Rebecca was not only naked, she was also in an extremely compromised position when Buddy burst into their bedroom. Ramon, equally naked, was compromised as well, though less so than was his physically constrained lover. Ramon‘s surprise was immediately apparent, though his attitude changed quickly and naturally from shocked disbelief to defensive self-preservation. Rebecca’s initial reaction, oddly enough, was not surprise at being caught, but was a misplaced anger at Buddy’s unannounced intrusion into the bedroom... as if a man should have to knock before entering his own bedroom. “What is he doing here?” Was the first question that came to her mind, rather than, “what am I doing here?” Why was he not at work, where he belonged? And why didn’t the dumbass knock on the god-damned door? After all, was a vulgar scene with the mother of Buddy’s children as the starlet of the sordid play what he really wanted to stumble in on?

But, Buddy being Buddy, Rebecca wasn’t about to get too rattled, even though she was tied to the bedposts. After all, Rebecca’s primary weapon was her tongue, and that weapon was still free to be yielded at will, though the rest of her fortress was openly indefensible. Her tongue had, in the past, chastised, reasoned with, and sometimes even manipulated Buddy, though her husband was nothing if not level-headed and rightfully so, as the man had a lot to lose. And believing she understood the risks of doing what she was doing in their home in broad daylight, and having done similar things successfully many times prior, Rebecca had played this very scenario out a hundred times in her mind, a thousand times maybe; what she would do if he caught her? What she would say? The risk of getting caught was half of the excitement anyways. Besides, after nearly twenty years together she knew very well how to pull Buddy’s strings and how to push his buttons, so what was the worst that could happen? That he would ask for a divorce? Sadly, divorce would probably be the best thing for them both. She was even ready for it. She wouldn’t mind going back to work now that the kids were a little older. It would get her out more, allow her to meet new people. It might even be fun, especially as she would keep the house with half of what she and Buddy had built together in it, which was quite a lot. So although the initial shock of Buddy crashing in on her and Ramon had been unsettling, Rebecca actually felt a thread of hope, despite how things had gone down. It was almost a relief that Buddy knew her secret, and that a ball which she fully expected him to fumble was now in his court, as Buddy was so simplistic in his nature that it was likely he would barely understand the game that was being played here. That is not to say that Buddy was stupid. He was not that at all. Predictable was the better word.

Now then, if only he would come back, she thought. It had been… what? An hour now? She couldn’t see the clock which had been knocked to the floor during the scuffle. She was actually quite proud that her husband had put up such a fight. Who knew Buddy had it in him, to kick a muscular and younger man like Ramon’s ass so handily? Of course, he’d had an advantage from the start, having burst in while Ramon hovered over her with his own dick in his hands. It had not been an easy thing for Ramon to go from such an attitude and position directly into fighting mode, so the poor kid had gotten his ass kicked pretty much straight away. Still, who knew her Buddy was even capable of such speed and brutality? She certainly hadn’t. Perhaps she didn’t know Buddy as well as she thought she did? And wasn’t this the absolute worst time for her husband to start revealing hidden talents to her?

Yes she’d displayed anger after the initial shock, demanding that Buddy untie her, but her cursings had gone ignored. And now her legs were cramping, the muscles in them tightening high-up around her hips from being outwardly extended like this for so long. “Where the fuck is he?” Her frustrations boiling over she fought at the ropes, jerking as hard as she could this way and that, but her efforts only tightened the knots until her feet were numb and her wrists bloody. It was an absolute emotional roller coaster for her, being left here alone on the bed to wonder what was happening while being incapable to act. Where had Buddy taken Ramon off to? The kids would be coming home from school soon, and the thought of Austin or Callie walking in to find their mother like this began a new round of flailing from her, one that never-minded the numbness or the blood, but it was no use. She could not break herself free. “Fucking Ramon and his bondage shit!“ She screamed! “Ahhhhgggg! Shit! Shit! Shit!” But none of that did any good.

Unable to free herself through anger, and with nothing else to do, Rebecca began to cry. What the fuck? How had she gotten herself into this position, anyway? How had she allowed it to happen? But she knew the answer. Boredom was how, and Ramon had satisfied it. It was her friend Trish who took her to the gym when she hadn’t really wanted to go, dragging her there as though she knew that Rebecca would meet Ramon there, or someone like him; someone young, hot, and aggressive. Ramon’s come-ons had been fast and furious, his confidence magnetic, all of it together creating a delicious whirlwind inside her that demanded release. His lovemaking had also been fast and furious; full of games, tricks, and surprises, unlike Buddy’s ritualistic fumblings. But that wasn’t really fair, was it? Buddy wasn’t bad in bed, just different… respectful. And what woman fantasizes about respectful? Buddy had satisfied her when she was younger and knew no better, but Ramon demanded things of her that Buddy would never, ever think of; dirty, degrading things that Rebecca found she craved once exposed to them. Ramon‘s deviancy led her onward from tea-bagging, to anal, to bondage, to threesomes, the surprises neverending. Sex with Ramon was nothing short of a super-hot adventureland after eighteen years of doggy-style and sixty-nining with Buddy.

