Michael Credico ~ Bulk

We would come to blows we got so bored. On bulk pick­up day, we rum­maged the tree lawns and the alleys. We plucked a water­logged gui­tar. It had two rust­ed strings that broke. We snapped them against our wrists until we broke skin. One of us, a streak of rust stuck under his skin for the rest of his life. It wasn’t very long but long enough we lost con­tact. How it is with boys is you remem­ber each oth­er longer than you know each oth­er. We sat on a loveseat that sagged in the mid­dle. We lay on a mat­tress that was wrapped in plas­tic. Bedbugs were on our shoul­ders. Somebody left out a fish­tank. It was filled up with water and fish. A gui­tar like the one we’d been pluck­ing was there too, except in minia­ture. One of the fish was the col­or of rust. We did noth­ing but tap on the glass and maybe get our hair a lit­tle wet for slick­ing back. The garbage men were pissed we didn’t wreck the thing and make it eas­i­er for them to not see and dri­ve past. They said it’s what they would have done were they still boys. We came to blows. They played it tough but you could tell they were too tired to real­ly defend them­selves. Learn us some­thing, we taunt­ed. One of them broke the bot­tom off a glass bot­tle and wield­ed it like it was a motion pic­ture. Some of the fish were the col­or of tech­ni­col­or. One of them mis­spoke the only line it was giv­en. We couldn’t stop laugh­ing. This is a sto­ry I tell now and then.

~

Michael Credico is the author of Heartland Calamitous and an edi­tor at the Cleveland Review of Books. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio. His web­site is www.michaelcredico.com.