Flies, a short story

[Author's Note: When I write creatively the voice in my head sounds like a Southern accent. Read the following passage with one if you can manage.]

Part I

It’s a Sunday and there’s a fly on my potato salad. And not one of those little ones either, but the egg-shaped ones with hairs as long as those in an old man’s nose. My uncle’s name is Beagle. He was named after an old Navy sloop that carried Charles Darwin on a historic journey around the Americas, and the world too. Charles Darwin was a scientist of sorts in case you didn’t know.The kind of science that isn't really real but pondered. There's a word for it, but I can't pin the tail on the donkey with this one.

The HMS Beagle seized operation in 1870. There she went, fifty years after her first launch to sea, she was stripped to the bone and sold for scrap. And like that big old sloop I wouldn’t be surprised if my dear Uncle Beagle sees the same darned fate.
I call him dear, but his friends call him bastard.

It was early June when my parents left for the Key Largo Florida. I was only six years old and it was the last I ever seen of them. My mama was beautiufl, had hair the color of sunflowers, roots the color of their seeds. My father was a bowler, ran with a team called the Yesterday Sandy's. They were headed down to the Keys for a big tournament. "A big one," they cheered as they patted my head and loaded their bags in that Ford pick-up they took from my Gran, almost the instant after my pop's daddy died. They even promised to bring me back authentic Floridian salt-water taffy, straight from the Zeno's factory! The stuff of dreams. Oh boy, I thought. Oh boy.

The funny part of it all - well there was a mountain of luggage stacked in the back of that truck - so high I was worried it'd block the rearview from reflecting the road behind. Worried for their safety, naturally. You should have seen it - their bedroom was nearly empty - drawers almost bare. Looked like a cyclone past through the house too. And yet as I listened to that Ford speed out of the driveway and onto the open road, I sit wondering why my father's lucky bowling ball sit at the bottom of their closet - with his initials engraved 'B' and 'J' all shiney on the front. And I sit wondering, didn't he believe in luck no more?

After a month of living with Gran and her barely saying a word, I started to realize I wasn't getting any Zeno's taffy anytime soon. And when the years started passing, I stopped dreaming of it all together.

My gran just turned 80 at the time, but she looked just about a hundred and twleve. For an old person she sure did smell good, like donut shop coffee and old fashioned glaze. I didn't have to move, 'cause we already lived in her house, off her dime and her cans of Campbells soup. "Mmm mmm good," she'd repeat over and over again. Without much talk or conversation, we established our own little routine, our own way of co-existing in a weird kind of peace. We got along her and I, and I guess it was because my ma and old man didn't just leave behind that special bowling ball, but they left her behind too.

Last Tuesday I was out in the yard and heard the "ding aling aling" of the Dickie Dee ice cream man and boy did I want a Rocket. I caught a glimpse of him - he was breakng on a sharp turn down Everly St. I ran so fast and yelled after him. I nearly tripped and chipped a tooth - surely worth the sacrfice .I caught up with him a moment later, wheezing and out and breath.

I licked that rocket so fast it was almost done by time I reached the front step of my house, my tonge purple from the red and blue fruit flavors, my chin sticky with tears of juices. If Gran saw my face, she wouldnt be pleased. I'd know it from that huff she always made anytime I was impolite or acting like what she called a "neandrathal." That always scared me straight 'cause that's what she called my daddy and I don't think she liked him very much. He never opened the door for her or picked up a quart or nothing. A neandrathal.

I stepped onto the porch and just as I reached for the screen door, there she was lying on the lineoleom kitchen floor, face planted into the ground, Campbells cream of mushroom splattered like an all-you-can-eat chalk outline. And it hit me, it seemed like everyone around me dropped like flies. Was I bug repellent? I wondered.

Sad as it was, that's how I ended up bunking with Uncle Beagle, the Zoologist. He was my only other living relative, but a relative I'd never met only overheard of in passing. Gran's house was repossessed, seems like she had no money, a beehive of credit, and a rather large outstanding dept. The authorities came to collect me and delivered me to the Park Street Zoo. And there he was Beagle James in a navy blue jumper, his name embroidered on his breast and a look of utter confusion on his fully bearded face. He looked like Jesus Christ I thought, the way he looks in the painting that hung above Gran's canopy.

No, Uncle Beagle the janitor (not a zoologist), wasn't expecting me at all. Even more, he wasn't expecting what would come of our life together...

***

xoLola