It had been wrong. But while she knew it was wrong, she was also powerless to stop it.

Her tears brought another round of spasmic jerking, this one delivering new waves of discomfort to her wrists and ankles while at the same time increasing the cramping in her hips. If only she could close her legs she would be ok, so she fought to close them, to pull the ropes binding her ankles to the foot board loose, or even to break them, but nothing happened except that her cyclical tears started again, and the convulsions, and the worry. Where the fuck could Buddy have gone? Her next prayer was actually spoken aloud, “Please, please, please let him come back before the kids get home! Please, God!”

Her prayer said, she quit fighting and succumbed ever-so briefly to the situation. But submission brought no relief from the pain in her wrists, or the ache in her hips. If only she could close her god-damn legs! “Where the fuck are you, Buddy!” She screamed it this time, as loud as she could, hoping the neighbors might hear it, or anybody else for that matter, anyone who might free her before Callie walked in and saw her mother this way, spread-eagled atop the covers, sticky and stinking, dried cum on her breasts and stomach.

Where the fuck were they? Where could Buddy have taken Ramon that was taking so long? She’d heard the garage door open when they left, and then heard it close again, so they’d obviously gone in the car. Could Buddy have taken Ramon to the police station? For what though? For fucking his wife? Maybe he took him to a lawyer’s office? They could certainly have gotten plenty of DNA evidence of her infidelity off of him. Jesus, if Buddy did file for divorce he could wind up with the money, the house, the kids… everything! Wouldn’t that suck! She had never contemplated that scenario, but here it was, right in front her!

She might have, metaphorically of course, really screwed the pooch this time.

But Rebecca knew better than that. She knew Buddy Carpenter better than she knew anyone in this world, better even than she wanted to know Buddy Carpenter... and the Buddy she knew would never do all of that. He was not devious enough to imagine it. Even in the furious state Buddy was in as he led Ramon from their bedroom he would not have been thinking that way. Divorce done properly is a calculating and malicious undertaking the likes of which Buddy did not have in him. Divorce is a means of destroying one’s enemy without that enemy even realizing it is involved in a war. The subtleties of a successful divorce must be worked out over time, secretly and manipulatively, which makes using divorce as a resolution a woman’s way, does it not, a man being too plodding and direct for it’s success? No, a man catching his wife in this way would not be thinking about how to win the divorce as he drug her lover from his bedroom, would he? “So then,” Rebecca wondered. “What would a man be thinking as he did so? Or rather, what would her man be thinking?”

A memory surfaced then, a distant one from long ago, from way back before she and Buddy were even married. It was the memory of a promise made in the dark of night as she’d held up her new diamond ring, the better to see its sparkling promise in the soft light of a dim harvest moon. “Remember this.” He’d told her as she’d barely bothered listening, lost in the dreams of a suddenly extant wedding day, “leave me if you no longer love me. I’ll be ok with that. But if you ever, for the rest of your life from this point forward, fuck another man while we’re married, I swear to God I will kill you both. Not because you didn’t love me, but because you didn’t respect me enough to cheat on me.”

“Oooh,” she recalled thinking at the time. “Such a tough guy in his cardigan and loafers!”

It had been an empty threat, hadn’t it? Spoken to frighten a giddy girl only twenty years old into obeyance? It wasn’t something Buddy would actually do, that he could actually do, was it? In her time with Buddy he had never shown any sort of bent towards violence whatsoever, absolutely no inkling of it to the point that she had begun to find him almost sickeningly docile and weak, what with him bending to her nearly every wish and want... nearly. She tried to convince herself that it was “always” so, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? Buddy did put his foot down on some matters, and when he did so, that was it. He was at those times frustratingly inflexible, and it was doubly annoying that he was almost always proved right on those matters in the end, despite her hissy-fits to the contrary.

But murder? Buddy was far too kind and gentle to go that far.

Ramon now? Ramon looked like he could kill. His wildness was part of her attraction to him; what with his testosterone infused muscles, and his dangerous looking tattoos and piercings. Ramon seemed almost eager to kill, or at least he had appeared more likely to be a killer up until the moment when Buddy stomped the shit out of him right here in front of her very eyes. She’d found out quick enough that Buddy was not weaker than Ramon, as she had thought and expected him to be. Not even a little bit.

Shit-fuck! What was she thinking? No one was going to kill anyone, were they? But what would she do if Buddy did kill Ramon? Would she turn him in? Could she? How could she do that to Austin and Callie’s father when this whole thing was her fault to begin with? But on the other hand, how could she not? In fact, the thought zipped across her mind as quickly as a shoo-fly at a picnic, that turning him in might be an even better way than divorce to be rid of Buddy. She would get everything! But the thought soured as quickly as it came, as it would come at the cost of her kids hating her forever… unless she could think of a way?

