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.

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”

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.

There are lots of words for it; egocentrism, arrogance, narcissism, conceit, vainglory, etc., but in this instance we’ll call it “smugness”. Our boy is looking and feeling “smug” … a wee bit repentant, of course, but mostly smug.

Because, yet again, he had been right! Mind you it is not easy being right, not with any consistency. Being right requires not only a mind guided by good old-fashioned common sense, but also a requisite, updated knowledge of the sciences, histories, philosophies and literatures. One must put in the work to be consistently right. A blow-hard cannot pull it off, though he will try. And Constantine Goolsby had been right once again! Ha, ha! And the look on her face when his rightness was proved to her had been golden, and had made it well worth the long, wintry ride Constantine had had to suffer just to show her that he was, indeed and again, right. Ha! Constantine’s chuckle was startling enough in the quiet stillness of the snowy afternoon to jerk his exhausted horse’s head up, and to cock its sagging ears his way.

Yes. “Smug” is the word.

And the December afternoon was quiet; so very, deathly quiet. Quiet as midnight, as if the whole world was asleep, or as if Constantine himself was asleep. It was the sort of snowfall where one could tip his head back, open his mouth wide, and catch flake after flake upon the tip of his tongue without hardly trying, so Constantine childishly did just that. The flakes were coming straight down and large, accumulating deep enough on the ground now to muffle the horse’s heavy hooves. Not even his saddle creaked to break the quiet. The snow muffled it all. Everything. It was as though he was lost in a snow globe with bits of frozen matter falling, falling, falling all around, and a glass dome to insulate him from the outside world.

It was also creepy, the silence, leaving him alone to think. Sometimes being smart was not so good. Being always right had its consequences, didn’t it? Sometimes Constantine wished he could escape himself, and this was one of those times.

She had been surprised! The wonder of his appearance had been apparent on her face; in her eyes. His heart had leapt at it… at her astonishment. And the way her astonishment had morphed into fear when he’d drawn his pistol, morphing so easily and readily that the expressions had almost been the same, and could easily have been confused for one another by someone who was not so sure of himself as Constantine. And “his” eyes had changed to… that guy’s.

“God,” Constantine thought as he rocked easy in the saddle, “what in Heaven’s name had the two of them been doing when he’d barged in with his, “Ha!” What exactly was that position they were in? Constantine had never seen anything like it, nor even imagined it! His neck grew warm at the thought of it. And his Laura Lee, too! Who would have thought?

Maybe he was not “always” right, after all. Maybe he’d been wrong this time… what he’d done back there. In any event there would be no one awaiting him at the cabin when he got there; no one to talk to. No one to admire his competence. No one to cook his dinner. The cabin would be as quiet as this snow globe he was in, and as lonely too. Maybe he should have been wrong this time. Maybe if he’d been wrong then his Laura Lee would could home. Maybe she would. Maybe.

Removing his glove from the one hand, Constantine pulled the pistol from its holster. The click of the cylinder opening was loud in the silence that was the snow globe. He shucked some shells one at a time from his belt and filled the empty chambers. He held the pistol for a long while, resting it in his lap, liking the way the butt of it felt in his hand, the ergonomics of it, and remembering how it had so violently bucked back yonder.

Without replacing his glove Constantine lifted the pistol’s barrel up to his temple, only somewhat sure that he was right.

Human footprints which date back 23,000 years have surfaced in White Sands National Park. Might the prints belong to a man spearfishing on the shores of some now extinct ocean? Or to a woman collecting shells there for a bauble? Or even to a child running at play, or from some ancient danger? Who is to say, except that a human was here, and once passed this way?

23,000 years? There are footprints found in Greece which scientists claim are +5m years old. “El Graeco” they call the owner of the foot who made them, though they cannot know his name, or even she had one. This is, of course, even older than the prints of “Lucy” found in Tanzania… twice as old, in fact.

Neil Armstrong’s footprints are not nearly that old, but they are still up there. With a strong enough telescope you could see them. It could be that Musk will send someone up who wipes them away in the soft dust, whether purposefully or accidentally. It will not really matter that they are destroyed, I supposed, as their significance will have been lost anyway, at that time. And maybe they already are insignificant, as NASA conspiracy theories abound.

