A word about LIWB

Just something that will bother me if anyone is actually following this. I want to state clearly that I am posting my writing without any proof reading. All will be corrected when the story is finished and polished. After writing I just want to post and not the spend the time required to make sure it's prefect.

Yes, "prefect" is on purpose. I hope you understand.

LIWB Chapter 4

Mel looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. The sun rose high and hot and filled the room with natural light and air that spilled warm like dishwater. Patches of fresh mold were sprinkled at the corners of the mirror while the rest of the glass wore layers of caked smoke. But he could still see get the gist of it. The old man could still make out his gruff, growling snarl.

A week had passed since his breakfast with Rosa. Mel still lived content with his decision. Indeed, he quickly grew to love the child named Happy. Happy filled a lifelong void for Mel Stotch. Never had he been responsible for the life of another human being. He never thought he'd see the day when it would appeal to him.

As Rosa would confirm, Mel never cared for another person in his life. He had never cared for children or siblings, certainly never for his wife. They co existed until it was clearly not helping either of them. Then they got divorced, which only happened upon Rosa's insisting. Mel didn't understand why you would pay a lawyer when you could just move out for free.

Mel Stotch walked alone. Life was easier to handle that way, less roadblocks when you walk alone. But he was old now. There are more roadblocks for young men than old. Mel felt he could afford to gain a few roadblocks back as long as he was in charge. This old man finished taking orders a long time ago.

The week had progressed slowly and smooth. No emergencies shook his spirit. No screaming split his mind. Happy was a quiet baby. He cried when he was wet or stinking. The old man couldn't blame him. The crying lessened when Mel started using old torn shirts for diapers instead of the newspaper. It was more laundry but it was worth the extra silence.

Mel could do this. He had no delusions of the child having a normal, what he would call "fancy", life. His advanced age could pose no threat to the Happy's growth. Mel would never miss his graduation because he would never go to school. He wouldn't miss his wedding because he wouldn't get married. Mel would do his best to make sure the boy didn't make the same mistakes he did.

Happy would know how to keep his mouth shut. Happy would know to spot a phony, in business and in life. Happy would know to always look out for number one, hide his secrets and lie to bartenders and cops. These are things Mel would teach him. This is what Happy needed to know to be a man. Mel was a father and a soldier, fighting the good fight.

Another week passed and the scars healed from Happy's umbilical cord and circumcision. After a couple checks from his customers Mel had stocked his cabinet with Gerber's baby food and soup broth. He found a mix and milk and coffee cream the boy seemed to really like. It was the same recipe he mixed for his cats.

A week after that and Mel bought a book on raising children. He learned not to shake them or play rough. He cursed the author for his wasted cash. A penny saved is a thimble of rum.

Months passed until Mel figured the boy had a birthday. Mel bought Happy a toy ball and ate cake with his rum. The book had said he could feed a child eggs at age one. Happy slopped scrambled eggs on his face and howled with excitement. The old man wished he owned a camera for the first time in his life. Mel had so much fun he overdrank and passed out before the baby.

He missed his first word that night but heard it the first thing the next morning, waking to the bouncing child on his chest, naked and stained with egg.
"Wat!", Happy yelled as he rammed his heels into the old man's collar bone. Mel nodded, wincing as the arthritis in his back screamed with his hangover. "That's right, Happy. Rat," the old drunk confirmed. It wasn't until hours later that he grasped the significance of the event.

Three years passed like a flood as the boy grew. Mel remembered a period after he left his twenties when an eternity of life began to accelerate, his age racing like a frightened wolf. The speed decreased with his vigor, his piss and vinegar, his muscle and strength. Years returned to crawling for the last two decades, pace of which the old man had grown very fond. But then he found the boy and waved a red flag and the race started again.

Mel thought about death more often as he felt his bones erode and his body shrink. Death used to be a cold lonely idea, one he avoided whenever possible. He had been nothing and would leave nothing. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But now he had family. Now he had a son to leave behind. His deathly vision struck a spark of warmth. Loneliness vanished with a visitor for his grave. The old man liked having a family and grew proud to be a dad.