The tears were just about to start again, the whole emotional cycle to begin again, when there came to her from the very wall’s themselves the distinct rumble of the garage door opening. He was back! Oh shit, he was back! But how to greet him? What to say? How to act? Her instinct was to fix herself up a little, to wipe away the mascara that surely stained her face and the dried cum that had her feeling sticky and stiff all over, but that option being unavailable to her, the only other one was to wait here spread-eagled, naked, and to attempt to exhibit a look of shame, even if she did not feel it.

The wait was a long one, too. She could hear him downstairs rifling through drawers and cabinets looking for God knew what. Rebecca thought to call out to him, to find out what he was doing down there, but she did not. She did not call out because suddenly, for the first time in their seventeen years together, Rebecca felt a cold apprehension toward a man who had ever and always been good to her; who was good to both her and their children, who was a good provider, and a good example of what a man should be. How was it then that she had stopped loving him? That she had become unhappy? That she was unfulfilled? How had it happened?

Unfulfilled? Shit! As though Ramon was fulfilling anything at all inside of her other than her vanity. And the unmanly way he had cowered naked before Buddy disgusted her, although even she had to admit that today she’d seen a strength in her husband that she’d never seen before, or at least that she’d never noticed, and would never have believed existed.

Those thoughts left her when came a squeak from the stairwell. He was coming up now, Buddy was. She could sense his weight on the steps, slowly and heavily, one by one, tromping as a young boy will tromp toward some disdainful task. She saw his shadow first, and then his form in the doorway, a countenance so sad upon him that she would not have believed it was him had she not known better, having rarely ever seen him visibly unhappy. Odd it was… to see that her husband actually had feelings. He’d never bothered showing them to her before, had he? Maybe if he had things could have been different, but he stopped there in the doorway not looking at her, the melancholy look on his face unchanging, though his eyes wore an icy expression.

Rebecca began in that same annoying, instigating voice she always assumed with Buddy. “Are you going to untie me before the kids get home? You don’t want them to see me like this, do you?” Even now she failed to notice the condescension in her own voice, probably because it was always there when she spoke to him. Over the years this had slowly become her “Buddy voice.”

He stepped into the room without answering. She noticed then that there was a piece of paper in one of his hands and a pistol in the other, that old revolver of his that he never pulled out since the kids were born. She’d nearly forgotten about that old thing. The idea that the gun was so old that it probably wouldn’t fire anymore gave her some confidence. He set the gun and the paper down on the dresser and walked over to the bedside. Anger had once again replaced Rebecca’s attempt at shame. That pitiful look he was wearing was the very embodiment of why she was cheating, wasn’t it? She softened a bit, however, when he began untying her right hand from the headboard. Thank God!

”Hurry up… please.” She might yet manage to get decent before the kids got home, if he fucking hurried. And she would need to hide Ramon’s things, seeing the pile of his clothes on the floor reminded her. “Where is Ramon? Where did you take him?”

”To the Mason County Bridge.”

”To the bridge? Why?”

”I told him he might survive the jump, but that I was surely going to kill him if he didn’t try it.”

When Buddy didn’t elaborate, she had to ask. “Did he jump?”

Buddy’s answer sounded bored. “Yep.”

Her mind raced. That bridge was pretty high, and the river pretty shallow beneath it. She wondered if the jump was survivable? “Did you see him?”

”He was floating.”

He picked up the paper. “Sign this.”

”Not until you untie me.”

”I’m not untying you.”

”Oh yes you fucking are!” She said it, but he was speaking in that unbending tone he sometimes used, the one that always pissed her off so, the one that told her he was done arguing.

He held the paper up to her so she swatted at it with her one free hand, knocking it away. “What does it fucking say?”

”It says that Jeremy and Lilly are going to assume custody of Austin and Callie. They already have control of their trust, as executors.”

”So you’re going to shoot me?”

”Yep.”

“Jesus, Buddy. You can’t let the kids find me like this.” She played along, not really believing he would do it.

”I called Lilly. She’s picking them up from school.”

”What’ll you do… after?”

”I haven’t decided. I might shoot myself after, I might not. Prison might not be so bad. I guess I can always kill myself in my cell if it is that bad”

”Buddy, you can’t do this. Think about the kids.”

”Me? You wanna put this on me? You think I should be worrying about the kids? Maybe you should have thought about the kids, Beck?”

”All I do is think about the kids.”

”Oh, so now you’re going to put this on them? The kids have caused you to miss your chance at a good time? Is that it? Because of them you can’t be tied up and jacked-off all over whenever you want to?”

”He has a kink.”

”Had.”

”What?”

”He had a kink.”

”Whatever.” She was busy trying to reach the ropes tying her left hand with her free right one. Letting her struggle he picked the paper and pen off the dresser.

“You gonna sign this?”

”No.”

Setting them back down, he picked the pistol up next. There was nothing left to do, or to say. Sensing a new resolve, she stopped struggling with the ropes and leaned back against the headboard. “Go ahead,” her anger flared. “You don’t have the balls. I dare you to do it.”