Still, they are there. I know they are.

Well, “who are you,” some of you might be asking, and “how can you know”? Excellent questions these. I applaud you for asking them. They are questions I might have ventured myself, once upon a time, though they are also ones with no good answers, for my footprints (if any can still be found) are as irrelevant now as are those discovered in White Sands.

For you see, I am laid out. My body probed, picked clean, and wiped over; vanity’s and insecurities notwithstanding. With any luck my suit is gray (as I abhor black and blue) and my tie red. Other than that I do not care, nor do such trivialities matter anymore… not now, as the lid is being closed, leaving me safe inside my own capsule. Safe to wait 23,000 years. Safe to wait +5m years. Safe to wait an eternity until unearthed and opened, whence I can be marveled over by those who will cease to exist themselves, in their own good time.

But should that footprint of mine be found someday, it will be a clean print and honest, left by a man who passed this way with the intelligence to question what was told, and the courage to believe what was true.

It was almost as though the curse inducing stream of sod which trickled down on the boy’s head was a sign from God, christening him in humiliating despair immediately following the fading echoes of his father’s unearthly throat rattles. He believed he’d been a pretty good nurse up until the rattle, but he hadn’t known what to do for that once it started, and how could one so young know there was nothing he could do?

Brunner Tschudi hated this sod house with all of his being; he hated the mildewy smell of it, and the moist air of it, and the sifting dirt and dust of it, and along with all of that he hated his father for bringing him to it, and now here he was, stranded alone in it. Though his father’s death had been inevitable, it was still difficult to fathom that he was actually alone. The simple acts of caring for the dying man had afforded Brunner some sense of security, even if the feeling had proven a lie. Unable to withstand the face’s pallid gaze any longer the boy stumbled towards the veiled sunlight at it’s entrance, but outside was as dreary as inside the dark sod house, what with grass in every direction, colorless grasses restlessly churning under unrelenting winds. Desperate for someone the boy climbed to the top of the earthen cabin which housed his father’s now lifeless body. From up there he circled, scanning the seemingly endless prairies in the hopes of a savior, any savior, but his disappointed eyes saw nothing but low, gray skies for as far as they could see, a sky with clouds caught up in frantic, Easterly races. East, where Brunner’s family and friends were. Oh, if only this hut was tall enough that he could step onto one of those clouds and fly away with them! Though his body had somewhat adjusted to the prairie’s biting cold, still a shiver crept up inside Brunner’s too-light jacket. Scanning his eyes ever closer in towards the cabin, and at the corral in particular, he saw his father’s horse standing three-legged, it’s back turned to the harsh wind. Ol’ McClellan was no cloud, but he could be ridden away from here, couldn’t he? But where to ride was the question? And in which direction? East, of course? There was a bit of food put by, but not much. Brunner had his father’s rifle and had been taught to use it, but their steady need to hunt had pushed what game there was far away from the isolated, sod-house cabin. With nothing here but death, Brunner knew he must leave. If only he had someplace to go?

It was a lot of situation to handle for a boy just turned twelve. He had been excited initially, when talk began around the supper table of coming to Wyoming. Of course Brunner had heard of the “cowboys” out west. Who hadn’t? And if his family went west, perhaps he could become a cowboy himself? The excitement of it filled his dreams for a great while even before Father packed up their belongings for the journey, and the excitement had continued on the trip, but like his many other dreams he never saw a cowboy once they got out here, until he had to figure that cowboys were tall tales too, just like the other stories he was told from childhood.

