📢 ESTATE SALE! Today 10am-3pm 📢
Mike Kraus
Little old ladies wander the vast street shuttling floor lamps, empty picture frames, and souvenir tchotchkes to their cars lining the road. There’s a man bartering unnecessarily over a $2 pan in the garage. The sleeves on his flannel shirt are at least three inches too short. In the living room, a professional-looking couple evaluate an end table. I’d love to tell them what my cousin did on that piece of furniture about ten years ago, but I don’t. I wave to my uncle. He’s eating a half-wrapped fast food burger. “Hey, here’s da paperwork. Dat should be ‘bout it.” I hand over the documents and he scrutinizes them.
After Grandpa died, relatives swarmed and started to bicker. I’ve been couch surfing since my uncle moved in “ta take care of things.” When I moved out, he oversaw my packing to make sure I didn’t take anything of value. The whole bunch of them act like Grandpa was a noble member of the ancient landed gentry or something. I’ve seen the finances and no one seems to believe me when I tell them “there’s nothin’ ta fight over.” That just leads to my aunts accusing me of stealing some mythical treasure chest secretly buried under one of the rose bushes. So, when everyone moved in, I moved out.
“Where ya off ta now?” My uncle crams the last quarter of the burger in his mouth. The grease on his fingers notarize each…
