Robinson - Part I

Two estranged siblings return to the decaying town of their childhood to settle the last remains of their family estate.

The first installment of my original short story, “Robinson.”

I haven’t told her that I’m going to burn the place down. She’s just been through a cruel breakup that makes my drawn out divorce proceedings seem banal by comparison. I initially pitched the trip as a whirlwind tour of days gone by, but after some discussion, it became clear neither of us want to see our hometown again. But Robinson, for some strange, masochistic reason, is a nightmare we’re both willing to revisit.

We meet at O’Hare. My flight arrived two hours before hers and I’ve been drinking away the difference. I had planned to be at her gate, waiting with a warm smile and an embrace when she arrived. Instead, I end up texting her the name and approximate location of the Mexican grill where I’m holed up. I buy a margarita for her, but by the time she gets to the terminal where the restaurant is, I’ve already drank most of it. I offer to buy her another one, but she seems irritated and anxious to get out of the airport. 

I get to my feet and feel the tequila for the first time. I have to pee. It’s only an afterthought that I think to give Alex a big hug. I almost lose my balance and she sort of pushes me off. 

“I’ve got to get to the baggage claim,” she says. “Can we go?”

I stay quiet while Alex deals with the rental car people. When we’re finally on the road, she eases up a bit. The drinks have worn down to a dull, manageable headache, and I feign the sort of joy I know I should feel in the presence of my only sibling after years apart. Before long, I feel genuinely grateful to be around her.

Two hours outside of Chicago, the initial thrill of being together again wears off,  and we’re at each other's throats. I tell her she talks too much. She tells me I’m an insensitive prick who says hurtful things, “like some kind of invalid.” The barbs don’t go back and forth long before we both apologize and begin commiserating in earnest.

Life has not been particularly kind to us these last seven years. Over the next hour, we talk about how to get out of our respective ruts, what sort of direction we’d like to see our middling lives take.

In the back of my mind is the caveat- if I don’t end up dead or in prison- but I don’t say that part out loud.

We finally bore of talking about ourselves and move on to things we’ve learned and read. Alex speaks of circadian rhythms. She says she’s determined to ‘perfect’ her daily schedule so it aligns with the principles of nature. I half-heartedly pledge to revamp my own life routines, to be more productive, to be better.

All I want to talk about is fire. How I’ve been dreaming of it. How I’m drawn to it. How I’m not entirely certain what I’ll do if there’s someone home when we get there. But I can’t tell Alex. She’d never let me go through with it. She’d never have come along for the ride. And I need her here. I always have.

I fondle the cool polished metal of Uncle Gary’s Zippo lighter in my pocket. Alex is telling me about the complicated mating rituals of Alaskan salmon—what great lengths the creatures go to to ensure that they never have to touch each other—and I absentmindedly pull out the lighter. I still have some silly Zippo tricks stored in my muscle memory, from my smoking days. I hold the lighter between my fingers and squeeze until the lighter pops open on its hinge with a satisfying thwack.

“You smoking again?” She’s looking over at me.

“No,” I say, pocketing the lighter.

“Is that Uncle Gary’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you miss it? Smoking?”

“I do, but it’s so low on the list of things I miss that it barely registers anymore.”

Alex lets out a little breath of a laugh, a semi-involuntary noise she makes when she decides something is clever enough to warrant a laugh, but not funny enough to actually elicit one.

“Are you still taking those pills?” I ask, giving the conversation one final thrust away from myself.

Alex murmurs. “No. The antidepressants? No. I take pills. Just for allergies.”

I want to say, “Good,” or, “Glad to hear it.” But I don’t.

“No,” Alex continues after a moment. “I had to stop taking Zeltram. It was wreaking all sorts of havoc. I cry a lot more now. But that’s alright.”

“How long have you been off?” I ask.

“About seven months.”

“Well,” I manage, “good for you.”

---

When we were kids, our family’s yearly trip to Robinson was Christmas as far as Alex and I were concerned. It wasn’t really the holidays until we saw that red, rusted mailbox along a silent stretch of corn fields, where we’d turn off the highway, onto the long, gravel road that Alex had dubbed “Rocky Road,” after her favorite ice cream. 

The road cut through a quarter mile of corn fields, then just around the bend, the first driveway on the left was Aunt Daisy and Uncle Gary’s house, a single story, prefabricated ranch house that I would occasionally hear my Dad make snide comments about—a trailer, he called it. But for Alex and I, it was a magical place, irrevocably entangled in our love for Aunt Daisy and Uncle Gary.

Maybe it was the relentless onslaught of homebaked cookies and caramels and Rice Krispies treats. Maybe it was the way the living room overflowed with presents, more than we could ever comfortably fit in the car, an embarrassment of riches billowing out from underneath their synthetic Christmas tree.

“Aunt Daisy always wanted kids,” Dad would tell us, every single year. “You’re the closest thing she has. I think that’s why they spoil you.”

Aunt Daisy was the angel of the family, well-loved by everyone. She was tender, kind, funny as hell and had a laugh that could brighten a room. She was warm and generous with her love. Uncle Gary was too, though he was more guarded around us. Gary drank Busch beer by the gallon and rode his Harley Davidson all around their small Southern Illinois town. After twenty grueling years as a Marathon Man, he retired from the oil refinery and spent his days in the garage blasting rock n’ roll, sitting in his recliner watching Cleveland Browns games, and wasting away at their cabin along the Wabash river, fishing and watching birds through high-caliber military grade binoculars.

