Mr. Tock is outside with my daddy before, all the time. They sit on plastic crates out in the yard drinking beers and throwing rocks at varmints underneath the house. Mr. Tock throws empty bottles out into the high grass where my brother and me won't see them. He says to daddy over and over every night while they are out there that our house is sinking into the ground, that daddy is a bare-backed fool for marrying that woman in the first place and moving out here in the second.
One thing Mr. Tock always does is points at my brother and my's bedroom and says Look at that end, already leaning down all whop-sided. Mr. Tock says the blocks holding up the floor on our end are at least a foot lower than the other blocks holding up the house.
My brother and my's favorite game is to wait on daddy and Mr. Tock to fall asleep out in the yard and pretend to give them funerals. My brother is the weeping wife. I am the priest. When my brother and my's time to play is coming, we wait in the front room, and watch the rocks bounce along on the dirt underneath the house through the floorboards. Sometimes for his funeral we roll daddy into a hole that's fell out off in the yard somewhere.
You total idiot, didn't you know, Mr. Tock told daddy one time while we waited, that it's all limestone underneath? This whole area out here, all limestone. The groundwater'll wash it out from under your feet, he said, like a big underground river, and then, ska-flip! Mr. Tock waved his arms and legs around like he's falling. The seat of his plastic crate cracked in two and Mr. Tock's rear end was stuck inside. He dropped his beer and daddy about shitted himself laughing. Mr. Tock's big round belly was poking way out in the air while he was stuck. He was a fat crab walking around trying to get out. My daddy's teeth smiling through his beard, he gets up and does a little chicken dance around the yard. He is a skeleton. My brother and me can see all his ribs, and my's arms are about as big around as his.
My brother and me watch our daddy out there with Mr. Tock every day since Mama ripped down the curtains and put the sledgehammer through the kitchen window while daddy was at work. My brother and me saw her take the car, spray gravel all over the front of the house when she pulled out. Mr. Tock and daddy used to work together at the mill, but daddy stopped going after that. He came home and finished a whole Old Crow bottle. He fell out right in the middle of the floor that time. We try to ask sometimes where's mama and all he does is drink and lay around. And talk to Mr. Tock. They are always talking till it's real dark and sometimes neither one falls asleep out in the yard so my brother and my's game is ruined those nights. Mr. Tock tells daddy that he is a big old idiot almost every night.
One time when daddy stands up to walk inside, Mr. Tock says he's going to get Bobby Hondo, his buddy that works for the city, to come over one day. He says Hondo'll tell whether for sure if it's limestone up underneath.
That night, my brother starts going maybe Mr. Tock is right. He was saying that the house is sinking for real and I was saying he is a total idiot, just like Mr. Tock says daddy is. I tell my brother to shut up his whining like a little girl and he shuts up. When we lay down that time, my brother and me were sliding backwards out the tops of our beds some. All night, our trucks and baseballs and little rocks and things come alive and move towards us in our beds a little bit.
Early, after that night when daddy and Mr. Tock ruined the game and my brother started thinking the house was sinking, my brother and me get up to see if Mama came home like my brother thinks she will. My brother and me get dizzy when we get up this time. He has to sit back down and I call him a sissy. In the kitchen, we don't see mama again. We see daddy laid out on the table, passed out asleep. My brother starts in on his weeping wife act, rubber-chinning and sniffling. He is the weeping wife. I am the priest. I say Let us pray. Lord, thank you for this daddy who was a bare backed fool. When he gets to heaven, please give him some Old Crow. God rest daddy's soul. Rest in Peace.