Now that Happy walked and talked Mel had little choice but to at least allow him in the junkyard. Happy learned that he was Mel's grandson. His daddy had ran away, scared of some woman. This is how customers came to understand it and it was very close to the truth, closer than most truths Mel told his customers. And those were closer to most truths Mel told his friends. Truth was only what you believed. Happy learned that too.

Mel had taught Happy a lot of important things early, all things he intended to teach. The most important lesson was that which brought them the closest together as father and son. This experience Mel passed down would bond the two infinitely and forever impact the toddler's life. It would steer Happy in his most dire moments and define him as a man and human being.

Two weeks after Happy's fourth birthday Mel taught him how to hunt for rats.

LIW&B Chapter 3

IGNORE THE PREVIOUS POST, STARTING OVER

Mel sat still a long time watching the boy thinking hard and deep for the right thing to do. He was a selfish man by most standards, a drunk and a hermit who lived hidden away in a garbage dump, never bending to anyone's rules of conduct, alone by choice and angry pride. Mel felt he had just not gotten in anybody's way. He kept to himself. There's nothing worse than getting in someone's way.

Happy napped pleasantly. The child was a born napper, a born bum, Mel thought. The old man raised his cheeks and scratched his chin. He envied the boy for his ability to sleep. Sleeping had become a luxury the old man sought and suffered. But watching the child had made him tired, sitting at the table in his dirty bachelor kitchen. Mel wasn't used to caring for another human being and found it to be awfully tiring work. But he liked the boy named Happy. He wanted him to be safe and healthy. He wanted good things for him. He didn't know why, but he liked saying his name. The old man said it out loud to good cheer his lonely trailer didn't know.

A wrap at the door. Mel almost forgot he called her. "Rosa?" he shouted through the paper thin walls.
"Yeah it's me," a voice calloused from a lifetime of cigarettes answered back.

Rosa was an old woman, a few years older than Mel. Her skin flowed in deep grooves sunken from age and stained red from burst blood vessels ruptured from her own addiction to alcohol. Her hair still held a darkness but was ultimately gray and light in patches around her head. Everything else hung like melted candle wax, including a distinctive poultry flap of a neck. She appeared brittle from age, but she was far from it. She looked around the room before addressing it.
"Mel, this place is caked in more shit than the garbage outside," she mused. She looked down to the table where Mel looked more helpless than the infant sleeping beside him. "Where'd the baby come from?" And before Mel could answer, "Who the fuck let you watch a baby?"

Mel took another sip of his rum and tea, assured he made the right decision to pour it before Rosa arrived. He knew the criticism to endure, but endure he would. He survived over a decade of marriage to the woman. He could stand a couple hours to get some baby tips.

"I don't know shit about babies, you fuckin' stump! Is that why you called me over here? Jesus Christ, Mel, I thought you were gonna tell me you had cancer." Rosa pulled out a cigarette and shook her head watching the baby as she lit up.

Mel thought showing her the letter from the father would help gain compassion. Now, he was left to his wits.
"Come on, Rosa," Mel pleaded, "I don't want to drop the kid off at a hospital. They got enough problems. And I ain't going near any cops. I figure the kid's better off here either way."

"You're 72 fucking years old!" The excited shriek blew a cord in the old woman. She launched into a coughing and hacking fit that finished only after she took a chair at the table.

"I'm 71 Rosa! I know my own age!" Mel, pulled himself back quickly from falling into a well rid routine. Even after being divorced for twenty eight years, the bickering was a familiar road to travel. "I gotta secure job, my own damn business, that I'll always have. It also allows me to stay home with the kid. That's better than most young dads could do."

"What if you die next month, Asshole?" Rosa loved cutting through bullshit.
Mel sat looking at her a long time before he could think of an answer. He took another sip of his tea.
"Well, I guess I'll need to keep up with some people so's they'll know to come callin' if they haven't heard nothin' from me." Even Mel began to qualify his comment before he was finished speaking it. And it didn't add up to his reality.

