The old man opens the door, and the raw beauty of mother nature greets him. Thick orange light from the morning sun pools over every crack and crevice of the northern landscape, made ever more vibrant from the light morning fog that coats the bleary-eyed world. The cool salty air from the sea carresses his skin and singes his nostrils. The natural beauty and wonders of rural Maine contrasts heavily with the rather unnatural and unwonderous man standing on his porch.
"Oh, Mr. Siegel! Hello! So great to see ya again!"
The man extends a bony and hairy hand towards him. Mr. Siegel leaves him hanging. He begins to speak, his craggly and smoke-ridden voice grinding through the first words of the day like a hand saw through a piece of rusty sheet metal.
"Do I know you?"
The man on his porch looks to be in his early thirties. He sports shaggy brown hair and a pinky ring. His designer fur jacket is around two sizes two big and seems in threat of swallowing him whole. His denim jeans are stained with dirt, and a bright-red striped t-shirt lies at the center of his thin ectomorphic build, shining in the morning sun like a traffic light. He seems mildly offended by Siegel's inquiry.
"Oh, C'mon, big guy. It's me!"
His finger guns aren't any aid in jogging Siegel's memory. He sighs and begins to close the door.
"Look... I don't know, pal. Wrong house."
The man breaks his jokey facade and desperately grabs at the door. Siegel tenses up. Shit. He's going to have to put this soliciting jockey in his place. He may be 58, but he can still fight. He was in Korea, god damnit. But suddenly, just as quickly as he started, the man stops, and chuckles. His face shifts to an ear-to-ear grin. The sort of grin a lawyer does when he knows he has an open-and-shut case on his hands. His next words are delivered with the impact and precision of a nail gun.
"Hold it. Does the name 'Jane' jog your memory? 'Jane Elizabeth Siegel?'"
The man feels Siegel senior's pressure against the door release. His magical spell worked. He knew it would. The door opens back up, and the two return face-to-face. Siegel looks unimpressed.
"Oh, Jane. Right. You... You're that slimeball that she married, right? Forever ago?"
The man doesn't exactly care for the phrase 'slimeball,' but he takes it anyway. He has to play nice for this flimsy excuse of a plan to work.
"Yes sirree. Guilty as charged." He laughs. "I'm surprised you don't remember me from the wedding, bud! You must've overdone it on the schnapps."
"Wedding? What wedding?"
"Uh... the wedding. You know."
"I didn't go to any wedding. I heard about her marriage through the mail."
"W-What? Then... who was the older guy I met there?"
The man's silent reassessment of how much he actually drank that day is interrupted by the sound of a third pair of footsteps clogging around on the old wood of the porch. From out behind the man steps a young kid. He doesn't look more than 9 years old. He loudly sniffs, and the three share a mexican standoff of awkward looks. Slimeball turns back to Siegel and, without invitation, begins to clamor his way into the house. He mentions something about making himself comfortable, but Siegel isn't even listening at this point.
. . .
The home is hot, and very very brown. The air is thick. You practically could cut through it with a knife. Striated walls of wood and amber enclose a damp living room space that reeks of cigarette smoke and burnt cooking. The carpet is a deep, brown shag, holding and concealing stains of god knows what from god knows when. The man takes a strained seat in one of the many ripped and tattered suede lazyboy furnishings surrounding a black and white television that looks to be from the 1700s. Siegel closes the front door and slowly limps into the living room behind him. His tired face conveys a blank anger.
"Man... Look at this! Some bachelor pad you got here. Recliners, a big sofa... Looks like a Hustler set, jesus!"
"Why are you even here, son? It's been years. Didn't you and Jane... hate eachother, or something?"
"Oh, no way. She left on good terms. She just wasn't into the fast-paced glitz and glamor of showbiz. Couldn't take it and ran off, that's all. Other than that she was a sweet little honey. Some body, too, I tell ya what."
As the early morning brain fogs wears away, it all comes back to Siegel. THIS guy. Long, long phonecalls of Jane complaining about his comedy. His routines. The traveling. The lack of money. It all only lasted 3 months.
