Marky leaned his scooter in his uncle’s garage, removed his cleats, and went in for a bowl of cereal. It was his uncle’s naptime so he turned the TV on low, to a program about the strange things people ate in Asia. Marky’s uncle collected antique pornography and had stacks of calendars and prints all over the coffee table. These pale, resigned, full-bodied ladies were more nurturing than seductive. Marky could imagine them eating peanut butter right out of the jar with spoons as big as hairbrushes, carrying hefty pens around in their hands all day, no intention of writing. His uncle collected all sorts of things. They lived among chili recipes and old car phones.
Marky knew that the man wasn’t a loved figure up at the warehouse where he worked the evening shift. His uncle carried on a handful of feuds with various coworkers and called in sick the maximum it was allowed. The warehouse, which stored mainly hair products, was going to be bought out — according to the gossip it was all but a done deal — and no one expected Marky’s uncle to survive the changeover. He wasn’t skilled, didn’t have a forklift license or anything. He’d only gotten the job in the first place because one of the shift supervisors had been an old friend of Marky’s uncle’s mother, before she died. Marky’s uncle never stayed at a job more than a year or two, but it was getting harder for him to get hired anywhere — the economy, and the fact that he had a reputation by now.
The topic of Marky’s uncle’s precarious employment wasn’t spoken of in the house, but there was a tension all could feel. The factory could be bought out next week, next month. Marky’s uncle, on principle, wouldn’t accept unemployment checks. He’d wind up in the temporary labor line, most probably, with the convicts and community college washouts, and the thought of that sank Marky’s heart.
A shot was fired and Marky dropped the hosiery calendar he’d been holding into a splay on the rug. His cousin was shooting.
Marky went out the back, toward the little range his cousin had cut near the fill dunes. His cousin was seventeen and even less suited for this world than the uncle. Marky’s cousin was a poet who spent most of his time observing birds and practicing with weapons. He was shooting cans of powdered barbecue sauce with a gun called a Mini-14. The concentrated powder, infused with calcium and ginkgo biloba, had been a science project of Marky’s. Marky didn’t want to startle his cousin, so he sat on a shellacked stump and watched can after can become dust in the breeze.
When his cousin was finished he set the gun down, shook his arms out, and removed a yellow plug from each ear. He came and stood near Marky.
“Those rounds cost a buck apiece,” he said. “I just shot forty dollars.”
“Does it seem like it was worth it?”
“It’s worrisome how much I enjoy shooting things.”
Marky’s cousin interlaced his fingers and brought his hands to his chest, a gesture he’d performed ever since Marky could remember. It often meant he was about to say something that didn’t quite make sense.
“Not enjoying anything for a full day is pretty satisfying too, though. If you don’t fake it, at least.” He paused. He had a look on his face like he was tasting something exotic. “Take that Nelson guy. Nelson Greer. He’s made an art out of not enjoying anything. He seems miserable, but I think there’s a sense in which he’s happier than most. I saw him at the deli yesterday. He was staring at the lunchmeats with this flat, flat expression, but he was intensely in the moment. His case interests me.”
“He was at my game again.”
“Oh, yeah? I should try that. I should try watching sports. I used to watch basketball when I was a kid, but when my team lost I would cry and cry. I’m talking wracking sobs. I could probably handle it a lot better now. The vicarious losing.”
“I’m going to try and meet him,” Marky said. “I think he could help me with some of my ideas.”
“You should bring a gift.”
“Yeah, I should, huh?”
“You don’t want to show up empty-handed.”
“I should bring him some liquor or something. Do you have any to spare inside?”
“I think I can dig something out.”
A plump bird on a low branch started chittering sharply. It seemed to be laying down the law, maybe to Marky and his cousin and maybe to other birds. They watched it until it was finished.
Marky’s cousin looked at him. “I know that bird. He’s here every year. He’s a little insane. I see him pecking at his own feet sometimes. He ate an eraser once.”
“Where’d he get an eraser from?”
“I was out here writing. I actually put it in the villanelle I was working on — how he kept trying to break it with his beak and then he finally gave up and swallowed it whole.”
Marky had always admired his cousin, but he worried about him more and more. He didn’t act in his own interests. The cousin and the uncle were his only family. His uncle, despite his occupational difficulties, was a good guy; he’d taken Marky in after Marky’s mother had died. His uncle hadn’t had to adopt him, but he had done it anyway. The man wasn’t really suited to being a father in the first place, and he’d agreed to look after another child, another boy who was considered strange, though in a different way than Marky’s cousin was strange. Marky could remember his uncle doing his level best as a parent when Marky was little. He could remember him helping with history homework, driving Marky to Pee Wee practice, making him breakfasts. And Marky’s cousin had never resented his presence. He’d always treated him as an equal, the way he treated everyone as an equal. He’d liked having an audience, if not a playmate. But what Marky knew about the present version of his cousin, this almost-adult version, was that he would never survive in the world on his own. He lived in a bubble in this house Marky’s uncle had inherited, and he wouldn’t fare well if he ever had to leave it.
“I meant to tell you not to worry about all those books in my room,” Marky’s cousin said. “In case you got a peek at them, that’s just academic reading. A poet not acquainted with suicide is like a shark with nothing but molars.”
Marky waited.
“Suicide is for chumps,” his cousin said. “And in my case, there’s the fun of getting to witness whatever happens with your life down the line. Ultimately, I’m going to be very proud of you. You’re a natural’s natural. You’ll swim the black waters, your stroke even and true.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Marky.
Marky’s cousin reached into a pocket of his shorts and pulled out an individually wrapped fig. He chewed it once or twice and swallowed hard. “Hell, I’m proud of you already.”
As evening fell, Marky grew antsy. He filled a thermos with apple juice and carried it around as he straightened his room. He watched a political debate while solving his Rubik’s cube. He was sick of giving away his ingenuity. Just last month he’d consulted with the new owner of the Big Spring Jungle Park, who was his baseball coach’s brother. He had advised him to produce laminated bird-watching pamphlets, and to solicit field trips. He advised a dual ticket with the drag racing museum. Koi in the gift shop fountain. An old man who played the banjo. Already the Jungle Park had taken on new employees. It was the talk of the district. Marky knew that guys in big cities got paid obscenely for that sort of consulting, and Marky didn’t have more than a few hundred bucks to his name. He knew it was a matter of time, and maybe not a long time, before he’d have to support his uncle and cousin. What Marky wanted was to start a business he could bring the two of them into, something where they could contribute however they felt like contributing, where they could find a way to utilize their talents.