Neighbors of Nothing by Jason Ockert

Author:Jason Ockert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Neighbors of Nothing
ISBN: 9781938604935
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

It is easy for Needle to pack up his bedroom. He fills a duffle bag with clothes, a suitcase with bed linen and toiletries, and a backpack with a tarnished trophy, a photograph, a deck of cards, and a length of rope. He slips a newspaper cutout under the rubber band at his wrist, pulls the blinds, and leaves the room, the house.

Paps, in the garage stuffing newspapers into thin orange plastic sleeves, watches his son go.

When the muscles in his arm burn from the weight Needle swings the bags and loosens his grip. He moves from the kind of neighborhood where people give someone swinging bags a wide berth to the kind of neighborhood where people purposefully bump into them.

Needle steps around a loud trio of loiterers huddled near the remnants of a park bench. Shrug off taunts and move the suitcase from right hand to left and the duffle from left to right, without slowing.

An acorn falls from a tree and pops against a fire hydrant then into the tall grass. Cars made mostly of stereos and speakers negotiate tight, pot-hole pocked roads. The sun takes a few steps into a blind alley. Buildings lean forward and try to intimidate each other. Note the missing bricks, broken glass, and dented gutters. The sidewalk is fragmented and often stained.

Needle’s footfalls are high and steady. He glances at street signs and the horizon—smokecloud yellow-gray factory heave—power lines like gradients providing space for what is otherwise nothing. The sidewalk gives up to a concrete expanse punctuated with drainage ditches for sky runoff and leaks.

A blue van with a smiling sandwich painted on its side, the mobile lunch vendor, hurries past Needle to set up where anyone can see it. The driver, a quick man from Burma, slides out tables, snaps open an umbrella, displays hoagies, hamburgers, chips, and coolers packed with drinks. He rattles wind chimes affixed to the rear van door.

Needle buys a dog, which the vendor zaps in a battery-powered microwave, and a drink and sits next to an orange cone just as employees trickle out.

There is an unspoken order to lunch. First come the foremen and navy-blue suits that do not have time to wait. They watch their watches, order tuna sandwiches and chips and leave bills in the plastic pickle tip jar. Because they have desks, they’ll eat at them.

Next are the receptionists and administrators who claim a park bench beneath a cluster of tough elm. They buy bottled water and dig into salads and energy bars they’ve brought from home.

Lastly come the high-beam-walking grunts who wear smudged hardhats and tar-stained blue jeans. Today, cinched around their arms are black bands, a kind of tribute to Lester Noone. The skin around their eyes is clean and soft, protected by goggles; the rest of their faces look like peanut butter. They let their arms dangle loosely and talk sporadically at one another. They clean the vendor out and congregate in patches of weeds near the picnic bench or anywhere else, appreciating the ground.

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