The Between Years

the driveway. First, he needed to move the piles of junk and boxes that stood before it to even access the door. When he reached the door, he found a rusted old lock on it, and could devise no other ingenious way inside, which called for another trip to the basement for the one tool that he could use: and equally rusted out hammer.

    He rapped the lock with the hammer until it busted open. Certainly, no one would miss an old lock like that. Inside, he found the relic of the riding lawnmower that his Bupa had used to mow his ample parcel of land. Randy reflected on the Saturday mornings in which Bupa had sat him on his lap while he mowed and pretended to let Randy take the wheel. On the wall, he found Bupa's hardhat from the steel plant where he'd worked for forty five years hanging from a nail.

    Along the back wall was a tool bench that Randy would have thought would have been more at home in the basement, but to each his own, he figured. He squeezed around the mower and made sure not to smack his head on anything while he rooted through the tiny shed.

    After having rooted through piled of junk, Randy spotted an old pickaxe leaned up again the far corner. The wooden handle was splitting and the metal looked old, rusted, and clunky. No doubt, it belonged to Bupa's father and his father before him. But no matter; anything that would do the job was fine by him. Besides, he found the irony alluring.

    Somewhere in the bed, he hoped he would find something that he could use as a suitable backup. The pick axe was still a relic and he didn't want to wind up using the hammer he'd used to bust the lock off-or his hands-like some sort of old fool if he broke it.

    Back in the house, he climbed upstairs, and listened to the cartilage in his knees crack and felt his lower back stiffen, and he realized how much punishment his body had taken over the last week. A hot shower sounded good, but there was no time to spare for that, and his physical comfort wouldn't matter in a few hours anyway. Where Kenny was going, pain would exist, but moreover he hoped that he could be at peace.

    As if in an act of cardinal sin, Randy slipped into Kenny's room without knocking. Kenny wouldn't be inside anyway, he knew, but he didn't want to be caught again the way he had been last night. He worried that Kenny was gone for real now anyway, the way he worried that Carol was gone forever in spite of her promise to visit him tonight.

    He picked the novel up off the desk, thumbed through the pages, and regretted that he still wouldn't have time to read it. Sliding the manuscript into a bag, he decided to at least keep it in safekeeping. Then he slid Kenny's laptop into its travel case but left it on the desk.

    When he slid the top drawer open, he once again found the Du Maurier cigarettes, snatched them up, and felt his upper lip curl. He would accept anything else about Kenny, but there was one thing that simply had to go, so he tore the smokes apart and chucked the pack in the garbage. Little bits of tobacco were left between his fingers so he dusted his hands off. Then he glanced at the guy magazines at the bottom of the drawer. If that was how Kenny felt then that was good enough for him. He was an understanding and progressive person and he meant to stay that way, come hell or high water.

    What next? He wondered. He glanced at the bed and was astounded by how neatly made it was. He remembered a grade school teacher who'd said that he'd had to make his bed tight enough so his commanding officer could bounce a quarter on it while in the military. Randy figured his son would have done that teacher proud. The bed looked like no one had ever slept in it, but Randy knew that Kenny would have slept in it ever night except for last night. He pulled the sheets and blankets off the bed, folded them, and left them in stacks atop the bed.

    Randy dragged some boxes into the room and packed up all of his books. The boy had stuck to Atwood and Irving, but wasn't afraid to read Dickens, or to pick up books from the small press. Then he searched the closets in other rooms and returned with a suitcase to pack up Kenny's clothes. Every shirt and pair of pants was folded neatly and placed in the suitcase with loving care. His undershirts and socks were placed on top. Randy couldn't help but wonder where a kid Kenny's age made the money to buy clothes like that, but he supposed it didn't matter now.

    Once the room was almost bare, Randy observed the boxes,