Associate Editor Lily Davenport: In Michael Credico’s surreal, deadpan flash story, a parent muses on the difficulties of raising children among the physical and emotional detritus of the past. Memory becomes, through loops of videotape, a physical as well as a psychological prison; an old toy turns out to have very real, albeit oddly beloved, teeth.
Listen to Credico read the piece:
Archival Landfill
We build a home over an archival landfill. We repurpose lengths of videotape to build a pen to contain the children. We build within the children’s pen another pen for the hobbyhorse. There are too many children for the hobbyhorse. Its stick is bowing. We forbid the children from riding it any further—except Junior. Junior may continue to ride the hobbyhorse. Junior is the oldest child. The hobbyhorse still enjoys letting Junior ride in its teeth. As for the rest of the children, the videotape contains footage of others growing up, though we have edited out any whiff of sadness or sorrow. The rest of the children should be able to raise themselves. Junior isn’t restricted to the pen. He may come and go as he pleases. All we ask is that he mow the lawn when it becomes too elegiac. Still, we worry. He seems to come and go just for the coming and going of it, as if he were a cowboy. We didn’t raise a cowboy. Though we tell Junior we wouldn’t mind it if he were a cowboy. Have we ever lied to him? We would like him to meet somebody. We rent him a chance meeting room. It’s inflatable, like a bounce house, except you don’t bounce; you meet people by chance. We put it where he can’t miss it. He doesn’t hit it off with anybody. Maybe it’s our fault. We let the hobbyhorse raise him as much as we raised him. Then again, I also was raised in part by the hobbyhorse, and probably I turned out fine. I still have the urge to ride in its teeth. I occasionally act on this urge, though I am too heavy for it and cause its teeth to bend. I don’t want to make this about my father. He taught me to shoot soda cans off a tree stump and nothing else. I’m trying to do better. I taught myself what not to shoot. My father never told me he was worried about me. Now, it’s with tremendous relief that we introduce you to Junior’s significant other: Toth’s girl. Toth’s girl is quite the inquisitive woman. She asks how one razes an archival landfill. Introduce a little rot and wait, is how. She asks if the rot can ever be completely remediated. She asks how one can tell the difference between a landfill and a landscape. Well . . . Junior wants to show Toth’s girl the hobbyhorse. We suppose they have been together long enough. We hitch the hobbyhorse and a couple empty soda cans to the riding mower. We’re tickled to witness their first argument: Who gets to ride in the hobbyhorse’s teeth?
Michael Credico is the author of Heartland Calamitous (Autumn House Press, 2020). He is an editor at the Cleveland Review of Books. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio. His website is www.michaelcredico.com.
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