Brunner climbed down off of the sod-house in discouragement. Having cried plenty in the past months, he did not cry now. Instead, he stood outside the door and gazed into the dark cabin without entering. Even if he was strong enough to drag his father out, he would then have to dig a grave. Having helped to cut the sod for the house Brunner knew how difficult that would be, and without his Father’s strength to lead? So he didn’t do that. Instead, the youngster went inside and collected what was useable and edible; an extra shirt of his own and another one of Father’s, a box of ammunition for the rifle, a hunting knife, a section of rope, a frying pan and coffee pot (though there was no more coffee), some smoked antelope, two cans of beans, and lastly a framed picture of his father and mother, taken back east, before they’d left home. The boy packed it all carefully into a tow sack which he set on the dirt floor before returning one last time for a final bedside look at the suddenly grayed, barely recognizable face of his father. The face he saw was not the face he remembered, nor was it the one he wanted to remember, so Brunner turned from it, aghast. He picked up his sack then and did not look back. Outside he stooped to fasten the buffalo-hide door to its pegs. The dirt cabin his father had been so proud of building would do for his crypt, a crypt which nature would soon enough melt down around his body into a proper grave.

Brunner paused at the wagon, though. Here was a decision to make. It was far easier for him to harness ’Ol McClellan to the wagon than it was for him to throw a saddle on the big horse, but the wagon was much slower, and was limited in where it could go. As much as he hated to Brunner would have to leave it behind, but the trade-off to that was to only make camp in places that had something Brunner could climb on top of in order to throw the heavy saddle up on McClellan’s back, a stump or some such thing, and those opportunities were not always so easy to find out on the prairie, though that was not really true either, Brunner knew. The prairies only looked level, when in fact there were gullies, depressions, and sometimes even entirely hidden canyons where a whole army of Cheyenne or Arapaho could lie in waiting.

Regardless, there was a perfect stump here in the corral for Brunner’s purpose. Using it, he soon had McClellan successfully saddled and bridled, the big horse proving patient through the boy’s struggles, as always. Once satisfied with the riggings, and with no place to put the rifle, the boy took it to hand as he climbed into the saddle. A simple touch of the heel led horse and boy out through the corral gate and onto the open prairie, the boy feeling a guilty twinge at leaving the gate open behind them, the twinge enough to show that his father had raised him right. The horse, for his part in this tragedy, felt absolutely nothing at all, and passed wind to prove it.

Four days later not much had changed as horse and boy continued their crooked ramblings. Non-raining rainclouds still raced across leaden skies, and dingy grasses still rustled quietly below them. The difference was that Brunner was hungry now, hungry and scared rather than hungry and sad. The beans and antelope were gone. He had the rifle, but he saw no game. The only signs of life he observed drifted high above him, black specks sprinkled on the gray sky circling, watching, and waiting. Where he stopped was not a particularly good spot for camping, but Brunner knew little of such things. There was a rocky copse, and that was good enough for him. It was the sort of place he needed, one where he could climb up to unsaddle or saddle Ol’ McClellan as occasion demanded, so he did so, unsaddling the weary horse before sitting himself down upon the same rock he’d just used for a ladder, finding it a satisfactory place to contemplate what to do next. With nothing here to break the wind he soon found himself shivering, nor was there water here for himself or for the horse. In fact, there was nothing here at all to attract a man, other than a ready supply of campfire fuel. Brunner wished he wasn’t here. He looked again to the sky, to its racing clouds, but his wishes brought him nothing, so he commenced to collecting the nearby fuel, taking care to reach for the dried buffalo patties, only.

Once collected the fuel pile was entirely too large for a boy alone out on the flat prairie, but it‘s blaze comforted him in the night. And having used neither reflectors nor windbreaks, the fire made by the pile was available to be seen or otherwise detected for quite a ways out on the wide-open flatlands. So naturally it was.

Brunner was awakened in the night with a start, and with a stomp. She looked quite lovely to him in the dying firelight, and the first thought she inspired from the hungry boy was quite naturally to find the rifle and shoot her, but he was not man enough yet to do it. She was too young and pretty for that anyways, and he was too lonely, so he named her instead, an unoriginal name for a cow… Betsy.

She was not really a cow though, Betsy wasn’t. Not yet. She was more obviously a calf, and a young one at that, which explained her curiousness at walking so brazenly right up to his campfire. But cow or not, she was someone besides Ol’ McClellan for him to talk to, so Brunner welcomed her into camp, finding some rope in his sack to picket her next to the horse with before falling back asleep.

