Sad Bastard Song

Jenkins heard himself screaming, and then he woke with the sinking feeling of that same damn dream. That feeling was heavy-wet, and all over him. He could still hear the gurgling sounds. Still frames of Ginny and the amorphous other man hung iridescent in his mind. The room was dark. It felt dark; like a thick dark. He thought he should say the name of Jesus, just in case.          
He formed the name of Jesus in his mind, but his voice would not sound. He pushed, and pushed, and found that he was not breathing. He took in a big breath and tried again.  Nothing happened. He thought Oh Jesus help me. Oh Jesus, help me. Oh Jesus, help. Help me. Oh God!
“Je…Jah…Juhjuhjuh,” he studdered, “Jeeeeeaahh. Fuck. Jesus! Oh Christ! Fucking ah! Oh shit.”
The room remained a dark room, and those dream sounds were rushing through his mind. He sat up, and turned his bedside lamp on.  He said, “Oh shit, I need a cigarette.”
He glanced at the clock. The hour started with a five. The minutes didn’t matter. At least he was up in time for work.          
Jenkins got out of bed, and put on yesterday’s pants. He felt in the pockets and found a soft pack of Marlboro Reds. The pack was squashed flat. He thumbed his finger through it, and then he ripped it open. The pack was empty. He thought hard. He was awake now.
When he first started smoking, he used to stash his smokes behind the books on the top book shelf to hide them. He took two steps to the shelf, and reached his hand behind the books to find two empty packs of Camel Menthols and three green packs of Pall-Malls. No cigarettes.
He went to the hamper and picked up a pair of jeans. He searched the pockets and threw them across the room. Then he picked up another to search it for cigarettes or more loose change. He worked faster and faster, tossing the dirty shirts and jeans across his bedroom. His hamper only yielded one dollar and thirty-five cents to his cause. He felt the tears welling, and that pulling feeling at the back of his throat was growing stronger.          
He touched his back pocket. His wallet was not there. After a moment he eyed the wallet on his dresser, and picked it up slowly. The wallet held no money, and he knew that, still, he opened it to look at a picture he kept there. In the picture, he wore a white button-up that was too large for him, suspenders, and brown slacks. He had this full of shit, happy as hell, undignified, arrogant smirk where his face was supposed to be, and under his arm he held Ginny. Ginny was perfect. She had mousy brown hair, and big blue eyes. She was an expression of adoration. In the picture she was looking up at him. It was the kind of look that launched ships. Jenkins closed his wallet, and put it back on his dresser.          
One dollar and thirty five cents was not enough. That much money could barely buy a soda. He needed at least four dollars to buy the cigarettes made of floor sweepings; labels like Maverick, and Doral. He decided to carry on. He flipped his mattress against the wall to search underneath, and found a sock with a dollar in quarters and five nickels inside it. The rest were pennies. He hoped he would not be forced to pay in pennies. Mr. Seamus at the Big O might not take pennies if his arthritis was hurting him. He put the new change on his desk, separated the coins by denominations, and counted it all together. The new change from the sock made the new total two dollars and fifty-five cents.          
He emptied the drawers of his desk onto the floor. There he found a box of letters, and a bunch of broken pens. He tossed the broken pens behind him. Then he took the box of letters, and put it at the very back of his closet under a stack of boxes. He returned to the desk to find a box of rocks he had collected over time. He opened it, and pulled several shiny rocks out to look at them. He placed a thumb sized sapphire against the light bulb of his lamp so the gem would glow, and smiled. He rummaged through the other drawers, finding other interesting things of no value.          
He went to the bookshelf again. This time he held each book by the spine, facing the pages toward the floor, and he thumbed through them so any stashed money would fall to the floor. Then he tossed each book into the empty hamper. This process took time. He enjoyed the rhythm and method of what he was doing. He was really moving when his bedroom door creaked open. His father stood in the doorway.          
“What are you doing?”
“It’s nothing Dad.”          
“This is nothing? “
“Dad, it’s nothing.”          
“There’s coffee in the kitchen “          
His father’s foot falls sounded down the hall.
