The Town (Doug MacRay)
This sound woke me up. Sound like a small animal that go trapped or something. Never heard a man cry. When I saw my father in the kitchen, all I can remember was the ashtray, must’ve been a hundred cigarettes in there. Ash like a little mountain. He stopped crying and just sat there. Watching TV on our little black and white. I think he didn’t know what else to do. He saw me standing in the doorway and he just goes, ‘Your mother left. She’s not coming back.’ Just like that. Smokin’ cigarettes and eatin’ a TV dinner at six in the mornin’.
(beat)
We lost our dog the year before. I wanted to make these posters so if she was lost someone could call us like the guy who found our dog. To this day my father will tell you that he helped me make those posters. But he didn’t. He sat tehre, drank a case of beer and I went around by myself on School Street asking people if they’d seen my mother.
(beat)
Her name was Dorris MacRay and her mother had a restaurant called Carrol’s in Tangerine, Florida. Still there. I let myself think that’s where she went but somewhere along the line I came to terms with the fact that if she left, she left for a reason. She didn’t want to be my mother anymore and she wasn’t coming back.