The Second Doublewide on the Right, part 31

I’m Fixin’ To Present Part 31 of The Second Doublewide on the Right:

It had been Leon Martin’s second afternoon in Apt-To-Miss when he began to make the rounds in Shady Grove Mobile Home Park. With his late Aunt Earlene’s rent schedule in hand he began knocking on trailer doors. He had no luck with the first three.

No one answered his knocks, but he could tell they were occupied because of the fresh tracks of vehicles in the dirt. Hopefully they were at work, however, to make sure he peeked through a crack in the curtains at one trailer and saw a sink full of dirty dishes, a pair of dirty socks hanging on a chair arm, and suddenly, a black cat staring back at him.

Leon was about to give up knocking on the fourth trailer door when he heard the clicking of the lock from the inside of the door. Then it opened and there was only a screen door separating him from the woman. He couldn’t see her plainly through the screen, but from what he could tell she appeared to have just gotten out of bed, with her hair sprouting out in all directions.

There were no light on inside and it was too dim to tell if she was attractive or not, but he knew right off that she was not in a good mood.

“Who the hell are you and what do you want?” the woman spat out at him.

Leon was taken aback and thought about just telling her he wanted his dang rent money. But he bit his tongue and said as diplomatically as he possibly could, “My name is Leon Walker and I’m the new owner of the trailer park.”

“Yeah, I heard the old lady croaked,” the voice of the woman beyond the screen told him.

Leon glanced down at his spread sheet and said, “According to her records this particular trailer is rented to Randy and Michele Clack. Might you be Mrs. Clack?”

“Yeah, I might be,” she replied in a noncommittal tone.

Leon didn’t like her smart mouth but he continued, “Well, how about Mister Clack, is he home?”

“Naw, he’s at work.”

“When do you think might be a good time to catch him?”

“That’s hard to say. Sometimes he works double shifts, and sometimes he gets drunk and don’t come home at all.”

Leon decided it was time to get to the point and said, “The reason I’m here is to collect the back rent you people owe.”

“Well, heck, ain’t been nobody here to pay it to,” the woman nastily replied.

“There is now. I moved into the first trailer up front yonder. When do you think I might be able to collect the back rent?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “You’ll have to talk to my husband about that.”

In frustration Leon moaned, “How am I supposed to talk to him if I don’t know when he’ll be here?”

“You the rent man, you figure it out,” the woman said a moment before she slammed the door in his face.

It got worse. Leon got cussed out and had two more doors slammed in his face and there was nobody home at the last two.

That night, over the remains of his first bottle, Leon realized that the management of the trailer park was out of control, and he didn’t have a clue on how to fix it.

The next day he discovered an ace-in-the-hole when he went to pay the overdue utility bills for the park. To his great delight he was made award that he had control of cutting off the lights and water of each individual trailer.

That night, over the second bottle, he figured out how he was fixin’ to collect his rent money.