Oatmeal and Sausages (3)
The trailer the woman lived in was ancient and largely unlit. Dust played in the few beams of sunlight that pushed their way through the battered blinds. The furniture was as out of date as the family pictures that crowed every surface. A worn TV tray sat between Roger and Gran Boykin.
The old woman plopped her cards onto the tray and pointed a skeletal finger in Roger’s direction. Her voice had the pitch of an angry crow. “You lose again Oatmeal. Boy, if you can’t play a decent game of cards, what in the world can you do? Huh?”
Roger didn’t care for their card games but they were usually better than life at home. He pulled up his worn pair of blue jeans and sat back into one of the musty corduroy chairs. He looked at the clock but it never displayed the right time. The decreasing sunlight meant it was probably time to go.
“Oatmeal, you listen to me.” Every time she spoke, Gran Boykin’s teeth would move unnaturally. It was no wonder. She used her late husband’s dentures.
Roger leaned forward. “There it is! Gran Boykin, you know I don’t like that name. I’m not boring! I’m interesting just not in ways the podunks around here can understand.”
“You ain’t proper kin and need to take what God’s given to us to give to you and that name is one of them. Besides, it’s funny. You don’t hear half of my grandkids complain when their called Bubba do you?”
“Are we finished playing here?”
Gran tried to sit up and failed. “Look see, before I forget and if I die, I want you to take care of my plants. I’ve always had a green thumb and I just won’t be able to stand leaving this earth unless my house plants are taken care of.”
Roger groaned and closed his eyes. “Gran, plants are not family heirlooms. And you should quit watering them! Their fake! They were replaced with plastic look-a-likes years ago.”
Something whacked Roger in the face. He had forgotten she was armed. The old woman had hit him with the disgusting, old fly swatter that she never kept far from her.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me Oatmeal. A little watering makes even plastic look a little better.”
Roger stood up and adjusted his pants again. He had been forced to adjust them all day and was becoming frustrated. Everything was second hand for him. He used his free hand to reach for his sweatshirt.
“Wait, wait.” Gran Boykin’s demeanor softened once she sensed Roger was ready to leave. She left her chair and started to shuffle into the nearby kitchen. “Don’t be going not having a can of piggy wee-wees.”
This time Roger really did roll his eyes. “Gran, look, those things are called Vienna sausages. When you call them piggy wee-wees you make is sound like they are…owww.” Lightning quick, she had turned and hit him with the fly swatter again.
“You keep that filthy mind to your own self!” She squinted at him, and finished with, “TV is doing that to you doesn’t it? Now c’mon.”
When they reached the kitchen, they turned toward different locations. The old crow’s white top meandered to the cabinets. Roger made a line to the porch door.
“Look Gran Boykin, I need to keep moving. Thanks for the card game and everything. I’ll come by tomorrow if I feel like life can’t get any worse.” She never caught the implied meaning and Kiser never felt guilty saying it.
Roger closed the screen door and took in a lungful of clean air. He continued purging his lungs until he reached the end of the gravel driveway. It blended almost seamlessly with the gravel road that stretched in both directions. The sun had started throwing red hues, as its path to the western horizon was not far from completion. It was late December and the atmosphere had turned chilly, which always coincided with dormant swaths of brown in the fields.
He had a good walk home before it became dark. All in all, it was a perfect opportunity for some quiet thought.
********************
The doorbell rang but Skechenko did not move to answer it. A few seconds later, Tim could hear the impatient sound of shaken keys. Bolts gave way with a bit too much force then the door swung open to admit a woman of striking girth. She wore loose fitting nursing scrubs and carried a large duffel bag. Her hair was shoulder length and feathered back in the style of women who know their sex appeal is gone.
She gave both men a bland uninterested stare. “Morning Mr. Skechenko. Should I fix your usual before I get started cleaning the kitchen and bathroom?”
Skechenko had yet turn and face her. “Yes Lena, that will be fine. And fix a helping for this young man. It looks like he will be staying for a while.”
“Ok, whatever.” She tossed her bag onto a stack of newspapers and marched into the kitchen. The sounds of pots clanging together was followed by, “Say, do you want that with guinea pig or without?”
“Woman! I’m sure there’s still room for that big rear of yours back in Eastern Europe! No doubt the crater from your last visit hasn’t been filled yet!” The old man turned and shook his fist in the kitchen’s direction. “You know full well that is prairie dog meat! And you know how I like it!”
Tim recaptured Skechenko’s attention. “Um, I think you were talking about Roger Kiser’s upbringing.”
“Are we still talking about him?!” Skechenko covered his eyes with mumbled something unintelligible. “Very well, Kiser dwelt in the delta region of the Mississippi River, just a few miles east of Lexa, Arkansas. The view from his bedroom window was a landscape filled with ramshackle mobile homes, which by this point were mobile in name only, tin covered tobacco sheds, and ivy covered silos. The northern horizon was usually obscured by the dust from a busy dirt road that separated his family’s farm from the usually lush fields of cotton and marijuana.“
Tim glanced over to make sure his tape recorder was still working. “Sir, you have an incredible knack for detail. How do you know all this?”
The old man just shrugged his shoulders. “Well son, all you need are postcards and stereotypes and you can be an expert on any geographic location. You should also know that everything I’m about to tell you is how it was relayed to me. The story is one of extremes but Kiser would have it no other way.”
“So how much of this is going to be accurate?”
Skechenko shrugged again. “There’s no real way of knowing. But let me reiterate that when his family called him Oatmeal, they weren’t that far off. He’s a guy who has an average build spread across the mean height for males of his age. Dominant genes dictated his hair and eye color, and his choice of clothing was directed toward jeans, plaids, and solid, subdued earth tones. It’s a trend that he stubbornly continues regardless of the whims of fashion.
You see son, he didn’t want anything to do with the chaos everyone around here associates with him. Roger viewed human beings as bumper cars in a rink that was too small. They’re always forcefully bumping into each other, changing each other’s direction, and causing whiplash.”
Skechenko paused to let Tim finish his mad scribbling. “So, uh, how did Roger Kilwein leave Arkansas and arrive in North Dakota?”
The old man delayed to gather his thoughts. “Fine, he was walking home…”
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