Old Ekdal's Influence

            They rarely argued, Roberta and Manuel. Managing a ma-and-pa business for thirty-one years enabled their shared labor to glide into evenings free from the subterfuge that sometimes answers for ‘how was your day?’ By the same token, a little distance from themselves was needed now and then—not an isolated retreat, but a get-away.

            Sales were down, steadily now for the last couple years. No Border Scouts had been a unique kind of store in the old warehouse district south of downtown: all kinds of camping gear for whomever, wherever. When the neighborhood was nicer, young couples would come in to plan their Yosemite road trips. When the ghetto grew, clients ranged from homeless people investing in winterproof sleeping bags to church groups prepping Edenic adventures.

            Autumn was particularly slow, and today they made not a single sale. Manuel nevertheless did the math on their kitchen table, a makeshift office space in their modest house two miles west of the store, still within the city. “It just isn’t worth hanging on to the place, Hon. It’s become an albatross.”

            The old braid of garlic bulbs caught her eye, so she undid it and salvaged some cloves. “We must hang on. We haven’t saved even a leap year’s pension, Manny—I’m planning to outlive that, aren’t you?”

            “Of course, and that’s what the sale of this place will provide—”

            “But who’s gonna buy it? You’ve seen real estate signs on the neighboring buildings that seem like toe-tags on cadavers.”

            “Don’t be so dramatic, Berta.”

            She looked out at the lone box elder in what had been a childless back yard. Its remaining helicopter seeds had long desiccated alongside the yellowing leaves. “I’m going up to the attic,” she announced.

            “Why?”

            “Spring cleaning.” And, because she loved him, “maybe we have a nest egg buried there we’ve forgotten about.”

           

            After an hour Manuel came up, followed by their beagle, trying out the steep steps for the first time. Roberta was immersed in a book despite the dim bulb light; she didn’t look up to note, “you’ll need to carry her back down, you know.”

            Alma, as if understanding, skulked to a tipped-over pram and curled into it to wait out their strange rendezvous. Manuel looked around from his rooted spot, uncertain where he’d want to contrive some curiosity of the packings of their past. So versed in inventory, he tightened his face in the knowledge of how little he knew about these several hundred boxes and things that lived out their value. Maybe that’s what Alma wanted to test out.

            “Have a look at this,” Roberta bid, still not looking up but making space for him to sit. “I read this back in high school, probably when we first started dating.” Manuel sat and cast a glance at the trapdoor that must have been hard to push open, the dust adding weight. “It was my favorite book in English class—The Wild Duck, by”

            “Ibsen. I remember it,” still looking away.

            “Maybe it was before we were steady, ’cuz I don’t remember cramming this with you.”

            “We didn’t cram much back then. Anyway, what did you like about it?”

            She flipped a couple pages previous to the one she’d been reading and started anew: “‘(EKDAL and HJALMAR have gone to the back of the stage, and each of them pushes back one side of the sliding doors. HEDVIG helps the old man; GREGERS remains standing by the sofa; GINA sits quietly sewing.’—that detail I recall starkly—‘The open doors disclose a large, irregularly-shaped attic, full of recesses and with two stove-pipes running up through it. Through the little roof-windows the bright moonlight is pouring in upon certain spots in the attic; the rest of it is in deep shadow.)’”

            “You’re trying to recreate the scene? Is this why you came up?”

            “It’s a coincidence, I think.” She shook her head and turned pages. “Old Ekdal’s got pigeons roosting in the rafters, and rabbits in hutches, chickens running about, even a pond, if I remember, for the wild duck—”

            “To what end? They’re farming from inside?”

            “Hunting, no less, with pistols! Can’t imagine what they’d be targeting.”

            Manuel considered Alma, now asleep. “Foxes, perhaps… Does he bring a hound?”

            Flipping again. “Not exactly. Gregers says he’d reincarnate as a dog to—let’s see—‘go down to the bottom after wild duck, when they dive down and bite fast hold of the weed and wrack in the mud.’ He’s relentless at rooting out a survival strategy.”

            “An attic pond couldn’t be so deep.”

            “No, he’s speaking more cynically—the depths of someone’s secrets.”

            “Like toys in the attic?”

