LITMIR.BIZ

       Under the Table

      TK wakes up under a table in a strange house. His feet are sticking out the end in his worn black boots. He pulled a pillow off the couch for his head, used one of the drapes for a blanket. Man has to improvise. When he was eleven, he could drink most grown men under the table, but this is not the case today. Twenty-three years living clean, and he’s got the AA medals to prove it, even if they’re in a cardboard box with the rest of his stuff up in Flint with his sister.

      The dawn light is a drowsy gray through the table cloth. Like a shroud. No wonder he was dreaming about being buried alive. Staring up at the dark grain of the wood makes it feel like he’s lying in a coffin – the luxury model you gotta fork out extra for, with the creamy exterior and the gold-plate handles and the silk-lined space inside. Not the kind he buried his momma in. But that’s morbid thinking, and the day is bright and all laid out ahead of him and he’s got a whole house to go through.

      A different man would have slept in one of the beds upstairs, but the family took the big mattress with them and it wouldn’t feel right to sleep in one of the little kids’ rooms. Besides, it’s one of his special talents. He’s got a knack for sleeping anywhere, anytime. Worked it up in the assembly line making screws, where if you were smart and motivated and very sneaky, you could take on the work of two men for an hour or two, while the other guy caught some shut-eye, and then switch it up. Bosses didn’t like it, but long as the work got done, what did they care? He finds he sleeps better if it’s really noisy. Conditioning, they call it. Drills and bolts and the whine of heavy machinery? That’s pure lullaby to him. The birds twittering outside to greet the sunrise don’t make the cut.

      Something crashes in the kitchen. He bolts upright, smashing his head on the underside of the table. Damn. Shouldn’t have got complacent, even with the door locked behind him and a kind-of permission.

      He tried to do it real polite. He stood on the corner across the way, while the family packed the car, loading everything into a station wagon and a U-Haul trailer. They strapped the mattress to the roof and a table to the mattress, upside down with its legs in the air like a dead bug. The kids went into the house and came out again, carrying boxes in relay, while the afternoon shadows stretched out. The wife kept glaring at him, like the foreclosed notice in a plastic folder taped to the door was somehow his fault. The kids, too. Shifty glances at him and then back at their folks, except for the toddler of course, who wanted to play in the boxes. Real cute little boy, getting underfoot like one of those wind-up toys that keeps going.

      TK tried to be nonchalant about it. Taking his time to roll a cigarette and smoke it. He didn’t mean to make them freak out. But he couldn’t walk away and leave it to chance, either. Someone else might happen along. And sure, that seems unlikely in this neighborhood where theirs is the last house standing among overgrown lots and burned-out wrecks, and he only chanced on them because it’s what he does; wander the city looking for luck. TK is no stranger to terrible coincidence. Ask his momma, and her twin sister who got her killed.

      ‘Leave it alone,’ the husband muttered, pulling on the ropes to make sure everything was tight as. But it was boiling up inside her, the whole time he waited, trying to make it seem like he wasn’t.

      ‘No,’ she said, handing the toddler off to her man and striding toward TK across the yellow grass, her little fists balled up like she was a pro-footballer instead of five-foot nothing. The husband started after her, then realized she’d immobilized him by handing him the baby.

      TK dropped the cigarette and ground it out. No manners in breathing your poison in someone else’s face. Nor in littering, nor wasting tobacco, even the cheap stuff. He picked up the stump and pocketed it. When he stood up again, she was in his face, hands on her hips, spitting outrage. Not really at him, but sometimes people need a stand-in. He’d seen it often enough, at the shelter, at meetings. He could be that for her.

      ‘Can’t you even wait till we’re out of here, you … vulture!’ Her voice cracked as she said it, but the insult bounced right off him. He doesn’t know much about vultures outside of what he’s seen on TV, hop-hopping to get at some dead carcass. If he’d had a choice, he’d have told her he’s more like one of the city’s stray dogs. Because they’re shameless opportunists and you can cuss them out much as you like, they’ve learned not to take it personally. The lone animals anyway. It’s when they pack together that you got a problem. Only takes one mean dog to wind up all the others into biting teeth and snarls. But he’s a solo mutt and he knows how to wag his tail a little.

      ‘I’m sorry to see you go, ma’am,’ TK said, calm, looking her in the eye. ‘Used to be that it was only the nice white families moving out of Detroit.’

      He’d knocked the indignation right out of her sails. Good manners will do that; turn a situation around. You got to treat people like people. Something his momma taught him, along with how to use a gun, and what the minimum going rate for a whore was.

      ‘Yes, well,’ she said, angrily brushing at her eyes, ‘tell that to the bank.’

      ‘You

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