"Yeah, and who's that gonna be? Me?" Rosa challenged. "What people do you keep in touch with that would come by here to see if you're livin' or dead? When's the last time you had any friends, Mel?" Rosa was also used to the routine. Even decades later, she still deplored his tactic of silence when he knew he was wrong.
"Answer me!" She shouted, tired of waiting.

"Well, I ain't thought of everything, but then again, I don't plan on dying anytime soon!" He asserted and grabbed some confidence with his volume. "I mean I know I can't coach a little league team, but I wouldn't of had interest in that when I was young. I don't see the big damn deal, especially when it's me or an orphanage." The old man was getting hot having fallen into the routine.

Rosa could only chuckle softly to prevent another heaving attack. She blew a stream of smoke across the table that floated upwards to join the newborn cloud hovering over all three of them. "I can't believe you got this bug up your ass, Mel," she tapped ashes onto the floor.
She gripped the table to rise to a stand and stepped around to look down at the infant. She appeared as any grandmother gazing down at her flesh and blood.
"The kid's not my problem," she agreed, "What do I care what you do with him?"

With this agreement reached, Mel sheepishly returned to his favor. "Well then, can you give me a few tips on raising him?"
Rosa looked back, the protest flushing back into her face. She ashed the cigarette again, sending some falling gently onto Happy's blanket.
"Is that why you called me over here, to teach you how to raise a baby?" She accused.

Mel stood from his chair for the first time since she entered the trailer. "I don't expect you to teach me anything, just a tip or two about what babies like."
Rosa raised her arms, melted wax sliding toward her elbows, "How the hell would I know what babies like? You think I had a kid after we got divorced? I was fifty five!"
"You raised your sisters growin' up, didn't ya? That's more experience than I got!" Mel begged.
"Shit, Mel, that was during the Depression. And most of my sisters are dead now." Rosa countered.
"It's not your fault they died," Mel offered.
"You don't know that," Rosa declined.

The two old divorcees stood opposite each other, seething but still at home. Mel wanted to respond with a biting remark to justify his position but he couldn't. Rosa knew he couldn't. And she forgave the old fool.
"Pour me some of that rum you're drinkin'. I drove all the way over here, I might as well get something from it." She held onto the table and guided herself back to her seat. She dropped the cigarette to the floor and smashed it with her slipper before sitting down.

Mel obeyed and mixed up her rum in his cleanest glass. He even put ice in it, the way she preferred. She took it from his hand before he could set it before her and gulped down half. The glass landed on the table with a thud.
"Something about babies, huh?" Rosa pondered. "They like music, but it's got to be the right kind of music, like kid's music." She breathed deeply and fended off a cough. "They like cartoon music. And they like cartoons." Mel nodded and thought about taking notes.

"I'll tell ya one thing they don't like, all the fuckin' rats you got runnin' around here," she warned him.
"The rats ain't a problem. I got my traps and I make rounds every day," Mel asserted with pride. "There's even a few rogue cats that likes eatin' all they can. Maybe I'll get a few more."
"Well, what about the cats?" Rosa continued, "Cats ain't too good around babies either. You gotta a lotta dangerous animals running around here."
"There ain't no dangerous animals around here!" Mel raised his voice, "Cats are pets and the rats ain't dangerous as long as I got my traps and cats!"
Rosa allowed another soft chuckle, surrendering a losing battle, "Have it your way Mel. Just don't let nobody that would give a damn inspect this place for safety. Most folks would think an orphanage is a helluva lot better."

Mel thought about his safe little haven in the middle of the dump. He couldn't imagine any place being safer. He knocked a fist on the table to catch Rosa's attention. He motioned for a cigarette which she had no problem to give. She lit her own first then passed him her lighter. Both took a drag then sat back and shot a laser of smoke at the other.
"I don't think you're doing the right thing, Mel. I think you're gonna make a big mistake and hurt this boy." The comment was the most honest she had spoke to him in a decade.

Mel sipped his rum and gathered his own honesty to match.
"It don't surprise me you think that way, Rosa," he said, "You've always been a negative bitch."