            Roberta raised her head to consider things. “More like toying with the attic. But forget Gregers—he’s a spoilsport in the end. I’ve got an idea based more on Old Ekdal.”

            “You want to transform this place to a farm?”

            “Not this place, but the store—and more like a countryside that would suit wild ducks.”

            “The store? Ours, that’s on its last legs?”

            “Precisely why—we could give it a fitting makeover, make the place feel like the great outdoors. You remember Cabela’s Superstore and how they arranged all their taxidermy to mingle with their customers? Well, we can do one better and bring in something more authentic.”

            “We can’t start a pet store, Berta, let alone zoo—”

            “No, that’s not what I mean. Okay—no wild ducks, but let’s say a pond with koi fish and turtles, and a couple cages of parakeets—no laws against having a few pets. And anyway, we’d focus more on potted trees and grassy areas to have people pitch tents for practice. Maybe a climbing wall to broaden interests—”

            “—you’re talking a lot of liability. You complained we have no retirement savings—”

            “—because we’ve invested so poorly. This could be an investment that pays off, drawing more customers and putting us back on the map.”

            Manny sighed. “We’d have trouble enough sorting our stuff up here.”

            “We don’t have to bother with here—Old Ekdal’s pushing us onward.”

            “What d’you think, Alma?” Hearing her name, the beagle uncurled and waddled over.

            “I think she’d add to the mix.” And carefully, the three of them descended the stairs together.

            Thanksgiving—and Black Friday, strategically—became a reasonable target. Procuring a hydraulic system for two ponds connected by a winding stream was not difficult; the wholesalers who supplied their normal merchandise were quick to give recommendations and discounts. No Border Scouts used to employ counterhelp and stockers when business was better—that feeling of success wafted in with the workers who installed the new features. Manny knew he could do much of their work by himself, but he and Berta were suddenly busy with customers who came in to browse as much as to buy. A buzz was beginning to make its way down the dilapidated streets.

            Though many responded to their ‘help wanted’ sign, Rosita was hired for her experience working in a flower shop that had fallen on hard times. Out of nothing but the burlap bags she brought every day, the store began to bloom. If Old Ekdal would deem the effort incomplete (the koi in the pond kind of paltry), Roberta figured they could bring Alma in to wander around—much better than the doggie depression she probably hid from them at home.

            They all worked late, mid-November. Rosita was met at closing time by her boyfriend Germaine, and the two pretended to sweep up after the windfall of sales—or at least their potential. Germaine even offered to give Alma a walk, as it was going to be tricky policing her not to pee on the trunks of indoor trees. “Thank you, Germaine, but…” Roberta said, hovering ten seconds more on her reluctance before waving consent. She had in the interim imagined a promo to get customers to feel more at home: pitch a tent by themselves, bring in their dog and maybe a bottle of wine, try out a portable stove in stock or broil something in a campfire pit. Some stuff they could give away—the makings of S’mores, for instance—and some they could silent auction to compel a return.

            She shared this idea—‘spend the night in the store’—with Manny, who took the same ten seconds to demur; factoring in the head start they’d have coming to work the next morning, he agreed to give it a test run. “I’ll go to 7-Eleven and pick up some perishables—just to make sure we get home sometime this week!”

            By the time he got back Roberta had pulled from the storage room an outdated satellite dish, some pallets and a hammer to pry apart its planks. Choosing a spot near the twist of the stream, and with a paraffin starter from a survival kit, she sparked a fire and fed it some cardboard kindling. Alma, confused by everything today, retreated to her familiar spot behind the counter and curled up to sleep.

            “She’ll come back for the bratwurst,” Manny predicted, but the day had worn Alma out.

            Roberta hummed at their escapade. “Like we’re kids making a living room fort!” She grabbed some sleeping bags from a shelf and unrolled them inside a display tent. “Is the pond deep enough for a skinny dip?” she joked.

            “Maybe after our Cabernet—”

            “Sauvignon? from 7-Eleven?”

            “Buy one, get one free. We gotta start practicing these business tactics!”

            They didn’t down both bottles, but had a good time trying. Then, as the embers glowed in the satellite dish, tiptoeing theatrically so as not to wake Alma, they giggled their way into the tent and went wild.

