Dewey was peculiar. He was short. Not at all thin. A no-heller of the Baptist variety who wore a small face on a big head. Fond of drinking songs and scripture, he carried a poke of tobacco in his left pocket, and an Oldtimer in his right – just in case he needed to stab
Monthly Archives: June 2006
I don’t think the sun is ever going to shine. Last week it was cold but not rainy and we all went down to the piano bar by Bridgewater and had lunch outdoors. One makes due.
I was 19 when it happened. My mother and sister were held hostage by a junkie with a bad haircut. That was the worst of it. But it wasn’t the first of it. It was all very Cape Fear. A family affair that lasted several years. Between Rich – That’s what I’ll call him –
“I don’t recollect a lot of birthdays. Didn’t really celebrate ’em when I was a boy.” Pa turned 70 today. “I’d get a year older and not even know it ’til a month later when one of my uncles’d come around.” I heard my grandmother in the background. Reminding him of the birthday he does
The summer was shorts and sandals. Trying to fish an alligator out of Lake Norman – Jo swore she saw it on the boat slip. Billy swore he’d catch it. A Cape Cod with a white picket fence. A lawn, mowed before we rolled out of bed. Speed boats. Jet skis and clear blue. That
She forgets. It use to be little things. The name of her neighbour’s husband. The iron in the wash room. Then it was the kitchen. She left the fry pan on and caught the wall afire. She told no one and thought about her grandfather. She was five when he forgot her name. Six, when
I’m watching ‘Three Sisters’. Morning syndication at its best. The middle blonde is reminiscing. Ooohing and aahhing about the day she fell in love. The absolute moment she just knew. She fell the second she lay eyes on him. He fell three months later, as he watched her eat a pepper off the floor. My
Two years ago Pa decided to hike with us into the wood at the head of Grapevine – to see what was left of the school he went to in 1942. The mountain had swallowed it up years before I was born. None of us were sure he could find it. But he did. (More
I use to peddle pharmaceuticals. I sold a boat load of haloperidol to a psychiatric hospital my first week on the job. The lady sounded fat and annoyed when I asked her if she needed to restock. Hoping to woo her I skipped the Freudian / Jungian trivia and went straight to the crazy cousin.
The air smells late and tiresome. The way it sometimes does when you’re waiting on it to happen. It’s uncomfortable cold, but I sit with ’em on the porch. ‘Cause ain’t no bunch ought to be left on their own like this. Roy shuffles his feet and folds his hands and then lays them straight
It’s lunch with the ladies again. Clare’s going on about the man she’s getting ready to dump and the one she’s trading him in for. “He doesn’t have Roger’s money, but with a body like that, who needs money?” Gill does. “Puhlease. A nice body never got a girl anything but a house full of
One minute I’m fine. The next, not so much. Two hours doubled over the toilet bowl, followed by fits (momma hates this word) and faints. T makes a bed of towels on the bathroom floor. Gets a cool cloth for my forehead. Feels like it weighs a ton. I try to sit up and throw
