Calloustown by George Singleton

purchase must’ve gotten siphoned off, but Ruben Orr veered right up beside me and skidded to a stop. He cleared his throat hard twice, unstraddled the moped, cleared his throat twice again, bent over, banged his right knee with his right palm, straightened up, walked two steps toward my truck’s bed, and petted the bobcat. He said, “I can’t leave you, Robert. I’m sorry.”
    I held the gas nozzle in my right hand. I’d already clicked down that little metal arm, so I was ready to look like One, I could pump either in my tank, or Two be a probable villain. I said, “You stole gas from me.”
    Raj said, “Hello, Mr. Ruben Orr.”
    â€œI made a mistake,” Ruben said. He touched every stuffed animal and called their names: Ringo for the raccoon, for example, and Slappy for the beaver. “Oh, God, I made some mistakes.” He looked like he might cry. “This would be a good time for you to say how you, too, have made some mistakes in your life, both personal and professional.”
    He didn’t look six-four or six-six anymore. As a matter of fact, he looked like the kind of man who could be a good grandfather to a ukulele-making man’s bastard child. I said, “I have sure enough made some errors.” I said, “I know this won’t make anyone involved feel better, but my own father thinks I’m screwed up, too.”
    Raj went inside. I looked at what I carried in the back of my truck. Ruben Orr said he didn’t want to go through with our original plan and gave me back the cash I’d handed over for starters. “These are like children to me. You can’t just sell off or abandon children, right?”
    I got it. I understood Mayley’s father’s less-than-subtle allusion.
    I said, “I might want to rent out some of the animals in the future. I could use them for promotion, you know. We can talk about it after the blood tests.”
    What else could I say? I foresaw our odd future connection. He asked me if I wanted Mayley’s phone number right before I asked for it. I said, “I swear to God I was just about to ask for it.”
    He said, “We should all get together some time, before and after, no matter the results.”
    I believed him, and put the nozzle in my tank. I looked into the store to see Raj giving me the go-ahead to pump. I pulled the trigger and thought about what I rightly owed a lot of people. What a bad person I ended up truly, I thought—I needed to call Mayley, my ex-wife, and anyone I had deceived into thinking he or she could achieve peace when strumming four strings on a miniature instrument.

Invasion of Grenada
    Maybe we weren’t meant to be possible pre-foster-parents-to-be. It’s important to learn these kinds of things early on, I would bet. My wife had signed up for the entire project, and some Department of Social Services people showed up to make sure we didn’t have firearms scattered around the house or booze bottles within reach. That we didn’t keep Pine-Sol bottles on the floor, or rat traps. I’m sure they looked into our backgrounds to conclude we weren’t child pornographers, dope smokers, domestic batterers, gunrunners, arsonists, that sort of thing. I had some questionable decisions in my past, but nothing worse than anyone else. Vandalism, mostly. Trespassing. I’d been married before, too young, and the vandalism and trespassing involved her. But I wasn’t violent, or a repeat offender. I walked onto my ex-wife’s property once, spray-painted CHEATER on the side of her house, then left. I spray-painted that, plus BITCH and TWO-TIMER and WHORE and EDUARDO–REALLY? on the side of what used to be my van. I don’t want to think that I’m a racist, but it hurt my ego that she’d fall in love with a Venezuelan over me.
    â€œIt’s kind of like being on-call 24/6,” our personal social worker came to tell Bonita and