Red
The wind howled through the crack of his window. He glanced in the rearview, looking close to see his face, hollow and spotty. His hair was gone and his wife would be back from work soon. She'd make dinner, though he couldn't keep anything down anymore. He waited at a red, trying to calculate. He'd go back the next day to play Black Jack, maybe Poker. He went ahead. He put the checkbook in the glove box. He'd made promises. He'd win it back.
After he got home, he sat in his rocker and waited for his wife. He fell asleep, then woke when his wife kissed him. She said he looked spent, which reminded him of chemo, radiation, those experimental treatments. He tried to get up. He took a step and fell. His wife tried to help. She called the paramedics. No, he said. No, he said again. No, he said on the way. He said sorry, the faces fading closer and then out again.
Screw
They drank their pops and he got out the detector he'd bought for her the night before at Wal-Mart, saying it wasn't as good as his, but it was something she could start with. It had the same flat ring at the bottom. The times before, she only followed him around and sifted through his dirt piles. Usually he found pop tabs and bottle caps, but he said he was sure they'd find a treasure, and he started digging faster, finding dimes and nickels, broken toys and razor blades and once he found a needle. He found a copper ring and put it on her finger. He brought his items home and cleaned them. He bought a toolbox where he could keep them sorted and he started a journal where he reported his findings.
He told her to go to the other end and she did and scanned her detector over the ground the way she was supposed to. Her detector kept beeping, so she focused on a spot and got down and she tried to dig through roots. She used a shovel like he did. She put the bevel in the ground and stomped on it with her foot to break through. She tore off the root layer and heard him on his end, screaming out a find: coins or screws or possibly a necklace.
She dug, finding worms and stones and the roots were viney. She dug slow and got deep, into the clay. She figured there was nothing really down there and her shovel was small and the ground was hard and impossible. She put her shovel down and took her hat and gloves off.
Ekleksographia:
Wave Two
March, 2010
Fiction
Kim Chinquee
Kim Chinquee is the author of Oh Baby (Ravenna Press), and the forthcoming Pretty (White Pine Press). She lives in Buffalo, New York.