So he did.

Amazingly, her eyes open, Rebecca saw the blast at the barrel’s end, and she felt its hammer blow. She even heard it’s echoing report, though from someplace far, far away.

You are going to die

I should clarify

It doesn't matter how strong you

How big your muscles are

It doesn't matter how much money you have

How rich you are

It doesn't matter how many women you sleep with

How many cars you have

How handsome you are

You are going to die

And the sooner you realize that

The happier you will be

Moments after being placed on my chest, my son scrunched his blue-tinged face, whimpered and began to cry in earnest.

Leaning over us, my husband spoke with him as he had spoken to my belly for nine months. He stopped crying and appeared to listen.

"He knows your voice," I whispered, smiling, eyes full.

"By the way," Dr. Blunt said, "your husband and your mom didn't know how to tell you, but your father died two days ago."

And thus was my full heart broken, bleeding sorrow that still seeps out now and again, even as it burst with joy.

Harry stared at the vast blue sky. He took a deep breath in, and tried to make his way through the throng. He’d never had imagined that his great grand father’s homeland would be so full of life. Most of the other big cities that he had visited with his daughter had seemed densely populated, but the people seemed to be focused on their own business, and trying to become a rich vlogger. Their smartphones were glued to their sides 24/7 which made Harry feel somewhat disconsolate. Yes, he had been a part of the so-called young and upcoming business technology gurus, but that time back then was like a distant nightmare that Harry wanted to forget. The devices that he had helped to create— he had hoped to have seen them being used for the greater good- Samaritan work, Volunteering to plant trees…or maybe he just needed to find a way to get the younger generation into learning how to spend more time in nature: enjoying the view of a beautiful sunrise be it over the ocean/lake, or spending some time with a family of elephants in a rainforest. These were also on his list of activities Harry planned to do with his daughter after his vacation. He gazed around the busy city of Lusaka. He chuckled to himself when he spotted a familiar face, Pamela. She waved at Harry, and he waved back.

Pamela: Mr. Banda…where are you headed today?

Harry: (shakes his head) Well, Hello to you, too, Pamela. I’m surprised you’re already here at KKIA to pick me up. I thought you would be still fast asleep.

Pamela: (grins) Ha! I was…eh kinda. I took a nap while waiting for you to arrive.

Harry: (sighs) This means my daughter won the bet.

Pamela: She’s a smart girl that one.

Harry: Yeah, that she is. She takes after her mother, and grandmother.

Pamela: (chuckles) That is true. Oh, by the way, Fiona wants to know what you’d like to have for breakfast.

Harry: Please tell her not to over cook like she’s serving the King of Nubia. All I need is some toast, scrambled eggs, and a cup of milo. I have to have some milo every morning now thanks to my daughter. (smiles)

Pamela: Aight. I’ll let Fiona know. (clears throat) How’s your wife doing?

Harry: Not so good. She’s still in a coma.

Pamela felt for Harry. She told Harry that she would continue to pray for his wife.

Harry felt his heart sink. He missed his wife’s presence. The memories of that night still lingered in his head— like a heavy fog that seemed to stay, and never vanish even as time- or seasons passed. He had not been at home. He’d decided to continue his work at the office, burning the midnight oil. Then his daughter called him and informed him that her mother had not made it back home from the library. Harry had nearly fainted. He rushed home, and on his way there he had made a call to the police station. The were right on top of it, and searched for his wife’s vehicle. Her body had been found lying still in her car underneath an old bridge. All doors of the vehicle, and most of the front as well looked quite beaten up. His wife had lost a lot of blood from a head, and neck injury. The airbag malfunctioned, and she had lost control of the car after hydroplaning off the road.

Harry took a deep breath. Now was not the time for thinking of his wife’s accident. She was in great hands. Harry and his daughter tried not to worry too much. They also prayed for a speedy recovery. Maybe his wife would be alright before, or by Christmas Day. If that was going to be the case, Harry would immediately cut his vacation time short, and head back home. Meanwhile, he would later check in on his daughter and find out how boarding school was going.

#Mr.HarryBanda

December 3rd, 2024.

Is there anybody hungry?

Is that gnaw even around?

When everybody’s fat

and burger joints abound?

I mean, if addict‘s can score hits

just by standing in a line,

then if anyone’s still hungry

it’s a bureaucratic crime!

Are there any kids still out there

with nutritional wishings?

Can you feel a hunger pang

whist obliviously Twitch-ing?

Or when Welfare pays you better

than the factory down the street,

so you’ve thrown your worthless man away

whose paycheck can’t compete?

And can there still be hunger

in a country so sublime,

that it‘s arming the Israelis

while aiding Palestine?

And if everyone’s invited

cause our borders don’t exist,

should we cry for who is hungry

but who will not dig a ditch?

Forgive me my foolish follies,

I know to you I sound obtuse.

But is emotional intelligence

not put to better use,

by placing useless passions

upon yesterday’s shelf,

and instead giving assistance to he

who cares to help himself?

