LIW&B Chapter 3

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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."