When next he woke it was to the same gray clouds in the same gray sky, but that was not all. There was the neighing of a horse, one too far away to be McClellan, as McClellan was picketed in close, so Brunner sat up for a look-see. Fifty feet from camp sat a rider on a pony looking inward towards the camp the same as Brunner looked out, rider and pony producing the classic silhouette of a western hero stark against a rising sun. A cowboy! A real one. The first such that Brunner had ever seen!

A bit ashamed of his poor situation, Brunner did not immediately call out, but waited, studying the cowboy even as he was being studied. The rider’s pony was small, much smaller than Ol’ McClellan, and the cowboy himself appeared barely older than Brunner was, though his lazy self-assurance presented a more worldly attitude. The rider sported the classic, wide-brimmed “cowboy” hat along with a calico shirt whose bright colors made Brunner deliciously envious of its high style. Below the shirt canvas jeans were tucked smartly into sharp-toed, lace up cattle boots which were in turn stuffed into large, wooden stirrups, but what mostly caught Brunner’s attention was the empty, over-sized holster on the young man’s belt and the handgun which filled up his outstretched hand, a hand which happened to be pointed directly at Brunner.

”Whacha doin’ with that there critter?” The cowboy called out. “It’s our’n.”

Brunner stood up to answer. On a whim, he raised his hands, showing the rider that he was unarmed. “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ with her. She just wandered in.”

Seeing that his “rustler” was just a boy alone, the cowboy holstered his pistol. “Looks a mite suspicious, you havin’ her tied up and all.” The cowboy let loose a black stream of tobacco after that.

Brunner only shrugged. “I figgered she was somebody’s, but I didn’t know whose?”

The cowboy clucked his little pony on into Brunner’s camp without an invite, quickly assessing the pitifulness of it as he came. “What are y‘all doin’ out here all alone like this? You wanted somewhere’s?”

”I reckon not.”

”Not even a bedroll, huh? I think y’all had best come along with me. Wilber’ll have questions for you. He likes to know about ever‘ thang.”

”Wilber?”

”Wilber Kate, foreman of the Five Star.” The cowboy did not have to add “you big dummy” to the end of his sentence, as it was implied by his uppity tone. “Now saddle up, Soddy. I ain’t got all day.”

Brunner did as he was told, packing his gear into his sack, and then guiding McClellan up to the big rock he would use to get him saddled. “Can I bring my rifle?”

”I reckon, but don’t point it my way.”

Once aboard Brunner kicked McClellan forward. “Say? How’d you know I was a Soddy?”

”Hell! You must be. This whole camp smells like dirt, and it’s ground into you, too.”

Looking down at himself, Brunner did not argue. He reckoned it was so.

”You hungry?”

Brunner’s stomach growled at the question. “Uh huh.”

”There’s coffee and beans at chuck. I’ll see you get some.” The cowboy freed the calf of her rope and used it to slap her back the way they had come. Without a signal the pony began herding “Betsy” in the correct direction, forcing McClellan into a trot to keep up.

”How far is it?” Brunner asked.

”Couple miles.”

”Sheesh. How’d you ever find us?”

”Saw the calf’s tracks leading this way firstly, then I smelled your fire.”

They rode in silence for awhile. Brunner saw the dust first, off in the cold distance, then the bobbing shadow of a great herd beneath it. Excited, he rode closer to the cowboy, and stretched himself taller in the saddle to see. “Say? Did you really smell sod-dirt back there in my camp?”

”Yep.”

”How’d you do that?”

”Grew up a Soddy myself. I know the smell, Pardner.” With that the cowboy kicked spurs to his pony, leaving young Brunner hard pressed to keep up.

The kid next door and his little brother put up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk beside our street. It is not a busy neighborhood, so at the same time that I appreciated the boys’ entrepreneurial spirits I also doubted the possibility of their success, yet being the typical American suckers for consumables Pooky-Bear, General Sherman and I ventured over to check it out.

Being a man, and therefore logically brained, the first thing I noticed about the colorfully magic-markered “Lemonade” sign taped to the folding card table was that, while it proudly proclaimed “Fresh, Cold Lemonade” and in smaller print “we accept Venmo,” there was no price written on it? Before I could ask about it though Pooky-Bear, being a woman with other, more important concerns, was already bent over the table examining the pitcher whilst debating the nutritional aspects of the lemonade with the kid.

