sniff.  What a little weirdo I must have been. Sniff.

Every now and again I smell something kind of like that rancid-y old greasy patch of rice from the freaky old Polish lady's freaky old kitchen that got smeared on my Garanimals.  I take a whiff while walking behind the filthy little Chinese restaurant down the street.  I inhale as I drive my car over the tracks near that warehouse just south of here. There it is.

I might as well be wearing brown Garanimals.  Thank God there is no scary, wacked-out old man with razor stubble and baggy eyes chasing me on his Vespa scooter.