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Things Made Scarce

Robert Crowl

    He kept on putting his things into the suitcase: button-down shirts, t-shirts, socks, jeans, etc.... He was methodical, filling the spaces like a game of Tetris. The mesh pouch on the back of the suitcase was stuffed plump with socks folded like tentacles and crumpled briefs.
    He hadn’t folded them.
    There were empty and half-filled boxes around the house, resembling tiny, cardboard freight cars. All that could be heard was the hsss of the coffee pot as he tread from room to room. He had no need entering some of the rooms, although some of their occupants and fixtures he had wrought. He breathed out, turning toward his dresser, picking up two crude napkin holders. The inside of the fired clay bore a troop number and his son’s initials. He carefully wrapped them in stiff packing paper, depositing them in a nearby freight car.
    Outside, a car door slammed; he lifted the blinds to an empty driveway.
    He returned to the dresser and retrieved an 8x10 picture frame clumsily covered in seashells and dried clumps of hot glue. Inside the frame was an awkward man in a palm tree print shirt the color of a sunset. His stance was deliberate but feigned. His arm was weakly extended to his right, disappearing behind a young girl in a grass skirt and sandals. The bottom of the picture read, “Father Daughter Dance 1994.” He collected another two sheets of newspaper, wrapped the frame, and eased it beside the napkin holders. It tilted and fell pushing the other contents in the box aside like a man with whisky induced motor deficits. The man winced.
    The house was as quiet as the boxes’ destination would be.
    He walked toward the kitchen. Before turning left down the long hallway that opened to the faux tile floor and dining room, he stopped in front of the two doors that led to their rooms. He went left; the brass knob was cold.
    His son’s room was strange, like somewhere he didn’t belong; yet there were traces of him everywhere: the wicker shelf, neatly packed with jewel cases and VHS tapes had been a wedding gift and bore his obsessive neatness, the shirts that hung in the closet, assorted by color, the bed made with military care, and the picture frames hung with leveled precision, as if he was trying to hide something. He looked at the mattress. He pictured his frail boy’s face squished beneath his palm, his knee digging into his son’s squirming spine, the comforter darkening with tears.
    He walked across the hall. There was a dollhouse on his left, occupied by Barbie’s and Kens of every season, an ironic army of perfectly sculpted people. The girl’s no longer played with dolls, innocence fading like the rhodium plating on his wedding ring.
    The kitchen tile was cold on his feet, as he poured himself a cup of coffee. He looked out the window at the grass he’d spent countless hours mowing. He had a ritual: a blue bandana folded neatly and tied snug around his forehead, the paisley border darkening with sweat as the sun ascended, frayed jean shorts, and tennis shoes stained as green as a Heineken label lit beneath a blinking neon. He remembered raking the cropped blades into soft mounds, his son and daughters pouncing on his work. His brow would furrow at these moments of innocence like a man trying to hide something. He’d labor in the heat, his body bright with sweat, chest hair hanging dark and heavy, until every blade was bagged and edge of yard trimmed flush with the concrete. The grass had since crept onto the concrete and toward the sun.
    Outside, he heard the low hum of an idling engine and bolted for the door. The hinges squeaked their irritatingly familiar song, and when he looked through the glass screen, his shoulders sank. Two portly men in black back braces awkwardly hopped from their 26' freight car on wheels. The buttons on their shirts were strained against their stomachs. Their back braces looked like cummerbunds held by suspenders; dressed fine for the great departure.
    He taped up the remaining boxes as they escorted reminders of his presence from the premises. With each box and chair removed, the stranger he felt in those walls. The house was becoming something new.
    The truck door closed with a clink. He was pinned against the window, the two rotund conveyers moist and sour in the small cab. The reverse beep sounded in long, slow tones as the truck eased into the street. The pregnant freight pulled from the station, the packing paper and sweaty escorts hugging things made scarce.

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