The face in the fly-specked mirror was a hard one, shaped even meaner by the rusty room. An aura of stagnant humidity lingered behind the stinking mixture of excrement and paper that filled the mineral stained toilet in the graffiti scratched stall; a literal shit-hole. Cyrus Bohannon had recently added his own bloody shat to the odorous pile in the bowl, carefully hovering himself overtop so as not to touch his ass to the filthy seat.

“Perfect!” He cursed aloud. “No hot water!” An undeterred Cyrus shaved in the tepid water anyway, dribbling it disgustedly over his cheap, pink, “toss-away” plastic razor. His toothbrush remained in his pocket, though. He did not pull it out, fearful that somehow the putrid, humid air might carry the shit smell into its bristles. He was successful in washing the sweat from his skin and face, but the tired redness would not rinse from his eyes, no matter how hard he scrubbed.

Cyrus Bohannon’s whole life smelled about like this cankerous Arkansas highway rest stop.

So Cy reached into his other pocket, the one without the toothbrush, removing from it a clear sandwich baggy, the baggie’s bottom a rainbow of colorful pills. His arthritic hands split one of the capsules in two rather deftly before pouring the powdered contents of each half into the hollow made at the base of his left thumb and index finger before tossing the empty halves into the sink’s trickle. Lastly, Cyrus Bohannon lowered his face into the powder and inhaled deeply, feeling the burn that sucked through his nostrils until came the familiar acidic drip down the back of his throat that preceded the rush.

The sun was bright upon re-entering the world, so Cyrus squinted into it, using a hand to shield his raw and red-rimmed eyes. Worn boot heels gave the old man an uncomfortable looking, bow-legged stride, or maybe that was the hemorrhoids, it would be hard to guess between them if an observer were to try.

Cy climbed up onto the cab’s fuel tank, grasping for the grimy Stuckey’s bag he had shoved between the rig’s seats. There were picnic tables close by the toilets, but Cyrus did not care for company so he found a shaded curb near the rig where he lowered himself gently down to the concrete, mindful of the electric pain from his arse-hole. He gripped the greasy bag tightly in his shaking hands, not really hungry but knowing he needed to eat. That was the problem with the speed, you never, ever felt hungry.

Once seated Cy allowed his eyes to close for the briefest moment. On the highway behind him the hum of tires and throaty roars of the “Big-Rigs” zipped along with a frequent and soothing irregularity, that and a warm sun lulling him despite the jittery-tingle of the pills. In a brief, but vivid dream a blinding silence of snow drifted around the Freight-liner’s cab as it slid down Monteagle while a desperate Cy fought at the wheel, the dream so real that he actually heard the lonely whine of air-brakes squelching high-pitched and hungry just before the crash. At the end Cy lay dead in a twist of metal, but he couldn’t be dead could he? Can you be dead and still feel the heat of the day, or the weight of the crushed door pressing your thigh?

“No, you cannot,” he reasoned. But still there came to him the whoosh-wooshing of passing cars on the highway, so Cy squeezed his eyes tighter yet, wishing to go back to being dead, but he could not ignore the cab door moving against his thigh, pressing harder now. Reluctantly, the “dead” being so peaceful, Cy peeked open his unwilling eyes.

He was surprised to find that it was not the door of the cab pressing against his leg, after all. No, it was a damned dog, a lowly mutt that had crawled its way up beside him while he napped, a damned flea-bag stray! Cy “shoo-ed” it angrily, willing it away. And it did take a wary step back, but it did not go. Instead, it whined… the same whine as the air-brakes in Cy’s dream? Cy “shoo-ed” again, and the dog took another step away to where Cy could get a better look. “Just a damned mutt, spotted brown and white like a Holstein cow, long-eared and long-tongued. Ugly, is what. You are one ugly dog!“

Shamed, the dog took a circle at these denigrations, sitting itself down on Cyrus’ other side, but leaning itself up hard against his right thigh this time.

“Shoo, dog!” He hollered it this time, angrily. Once again the dog stepped off, but not far away. Instead it stretched its nose toward the Stuckey’s bag, eyebrows high and hopeful. Cy noted then how thin it was, even for a dog. He pulled the burger from the bag then, tickled when the dog sat down. Curious, Cy put the burger back in the bag, it amusing him when the dog stood back up. Cyrus took it from the bag again, “hooting” this time when the dog sat down once again.

“Well, how about that?” Cy didn’t even realize in his excitement that he was speaking aloud. He unwrapped the burger now, smiling when the dog sat back down. He took a bite, surprised when there was no reaction from the dog, not even a whimper. Not hungry himself, he pulled the patty from between the buns and tossed it at the dog, who promptly snagged it out of the air and smacked it down.

“Whooeee! I reckon you are a smart dog!” Cyrus took out the french fries next, and tossed them one-by-one at the cur, who yanked each one from the air and smacked them all down, just as it had the meat patty.

Fries gone, Cyrus wadded up the bag. The dog sat.

