Chapter 1: Home
I slowly trudge up the stairway, fumble around with the keys, and then remember the apartment door isn’t locked, so I slowly turn the knob and the door silently creeps open. The place looks straight out of 1979. The kitchen light was left on, sending a low glow through the living room, reminding me that the living room carpet, was, in fact, still a shade of deep auburn and matted down into paths where travel always happened. I walk in, loosening my tie, as I walk to the fridge, an ancient Kenmore that has had a noisy fan for about a decade, yet still will freeze the milk, and I open the door, pull out a longneck Budweiser, and open it, taking a sip.
“You always liked it from bottles, didn’t you?” I murmur to myself. I close the fridge, looking at all the magnets on the door, holding scribbled down notes on torn scraps of paper, some barely legible, others almost disintegrating from hanging there for so long. I smile as I skim through some of the notes, remembering how many tasks all needed to be done. It was a never ending list.
I take another sip of my beer as I work my way to the couch. That poor couch, formerly a off white and blue floral pattern print, now draped with old chocolate brown blankets, and with a permanent dent on the left end of it, from years of falling asleep with the late night news playing. I avoid the dent, sitting on the right end of it, looking over at the old tube style console TV. I remembered playing Super Nintendo on the same TV as a kid, sitting way too close, as the screen sat nearly on the floor right in front of me, struggling to get through Super Mario World’s Forest of Illusion before it was bedtime. The thick carpet wasn’t so matted back then.
As I finish my beer and set it on the end table, Babe slowly and silently crawls onto the couch next to me, stretching out, and setting her head on my lap. Her deep brown eyes look up at me, I can see the sadness in them, and I knew exactly how she felt without even saying a word.
“I know, Babe” I look down at her, her face resting against my leg. I feel a tear begin to swell in my own eye, but I fight it back. Pops always told me there’s no shame in crying, but there’s no need in crying over things that can’t change. Yup, I remember, pops.
I get back up to go get myself another beer, and as I walked past the counter, I pulled the big pile of keys out of my pocket and tossed them on the countertop. No, the ring wasn’t full of keychains or black plastic key fobs like the one for my Ford Escape, it was filled with old, worn keys, some long door keys, others short padlock keys, some copper, others silver, one in the middle of it all that was spray painted cherry red at one point, but only a remnant of the red paint still remained. Those keys had seen a lifetime of use already. As that thought rolled through my head, the tears swelled up, and this time, I couldn’t fight it, one let go and ran down my cheek. Time for another beer, James. I swing open the fridge, pull out another longneck, toss the cap on the counter, and start to chug it, hoping to drown my thoughts in the lager. But there wasn’t enough booze in the bottle. There wasn’t enough booze in the entire town of Luxberg.
I slam the fridge door in anger, all the notes fall off the door and flutter to the ground, almost like watching the leaves fall on a cool October windy day. I sink to the ground, holding the empty bottle against my head, the tears blurring my vision. Babe looks over at me, from the couch, silently wanting to help, but knowing I need room.
“God dammit Pops!” I yell in anger. The bottle flies from my hand, against the fridge, shattering into pieces and scattering into the notes strewn across the yellow linoleum floor. “Why did you do this to me? Why did you send me away, and then drag me back here? WHY??”
There was no answer to the question, no matter how loud I yelled ‘why’ through my sobs. Pops never answered me. Pops never would answer me again, because today, I stood there as they put pops in the ground.
Welcome home.
