While this year’s Dunbar Christmas will be seasoned with loss and sadness, we plan to proceed, as best we can, toward that day of days, December twenty-seventh — 1:45 P.M. at The White Paw County Courthouse, room 412.

I will be calling to remind you of that information and look forward to discussing the festive bounty of your holiday season. Until that time we wish the best to you and yours.

Merry Christmas,

The Dunbars

Barrel Fever

JAMBOREE

EVER since Dad and Rochelle threw me out I have been staying with my sister and her family. Marty doesn’t want me living inside the house proper so I sleep in the garage. He says he wants me back here so I can keep an eye out for the sons of bitches who broke in and sawed the handlebars off his motorcycle.

It’s a good thing nobody tried ripping off his shingles — that way he’d have me sleeping on the roof.

Vicki told me I should count my blessings. “There’s plenty of people who got it a lot worse than this. People in Europe are living in drain-pipes with flies crawling all over their faces. They’re eating cardboard and bathing in their own spit. Over in China they have to sleep standing up in muddy ditches. This here,” she said, spreading out her arms to indicate majesty, “this here is nothing to look down your nose at. You’re living like a king. Look at everything I’ve done for you.”

I looked at the carpet remnants she had laid upon the concrete floor for use as a bed, and at the table she fashioned by placing a board on top of the grill. For decoration she had nailed up a poster picturing a baby orangutan sitting behind a cluttered desk, up to his neck in paperwork. The poster reads “One of these days I’ve got to get organizized.”

I used to think that Vicki had something going for her but now, when I ask myself how I ever got such a notion, I shrug my shoulders and chalk it up to my past ignorance and youth. I was maybe ten years old when Vicki decided, out of nowhere, to join her high school chorus. She auditioned and was accepted, just like that. I can recall listening to her practice all alone in her room, holding a stick of deodorant in place of a microphone. Her voice was nothing special but she never allowed that fact to dampen her spirits. “I’m very much into music. I’m so much into the whole fucking entertainment industry that it practically scares the life out of me. I’m destined for something big, some-thing bigger than the both of us. Something huge.” I watched as she stood before the mirror, brushing out her hair and challenging her reflection. “You are a winner, at the top of your game. You call the shots, nobody but you.” She would then change her clothes three or four times while discussing her future and all the records she would release. I would observe her, lying on the bed with a stuffed animal and see that as a record cover: Vicki, The Early Years, or Playfully Yours, Vicki! I had it all worked out.