”Did you squeeze it, or is it frozen?” She asked him, in what to me sounded like a childishly condescending voice

”I don’t know. Mom made it.”

”Well, did she add sugar?”

”I don’t know. Mom made it.”

My wife’s face corkscrewed at this unacceptable answer. ”You should find out. Your customer’s will want to know.”

The kid was growing discouraged. ”Do you want some or not?”

Pook remained undecided. “I don’t see any ice. Do you have ice? I like ice in mine.”

The kid just looked at her with his mouth open, so I took it as my opportunity. “There’s no price on the sign. How much is it?”

He gave me the same astounded look. “It’s whatever you want to pay.”

”Great, but I don’t know what Venmo is. Do you take cash?”

The kid shrugged. “I guess.”

”Those the cups?” I asked.

The kid held one up. It was so small it could have been a Solo shot glass. “Yea.”

Hiding my own childish disappointment in the small size, I gestured for two. “I remember back when I was a kid I branched out at my lemonade stand, you know; cookies, candy, Kool-aid? Not everyone wants just lemonade.“

”You bought it.”

”Yea, well I guess I’m a sucker.”

”There’s lots of suckers.” He was smiling at me as he measured out our two tiny shots.

I laughed along about the “suckers” comment at the same time I was laying my five-spot on the table. He wasn’t wrong. I mean, if the “My Pillow” guy can make it?

“Thanks!“ the kid eagerly pocketed the cash. “But what about Billy?”

Billy was gazing up at me through sad, round, little kid eyes.

”I think five is plenty for two shot-glasses half full of canned lemonade. You guys can split it.”

Now both kids had sad eyes, which pissed Pook off. “Just give them some more, you tight-wad!”

Grumbling, I laid another five on the table. “This stand is nothing but a rip-off!”

”Shut up,” she cautioned, “and come on.” As she walked away Pook poured her cup out onto my lawn.

”Hey! That’s a five dollar shot of lemonade you just pitched onto a thousand dollar lawn!”

”Too much sugar and no ice.”

From behind me the kid yelled, “Thanks y’all! And come again!” Followed by the hurtful, souring twist of, “Suckers!”

Not being sure if my own face-twisting was caused by the lemonade or the shouted words, I went ahead and poured mine out alongside Pooks‘, no longer wanting it. “No wonder the schools are medicating young boys these days.”

”Yea, well, he’ll probably grow up to be just like you.”

On second thought, maybe the little rug-rat wasn’t so bad after all. Besides, it was about time for school to start back up anyways, ha-ha!

How, when Gods are so scarce, is there an Angel in every whorehouse?

It was not in her head. She was different than the other girls, and those differences kept her feeling like an outsider. Angel was always surprised and a tad apprehensive when chosen, which was a major difference in itself, as the others vied to be chosen, making themselves comparably “bigger” everywhere that bigness mattered in mad attempts at being picked; bigger boobs, bigger hair, bigger lips, bigger personalities, while Angel remained small, girlishly-figured (flat as a board, a carpenter would call it), and meek from the facts of it. Yet she was chosen, and frequently. In fact, the other girls would not have believed it to learn that Angel was the fourth highest earner of the sixteen of them. Yet it shouldn’t have surprised them. They, better than anyone else, understood the sheer number of pervs out there, and how many of those pervs desired youthfulness in a lover. With most of Angel’s customers it was the more youthful the better. Child-like was even preferable, which was poor Angel’s lot, her appearance being small, round-eyed, and submissive. And none of the girls would have guessed it, not even Angel herself, but Angel’s lack of desire to be chosen was actually an added temptation for the sordid sort she attracted.

Like the other cathouse professionals Angel had learned to discern those customers who were likely to choose her within minutes of them walking into the brothel’s front room, where the scantily clad girls awaited to serve them drinks, and to seduce them (and their billfolds) for the night. It wasn’t so much the pervs’ looks that gave them away to her, it was more how they acted. Some customers walked in like they owned the place, appearing immediately at ease. They were the regulars; the senior fraternity brothers from the downtown university, the half-sober vocational workers who didn’t want to go home to their nagging, never in-the-mood wives, and finally the hurried, desperate to be discreet professional-types… but none of those “normal” kinds, ever seemed to be looking for Angel.