“That,” Cyrus thought aloud, “is really something! I reckon she knows just when to sit. You are a smart bitch, ain’t you now?”

As if it could help, Cy grabbed at a handful of air, pulling himself with it up from the curb. The dog stood as well. Limping his way towards the Freightliner, he glanced back to see the dog limping along behind. A mini-van sailed by on the highway, its children waving at Cyrus and the dog through its opened windows. Cy found himself waving back, though he wasn’t sure which was more noteworthy; children waving at him, or him waving back?

He climbed into the cab then, settling his hemorrhoids into the warn cloth of the Freight-liner’s seat. Triggered, the big diesel roared beneath his boots, shaking the cab like an atmospheric re-entry. The dog sat hopefully below, patiently, its wide eyes looking up at the driver’s side door. With the hissing of brakes and a grinding of gears the big rig shuddered forward fifty slow feet before the brakes hissed again, lurching the rig to a stop. The man climbed back down and gestured toward the dog, who dropped her ears and trotted happily forward.

At sixty-four years of age Cyrus Bohannon finally caught a break. He found his luck just outside of Little Rock, so that’s what he called her. And so that everyone would know, he painted it beside the Queen of Hearts on either side of his cab:

Cyrus Bohannon

Owner/ Operator

Me and My “Little Rock”

A pain no one

Understands

Like an itch

You can’t scratch

A problem no one

Wants to face

Yet I must deal with it

On a day to day

Minute by minute

Unrelenting basis

It’s my own fault

Good decision

Bad decision

That’s inconsequential

As the years pile on

The self inflicted

Soul crushing pain

Only I can feel

I have become

Devoid of hope

One would think

There is no

Foreseeable solution

Other than escape

But I’m no coward

And as Camus said

“…in the end

one needs more courage

to live than to

kill himself.”

Within the lucidity

Of my existence

The only logical choice

In an absurd life

Is to suffer

The consequences

Of my choices

It is older than old

this Paleo soul

which drank whole deserts dry

Then rested on mountain crests

pondering stars

which have burned but the blink of it’s eye

Father to daughter and mother to son

one solitary soul

older than old, bolder than bold

A bridge to the question of why

I have no idea where I am going with this except to say that I’m a sucker for a good documentary and I watched one yesterday. In fact, the one I watched was so good for someone with my upbringing that I feel compelled to complete the circle, and to document it in turn.

I stumbled across “In the Blink of an Eye” on Prime Video and started watching it with low hopes, but it did what good documentaries do, pulling me in, tickling my memory back to one of the passions of my youth; a passion which, as happened with Christmas at an even younger age, had its glory stolen away by the money grab of commercialism.

Those of you who know anything about me from my time here on site know that I am a redneck sprung from rednecks. I do not say this proudly, although I could. It is simply fact. And being a redneck, I like automobile racing (at least I did, once upon a time). In particular I like southern stock car racing. Like me, NASCAR sprung up from the red clay of our shared southern home; a heavy, sticky soil that packs out smooth and hard as hawked-out cement until it is perfectly suited to race cars on. So they did just that, those good ol’ boys of another era who came home from WWII having gained the three things required to create the perfect twister of a red-dust storm; mechanical knowledge, engineering experience, and a lust for excitement.

I vividly remember my first time at a race track. My father took me out to East-Side Speedway one night around 1970, when I was still small enough to be toted in his arms late at night. I remember the glow of the lights in the distance from where we parked, the roaring of cars which could not yet be seen, the anxiousness in my dad’s step to get those cars into view. I remember the roughness of the wooden bleachers beneath my bare feet, the glimmer of the lights off the whirling metal, the smells of wetted dust, burning high-test, popping corn and suspense. It was only small-time, small town racing, but it was sprinkled liberally with the magic dust of Grand National dreams.

A couple of years after that night, and right after the divorce, the old man called up my mother one Friday and asked if he could take me with him up to Martinsville, to see the “big boys” race. Caught quick like that and without an excuse handy Mom said yes. That weekend was the highlight of my childhood; camping out in the back of Pop’s pickup truck and joining in frisbee games where fifty-or-so Blue Ribbon and Marlboro toting fathers gathered in an outside circle throwing a bunch of frisbees across to each other while their screeching flock of kids in the middle happily chased down, and tussled over, any wayward throws (myself right in there with ’em). There were banjos picking over in that direction, and race cars roaring in the other, colorful flags flying on high with a blimp slow-rolling against the clouds, and best of all Richard Petty was right yonder; King Richard we called him, a sparse man sporting a big hat beside a sky-blue race car any of the three of which… man, hat or car… were already larger than life. It couldn’t possibly get any better for an eleven year old, yet it did. After that weekend followed Bristol, Rockingham, and finally Charlotte, the crown jewel of racing. What a summer!

