“I should be working for the Library of Congress,” Dwayne said to his dog Mr. Pickles who was busy pursuing a crumb of bacon under the stove.
“I know how to catalog things, and find them again later. Sometimes years later!” Dwayne unboxed a collection of National Geographics he bought at a thrift store. Six boxes cost him twelve dollars.
“Can you believe they practically gave them away? These are valuable and informative.” The magazines looked new, the pages still stuck together with static electricity.
Mr. Pickles grunted as he worked his paw further under the stove. He smelled the bacon since yesterday and couldn’t sleep from thinking about it. Dwayne hadn’t noticed when he was chopping strips of bacon into bits for his macaroni and cheese that a piece jumped off the cutting board. At the time the bacon was being prepped, a savory fog filled the house causing Mr. Pickles to swoon and not notice the meat bouncing along the floor.
Dwayne gingerly thumbed through a few of the magazines, careful not to open them fully. He wanted to preserve their mint condition. He looked around the living room, trying to decide where to put his new treasure. It was filled floor-to-ceiling with particle board shelving so close together Dwayne had to move sideways between them. He had long ago given up furniture except for a cot, and a small table and chair in the kitchen—also filled with shelving. The hallways, the bedrooms, even the bathrooms made up a rat’s maze of shelves filled to the brim with books, newspapers, and magazines. Papers stacked on the stairs left only a narrow path to the second floor where every room looked like a vast library squeezed into a smaller space. In the basement, the effect of the heavy load above bowed the beams, which pressed down on even more shelves of books and magazines.
“I think these will have to go in the attic,” Dwayne said as he put the magazines back in the box. Dwayne hesitated as he considered going up the ladder to the eaves where unhappy memories were waiting for him. Mr. Pickles whined, hoping his owner would help him with the maddening bit of meat. Instead, Dwayne put a scoop of kibble in his bowl next to the sink. The sound of the dogfood hitting his dish caused Mr. Pickles to pause his efforts. He considered the meal for a moment, but the smell of the bacon bit took hold of his mind, and he returned to his efforts.
***
Dwayne suffered from profound dyslexia, making it impossible for him to read. Ever since grade school, he collected books, magazines, and newspapers. His goal was to save them all up for the day when he could finally understand the words. Unfortunately, Dwayne’s parents moved frequently, and his mother refused to pack up his library. With every new apartment, he had to start again.
His parents sold black market laundry detergent, by either shoplifting or paying off drivers to divert a percentage of their valuable freight. But once local police started to catch wise, they had to move to the next town.
Because of the frequent moves, Dwayne’s dyslexia was never adequately treated. At each new school, it took time for teachers to notice he couldn’t keep up, at which point he transferred to the special education program—usually right before the next move. If the school didn’t have special ed, he would be stationed in the last row of the classroom and encouraged to remain quiet. This continued until Dwayne graduated—the principal fudging his transcript to get rid of him.
Along with selling detergent, his parents also liked gambling—mostly lottery and scratch-off tickets. They tried stealing them but found the supply chain nearly impervious to theft—the government didn’t take kindly to anyone cutting into their revenue stream.
One day after school, Dwayne returned to the apartment, finding it empty. This was unusual because his parents slept most of the day. He waited around, idly watching TV and eating left-over Hamburger Helper. It wasn’t unheard of for his parents to go out at strange times, but they always left a message for Dwayne on the answering machine.
***
Earlier that day, his parents had been out making the rounds when they saw an overturned delivery truck on the highway. Scattered across the road were hundreds of boxes and jugs of name-brand detergent. Dwayne’s parents couldn’t believe their luck. They pulled over and started loading. A police car arrived at the scene and his parents sped off, the car filled with slippery jugs of laundry soap. An inch-thick layer of slimy soap covered the road, and in his haste, Dwayne’s father spun out, crashed into an oncoming truck, lost control of the slick steering wheel, and veered down the embankment flipping the car several times. Both his parents were knocked unconscious and scrunched up against the ceiling of the overturned car. By the time the fire department extracted them, they both drowned in the blue soapy fluid. Because his parents kept their address a secret, nobody came looking for Dwayne.
His parents taught him to never call the police, so Dwayne went to school the next day, anxiously returning to the empty apartment with still no message on the machine. This went on for days, as he kept going to school to keep up appearances. Another important tip from his parents—try to make everything look normal. While he waited in the apartment, he scoured it for clues that might explain his parents’ whereabouts. In doing so, he found a stack of lottery tickets valid for a drawing later that week (he understood the numeric calendar date just fine). He put them on the coffee table under a glass ashtray to comfort himself that his parents would be back before the numbers were called.
After two weeks, Dwayne was running low on frozen dinners. The lottery date had come and gone, and he concluded his parents ran into trouble and were gone. Having no money, he took the lottery tickets to the corner store in the hope they might be worth a few dollars. One of them turned out to be a million-dollar winner which he used to buy the house he eventually shared with Mr. Pickles.
***
Dwayne carried the box of National Geographics up the stairs and headed up the ladder. Hundreds of boxes of laundry detergent filled the space, with the overwhelming smell of “fresh.” He bought them as a gift for his parents but only served as soapy frustration for the mice that nibbled on them looking for a free meal. He put the box next to the answering machine.
A heavy rain started that night which lasted for days. It softened the ground around Dwayne’s house, causing it to shift. Already strained to the limit, the building twisted causing cracks in the roof and floors, letting in the water. As Dwayne and Mr. Pickles slept, the water mixed with the laundry detergent, and wet foam flowed into every stack on every floor. The paper and particleboard swelled, the weight pulling the house further out of plumb, immobilizing every door and window.
Dwayne woke to Mr. Pickles whining and pawing at him to wake. Still in his cot, he sleepily put a scoop of kibble in Mr. Pickles bowl, but the whining continued. When he finally looked around, Dwayne saw his cot had moved in the night, pushed out of place by a wall of swollen periodicals. The house stank like an exploded air freshener and was a humid as an unventilated laundromat. Dwayne and Mr. Pickles were stuck—the house now consumed by pulpy particleboard and paper that kept taking on more water. The building shifted again, a crack appearing in the ceiling allowing soapy water to drip through.
“I think we’re done for Mr. Pickles. There’s no way out!”
Mr. Pickles barked, trying hard to be understood, “So do you think you can finally help me with the bacon under the stove?”