Story 1

Adam would always go see him on the pretense of playing with his kids. But he didn’t much like the kids. They were dirty faced little urchins. When he walked up to the trailer they were always sitting in the dirt. Looking up with idiot eyes. Drooling. Matted hair stuck to their dirty faces. The yard was a riot of broken parts. Machines in various states of disrepair. Cars. Dishwashers. A pile of plastic trash that was meant to be burnt but never was.

Dwain lived in a beaten trailer on an asphalt road. Adam lived up the hill. Adam would go to him, and just walk in the house. He would often be sitting at the table, drinking, smoking. Downturned eyes. Flies buzzing. The kitchen vomiting the stench of the rotting food that had long since clogged up the sink. Adam would just pull up a chair and sit down, and Dwain would start talking. He talked of two things only. His ex-wife and the kids. He had been a truck driver when they were married. He was gone for long stretches of time. He was a convict so he said that was the best he could do. His uncle owned the trucking company so he was thankful to have that.
In those days, he said, they fought all the time. He would come home and they would fuck first and fight not long afterwards. She wanted him to be in town. She was lonely. Plus raising kids was no easy chore. But he couldn’t find a job in town. Especially in Woodville, a tiny hamlet carved out of the Big Thicket. There wasn’t much work around. Most folks in town worked at the saw mill, but they would not hire him on account of his record.

Well, it got worse and worse. He started smoking speed to keep him up on long hauls. When he came home he was tweeked, strung out, could hardly get it up. So the sex stopped, and she thought he had been fucking lot lizards, so he was worn out. But it was the speed. The shit clogs up the veins down there he complained.

Adam would just sit a listen. He liked the smell of the whiskey and cigarettes. Sometimes his oldest daughter would be around. Adam liked her too. She was always dressed skimpily. Even at 11 Adam knew what the status was.

He would always complain that she was like her mother. “Girls only dress like that for one reason” he said, “and it ant cuse its hot. You see these little hoocies in that shit in the winter time. They want to get nailed. That’s the long and the short of it. Not long after she got pregnant and she never came around.”

In the fall Adam came was coming home from school and saw as the police and the ambulance their. The cops were standing around with the paramedics Adam ran down to the corner as fast as he could when the bus dropped him off. Dwain had took a handful of Vacitin, chased it with a bottle of whiskey, and died in his sleep.