TERENCE PATRICK HUGHES

         In the Affairs of Men            

The young guy in the old suit walked in around six or seven, hard to tell since the old Budweiser clock up behind the bar stopped keeping time. It was a Friday evening, and there was a crowd for him to work through before he could reach the far side of the deep, narrow, dim, and smoky space. He carried a briefcase that hindered his progress as nobody carries that sort of thing into The Trap at the risk of being carried back out with it. A few of the more unhinged patrons questioned his choice of accessory until he finally set it down on a rickety pub table between the jukebox and the infrequently used door to the ladies room. Quickly, he snapped the case open and retrieved a small stack of papers which he then held in the air over his thinning, yet well maintained, blond hair.

"I've got letters from the judge granting double hours of community service for anyone who helps out in the morning!" 

It was now clear why he hadn't been set upon by any of the more violent and clownish of The Trap crew. This was a low-level legal representative. No matter how better-off his appearance or how too-perfect his language, he was a clerk of the court, and most everyone in the tavern had lost a few rounds with the law somewhere along the way. So, as the salty comments were held to lurid whispers, the guy to my left, a funny old coot named Benny who ships out every morning at 3 am, one hour earlier than the rest of the rag-tag fleet, simply because he likes to be drunk while he checks his lobster traps, suddenly burst out with a thick, tar-soaked laugh.

"This isn’t funny," the clerk admonished lightly, locking his nervous blue-eyed gaze to the old man's.

"Never said it was," Benny returned.

"This is serious," the clerk attempted slightly more bravado.

"So's your haircut," Benny bellowed.

A good laugh ripped through the place, and the clerk smirked along with it, not exactly sure if he was maintaining safe ground or smiling his way to the grave. As soon as the howls died down and the guys in the corner went back to throwing darts, he played the card that he thought could win us over.

"Gentleman," he began, not at all well, as there was maybe one gentleman in the place, and it was him. "This is not just a storm headed our way. It's a monster."

Most of us looked down at our drinks or up at the ballgame on the TV behind the bar because except for me and one of the younger guys the place was full of fishermen and lobster trappers. I earned my spot as a regular by buying a summer season's worth of rounds while one of the kids playing darts was in college and only waiting around for his clammer dad to finish sousing himself so that he could carry the old guy home.

"You all secured your boats, didn't you?" the clerk used a gentle yet authoritative tone, reminding me of a pissed-off priest. "The shop windows are all boarded, short-termers and weekenders racing back to the city. We know what's coming. Now who wants to help their neighbor?"

A long stretch of awkward silence seemed to signify the true conscience and human compassion that was hiding under the weather-beaten hides of these men of the sea until the sound of a coin dropping into the jukebox let loose the crunching blast of ZZ Top, and the entire place whipped right back into blasting a hole through Friday night. I did my part, raising a shot of bottom-shelf rum and clinking it in camaraderie to Benny's beer bottle, which seemed to never touch the bar top. Just as the sugary heat hit the back of my throat and I forced it down with anxious pleasure, the clerk stepped up behind Benny and me.

"Could I talk to you for a second?"

I looked at Benny who was chugging the last of his beer before handing it to the bartender and coming away with a fresh, cold bottle. “I only got one thing to say,” Benny grumbled and then let out a long, wet belch.

"You, I mean," the clerk tapped me lightly on the shoulder. "You're the TV guy, right?"

My cover was blown, but I didn't turn around right away, first motioning for the bartender to replenish my personal poison then looking over to Benny who smiled back with the last of his teeth.

"You're busted, baby!" he roared.

