Austin Downtown Arts Magazine

Fiction

Raccoons

by Robert Ashker Kraft

We sat on the back porch talking, drinking Bushmills and chain-smoking Camel filters. A family of raccoons shuffled past us one by one on their way to the automatic feeder set up on the other side of the porch. "They must just think that we're weird, mumbling lawn chairs or something," I whispered.

"Who knows what they think." Trent grabbed the lighter off the arm of my chair and lit his fifth cigarette. The butane flare startled a very small raccoon, which squeaked and ran down the stairs into the shadows of the back yard.

"Damn," I muttered.

"He'll be back."

From the kitchen behind us I heard Trent's girlfriend Toni talking on the phone with one of her dancer friends. "Oh my Gawd, that is gross. They are going to fire his ass, if he don't watch it." I heard the muffled crackle of microwave popcorn and the clink of glassware. She was preparing for her Friday night ritual with Carl, an old guy from the club for whom she often danced. He came over every Friday night and they would snort crank, drink Martinis and play Yatzhee until the following afternoon.

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"Why isn't Toni working tonight?"

Trent sighed, "Friday. Too many girls and not enough money."

We spoke, as they say, of everything and nothing, after the fashion of lifelong friends. Trent and I had met in kindergarten. He is to this day my best and, sometimes, only friend.

In the middle of our dialogue, Trent stopped and pointed, "Check him out," he said. The baby raccoon waddled back up the stairs towards us. He stopped to sniff my boot, gazed up at me, then wandered past us to his family, which was munching and splashing around the feeder and water trough. A thrill ran the length of my body. Some of the raccoons had made their way to the roof, and they sat watching us, ears cocked at our rumbling and gurgling.

"So, how you dealing with the Dad thing?" Trent asked.

"I don't know if I am. I don't feel anything yet."

"Maybe it hasn't been long enough. It hasn't sunk in."

I lit a cigarette. "Yeah, maybe not."

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Trent handed me the bottle and I took a long pull of the sweet, amber whiskey. The backyard was slowly bathed in yellow light as Carl's Jeep crept up the alley and pulled into Trent's driveway. We sat silently and watched him climb out of the Jeep and shuffle up the stairs towards us. He was a slouching, fidgety man in his late forties, his pale face pocked and seamed.

"How's it goin'" he piped.

"Alright," we answered in menacing unison.

He stood before us for a moment, squirming under the obligation to make small talk with Trent before he went inside for his "date" with Trent's girlfriend. We were not inclined to encourage him.

"Well, I guess I'll go in," he said, rubbing the palms of his hands on his jeans.

"Alright," we chimed. He went in through the kitchen door.

"What's the story there? Is he an ex or something?" I asked.

"No, I told you, he's just her customer, and her dealer. She lets him hang out with her, and he gets her wired."

Toni popped her glossy head out of the kitchen door. "Are you alright, sweetie? Do you boys need anything?"

"We're fine, Hon."

Toni glance down at me. "Sherry thought you were really cute," she cooed. Sherry was a topless dancer to whom Trent had introduced me the night before in the DJ booth of the club where he and Toni worked.

"I thought she was really...naked," I replied. She had been. That was honestly all I remembered about her.

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Toni snorted, "Yeah, right." Sherry was Toni's best friend in the world, when they weren't busy being mortal enemies. Toni kissed the air in Trent's direction and went back inside to play Yahtzee.

"What's the story there? Is he an ex or something?" I asked.

A cockroach the size of my hand had crawled out of the woodpile and was moving past us along the rail. "Jesus!" I hissed. I swear I could hear its jointed legs creaking and the scrap of its carapace against the wood. Trent's hand shot out like a bullfrog's tongue and he snatched it, alive and squirming, and held it cupped in his two hands. I could see the thin filament antennae wriggling from between his fingers.

"Come on!" he said, leaping from his chair. "Get the door!" I opened the door and followed him through the kitchen, down the hall and into the living room, where Toni and Carl sat on the floor. Dice rattled in the cardboard cup.

"Oh my Gawd! " squealed Toni when she saw us. Trent ran to the large aquarium behind the couch. "Raise the lid, and watch your hands." I lifted the foggy plexi-glass aquarium lid and Trent opened his hands over it, brushing the cockroach into the water.

The alligator burst from the green water and snapped first at my hand, which was still holding the lid, then spun to catch the scurrying insect as it ran across a floating log. It missed, plunged under the log, came up on the opposite side and grunted three times.

The cockroach scrambled up the wall of the aquarium. Trent pointed to it and yelled, "It's over here, you idiot!" The alligator grunted three more times, one and one half feet of prehistoric rage and yearning. It lunged again, smacking its head against the log. Toni, looking on serenely, said, "Y'all are just too gross."

The cockroach met its end. The alligator munched angrily, and Trent and I headed back out to the porch.

"Man!" said Carl.

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Trent and I continued to smoke, drink and talk. I asked about old friends, people we grew up with whom I hadn't seen in the years since I had moved away. Trent filled me in on who was married and divorced, who was thriving and who was disappointed. He punctuated his reports with humorous anecdotes and the dead-on impersonations of characters from our childhood that made him such a captivating yarn-spinner. Finally, the whiskey moved me to the place where one is free to pursue uncomfortable truths.

"So what happened to us, anyway?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, this isn't where we saw ourselves ending up, is it."

Trent laughed. "Oh, no! We aren't ending up are we?"

"What's the story there? Is he an ex or something?" I asked.

"Well, you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I guess I do. I don't know what happened to us, man."

The raccoons had begun to file past us, down the driveway and into the alley. They stood beneath the street light, the mother pacing, waiting for the stragglers. The small ones romped beside the garbage cans, eager to move on to the next feeding ground on their nightly route.

I felt, once again, the need to probe the wound. "What do you and Toni talk about, usually?"

"Talk about? Well, sometimes we talk about people at work. Or Seinfeld. Or shoes. What difference does it make?"

"Do you love her?"

"Love her? I love her body. I love to fuck her. What do you mean, man? Like, True Love? Passion? Romance? She's fuckin' gorgeous, man. That's enough for me, anymore."

My silence seemed to annoy him. "You mean to tell me that after all the shit and pain that you have been through, you still believe in True Love, and all that shit? You still want a woman to be your friend and soul mate? You're crazy."

I didn't answer. Not because I disagreed, either. I was silent because I felt a sudden guilty resonance to what Trent said stirring inside me. I did not want to feel my idealism dying. I changed the subject.

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Toni shrieked with laughter at something clever that Carl had said. Trent and I finished the bottle. We talked ourselves into the sad, comfortable silence that sometimes falls between old friends.

"I guess I'm going to turn in."

"You got everything you need?" Trent asked.

"Yeah, I think I'm set. Goodnight."

On the bed in the guestroom, I laid out my father's violin and his gold pocket watch and stared at them by the light of the strawberry-scented candle that Toni had lit for me. My father had never learned to play the violin. The horsehair was cut from the bow. Three strings were snapped and the bridge had collapsed. I would get it fixed when I got home. I would find someone to play it.

The watch had been a gift for my grandfather, bought shortly after World War II. It was a Bulova. It rested pristine in its original red velvet case. I opened the window and listened to the highway. I breathed in the juniper-scented air of the city that had never felt like home. I went to bed. I was awakened by Toni's orgasmic shrieks. She had slipped away from the Yatzhee tournament for a brief interlude with Trent. I dozed off again as I heard her tiptoeing back to the living room.

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