Dan approached the kitchen from the bedroom hallway. The photos along the walls were all of dead or terribly old relatives. They rarely smiled although in some of the more recent Polaroids there were pale people in short shorts sitting on porches and stairways, smiling wide. Some of them he did know. As the baby he had experienced only a flitting moment of the family they spoke of when looking at photo albums. As a young man, however, he learned that family meant isolation to separate quadrants of the house or garage. He and his father split their garage time equally among themselves, without a word ever spoken, and as an assurance of limited father-son conversation, for they each had their individual projects to focus on (Dan worked on his models and his father focused on lawn and garden maintenance). His mother spent much time in the kitchen and in the upstairs guest room where Dan’s father had established a cozy sitting room with a nice television. Mary spent her time in her room, just like Dan remained in his room in the afternoons and evenings. The living room was used by all members of the house but without a television or radio to occupy their time its purpose was relegated to a room in which one could sit in silence or with company for polite conversation, and only Dan’s mother used it in that manner.
The kitchen was in the state it is in when nearly every member of a family has left the house. His mother and father both worked (him at a nursery, her at the gas station just outside of town), and his sister was probably at her friend Becca’s house. Sunlight had not yet begun to pour across the linoleum floor, glass table, and old white refrigerator. He scuffed along the ground wearing slippers and boxer shorts, his light brown hair in its purest unkempt state. He shivered slightly when he placed his hand on the cool handle of the aluminum-coated refrigerator handle. Inside he found pasteurized orange juice, store brand ginger ale, several bottles of orange Fanta, several more of Budweiser, and even small cans of young coconut juice, but no milk. There was no sign at all of a carton and it perplexed Dan to find the refrigerator bereft of milk. Luckily for Dan, his mother always stored spare cartons of milk in the refrigerator that was kept in the garage. He entered the garage and turned to the refrigerator that sat by the boxes full of holiday decorations. The yellowing and dull surface of the secondary refrigerator gleamed in the light from the garage’s side door, and would look like a polished antique if not for the small grease stain on the handle. Dan opened it in anticipation of the milk within only to discover something horrible: the lone milk carton was empty. He held the container upside above his mouth and shook it violently, but not a drop remained. The milk finisher had not only emptied the primary refrigerator of its milk but had then proceeded to finish all of the milk in the secondary refrigerator. The situation seemed malicious in its intent and was surely perpetrated by a member of his household. Dan felt the need to expose the milk finisher for his or her misdeed and began his investigation into the matter.
He called the nursery first.
“Hey dad.”
“Dan?”
“Yea. Hey, did you drink all the milk?”
“The milk? What?”
“Yea. It’s all gone this morning. Did you drink it?”
“I didn’t drink no milk this morning.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. You calling me to ask about milk?”
“Yea, just checking. Bye.”
His father had no reason to lie. He was a blunt man and said things as they were. He could not be the culpable one.
Dan called the gas station.
“Sarcozzi Super Mart & Gas.”
“Hey mom, it’s Dan. I wanted to ask you about the milk.”
“What?”
“There’s no more milk in the refrigerator. Like, it’s all gone. Did you drink it?”
“Sorry honey, I didn’t drink any milk before I left. Maybe your dad or your sister.”
“Nah, wasn’t dad. And Mary doesn’t drink milk, I thought.”
“I’ve been telling her to. She worries me.”
“Some people don’t want milk is all. I’ll ask her anyway. Do you know Becca’s number?”
“No, sorry sweetie. Since you’re already on it, can you go to the store and pick up some more this morning?”
“Sure. Bye mom.”
Dan replaced the receiver on the wall phone. It occurred to Dan that he should just go buy more milk and return home but he was compelled to expose the milk finisher, and only one suspect remained. He quietly entered Mary’s room. Unlike Dan’s room, Mary’s was light and steeped in colors, from the violet semi-transparent curtains to the yellow sheets and the myriad of photographs and colored paper clinging to the walls around her bed. He searched the papers around her laptop for any sign of a phone book or even her phone, but there was nothing. He leaned against the door for a moment and resolved to go buy the milk after all.
Dan exited the house through the front door and turned right as he crossed the front lawn, avoiding the mounds of crab grass that graced the spotted lawn. They rose from the surface several feet apart from one another and extended from one end to another like great fortifications, preparing for Manifest Destiny. Dan’s blue canvas sneakers wound their way through them until at last he was on the concrete of the sidewalk and bound for the Greg’s Liquor Emporium on Willis St. Dan placed his left hand into the relative safety of his shorts’ pocket and allowed his right to flow freely along his right hip. He could hear cars in the distance and the swish of Mrs. Carson’s broom as he passed her decrepit ranch home, painted in corn yellow and browned by years of sunlight and dust that would not be removed by rain nor snow or any other act of God. Dan remained stoic and faced his destination. His nose navigated the sidewalk and his eyes wandered from one focal point to another. The morning rose around him when he had hoped to avoid it altogether, but there was a need. Milk awaited him.
