Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 24: Daddy Please Don't Cry

Just as I pulled open the screen door, I saw Jim come hobbling from around the living room corner. Balancing his steps with a cane I wasn't quite sure of when he started using, and dangling a joint from out of his mouth. The smell of marijuana shot straight up my nose.

Jim lunged forward, limping with the wooden cane that wobbled with the weight of his body.

"I'm here to get my things," I said.

"Don't worry 'bout it." He answered. But then as Jim crossed into the gray daylight from the dimness of the hallway, standing in the doorframe, he looked warily at me.

"Wh-What happened t'your eye?"

"Are you fuc—are you joking?"

"No, dear?" He took a careful step down onto the porch. "Your eye, sweetie. Tell me. What happened?"

"Nothing... I'm here to get my things."

"What? Why?" he said anxiously as he walked to his lawn chair. "Are you movin' out?"

"Seriously?"

Before Jim answered, he dropped the cane against the barbecue, scratching the steel as it slid off and thumped to the ground. And then while struggling to lower himself into the seat, asked, "Still seeing... ooh? What was his name? Daniel?"

I shook my head.

"Oh. That's too bad. He seemed like a very nice boy."

On the strike of the lighter, the end-tip of the joint caught a short flame and fizzled, cupping the harsh stank of raw weed. Jim took a hard hit, and as the smoke drooled out of his mouth, he admired how fat of a joint he rolled.

Jim then went on a rant about how Danny was a Leftist and how he's a part of a group of defective snowflakes that are trying to destroy the First Amendment. And that we can't trust our neighbors anymore, and that the Left are committing crimes like taking a knee for our National Anthem. I stopped listening somewhere in the midst of it.

"I'm just tryin' to protect ya, Mary," he said before he began another rant about taxes, or the government, or some other conspiracy theory. Just as I nodded and pulled open the door he said, "I just don't want what happened t'your mum, t'happen to you."

My attention averted from the cold handle.

"Ya know, your mum was young, she was your age, when she got pregnant with you, right?"

The indents of the screen door handle crushed into my palm. I didn't dare let go of my grip.

"It's just real scary t'think 'bout that happening t'ya too, Mary."

He lifted the joint to his mouth. I nodded, anticipating more.

But he only picked and chose what he wanted to reveal about my mom. We didn't say anything else. Jim vanished into a daze or a daydream, staring out towards the crevice between the close-knit properties on the east side of the street. The only view of the ocean we got.

The hinges of the screen door shrieked as I pulled it back, about to step inside.

"Mary."

I turned around. Jim's eyes were glossed over and red. Even then, I had faith they were red with tears.

"I need you," he said.

The smoke from his lips slipped into the air. The frame of the porch cringed with the rocking of the wind. Flakes of dirt wavered in the cobwebs.

"Yeah," I said. My eye throbbed.

"I couldn't handle losin' you, like how I lost your mother."

I nodded, opening the door wide enough to let myself in.