You have to keep in mind that this was all pre-1979, when began an unquenchable thirst throughout America for all things NASCAR. Prior to 1979 Winston Cup racing was little more than a southern joke. The races were held in the south, the drivers were from the south, and there was little to no television coverage (the Daytona 500 being the lone exception as a once a year novelty event on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports”). The Daytona 500 is unique in that it is equivalent to NASCAR’s “Super Bowl”, but it is strangely held as the first race of the season, rather than the last. They run it first, in late February, because Daytona is usually warm then while the rest of America is still frozen. This was especially the case in 1979, as a gigantic snowstorm had settled over most of the east coast, forcing people inside on a Sunday afternoon, and this after the NFL season had ended and before baseball season had begun… the horror! With no other sport available for bored men to watch on an inside day they tuned into the Daytona 500, and those bored men were coincidentally treated to the greatest race in NASCAR history. For stock car racing, that snowstorm turned out to be the perfect storm, as a fantastic race culminated in a last lap crash, allowing NASCAR’s only nationally recognized name, Richard Petty, to sweep through to the checkered flag. And better yet, immediately after Petty flashed across the finish line in his famous STP branded racer the cameras panned back to the wreck where two drivers were fist fighting in the infield, and still another driver had leapt out of his car to come to the aid of his brother, the three of them throwing haymakers until the service trucks could get there to pull them apart! It was glorious, this two on one melee after a fantastic race with millions of first time viewers! It was the perfect storm indeed for a second rate sport, as fans from all over America began heading down south to watch those crazy-assed southerners race their hot rods. It was the height of happiness for me to see the rest of the country embracing my favorite sport!

For a while, at least.

Then my happy bubble burst. Mom moved us further away from Dad. Worse, she moved us to the city. Trips to race tracks ended for me. City life and time changed my priorities, as will happen, turning me away from “out of sight, out of mind race cars,” and toward girls, rock-n-roll, and a car of my own. But then came cable television. ESPN and TBS began showing races nearly every weekend. I found myself drawn back in by the ’84 Firecracker 400, hearing Ronald Reagan issue the “Gentlemen, start your engines” command from a phone in Air Force 1, and then seeing in real time, albeit on television, the image made famous by Sports Illustrated of Air Force 1 cruising in to land with that iconic STP car in the foreground, racing alone down Daytona’s backstretch. It was not my luck to be able to go to the races anymore, but I’ll be damned if racing wasn’t reaching out to me and pulling me back in, or so it seemed at the time.

A few years later my buddy Dave and I got us a place down at the beach. Dave laughed at me on those hot summer afternoons when I‘d hop on my ”beach cruiser” to pedal back up to our 17th Street apartment in time to catch my heroes on TV. My asshole friend would yell, “go on then, you hillbilly fuck” as I flipped him off on my way. The bikini-clad tourists could wait, I figured. Girls would always be there, but Talledega only came around twice a year. I guess those priorities hadn’t completely changed.

I will admit to being a little bit ass-hurt when my friend called me a “hillbilly fuck,“ so I did the only thing I could do. I loaded up my truck with beer and weed, shoved Dave into the passenger seat, and I converted him; two long-hairs in cut-off shorts and Van Halen t-shirts on a NASCAR roadtrip. What a fucking blast we had! I’ll never forget the joy on his face that entire weekend. We’d been to a lot of rock and roll shows, but there is a huge and obvious difference between 18,000 headbangers at a one-night stand, and 80,000 redneck wall-bangers rockin’ a racetrack for an entire weekend. Upon arrival Dave completely bought in to the laid-back party style of it (in particular to a group of redneck girls we came across as they bathed boldly shirtless in the dangerous southern sun, Dave kindly offering to shade them with his own naked body at much hazard). And to my chagrin he also bought in to the whole “Intimidator”, “Man in Black” thing, and so became a Dale Earnhardt fan (plus he knew I hated the driver whom many fans, myself included, referred to as Ironhead, rather than Earnhardt. You have to keep in mind that Dave was, as most maturing young men are with each other, a real butt-wipe).

Our front-stretch seats for that race were low down in the stands, a bit close to the track for comfort’s sake, but perfect to hear the sounds, sense the speed, and to get caught up in the drama of it all. Dave remained skeptical of the actual racing right up through the warm-up laps, looking at me like I was an idiot when I warned him that he’d best take off his brand new Earnhardt cap before they came around again or he would lose it. You see, it takes a minute at a track like Charlotte for speed to accumulate. Heavyweight American muscle doesn’t zip off the line like a sissy little European racer does. It gathers it’s momentum slowly, needing every bit of the mile-and-a-half, high banked speedway with the dog-leg rounding out it’s start-finish line to get it’s gears sorted out. Once that space and speed is gathered however, watch the hell out!

That first lap circled about like slow motion. I looked over, unsurprised by a cynicism on Dave’s face which only made me laugh, as I knew what was to come. Like two trains vying for supremacy the twin lines of cars drove away from us down the backstretch, circling bumper-to-bumper and side-by-side-by-side through turn three, the fans in the bleachers standing in salute before the onslaught. As they rounded through turn four you could feel a difference in the air, and in the crowd, and in the concrete seat beneath you as they came, the roar from forty-three, 600 hp engines screaming angrily towards you, the cars nervously jockeying for position like a boy at the movies on a first date. Like everyone else, Dave and I were also standing now as they approach us, me screaming and waving my driver forward, Dave watching them roar past in mesmerized wonder… and blissfully hatless.

