Day Eight

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Dad made me go to the junkyard with him today. And then to the dump. It was so gross. The dump, not the junkyard. The junkyard might have been kind of cool except that Dad wouldn’t let me look at any of the old cars and stuff. He just wanted me to crawl around in piles of scrap and look for something to make an antenna out of.

No one has antennas. Trump keeps saying they’re going to make sure that everyone has antennas – it’s on the radio all the time – but the stores don’t have any. The only person I know of with an antenna is that old guy down the street, the one who still gets a newspaper, except everyone is getting newspapers now. Or trying to. We’re on a waiting list, and Dad is mad about that, too.

So Dad made me crawl all around in these piles of scraps looking for… You know, I don’t even know what I was supposed to be looking for. He just kept saying to find something he could make an antenna out of, but he wasn’t satisfied with anything I found, and he was kind of frantic about it because he wasn’t the only one to have the idea to check the junkyard, I think, because there were a lot of other people there, too, clawing through piles of metal scrap and junk. Some of them were making their kids crawl around in the piles of scrap, too.

Then I fell because someone yanked on something at the bottom of the pile I was on and everything shifted, and a rusty piece of I-don’t-know-what sliced open my leg, and my dad, instead of helping me, got into a fight with the man until the owner of the junkyard came over and made us leave. Dad was fuming, and I was bleeding everywhere, but did we go home? No! We drove to the dump!

Dad tried to make me crawl around in the garbage to look for stuff for him, but it stank so bad, and I was still bleeding, so I wouldn’t do it. He made me go back to the car, which is what I wanted to do anyway. He’s such an asshole. We left right after that. I watched him walk over to a pile of garbage, but he just stared at it for a few minutes until he came back to the car, and we drove off and he didn’t say anything else to me at all. Why should I have to crawl around in garbage shit when he won’t even do it? Asshole.

But he got yelled out by mom when we got home and she saw my leg. I wish that had gone on longer, because she didn’t let him get a word in at all and told him she didn’t care about some “damn fucking antenna” if it meant that I was going to get lockjaw because of it. Mom never cursed, so I knew something bad was happening.

It wasn’t until we – Mom and me, because dad stayed home – were on the way to the hospital that I could find out what lockjaw was. That made me scared. I didn’t know if I’d had a tetanus booster. I just know that I sometimes go get shots; I don’t know what kind of shots they are. I think I might decide that I want to know, now, though.

We had to wait a long time in the emergency room, and it was so boring. Mom’s phone wasn’t good for anything since there wasn’t any internet, there was nothing on the TV in the waiting room except static, and I didn’t even have the stupid book I was reading because Mom made me get out to the car so fast. So I just sat there and bled on the floor until some nurse noticed and yelled at me for getting blood on the floor, but they took me to see a doctor.

The doctor said I was probably okay since it hadn’t even been two years since I had a deetap but, since the cut was so deep, they would give me a booster anyway. And another antibiotic, just to be safe. And stitches! I had to have stitches because my stupid father made me crawl around in rusty scrap metal.

Then, before we could leave, Mom had a fight with the lady at the desk because of the bill. I didn’t know they made you pay when you have to go to the emergency room, and I guess Mom didn’t know either. Or she did but didn’t realize how much it was going to be because we lost our insurance when Trump took away Obamacare. Mom did a lot of cussing and kept saying, “What was I supposed to do, let her fucking leg fall off?”

Finally, we just left, but the desk lady kept yelling at us as we were going that they were going to send us a bill. Mom actually flipped her off as we were going out the sliding doors. I’ve NEVER seen my mom act like that before. Or heard her say anything bad about Trump, but she cursed him all the way home.

Good.

My leg hurts.

A lot.



A Note from the author:
I hope you are enjoying this piece of FREE! serialized fiction. At least so far as it is fiction. For the moment. Who's to say what could be happening a year from now considering where we are at this moment in time.
Speaking of FREE!, because this is FREE!, it would be great, if are enjoying this story, if you could support the author by purchasing one of his other stories. Like, maybe, "Tiberius," collection One of Shadow Spinner. Or something else; there are links all over the page and many different types of stories available.

It's always great to feel supported.

Thanks!