Z Ward by Jay Mouton

Author:Jay Mouton [Mouton, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: zombies
Published: 2017-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

*****

His mother had been involved with one of her stints with Alcoholics Anonymous. Robey couldn’t have been much more than seven or eight years old at the time.

His mom was sober.

Well, she was kind of sober. It had been, almost, two weeks. She’d been going to a local church mission for her sobriety meetings. They were living, for the second time, in Gainesville, Florida.

Robey remembered hearing his mother stumbling into their studio apartment that night. He knew, instantly, that something had given, or something was about to give.

She was singing her song. Softly, and melodically. Broken strains of broken lyrics wafted into the easy darkness of the two-room studio. “I’m a takin’ all that business. All the days, taking so much business,” she half sang, half whispered.

He heard her open the door on the tiny compact fridge that rested underneath the even more compact microwave oven that most of their meals were prepared in.

A soft ray of light glowed across the dark interior of the small room, but only for a few seconds. Robey heard a little noise, then the light disappeared. Then, a moment later, he heard the familiar pop and the faint hiss that followed it. The lonely joy experienced by imprisoned carbonated air escaping confinement as it rushed out of its cold, circular cell. Rushing free, out into the world. He knew the sound by heart. He wasn’t sure that he could count to a thousand yet, but he was pretty sure he had heard at least a thousand cans of Bush beer whispering “hello, Roberta!”

It was crazy that night. And crazy was normal for Robey Paquette and Roberta.

Robey heard his mom take a long, satisfied swallow from her can of Bush. Then singing her favorite, things are going to get a little bit better, song she stumbled over to her favorite little man. She leaned over, listing. Then, she caught her balance. She reached for his small body, buried under a warm, fleece throw. She shook him. Once. She was gentle. She asked, in her softest slur, “you awake, Robey, baby?”

The boy remembered sitting up in the loveseat that doubled as his bed. The warm air surrounding him, in the cocoon he’d created within the confines of the fleece throw, dissipated into the coolness of the room when the throw slid away from his t-shirt pajama top.

The memory, recalled, seemed so real he could almost feel himself rubbing pretend sleep from his eyes. He could, almost, remember how small his voice used to sound. Way back, he thought, back when he was just a little boy. And, keeping in pace with the times he’d heard a can of Bush whispering out his mama’s name as it beckoned to her, he could hear himself say, “Mama! I thought you’d never get here!”

Then, bathing her child in the scent of Bush beer breath, she leaned deeper into the small boy. She gave him warm hug. It was another thing that Robey, fondly, recollected. His mom, no matter what condition she happened to arrive home in, always gave him the gentlest of hugs.

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