It was a programmed catch-phrase that never quite caught on due to its gritty 1930s slang twistedly paired with a term of endearment. The script writers guaranteed -- "You’re busted, baby!" -- would be on t-shirts and coffee mugs by Christmas, but the show never lasted that long. At some point prior to Thanksgiving along with 46 million other turkeys, the network killed off The Precinct after just nine episodes. So, in the wake of four years of tedious college acting classes with soulful/masochistic teachers, eight years of chronic unemployment only sparsely interrupted by random voice-over work, and one really, really bad off-broadway play about psychic gamblers, I got nine episodes. Huge paycheck, but basically a confidence castration. The very moment that I got the news from my agent, I convinced the girls to pack their bags and booked us a car to take us as far up the coastline as possible where I paid way too much money to rent an opulent summer beach house or as it turned out, a summer asylum.

"Go away, please," I said while turning to face the clerk. "I'm trying to work through the intricacies of self-destruction."

"You're here all the time. You're one of them."

He was half-right as I do spend a gravely concerning amount of time at The Trap, either trying to scrub a hangover away with a late morning Bloody Mary or soaking my anxious brain in rum deep into the night.

"They'd do it if you did." The clerk had to raise his voice over the appreciative crowd's clamor as ZZ Top gave way to AC/DC. "Come on. Try to be more of a samaritan tomorrow than you were today."

The well-educated piece of shit's words struck me hard and quick. Although I reached back to the bar and downed a fresh shot of devil's juice, a wave of sickness washed over me, not due to the quality of The Trap's suspect alcohol but from the grip of crushing regret at how far my life had come apart in such a short time.

"Somebody said you were good on that show," the clerk smiled, he was easing himself into some kind of passive-aggressive debate style likely learned at a very reputable and expensively uptight college. "I don't watch TV, but, even though it never caught on, they said you were all right."

"Ah what a fine, jagged compliment, thank you." I turned to Benny, who was having an awful time lighting a cigarette, and asked, "Who’s in trouble if this storm hits?"

Benny took the cigarette out of his mouth and wiped a stubbly cheek with the other hand. "Up the bay always gets water, so they know what's comin'…and most of the harbor folks built back on stilts after Imogene…I'd say the only one's who'd get screwed are them shacks at the end of Shore Drive."

"That's exactly right!" the clerk shouted, shaking the papers in his hand. "Over forty residents, low income, poor families, children..."

I stopped listening after "children" as my body-sized bruise of guilt began to throb, and I couldn't block the images from my mind any longer. There was my girlfriend Morgan and her duaghter Tess holding hands as they strolled in front of me on a perfect afternoon as we eased our way to the museum. Tess chasing me in her stocking feet across the park grass. Me dressing up to stage Tessie's Variety Show replete with song and dance to the delight of Morgan who would laugh so hard she had to lay on the floor of our apartment. They were the girls of my life for almost two years and what began as stay-overs at their place on nights when the city was drenched in rain ultimately led to what looked like the ingredients for an instant family. Only I turned out to be a bad egg, and you can't cook around that.

"If it will shut you up," I growled and snatched the clipboard from the clerk, hiding my feelings beneath a blanket of sarcasm while signing up. "There."

Of course, Benny signed on right after me, and the bartender, Willy, did also. After about another twenty minutes, the clerk had seven names and addresses, so I advised him to collect his things and escape. He had already had ample beer spilled on him. The next thing the trappers do to their catch is boil them alive.

"Meet the trucks out behind the hardware store at 5 am," he called after safely reaching the door. The responses from the patrons were as vile as expected, and the clerk rode their crude wave out to the sidewalk.

"Did he say 5 am?" I asked, turning to Benny who had finally lit his cigarette.

"I'll be out pullin' up traps at 5 am," Benny replied and blew a long stream of bluish smoke into the air. "I wrote my name down as Captain America. Address is 'Up Yours.'"



Someone's car horn was blaring outside and because I never made it into the bedroom last night the wide-open window above the couch allowed the torturous clamor to startle me awake. As I sat up, my head blazed with big Mozart-like opening notes of a hangover symphony, and I was about to scream for some moron to shut his alarm off when I saw the big blue pickup idling in front of my house. There were a number of men sitting in the back, and someone opened the driver side door and started up my walkway. I stood up unsteadily and made it into the kitchen for a long drink from the faucet as the rapid knocking began.

