Decatur 38
David Caylor
Decatur, Illinois. Todd was fourteen years old, and his family- his mother, his ten year old half-brother Cory and himself- were medium poor. They always had food but never went out to dinner. They never went on vacation. Todd and Cory had the same mother and different fathers, and Cory had another half-brother. Ron was nine years old. Cory’s father was the same as Ron’s, but Ron had a different mother. They lived four trailers down in forty-two. For a long time Todd thought Ron was his quarter-brother because the math made sense to him. Now he knew this wasn’t right. “But still,” Todd thought, “Ronnie is Cory’s brother so that’s something.” Most of the time Todd thought none of this mattered because all three of them hardly ever saw their fathers.
Todd was sitting in the living chair wearing an old U.A.W. t-shirt his father had left behind. The shirt had just started to fit this summer, Todd realized he had grown at least two inches and gained weight. Cory hadn’t put a shirt on all summer and was lying on his stomach on the floor. He held his head up with his hands to watch television. During the middle of this, their uncle pushed open the front door with a twenty pound bag of potatoes.
“Where’s your mom at?” the uncle asked looking down the hallway that led from the living room to the boys’ bedroom, the mother’s and then the bathroom, in that order.
“She went to that lady’s house. Her friend.” Cory said, still holding his head in his hands.
“What’s she doing there?” the uncle said, swinging the potatoes onto the kitchen floor.
“She went there this morning probably for all day,” Cory said. The man grabbed an envelope from the stack of mail to write a note.
“Todd, make sure she sees this,” he said scribbling. Todd didn’t look away from the television. “Todd, show her this note,” he waved the envelope in the boys direction.
“Yeah, alright, I will. Don’t make such a big deal about it,” Todd said pushing the hair out of his eyes. The uncle cleared his throat and leaned against the counter for a minute.
“I gotta get back to work,” he said. The man left the trailer, and Todd got up right away to read the note.
Jane:
School starts for the boys on Wed. I left $50 on the refrig. get the boys a haircut and stuff for school.
Steve
Todd slid his hand across the top of the refrigerator until he found the bill.
“Hey Cory, come look at his fifty,” Todd said holding the bill out in the air. He held the bill between them with two hands as they stood on the kitchen floor looking down at it.
“Who’s Grant?” Cory asked.
“I think he was in the army, then he was president.”
“Is it mom’ s?”
“Steve left it here for us to get school stuff with,” Todd said. “Haircuts too.”
Teachers in Illinois schools can tell who the trailer park kids are. These kids get put in low level reading class, wear jeans that are either too big or too tight, don’t join sports teams, have older brothers, steal their parents’ cigarettes, have long hair and some get free hot lunch. They squint at the blackboard from the back of the classroom, move in groups, and never talk about dogs because a dog won’t fit in a trailer.
But the thing is these kids don’t cause that much trouble; that’s just a rumor.
Cory was back in the living room, sitting in front of the television again. Todd stood in the kitchen longer, put the money back on the refrigerator and also went back to the living room.
“What are you going to do tonight?” Cory asked.
“I’m gonna go swimming- if mom will give me the fifty cents and I can find that tape I borrowed off Woodward. He’s gonna kill me if I don’t give it back to him sometime today.”
“You still got that?”
“Yeah. Well, it’s around here someplace,” Todd said looking around the messy trailer from the e-z chair, but really still thinking about the money.
“Is he gonna beat you up?”
“No, he just thinks I lost it and is pissed off. Change the channel. This is stupid.” Cory reached up and switched from four to seven, to a game show where the first person gives clues and the second tries to guess what he is talking about was on.
“Go to twelve,” Todd said.
“No, I like this.” Todd picked a magazine up off the floor and started flipping through it.
“What tape is it anyway?” Cory asked.
“Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
“Is he any good?”
“It’s a whole band not just one guy.”
“Are they any good?” Cory asked, turning his head toward Todd.
“Yeah, they’re these Southern guys. They’re really cool. Their plane crashed, and a couple of them died.” The game show ended. The team of one man and one woman beat the team of two men. Cory got up and went down the hallway of the trailer.
He was back a minute later wearing a white t-shirt and carrying his tennis shoes.
“When do you think Mom will take us to get that stuff?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“I’m gonna go tell Ronnie.”
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him we might go tomorrow.”
“What for? He’s not going with us,” Todd said.
“Yeah, he’ll go with us with the money Steve left.”
Todd waited to make to sure that he understood. tie was always explaining things to Cory, how to open a combination lock, how to bend a snow fence so you can crawl under it. How, if they are going to test your eyes at school and you don’t want to have to wear glasses get in line behind a kid already wearing glasses and just repeat the letters they said when it’s your turn.
“No, Steve only left the money for me and you,” Todd said.
“For Ronnie too.”
“No.”
“Why not,” Cory asked flipping the hair out of his eyes by jerking his head back quickly.
“Because me and you are brothers, and Ronnie is your brother, but he’s not mine. Steve is Mom’s brother,” Todd told Cory. He’s our uncle,” he said pointing back and forth between Cory and himself. “Steve doesn’t have anything to do with Ronnie.”
“But Ronnie is my brother, he’ll get something too,” Cory said.
“He’s your half brother, same as me. But Ronnie’s not my brother at all. Me and him have totally different moms and dads.”
“He’s your cousin,” Cory said pulling up his loose jeans.
“No, he’s not even that. Listen, mom is our mom, mine and yours, and we have different dads from each other,” Todd said.
“Right,” Cory said.
“So Mom is our mom, and Steve is only mine and your uncle. So the money is only for me and you because it’s from him.”
“Still Ronnie gets some of it because of....”
“Just forget it. I’ll have Mom tell you when she gets home.”
“I don’t even want her to,” Cory said, slumping onto to the carpet.
