HAPPY

A Short Story

by Hal Jones

Copyright 2006
H.V. Jones

The impatiens were the first to go, even though they weren’t for sale. The crowd in the front yard trampled them under as they pawed over the furniture and clothes and fixtures that had accumulated around three years of family life. It was the most stuff that had ever stuck to Hap, and now it was being scraped away by the crowd of scavengers at the yard sale.
He didn’t miss it. Most of his life he hadn’t had enough to fill a small suitcase, and he liked it like that, or at least was comfortable like that.
He noticed his three-year-old son, Teddy, trying to climb into his crib where it stood on the driveway as a large Haitian lady checked it over and then paid Tavia, his wife. Tavia pulled Teddy away, calling his attention to something else as the crib was folded and carted off. She was good like that. The little boy didn’t even cry.
Hap watched the stuff flowing away. He figured it was just moving on to the next place like it’d come to him through thrift shops and flea markets and yard sales. The impatiens got to him, though. He didn’t care that people were walking all over them - their colored cushions had already turned yellow and bony in the late spring sun. What pissed him was that he’d ever gotten them in the first place, that he’d paid twenty bucks for all those little potty plants and taken the time to plant and mulch and water them like some real homeowner. Well, that happened when you forgot your principles.
That night they slept on the bare floor of the small rental house in North Miami Beach, and the next morning loaded what little they had left into the Cutlass and headed for Macon. There wasn’t much reason why Macon - no relatives or close friends - it was just where his daddy had always gone to lick his wounds.
The May sun boiled off the swamps until the air was almost too thick to breathe. Hap glanced at Teddy, red from the heat, sleeping fitfully on Tavia’s lap. He’d put towels over the plastic seats, but they did little to make the day more bearable. Tavia stared out the window, saying nothing.
They’d met three years before. He delivered furniture for an office supply store, and she worked at the restaurant across the street. He was 41; she was 18. Within a month she was pregnant. That was usually the time for him to head for Macon, but he stayed, they married. He even gave her his father’s heavy old ring, his only inheritance.
For a couple of years things went well. Between their two paychecks they rented the little house and furnished it pretty well. For the first time Hap had an idea of what a home might be like. But then the trouble started. Business fell off at the furniture store, and he was let go. Then the big old ring slipped off Tavia’s finger and into the deep fryer at the restaurant. Instinctively, she plunged her hand into the hot grease after it. When their unemployment and comp checks ran out, they tried to find other jobs, but Hap was already thinking about Macon.
They’d made it almost to Ocala when the rod blew. The Cutlass limped along to a motel where they counted the remains of the yard sale money and figured they might have enough to catch a bus the next day. There was no hope of fixing the Cutlass.
The old motor court was a U of little houses. Hap sat on his stoop trying to catch some cool air. Not a car in the lot was under ten years old. He knew the place too well. He’d been raised in motels or trailer parks or worse. His mother’d left when he was four. His father’d kept him, but that was about all he’d done. An alcoholic when he could afford it, he’d never abused Hap physically - just ignored him or used a foul tongue on him now and then. The child’s personality had formed in reaction. It was really a nervous thing, but whatever was wrong, he always seemed to have a smile. One day someone laid Happy on him - his name was Harley - and it stuck. He may have looked happy, but he remembered his childhood as just sad. He’d vowed never to bring another child through that.
That night he dreamed about Macon. He was in the canyon where the rich people lived. As in so many dreams, he saw the grey stone mansion and the gardens of blooming azaleas and camellias that stretched for acres.
He woke to find a note from Tavia that she’d gone into town looking for work. By late afternoon she hadn’t come back.
Hap sat on the bed staring at the fuzzy images on the old TV. Teddy was vrooming around the room, pushing a toilet-paper-roll car. Then the boy got up, looking very serious, and stood before his father.
“Daddy?” he asked. Hap’s stare remained fixed on the TV.
“Daddy!” he demanded. Hap looked down.
“Daddy, I like our new house,” he declared in his manliest tone. He waited a few moments, studying the effect of his words, then returned to his car. He didn’t notice Happy’s tear.