So much wisdom was balled up in the eye roll of the father as he beheld the day.
“Well,” he said. “I guess we gotta go do laundry today.”
They were in America, the land of “tryin’ to get this day over with.”
The kid hung close to his father, mimicking all of his movements, all of his facial expressions. Intermittently, the dad would twitter at the radio angrily, discontent with all of the fluff, the typical capitalistic fanfare, that was coming out of it.
The kid noticed the big hole in the ground.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I dunno.”
A silence ensued.
“Yeah,” continued the father. “I always wondered about that too. I’ll look it up when we’re at Courtesy.”
Courtesy was the name of the laundromat.
The dad started to get nervous a little bit, and started to get the shakes. Plus, he was thinking of Tracy a little bit, this brunette who worked at courtesy. He was a little low on funds, otherwise he’d go pick up a couple of donuts, and a couple of pint cartons of milk, for him and the kid. Luckily, the kid wasn’t saying anything about being hungry or anything. After laundry, it would be back home, where they’d turn on the TV, probably to the news, and witness all the bombings and drudgery going on all across the world. Then, in three days, the kid went back to school. Thank God for that, thought the dad. I’ll be damned if I know what to do with him.
One thing was for sure: fighting was good. All of the virtue furnished in America at this time was more or less directly derivative of military achievements. The other hemisphere of values involved marijuana, and given the slowness of things, the novelty appeal of the fact that the drug had so recently been illegal had yet to wear off. Caring about stuff, or not caring about stuff, were the essential formats of the human mind. On, or off. And look cool, doing either one, and honey, if you’re on, it’s sure hard to look cool.
The dad could sense Tracy smiling at him, but his hands were fidgety down at the change machine, and he avoided her glance. Plus, Christ, he thought, I’m married. But my hands are still shaking, he thought. God must not care about marriage.
The kid was playing this game where he tried to actually run up the wall, sort of like Spider-Man might do. He’d noticed that his dad’s hands were shaking, but he didn’t want his dad to know that he’d noticed. He was just running up the wall, dragging down the heavens, demanding their attention.
Suddenly they heard some clamor from over in the corner. It was coming from some bald dude, and he was issuing an aggressive directive at some old dude.
“Hey, knock it off, motherfucker!”
Some people around him noticed, and all of a sudden their dispositions were cheery. This was a newsworthy event, they thought to themselves. Perhaps even later, they thought, the incident will end in a murder, and channel 10 will show up with cameras. Then they can tell their grandchildren this story of today, that they witnessed, not just any news, but THE news, firsthand, and they didn’t even have to turn on the television. It just fell into their lap, like— like— something they wouldn’t even know the sight of, if it bit them in the god damned face.
Proceeding, Tracy had to go over to the two men and break them up, threatening to call the cops. Outside, some snow started to fall on the gray day. The kid liked snow, and he started peering out at it, as the dad tried to figure out how to afford some donuts, ‘cause he knew it wasn’t long before the kid got hungry. Christ, he thought, what if things would have turned out differently. Like if maybe they lived out in California, or something, or Arizona. He’d heard there was less unemployment out there. But there was no snow out there, and here he was, sitting by his well-behaved kid who got hypnotized just looking at snow, and looking over, he saw Tracy smiling at him, running a hand through her hair. He gazed brusquely back at her and then looked down. Eggshells over the giant hole at the side of the road.