He was a country boy, through and through. It’s why Daisy had fallen in love with him. It’s why they chose to live in a barely incorporated town in the middle of nowhere. Uncle Gary, and the life he provided, were just what she wanted.

For us, Robinson was a welcome diversion from life in the city, a chance to slow down, decompress, and spend time as a family. Alex and I went for a lot of walks during our stays there. Sometimes we’d trek through the wooded area that comprised most of their property, but more often we’d continue down the gravel road that led past their house. Heading further down Rocky Road, we’d find ourselves out in the vast open space, sprawling fields of nubby cornstalks on either side of us, all but dead for the winter. We’d talk or take pictures or just listen to the drizzle tapping down on our unzipped coats and the gravel crunching under our shoes.

Soon we’d hear the whine of dogs or the meek little meows of cats and we’d know we were close to the “Junk Yard.” The Junk Yard was the closest property, about a half mile down the gravel road, and believe me, it earned its moniker.

The spectacle of it evolved over the years, but it was always astonishing and grotesque. At the heart of the property was a trailer in comical shades of disrepair. The space around it was a graveyard of trash. Metal car frames, televisions, dozens of tires, decaying furniture. It evoked a sense of horror and wonder in us.

Cats and dogs roamed the property. Sometimes there were even pigs, oinking and squealing with their mud-caked snouts. A whole host of unsupervised creatures, living alone in a city of garbage. 

Most of the animals were aggressively friendly. The cats and dogs would run out to the gravel road and throw themselves at us, often following us all the way back home to Daisy and Gary’s house.

Some years, there were no animals at all. Just weeds latching onto the rusting tractors and dead, overgrown grass as it swayed in the breeze.

One year, there was just a lone dog, locked in a metal cage in the middle of the yard. He was a run-down old beast with a jagged face and murky, discolored eyes. 

Alex was a teenager then, and I was still a away from high school. She marched fearlessly onto the property and I followed timidly. We scrambled over the rusting sewing machines and bicycle frames and got as close as we could. There seemed to be a sort of invisible force field between us and the cage. We looked across the way to the trailer, its windows filthy, opaque, and dark. There was no one inside. Just the lone dog in the yard, trapped behind bars.

“What are you going to do?” I asked Alex, as we crouched a dozen feet from the cage.

“I’m going to let that dog out of that stupid, fucking cage,” she said. 

But she didn’t move. We stayed motionless, crouching on our haunches.

If the dog wanted us to help it, he wasn’t making a compelling case for itself. He was barking crazily now, his noises frenzied and aggressive.

“I wouldn’t go near that thing,” I told her.

She stood up but still didn’t move. After a minute, she turned around and stormed back to Daisy and Gary’s house.

She went to Uncle Gary first. “There’s a dog trapped in a cage outside and no one’s home and it’s barking and crying. That’s animal abuse! Someone needs to do something!”

Uncle Gary looked concerned. He put on his boots and went out to take a look.

He came back shortly thereafter. “Dog’s alright,” he said. “Sure they’ll be back for it in the mornin’.” We reluctantly accepted this. Gary loved animals of all stripes. If he wasn’t too concerned, then we shouldn’t be either. 

But Aunt Daisy seemed thoroughly disgusted. She spoke with a venom that I’d never heard from her. She hated the Petersons. They were rotten people. They used that land as a junk yard. She couldn’t count how many times she’d called the city complaining. But the city never did a thing about it. The mess never got cleaned up.

“It’s a shame,” she said. “It’s a darn shame.”

---

Static accosts us over the radio as the FM station dwindles in potency and disappears, the last notes of jazz coughing at us violently through a cloud of white noise. Alex flips the radio off and cracks her window, the wind masking the silence between us. It’s been fifty miles since either one of us has said anything of import. Alex has been driving this whole time and she indicates with a yawn that my turn is quickly approaching. 

The booze has worn off entirely and the headache is only a faint throbbing. I watch Alex. Her age is starting to show. Lines creeping into the corners of her face, a strange coarseness in her hands, gripping the wheel tighter than necessary. She wears mostly black these days— plain, unflattering blouses and dark, bland slacks. She always wanted to have children. I wonder if she ever will.

I feel a soft, pitying tenderness towards her. She sees me looking at her and smiles automatically. “You doing alright over there?”

I just nod, strangely choked up.

I think of what my dad said to us both on my wedding night. The reception was still in full swing when he pulled me and Alex into a boozy family pow-wow. He told us Mom and Aunt Daisy were there, smiling down on us. And for a moment as we all embraced, it really did feel like they were there, all around us.

“Someday, all you’ll have is each other.”

I wonder if things can ever be the same after this, after what I’m going to do.

We stop at a gas station to switch drivers. Alex fills the tank while I buy a cup of watered-down coffee. The gas station attendant eyes me suspiciously for no reason in particular and I can tell by her exasperated southern drawl as she asks, “Anything else?” that we’re close.

---

Continue reading Part II of “Robinson.”