"Okay, Okay," I shouted and immediately paid the price in my frontal lobe as I opened the door to face the tall, way-too-tanned, middling-aged man on the other side. "Listen, this is night-time around here. At least until noon."

"You Devlin?" he demanded.

"Who wants to know?"

"You volunteered for storm crew. Supposed to meet us at 5. Get your shit." He hadn't finished speaking before turning and bounding down the walkway. 

The man jumped into the truck while I simply stood in the doorway and stared at the sky. The clouds were thick and blue with huge black splotches at their edges. In the morning light, they looked uncanny.

"Move your ass!" he shouted from the truck.

I shot an angry look at him as he banged on the side, but I did indeed hustle and was soon dressed in some khakis and a windbreaker. Once out onto the sidewalk, I climbed into the back of the truck where the others made room for me on the cold, wet bed. I immediately recognized Willy the bartender who nudged his head up in greeting.

"Nice place," commented a young, tough-looking guy who I'd never seen before, craning his head around as the truck pulled away.

"It's a rental," I explained for some odd reason. "The owner lives in Greece."

"Grease is the word," Willy offered with no takers.

My house was in a pretty high-end section set back from the ocean by only a few blocks, but secure in suburban order with fresh green lawns, homes set high up on fine teak gun barrel pilings and fiberglass braces to keep clear of the steadily infringing ocean, and sharp neighborly eyes perpetually on the look-out for strangers. As the truck sped along, the more posh houses gave way to a far larger patch overcrowded with duplexes wherein the lifeblood of the village reside. These dwellings are jammed so tight together that a cup of sugar or a gallon of malice can be handed from one kitchen to the next and each one filled with some one to two week renters and the occasional full-summer family but mainly scores of rowdy, drunken teens and twenty-somethings who swarm the beaches by day and the bars by night.

Our final destination was the quarter mile stretch at the end of Shore Drive where shacks are washed away and built up again with such a regularity that every single one is impossible to insure and thus have all been auctioned over time to the state who then use them to house indigent families, some hard-up service veterans, and more recently, to the ire of the locals, illegal migrants.

"Hell we tryin' to save these shacks for?" inquired one of the gang who I knew to be a fisherman. "So they get washed out by the next one? That's where our tax dollars are goin'! Shit."

His comments set off a collective grumble about welfare and sponging off the government, a distinctively sore issue with those who had previously been happy recipients of government checks until they were told it was time to work or go hungry.

"Suppose it's better than cleaning up bodies later," I replied.

"Izzat so?" the fisherman spat and pointed my way. "Okay, TV boy, you're outta the truck first!"

I wasn't about to argue with a man whose temperamental lineage dated to Blackbeard himself. Instead, I spent the next few minutes watching the village drift by as we cut through the downtown, passing shop after shop with boarded up windows and every parking spot empty, a bizarre sight on a late summer Saturday. I painfully recalled that the very last blowout fight with Morgan was over parking. It started innocuously with my offer to wait in the car as she and Tessie ran into the market for sodas and chips, but soon exploded into a fierce battle over the ethics of parking in a handicap spot even though you sit behind the steering wheel with motor idling. Both of us cruelly piling on old issues of acrimony to the battle and ceasing only when Tessie burst into a torrent of sobs. It all ended right after that. Morgan packed their things and left. I held a stoic front while they loaded the car and then stepped out onto the raised deck and looked down as Morgan roared the engine. 

"Bye, Papa Bear!" Tessie cried as she leaned out the window before sliding back into the car and covering her face with her hands.