It is not a difficult game, racing, though there are nuances to know. I recall at one point Eddie Bierschwale’s car got sideways and lifted completely up off the ground as if held there by a giant, invisible hand as it flew directly towards us. I was standing and could see the car’s undercarriage, exhaust system and all as it hung like a toy in front of me. Joyful, I turned to find Dave curled up in a humorous ball beneath his seat. Yet by day’s end my rookie friend was an expert, educated in every phase of racing; driver’s, strategies, and courtesies. Having hooked my fish, those Sunday afternoons watching races alone in our little apartment became parties of two when we were broke, which was much of the time, and roadtrips when we weren’t.

They say you can’t go home again. I found this to be true. Dave and I stayed in touch after I moved to Charlotte. I even bumped into him unexpectedly at a race once. I assumed that racing was something I would always have, and that my friend Dave and I would always share it, but time is fickle, taking Dave away for good and changing my beloved NASCAR into something almost unrecognizable, with ”Cars of Tomorrow” that all look exactly alike (some are even foreign, eee-gads!) and that are unable to pass one another without difficulty. And the racetracks are mostly as alike as the cars are, besides their being spread into far away geographies where there are no hardcore fans, hence the empty grandstands in Kansas, California, and Vegas most weekends. Ticket prices have become as ridiculous as those for NFL games, and then you have these drivers with midwestern names who whine when they lose, rather than fight. Nah, me and a hundred thousand other southerners will take a pass on that.

So I am pretty much done with racing. I still turn to some of the bigger races when I am home on a Sunday, but my attention quickly wanes. Gone is the Ford and Chevy rivalry, gone are the short tracks with their noon starts, gone are the drivers in open-faced helmets having a smoke at 200 mph, gone are the kids clinging to the catch fences, and the chicken bones and soda cans tossed down to the walkways, gone are the beer brands on cars, the cigarette brand on the trophies, and the pretty girls kissing the winner at race’s end (Well, the pretty girls might still be there, I honestly don’t know. Seems a bit sexist though, for this day and age?). It seems that, as everything does, Southern stock car racing has run its course.

But that documentary, now. I’ve got to say, that was pretty darn good. The racing scenes got me going, seeing the old guard strapped in again, hammer down and hell-bent for glory. It’s a shame my old buddy Dave and I can’t load up the truck for one last NASCAR roadtrip. I’ll bet he would like that, if he was still here with us.

I know I would, just once, for old time’s sake.

It is an ongoing joke between my husband and son that I am probably in the CIA, living undercover in the suburbs of New Jersey with my Russian immigrant husband and son as cover. I’ve never understood what they imagine my assignment to be; nor what about me encourages their thinking. I am an African-American educator with a PhD in Hispanic literature. I am a devoted wife. An adoring mother. Indeed, it is so unlikely as to be far-fetched albeit quite amusing.

Until it wasn’t. I mean, if I tell you, I have to kill you is not merely a line of fiction.

It’s my life.

And so, the day they made the joke in front of my husband’s worthless half brother, Aleksandr, (“former” KGB, ha, unbeknownst to his family), and his gaze sharpened on me, and I knew he knew that I knew that he knew. And he had to die.

And it had to be quick, fatal and undetectable.

My specialty.

“I’ll be right back, guys,” I said, getting up from the dining room table. The cookies should be done.”

“Chocolate chip?” my son asked. I nodded. “I hope you made at least three dozen. I could eat them all. Although Anna’s cookies are great, too,” he added about his girlfriend of the moment.

“I can always bake more, sweetheart,” I replied over my shoulder as I went to the kitchen.

After removing the cookie sheets from the oven, I placed several cookies on three dessert plates: one for my husband, one for my son, and one for Aleksandr. Grabbing a small brown jar from the back of the spice cabinet, I added a drop of the contents to the top cookie on Aleksandr’s plate. I replaced the jar before I picked up the plates and re-entered the dining room.

“Here you go guys! Let me know if you want more” I said, placing an identical plate in front of each of them. “Milk?”

Mouths full, I got a nod of yes from my son, no from Aleksandr and my husband. I could feel Aleksandr’s eyes following me as I left the room.

Back in the kitchen, I took a glass from the cabinet and milk from the refrigerator. As I poured, I heard a chair scrape the wood floor and fall in the dining room.

“What are you three doing now?”

“It’s Aleksandr!” my husband said. “Something’s wrong!”

I ran in the room. Aleksandr was on the floor, clutching his chest. He looked at me in pain and bewilderment. “Oh my God,” I screamed, kneeling next to my husband. “Call 911!” I said to my son.

The EMTs arrived within five minutes.

He was dead within three.

The medical examiner’s report ruled it a heart attack.

My secret is safe.