Trying the Knot by Todd Erickson

aunt would peddle it from door to door.”
    Together, they made their way along the
lakeshore. As they walked over the wet sand, gentle waves soaked
through their shoes and seagulls squawked and screeched overhead.
They observed a woman interacting with her child. It was the same
snot-nosed kid they’d seen earlier in the morning at the hospital.
Thad moved closer to the sleepy looking toddler.
    “Another casualty of PHS’s Sex Ed program,”
Chelsea said under her breath.
    “I don’t remember any Sex Ed classes.”
    “Exactly.”
    Yet another Derry Queen who had once been
crowned Miss Portnorth. There was a seemingly endless supply. She
would have been a member of their graduating class if she had not
dropped out of school and gave birth before her tiara had a chance
to tarnish.
    “Brittany Morgan, get your ass away from that
dead fish,” the queen mother yelled, and swept up the
soggy-diapered child into her sunburnt arms.
    “Hey,” Thad called, and she waved at him.
    Derry Cow, as she was now called, wore faded
pink sweat pants and a tomato colored T-shirt that stated Spoiled
Rotten. Her matted strawberry blond hair hung past her shoulders,
but it was ingeniously shorn above her ears in an extreme
mullet.
    “Hey, long time no see,” she said, despite
their having encountered one another at the hospital that
morning.
    “It’s kind of early to be combing the beach,”
Thad said.
    “Brittany drags me here at all hours. Thinks
she’ll see daddy’s boat. It don’t matter he’s home sitting his big
fat ass in front of the TV sucking down beer and bitching about his
sore hand.”
    “Don’t you have an older kid, too?”
    “Yeah, little Rocky heads back to
Kindergarten next week, still in school only half a day.” She waved
a fly away from Brittany’s tangled hair. “Wouldn’t happen to have a
light, would’juh?”
    “Sure,” Thad said, and he lit her smashed
menthol cigarette. Chelsea stepped away and wrote leisurely with
driftwood in the sand. Thad nodded at the toddler and lied, “She’s
cute.”
    “She’s got my hair, but she got Rocky’s
temper,” Derry Cow said, and she sucked deeply on the cigarette.
Her left eye was lightly bruised. “I wish that bastard was back on
the boats, instead of dodging trees in the damn woods.”
    “He’s laid off?”
    “Yup, times are tough. At least when he’s
sailing the pay check is bigger, and I don’t have to see him for
months. That’s always a perk.”
    Thad nodded, and he wondered if the old
cliche was true that all sailors were drunks. He blurted
impulsively, “I heard he knocked up your sister.”
    “That nasty snatch,” said the washed up
queen. She swatted the kid when it kicked and screamed to be let
down.
    Thad wrapped the child’s filthy foot in his
hand and shook it. Between her simpering whimpers, saliva landed on
his wrist.
    “Sorry ‘bout that, it’s like she’s retarded
or something. Hey, you hear about Vangie Whiley? Isn’t it sad? I
hope she pulls through, even if she is a nut job,” Derry Cow said
as she shifted the kid on her hip. Thad wiped his saliva-coated
hand on his thigh. “I was going to ask her to sing at my wedding if
that dumb Dago ever asked me to tie the knot.”
    “Hell, maybe she could sing at your sister’s
wedding, too,” Thad added.
    “Your friend is leaving,” said the former
queen, pointing to Chelsea. “I never did like her. Thinks her shit
don’t stink, don’t she?”
    Thad shrugged, said good-bye and ran to catch
up. By the time he joined her, Chelsea had reached an empty path
beyond the baseball field concession stand. As they made their way
toward the newspaper building, Chelsea commented on how friendly he
had been to the former Derry queen.
    “I heard her boyfriend’s knocked up at least
one other girl besides her sister,” Thad said winded. “Her life is
messed up enough without my being a jerk to her.”
    Still holding the driftwood, Chelsea pointed
it at him and said, “I hope