The milk in the secondary refrigerator was for this very purpose. For emergencies. Dan sniffed. Who would do such a thing? Who would break the taboo of finishing all milk and spit in the face of the next person in need by replacing the empty carton in the refrigerator? It was a travesty. An insult to civility. Dan peered to the left as he crossed Thurman and spit onto the graying asphalt. He heard it sizzle.
Becca’s house was on Thurman. Dan stopped on the corner and looked to the north-east, where Becca’s house sat far off in the distance between an alley and a house occupied by several single women who Dan guessed worked as secretaries or waitresses. It would take twelve to fifteen minutes to get to Becca’s house. If he continued on his current path, to Greg’s Liquor Emporium, he would arrive in five minutes. He could have milk in his hands and return to the corner of Thurman in less time than it would take to walk to Becca’s house, where Mary undoubtedly sat on the shaggily carpeted ground, smiling, laughing at Dan’s misfortune, her bones filled with the rich, nourishing bounty which by rights should have gone to Dan, as the youngest, and the one most in need of calcium, for everyone told him he was a growing boy.
“Not this time, Mary,” he whispered. “Judgment upon thee.”
A fierce wind rose from the street and compelled Dan toward Becca’s house. It blew into his oversized BIG DAWG t-shirt and out around his face, and he paused to smooth down the t-shirt before continuing onward, to the north-east, to face the culprit: Mary, the thief, the insulter, the one should buy more milk.
Thurman was a small thoroughfare, scarcely wide enough for a parking lane on each side and one car driving along the middle, which forced many drivers to weave in and out of empty parking spaces so as to avoid oncoming traffic. Dan walked along the middle of the street, stamping his feet down and anxiously awaiting the confrontation to come. His mind bubbled and frothed, anticipating the clash. He would not allow Mary to remain hidden in her fortress of Becca. She would not hide nor avoid him, which was what Dan appreciated most of all. It would be a swift and decisive reveal of Mary’s unkindly act and character.
The walk was not as long as Dan had expected, and he passed alongside a rusting gray Oldsmobile in front of Becca’s house only nine minutes after the spitting. The two-story house was neatly painted in a pale blue shade, resembling the color of a room at a hospital. The two columns that held up the porch showed signs of wear where people, most likely Becca, her two sisters, and their friends sat on the railing and leaned against them, slowly rubbing away the inches of paint and primer as the months and years of their youth wiled away. They were not on the front porch on this occasion. They most likely remained locked away in whichever room Becca had inherited when the oldest of the four siblings left to college. Dan walked up the front steps to the screen door and looked inside but could see no signs of life. He could see only the depressed center of the cushion farthest to the right on the couch in the living room, where someone fat had staked a claim, and a television on the opposite end of the room. The blue shag carpet seemed to wave in the absence of wind like seaweed.
There was no point in looking around for them, so Dan bracketed his mouth and yelled: “Mary! Mary! You in there, Mary? Mary!”
He heard immediate shuffling and then footsteps from the ceiling, and he stopped to wait for whoever should appear. Becca approached from the hallway as he prepared his rebuttals to Mary’s futile denials. Her lightly tinted hair was tied back in a ponytail, and from his vantage point beyond the screen door Dan could see that she was wearing pajama pants and a sweater too large for her small frame. Her feet were bare, which Dan had noted was common custom among girls of a certain age. Although Mary’s senior by one school grade, she was decidedly smaller than his sister. She pressed the screen door open and poked her head out to appraise the visitor.
“Dan? What the hell do you want?”
“Where’s Mary?”
“What? Why?”
“Because she has to pay for what she’s done.”
“What did she do?”
“She’s a thief is what. Is she here?”
Dan then heard more footsteps and Becca turned back to the hallway. “Mary!”
“What?”
“It’s Dan.”
“Dan?”
“Yea.”
“What’s he want?”
“I don’t know. Says you stole something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Come talk to him.”
Dan waited patiently as Becca gave him one more fleeting glance and then returned to the upper level, while Mary descended and presumably questioned her further so that Dan could not hear. After a minute of relative silence she appeared at the screen door but did not open it. Her guilt was near certain. She was wearing the outfit she wore when boys were about, a knee-length skirt covered in flowers and a white blouse with no sleeves. Presumably, the girls would be going into town later in the day. Her feet were also bare.
“Yea?”
“You drank the milk, didn’t you?”
“What the hell?”
“You drank it. All of it. There’s no milk left.”
“So, go buy some more.”
“No, that’s not the point. You drank all the milk that was left in the garage fridge. You even put the carton back inside.”
“I don’t drink milk, idiot. I didn’t drink any milk from anywhere.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Because you’re a cruel bitch.”
“Okay, you know what? Go to hell. I didn’t drink your stupid milk.”
She turned and shut the wooden front door loudly, leaving Dan standing on the floorboards of the porch. The air was still as a stone. Nothing moved, and Dan’s mouth twisted as he thought to himself that perhaps it was not Mary after all. He detected no victory in her tone, no lie meant to confuse him. It was only truth, and it confused him. If not Mary, and not his father, and not his mother, then Dan began to think that perhaps it was he who had finished the milk. It was possible. Dan was known to suffer from bouts of memory loss, especially concerning activities and conversations which took place in the evenings, when Dan was more susceptible to the lull of sleep and the majesty of television.