            New Year’s Eve, for the first time in memory, was something to plan for. “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Manny warned half-heartedly, trying not to smile with Roberta. “We’re still providing a lot of loss-leaders—”

            “We’ve lured people into the store. Yeah, they’ve taken more than their share of S’mores, but—”

            “They love your signs,” Rosita chimed from the counter. “That’s what they say when I ask them ‘what brings you here?’”

            “I don’t need them to be loved; just to be wondered about.”

            Now Manuel relaxed his face and reflected on the teamwork. They had hired Germaine, a little down on his luck, to clean up the storage room and manage inventory after hours. Naturally that led to Rosita’s time-and-a-half that she carefully never tabulated, and the two of them camped in some nights in their new-fashioned way. And that meant the store’s twilight founders could go home at a reasonable hour, cook on their own stove, catch up on old movies and craft more a vision. Roberta’s signs, for example, were really the pull-apart lines to a jingle she wrote. She went to Kinko’s to laminate sixteen pages and attached them to streetlights and telephone poles from a mile east of the store and a mile west. She also stenciled paw prints—a left and a right—and applied wash-away spraypaint to track them between the signs:

                        Follow the paw prints into the store.

She was conscious to post that lead far enough away from an obvious rival.

                        Senses excite—you want to explore

‘what’, you might ask? This was the passer-by question.

                        All sorts of gear and guidance, it seems:

                        Agents of nature await your dreams.

Manuel thought that maybe ‘angels’ would be the better fit—he didn’t want to specify Rosita, exactly—but agreed in the end that they wouldn’t want the signs to sound maudlin. That said, the next signs confessed:

                        Given to goosebumps, heartaches to go

                        Onward and outward, safely and slow,

maybe a risk—where were these cryptic signs going? and who’d want a hurt heart?

                        Winter is summer somewhere right now;

somewhere. So what?

                        Follow the paw prints to find out how.

They placed all eight lines together in some newspaper ads, with tiny paw prints to their address. Of millions of people in the urban area, they hoped to attract a few new pedestrians and wistful readers of the classifieds. A website at this juncture was beyond them, and perhaps beside the point.

            “What if all these wanderers want to come to our New Year’s camp-out?

            “Just like the silent auction after Thanksgiving,” Roberta offered, “they’d have to qualify. And bring their own gear—or buy ours. That’s their ticket in.”

            “And their ticket out?”

            “We can activate the ceiling sprinklers for a rainy touch of realism. Plus it would water the trees.”

            “They’re still mostly saplings—”

            “All the more reason to give them a thunderstorm.”

            So it happened, let pass by any patrol cars that could check the business license against public sleepovers. More risky were the campfires—three burning strategically behind the pillars and ponds, which plateaued from the concrete floor and remained stable by mounds of packed soil—landscaping courtesy of Germaine. He also installed rotary fans high up those pillars to swirl the smoke toward ventilation windows; still, the smoke detectors would have to be switched off in the good faith that everybody would be vigilant.

            Music was ad hoc: Manny six-stringed the folklore he always did whenever he and Roberta managed to get out of the city—Pete Seeger sort of stuff. One of the guests hustled home to get another guitar, promising a Los Lobos ensemble. Another wish unanswered in America was a line lost in the shuffle of “One Time, One Night”, but Roberta heard it and felt a need to check on Alma. A segue to “La Bamba” got others on their feet, and in a matter of time a playlist was hooked to the retooled car stereo system to blast tunes toward midnight. Germaine’s friends took it over with Kendrick Lamar, “Alright” being a stark way to usher in the new year. What you want you: a house or a car? Forty acres and a mule? Tonight the want was nothing more than this unlikely urban chicken coop, and the hope that we gon’ be alright.

            Pissing away the liquor could happen in the storage room toilet, or just as easily in the alley that allowed a periscope to the firework sky, near and far. A bonfire there spilled the party where it was more natural, uncontained. Rosita pushed the disinclined-to-sleep in that direction, encouraging the others to bed down as 1 and 2am would have it. “I’m surprised there are no children here,” she observed, if not to get a reaction from Roberta, still holding Alma in her lap.

            “I’m not surprised. Most of those who’ve come are barely planning families.”