It was a nickname she gave me after I made some bad dreams disappear by telling her the Goldilocks story over and over. As they drove away, I had the urge to fly, defy gravity, and sweep through the air to land on their windshield like a giant heartbroken bug and make the sort of face that would explode them both into laughter, ending the war forever. Instead, I stood there, feeling far more dead than alive, suddenly horrified at the heroic reserves of strength that I'd muster to fight meaningless, stupid battles with a beautiful, certainly crazy, yet ultra-caring woman who offered me the shot at father-figure to a little angel. But when it came to the crucial moment of saving the day, I could only muster near-paralysis.

The truck slowed down as we turned up the beach access road that connects to the end of Shore Drive. As we bumped up the sandy incline, I caught sight of the ocean between two dunes. Long lines of large, successive swells had replaced the sweet white-caps, each landing ashore with a thump instead of the customary crash and receding sibilance. I had been able to dismiss the slate gray sky, but the ocean turning ugly sent a tremble up my spine as the truck turned onto the street and jerked to a stop.

"Two of you, get out," the way-too tanned man shouted from inside the cab as the fisherman who I'd pissed off glared at me. I let a few seconds pass before I began to make my exit. "You, too," he grumbled from behind me. As my feet hit the cracked, sandy pavement, I turned to see that for a companion they had expelled the mean-faced man, who bumped past me on the way to the driver's side of the truck. Begrudgingly, he joined me.

"That’s your pile over there," mumbled the driver, a sheriff's deputy who once came to our beach house after Morgan had thrown a kitchen chair through the bay window. "Shovel's by the pile. One of you fills and ties and one wheels and stacks," old leather face added from the passenger side. "Can't screw that up, can you?"

With great certainty in my ability to screw up anything, I weakly smiled and and then the truck was off, shooting sand across my shins and trailing a few evil looks from the bunch in the back, except for Willy who gave a friendly smile. My partner instantly laid claim to an old wheelbarrow that was on its side a few paces away and sat upon it as he withdrew a small fifth of brown liquor from his dungaree jacket.

"You want a belt?" he asked as he breathed out his first long sip.

"No, thanks," I replied honestly, "I drank a tub full last night."

"Hell, it's still last night," he snorted and took another big sip. "What's your name?"

"Devlin. Ted Devlin."

"My name's Keith. And I got stackin' duty. You get your ass over to that pile. Once you fill some bags, I'll get to work." 

"Yes, sir," I saluted.

"And don't give me that city-ass TV dickhead bullshit," he snarled and achieved a portrait of ugliness that was almost exquisite.

I turned from the lost wreck of rage and set off toward my small mountain of sand, which was between where they'd dropped us and the first shack. This end of Shore Drive has multiple beach access points, mostly footpaths beaten by goers through the dunes over time, but with no parking and a twenty-minute walk from town, it mainly serves the residents of the feeble quarter-mile neighborhood of shacks. Though locals and tourists alike refer to these dwellings with disdain, I pitied the folks who had to live in two or three tight rooms with a crawl space for a second floor. The original homes were hastily built, trucked, and dumped there almost fifty years ago after a governor with a heart, when there was such a thing, allocated a ton of money for low-income housing. Of course, no one complained much until the needy individuals began looking like they came a long, long way from not just this village but outside the good old USA.

When I reached the mound, I saw that it was not common dirt or beach sand but the dark, gritty stuff that they had been dumping on the sections of shoreline to combat the slow yet noticeable erosion. I took off my jacket as it was getting warmer, even though the wind was picking up, and I tossed it on top of the pile and began inspecting my tools. The shovel was fairly rusty, but in good shape with a nice concave to the blade, sharp point, and a strong handle, but the rest of the gear was worn out. The sandbags seemed to have been fighting off storms for centuries while a large white garbage bag full of cut twine pieces looked as if long ago some poorly equipped and soundly beaten army regiment had given up all their boot laces.

"Take your time!" Keith called out from his perch on the wheelbarrow.

