Gin Rummy

“Gin Rummy” -- A Peggy Scribble
By Michael Kroetch

It was a small house we lived in. It had been a fisherman’s before it was ours. From its top window the entire bay could be seen, even the bar where my father worked as a bouncer. At night when it got late, my little sister Peggy and I would climb up there and wait for the light’s of Dad’s bar to go out. Most nights he brought us pickles from a bulbous oak vat beside the bar’s icebox. The wax covered bags he brought the pickles home in smelled funny. They had the same smell as the perfume of a woman who lived next door. We always at them quickly because we knew if you held one too long your hand got warts.

Dad never said much when he came home. He would slide his shoes off, bang them against the wood stove and drop them beside it. They were dark with mist from the tall beach grass that surrounded our house on all sides.

Only one night did Dad say much more than “Hi, here’s your pickles.” It was was the night his brother had brain surgery. He took me with him to the post office—which he’d called up special to make sure was open that late. On the way he talked fast. It was as if he couldn’t stop himself. I don’t remember any of what he said, but his brother died that night and we didn’t go to the funeral; it was in Vermont.

Peggy and I got out of school the next day. We stayed home, had Chef-Boy-R-Dee spaghetti and playd gin rummy until she said she was so sick of it she could throw up. After that she read a book. I tried to, but couldn’t. Instead I watched TV for as long as the sun lasted. After it went down, the set’s reception went completely berserk and made everything look like a desert. In the darkness of the bed I listened for the dim whir of passing squid boats and a song in my head that Mom had taught me back before Peggy was born, when Mom still lived with us, before she put all those things in the fire and had to go away.