Running Out Billy Mac’s Batteries

If the kids think old Malcolm McCallister wants their rotting bits of trash, I’ll be damned. Budweiser and Marlboros, pennies and glass jewels from secondhand prom dresses, oh these kids. I'm tired of picking up after them. I could come up here at night to try and catch them at it, but my job here at Grandview ends at five o’clock, so I’m not going to do that. I’ve been known to just leave off in the middle of mowing or raking up the leaves because five o’clock is five o’clock. But I do make sure to swing by the plots on the high hill every few days to tidy up. It’s worse in the summer when they run the city like a pack of old ladies at a Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart. We’ve all got something worth shoving for and for these kids it’s this, I guess. The big pileup that took Billy Mac back in May sapped a little of the piss and vinegar out of them for a bit, had them all doing sober driving assemblies for the driver’s ed classes, but nothing keeps these kids out of trouble for long.

Oh, I know they’re not visiting Malcolm on their late nights, but doesn’t that image just tickle you? All the kids from Paint Creek High whooping it up and pouring out a pint for that old banker? Boy, he spent a wad to make his tomb match the vaults at the Hill County Banking Center. Why?

The lights on Billy Mac’s tombstone didn’t cost nearly so much and they’re a lot better to look at. The whole thing glows after dark if it’s been a sunny day, but you can also flip a switch to the side anytime and blue and red lights race around the outside of Petty’s 43. It’s got Billy Mac’s face in the driver’s window. Took the picture from his sophomore photo, but the good folks at Logan’s worked out all the pimples before doing the etching. Didn’t even charge extra. Sometimes the kids leave the switch flipped and I turn it off when I come around in the morning.

The stone glows from solar but the lights run on those rechargeable batteries and the man at Logan’s said they only have so many charges before you have to replace them completely. Billy Mac’s mom hadn’t wanted them at all. We’d argued a good one on that. She just wanted one of those little name plates. Her people only stopped marking graves with marbles and little angels and crosses a generation ago—her mom was the first to have a proper stone. What does she know about these sorts of things, then? Anyway, I paid for it even though the divorce just said I had to do child support up until eighteen, didn’t mention this sort of thing. I picked it out. I like it. The kids like it. That’s enough. If they leave the lights on again, I’ll say something to Tommy J’s mom about it. And about the trash, too. But for now, it’s nice enough to know they’ve been by.

JENNIFER SCHOMBURG KANKE

Jennifer Schomburg Kanke, originally from Columbus, Ohio, lives in Tallahassee, Florida. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, and SWWIM. Her chapbook, Fine, Considering, about her experiences undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, is available from Rinky Dink Press. She serves as a reader for Emrys.