Deadbeats
by Emily Kingery
I met him at Jungle Bungle and we really hit it off. He was walking around with a kid-sized Croc in his hand, holding it up like an empty leash, like mister have you seen my dog, so I was like, oh no, and we did the fuck-my-luck laugh. Eventually, he went back to the claw machine, where the other Croc was stranded. He kicked it aside, then got eye-level with the coin slot and jangled it, fast, like he was feeling up the babysitter, and would you believe two quarters came out? No way, I said, and he grinned and jerked his head, like hey kid wanna meet the band, so okay, I joined him. Not to toot my own horn, but I played the claw machine at the I-80 rest stop and won a Minion stuffie for my daughter. I got to the hospital when she was born and everything– the nurse gave me this tight little smile, but it made me proud, showing up with a gift. So I was telling him this story, dad to dad, while he fumbled with his cargo pockets. He made a face like he was unhooking a bra, like where’s the Velcro, and for a second I thought he wasn’t listening. But then he reached into his pockets and pulled out BuzzBallz, one left and one right. Two magic rabbits. Voila! he chuckled, and we clinked the balls. To kids! I boomed, like it was a speech at my daughter’s wedding, though she was not in Jungle Bungle but somewhere else in Iowa, probably. We chugged our BuzzBallz. I looked around for a trash can, and when I came back to the claw machine, he was gone. Can you believe it? He left his empty ball on the floor with the Crocs. Not littering, exactly– he placed it there, like a still-life arrangement. It looked pretty good, honestly, so I took a picture on my phone and hit send. I watched her typing bubble appear and vanish, appear and vanish, then stop.
EMILY KINGERY is the author of Invasives (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her work appears widely in journals and has been selected for multiple honors and awards. She teaches creative writing and literature at St. Ambrose University and is an emeritus member of the Board of Directors at the Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit supporting writers in the Quad Cities community (mwcqc.org). You can find her at emilykingery.com.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Deadbeats”? It started with two ingredients: the opening line, which came from something funny I heard my stepson say, and BuzzBallz, which I clocked at the grocery store as something I had yet to see in a poem or story. What struck me as interesting about the opening line was that a lot depended on who might be saying it— plausible for a kid, unusual for an adult, not clearly the language of either. I started to imagine what it might look like for two adults to “really hit it off” at Jungle Bungle, and how their experience might clash with what readers can see about their lives. The BuzzBallz element I intended as one of many surprises along the way, but by the time I’d finished the piece, it seemed so fitting for the scene that it may as well be inevitable.
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