Free Grime by K.H. Leigh Page A

as much. You the only
one here?”
    “Yeah. I haven’t heard from them.”
    “I’m sure Gwen will be late.” She pulls a
pack of Newports out of her jacket pocket and lights one without
offering me any. Just as well, I gave it up when I met Ben. She
doesn’t know that, though. “What’s with the boxes?” she asks. “You
planning to keep any of this shit?”
    “No, just thought some of it might go to
Goodwill or something.” In fact I hadn’t even thought about it that
much. I just got boxes because that’s what you need to pack up a
house. Boxes. Not trash bags, not dumpsters. Boxes.
    “I’m surprised you came, to be honest,” Val
said between drags.
    “I’m surprised any of us did. We could have
hired someone. People do that.”
    She shrugs. “We could have. But we didn’t.
How’s Ben?” I must look surprised, because she smiles a bit.
    “He’s good.”
    “You two married?”
    “Next spring, maybe. Just something small. We
haven’t really talked about it much.”
    My phone buzzes in my pocket.
     
    What time did we say?
    10 minutes ago.
    Shitturds. Leaving now.
     
    “Gwen’s on her way.”
    Val drops what’s left of her cigarette on the
curb and smashes it with the toe of her sneaker. Like a flash of
lightning I see her in pigtails, stepping on an earthworm, studying
the pinkish brown streak left on the sidewalk with a look of smug
satisfaction as she scrapes it off her shoe. Strangely vivid for
such a meaningless memory.
    I open the Swiss army knife on my keychain
and slice the plastic ties off one of the stacks of boxes. Val
watches me fold up two of them before taking one for herself.
Neither of us say anything.
    A pickup truck towing a U-Haul trailer comes
around the corner and stops in the middle of the street in front of
the house. The window rolls down and James Taylor leaks out of the
stereo. How apropos.
    “Mitchell,” Jamie calls from the driver’s
seat. Always Mitchell, never Mitch. She’s the only one I ever let
get away with that. Or maybe just the only one who ignored my
protestations. “Help me back it up the driveway.”
    I walk backwards by the driver’s side edge of
the trailer and shout instructions to her as she eases up to the
house. “Left a bit. More. More. Straighten out. You’re good. Keep
coming.”
    Once she has it in park she kills the noisy
diesel engine and climbs out. I don’t have time to wonder how I
should greet her, because she pulls me in for a quick side hug,
just one arm each, hip to hip. It isn’t as awkward as I would
think, not like it would have been with Val. Maybe it’s residual
from spending so much time snuggled up against each other in the
womb.
    “I have trash bags and gloves,” Jamie says,
reaching into the cargo box in the bed of the truck. She hands me a
pair of blue gardening gloves with the price tag still attached and
hefts an oversized box of those huge black bags people use for lawn
clippings onto her shoulder. “Jesus, has anyone ever trimmed these
trees?”
    She hugs Val, too, and for some reason it
makes me feel guilty.
    Jamie marches up to the open doorway and we
both follow her. She stands with her hands on her hips, surveying
the room, then drops the box of garbage bags on a lumpy chair by
the door. A cloud of dust swirls up from the impact.
    "You wanna do one room at a time? Start in
here and work our way back?"
    "Works for me."
    We each gravitate toward a different corner.
Mine has a bookcase with a broken shelf, covered in old magazines.
National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Time. All at least twenty
years old. I leaf through a couple, checking the covers for any
interesting history, then start dropping them by stacks into a
box.
    “Why aren’t there any lights on?” Jamie
asks.
    "The power was shut off weeks ago," Val
answers, shoving a bent umbrella frame into a black trash bag.
"Apparently his bill hadn’t been paid in a long time."
    His. It's the first time any of us have
mentioned him. Just a tiny personal