My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Welcome to Carlsbad, California – an unassuming So-Cal beach town with chopper shops and cheap taquerias on the boardwalk, boys in flip-flops riding beach cruisers balancing girls on the handlebars rolling past surf shops playing reggae into the perfectly still air that holds the clouds in place overhead as the waves break onto white sand just past the seagull shit flecked erosion wall. Shouldn’t have rushed that…Carlsbad goes slow. That one long sentence fit the whole town in it.

That one long sentence can make an old man feel young, too. Jimmy ended up here. 62 years old, ex-Marine who’d been in the shit. The shit handed to 19 year old black men who went to Vietnam. Front lines shit. Carlsbad made him feel young and it was quiet. The lack of urgency in a dime sized beach town was just what his troubled mind needed.

He had one daughter, Florida. She was the one who would be canceling his cable, gas and electric bill, telling strangers over and over again that her father was dead, no, she didn’t want to put the cell phone, the newspaper, or canceled reservations in someone else’s name. Jimmy was gone. He didn’t leave anyone behind. Not recently.

Florida lived 500 miles away. It had been 29 years since she’d seen him. The occasional phone call. Once Jimmy was ashes in an urn the last chance of them having a relationship went up in that smoke. So, no, thank you, she doesn’t need to receive his daily North County Times.

Imagine not seeing your father for 29 years. Imagine that call that says he’s gone. So you go down to see what your father left you, what’s left of him, what little bit of earthly crap might solve the puzzle of why he wouldn’t make a relationship, even after phone calls and letters from you.

Jimmy had a one bedroom in the Seabreeze complex. The Pacific Ocean broke gently two blocks away. Apartment H. Last on the right, second floor. Neighbors noticed he’d left his car windows down for a few days and the North County Times was piling up at the door. The apartment manager was notified. The police came and broke in. Jimmy was dead on his bedroom floor. Blame it on the heart.

In the war, he was sent to recover information from the bodies of dead soldiers. The bodies of the enemy were unimportant, it was what they carried. Pieces of the puzzle. Explanations. We judge people by what they leave behind…Jimmy had mail order bride catalogs and DVD fuck movies. His apartment was full of clothes in plastic bags, the refrigerator had beef marinating in Tupperware and cases of salad dressing. Nothing else. Steak knives everywhere: in the bedroom under the bed, in the vanity drawer, between cushions of the couch. Loose steak knives. Plastic convenience store bags stuffed full of greasy used Jheri Curl caps piled in front closet. The whole closet loaded. But most of all there were porn magazines. Pictures cut out and taped to the walls. Piles of them covering the love seat. On the floor by the bed. In the bathroom. On the kitchen counter.

Florida turned around and went to Walgreen’s and bought garbage bags, rubber gloves, a scrub brush and Spic and Span.

It wasn’t much of an estate sale. A toaster oven. A Fry-Daddy. A new King Size bed. That and the psychiatric evaluations from the V.A. that showed he no longer knew how to interact with people. That he woke up screaming with nightmares…people trying to murder him. He killing people with his hands.

His daughter dragged bag after bag outside, down the steps, across the little parking lot where her fathers car sat, the windows still down. It rarely rains in Carlsbad. Perfect weather. Very pretty. The dumpster was behind a neat little fence. Homeless guys came by in the evening and took as many magazines as they could.

There was a knock on the apartment door. It was Tammy, the apartment manager.

“I just wanted you to know you’re father wasn’t hiding out here, he made friends. One time his kitchen pipes burst, he hollered for me to bring towels. My daughter and I came up with towels, I couldn’t believe all the magazines around. I told her that it doesn’t make him a bad person. He was alone, that’s all. He was a really great guy, at least to me. Always smiling. Always happy. Jerry didn’t tell me he had a beautiful daughter…”

“I know, I look just like him.”

“No, no, you’re beautiful. Jerry wasn’t ugly, but he was close. You are beautiful.”

“Well, thank you, thank you. He’ll be laid to rest Tuesday, Fort Rosecrans Cemetary. On the Marine Corps base in San Diego. I hope you can make it.”

“I’ll really try to. How are you doing?”

“Walking bags of his clothes to the dumpster was the only time I felt a connection, an eerie sense of taking his body parts to the trash. Have you ever thrown a person away?”

The apartment manager, divorced, a story of her own, put her hand out and rested it on Florida’s arm.