He never sleeps. If he does his eyes don’t know it. They’re flat and dull and hemmed in by circles. The size of baseballs. The colour of walnut stain. It looks like he’s been punched. A good one-two. He hasn’t.

He’s nice. He’s quiet. He always tries to help.

If I saw him on the street I’d walk the other way and not feel bad about it. He works the night shift at a national paper. Stays late to watch us arrive early.

His skin is paper thin. The life in it looks like ink.

A few years ago my my brother and I got into an argument over whether or not my friend’s car could fit into the back of his truck. He had never seen the little auto, or anything like it, but he knew cars, he said, and there was no way one could climb into the bed of his pick up. He was wrong.

Yesterday we were driving down Interstate 77. Memorial Day traffic was already backed up by lunch time. For kicks and giggles I noted the ratio of SUVs (I count trucks and vans in this category too) to plain old normal sized cars. Seventy-two out of a hundred on the first go around. Seventy-nine on the second. Good grief!

Last weekend The European got into a discussion with an extended family member over the price of petrol.

“Really though,” he said, looking at a driveway full of SUVs, “Compared to the rest of the world, you Americans are spoiled when it comes to things like this.”

“Not the working man,” said a short little Mexican who isn’t really a Mexican at all but who looks enough like one so as to be confused. “The working man can’t make it in this country. Not with gas prices like this.”

“Well, in my country - or any other country I’ve ever been to - the working man doesn’t drive an SUV or a monster truck or a minivan bigger than a house. And they still pay over $7 a gallon for petrol.”

He was right.

My mother gets mad whenever I mentioned gas guzzlers or public smoking bans and says it all sounds very communist to her. But it’s true. I’m not gonna get all environmental and jump down someone’s throat because they drive an Expedition or a Hemi. My sister has both and I’ve never heard her mention gas prices in her life. But please people. Don’t bring home a 600 pound gorilla and then moan because you can’t afford to feed it.

Cold and empty decorated the room; tiled floors and a light bulb on a string. A kind of grass colour mixed from three cheaper shades of green climbed the walls. Two windows sat side by side like huge glass eyes.

The eyes of a man.

I thought how this house of a man was just as much a prison as a head of a man would be if we were stuck there … and how if we were in a head we would at least have something to talk about and maybe something to do. For a while. But we weren’t.

My brother and I sat still - behind the plated eyes, on a slab of worn out box springs - and waited for our mother to tell us we didn’t have to anymore. Because nothing could be believed or known or taken for granted for the sake of how things use to be.

Not even moving.

Full Name: Dewey D Payne
Birthday: Dog days of summer.
Birthplace: Bear Town, West Virginia
Current Location: Rather not say.
Heritage: I got Indian blood. And that’s a fact.
Right or Left Handed: Right. But it don’t work so good.
Major Strength: A dashin’ good-lookiness my daddy gave me.
Major Weakness: That same good-lookiness. A burden I tell you.
Fears: Haints
Life Goal: To not raise no kids.
Dream Profession: Another kind of Bill Monroe.
Actual Profession: I aint about capitalism.
Favorite Meal: Anything but onions. I hate onions.
Coffee Drinker: Yes sir.
Favorite Alcoholic Drink: None thanks. Hurts my liver.
Has Character Been in Love: At least once a week.
Is Character Attractive: I reckon I am.
Does Character Think of Self as Attractive: Now, what’d I just say?
Healthy Habits: I sleep alot.
Unhealthy Habits: It aint at night.
Favorite Movie: They Call Me Trinity.
Vices: I got my share.
Number One Regret: Congregatin with ole man Leach.

A Writers Digest Prompt: Character memes.

Her shoes were blue. Her dress was not. She wore her hair bundled atop her head in a muted scarf; her lips in a kind of pout that wasn’t really a pout at all but a ‘what do I do with my mouth when it’s not forming words’ sort of set.

She called herself an “old fashioned feminist” and I made a note to find out exactly what an old fashioned feminist was - how the one generation different from the next. If it differed at all.

