New Micro by James Thomas

Author:James Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

DINTY W. MOORE

Rumford

Given how Uncle Skitch drank, no one in the family wanted to believe him when he insisted that Rumford could speak.

No one wanted Skitch to drive, either, but he did.

In the mornings, still stung from the four or five tumblers of whiskey he downed at the kitchen table the night before while shouting at the voices on his radio, Skitch would stumble out his front door, fumble into his massive, gray 1962 Buick—“the battleship”—and jerk-stop, jerk-stop, jerk-stop the damn car all the way to the end of the block before realizing his emergency brake was still engaged. He did this repeatedly, refusing to learn. The noise horrified everyone.

But old Skitch jerk-stopped his battleship to its final mooring spot when the railroad finally let him go. Skitch used to ride in the back of the train, watching out for equipment failure. After he lost the job, he just drank around the clock, and never drove anywhere. The neighbors were more relieved than annoyed to see that old Buick rotting out front.

Skitch still bragged about Rumford, though.

If you called Skitch at home, the dog would answer the phone. Or that is what Skitch said, anyway. Most of us thought it was his wife, Ethel. She had a deep voice from all those years of chain-smoking unfiltered Pall Malls. She loved a good practical joke.

Three years later, Skitch and Ethel vanished. The Buick disappeared from the curb. Mail piled up. The phone wasn’t answered. My father finally broke into the house to find no one at home, no note, but all the clothes missing.

Police quizzed the only witness.

Rumford didn’t say a thing.

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