Of course, I did the opposite. At first, it was difficult holding the wet bag open as I poured in the heavy sand. I finally got used to holding the shovel down low on the shaft and catching the edge to allow a nice opening in which to nudge along the packed grains. Tying them closed proved much easier as the bags had been twisted shut countless times, and the twine was old but still usable and no more difficult than tying a shoe. Soon I had a dozen packed bags piled next to me, and my foul partner finally wheeled his squeaky barrow up and took off with a load and then returned for a few more. I wasn't only working to keep his angry ass busy, but for the first time in months it felt good to be doing something other than polluting my mind and body. The pounding still raged at my temples, and by now my thirst was furious, but I worked through it as the sweat built up on my back and neck. After I found an old, fraying pair of painter’s gloves in the twine bag, my output increased significantly. Within a half-hour, Keith returned and dumped the wheelbarrow on its side at the base of the sand pile.

"Okay! That's it! Now you stack, and I'll do the bags!"

I placed the shovel down, stood up tall to stretch my aching back, and locked eyes with Keith. He was about the same size as I was. I certainly had a good twenty pounds on him. He would probably kick my ass, but it might be worth one good shot to his nose.

"What's your problem?" I asked.

"You're my problem," Keith shot back, taking a step toward me.

"I don't think so," I returned fire and picked the shovel back up.

"Yeah," Keith looked at me harshly, but his shoulders eased down, and his fists turned into searching hands that soon grasped his bottle, which he greeted with a long swig. "You're my problem. But only one of a shit load."

"Sorry to add to your misery," I said in a harsh tone, but with a searching glance while I held the shovel out to him.

After a short moment, Keith turned and spat toward but not near me and then grabbed the shovel and began loosening the pile with short chops of the blade. I took the gloves off and tossed them over, but he ignored them. After I had the wheelbarrow upright and almost full for my first trip, Keith surprised me enough that I thought he was someone else.

"Ya wanna know what? Do ya?" he exclaimed in a high voice. "Storms gonna wreck my boat. I got nowhere to put it. Harbormaster hates me. Hated my dad and now me ten times more. I got rent due. I got bills. I got…you're just one of a shit-ton a problems I got."

Keith went back to slashing up the pile, and I loaded one more bag and wheeled away, seeing to my surprise that he had done a fine job on the first house. The bags were neatly packed in a solid line along the front and higher at the door to entice the water to move around and away until such time that the flood decided that it wanted to take everything with it. Pushing onward, it was a struggle where the sand ran deep, but I slowly maneuvered the load about ten yards further to the second home. This one was in worse shape than the last, half of the roof was haphazardly patched with assorted shingles, their corners turned up with the strong breeze. The wood stairs were rotted out, and the porch was not far behind. I parked the wheelbarrow in the empty driveway and grabbed my first bag, which was much heavier than expected, and I almost dropped it when a little voice spoke up.

"You gonna stop the ocean from comin'?" It was a little boy crouching in the shadow of the house, probably seven or eight with a dark shock of hair and wide, brown eyes.

"I'm going to try," I replied, taking one last studious look at Keith's work next door and setting down the first bag near where the boy remained crouched, “This your house?” He nodded in the affirmative and squeezed an old teddy bear tightly to his chest. “Who’s that you got?” I asked. He didn’t offer an answer, so I moved back to the wagon and got a bag and placed it down and then another. After a few more trips, I got my answer.

“Oso says hi,” the boy was waving the stuffy's limp little arm at me.

“Hi there,” I waved and went off again and when I got back the boy had moved out of the shadows and was perched on the corner of the first bag that I had laid down.

"How ya gonna stop it?" he asked with wonder in his wide eyes.

I had to restrain myself from answering too soon, for the kid had pressed the button inside me that launches stories, myths, and fantasies. It's a gift and curse developed as a balm to inflamed emotions in adolescence and later used as an escape from awkward or dangerous teen encounters by means of an Odysseusian verbal skill. Then, as a so-called adult, by mastering the art of being someone else entirely through the actor's alchemy, I found refuge from reality for brief scripted stretches of time.

