"When I tell you to do something, you do it"
Scott’s mother walked into his bedroom wearing a bathrobe and a hair towel. Scott was lying in bed under a light blanket. The bed was surrounded by piles of dirty clothes and empty pop bottles. His mother stepped up to the bed and stripped the blanket off him.
Scott curled into a ball on the bed. He was wearing only briefs, and the bedroom window was open.
“When I tell you to do something,” she said, “you do it.” She took a pack of cigarettes out of her bathrobe. She tapped the pack on her palm to free a cigarette, before pulling it out with her lips.
Scott crawled out of the bed and walked up to the closet. A pile of clothes lay on top of the dresser in the closet. He grabbed a pair of faded blue jeans and a t-shirt from the top of the dresser.
“Where’d you put my lighter?” she mumbled. The cigarette dangled from her lips. She glanced at a pile of clothes on the floor. “And when are you going to clean up this mess?”
Scott shook his head. He walked out of the bedroom, stepping over piles of clothes on the floor.
She took the cigarette out of her mouth. “Don’t you walk away from me,” she said.
He stepped through the hallway and into the living room, and she followed him. He walked past a sofa, a crooked shelf with photo albums, a glass coffee table with a crack down the center, and a new flat-screen television. As he walked into the kitchen, she sat on the sofa and kicked her feet up on the coffee table.
In the kitchen, there were dirty dishes piled in the sink and on the counters. Scott opened the refrigerator door. “What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes narrowing on him.
Scott took a jug of milk from the refrigerator. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“You can eat something when it’s done,” she said.
Scott pounded the jug of milk down on the counter. He stomped to the front door.
“Scott,” she said, as he reached for the doorknob, “don’t just drag it into the backyard. Dig a hole.”
Scott stepped outside and slammed the trailer door behind him. It was a warm August afternoon with a humid South Carolina breeze. Between his trailer and the neighbor’s was a fenced garden, which was overgrown with weeds. Behind the garden and the two trailers stood a rusty red shed.
Scott walked into the garden and took a seat on a mound near the body of a black lab. The lab was lying on its side in the walking path between two beds of cabbage. The dead lab’s pink tongue dangled out of its mouth. Hundreds of tiny white worms wriggled on its fleshy black lips. One of its lidless black eyes looked up at him. Scott studied his reflection in the lab’s black eye.
The neighbor’s trailer door creaked open and then banged shut. A girl from the neighbor’s trailer ran across the yard to the garden. She wore a pink tank top and jean shorts, clothes that hung loose on her slight and bony frame. She halted on the other side of the fence and waved at him. “Hey, Scott,” she said.
“Go away, Louie,” he said.
She smiled at him, exposing her overbite. “I’m going to the mall soon,” she said. “Do you want to come with me?”
“No,” he said. He grabbed a clump of Creeping Charlie that was growing on the mound beside him.
“Bet you do,” she said.
“Bet you don’t care,” he said. He tossed the clump at her face. It missed.
“You’re not very nice,” she said.
Scott hung his head.
“I’ll ask you later,” she said, swinging her right leg over the fence. As she maneuvered to raise the other leg, a barb of wire caught her shorts, and she squealed.
“Watch it,” he said.
“I am,” she said, freeing herself. She strolled over to him.
He pulled up another clump of Creeping Charlie as she sat next to him. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“What does it look like?” asked Scott. He hurled the clump over the garden fence and into the gravel driveway near the trailer.
She glanced at the dead lab and wrinkled her nose. “Your dad’s dog,” she said.
Scott grabbed the lab’s hind legs and dragged it closer to them.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because,” she said, “it’s gross.”
He looked over his shoulder at the shed in the backyard. “I’m going to bury it,” he said. He pointed at her forehead.
She looked up at his finger.
“Don’t follow me,” he said, standing. He walked out of the garden.
A rusty padlock hung from the corrugated steel door of the shed. Scott picked up the padlock and slammed it back on the door. When he turned around, Louie was standing in front of him. “I want to help,” she said.
He walked around her, making his way to the trailer. She followed him. He climbed the stairs up to the deck and opened the front door. His mother was lying on the sofa, her damp hair draped on the sofa cushion. She was watching television. A yellow purse lay on the floor beside her.
She looked up at him. “You done?” she asked.
Scott shook his head. “Where’s the key for the shed?” he asked.
“Your father has it,” she said.
He stepped inside, allowing the door to close behind him. “Guess I’m running to Mick’s for a metal saw,” he said.
She grabbed her wallet out of her purse. She held out a twenty dollar bill to him. “Pick me up a lighter,” she said, looking at the television.
He stepped forward and grabbed the bill.