            “But I thought those paw prints were a good touch toward…”

            “Toward what?”

            Rosita heard her name called from the alley. She asked if Alma needed a new year’s walk, but, in these circumstances…, “I get it. She’s seen less of these hyped-up turns at age sixteen, yet in dog years…”

            “In dog years, she’s eighty-five. But what did you mean by ‘toward’?”

            “I don’t know,” Rosita shrugged. “Toward getting more kids to camp.”

            Manny came over to take Alma out the front door for a new year’s walk. “Wanna join us?” he extended a hand to his wife.

            Roberta looked at Rosita, as if she needed some permission. “The store won’t implode without us, will it?”

            Rosita considered that, and decided to say, “the world’s at party anyway. Why don’t you three take the season’s victory lap that should be satisfied.”

            And blocks and miles they did, unleashed as the years would have it.

            They walked home, slept in familiarity, and greeted the morning with all trust that Rosita and Germaine had held down the fort. Since they had driven there yesterday (last year, literally), they’d have to hoof it and hope the car was still safe and sound. They gave Alma the day off—a national holiday, after all—and told her to ‘watch the house’, as they always did, a running joke that she’d just as soon watch the wallpaper than anything remotely scheming to invade it.

            They came back to a No Borders more or less in disarray. The front door was closed but unlocked, the campfires smoldering and unminded. Tents were invariably used for the night, yet sprawling outside of them were some of Germaine’s friends, one on the counter—Manny cringed at the sight—using the cashier machine as a pillow. “We should have set down a semblance of law.”

            Roberta marched to the pond to check that the koi were okay. Floating atop the drainage pond were a dozen aluminum cans and a constellation of Cheetos, but no dead fish. A knocked-over row of potted trees seemed less likely to survive, especially those that had branches torn away for green attempts at kindling. Manny went to the back room to get a broom and dustpan, and clanked them together on his way back to serve as a reveille. Rosita stretched out of the central tent and chimed her best “hey… happy new year’s… everybody.”

            “Slaphappy, it seems,” dead-panned Manny. He couldn’t help smiling in how she emerged, earnestly enough. Roberta, to establish a difference, went over to push the interloper off the sanctity of the counter.

            “For fuck’s sake,” he mumbled awake, then quickly made himself scarce with two others who didn’t want to answer for anything. Germaine remained in the tent, stubborn or ashamed.

            Some older customers had already left—perhaps while Manny and Roberta had been on their walk; others came out of their tents and shuffled through attempts to clean up—‘leave the campsite better than you found it’—and small-talk their thanks for letting them stay the night. “You followed the paw prints a couple times already,” Roberta reminded, “and you know we’ll always be here,” giving them a customized calendar with coupons designed for each month. They took a cup of coffee once it was brewed, put a few bills in the tip jar, didn’t buy anything “for now”, and waved good-bye.

            Only then did Germaine make an appearance with a brusque “Is he gone?”

Manuel assumed himself as the reference, but Germaine brushed a heedless awareness of him and repeated the query directed at Rosita.

            She looked around and shrugged. Germaine stood rooted, adding contrast to the trees that needed uprighting. She also didn’t move, but softened into Roberta’s clasp of her biceps from behind. Manny picked up one tree and asked Germaine to help refill the soil, which he did after twenty more seconds of stare-down.

            “What’s this about?” Roberta whispered as they pulled themselves to the coffee pot.

            “I don’t know… well, I can imagine, but I don’t…”

            “Shut up over there!” Germaine shot out, startling Manuel most of all.

            The store became frozen—only the trickle of faux stream continued as if escaping the grip of some glacier, suddenly found. Rosita didn’t want to comply, but also didn’t know what else to say, especially if Roberta didn’t require of her anything more. They wiped down the counter and reset the displays as if they’d be open for business today, which of course on New Year’s wouldn’t happen.

            Manuel dithered around for a few minutes, then sifted debris out of the water and asked Germaine to dump all the ashes into a box in the alley. He followed him out to see if he’d talk. “Don’t want to, man.”

            “Fair ’nuf. But there’s Rosita in there, probably upset—”

            “She should’ve thought about that last night.”