In fact, my escapes into fictive narratives was a major issue between Morgan and me. After my TV show went south, the fabric of the relationship quickly became tattered. As it stretched to the point of tearing over the summer, I tried way too hard to console Tessie with stories of our adventures in the future, starting with tomorrow, jumping to next week, and inflating to the point of her having kids and making me a grandpa. On the night that I told Morgan about her little girl’s sweet plans for our golden years, she broke down crying hysterically into a pillow to the point where I thought she'd suffocate. I couldn't console her. I couldn't even touch her.

I should know better by now than to use my imagination outside of my own head, but this poor little kid was clutching at that old bear with such ferocity that his fear was obvious. "Well, first off these are magic bags," I began, "The water goes right around them."

"What if it doesn't?" he yelped with a strangling grasp on the bear. "Weeeellll,” I smiled, although at a loss for words, "you see…magic is magic and it always…anyway, in the very outside chance that the magic sort of didn't work…it'll be okay because…I know Poseidon personally."

"Who?"

"He's the king of the ocean. So…don't worry."

The kid's face lightened and a big smile appeared and honestly at that moment it was like a million dollars. As I turned to retrieve one of the last sandbags from the wheelbarrow, the door to the house opened and a woman stepped out. She was on the shorter side and a little plump with a tired yet very beautiful face, smooth tawny skin just like her son, and long dark hair tied into a ponytail. She began shaking a finger at the boy.

"Andy!" she exclaimed, "leave the man alone. He's working."

"It's okay," I said. "The kid's just a little worried."

She smiled and said something to the boy in some flavor of Spanish, and he shook his head in negation. "Thank you for helping," she said to me, her caring eyes meeting mine, "We have no place to go."

"No problem, I…" Before I could kindly dismiss her thanks with an "all in a day’s work" platitude, Keith's angry shouting from back at the sandpile interrupted us.

"The hell you doin'?! Come get these bags!"

I turned and waved him off with disgust, but also reminded myself that I was there to fend off watery disaster not flirt with a good looking woman.

"Andy's going to eat breakfast," she offered as I moved toward the wheelbarrow. She added, "Do you want something?"

"Oh, no thanks." I couldn't remember the last time I ate anything other than fish and chips at the bar. "I got work to do."

"Okay. You sure he's not in the way?" she raised her eyebrows in a glance toward the child who was now trying unsuccessfully to pick up the last sandbag that I had placed down.

"Not in the least,” I winked and she looked warmly at me for a moment, perhaps too long for my damaged state as I turned and made a bee-line for the wheelbarrow. I got it moving slowly through the driveway. When the screen door shut, I looked back once at the kid who had given up on power lifting and was studying a bug that had crawled onto the bag. Once on the street, I hustled over to Keith who was sitting on a rock by the sand pile.

"Tryin' to get a piece of ass before it washes away, eh?" he cackled while folding his fingers and stretching them aloft. "Suppose ya don’t mind if I take a crack at her?"

I moved toward him quickly with my first thought of burying his face in the sand but stopped short and glared into his mocking, ugly face. "You go near that house, and I'll knock you out," I growled through gritted teeth, surprising myself with the intensity.

"That’ll be the day…," Keith laughed as he sang, "...that'll be the day-ay-ay that I die!"

"Who's Buddy Holly?" I asked and got nothing in return but a blank, ugly face. "I'll make it easier. Who's Linda Ronstadt?"

"Hell, I care who."

"Because they both sang that song," I relished in the pedanticism. "And you have no clue because your head houses the brain of a parrot."

A battle royale did not immediately break out, so I went to work loading up the bags while Keith continued doing nothing until I was finished.

"Squawk!" he exploded as he left. "Keith-y want a beer! Keith-y want a beer! Squawk!"

