c. 2026 Rod Ice
All rights reserved
(3-26)
Mockbina Petrovich had the classic figure of a rural laborer, owing to her Russian heritage. She was stout and curvaceous, and pretty in a plain sense. But in northeastern Ohio, people around her isolated neighborhood did not identify this distant origin, immediately. At first, because she had taken a position in Middlefield, making cheese, they assumed that she must be Amish. Or someone who had left the discipline of a similar community, to live with Yankee folk. But whenever someone engaged her in polite conversation, then, a revelation occurred. She sounded very foreign. And still beamed with excitement over the wealth of choices available to average people who lived in America.
Among relatives in the Cleveland area, this positive attitude was welcomed and echoed. But when at her lot within the crumbling confines of Evergreen Estates, it made her irritatingly upbeat. Cheerful to a point of obvious ignorance. Someone who seemed oblivious to the plight of leaseholders and rent-to-own inhabitants, who crawled through each month on meager, hourly wages or retirement checks.
That disconnect kept her from making friends easily, at first.
But with T.C. Lincoln, the drunken hermit across from her own trailer, this enduring mood of happiness did not matter. Despite the dark overtones of his combative personality, he accepted her outlook with no questions. Being generally withdrawn and solitary in his habits meant that on the rare occasions when he attempted to socialize with anyone, he avoided passing judgment.
Soon, the immigrant widow found herself spending days off with the contrarian figure, on his inset porch. She would pepper him with queries about everyday life, in their rustic setting. Once enough bourbon whiskey had been dispensed, he became a willing adviser and friend. Relaxed enough by being inebriated that he could speak freely and without inhibitions.
She was still naïve about living in her new homeland, and curious.
“Everyone here drives the pickup! Yes? I see them on a road to work, in this park, but not so much when I visit cousins at St. Theodosius church. They have the big tires. I hear them getting noisy. They are wery loud. Why the pickups here?”
Lincoln grinned in between swigs of his brown liquor.
“It’s part of the culture, ma’am. In my day, trucks were work vehicles. If ya drove one, it was to haul stuff, or get things done on the farm. Now though, it is a little bit different. People drive ‘em who never load up freight, never play in the mud, and never use ‘em for anything but hauling kids or getting groceries. It feels good to have one though, they are more sturdy than the crappy little shitboxes they make nowadays! Maybe it’s a throwback to yesteryear. Like the little, fake-ass shutters around windows on our prefab homes. Ya know nobody has actually had shutters on their frigging windows in years!”
Mockbina sipped plain lemonade from her glass. The slang terminology was confusing, yet caused her to smile.
“This is how you say, ‘Crappy little boxes?’ That is what we had to drive in my country. The big trucks are for army, for soldiers. Like my husband. I miss him so much.”
The shaggy alcoholic bowed his head with regret.
“I’m sorry, miss. No need to dredge up bad memories...”
The Russian femme shook her head as if to dispel those bittersweet recollections.
“Anyway, this are my country now. I am American, like you. Maybe I too will buy a pickup!”
Lincoln snorted a blast of distilled spirits through his nostrils.
“I used to drive ‘em myself, did that fer 35 years or more. And I had a van before those rigs, it could hold a ton of shit. I lived out of it once, when first landing here at this park. It wasn’t bad as a camper. Just not too comfortable stretched out on the floor with no mattress...”
Mockbina rolled her eyes with wonder.
“You came here when? I figure you are born here!”
The dirty drunk laughed out loud, so forcefully that it rattled the glass of his storm door.
“It damn well feels that way! But naw, I lived all over the place as a younger dude. Getting divorced sidelined my career. I took all the blame, and kept the bills. Call it a learning experience, an expensive one at that. It ruined my reputation. And I almost ended up in the hoosegow. Fer what I don’t know...”
His new associate was puzzled and silent. Then, she blurted out a note of exasperation.
“Hoose-a-gow? What is that, it sounds like some kind of animal, I think. Do you like going to the zoo? I hear from people at the cheese factory that Cleveland have a zoo...”
Lincoln nearly fell off of his wooden bench.
“Ma’am, it’s a sloppy term fer jail. I apologize, ya gotta get used to us hillbillies out here...”
Again, the immigrant woman appeared to be in a daze.
“Heel-beely? What is that? I am not used to this country yet. I must learn to be real American, I think. You will help me, yes?”
The tipsy alcoholic belched with a spray of beer foam dribbling down his gray beard.
“I can’t guarantee being too much help, miss. But sure, I’ll do my best. It’d be smart to keep in mind that people here are gonna give ya the side-eye, at least until they get used to yer personality. They are suspicious of strangers, and damn well mistrustful of anybody who don’t fit the pattern. I got a snoot full of that around 24 years ago. Believe it or not, I was Mr. Clean back then, I had the corporate look fer my job. White shirts and neckties every day. I played the game so as to get my salary paid. But all that fell apart pretty fast when my wife evicted me from the house in Lake County. I ended up here in this rat’s nest. Broke and busted, pissed-off at the world, and deep in debt. Ony one thing made me feel better about it, getting drunk every day. But, now I got two things, instead. Getting blitzed on booze, and... taking shit with you, neighbor!”
Without hesitation, the foreign female stood up, embraced her adoptive companion, and kissed him gently on the forehead. This caused gasps and groans as the old man teetered on his bench. He was not prepared for this random display of kindness. It made the pulse thump in his chest. Yet for the first time in many years, he felt warm inside, where it mattered.
Then, Mockbina scolded him with playful outrage.
“You smell like a barn! It remembers me of home, I used to help with chores when being wery little. Now, you help me, okay? And maybe some day, I help you, too!”
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