Waste by Andrew F. Sullivan Page B

eye sockets and mussed hair. Jamie kept his own eyes on the pawnshop windows, watching them swallowing everything up whole, every little piece they were given. He had nothing to give.
    Even now, eight years later, as he pulled into the strip mall parking lot, Jamie Garrison’s fists clutched the steering wheel, imagining his fingers tautly bound up in the handles of that plastic Kmart bag, watching that fucking kid’s face go pink, then red, then purple, until everything turned white and limp in his hands. This was all his fault, that little fucker. The kid couldn’t think right after that—couldn’t count, couldn’t write his name in a straight line, couldn’t even piss in a straight line. As Jamie climbed up out of the car with his knees popping and crackling, he could not shake that feeling. The little sniveling face. The small lung capacity. The penchant for minor but permanent brain damage. It was all that kid’s fault.
    The wide parking lot was spotted with aging pickup trucks filled with older men who lived with their robes open and their families excommunicated. In the summer months, they lingered after hours at the drive-in theater just outside of Larkhill, where no one ever knocked on your window with a flashlight and a badge. The drivein had been closed for a few months now, so they roamed from one abandoned strip mall to another, writing phone numbers on bathroom walls and pay phones in perfect, tidy script.
    A few leered at Jamie through fogged windows. A lone woman scuttled out from the adult video store, white cardboard covering its plate-glass windows. She climbed into her Riviera and began to unwrap a package in her lap. She could not wait to get home. Jamie Garrison tried not to stare at the need exposed so openly around him, wounds dripping with washer fluid and sad, old want. Even now, he still had nothing to give.

8
    â€œHe was always satisfied, my father. Complacent. That’s how I would diagnosis him. Made no sense. For God’s sake, he was born in the Year of the Rat, not the Rabbit,” Mr. Chatterton said. “But not at home. At work they could shit all over him, excuse my language, but at home, nothing was ever right, no one was ever right. Not even the television.”
    Sometimes Moses Moon would dream his father had never run away to sing Bette Midler classics in the Arizona desert. On some nights, after the dull thwap of leaking water beds had faded into a calming tide, Moses Moon dreamed he had a father who would teach him how to fish; a father who would teach him how to swim the butterfly and check the oil in his first car. In the dreams of Moses Moon, his new father was a lecherous professor, a cocky camp counselor, a crotchety TV executive, and a newly minted Ghostbuster, all wrapped up into one unparalleled human being. In these dreams, his true father was always Bill Murray.
    â€œYes, Mr. Chatterton.”
    Logan’s father sat across from Moses, polishing his glasses on the long sleeve of his shirt. The kitchen was quiet and clean but covered in old drawings, tracings from medical textbooks labeled with nonexistent bones and new tendon systems that would increase power while reducing maneuverability. Mr. Chatterton called them works in progress.
    â€œNow my father always did have a thing about interrupting your elders, one of the few tenets I still uphold in this house. He never did listen, though—that was the problem,” Mr. Chatterton continued. “Didn’t listen to my mother or me. No, we always had to listen to him. Always.”
    Logan was still bleeding in the basement. Moses squirmed in his chair, slowly drinking his glass of water. He didn’t want another refill.
    â€œLogan never had to play organized sports. He never had to eat the same goddamn ham sandwich every day either. My wife and I—my former wife and I—we always did our best to let Logan choose his own path. Because rules—do you know