The Disposables Read Online Free

without a creak.
    I turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. My heart skipped a beat. Damn, he knew better than that.
    The stuffy air inside the small lath-and-plaster house smelled of bacon grease, okra, and greens. It sparked a nostalgic moment that took me back many years and made me wish I was back there, away from all the pressure, these problems. The feeling hadn’t happened in a long time. The shooting of the kid at the liquor store, the sudden realization of being old and helpless was what set me off.
    The dim orange-yellow glow from the living room lamp filtered into the kitchen on the floor. I eased the door closed. The house was absolutely quiet, minus the snore. I stopped and opened the refrigerator. The bright light near blinded me. Just as I thought, they were out of milk and low on just about everything else. I was a fool. The old man had begun to panic. I couldn’t blame him.
    I peeked around the corner. He sat in his easy chair his head back, his mouth open, gums exposed. His teeth were on the end table next to him as he quietly snored. His short-cut afro was cotton white. I carefully put my hand on it and remembered a time when it was jet black and glistened, a time when he was built like a world-class boxer and wasn’t afraid to keep the neighborhood safe from the thugs. Feeble now, and too old to care about anything but the two small children asleep on his lap and the others, two over on the couch in a makeshift bed and three more on the floor with pillows and blankets. Dad slept too soundly to be an effective night watchman. I felt bad that he was left with the job of caring for the children. I felt even worse about what I had to do to him in a couple of weeks. He knew the plan. He was unafraid to bealone looking into the backside of forever. My old man never complained, never.
    Because of the situation, he wasn’t allowed to leave the house and had to pay the neighbor kid to buy the groceries. Had to pay him extra so the neighbor kid wasn’t inclined to talk and ruin the good thing we had going. The cover we wanted people to believe—crazy old man living by himself, a recluse who doesn’t want to venture out into the real world—so far it had worked fine. It just cost double for the food and supplies.
    The kids looked as if they’d grown in the two weeks I’d been away. The responsibility of their safety caught me up short. How could I keep them safe? Who was I to think I was better than the county system? Was I doing the right thing here?
    Of course, I was. Each one of these kids had been returned, by a judge no less, to an abusive home. Returned to parents who only wanted custody to keep the welfare checks coming. Some people were just plain wired wrong, mentally and emotionally. They did not consider kids to be living, breathing human beings. Children were disposable, even their own. Of course, I reassured myself, the kids were better off with Marie and me.
    The kids needed to be in their beds in the bedroom. Dad was a soft touch and had let them stay up late watching TV and he’d fallen asleep with the rest of them. One at a time, I picked up the Bixlers, Ricky and Toby, two black boys, six and seven respectively, and carried them to their bedroom. They’d been taken into custody after their mom’s boyfriend’s PCP lab caught fire in their apartment. They hadn’t escaped unscathed. Their arms, legs, and backs rippled with scar tissue. They’d spent two months in the burn unit and were thendumped right back with the same mother who still lived with the same boyfriend, now out on bail.
    I came back and lifted Sonny Taylor. He’d almost died overdosing on some meth his mom had left out on the living room coffee table. I’d found him in a closet where his mom had left him while she went out foraging for dope money.
    Little Marvin Kelso was so light in my arms, so young to be a victim of abuse. Even though there was a court order