Mark Tufo: A Plague Upon Your Family

Travis stopped his motion, now staring straight at the offending heap of gooey goodness on Tommy’s nose.

“What?” Tommy asked wondering why he was now the center of Travis’ attention. Travis kept staring, finally Tommy’s eyes tracked down to the tip of his nose. All he could do was sheepishly smile and shrug his shoulders.

“What was it?” Travis asked, a small measure of wonderment and envy in his tone.

Tommy looked like he was having an inner debate with himself, whether to come clean or just deny the whole thing, of course good won out. “Snickers.” He said hesitantly.

“We have peanut butter Snicker’s? They don’t even make those anymore!” Travis said pleadingly, looking to me.

I just shrugged my shoulders in reply to Travis’ imploring look. At this point I wouldn’t doubt that Tommy went to an alternate universe where they still make peanut butter Snickers and just snagged himself a few. Ok well actually I don’t believe that, because he would have paid for them.

“Weef did.” Tommy said as he wiped the peanut butter off his nose and popped the near dime-sized morsel lovingly into his mouth.

Any doubt to the authenticity of Tommy’s food choice was immediately set asunder as I pulled a slightly worse for the wear peanut butter Snicker’s wrapper out of Henry’s mouth. I was heavily tempted to see where that candy bar had been made but if I turned the wrapper over and it said something to the effect of proudly produced in the United States of Columbia I would be wasting more precious minutes than I had trying to puzzle this piece out. The world had gone to hell and there was no hand basket, but I still couldn’t find it in myself to litter. I put the Henry slime covered wrapper in my pocket, the germ-a-phobe in me shuddered as I pulled my goo covered hand out of my jeans pocket.

“Fucken gross.” I said to no one in particular. My diatribe was cut short as I looked over lovingly at my Jeep. A week or so previously Brendon and I had stowed our cars. His was a huge Ford explorer and mine was a Jeep Wrangler, they were loaded with camping gear, ammo, food and water, so much so that fitting us all in, was going to look more like a Ringling Brothers event.

Alex was waiting until both SUVs’ started before he was going to place the big rig in gear. Some of the passengers in the back of the truck were loudly protesting that they had stopped so close to the now defunct Little Turtle housing community. I wouldn’t begrudge them that. I was still amazed that they had let the truck turn around at all.

Tommy disengaged himself from his aunt’s arms. “Are you sure Tommy?”

I hadn’t heard the entire conversation but I got the general gist. Marta wanted her nephew to go in the truck with them. Marta had finally pulled herself out of the shell-shocked near catatonic state the zombies had placed her in. She did not want to jeopardize the progress she had clawed for and losing any more family would be unacceptable. I completely understood her distress, when Tommy answered her.

“No auntie, I can’t.” Tommy said sadly.

“But why Tommy, you’re all that’s left of my family.” She pleaded.

I knew this struck a truly tender cord with the kid and I was more than half tempted to tell her to leave him alone, when I realized how in the wrong I would be. They were family after all. I was the outsider in all this. Hell I’d only known the kid for three weeks or so.

CHAPTER 2

I would later ask Alex how he hadn’t recognized Tommy on his work crew and he answered me “Never met him, Mike.” It seemed that he was going to be content with that answer. As God is my witness, I wanted to pry so badly but discretion got the better of me, I was going to leave it at that.

Alex it seems had delayed his answer for fear of how I might react.

“I did some time when I was 18.” Alex said with his face pointed down, embarrassment strangled his words. My mouth may have dropped a little but he couldn’t see it from his vantage point. “Marta’s family hated me and disowned her because she married a convict.” He looked up at me a nervous smile played across his lips. He continued. “Her parents are or were.” he corrected himself, “Strict Catholics, which actually makes no sense, because of all religions don’t they preach forgiveness?” He looked like he was getting ready to blow a gasket. This was apparently a sore spot for him.

“Uh, Alex.” I said as I put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to tell him we had bigger fish to fry at this point but he quickly realized that small little tidbit of a fact.

“I know Mike, I know. Her parents and the majority of her family are probably gone but they caused my Marta so much pain. Her parents never EVER came to see our kids. For Christ sakes Mike 12 years ago I did time for boosting some cars.”

Whew, I was so happy he didn’t say rape or child molestation or something heinous like that, because no matter how much I liked him now I would never be able to look at him the same way. There are some transgressions in life you just don’t get over and those were a few of them.

“It didn’t matter to them that while I was in jail I got my degree and then when I got out I got my masters, none of that mattered to them. I was always going to be that convict that corrupted their daughter. Hell I hadn’t even met her when I got in trouble, to hear them talk you would have thought I had her out there watching for cops while I was popping ignitions. I had just started at an engineering firm after getting my degree. She was the HR Generalist. We dated we fell in love, at my first dinner meeting her folks I told them about my past just to make sure everything was out in the open, that there would be no surprises down the road. Her father flipped out. He kicked me out of the house and forbade his daughter to ever see me again. So the first thing we did was elope, at that point her parents disowned her. She was upset but she didn’t truly think it would be a lifelong ban. Surely after our baby was born they would come around. The staunchy bastards never even called, a little piece of my Marta died the day she realized her parents were fully done with her. After Vera, our second, was born she slipped even deeper into her, self imposed, despot of despair. When the zombies came clawing at our house she went over the edge. I at first thought she had become one of them.” I shuddered. “She was slowly pulling herself back out of her depression but when Tommy did whatever he did, sending a signal, lighting a beacon? Whatever, that was the first time in the 7 years I’ve known her that she has been completely free and clear of the shackles that her parents put on her.”

“Yeah, I know, Tommy can have that affect on people.” I said without really thinking.

Alex just looked at me like I was loco. I didn’t clarify my outward thought, thus leaving him thoroughly confused.

“So when she told me to turn the truck around I didn’t hesitate. I would have driven to hell on two flats to see that spark of life back in her eyes.”

“Shit, Alex you kind of did.” I said, he nodded in agreement.

“I mean so back to your original question she had told me all about her family, her sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews but she didn’t have any pictures of them. The day we eloped, her parents threw everything in her room out. She was forbidden from going and getting any of her belongings and her siblings were told if they so much as mentioned her name the same fate would befall them. So for all intents and purposes she was an orphan. You know now that I think about it, I caught Tommy looking at me a lot while we were working, do you think he knew who I was? Maybe he had a picture or something.”