Of all the names to choose from, for a job like hers.

No, the ones who picked Angel were the neurotic, weaselly ones, their eyes darting this way and that. That was how she could tell them, by their eyes. Her customers always seemed unsettled, and not with the nervous kind of jitters that a brothel can give someone who seldom frequents one, either. Theirs was not just a nervousness gained through lack of situational confidence. No, it was way worse than that. It was a nervous born from ineptitude maybe… or worse, from some prevailing odium which followed them around like that cartoon character with the dark cloud always above him. Nevertheless, these were not cartoon characters. Far from it. Her customers did not come to the brothel looking for a good time. These people, men and women, came with a different purpose; for the chance to be alone (if only for a short while) with someone whom they could control, someone they could dominate, someone they could show the very opposite of a good time. And Angel had the look they sought; that callow, guileless look these insecure types craved. Poor little Angel’s diminutiveness made her ripe for domination.

And it was not just men. Angel attracted women too; couples, lesbians, or sometimes even lesbian couples. Always the hard core lesbians. The “butch” ones. The cropped haired, masculine ones, and the ones who had begun “the change”. The scarred and breast-less ones who sought out a paid professional, as professionals lacked the option to back out after being introduced to said lesbian’s clinically contrived attempts at manliness.

Poor little Angel humored them all, best she could. After all, she was one of them; those diffident, nervous types. She understood them. There was empathy for them inside her, even as they hurt her. It was somehow in her heart to help them. Wasn’t she as meek and misunderstood as they were? Wasn’t she also bullied and looked down upon? Wasn’t she the eternal subject of humiliation, degradation, and lewdness? By God, didn’t she allow the most disdainful of them to have their ways with her, so long as it did not become too violent? Angel was so used to being pounded on from behind for long stretches by strangers with no interest in ejaculation that she had grown to expect it, and of having her tiny bottom slapped pink by a calloused, masculine hand as she was pounded, or worse, being sprayed in a golden shower afterward. But, “it was ok,” Angel always reminded herself while catching her breath, and while cleaning herself up, and while counting her money at the end of the night. It did not hurt that bad, nor for that long, and it was a kind of therapy she was supplying to them, the saddest and most destitute of people, was it not? It made Angel feel better when she applied a virtuous spin to it all. “It is not only profitable work,“ is what she often told herself after a bad night, “it is good work.”

Now then, with this dismal setting properly set our story may begin. Having read to this point you will not fail to understand Angel’s happy surprise at the prospective client who walked in early in the evening on this particular night and bee-lined straight for her. The woman was not at all Angel’s “type”. She was neither shifty, nor weaselly. Rather, this woman approached Angel’s corner table with a warm, friendly smile. She was singularly attractive, not young, but not old either. The woman’s make-up was as light as her perfume was. Her hair was pulled back and uncolored. Her clothing was of good quality, and was conservative in style. She had the refined look of a professional type, of a doctor maybe, and would have looked comfortable in a lab coat. And the woman’s demeanor was spot-on for her appearance with her naturally inquisitive eyes, and her shoulders confidently set, so much so that Angel’s hopes for the night actually rose. Surely such a woman as this had not come to her with degradative aims?

Angel’s instincts were only partially wrong.

”Hello! Angel, isn’t it?”

”Yes. Have we met?” Having chosen it herself, and having been decently raised, the name still left her a little uncomfortable to use. “Of course, Angel isn’t my ‘real’ name.”

The woman did not mean to cut, but her words were sharp, nevertheless. “I should think not.” The glimmer in the woman’s eyes vanished for just a tick, then was back, although stiffer. “No, we have not met. I am Beverly Vypont. I have a proposition for you. Do you mind if I sit?”

Curious, but also stung, Angel remained negligent with her invitation, exhaling a pointed and impolite stream of smoke in the woman’s direction while gesturing towards the seat opposite her own.

