Trailer Trash
Call me trailer trash. My double-wide home has sinking floors and bathroom walls covered with creeping speckled black mold. Hard panned clay with a dusting of orange-red powder made perfect for cigarette butts and bullshit comprises my front yard. Rusty bed rails, beer cans, wood pallets, and worn-out tires are stacked as a temple to my being trashy. Maybe a tornado will get it this summer.
My parents let me put this rat hole of a trailer on a dusty acre lot just in the city limits of Plano, Texas. Daddy had bought the land as an investment. It wasn’t too far from an expanding rich people part of town. He was good with most of his investments. I guess I was the exception.
My trailer, like a few other nearby trailers and shacks, was starting to look out of place. I knew it was a matter of time before Daddy would sell the land for a profit and I would have to move.
The day my girlfriend spilled boiling water on my back, I screeched and screamed. Can’t remember if she did it before or after she told me to get a job. I do remember her calling me a lazy bum while pouring. Don’t take hot showers anymore because of it.
I didn’t file charges. After all, she’s right, I should get a job. She wasn’t the first to tell me that. Daddy told me to get a job when I decided not to go to college. It wasn’t long after the boiling water that my girl friend and her kid left me. Since then, the couch has become my bed, beer is my friend, and TV is my love. I always have an icebox next to the couch so I don’t have to get up. When I wake up, the TV is still on, and it’s never before noon. There are always five or six upright and sideways empty beer cans lying askew next to my couch when I get up.
My high school counselor said I had an IQ of 140. Probably would have been better if he told me I was stupid. When my daddy found out, he said, “Such a waste of potential.”
School did bore me. While I did pass with C's, school didn’t really interest me. Got to admit I kind of liked disappointing Daddy. It was entertaining seeing his face when getting a report card of straight C’s.
Daddy never thought much of me. When I was six, Daddy told me that the day I was born there was a turd and a little boy. Chortling, he’d say, “The little boy died.”
He'd also say, "Boy, you’re so lazy; you’d probably shit in bed, shove it off with your foot, and keep on sleeping."
The jokes gave him a good laugh. Daddy is not as smart a man as he thinks. I think he thought the reverse psychology of his jokes would get me off my ass. Or, maybe he just doesn’t like me.
The two hundred dollars a month my mother gives me and selling my car has kept me out of the red. And, since the girlfriend left, I’ve been selling her stuff on eBay. I was glad she left. I consider that a money lagniappe. I like having extra cash. Though all I need is enough money for electricity and beer.
Troy came over about five every afternoon from his work at the potato chip factory. I often impress him by saying, “How’s work at the “solanum tuberosum chip” factory?”
Troy has to work because he has a wife. He lives about a half mile down the road in his trailer, though there are many times a week he passes out and lives in my front yard. Sometimes, he manages to pilfer several bags of chips. We can’t be choosy, but I like it when he steals the BBQ ones. They go well with my cheap Keystone beer.
Troy and I post up in raggedy low to the ground lawn chairs, unless Jake and Tommy come over, in which case they take the chairs and we relocate to the mildewed outdoor couch. Sometimes I call it a settee to impress my friends. Hence, we often plant ourselves in my mildewed outdoor “settee” across from Jake and Tommy. Cooler nights I make a fire. We often spend evenings drinking beer and talking bullshit. Jake brings weed on nights when Troy scores big on the chips. They don’t seem to mind me being a lazy-ass bum as long as I provide them a belly-full of beer.
***
Things changed the day she came into my trailer. Maybe it was who or what she was that changed my life’s passion.
Puffs of orange dirt and a blur of blue and white were the first things I saw coming across my grassless yard. When she got closer, I saw flip-flops, jeans, and a white sleeveless blouse. Through heavy panting, she said, “I’ve got to hide.”
Bravery is not something I aspire to in this world. Subconsciously, I thought, tell her to run along.
I guess it was the puffed lip, swollen red cheek, and a brain fart in the moment—kind of pity—that made me say out loud, “Go inside.”
I wished Troy was here.
I keep the trailer dark. Seems cooler that way. Took a moment for my eyes to adjust. She sat in the middle of the couch where I stretched out to watch TV. Her thin arms stretched across her thighs as she leaned forward. I watched her fingertips tap on her knees. She carried a look of nervous worry.
She said “my name is Lucy.”
I said, “Can I get you a beer?”
Despite the squeaky racket created by opening and closing my cheap trailer screen door, she seemed surprised that she wasn’t alone. After a delay she said, “No thanks. But I’ll take a smoke if you got one.”
Lucky for her, Troy left half a pack of Marlboros with a blue Bic lighter on the kitchen counter. Being a gentleman is not my style, but for her, with alacrity, I shook and held the pack. She looked upward as she slowly pulled the farthest extended cigarette out with her puffed lips. Her upward staring eyes were unusual. Beautiful in a strange way.
Since, my girlfriend left, having a woman in my trailer was not the norm. Having one touch and cup my hand as I held the lighter toward the tip of the cigarette had never happened. I noticed how cold and soft her hand was before saying, “Would you like some ice?”
