Trailer Trashed: A Severely Fractured Fairy Tale

Trailer Trashed: A Severely Fractured Fairy Tale (1)

My name is Cody Taggert.

Yes, I am a girl.

Yes, I shop in the boys's section at Wal-mart, and yes, I'm more redneck than a couple of cousins tying the knot at a drive-through.

I have a cat named Jimbo, and that is not my fault. I wanted her name to be Abby.

Yes, my cat is also a girl.

As I sat on the front steps of my parents's RV, Jimbo sidled up next to me and meowed. I picked her up, testing her heft, and was fairly certain I felt a number of her kittens moving inside her. From my calculations she was ready to give birth any day now and she weighed as much as a cement block. Holding her involved juggling her bellyful of babies and her immensely long legs until she was settled, her paws on my shoulder and my arm under her butt. Her tail whipped me in the face a few times as she jabbed her claws gleefully into my arms and began rubbing her head against mine.

Jimbo, a big black cat, had never been pregnant before this, so I'd expected her to be fussier than she was. I'd been prepared with hot water bottles and canned tuna for weeks, but she'd never even hissed at me. She was pretty pissed at the tomcat, though, and he turned tail and ran once he realized what the problem was.

I wouldn't blame him; dealing with unexpected cat pregnancy and an unknown amount of eventual kittens scared the crap out of me too.

Jimbo bit my ear, as if she sensed my mind was wandering. Whenever she thinks I'm not paying enough attention to her, she bites some part of my anatomy, usually the softest and the fleshiest.

"Ow. Baby Girl." I didn't raise my voice at her but she pushed her forehead against me to make up. A purr started to vibrate through her entire body as she sagged on my shoulder, still rubbing her face firmly against my hair.

It was all a very idyllic scene; or, it would have been, if I hadn't been sitting on the fold-out stairs of a parked, beat-up RV in the boondocks under a cover of shedding pines and bare oaks. The path was covered in brown leaves, dry and crunchy as the croutons you get on restaurant salads. You can hear anybody walking to my "house" long before you can see them, usually a minute or so before whoever it was comes trumping up the slope, face red and huffing and puffing like they're going to die.

Silence surrounded me, except for Jimbo's happy rumble as she clawed my arms to shreds.

That was when it hit me; I was going to live here for the rest of my life.

Well, that wasn't what hit me- what actually hit me was a Frisbee, and it got me right in the side of the head. Jimbo jumped out of range as I overbalanced and fell off the steps.

Thanks a lot, cat.

As I lay on my side with my legs stuck in the folding stairs and my sweatshirt shrugged over my face, I sighed and blew a leaf off my face. Did my life ever begin, or was it always this over?

Tugging my legs off the trailer, I rolled onto my stomach and got up, brushing the leafy mold from my jeans and rearranging my shirt to cover my muffin-top. Yup, life was a peach. Unfortunately, mine was the pit. "Who threw that?"

And there he was.

Blue eyes glistening with joy, pale, round face spread into a smile, he jogged into view, crunching on the leaves in his brand new(ish) Goodwill sneakers and sweat-stained, grubby wife beater that didn't quite cover his spare (monster-truck) tire. It was my neighbor, the one whose tomcat got fresh with Jimbo.

"Hi Ralph," I grunted, picking up the neon green disc and holding it out to him. His name suited him, since every time I had to see him I had the spontaneous urge to throw up. Here was trailer-trash at its finest, the emperor of the greasy, creepy, overly familiar, stereotypical, marry-your-first-cousin-Earl, rednecks. And he lived right next to me.