C4 antho - Chamber Four

~24~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
shows no signs of change from season to season. Only E.
Eagle’s mailbox, swaybacked and half ajar, gives an indication
of the passage of time. The mail carrier stacks E.’s
weekly magazine, sheathed in black plastic, on top of his box,
and since E. Eagle collects his mail but once a month the
pile-up is a good indication how far into the month it is. On
the Chickens’ mailbox, the letters “+Mal” have been scribbled
on the face in a harried stroke, as though something
special would fail to be delivered if written any slower. The
Chickens’ box, as well as the Benscooters’, is missing the red
flag for outgoing mail.
Beyond the Chickens’ trailer park is an empty lot that
marks the beginning of what locals call “Auto Row,” where
what started several years ago as one store selling leather
conditioner and piñon-scented car freshener gradually
turned into an entire community of auto repair and auto
parts/junk shops. By order of his mom, the neighborhood is
off limits for Malchicken, even though she secretly lusts after
all of it―the whole eight blocks from Roget’s to Sven’s―for
she knows every man there is wearing a jumpsuit. Each shop
along the Row has a different animal mascot, and a fierce
competition takes place thirty feet above ground, in neon.
Roget’s badger wears a black beret, and he’s smoking an unattached
mouse’s tail in one hand and strangle-holding Marson’s
little mouse head in the other. Every time the badger
pumps his biceps, the mouse’s bent whiskers light up in sequence.
Malchicken’s dad used to say the proximity to Auto
Row was a good thing, and that the lights were there to make
ordinary days seem like holidays. His mom used to argue
that it was so bright she could see the screws coming down
on the lid of her coffin.
The buzzing from Roget’s neon sign stings the back of
Mal’s head, just underneath the wide cup of his skull. A similar
tone comes out of the television speaker when Malchicken’s