Coffee sounded good. There was nothing better in the world than coffee with a good cigarette. Sex was better. Sex was not an option. He looked at the clock. It was 6:23 am. Jenkins threw on a T-shirt and walked toward the kitchen.          
His father, Mr. Jenkins, sat at the small round kitchen table drinking coffee out of an elegant Chinese tea mug. The mug was thin white glass with a picture of a plant stem painted on the front with water colors. He held the morning paper folded over in one hand, and read it a distance through bi-focal glasses. He wore a thick bushy mustache and short hair. He wore a robe that left him naked from the thigh down, to his teddy bear slippers. The window behind him gave him a backdrop of orange and pink; the color the edge of the sky gets around four in the morning, but brighter. Jenkins entered the room with quite socked feet.          
“Hey Pa, what’s the paper say?”          
“It doesn’t say anything.”          
“No?”          
“No. Do you hear it?”          
“No.”          
“It isn’t talking”          
Jenkins poured a mug of coffee and sipped. He gave a grin.          
“Hey Pa…”          
“Yes?”          
“What you reading?”          
“Son, this is the paper. It is a daily account of local and national events under subheadings like, news, sports, weather, and business. Does that sort of thing interest you?”          
“Well, I was just…”          
“Here.”          
Mr. Jenkins handed Jenkins the comic section of the paper and grinned. They enjoyed the exchange as though it was a good joke. They sat on opposing sides of the small round kitchen table sipping coffee and reading.          
Jenkins found a comic he liked. It was a comic with several frames. One frame showed a caricature of George W. Bush playing videogames in flight suite pajamas. The next frame showed George at the grocery store in flight suite pajamas. The next showed him entering a limousine in flight suite pajamas. The next showed him on an air craft carrier in flight suite pajamas. The next frame was larger, and it showed caricatures of George Bush Sr. and Martha Bush watching television. The caricature of George Bush Sr. had a speech bubble that said “Martha, you forgot to dress the kids again.” Jenkins laughed out loud and looked at his father, who was still reading.          
Mr. Jenkins, cleared his throat, and said,          
“Looks like Funny Cide took the Kentucky Derby over Empire Maker and Peace Rules.”          
“That is great Dad.”          
“Jose Santos, what a guy… “          
Jenkins never understood why his father insisted on talking about athletes like he knew them. He did not understand that in the same way he did not understand why his father would argue the constitution with anyone he met. His father would ignore a perfectly attractive promiscuous woman at a bar to argue civil rights with strangers as if the Supreme Court was listening in on the conversation. His father read that paper every morning like it was gospel, and he acted accordingly.          
Listening to his father talk about Santos and the Derby, Jenkins crossed the kitchen to the laundry room, and started looking for change on top of the washer and dryer. He found six dimes, two nickels, and one quarter. He counted the change again in his hand, while his father continued to talk about horses and jockeys. Apparently, the race was an upset. They were all upsets. Jenkins kept counting. He was at three dollars and fifty cents. His father said, “Looks like Santos is under some suspicion.”          
“What kind?”
His father started talking again.          
Jenkins had an idea. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out the eggs, an onion, the milk, and the butter. He set to making scrambled eggs. He worked steady until he had everything mixed in a bowl with the pan hot and buttered. His father was saying, ”See? They say that he was saying something else, due to his bad English, but I don’t know.”Jenkins poured the eggs in the pan and said,          
“How much do you owe Kip now?”
         “Oh, that isn’t it.”          
“No?”          
“Fifty. So what?”                    
“Can you watch these eggs while I grab my work stuff?”          
“Sure.”          
Jenkins walked straight to his father’s room and found the tray on the bed-stand where his father kept his extra change. He pulled five quarters out of the little tin, and then crossed the hall to his room. He stepped over his cloths, books, and debris to his dresser. He picked up his watch, a pen, a knife, and his wallet from next to the lamp on top of his dresser. He reached the doorway of his bedroom on his way back to the kitchen, and he stopped.          
He looked over his room. His bed was turned on its side. His clothes hamper was full of books. The book shelves were mostly empty. His clothes were all over the floor. Jenkins stood leaning on the doorframe of his room, and realized, as if the information were new and profound, that he had a problem. He was definitely addicted to cigarettes.