Brothers

The phone rings but everyone is at the table.
“Hey sweetie can you get that.”
But Don was to busy eating his bacon omelette to worry about phone calls before work.  Work never called him, the head mechanic would tell him the previous work day, so who could it be anyway's.  He looked up at his wife, looked in her eyes and focused back in on his breakfast.  The most important meal of the day.  His three daughters were all awake, ready to be home-schooled, with there red hair pulled back, which they got from their mother, held back with bonnets.  Jessica couldn’t eat with the phone ringing.  Would the monotony ever end.  The shrill of the rings, made it so she couldn’t hear herself chew.  She motioned to get up, to pick up the phone but as soon as Don heard the wooden chair slide on the tile, hitting the borders of grout, he sprung up with all of his energy that he received from the eggs.  He took a few lunges until he reached the phone in his living room.
“Hello, This is Donald Mundolt speaking.”

“Hello, Donald.  My name is Mellissa and I am calling on the behalf of visa and I just need to tell you that...”
“You know how early it is.”
“...You never paid your interest on your last credit card statement.  It was 427 dollars and 87 cents.”
“When did you get to work, jeez people work before ten?”
“I am just calling to let you know that we need your payment by the 27th or we, unfortunately, or we will have no choice but to cancel your card.
Today was the 11th.
***

    I don’t know why Jeff invited me here.  I don’t even know why I agreed.  If my father saw me now, hell he’s probably poundin’ a cloud waiting to whip me when I get up there.  And I wasn’t even properly introduced to this Steve guy.  He sort of looks like a drug dealer behind that trailer bench table, fixing up the smack.  Is that what they call it now or do they just stick to the original name, Heroin.  So I’m supposed to tie this around my arm, this plastic tubing that is now encaked with god knows what.  It’s fucking opaque.  Jeff’s using his work belt.  Tie it around my arm and then take this needle.  Shit did my phone just beep.  Motorola, walkie talkie was a bad idea, or this is.  Hit a vein like a nurse removing blood.  Take a millimeter of your blood to check your mistakes.  and then you
I        N         J        E             C               T.
I couldn’t watch the fluid go into my arm.  I couldn’t even look, I clenched my eyes tight.  Jeff roared with a sign or a grown, it was from his belly.  His eyes shifted from left to right, Steve tilts off-axis and the trailer, the laminated wood, twirls around
and around like a pig roast.
    I hear the asphalt, pebbles scattering on the side of the road outside, 25 yards away.  Chuckling, people, a group of them.  Cops, family, I have no idea.  Everyone else in the trailer is laughing but I need to just stare at a thumbnail on the wall.  Window, yellow curtains, small, enclosed.  I try to see everyone expression of the people walking outside but they don’t seem to hear it like I can.  They are just curled over walking around laughing, a smell of camaraderie drifts through the air.  I feel like I have been left out.  This is weird.
    Grass starts to get trampled and the group seem to coming.  Closer each second like they know the route.  Why didn’t Jeff inform me, why did I accept this, more manic laughter, my eyes begin to roll upwards.  The ceiling, level, green, light bulb surrounded by a plastic, white globe.  It’s only white because the light’s on.  I come around, fix in on Steve’s face.  He’s starting to grow out his facial hair, it’s clumpy, some parts are coming together better then others.  Eyes look like a physics smile after a reading. 
    A knock on the door, did my phone just vibrate or was it from the rumbling of the trailer.  Shit, hopefully she didn’t just page me.  I got kids, three.  Can’t be doing this on a school night, tuesday.  But we just got laid off.  Jeff let’s them in, everyone says hi, even I try to.  Turn my head and just assume that I am part of the conversation to.  Stranger one talks about prospect in another part of town.  Drugs, I am guessing drugs but it could mean everything.  Is everyone into drugs now a days.  Like a culture.  Steve looks surprised when the men enter.  He was rubbing his hands together like he was talking to himself saying, money money money.  Greedy. 
    They went over to the booth and purchased some “smack.”  What a wrong name for this.  It’s more like a punch to the stomach, laid back, even though you are out of your element it feels like you are watching life around you.  Whoah.  Wonder if I am supposed to pay.  Jeff falls asleep before I ask.  I gotta go.

***

Dinner was over.  The three small, young girls scattered as they were excused.  Tiffany, the oldest of the three, went upstairs to hoard the bedroom from her two other sisters that she shared it with.  Melanie went out the back door, which was connected to the kitchen, to go play in the yard with the German Shepard, Panzer.  And Bonny, the smallest, went into the living room to watch the Cartoon Neck.  Don studied there movements carefully, still sitting at the table forking around the carrots left from the pot roast.  He swirled each baby cut into the remaining beef broth until they were submerged.  His wife, Jessica, a short 5,2 woman in her mid-twenties, always wearing either a tom boy attire like a white pocket t shirt with faded jeans or a blouse that looking over-worn, and un-fitted.  She was cleaning up the dishes, putting them into the sink, on top of the lunch bowls and the breakfast plates.  Each day another load that took at least an hour to clean, where the antibacterial soup would eat at your hands and leave them defenseless and dry.  Before Jessica could rinse the dishes off, Don stood up and looked like a blood hound with an idea.  He ushered over his wife and grabbed her around the hips to pull her way from her duties. She was surprised from his new actions.  Don tilted his head and kissed her neck to make her flinch from the air on her neck.  He needed a way to provoke her, persuade her before asking.  He inched up slowly with his nose from her neck to her left ear and whispered “Come with me.”
    He walked her into the living room, away from the television.  He practically cornered her against a wall.  He needed to have the control.  She seemed worried, odd in a sort of way.  An uneasiness between her and Don that was like a rock beginning to tumble but these sort of instincts come in waves when living in such a hectic, chaotic, close family where not only your immediate family live in your town but your distant could too.  Hell, you might find out that your husbands father had a child with his daughter.  Family secrets get swept away because what is perceived as bad never want to be brought up around the good.  Even if you hated a person you would never talk about their cross bred ancestry.  Don glanced her in the eyes for a few seconds but was able to capture her green eyes, dilated, with the whites of her eyes strained with red veins.
    “We need to go.”
    “Go where, Don.”
    “Just pack up and move on.  We need to just go.”
    “Don, nothing is easier then just saying that.”
    “We need to go.  Gotta go right now.”
    “My mother just moved her a year ago.  She wanted to be closer to the family and yo want to just leave her here with yours?”
    “Whatever it takes as long as we are out of this state.”
    “Where would we possibly go, where could we go?  We don’t have any money.”
    “WE just need to leave.  I heard about this place in Illinois.  By Mom’s sister.”
    “Where would we stay?”
    “This place gives you all of that as long as you work.  It’s like a work program or something.”
    “Just something... Don I can’t believe you.  Moving isn’t just a spur of the moment situation.”
    “It can be and needs to be for us.  If we don’t go, were going to be in worse trouble then if we took our sweet time and planned this out.”
    “DON!”
    But before she snapped, like usual, before they got into another fight that would send there kids straight to their rooms, she found clarity in his words.  Something had to be up.  A money issue was always the problem.  He works three jobs but somehow can’t provide for his family that is already receiving poverty level assistance. 
    Last week a check bounced at the grocery store.  Good thing she had some cash on her when she heard the news or the withdrawal fees would of been outrageous.  She thought it was just due to Don’s forgetfulness, that he never put his money that he got into their bank account.  Or another thought could of been that his side jobs haven’t paid him yet.  But it wasn’t any of that.  They were in financial trouble.  Don showed it on his face, his sentences, his actions.  Life was going to have to be taken in small doses like medication after tonight.  Just one a day.