Free Abbott Awaits by Chris Bachelder

Abbott and the Clenched Jaw
    At whom can Abbott be angry? “Another amazing Friday night,” he says to his wife as they clip the dog’s toenails in the foyer. Abbott’s dog lies compliantly on the tile floor, but his eyes are wild with terror and his limbs are trembling. “It’s OK,” Abbott’s wife says to the dog. “This won’t hurt. You’re doing great.” Abbott’s knee hurts. He is angry with the dog, though he understands it is unfair to blame the dog for everything. He notices for the first time that there seems to be some kind of rot in the grout between the tiles. “We should brush his teeth, too,” Abbott’s wife says. “Look at that brown stuff.” “It’s always such a relief when the weekend comes,” Abbott says. “Don’t cut them too short,” says his wife. “It’s a chance to kick back and blow off some steam,” he says. With a little pep and tonal diligence, these words might possibly convey a tenderly ironic statement of solidarity, rather than a jagged statement of anger poorly disguised as a tenderly ironic statement of solidarity. “One more foot, buddy,” Abbott’s wife says. “You’re doing great.” “This is why we work so hard,” Abbott says. “It’s all worth it when the weekend comes.” Abbott’s dog makes a halfhearted attempt at escape, and Abbott pushes him back down to thefloor. “Just relax!” he shouts at the dog. “First of all?” Abbott’s wife says. “This is not Friday.” Abbott says, “Fine.” She says, “It’s not even close to Friday.” Abbott says, “The point still holds.” “What point is that?” his wife asks. Abbott is not quite sure he knows what his point is. He has a notion, but it’s too terrible to say out loud. He pets the dog, examines a paw. “Second, it’s not my fault and it’s not his fault,” Abbott’s wife says, “so don’t take it out on us.” She kneels on the tile by the dog, scratching his ear. Abbott has been trying, he realizes, to look down her shirt. “Fine,” he says. “I know.” “And third?” she says, “do you even remember how hard I had to try to get you to go out on a Friday night before we had a kid?” Abbott says, “That’s not true,” which is not true. Meanwhile, the developing fetus can hear this whole pitiful encounter, according to the Internet. You would think the amniotic fluid would muffle sound, but it actually amplifies it. For an analogy, it might be helpful to remember how well you could hear underwater in the county swimming pool of so long ago.

12 Abbott Discovers an Idiom in His Yard
    Abbott’s neighbor’s woodpile, against which Abbott pushes his mower this afternoon, is a real woodpile, not a metaphor. Abbott, deep in academic reverie, doesn’t even recognize the object, doesn’t name it
woodpile
. It’s been reduced to its geometry—it exists only in relation to his mower. As he bumps the mower against the edge of the pile, he is startled by an interstitial slithering in the stacked logs. He sees the scales, so vivid as to seem artificial. Numerous times in his professional life, in hallways and department meetings, Abbott has heard the phrase
snake in the woodpile
. It’s a stock expression of the paranoid intellectual.
I know about snakes in woodpiles
, Abbott thinks, sprinting across his yard away from the snake in the woodpile,
but what is that snake doing in that woodpile
? This is what it’s like living life backwards. He can’t catch his breath. Once again he’s stunned by the real.

13 Abbott Thinks, Yet Again, the Unthinkable
    Abbott’s daughter has been napping for two hours and fifty minutes. Abbott, a frequent complainer about her short naps, thinks this one has been going on entirely too