Удушье (Choke)

The plan was only one rock a day, but Denny's got such an addictive personality. Now he has to cart home a half-dozen rocks every day just to maintain his habit. Every day the dishwasher is running and the kitchen counters are spread with my mom's good bath towels covered with rocks so they can air-dry. Round gray rocks. Square black rocks. Broken brown and streaked yel­low rocks. Travertine limestone. Every new batch that Denny brings home, he loads in the dishwasher and throws the clean, dry rocks from the day before into the basement.

At first you can't see the basement floor because of all the rocks. Then the rocks are piling up around the bottom step. Then the basement's filled to halfway up the stairs. Now you open the basement door and the rocks piled inside spill out into the kitchen. Anymore, there is no basement.

'Dude, the place is filling up,' I say. 'It feels like we're living in the bottom half of an hourglass.'

Like somehow we're running out of time.

Being buried alive.

Denny in his dirty clothes, his waistcoat coming apart under the arms, his cravat hanging in threads, he waits at each bus stop cradling each pink bundle against his chest. He bounces each armload when the muscles in his arms start to fall asleep. After the bus comes, Denny with dirt smeared on his cheeks snores leaned against the drumming metal inside of the bus, still hold­ing his baby.

At breakfast I say, 'Dude, you said your plan was one rock each day.'

And Denny says, 'That's all I do. Just one.'

And I say, 'Dude, you are such a junkie.' I say, 'Don't lie. I know you're doing at least ten rocks a day.'

Putting a rock in the bathroom, in the medicine cabinet, Denny says, 'Okay, so I'm a little ahead of schedule.'

There's rocks hidden in the toilet tank, I tell him.

And I say, 'Just because it's rocks doesn't mean this still isn't substance abuse.'

Denny with his running nose, with his shaved head, his baby blanket wet in the rain, he waits at each bus stop, coughing. He shifts the bundle from arm to arm. With his face tucked in close, he pulls up the pink satin edge of the blanket. To better protect his baby this looks like, but really to hide the fact that it's vol­ canic tufa.

The rain's running off the back of his tricorner hat. Rocks tear out the inside of his pockets.

Inside his sweaty clothes, carrying all that weight, Denny keeps getting skinnier and skinnier.

Heaving around what looks like a baby, it's just a waiting game until somebody in the neighborhood gets him nailed for child abuse and neglect. People are just itching to declare somebody an unfit parent and put some kid in a foster home, hey but that's just been my experience.

Every night, I come home from a long evening of choking to death and there's Denny with some new rock. Quartz or agate or marble. Feldspar or obsidian or argillite.

Every night I come home from forging heroes out of nobod­ies, and the dishwasher's running. I still have to sit down and do the day's accounts, total the checks, send today's thank-you let­ters. A rock's sitting on my chair. My papers and stuff on the dining-room table, it's all covered with rocks.

At first, I tell Denny, no rocks in my room. He can put the rocks anywhere else. Put them in the hallways. Put them in the closets. After that I'm saying, 'Just don't be putting rocks in my bed.'

'But you never sleep on that side,' Denny says.

I say, 'That's not the point. No rocks go in my bed, that's the point.'

I come home from a couple hours of group therapy with Nico or Leeza or Tanya, and there's rocks inside the microwave oven. There's rocks in the clothes dryer. Rocks inside the washing machine.

Sometimes it's three or four in the morning before Denny's in the driveway hosing off a new rock, some nights a rock so big he has to roll it inside. Then he's piling it on top the other rocks in the bathroom, in the basement, in my mom's room.

This is Denny's full-time occupation, this hustling rocks home.