Eeny Meeny Miny Moe

Robbie woke up staring at the side of his sofa.  Bottles were scattered across the floor.  Bourbon, vodka, orange juice, ginger ale.  He could remember most of it.  It wasn’t some single binge.  He was drunk for 3 days straight.  Now he needed water.

He hadn’t changed his clothes since he started.  These were the same jeans he wore when Nicki came and got Ashley.  He was still pissed she brought her father with her.  There was no need for that.  He would have let her have Ashley.  She was the one thing he would never hurt.

He stood up and stretched the stiffness out of his bones.  For the first time he noticed the lights and his stereo were all on from whenever.  He opened up the CD player to see what he had listened to the days and nights before.  The player was empty.  He closed and walked to the kitchen to get the water.

Robbie’s foot stepped on something sharp and he hopped back over to his couch and pulled a sliver of a CD out of his foot.  It didn’t cut too deep.  He stood and walked on his heel back over to the broken CD.  It was one of his old Dwight Yoakam CDs.  He remembered finding it in the stack of stuff Nicki brought with her when she came for their daughter.

He couldn’t find a clean glass.  They were all in the sink and they stunk of liquor, orange juice, and ginger ale.  He dug out the cleanest one he could find and rinsed out a few times before going to pour the water from the pitcher in the refrigerator.  As the first glass and then the second glass started to flow throw his system he started to remember what really happened.

He remembered seeing Ashley through the window of the squad car.  He remembered Roger taking pity on him and convincing the guy at the pawn shop Robbie wasn’t really trying to steal from him and escorting him back here to the trailer.  He remembered Roger telling he still had to call this in and that DSS or Nicki would be coming to get Ashley later that day.

He remembered Nicki and her father pulling in front of the trailer in the pick-up truck.  He remembered Nicki walking to the house with her father sitting in the cab of the truck and the hunting rifle hanging in the rack behind his head.

He remembered the box Nicki was carrying that had what was left of their time living together and how she dropped it down on the kitchen table with finality before she walked into Ashley’s room and gathered the little girl and her things up to leave.  He remembered how Nicki didn’t say a word the whole time she was inside the trailer.

He remembered watching his two girls drive away with old man at the wheel.  He remembers watching them turn off just ahead of him as he drove to the liquor store.  He remembered how it was on liquor he spent his last dime.

The rest was a haze of bourbon, vodka, and music.  He stared out his window.  All that was there was a patch of dirt where a yard was supposed to be and a dusty cheap black top road that leads to the highway that runs both ways out of town.

He looked around his trailer and thought.  He limped into his bedroom leaving a trail of blood on the floor and through a couple of pairs of jeans, clean t-shirts, and clean boxers into his duffle along with his stereo and a bunch of CDs.  He looked around one more time, put a band aid on his foot before putting on his shoes, and walked out the door without even locking it.

He got into his car and did “teeny money many moe” to pick his direction and pulled out onto the dusty road in his old Camry with the rusted spot on the rear passenger side panel.