Beverly Vypont waited patiently for the smoke to clear before slipping properly into the offered chair. “I came by this afternoon and spoke with Carmen, your manager. She described you to me, suggested that I look for you.”

”Oh, how nice of her.” There was no emotion in Angel’s voice. Carmen had “recommended” her to this woman? So… this would likely be bad after all.

”May I explain my situation?”

”Sure. Why not?” Angel snuffed out her cigarette, the better to listen.

The woman paused, scanning the table as if for a drink. Catching the clue, Angel rose. She was, after all, a servant, if a barely dressed one. “What can I get you?”

”Whiskey. Neat. Thank you.” Beverly Vypont watched Angel circle the bar, liking what she saw. This girl Angel was just as Carmen had described her, youthful and pretty if a bit sharp featured. The girl wore nothing but a very short, scarlet negligee. The legs sticking out from below it were thin, pale, and a bit knock-kneed, but that was alright. It would not matter. Willingness was the key, and Carmen had hinted that this girl would brave just about anything. The whiskey Angel brought back was cheap, biting harshly at Beverly’s tongue, much as this mission did, but that did not matter, either.

”Now then. What is it you want from me?” Angel’s half-smile did not reach her eyes.

Right to the point, Beverly thought. Fair enough. “I need a woman for my son.”

Angel laughed dismissively. Usually it was the father with such a proposition, not the mother. “Why not just bring him in then, Lady. We’ve all done that trick here.”

Beverly Vypont was not laughing. “It is not that simple.”

Of course not. Angel cursed her bad luck. It was never that simple, not for her. “All right then, spit it out already. Why isn’t it that simple?”

Beverly Vypont’s eyes leveled on Angel’s own, looking through them into her very soul, striking Anne’s callous indignity a shameful hammer blow when she said it. “My son is dying.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Anne would have dropped her head into her hands were this Vypont woman not holding her hypnotized with her eyes. Could she never just get a “normal” guy?

“Dying can mean a lot things? What do you mean when you say it?”

”He is bedridden now, under hospice care. He has weeks, at most.”

”Well, how do you intend to get him here then?”

”I’m not. You will have to come with me. Carmen said it would be ok.”

Angel somewhat controlled her belligerence. “Carmen said? Screw Carmen, I’m not leaving here and going God knows where with some deranged woman who wants me to fuck her dying son!”

”I’ll pay you $100,000.”

Angel had been leaning forward over the table, the better to hear the woman’s whispered tones, but she sagged back now, her determination to say “no” whooshing out of her like air from a poorly patched tire. “$100,000? Jesus! Lady, are you batshit crazy? What do you expect me to do with him for that kind of money?” Her nosed curled with displeasure at the very thought of it.

Beverly Vypont refused to let this whore’s vile words rile her. ”I don’t know, honestly. I know he can get an erection, but I don’t know if he can feel anything… you know… down there. But he asked me for this, for a woman, and at this point I will give him whatever I can.”

Angel reached again for her cigarette pack. “What is wrong with him?”

”ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It’s a…”

”I know what ALS is. I’m not stupid.”

”Of course not. I did not mean to imply…”

”Whatever. Forget it. Fucking Carmen…. why me?” That last part was not intended to be spoken out loud, though it was.

”You don’t have to, you know? I can ask someone else.”

”For 100 grand? Not on your life! I’d blow a grizzly bear for 100 grand! I’ll do it, but sheeesh… it’s messed up, Lady.”

Beverly Vypont missed the attempted humor. Her reply was tight-lipped, and was spoken with a raised eyebrow. “You are talking about my child, ‘Lady’. And believe me, his life is much more messed-up than yours.”

”Oh! Yea. Sorry... though I kind of doubt that last bit is true.”

Having witnessed the worsts of God and man an Angel treads fearlessly forth, for in the darkest of pits goodness doth dwell, waiting to be awakened.