LIW&B Chapter 3

Mel sat still a long time watching the boy thinking hard and deep for the right thing to do. He was a selfish man by most standards, a drunk and a hermit who lived hidden away in a garbage dump, never bending to anyone's rules of conduct. Mel felt he had just not gotten in anybody's way. He kept to himself. There's nothing worse than getting in someone's way.
Happy napped pleasantly. The child was a born napper, a born bum, Mel thought. The old man raised his cheeks and scratched his chin. He envied the boy for his ability to sleep. Sleeping had become a luxury the old man sought and suffered. But watching the child had made him tired, sitting at the table in his dirty bachelor kitchen. Mel wasn't used to caring for another human being and found it to be awfully tiring work. But he liked the boy named Happy. He wanted him to be safe and healthy. He liked saying his name.
A wrap at the door. Mel almost forgot he called her. "Rosa?" he shouted through the paper thin walls.
"Yeah it's me," a cigarette calloused voice answered back.





That's all for now, I know it ain't much but it's already a rough week.

Life is Warm and Buttery: Chapter 2

Mel Stotch loved the smell of cigar smoke in the morning. His teeth clamped the stogie steady and sucked out a few puffs as the bags of trash tumbled into his cart. Ember bristled and relaxed at the smoldering tip. A few ashes escaped and floated away in the freedom of the wind.

Mel sat the empty steel can back on the floor slowly so as to keep it quiet. The last thing he wanted to do was make noise and summon the nuns. He was hanging by a thread of their goodwill. Another unpleasant conflict and they'd forget about his discount and start having their trash collected by the city. Of course, this threat didn't prevent the old pain in the ass from smoking his stogies, the one thing they hated the most. Mel felt he had won that right.

After a recent falling out, it had been agreed Mel could smoke his cigars but he was not allowed inside the convent. The sisters made certain to leave all trash receptacles outside for Mel to collect. If God decided to make the skies precipitate, the receptacles would be stored in a group and placed outside the kitchen. Under this arrangement Mel was not allowed inside anymore, regardless if he was smoking, unless emergency. Mel couldn't think of an emergency that could cause him to demand entrance, but got the message just the same.

Mel knew he was a smelly, dirty, ill mannered, foul mouthed old man, but it still hurts to have nuns share such feelings about you. He also knew he had done plenty to accommodate their dislike. Normally, Mel wouldn't smoke while emptying cans. You never know what might be flammable inside the bags. There's no reason to take the chance of one of his proud burning embers landed on the wrong piece of garbage and igniting. But he felt the sisters had pushed him. So smoke he must.

With his bin full, the white haired devil shuffled back to his truck. Mel Stotch was 79 years old. He didn't care that he looked and smelled like garbage. He had owned his dump since his father passed it to him when he was 15. His father died at home, a lingering cancer that clawed and crawled. After he died the house didn't feel very inviting. Mel slept in the office until he saved enough money to put a trailer on the lot. It was just Mel anyway. His mother died long before his father. Mel never knew the entire story. His father didn't want to tell it.

Mel Stotch was a lonely man but he didn't know it. Solitary is the only way he ever lived. He didn't have any friends except some of the pub owners that hired him to pick up their trash. A couple of them had invited to stay for a drink over the years and he had accepted. But he never spent enough time there to consider anyone a friend. The relationship was strictly professional.

The end of the stogie crackled as it evaporated sending a a trail of tobacco odor to follow. A ball cap hung backwards over the old man's spotted head. It was a warm summer morning as good as any Mel had known. He passed two chattering sisters that paid him no mind. He crossed out of the courtyard and onto the brick sidewalk with his trash bin.

As he neared his truck, Mel saw a flock of sisters sitting on and around the stairwell in front of which he had parked. To avoid the group would require taking the trash bin over their grass which would be a definite confrontation. He would have to pass straight through the group. Mel braced himself for combat.

Mel Stotch didn't like to fight and was far from hateful. He developed some wit and a smart mouth dealing with the characters he encountered at his dump over the years. He had no ill against the nuns or their mission. He really had no experience with women at all. Not many ladies came to his junkyard. But rather than address their comments about improving his appearance and behavior like a gentleman, Mel chose to grunt and shout profanities like a hobo. Eventually, the sisters simply chose to dislike him. It seemed to be easiest for all.

