Fourteen

Once settled into the second sardine can of a two bedroom trailer, I started working at a convenience store. I would work from two in the afternoon until ten at night. Sometimes I'd have the midnight shift and it would be from midnight until six in the morning, but those shifts were rare.

The Evil Bastard would go drinking when he got off work, while I was working. I can't count the times he came up there, belligerent and intoxicated out of his mind. He'd come and accuse me of things. Mostly of having affairs. Just talking all kinds of nonsense in front of the customers. So, not only was this what I had to look forward to when I got off of work, he was to be my ride home because we still only had the one vehicle. I can't count the times he never showed up after my shift to pick me up. So that would leave me having to either walk or call my mama to come and get me.

Two things stand out in my memory of my tenure on that job. The first is the time I called the police after one of his drunken tirades. He left and I watched the police pull him over in a parking lot across from where I was working. Through the window, I saw them do the sobriety field test. I also saw them walk to their cars. I watched and listened as he squealed his tires and sped off after the police gave him the all clear. I watched them do nothing about it.

The next thing I remember is the night that I saw rescue vehicles and police with sirens blaring, speeding down the service road of the freeway just about the time my shift was ending. I waited. He never never showed up. This wasn't anything new so I wasn't surprised. I was just about to call my mama, again, to come and pick me up when she called me to tell me that The Evil Bastard had been in a terrible wreck. My first thoughts were not ones of worry or fear or anything like that. I wanted to know if he was dead. I wanted to hear that he was dead.

But no - he wasn't dead. I couldn't get that lucky because people have been trying to kill Satan since the beginning of time, but he just won't die. He just had a broken leg that laid him up for six weeks. How unfortunate. The ambulance took him to the hospital and the rescue vehicles I saw earlier were on their way to the scene of his accident. I did go to the hospital straight from work that night - just because I wanted to see the bastard writhing in pain. I remember walking into the room and being overcome by the smell of alcohol. He was that drunk. I didn't speak. I didn't console. I didn't ask the attending doctors for any information. I just turned around and left, hoping I'd get a call during the night that he had died from internal bleeding that they did not find until it was too late - but alas. He lived.