Brookpark, Ohio, 1969

Tuesday night.

I’d collect my paper route on Tuesday night. 59 dailies and 120 Sundays of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Tuesday worked well: customers were mostly home, their paychecks from the Ford plant cashed. Nighttime worked because I could see easily, but, could not be seen easily. In cold winters I’d crouch by basement windows and warm my hands on the exhaust valve of the clothes dryer. I’d also be able to see many wonderful sights of suburban wives and mothers.

I’d approach the front door quietly, and before knocking I’d go to tiptoes and peek into the six small windows that adorned the top of most of the doors on my route. There I’d see into the private lives of my customers before knocking and collecting what was owed.

Their son and brother, my classmate had been killed at (5 points) a lethal rail crossing in the area. It was a Volkswagen. They towed it to a Sunoco station on Pearl Road and left it there, in the back, out of sight. I went over Sunday night with a friend to take a look. The back seat had been rendered no wider than less than twelve inches. The Beatle was full of bright red blood and shattered glass. Looked like the kaleidoscope opening to “Family Affair.” Mickey T. had been in that backseat. Alive he was much larger than a foot across. He’d been obese at a time when obese was a curiosity, not a standard. Mark K. had been in the front seat, but, ended up outside on the rails, we heard.

This was the Tuesday after the Friday when a train had smashed that Beatle. As I peered in, the remaining K’s were seated in the living room eating off metal TV trays. The daughter, the driver had survived. Her arm broken she was seated on the couch. They had a color TV, the lucky dogs.

They owed double. $2.50 which was a lot of money 50 years ago. I eased back down off my tiptoes and returned to the night without knocking.

Two houses down the Miles family; the missus, her husband, and their small child. The missus was a favorite. She’d most of the time come to the side door in a red nightgown. I always figured she was waiting for her husband to come home from the office. She’d brush aside the door curtain, see that it was me, and retreat to get her purse. Then she opened the door and lean into the screen door and rifle thru that purse for the exact change.

“How are you, Cully-boy?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Miles.”

It was then that her nightgown would part and her flaming red panties would appear. She’d count out the exact coinage, then at the last would include a .50 cent tip each Tuesday night. Well, most Tuesday nights, sometimes her husband would be home from the office. I’d get the $1.25 and nary tip.

“Thank you, Mr. Miles.”

“Yeah, kid, okay.” He was always gruff. Always.

I’d save Mrs. Miles for last then go home, ensconce myself in the bathroom with mother’s ladies magazines organized on the floor in front of the toilet to the pages, yes, the pages of the ladies underwear ads and pull it with visions of Mrs. Miles and those red panties and the photographs of panty-girdle clad women in the ads.

There’d be no pulling this night even though Mrs. Miles had shown me her red panties. At the corner twixt North Gallatin Blvd and South Gallatin Blvd where I lived, I saw a brown paper lunch bag on the sidewalk. It had been neatly folded at the top and seemed full. I knelt over it and in the street light illumination opened it.

Inside was a perfectly sectioned kitten, each body part drained of blood and put back precisely in place.

The body was still warm.