            “What do you mean? We left you two at the height of happiness—”

            Germaine flipped his wrists. “She makes everyone happy. So happy.”

            Manuel was baffled. “Are you jealous or something? Did she not seem herself or,…or were you not yourself?”

            “Why you talkin’ this shit? I told you I didn’t want to, and this is why.”

            “Well, that’s not good enough, Germaine. I can handle the broken branches of trees that should have survived as innocent bystanders, but I won’t tolerate an unexcused ‘shut up’ in my store. It’s a day off—you don’t need to be here—so I suggest you give it some time and start the new year better tomorrow. We just entered a leap year, anyhow—sort of a mulligan if the year was a round of golf.”

            Germaine looked at the door to go in, then brushed by Manuel to walk down the alley. “Round of golf,” he scoffed. And Manny, too, doubted the reason for such an analogy.

            He went in to the sanctum of the store and the Ro’s as he started to see them: the mother of their dream daughter, all grown up. Or not so grown up, if her proxy parents assumed in the morning’s confusion such furrowed brows.

            They decided to go home together and cook up a duck that had been in the freezer since hunting season—given to them by a customer, as they themselves didn’t hunt. “Be sure to throw Alma the gizzard, a dog’s delight.”

            And by half-time of the Rose Bowl on TV, they did just that, laughing—all three—for the fact that the new year was beginning to be a thing to… give thanks for.

            Business was better—certainly not booming—heading towards Arbor Day. The ‘Paw Prints’ ad morphed into a radio spot with hired musicians (led by that fan of Los Lobos), and Roberta reinforced the signs and spray paint, which had never met with municipal contention. They’d host another in-store camp-out to promote the planting of trees—now in large garden boxes that Manny and Felix, who replaced Germaine, had made for the occasion. The 3’x12’s lined the front and left side of the store, where lighting was best, and spilled into the alley and sidewalk area, again without asking permission. Who would, just to get taxed on the project?

            Rosita had moved into Manny and Berta’s house, partly because she couldn’t pay rent in the absence of Germaine (who’d paid a pittance, anyway). Their break-up had something to do with competing attentions on New Year’s Eve, if tangibles were harder to pinpoint. “He was as kind as you saw him, taking care of the store. He didn’t drink much and was bothered when his friends went over the line. But then he’d do so, too. Kind of drunk without liquor, brewed out of the blue.”

            “Did he ever hit you?”

            “No, but he paced around like he would.”

            Manny came in from walking the dog. “Who would?”

            “Nothing,” Roberta covered. “No one, I mean.”

            “Doesn’t sound like it.”

            “Germaine,” said Rosita, “would pace like a panther sometimes.”

            Any needed context was not going to come without questions, and rather than those, they resorted to planning for Arbor Day. The focus this time would be more on kids—a bouncy castle out in the alley, a couple swings hung from the rafters, fishing rods for magnetized plastic koi, and their own garden plot in the form of a sandbox, with mock-seedlings to plant, like their moms and dads would attempt for real.

            Felix and his girlfriend, Maria, organized most of the program, letting Manny, Roberta and Rosita handle the business ends. This time, they projected, there would be clearer pay-off for those they’d invite and what would be gained. There’d be a curfew, for one thing, posted along with other authentic campground rules: the campfire would be contained to the alley—the weather would be nicer this night, anyway—and trash would be better disposed of. Music—including the chance of an encore Lamar—would stay unplugged, as the store was truly looking much more like a forest, away from ‘the grid’.

            Alma would camp there again: when asked by Rosita, she lifted her graying eyebrows and stretched herself up, glad to be wanted by this new sister in the house.

            They didn’t anticipate Germaine and his friends showing up. It was already dark, some of the children asleep, and songs in the alley were winding down. Manuel stepped away from the fire when he recognized them, and stated in a level voice, “it’s a closed event—”

             “—Just followin’ the paw prints, Pops.” This from the guy who had slept on their counter. His buddy laughed, encouraging more lip: “besides, the alley aint closed, ’specially for unlicensed bonfires.”

            Germaine shushed him down with a look and tried to shake Manny’s hand, who wasn’t ready for that, all considering. “Hey, it wasn’t a great way to go—we heard about this on the radio and, well—”

            “We wanted to stop by,” the first friend finished, softening his tone.