The rumbling wheels of the trash bin on brick alerted the sisters to turn and observe the scratchy old buzzard. He slowed to ask permission to pass.
"Excuse me sisters, just gettin' to my truck," he smiled and waved, breaking the cigar halo rising above his head.

Most of the sisters stood or scooted, some with a scornful glare. One rose and spoke, not being the first time she had done it.
"Please, Mr. Stotch, pass us with your bin so that the garbage can mask the horrible odor of your cigar."
Mel nodded and wanted to keep his eyes down. Looking at this woman directly could cause him to say something he would regret. "Yes, Sister Fabish, I will move fast."

As he pushed the cart past, Sister Fabish cast one more stone. "How must a man's breath smell after keeping such a foul thing festering in his mouth all day?"
And Mel reverted to his ignorance of manners to answer, "It's probably quite the same as a woman's breath after talking a lot of shit."

Sister Fabish shrieked while the others just shook in disgust. Mel sped his shuffle to his truck. His trash bin wheels clanked and spun on the brick stairs almost getting out his grip in the haste. The old man made it to the parking lot and never looked back. He only heard Sister Fabish as she stormed off to tell a superior or priest.
"A man like you has no business here except to pray for forgiveness of the Lord!"

Mel shook it off as he rolled his cart around to the back of his truck to load. He had heard it before. The codger still moved his arthritic arms and hands faster than he normally did to unload the trash into his truck. Upsetting the geese gave him no issues, but he never liked to loiter after he did. Few things are less fun then having holes bore through you by a gaggle of angry, pious women. The extra heaves might make his back sore but he had lotion for that.

By the time he opened his truck door and jumped inside only half the nuns remained where he had passed. Most had returned to their texts but one or two still watched him. He turned the ignition and pressed the accelerator before he turned and found his surprise. An infant, a newborn, lie sleeping on the passenger side. Had Mel been drinking coffee he would have sat his cup on the child. The old man turned his head out the window to exhale the cigar smoke and spit out the butt.

The sisters still watching didn't appreciate the spit cigar on their parking lot. They began to squawk as the truck backed away. Mel hit the brakes at the sight of the infant. The nuns were forgotten as he picked up the note.

Mel had never been so close to a newborn. The situation expanded beyond his comprehension. The child stirred with the motion of the truck and the sudden stop.
"Happy," Mel said out loud, reading the boy's name. He looked down at the boy, expressionless from shock. "Hi Happy," came out as automatic as robot.

The nuns rose and came forward, shouting and waving their books. The catcalls broke Mel's focus and he looked through his windshield to see the maddening mob. Oblivious to the cigar still smoldering beside his tire, Mel figured the nuns weren't finished chastising his remark. They continued to approach the truck. Mel grew very nervous. The shock of the child and the domineering rebuttals from the sisters struck the old man like the flashing lights of a police car. He felt very scared and guilty and wanted to flee.

The tires of the truck spun as the pedal hit the floor. The truck lurched forward and the child slid against the seat. Mel's eyes widened with the force and slowed down. He steered the car out of the lot as the infant started to yell and cry. The truck pulled over into a gas station half a mile down the road.

Mel read the note over and over, trying to visualize who might have left this child. The truck sat idling in the parking lot long enough to burn through half a tank. Mel didn't know anything about children. Even as a child he didn't know them. The old man knew the right call would be to the police. But the old man also knew what it was to be an orphan. While there was a note signed by someone claiming to be his father, this child was exactly that.

Mel could make the child's life better than an orphanage. As a boy, he had been fortunate to inherit his father's dump. The livelihood kept him in his own control. Mel was old, not as strong as he once was. But he had built himself a life of leaving nothing behind. Perhaps this opportunity had arrived so Mel could leave behind that blessing of self control that he had received so long ago. This idea was one of a thousand that spinned through his mind.

