In a town of McMansions, Samantha and her father, Duncan, lived in a doublewide trailer. Where German was the favorite country of origin for most vehicles here, Duncan drove a Honda last washed during the Reagan era. He didn’t mind the income disparity with his neighbors so long as he didn’t have to work. At forty, he had worked every minimum wage job in town and wasn’t known for his attitude or punctiliousness. His wife suffered from a chronic disease that kept her bedbound, leaving Duncan to play nursemaid around the clock. For avoiding his troubles, there was nothing like the trailer roof, where he could sit alone, undisturbed in his lawn chair and throw back a couple beers, contemplating the fuzzy state of his navel. He determined that if his wife didn’t care, there was no point to him. To his life. Only a red EVICTION: FINAL NOTICE sticker slapped across his front door brought him around. He knew exactly what to do.

​

When theme restaurant Medieval Ages opened, Duncan auditioned and was cast as the King. His constantly Highness got Sam a weekend gig as a serving wench. Soon Duncan realized playing the King was his raison d'être. He could think of nothing more pleasing than being surrounded by beautiful young wenches with Daddy issues. Absolutely the sort of man to take advantage, Duncan lost himself to the fleshy parts of his new job. He made silly proclamations. He judged jousting matches. He knighted and benighted. He sentenced the poor to death. He called in reinforcements when a dragon required slaying, or an uppity peasant was cruising for a beheading.

King Duncan eschewed the idea of marriage. He preferred to live in a state of such gleeful sin that even Caligula would blush. The only items in the refrigerator filled were beer and a moldy pizza box. Samantha absconded with a few bucks each day, just enough for a hot lunch at school. For other expenses like clothes, food, coffee, mobile phone, and protection from the elements - the King expected her to earn the hard way while keeping his trailer spotless. She was halfway there.

​

Come high school, Samantha rebelled and refused to pick up after Duncan and his wenches. The doublewide went from dirty to needing to be smited in a biblically way. Mold grew upon mold. Bacteria blossomed. Mushrooms, well, mushroomed.  Forests of fungus grew on the kitchen and bathroom tiles like the lush green hills of Ireland. The bathtub mildew had hardened into a state of impermeability and could no longer be cleaned without professional equipment. Streaks of humidity lined the wallpaper. Trash collected everywhere. The smell was indescribable.

 

*****

 

Hidden behind a wall of mature evergreens, in a town composed mostly of America’s richest one percent, was an unadvertised mobile home park. Theirs was a doublewide. Samantha claimed one bedroom and kept to herself - avoiding her boozy father and sickly mother.  She had adapted incredibly well to living among America’s forgotten and unforgiven. Growing up with a mentally absent mother and a boozehound father hardened her. After high school, she vowed to catch the first bus going anywhere out of town. She rebelled against Duncan by getting straight A’s. She took a job at a diner and waitressed nights and weekend shifts to spite him with her full tip jar. She even began dating a boy from named Ross, who refused to believe her family was as disturbed as she described.

           

Ross twisted her arm until she agreed to a quick pop-in. Ostensibly to pick up some laundry. When he turned into the trailer park, a quiver of fear tickled his spine. He was five minutes from home and already wanted to roll up his windows and lock his doors. Internally, he smacked himself upside the head for his homegrown snobbery. You could take the kid out of Grosse Pointe, but you couldn’t take the Grosse Pointe out of the kid.

           

Walking in the door was like entering an eerily familiar dimension: her father and his wench-of-the-day were in suspended animation, unconscious and undressed, passed out with nineties porn on a box-shaped TV, also circa grunge times. The stale air hung heavy with the late-night effluvium of beer, smoke, sex, and B.O. We just had to get past the King and into her bedroom.

           

“The feck you think you’re doing?” The King, a somnambulist bully, harangued her. Suddenly, lucid. Samantha and Ross clung to each other. She shifted her weigh from one foot to the other and her breasts lightly brushing his arm. Ross was instantly hard.

​

“No boys!” Her father, suddenly awake, took on a royally pissed edge as he proclaimed that mine was a dead ass. Instead of giving chase, he tripped over a bottle and took a tumble that knocked the wind right out of his sails and launched the half-naked woman out of the recliner.  

​

“He-ey!” We heard an annoyed voice. Wrapped in a sheet, she returned to the recliner, put her feet up, and lit a cigarette.

​

Samantha and Ross decided they’d had enough. The time had finally come to make a break for it. Their plan was mutually understood. Today was not the best day to introduce someone to her father. Then she realized that her father’s wench in the chair was none other than Page Campbell, one of her best friends since kindergarten. Until the end of that year, Sam hitched rides home from Page. Afterwards, not so much. Before the grotesque slide show had time to roll and damage her forever, Ross covered crotch with his Tiger’s cap and hustled her out of the trailer. But not fast enough. By the time they reached her car, Sam was puking. Ross heard the phlegmy laugh of Samantha’s father as they drove off and hoped never to return.