My lawyer, a poor, cheap man who wore little and knew little, knocked on the door of my run-down apartment with a forlorn expression slicked across his plasticine face.

“Are you Mr. Frauk?” He pulled out a card, offered his rubber-gloved hands, but I refused. He offered it again, but I pushed it away and smiled in false respect. 

“Mr. Frauk?”, the lawyer repeated in his ancient German accent.

“Frank”, I paused, and beckoned him in, “My name is Frank. What is this about?”

“Mr… Frauk”, his lips curled as he grimaced to pronounce my name,” Frauk, Frank, Frauk… Nonetheless, I’m here because of a recent uncle of your kin. If I remember him properly, his name is Drew Trijark.”

“Trark”, I repeated, but in a different accent, mocking him somewhat.

“Trark, Trijark, Trark… But what I wanted to talk to you about is his inheritance”, my lawyer paused as if in sadness and contemplation, turned away, hiding his motionless expression. He stiffened upwards, showing his pale, facile features, and continued, “Drew is dead. Yesterday his heart stopped. I’m sorry if it seems difficult-”

“You mean...His inheritance?... What is in his inheritanc-...”, I paused in the realization of what I had said, coughed in embarrassment. I smiled again and continued in a different direction, “I’m sorry, I meant his-”

“Not much of something that matters. But his loss must be a significant burden.”, my lawyer said quickly, rubbing his rubbery fingers in fast spurts so that some of the outer coatings of his gloves peeled away.

“No, no, no, I meant something else. Not his inheritance. He was a great uncle, someone that I admired.”, I nodded. 

My words were blunt and quick, having their effect, and my lawyer nodded along with me. He didn’t talk for a few seconds, quietly repeating my actions. Then, he continued with his talk.

“Tomorrow is his funeral. And, as you are one of his few relatives. You will be slowly preceding along...”, my lawyer mumbled, continuing in his droning response, as I thought about his inheritance.

An RV, with windows of peeling glass, two flat tires, and two missing tires. Barely anybody around the place except my uncle. He lived in the deeper parts of California. But the inheritance? I remembered a bookshelf, some boxes, and food lying everywhere. Broken glass lying in the dust. Picture frames swinging in the tilting, rusty, smelly, junk-filled place. Fumes of chemical waste pouring into the air. Burnt skeletons of dead cars and dead places filled the place. The carcass of a dead cow drying in the sun, a raisin in the dust.  

“His… inheritance?”, I mumbled in thought. My lawyer turned around suddenly.

“What?”

“Hrmmm?”, I straightened.“Oh, nothing, nothing, thinking to myself”

I tapped my forehead, in hopes that he would understand, and also nodded.

He nodded along with me again. Then, he continued with his long monologue.

“It was a shame that he died at the young age of…. I don’t understand whenever, whence, or when, but... ”, and my lawyer went on and on about everything my uncle had done and what my uncle had achieved, although there were thousands of men like him. All pale-faced and unoriginal as he was. Eccentric, demeaning, isolated, wiry, and thin. All of them had let the wind softly blow them away.

He looked at his watch, while his lawyer looked through the window into a drowned and polluted city, full of the scarred people, and the smog of the sharp chimney-stacks. 

“His inheritance”, I listened to those words. My lawyer paused, silence ensued. I smiled at him and he continued, “His inheritance… It seems that you... “

My lawyer paused, almost shaking his head before jerking it up and down. His forehead filled with sweat, his eyes gone of excitement. 

“An RV. Yes, that is it... And something else specific… Something of utmost importance, a chunk of cardboard. I have it here.”

The sound of cars drowned out the slight twitch of my leg and the sudden emptiness in my mind. I coughed, and straightened myself, alertness hiding my limp form. 

A box appeared, an old McDonalds container. Red Sharpie marker scribbled across the top, and I opened it.

A chunk of cardboard lay inside, resting neatly in the confinements of the box.

I nearly dropped it. But I managed to balance it between my limp, twitching, fingers as I took out a disappointing piece of cardboard shaped like California. Limp, wet, ragged edges. I observed it for a while. Looking at what made it special. But it was a bulk of soft brown. Nothing else. The image of the disappointing thing burned into my retina until it left a purple trail.

“Mr. Frauk”, my lawyer said, “In a rambling letter, which I cannot discern well enough, he stated that he wished for you to have it for various reasons. The first of which...”

He talked further on about the rules in my uncle’s chaotic chicken-scratch. I listened as attentively as I could, but eventually could not keep my eyes open after the third rule about carefully keeping track of the piece of cardboard and et cetera…and et cetera… I collapsed on the couch, closing my eyes, as my lawyer moved his thin lips, and kept talking. Talking and talking, talking… talking… Droning on and on about my uncle and his eccentricities. His rules, his insanity, his mind, his brain.

After my lawyer left, I sat on my moth-ridden couch and chewed on some gas-station jerky. 

My uncle was one of the worst of the worst of eccentrics. The lowliest of the low. The pale, disgusting man of the desert. A hermit. He also had something hidden in his RV. But most likely a gem from the trash heap. The carapace of a beetle. The horns of a deer. A rotting carrot. He collected everything, hoarded them. 

He was our uncle. The one who I had stayed with once. He had fed me nothing, locked me in the bedroom, while he went into that hidden and locked room, gone.  Where it contained the only thing that he accepted in his world and his reality.

But, I kept the box, the cardboard, inside a cupboard in my home, where it lay filling up the space of my home. Eventually, the dust-covered it up, until it lay covered in a shroud of white.

Two years later, I took the box with me, uncovered the contents, as I lay in the streets of Los Angeles. The blaring buzz of the helicopter blades. The squealing rubber of cars. Around me, the police yelled through sirens that drowned out the gunshots and yells. 

I lay in the middle of it all. Drunk, dazed, confused. Mumbling about money, casino chips, and the white foam of the beer. 

Again, I had gambled most of my Stash, after recycling thousands of plastic bottles and working for the police. Again and again, I was broke, sobering up, and deeply in trouble. 

“Heck… Oh hell…. Oh god....”, I wiped my dry eyes, rubbed my cheeks to clean my dirty face, and drank a sip of the Martini the casino had given me before kicking me out. My cardboard sign requesting bottle caps was gone, stolen by the wind. 

“Oh god… Oh god… Oh god...”

Maybe there was something I had left. Something great. Something nice. Something worth selling. Something from my evicted apartment. I looked in my ragged bag, nearly empty, and saw the McDonalds Container and the piece of cardboard. My uncle again. His RV, all in the middle of the desert. Two years later, this was all I had. My lawyer had long abandoned me. The funeral had long passed. A piece of cardboard and a McDonald’s Big Mac container was all that I had in my memory. 

The police siren blared louder. A car squealed and burst into the alleyway. Blackjacks unsheathed themselves from fat pockets. Now, they were evicting and kicking out the homeless people from the alleyway. 

The chain-like fence crashed down, I heard a dog bark, and a gun cock ready. People were yelling around me. The residents of the apartment ran out of their houses. People cried, others screamed, and then silence, as the dogs ran forward and they all ran for their lives.

I hopped over the fence, landed into the leaves, and ran toward the highway. My heart pounded, I sprinted onto the highway. Gone was my luck, gone was everything.

Then, there was only one place to go. My uncle’s RV in Los Dep. A two-day walk under the fiery sun of California.