Mel didn't call the police that night. He took home the child named Happy, back to his stained, crumbling trailer in the middle of tons of human garbage. He wrapped the boy in his cleanest blanket and struggled to feed him some milk from a spoon. The old man cursed himself for not thinking to buy some baby food. That night, Mel endured the crying and sleeplessness of a new parent.

The next day, Mel was at the market when they unlocked and opened. He spoke with a woman cashier who had children of her own. He bought baby food, diapers, formula, and other supplies essential to a new baby boy. Still unsure if he would or even could keep the boy, he at least wanted to make sure the child would be healthy until he made his decision.

"What's your boy's name?" the sharing cashier asked the old man.

"Happy," the old man answered with a cheer he wanted to repeat.

Life is Warm and Buttery: Prologue (completed)

The fat man pushed into the wall belly first. His hips turned with contact, rolling him around until he was flat on his back. The crying child remained secure in his heavy arms.

Sweat flooded his eyebrows and stung his eyes. One arm was allowed release to wipe this perspiration. After a single wipe, the arm returned to the safety of the newborn.

The crying echoed through the stairwell loudly. Concrete walls provide effective reflection. Two deep breaths and the fat man resumed his hurried descent, stomping loudly to help block the cries. There were six floors left to go. He would stumble again and hit the wall, but the child remained secure in his obese bosom.

The fat man knew something about mothers. He knew how they could be cruel. This sweaty fat man saw through the myth of the loving mother. He'd never known any as a child nor as an adult. Poked and prodded, mocked and abused, this thief, this kidnapper, this panicked father recognized a lack of motherly love. He saw it in the face of this child's mother. He couldn't let it happen again.

Here was a fat man, a fat boy, a loser, an idiot, an unreliable employee and all around piece of shit. There came a woman, not fat, but ugly. She had ugliness that reeked of suicide and wine. She was sick and the fat man thought she might let him take care of her. But she wouldn't, even after she was pregnant with his son. Instead, she lived rough and deadly, trying to kill the infection in her womb. The child would be dead. She wouldn't raise a son of his. She'd kill it or sell it. And then she gave birth.

When the doctor showed her bundle of joy, she complained about the pain. She begged for drugs she knew she would get. True disgust crusted her lips when she heard her son begging for her poison milk. She held the infant away from her, away from her lactating breast. Her eyes shuddered with this burden. And the fat man recognized the look.

He burst through the exit and entered the alley, the child's screams still echoing in the stairwell behind them. He caught his balance without the assistance of the walls and looked around them. An ambulance sat idle with lights flashing, its crew busy inside with their own unloved body. The fat man knew where he was heading. He could make it on foot.

The fat man tried to walk brisk but calm. He was too heavy for brisk. His thighs smashed together and the hang of his gut bent his back. The sweat from the stairwell started to pour. His appearance was everything but calm.

The child screamed and his father didn't hide it. So many questions and consequences popped between his temples. This moment he'd agree to raise the child; that moment he had no choice but to abandon it. He wanted to attack the boy's mother and he might just as well. Deep down he knew he would only run, terrified she would track him down, hungry for what he had cost her with steaming blood in her eyes. The fat man disgusted himself. No child should be raised like that.

He was ready to be stopped. He wanted a police officer, an EMT, a passing nurse, anyone to stop him and demand release of the child. This spineless, battered fat man would spill it all, the drugs, the dirt and blood and the pain, endless pain. The fat man didn't know life without it. He was ready for someone to take this child to a safer place, anywhere except near his mother and father.

The fat man loved the child. He glanced down at the red wrinkled face insulated in the meat of his elbow cradle. He wanted to protect the child, his son, and thought he knew the only true way. Safety existed only where the his mother couldn't find him. It would be years before the child's black market value would plummet.

Even in his struggling waddle, the fat man and his son had made it three blocks from the hospital. The man's shirt was now drenched with sweat. The child's blanket grew damp with it. Not much farther, just another few blocks.

People stared as he passed them, but no one stood in his way. He certainly didn't look like a dangerous kidnapper. Witnesses would clearly remember him later, but that's due to his obesity with his combined gallop as he passed. The spectacle was in the humor not the threat.