"Anyway... I was just in town for a gig and thought I'd stop by. Stay for a week or two... y'know. With my old man!"
The man attempts to say that with the conviction that he's not planning to stay for months on end. That his jacket, his clothes, a wad of 20s in his pocket, and the illegally-registered rustbucket fastback out front aren't the only things to his name. Siegel stares, unphased. He's about ready to tell this guy to pound sand.
"And who's he?"
The kid, who had been standing in the room for a good 8 minutes up to this point, perks up. He nervously toys with his shirt collar, and glances at the two men. He shares the same shaggy brown hair as his father, yet his eyes are a stark green. Just like Jane's. Dressed in an auburn sweater vest and a pair of big and boxy glasses, he looks like he'd rather be anywhere else than here.
"Oh, you're not gonna believe this. He... wait for it... is your GRANDSON!"
The word "grandson" explodes from his mouth the same way a chunk of bile rises within your throat after a particularly violent burp. It zings through the air for a while before smacking Siegel right in the face.
"Grandson?"
Grandson. Damn. He wasn't even planning to make it out of military service. First Japan, then Korea, then security duty at the Belgian DMZ. His life was supposed to end with some greasy OPFOR putting a 7.62 through his temple. And now here he was. A grandfather. He continues, stupefied and staring at the kid.
"...Jane never said anything about planning to start a family."
"Well, she kind of, uh... wasn't. But y'know, bygones be bygones or whatever. I always try to keep looking at the bright side of things and keep moving forward, y'know? Part of my luster that makes me so irresistable. You mind if I smoke?"
"Hold on. Where are you even gonna stay? Where is HE gonna stay?"
The man pauses and whips his head around. An unlit cigarette dangles from his slimy chapped lips.
"I dunno. Don't you have a guest room or something?"
"No. I don't."
"The couch then. He'll take it during the night, and I'll use it during the day."
"The couch is my bed, dipshit. It folds out."
"Oh... What about like an oversized doggy bed? You got one of those?"
Siegel brings his palm up to his face in an act of exhasperation.
"Look. This isn't going to work. I don't make enough money on social security or in the mail room to support myself. Let alone three. I can't do this, son. Just get out of here."
"Woah, woah, woah. Hold on."
The man violently rises from his slumped position in the reclined chair.
"What the hell, man? We're family, aren't we? Families look after each other, care for each other, and pretend they don't want to stab each other, or whatever. You're really just gonna kick us out? Leave your own flesh and blood starving on the street, all cold and alone? Eating BUGS just to survive?"
Slimeball is animated, and intensely gesticulates towards the kid as he talks. Sweat drips from his forehead as he shouts and spazzes sporadically. The kid nervously toys with a piece of pocket lint, and stares downward at his shoes. He's heard this dozens of times before. Siegel looks on in revulsion; he knows what's happening here. He can tell this isn't the first time this jerkoff has used his kid as a pawn for bargaining. God, he's pathetic. He's like a medieval serf haggling and exchanging their baby for two coins off a piece of bread. What a loser. Siegel can see right through his games. He's gonna put this guy in his place.
But then, just as he begins in a final fuck-you and goodbye, something stops him. Something deep in the cold black raisin in his chest cavity that once resembled a heart. It's been a while since he's felt anything in there, but something about this kid triggers memories of his own cold and paranoid Great War veteran father, and the hard-as-nails pissed off steel worker that raised him, and the Civil War soldier before him. A long lineage of destitute and broken men flashing before him, all stacking right up to this kid and Slimeball. He owes something to this kid. Probably. Lest he turn into one of those pinkos he sees on T.V. In an emotional instant, all of his conflicting feelings and memories bubble up and out of his mouth in the most sentimental sentence he can muster.
"Can't you and the wimp just live out of your car?"
The man pauses and stares in disbelief, before letting out a loud and fierce laugh. It's a gross and shrill hyena cackle that echoes off the rotten walls of the house. He walks past Siegel and pats him on the shoulder as he does.
"Wow, I forgot how funny you were! I think I'm gonna put something like that in my act. Anyway, I'm gonna go grab the rest of my stuff. Be back in a jiffy!"