Free Skunk Hunt by J. Clayton Rogers Page A

Jeremy for his input. I
expected him to dismiss my concern, and experienced a highly
tangible chill when he said:
    "I think I saw someone outside, sitting in a
car."
    "Watching my house?" I said.
    "Isn't it still sorta our house?" Barbara
protested.
    "If it's your house too, clean it up," I
groused. The new Jeremy was already having an impact on me. "This
is a pigsty."
    My brother did not involve himself in the
brief squabble over property rights. He scrubbed his hand on his
bristly crewcut, set his jaw in a Skunk-like grimace, and waited.
In the back of my mind I registered this as another mark against
him. No papers had been signed after our parents' deaths. Legally,
this was as much his house as ours. Why wasn't he staking his
claim?
    But my fear returned and I stood.
    "I've got to check this guy out," I said,
heading for the front door.
    "Gal," Jeremy amended, joining me. "Kind of a
dog, too."
    This alarmed me even more. The two girls I
had recently dated were fit for euphemisms: 'ill-favored', 'on the
plain side', 'glamour-challenged', 'Miss Alternate Universe'. I
would add 'sweet personalities', if it applied. So far as I knew,
neither of them was dragging a torch for me. But what if I had
sparked some kind of emotion? Love? Unlikely. Perhaps, then, a
gnawing disgust so potent that they were inclined to rid the
neighborhood of such a fumbling rat? I doubted either one of them
was packing—but around here, you never knew. Still, if one of them
wanted to slather me in ridicule, with my siblings present as
witnesses, that would have been as effective as a bullet in the
head.
    I had intended to stroll out the door and
take a casual glance up the street, as though looking for the ice
cream man. But prudence invoked a last-second course adjustment
that steered me to the window. Slowly opening a gap in the dismal
smoke-saturated curtains, which had not been changed (or washed)
since our mother died, I tried to find a clear field of vision
through the dusty glass.
    "You've got to be joking," Jeremy fumed,
turning away.
    "Wait!" I called out, but my brother was
already opening the door.
    When I arrived on the porch, a rust-streaked
van was pulling away from the curb. I caught only a chubby fragment
of the driver's profile before it sped off.
    "She saw us coming," said Barbara, coming up
behind me.
    "Yeah," said Jeremy. "So...the old homestead
is out of the question. We'll have to meet somewhere else."

CHAPTER 7
     
    The Tyrannosaurus rex roared with nauseating
regularity as I handed out feedbags of overpriced popcorn to
overfed brats in the care of overindulgent significant-others. It
seemed to me a fair portion of the accompanying grownups were
divorced fathers trying to put a good face on a bad result. Then
there were the nannies forced to suffer through A Day on Mars for
minimum wage. Most of the adult couples looked inordinately
happy—divorced fathers and nannies hooking up, using the little
creeps bouncing against their kneecaps as camouflage.
    I tried to remain oblivious, without much
luck. I also tried to remain invisible—with a little more success.
Maybe it was my Sad Sack posture, my limp demeanor, or the empty
cave of my personality. The robotic dinosaurs in the next exhibit
hall had more charm, although I had formed a sympathetic attachment
with the demure ankylosaurus, with its head-to-tail armor. Go
ahead, he seemed to say. Bite me.
    But I didn't want to be bitten. I didn't want to be seen . Among my forefathers, labor was
a dirty word, and looking stupid while performing labor was enough
to evict me from the family tree. I wasn't a captain of industry,
but a busy-work clown. About the only thing positive was that I was
legal, a rare attainment at this level of employment. I was free of
razor wire cuts, lungs half-choked with border sewage, scrapes and
bumps from dark, narrow tunnels. Don't knock it. Being born an
American is my only accomplishment.
    The old-style red and yellow popcorn stand
(which my uniform