The Itch

By Timothy O. Davis

Joe had felt the hands of cousins and uncles on his back; a mountain of father figures all culminating in weekend trips camping on Badin Lake or fishing at Oak Hollow after church. Joe would come home wet and muddy, and his momma would be waiting for him, barefoot on the cement porch. His cousins would wave bye as Joe stood there with his momma. He’d watch until the lightning bugs came out and his supper was cold. The trips never took the sting out of his dad’s departure. 

None of that mattered now as Joe stared at the final notices scattered on the blue and white plastic tablecloth. The dining room’s yellow light made it appear greasy, but it was something Joe had become used to. Under his left hand was a pile of lottery tickets – financial ventures that had failed. He looked at the oil bill, and wondered if he and his wife, Cheryl, could survive the coming winter.

Cheryl sat down, and sipped a cup of coffee. Occasionally, Joe would look up at her, and she would look away into the living room at her velvet portrait of Jesus on the cross. Joe hated that picture because it reminded him of his momma. It reminded him of her, because of her dedication to High Point First Baptist after Walter, his dad, left. The church had done nothing for them; there was only a congregation of angry faces each week. Joe slapped the table top, and pushed away from the table.  

“That’s productive,” Cheryl said, and set her cup on the table.

“What do you want us to do?”

“You can’t put your faith in the devil and expect to come out right,” Cheryl said, and stood up. She placed her hand on Joe’s shoulders.

Joe looked into her eyes. For a moment, he thought he saw his momma in her face. “I don’t know how we can get through this.”

“Faith and hard work,” Cheryl said, and kissed Joe’s cheek. She held him, and then backed away. 

Joe nodded his head. When Cheryl left the room, he picked up the lottery tickets. Tomorrow was Thursday, and he would have to go to work, and Friday as well, but Saturday was the drawing, and he would get a ticket and win the lottery. Beverly, who lived on the end of their street, had won from a two-dollar scratcher, and she was off to Greece now. Beverly, from all Joe knew, had not set a foot in any church or said any prayer. He could taste that money, like molasses, which made his teeth itch. 

Joe stood in front of the glass looking at each of the beverages. A ghost stared back with darkened circles and puffy, bloodshot eyes like a rabid coonhound. It was the ghost of Walter. Skeletal hands opened the door. The brisk air reminded him of summer when he would stand with the freezer open and a box fan blowing in the kitchen, and all through the house like a procession line of fans. Joe still found it hard to sleep without the hum of a fan, but Cheryl liked her bedroom warm even during the summer when the humidity seemed a living thing. Joe closed the door, and took his Coke to the front. He would be late today, but he didn’t care. He needed time to think before he went into Marsh, before he was stuck on the line and wrestling with furniture parts. Cynthia helped. Joe had rediscovered his elementary school crush at Marsh, and they had been taking breaks together whenever the opportunity came up. Joe wasn’t sure what her intentions were. He didn’t wear his ring at work, but it was one of the first things Joe had mentioned, and only because he knew those break room walls had ears. Cynthia had never told him why she left, and he had been too busy with life struggling to climb out of the North Carolina clay to really think about her. Then Cheryl came into his life, and nothing else seemed important until Cynthia waved at him on the line one day. It was kites outside Oak Hill Elementary all over again.   

Joe breathed in, and wondered what Cynthia thought about the lottery. He wondered if she would run away with him if he won Saturday. Joe shook his head at this thought, and set his Coke on the counter. He looked at the clerk. She was a young, Asian girl Joe had never seen before. He had been coming to this Philips 66 station every morning since he started work at Marsh five years ago. 

She smiled at Joe, and he looked out at his truck. If he bought this Coke and a lunch today, he would have just enough gas to get to work and back. He didn’t want to skip another meal, but he needed that ticket.

When you’re a millionaire you won’t have to worry about that, he thought, and pulled out his wallet. “What’s the damage?”

“Two-seventy, sir,” she said, and flipped her hair out of her eyes.

Joe loved when women did that. Cheryl never did that anymore. “Lemme get a lotto ticket.”

“Four-seventy,” she said, and moved over to the machine. 

Joe watched her punch in the numbers.

She handed Joe the ticket.

He handed her the cash, and stared at the ticket. The numbers seemed to make sense in his head, like a set of tumblers rolling and Joe knew when and where they were going to stop. He looked back at the cashier, and she was surrounded by sunlight filtering through the door. Joe pushed through the doors. He’d have to hurry, but being late didn’t matter, although it meant more points on his personnel record. Cheryl won’t be happy with that, he thought, and looked at the ticket again. It was warm in his hand, and Joe decided for once he didn’t care what Cheryl thought. 

Joe sat in the break room and sipped his coffee. A bag of M&Ms was open on the dirty tabletop. The yellow bag stood out in the shadows, and Joe watched the door hoping no one would enter to disturb his moment. He looked out especially for line supervisors – being late this morning hadn’t helped. Joe burped and felt the tepid coffee crawl back up his throat; he swallowed it back down and tapped his chest. He stood up and tossed the half-empty cup into the trash. The door opened, letting in the droning of the belt line, which returned to a low vibration like a bumblebee when Cynthia closed the door. 

“I see you had the coffee,” she said, and patted Joe on the shoulder. She was almost as tall as Joe was, and her red hair was cut close and kept frizzy by the humidity. She took off her safety goggles, and sat down in the bench chair. “I also see you’re having the power lunch,” she said, and pointed to the bag of M&Ms. 

“Well, I’m trying to keep my girlish figure.”

“I guess someone has to.”

“Don’t start.” 

“I’m just concerned.”

“Concerned? Concerned about what?” Joe asked, and rubbed the back of his head. 