She smiled before saying, “I usually don’t take ice with my smoke, but okay?”
As I walked toward the freezer, she said, “I hope you don’t mind me smoking in your home.”
I laughed before saying, “Cigarette smoke probably makes this dump smell better.”
I wrapped a dozen cubes in a towel. When I handed it to her, her fingers touched mine. They lingered for a moment and she smiled. I watched as she placed the ice pack on her swollen cheek.
Out of character, I sat next to her as she held the towel in one hand and the cigarette in the other. Watching her, it was rhythmic as she alternated ice pack to cheek and cigarette to mouth.
Once she stopped, she asked my name.
“George, but friends call me Professor.”
She asked, “Professor? Why Professor?”
"I guess I used a few big words around them.”
She stared for a moment before saying, "You do seem a little more erudite than your surroundings.”
I laughed and repeated, "Erudite, that’s me.”
Before she spoke again, I said, “I don’t have a car, but my friend Troy is around. You want us to take you to the emergency room?”
I looked down, embarrassed about not having a car, and noticed her painted toenails. Despite flip-flops, there were a lot of things that convinced me this was a refined woman. The diamond ring and gold necklace had me certain that she was the classiest female to have ever entered this shit hole.
Holding the ice pack to her cheek, she said, “No, I’ve got to go. Just give me a few minutes.”
"Go where?”
She didn’t answer but asked, “What do you do, Professor?”
“I live in my daddy’s trailer and drink beer.”
I could tell she saw no humor. Instead of smiling, she put her hand on my knee, squeezing. She said, “Why do you blame your parents for your predicament?”
What a strange-ass question.
"Don't you blame your parents? . . . Before you answer, I want to say my mother often told me you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”
I smiled and said, “Who were you or your mother talking about?”
"She wasn’t talking about anyone. She was asking me what I was made of and if I could be successful.”
After a pause, she added, “You really need to get your shit together. I know you have so much potential. Maybe you should go back to school or at least get a job.”
What a strange event. This woman who doesn’t know me comes to my trailer and gets presumptively pedantic with me.
As she rested on my couch, her beauty seemed to grow. She wasn’t all that young. Maybe in early thirties she was alluring in an unexplainable way. Her looks became striking with each dimple-induced smile. Despite the imperfection of her swollen cheek, I had become enamored with her looks. I finally figured out the odd thing that stood out about her eyes. She had one blue and one green eye.
It came out without thinking, “You have heterochromia.”
She smiled, showing brilliant white teeth. “I guess you can use big words.”
"I can’t help myself.”
"George, you really should try to make something of yourself. Try not to prove your daddy right.”
Stunned, I asked her, “How do you know how my daddy feels about me?”
Again, she didn’t answer my question. Instead, she said, “Do you really want to live in this trailer and waste your life?”
"Well, what should I do?”
Once again she ignored my question and said, “Professor, it’s time for me to go. Thanks for the smoke and the ice.”
When she left, she flicked the half-smoked cigarette out into my yard. She walked away slower than she came. Standing on my stoop, I heard the popping of the flip-flops spanking the back of her heels. She turned once to wave goodbye. My heart both melted and sank as I watched her seemingly float and fade into nothing.
***
Troy rolled up in his red 2007 Chevy Camaro. He held a wide grin as he pulled out three grocery bags. “Hey Professor, I hit the jackpot for you. Got us six grocery bags of BBQ chips.”
"Wow. How did you manage the pilfered “largess”?”
"Large est? What the hell does that mean?”
"How did you get so many bags of chips?
“You’ve heard me talk about Johnny? He works the bagging conveyor. Anyway, he went to my boss’s house this morning. Heard the cops say he beat her up pretty good before he put a bullet in her stomach. By the time the ambulance got there, she’d bled out. With the mayhem it was pretty easy to get out of there with as many bags as I wanted.”
"Your boss is a her?”
"Yeah. My boss. Only met her once. She was the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the United States. She was quite the looker. Hard to believe with her millions she was single.”
Troy handed me the three grocery bags and went back to his car to grab the other three.
Curious, I said, “Where did she live?”
"Funny you ask. She moved into that ritzy exclusive neighborhood just down the road a month or so ago. She did have one really weird thing about her?
"What's that?”
"Her picture is on the wall as you enter the plant. It’s strange seeing a woman with one blue and one green eyeball.”
Nervous, I said, “That’s really too bad. Got to wonder why someone could get shot over working at a potato chip factory.”
Troy laughed before saying, “How would you know about work? You’ve avoided work all your life.”
Under normal circumstances I might have thought what he said was funny. Not in my nature to get violent. But for the first time anger hit me hard. I swung a lucky fist, managing to knock Troy to the ground.
"Why the hell did you do that?” Troy lay on the ground shaking his head.
I didn’t tell him that it took a ghost to try to set me straight. Besides, I don’t believe in ghosts. I ended up saying, “I don’t know why I hit you, but I think it might be best if you went home tonight.”
Hearing his glass pack mufflers and the crunchy sound of Troy’s redneck red Camaro roll off, I wondered if he took all his chips with him.
The End