            “Is this the one you were jealous of that night?” Manny kept looking at Germaine while thumbing at his friend.

            “Nah. That was overblown anyway—Rosita would be the first to agree.”

            “Not so sure.”

            “Well, call her out and see.”

            “I can’t have trouble—it’s a different night than New Year’s—”

            Germaine nodded and turned to mumble a scram to his friends, who shrugged and alley-catted away. “Business been good?”

            “We aint getting rich;… and we got nothing to pay protection for.”

            “That’s not what I meant,” Germaine smiled, “though I’m flattered to be likened to a don.” They stood for a half-minute before Manny could also offer a smile. Germaine picked this up. “We did follow the paw prints, honest.”

            “No offense to your friends, but they come off as a pack, or posse.”

            “In their own way they’d want to apologize, as well as say thanks. Or—more to the point—I wanted to do that.”

            Manny then held out his hand for the deferred shake. He sauntered back to the fire and joined a last verse of “If I Had a Hammer”, making a little room for Germaine. They tacitly calculated the imminent moment Roberta or Rosita would come out, naturally awkward. Instead of them, Felix exited the store with Alma on an unnecessary leash. He nodded at his boss to express the obvious, then a naïve hello to Germaine, never having met him.

            “New guy,” Manny explained, “doing alright.” Germaine seemed to accept that, his mind on the glow of the campfire.

            When Rosita emerged a little later, she was in a bit of a panic: “did anyone see the dog?” She stopped in her tracks at the sight of Germaine.

            “Not the dog you’re looking for,” he tried to charm, “but Alma’s okay.”

            “Felix took her for a walk,” Manny supplied.

            Rosita was nonplussed. “Why would you come tonight, of all times?”

            “Won’t stay—just wanted to… wish it success.”

            And he didn’t linger more than the campfire glowed, Rosita allowing his answers to her questions, and vice versa, to have this space. Felix returned with Alma and joked about some ‘summer camp magic’ which probably fell on deaf ears. Rosita wasn’t going to fall to tricks or sudden sparkle. But she would ask Roberta advice when she came back in, alone.

            “See how it goes, Honey. It’s spring, you know—spring of your life, too.”

            A few weeks later, by arrangement, they had Germaine over for dinner. He’d stopped in at the store and offered to do some work, gratis, which Felix would have welcomed in the sales that anticipated an auspicious summer. Manuel held off on that, though, preferring to log his own overtime to keep Felix happy. He didn’t want to resort to the phrase ‘don’t upset the apple cart’, if that was exactly what came to mind.

            They were working hard for Memorial Day weekend—another promo, if not a need for a sleepover. Their habit had been to order take-away after closing hours, even Saturday, and so the only time they saw their house in daylight was Sunday, a day they hadn’t ever opened up for business, though this Memorial Day might demand a difference. They had a couple Sundays still to decide.

            Germaine brought flowers and a bottle of port. “Should have thought of Alma, though.”

            “She’s particular about her bones,” Roberta said. “Her teeth are wearing out, you know.”

            Manuel let her out to the little backyard, watched her sniff around the base of the box elder, then picked out a couple beers from the fridge. The MLB game of the week was on—Dodgers at home against the Cubs—and after glib assurances that they weren’t sexist sloths to watch TV while the women toiled in the kitchen, they claimed their spots in the living room. The labor was down to watching the oven, anyway, which Manny had done well to stoke.

            Soup was interrupted by a call Germaine had to take, apologetically, and after five minutes he returned, trying not to frown. The port had been opened and he offered to fill glasses again, even though his was the only one drained. They picked up a thread of the previous conversation, then Rosita’s phone hummed, and she looked at it and pressed the display quiet.

            “Who was that?” Germaine asked.

            “No one. No one you know.” It rang again and she answered in rushed hushes, “I’m at dinner right now…” and stood up not to keep talking, rather to put the blame thing in the buffet drawer that harbored silverware for special occasions—emptied a bit for this very dinner.

            Germaine took his phone out and handed it across, gesturing for her to put his with hers. “Phones at the table are rude, we can see.” And, grinning a bit awkwardly, Manny took out his to do the same.