“You deserve better. Don’t you think?”

“I’ve got fifty-nine points.” Joe stood up, but then sat down. The truth was, he didn’t know, and probably never would. “I had a weird dream the other night.”

“You should be careful about dreams.”

 “What do you mean,” Joe asked. 

Cynthia sat there, bathed in the low light of the lounge, her hair, work shirt, and pants covered in sawdust and sweat. She was stretching her neck, her large eyes closed and long neck rolling back and forth. 

Joe looked away. He turned back when he felt her looking at him.

“You should call me when you want to figure things out,” she said, and wrote her phone number and address on a napkin, and placed it in Joe’s hand. Joe felt something like a sting, as if he had touched an iron. She leaned in and touched his shoulder. He smelled sawdust mixed with figs and brown sugar, and he wondered if she could smell the mustiness he thought he smelled like, but then she backed away and left the break room, the door letting in the factory for a brief moment, and then closing it off once again.

Joe had forgotten that Friday was payday. So much money had been flowing out of his pocket that he stopped relishing payday. It had become just another day he was without money, and another day the mailman brought more notices. He coasted home after work, and washed the sawdust and sweat off with the backyard hose. The water stung, it always stung, but it kept him from tracking in sawdust. 

He looked at his backyard, which had been his momma’s. She had always kept a garden, but Joe let it grow over with poison oak, grass, dandelions and snake berries. He had no kids, and copper heads had as much a right to live as he did to breathe. Cheryl always took a hoe to them whenever she saw them anyway, and hung their bodies on the old woodshed that marked the end of his property. The rest of the backyard stretched off down a hill through a range of dogwoods, and ended in a white-graveled parking lot of the die-casting plant. Growing up, Joe had always watched the men and women scrabble across the gravel into the red-bricked building, and wondered if he would share their fate one day. Now, looking across the backyard that had been his momma’s and was now his, he shivered and turned off the hose. 

Inside, he toweled off and put on a pair of shorts. Cheryl was upstairs sleeping off a migraine. Joe threw his towel in the hamper next to the large bin freezer, and walked in the kitchen making sure to dodge the ceiling fan.

He looked out the window at the landscaping nightmare that was the backyard. Joe remembered the first year they were married. Money wasn’t important back then. Religion wasn’t important; although, in the end, that’s probably why he married her, but not so she could save him. He didn’t want to be saved – there was only the lottery. There were things he could do with that type of money. He watched the sun dip past the oak trees in Mr. Walker’s yard. It was getting late, but this was his favorite part of the day, something his momma used to say, when the world died, and things slowly slipped into darkness. Maybe Cynthia was right. 

Joe walked across the apartment complex parking lot. In the blurry, white light of the street lamps, Joe felt like the last person on earth until a car drove by. Joe looked at the red Taurus for a moment. When the car passed, he let out his breath, which came out hot and sticky. The haunting scrape of its tires followed Joe up the sidewalk and to Cynthia’s apartment. 

Inside, Joe was surprised to find the apartment nearly empty. The carpet was white and stained with indiscernible black spots. There was only a black futon and a television on a milk crate in the middle of the living room. Joe could see through the living room to the kitchen and down a hallway, which he assumed led to bedrooms. There were no pictures on the faux wood paneled walls, and this surprised him because he had always thought of Cynthia as an artistic person. The apartment was hot and stuffy, and Joe had trouble breathing. 

“You should have a seat,” Cynthia said from the kitchen.

Joe looked at Cynthia, and then at the dusty futon. “I’m not sure, Cynthia. Maybe I should leave?”

“Just sit,” she said.

“I guess sitting wouldn’t hurt anything,” he said, and sat on the futon. Joe looked at the TV. The news was on, and he licked his lips. 

Cynthia laughed, and sat next to Joe.

“It’s been awhile,” Joe said. 

Cynthia placed her leg against Joe’s. It was smoother and darker than his. She leaned her body into his. “I remember when we used to fly kites at Oak Hill,” she said.

Joe looked past her to see if they had announced the numbers yet, but Roy McCormick was still giving his weather report. “I always believed Cheryl and I would be together forever,” Joe said, and leaned back against the cool fabric of the futon. The futon smelled like earth or pottery, almost like the creeks Cynthia and he had hunted for crawdads before she fell out of his life. He grabbed the pillow behind his head, and adjusted it to where he felt comfortable. 

“Joe, I’ve been through two failed marriages, I live in the town where I grew up and work for a furniture company with one foot across the border. You know what I learned from all that?” She grabbed Joe’s hand.

Joe squeezed her hand, and looked at the TV. The balls were spinning, but nothing had spun on the screen.

“It taught me that you have to ask yourself what it is you want.”

“I never really thought about it that way,” Joe said, and watched the television. The white balls were rolling on the screen. 

“Why live an unhappy life?” Cynthia said. She tapped his knee, stood up and walked down the hallway. Joe watched her heart-shaped ass until she disappeared through a yellow doorway. Joe stood up, looked down the hallway, which seemed darker now than when he had just been looking at it, and back at the TV. The last ball sat swirling, red and giant in the tube, and all he could think of was Cheryl. It was no longer about the money or Cynthia or his life being happier. It was about the swirling ball, which had become his world. A world he was orbiting now, and somewhere down a hall or in his house, he heard a woman's voice calling him, but he could not escape from the spinning red globe.

****

Timothy O. Davis grew up in North Carolina. In 2001, after serving honorably in the Army, he moved to Idaho with his family. His writing has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Flash: The International Short-Story Magazine, Flash Frontier, The Slag Review, Juste Milieu, The Del Sol SFF Review, Techniques, The Suisun Valley Review, and Military Experience & the Arts. Timothy currently lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho.