Anthony Neil Smith

Content Warning

bullying, child neglect, drug abuse and overdose

Cubby sat at the picnic table in the park like always, counting the mosquitoes on his arm. He liked the mosquitoes. They were his friends. They had to be, because they liked him. Their bites were like the laughing of his friends at school, who laughed when he did what they told him, like “Drop your pants,” or “Eat this booger,” or “Go into the girls’ bathroom.” He liked making them laugh. 

He missed his school friends. He missed his teacher, Miss Teacher. He’d been in her class for two years in a row, and she was sweet on him. His friends had told him the teacher was sweet on him. Then Miss Teacher and Mister Principal (“He’s my PAL!”) told Cubby’s momma he should be spent somewhere special. Momma got mad. Momma took him out of school completely. Momma said, “He’s not special. He’s just a little off.”

Cubby didn’t understand. He thought being special was good. 

Now, no more school. No more Miss Teacher. She had soft boobs. He knew because his school friends dared him to squeeze one of them once. Miss Teacher had chided him, told him never to do that again. She called him by his other name: Colin. He liked Cubby instead, because when he thought the other kids were calling him “Chubby,” he told his momma, who told him, “No, they’re saying Cubby because you’re cuddly as a bear cub.”

Today he sat at the picnic table in the park, not far from his momma’s car. His younger sister – just turned nine – was pacing along the walking path, looking for frogs. She wore the only thing she wanted to wear anymore, which was a bathrobe she’d got for Christmas and big fuzzy slippers. The bathrobe was dirty and smelled funky. Momma had stopped washing it. She’d stopped washing most everything. Stopped cooking, too. Every night was McDonald’s or BK or Arby’s. Every night was Coca Cola. Momma didn’t get up early enough to make breakfast, and don’t even ask about lunch. Cubby had grown out of Happy Meals, though. He got a Big Mac and lots of nugs. He missed getting a toy, but his sister, Wana, would give him hers sometimes. 

Cubby was bigger than ever, bigger than even the husky boy sizes, but he was hungry all the time. Momma, though, she didn’t eat anything. She smoked cigarettes and sometimes stole a few of his fries. Momma was like a skeleton from cartoons, but with sores and bruises.

He wiped away the mosquitoes when the itching got to be too much. He smeared blood down his arm. The mosquitoes always came back. They were his friends. 

His momma was in the car, the white car. The white car with speckles and bumps and bruises. One of the doors was gray. She always brought them here to the back entrance of the park where no one much came, and she told him and Wana to go play while she met with her friend Logan. Logan always got there later in a grumbly pick-up truck. Momma said he fixed the car for them, fixed everyone’s cars. But how come the white car was always broken? 

Logan was a dirty white man. He had blacked fingernails, greasy face, and skin looking like sandpaper. Always in a snap-button shirt and a cap with greasy hair pressed down under it, spilling out. A sandpaper mustache. Black teeth. 

He always held up his big fist to Cubby and said, “Big man!”

Cubby liked being called Big Man, like a football player, or a professional wrestler. Big Man!

Then Logan would climb into the car beside his momma, and she’d get mighty PEE-OH’D if the kids paid any mind to what was going on in the white car. Be it smoking, be it Momma and Logan getting sleepy, taking naps, be it Logan on top of his spread-eagled momma in the backseat, all them grunting and hollering. 

Making babies was what Wana whispered to him. They’re making babies. 

Then later, Logan would get out of the white car, go back to his truck, and drive off. Momma would call Cubby and Wana back to the car, which now smelled like people stink and burning, and she took them to McDonalds or whichever and got them burgers and nuggets and fries and Coca Cola.

Today was sunny. It had been raining the day before, so Cubby knew his friends the mosquitoes would be out in swarms. Wana paced and hummed, paced and hummed, eyes on the ground looking for frogs. A man on a bike sped through on the path, had to stop so he wouldn’t hit Wana, and said, “Excuse me,” riding around her. 

Momma told them not to talk to strangers. Said if a stranger said something to them, to come get her. But the only people who’d said anything to them was the man on his bike, the men with the Frisbees, and some old ladies walking the path. Cubby knew they weren’t the sort of strangers Momma was talking about.

She’d meant strangers like Logan. 

Cubby was hungry again. Momma had gotten them Slurpees and M&M’s before the park, but he’d already eaten them all. Wana didn’t like peanuts. The mosquitoes liked Cubby’s cherry-and-chocolate-stained lips. 

Then Logan got out of the white car saying all the bad words. 

“Oh fuck! Oh shit! Fuck! Motherfucker! Shit! Shit shit shit!”

He looked up at Cubby. Cubby saw past him into the white car. Momma was sleeping behind the wheel. Logan slammed the door and held up his fist. “Big man!”

And ran to his truck and got in and raced out of the lot, kicking up gravel and dust. 

Cubby said, “Wana, come on.”

She knelt beside one of the puddles. “I found tadpoles.”

“Logan’s gone. Let’s go now.” He was really hungry. Big Mac and nugs. Fries and Coke.

Wana and Cubby started for the white car. Wana got into the front seat because Cubby felt less squeezed in the back. He could spread out. Wana climbed into the seat and Cubby closed the door for her. That robe really did stink. 

But the stink inside the white car was worse. Cubby didn’t know what it was. Something burnt? Something crispy? Not like a nug.

Momma was fast asleep. Not even breathing. She had blood running down her arm. It was nearly black against her bone-white skin.

“Momma?”

Nothing. 

Wana found a napkin – there were always napkins, always plenty of fast-food napkins – and wiped the blood off Momma’s arm. “Maybe there was a mosquito,” she said.

Could be. Could be. Cubby wondered if that was why Logan was saying all the bad words. Oh fuck oh shit oh motherfucker. 

Cubby shook his momma’s shoulder. “Momma? I’m hungry.”

Nothing. Her skin felt weird.

“Momma?”

Wana turned around in her seat. “Is Momma okay?”

Cubby was the older one. He knew best. “She’s just taking a nap. When she wakes up, we can go eat.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mm hm. Let’s just wait until she wakes up.”

And so they waited together in the white car.

Cubby was really hungry.

Anthony Neil Smith is a novelist (Slow Bear, The Drummer, Yellow Medicine, many more), short story writer (HAD, Bull, Cowboy Jamboree, Maudlin House, Bellevue Literary Review, Reckon Review, The Hooghly Review, many more), and professor (Southwest Minnesota State University). One of his pieces was chosen for Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023. He was previously an associate editor with Mississippi Review Web, and is now editor of Revolution John.