He walked away from the house and stopped to look at the windows of the upper level. He saw no movement, but he thought that he could make out silhouettes behind the white curtains of the window on the right side, which had small red shapes sewed into them.
Having run through all clues and now facing the possibility that he himself was the culprit, Dan turned to the street, and retraced his steps until he could continue with his original intent of getting to Greg’s Liquor Emporium. The path was simple, direct, and without peril. Few cars drove along the street and Dan did not feel the need to stray from the sidewalk, which afforded him an opportunity to look down at the ground and follow the cracks in the concrete, some of which transcended the segmentation and tore along from one square to the next.
Dan arrived at his destination and looked up at the windows to see advertisements for Cheetos, sold at 2 bags for $0.99, which caused Dan to consider his post-milk options; cigarettes, Marlboro brand; Budweiser beer in a six or twelve pack; and toilet paper of an unknown brand. Dan stepped inside and stopped when he didn’t hear the jingle as he opened the door, stepped outside, and then stepped inside again. The jingle remained absent. He looked up to find the bell for the jingle device missing. He thought it wise to notify Herbert, the man who owned the liquor establishment.
“Bell’s broken,” he said.
A lean, bald man ceased stacking boxes of crackers in front of the counter and turned to Dan. He shrugged.
“I’ll get to it.”
Dan picked up a carton of milk, most of which he would finish, and a second carton for the secondary refrigerator. Unlike the milk thief he was considerate in all matters. He waited patiently at the counter for Herbert to walk around and complete the transaction.
As Dan opened the door he heard the bell.
“It’s not broken anymore.”
“Because I fixed it.”
“When?”
“When you wasn’t lookin’.”
He tried the door once more and, satisfied that the bell was indeed working again, walked outside. Nothing had changed.
“Spare change.”
Dan turned to the right side of the mart and found an old vagrant sitting on a green milk crate. He wore an olive overcoat and was filthy from the top of his knit cap to the end of his old running sneakers. The vagrant’s face appeared to be powdered in soot.
“I don’t have any change, sorry.”
“Well, God bless.”
As Dan walked away he felt a hook dig into his wrist. It was the vagrant’s claws, sunk in to hold him back.
“Say, son.”
“Yea?”
“You look vexed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean to say you’re troubled. It’s on your face.”
“Everyone’s troubled.”
“Save the bullshit for girls. I’m serious, son.”
“I need to go.”
“Relax, son. Let me talk at you a minute.”
Dan smirked and relaxed his arm. The vagrant released it and looked up. “The elements of chaos are all around us.”
“What?”
The vagrant waved his right arm into the air. It trembled and it seemed to Dan that he was perhaps calling down the thunder. “I see it plain as the sky. Nothing but chaos.”
“Right now?”
“All the time, homeboy. All the time.”
He took hold of Dan’s wrist again, and stared into his eyes with the intensity of a demon of the damned, burning hot pits into Dan’s irises.
“Can I at least have some milk?”
“No.”
The vagrant released him and returned to his milk crate meditation. Dan walked away then, leaving the vagrant and his filthy hands to their silent appeal for change.
The walk home was uneventful. He drank milk along the way, savoring at last the nectar that he so craved. The carton sweated in the sun and he tightened his grip to ensure the safety of the contents within. When he arrived he deposited the unopened milk carton in the kitchen refrigerator, noting that the sun’s rays had moved along to a better place. When he entered the garage he held the milk carton and continued to drink.
No one in his family had committed the crime. Or, one of them had lied. He would have guessed Mary to be the liar, but her tone and actions at Becca’s house had revealed no snark or misdirection, both of which were as present in Mary’s lies as the acne on Mary’s face. Who, then, was the culprit? It was a perplexity. As he pondered and drank milk, he glanced at the refrigerator, and once again noted the polished yellow, the wear of time, and the stains on the handle. He approached and looked at them. They were dark brown, nearly black. Car grease, or perhaps oil from a slick on the asphalt.
It was familiar grease. He had felt the grease before. Dan needed only to peer at his wrist before he threw the milk carton into the refrigerator and ran out of the garage, across the crabs grass, and back down the street toward the mart. He sprinted will all intensity and felt his lungs and calves burn as he neared the end, finally relinquishing the speed in favor of a slower jog and nearly collapsing from absence of breath. Upon arrival at the mart he approached the milk crate but found no vagrant. He walked around, peering in behind the blue dumpster at the back of the mart and inside the tall bushes along one side. When he could find no trace of the vagrant he entered inside.
“Hey, Herbert. Where did that old bum go?”
“What bum?”
“The one that was sitting outside the store here.”
“Never seen no bum.”
“He was sitting right on that old crate outside. He must’ve been there when you were fixing the bell.”
Hebert scratched the skin on his head.
“Haven’t fixed the bell.”
“What? You told me you did when I was in here before.”
“Well, I don’t recollect that at all.”
Dan opened and closed the door several times, and surely enough there was no sound. He stepped outside and looked up at the sky, then down at the milk crate, next to which he found an empty milk carton smothered in sweat and the dark grease.