Debate raged on in his mind. The child screamed in protest of the wind, the only sound in a solitary square. The walked on streets of stone and passed buildings of brick. Finally, they found a tree. An iron bench reclined and invited as only iron can invite. The fat man wanted to sit and breath the peaceful air. He stopped and held the child less tightly.

It was peaceful there, as safe as appeared peaceful. The child cried his side of the story. The fat man watched the bench, hypnotized by its offer. The bench would take care of the child, at least until some one heard him which they almost certainly would. Why can't all bets be that safe?

A honking horn breaks the spell. All doubts are ignored and he continues to walk. They're almost there, just around the corner. They avoided capture. So far so good.

The child's mother screams at this fat man, a black widow bound to its web. Soon she'll recover and she'll come hunting for her mate hungry to take back the murder he stole from her. The fat man thinks about her and wonders if she's saying his name.

The father steps into a parking lot with his son. It is quiet except for a single truck, old and parked in front of the stairs leading to a convent door. A large sign reading "Sisters of St. Elizabeth" hung behind a podium in a courtyard. The fat man exhaled relief. He had brought his son to safety. The child ceased to scream, sharing his father's relief.

They cross the parking lot and begin to ascend the steps. Sweat is pouring, his heart is hammering, the adrenaline has run out. Only a few more steps and a letter, a brief letter, just something to prove he had held the boy. Maybe even something for the boy to keep.

Footsteps, women speaking, the fat man freezes and looks both ways. Several women, the sisters of St. Elizabeth, begin exiting from the doors. The fat man steps backward and almost loses his balance. He hugs the child tightly then recoils in fear of being too tight. Women continue to exit, a class must be dismissing, or mass just ended.

The fat man loses his nerve. He can't look them in the eye and hand over his son. The urge to run, mad panic, drilled his senses. He turned around, covering the child, hiding his good deed. The old truck sat waiting for him, more inviting than the iron bench. His hand covered the child's mouth but not completely. The boy kept his silence, giving no reason.

The fat man glanced at the side of the truck to make sure it wasn't named as servicing child molesters or demons. Those were the only businesses for which he would have refused to hide the child inside the truck. Fortunately, it belonged to a local trash disposal yard, a city dump, certainly safe enough for abandoning a child in a hurry. As more luck would have it, the door was unlocked, another sign of a beckoning haven.

The fat man moved slowly to place the child on the seat and assure his dampened blankets were still wrapped tightly. In all other actions he scrambled, oblivious to the stench of raw, molding, morning fresh trash, the grime, the ash, the waste. Nuns now spread across the courtyard, some watching the jumpy fat man bent over the passenger seat of a trash truck.

His round, fatty fists grabbed an invoice for an oil change from the floor and slammed it against the dash board. A pen was found stashed in the console under saved cigarette packs. The truck's owner could arrive any moment. The fat man felt ready to burst and cry. The child remained quiet, aiding his own abandon.

A farewell forever, a final goodbye to his son. The fat man scribbled but steadied his hand and started over. He insisted his only words be clear. Once written, he stashed the letter inside the blanket, hoping its instructions would be followed. The letter was quick but not hasty. The emotions were erratic but true.

The most careful part was the naming. The letter had to include the child's name. Of all the decisions the fat man had wrestled this had not been one. With witnesses in black robes rapidly surrounding them, he had to keep it simple. But he wanted the name, his only gift to his son, to be important to the boy too.

The letter implored the reader to accept this boy as their own and to feed and clothe and keep the boy healthy and not to abuse him unless he warranted so. It offered no reasons except that if those basic cares could be given then the boy would be better off than with his own. The letter was short but flooded with shame. The clock ticked thunderously and the fat man finished the seal.

The fat man recalled all the abuse, scorn, and contempt he'd born. He winced with memories of terror and broken glass. Sweat mixed with tears and sizzled on his chin. The fat man reached out a pillowed paw to pet the gentle creature he had saved.

He named the boy Happy. He hoped if he heard the idea enough it would last within his soul and he believed that such simplicity might just inspire enough moments of real joy to be worth more than a lifetime of anything else his father could give him.