I pushed hard to get going as the wheel was stubborn under the heavy weight, for I had piled on even more bags this time. My partner's cackling laugh continued as I maneuvered slowly along the street and struggled to park close to the house. Andy was sitting on the porch with a bowl of cereal, and we exchanged a nod in silence just like old friends. After stopping, I looked up at the sky which was taking on a more sinister shade of black.

"How are they magic?" The kid had finished his cereal and was placing the bowl down as I considered his question. He wiped away the milk mustache and gazed at me anxiously.

"Oh…because…each one of these bags is full of…special memories."

"Huh?" Andy blurted, contorting his face in skepticism.

"Yup," I picked up a sandbag and carried it over to him. "See, this one is full of the good times I had at the arcade this summer with a girl who's just a little older than you. If you listen closely, you can hear us laughing." I lifted the sandbag up a bit and we both turned an ear to it.

After a few seconds, Andy lit up. "I can hear it! Get more!"

After instructing the kid that the bags only stay magic if you leave them alone, insuring against any post-construction autopsy that he had in mind, I hauled another bag over. This one was full of frisbee games on the shore with the girls, Morgan never quite getting the release while Tess's early mastery signified a budding beach bum. The next bag was mini-golf. The one after that was the movies for which I had to use two bags to cover the little cinema in town and the drive-in out by the bay. Then there was Sunday morning breakfast at the diner. The next was stuffed full of knock-knock jokes. I was shocked at how fast I emptied the wheelbarrow,  so I left the overjoyed kid to hustle over for more. When I had completed the tiny levee and proclaimed that the house was secure, Andy demanded that he check my work to be sure that no magic could leak out. I wiped the sweat from my face and rubbed the sandy grit from my hands as he repeated out loud the memories stuffed into each bag.

“The arcade,” he smiled and ran his hands over them, “This one’s mini-golf…”

As he went on, a warm sense of satisfaction rose in me. It wasn't just the realization that my habits had to drastically change, or I'd end up really sick or worse, but also somewhere between the bags full of long beach walks and late night pizza pig-outs, I'd decided that I had to get my girls back. I owed it greatly to this kid's fascination with all the sweet memories and their protective magic, to be honest it made me hopeful for him, too. I recognized in his play the desperate desire to have more, to improve, to work on his own magic so that he could learn to stand in this world himself. In a flash, I saw him growing up, meeting a nice girl, marrying and taking care of his mother into a tender old age. Hell, if I can do it, he can do it. I began to laugh at the wonderful prospects ahead for both of us. The kid was at first confused, but soon he joined in with the cutest little chuckle, and we both went on until I was near out of breath.

I glanced toward the house to see if his mother wanted to come out and join in on the good time when I caught sight of her through the smudgy window that looked into the kitchen area. At first, I thought she was reaching into a cupboard for some kind of treat for the kid, but instead she pulled out a bottle, quickly twisting off the cap and lifting it to her lips for a long, sloppy guzzle. I looked away and pressed my eyes shut with my fingers as the pounding headache returned. When I opened them again, the kid was standing in front of me.

"Can we make more?"

I couldn't speak a word because if I did it would end badly. He was going to grow up and feel all the pain and suffering that life can dole out, and no bullshit bags of magic sand would save him. This neighborhood would be his prison and if it gets washed away, then a worse one awaits him, until one day he'll be the one fishing in the cupboard for a breakfast bottle of booze. I grabbed the wheelbarrow and headed back to the pile, ignoring the calls from the kid.

"Hey," he squealed, getting progressively louder the further I moved away. "Come back! Come back!" 

I had to get more loads of sandbags. The next house might have another kid and another mom and maybe they could use some of my memories, maybe they'll turn out all right.

“Come back!"

I wanted to tell the kid that I can't come back, none of us can, but instead I helped Keith finish off his bottle, filled up another load of bags, and pushed onward in search of the elusive house that might somehow be saved from the storm.

---

 

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