            “Mine’s in my purse, wherever that is,” joked Roberta. “And Alma’s?”

            “Holy smokes—she’s still outside,” Manny realized, and beelined to call her in.

            “Springtime—no matter,” Roberta waved off.

            “Spring of her life, too?”

            Germaine wasn’t smiling at any of this. “Who’s calling you so urgently?”

            Rosita turned to Manuel. “Who’s winning, Dodgers or Cubs?”

            “Is it Felix?”

            “Cubs, last I looked.”

            Germaine pressed the point. “I don’t care if it’s Felix, but at least you can be polite—”

            “Why would it be Felix?” Roberta interjected. “He and Maria—”

            “Be polite? Seriously?”

            “You ignored me right there.”

            She doubled up on his premise. Dessert would be rhubarb crisp with cool whip, and now would be as good a time as any to serve it up. As Rosita got up, so did Manuel—not to the kitchen, but to check out the score. “Dodgers, now, two outs in the eighth,” he called out.

            Roberta sat with Germaine. Her face told him ‘don’t sulk’ and his all the more sulked back. “I gotta use the john. May I?”

            The downstairs bathroom was through the kitchen, so Roberta pointed him upstairs, “first door on the right.”

            Half-way through their rhubarb crisp, Germaine had yet to come down. “This is nonsense,” announced Rosita as she went upstairs and turned left, where her bedroom light was on. Roberta and Manny listened with their forks half-raised, then tacitly agreed with their eyes to ‘let them work it out.’

            Whatever it was, wasn’t working. Voices through closed teeth became an unabashed argument, and Roberta sighed a need to umpire the situation. Manuel cleared the table—dinner evidently done—and selected some vittles for Alma’s bowl. The noise upstairs subsided for a while, Roberta’s presence helping, and Manny lumbered to the living room to see the top of the ninth.

            Rosita’s scream was so abrupt and quickly muffled that Manny, almost napping, didn’t process it at first. Roberta’s shout and pleas that followed got the old man on his feet and dashing up the stairs. Arms were like starfish, freakishly large. Germaine had drawn a Ruger and held it against Rosita’s temple. “Get out!” he shouted as Manuel spilled in.

            Roberta put up her hands and panted “no”, looking only at Rosita.

            “Germaine, let’s go downstairs, it’s..., c’mon.” Manuel stammered.

            He seemed to reflect. “The opposite—you two stay in here. Rosie and I go away. Get away from the door—stay near the dresser or I’ll shoot!”

            He slid out the door clutching Rosita, crying in fear and apology. A split-second later Manny sprung from the room and tackled the two in the hallway. He pinned Germaine’s body but couldn’t disarm him as the Ruger fired. “Get up to the attic!” Manny yelled, wrestling Germaine toward the stairs.

            Rosita froze before Roberta grabbed her arm and pulled her up like an anchor to the attic trapdoor. “Shouldn’t we pile on him?”

            “Get up here! Now!” Roberta was about to close them inside but happened to witness Manny kicking Germaine down the stairs. Manny considered a lunge toward him, but ran to the trapdoor instead.

            “To the back—over there!” he ordered, and shut the three of them in. He tumbled over a stack of boxes to serve as some lock, rumbling them against Germaine’s howl as the latter gathered his vengeance from the ground floor. “What else is heavy?” he spit out the question, and then in a hush: “stay there—don’t let him hear where you are.”

            Guessing as much, two shots tore through the floor—one through the trapdoor, another obliquely toward the back of the house, shattering the glass of the lone window. Manny put all of his weight upon the largest box he had tumbled, and turned toward the Ro’s in a gesture of prayer.

            Germaine cursed and pounded the trapdoor with a sense that he somehow could burst through. A bullet pierced the box that Manny sat upon, and as a result he tumbled headlong into the tipped-over pram. Another shot followed, then a ram of body weight that jostled the boxes more.

            Thereafter, qualified silence: a tip-toe down the steep stairs, and anywhere else the shooter might go; a cry from the Ro’s thinking Manny was dead, his no worries wave from the pram which proved otherwise. “What about Alma?” one of them uttered, barely out loud.

            The Ruger went off deeper into the house, and hours went by in the minutes that listened.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2017)