She said something about reading fiction against the whites of people’s eyes and then began to talk about beauty. And the woman. About how we are different in ourselves when we are different to others. How we are not like men. Or men are not like us. Whichever way it goes.

A woman loses her youth and her waist. Her bosom grows with the rest of her. People forget what she use to be. Sees only the now. She assumes the cheerful, matron-like image projected upon her. The nurturer - and nothing else.

“Women,” said this woman, this author “realise life is finite in a way men cannot. Maybe it’s the menopause. The time clock our bodies are always fighting against. The realisation we must have children soon and that life really isn’t equal… we know that we will die when men are still running around playing games and pretending they’re still at school.”

Despite the Cheap beer. Meals For Two. Drinks Included. £5.

“It’s strange that place. They’re all skinny and Russian looking. I couldn’t find a sweet shop one.”

Then there’s the stumpy beggars…

“It’s horrible. They make you feel so guilty. You just keep going to the cash machine.”

An old lady grew fruit up in the mountains. Brought it down to the beach to sell. Followed people around.

“It’s bad. But it’s not as bad as Tunisia.”

Donna doesn’t like Bulgaria. But she does like Kefalonia.

“When I win the lottery, I’m retiring there. I’m sitting by the window and looking at the ocean. All day.”

I like to ponder the human condition and finish the unfinishables. At least that’s what GradSpot reckons. The new life-after-college website wants to help you build a sexier library. “25 Books That Look Good and Read Even Better” is presented in a five-set: revisiting the reading list, intellectualism, dwelling on the human condition, NYT best sellers and the unfinishables.

Revisitations are a given. I’ve read more Twain than any woman has a right to and Hemingway is, well, Hemingway. I’ve pretty much covered ‘pondering’ - I’ll touch on my Stephen Hawking obsession later - but clearly I aint smart because excluding Aldous I’ve only read Nabokov. I’m also not up on my bestsellers. At all. None read. I have no idea what the unfinishables list is all about because who doesn’t finish Faulkner? ??

If I’ve managed to lose you, have a look below and all will be made right. Books to build your library. Whether you read them or not. Apparently.

The best “Time To Revisit It Now That It’s Off the Reading List” book:
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Sun Also Rises, Earnest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

The best ‘Yes, I am an intellectual. What tipped you off?’ book:
Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco
Ada or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
White Noise, Don DeLillo
The Magus, John Fowles

The best ‘In My Spare Time I Like to Ponder the Human Condition’ book:
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
How the Mind Works, Stephen Pinker
The Moral Animal, Robert Wright
The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen J. Gould

The ‘Why Yes, I Do Follow The New York Times Bestseller List’ book:
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong
The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright
Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

The best ‘Has Anyone Ever Really Finished This?’ book:
Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
A Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust
Ulysses, James Joyce
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

You’ve seen it in movies. Maybe even lived through something similar yourself.

Girl brings home suitor. Father tries to frighten suitor. For real or for jest. With harsh words. An intimidating stare.

Pa used arms the size of tree trunks and a highly arched brow. A friend’s dad employed over the counter drug tests. “Here. Pee in the cup.” The old codgers from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers used guns. Lined up the boys and whipped out the rifles.

Mine used dynamite.

T was the first and last guy I ever brought home to meet the family. I was 25. We’d been together for two years and it was his first visit to Appalachia. I should have been shocked by it all. I wasn’t. Not that I expected my father and his pack of dark-eyed brothers to blow up the mountain, close down the only road out and block any chance of escape for a good portion of the day. But I didn’t not expect it either.

I imagine most guys would prefer a urine test to what looked like an Al Qaeda training camp full of angry Syrians - My brother has long jested that my dad and his sibs should lay low until the whole ‘terrorism threat’ blew over lest some flag-happy hillbilly mistake one of them for an ace of clubs and shoot their heads off - but T didn’t seem too bothered by it. In fact, the only thing he ever said about the whole thing was “I knew America was different, but….”

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

Ernest Hemingway