Knockout by John Jodzio Page A

one of the kids standing in her yard.
    â€œAunt Elaine crashed her car,” he said.
    T here are a couple of other people roaming around in Ackerman’s garage too. There’s a young girl flipping through his recordcollection. There’s an old guy rooting around in a box of tools. Ackerman’s middle-aged, not much older than me. He’s way too young to have lost a wife, but maybe too old and too sad to look for another one.
    â€œThat chair’s gonna go quick,” he says. “I wouldn’t dillydally.”
    Ackerman’s right. There’s already another guy eyeing it. I look at this guy and can tell exactly what he’s thinking. He’s thinking about the chair’s possibilities. He’s thinking about where he could put it in his house, who he could talk into using it. He’s not thinking what I’m thinking—how I miss Elaine so damn much that I stopped by her husband’s garage sale to buy something she once sat in or touched or that still held the scent of her shampoo. Before this other guy pulls out his wallet, I pluck the price tag off the chair and hand Ackerman my money.
    â€œSold,” he says.
    A ckerman pulls the chair down from the rafters. Everyone else is gone now; it’s just me and him. Grief isn’t a contest, but suddenly I want it to be. I want someone to invent a grief-testing machine and then hook both of us up to it so I can show Ackerman I miss his wife way more than he does.
    â€œYou’re really gonna enjoy this chair,” he says.
    What a normal person does now is says “thank you very much” and walks back to his car. This isn’t what I do. Now that I’m here, I realize how badly I want to get inside Ackerman’s house to see what other things of Elaine’s I’m missing out on. The only way I can figure out how to do this is to pretend to faint. And so that’s what I do. I roll my eyes back in my head and make my legs go slack and down I go.
    â€œOh shit,” Ackerman says.
    After I count to twenty, I open my eyes.
    â€œLet’s get you somewhere cool,” Ackerman tells me.
    â€œYes,” I say. “Let’s.”
    I sit on Ackerman’s couch and eat a banana. I assure him I’m fine, that this happens to me once in a while.
    â€œLow blood sugar,” I say.
    He hands me a glass of water and I drink it down. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of talk radio for company. I don’t care what the topic is—sports or celebrity gossip or politics—I’m just really scared of it being quiet. I want to ask Ackerman what he does to fill up the silence, how he copes with Elaine being gone, but I can’t let him know I’m anything other than a random garage sale pervert.
    â€œGreat house,” I tell him.
    I look out the window into his backyard. There’s a garden bed with some sweet corn and cucumbers, there’s a patio with a fire pit. Elaine always complained about Ackerman being selfish, not paying enough attention to her, but he seems nice enough to me.
    â€œYou want to see the rest of the place?” he asks.
    T he last time I shoplifted anything was in high school, but each room Ackerman and I walk through I shove something of Elaine’s into my pocket—a five-by-seven black and white of her at the beach, a fridge magnet, a dart from the rec room. When Ackerman goes to take a piss, I slide into the bedroom and shove a pair of her panties into my pocket.
    â€œI’m really sorry about all this,” I tell him when he comes back.
    â€œIt happens,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
    We’re standing on his front porch now, staring out toward the street. A car slows down for a speed bump. It’s a convertible, full of teenagers. When they go over the bump they bouncearound, laugh their asses off. Ackerman stares at them and I see tears form in his eyes. I understand how something insignificant can