Beverly Vypont opened the door and waited, making way for a hesitant Angel to enter first. It was too large a room for a bedroom, though there was a bed in its center; the hospital type of bed with a button to raise its patient to a sitting position, and then to lower them again for sleeping. The bed was currently partially raised. The room was dark but for the soft, bluish glow of an electronic halo which encircled the headboard while somehow reaching without diminishment into the furthest corners of the room through air already weighted with the sickly odors of antiseptics, the odors and lights tangling together with the sounds of sucking oxygen and the consistently quiet beep of a heartbeat monitor. These were, Angel instinctively knew, the sights, smells, and sounds of an approaching death so close by as to leave her reverently docile.

”Christian? This is Angel.” There was obvious emotion in Beverly Vypont’s voice, enough to pull at Angel’s own heartstrings, dragging her into a fervent state as well. “She’s come for you.” The woman’s voice literally broke with that said. She backed quickly out of the doorway then, pulling it to behind her, leaving Angel practically alone in a room filled with fears.

Despite them, and with only the briefest hesitation, Angel tip-toed ever so slowly to the bed’s side. She had to see, didn’t she? What it was she was in for? He was truly little more than a boy. His head did not turn toward her as Angel came into his vision, though his eyes looked side-wise at her with something akin to terror in them. Angel understood that. She was afraid too. How to begin? What to do? How to do it? What if she hurt him, or unplugged something important? Hell, he might not even want her.

Angel started with the obvious. “Hi?”

He held a blow tube between his clenched lips. Her eyes followed its meandering tube down to a box that was connected by wire to another box which was in turn connected to an IV bag whose tube ran back down and into his arm. Rather than trying to reply around the blow tube the boy closed his eyes for a long second before reopening them, making Angel immediately aware that this was how he communicated, with his eyes. “Would you like to be friends, Christian?”

Angel was not sure how to feel when the eyes slowly closed and reopened. Part of her was repulsed, but a larger part was already reaching for the soul inside the boy’s emaciated shell. She could see it in there, hiding behind his silence, a young man as desperate to love as she was to be loved. “Good” she said. And she meant it. “I would like that, too.” Her smile wasn’t forced anymore. There was a chair beside the bed, so Angel removed her overcoat and draped it over the chair’s back, leaving herself in the same skimpy, silky red negligee she’d been wearing before, when Beverly Vypont had first approached her in the brothel. While beside the chair she sat down and removed the ridiculously tall shoes she’d put on for the ride over... anything to appear taller. Returning to the bedside she decided to make things easy. With either hand she pushed at the strings holding the “nightie” to her shoulders, letting it slide off and around her ankles so that she stood naked before him. She was pleased to see that Christian’s eyes widened again, but not with fear this time. They fell to her breasts, which was the only part of her he could actually see for the bed’s height. She giggled as his face actually blushed when he looked back up at her, his shame obvious in them.

”It’s ok to look,” she assured him.

And to show it was ok, she looked down too. It was her turn to be embarrassed. They were so small. Why in God’s name had the mother chosen her for this? Any of the other girls would have been better for this boy, though even as he looked there was a rustle of movement from under the bedsheets. They were apparently big enough. “Are they all right? They aren’t very big.”

The boys’ eyes closed and then re-opened, remaining on her body. She reached for his hand, finding it twisted, its fingers curled up tight as a rubber band, the arm it extended from pale, emaciated and weak. It was nothing for her to pick the hand up, as there was literally no opposing force, neither muscular nor gravitational. The hand was cold, so she gathered it up in both of her own, warming it, massaging it futilely in an attempt to relax what could not be relaxed. “You are so cold. Would you mind if I warmed you?”

The eyes closed and opened once more.

Letting go of the hand, she reached for his blankets, pulling slowly at them, respecting his shame and distrust. His body was wasted away, his ribs pushing birdlike against pale skin, their cage protruding overtop a starved abdomen, but there was nothing shrunken about one part of him. In fact, that part, being non-muscular, stood tall, swollen and purple with life. Ignoring it, Angel climbed in beside him, pulling the covers back over them both. “Is this ok?”

The boy’s muscles might be atrophied and weak, but there was nothing wrong with his skin, which thrilled at her warmth, and at the softness of her skin against his own. His eyes closed for a longer moment this time, and then reluctantly re-opened in acknowledgement. Angel rolled onto her side, so that she could see him better, and he her. She slid one knee forward until it rested gently atop his thigh. She had been with many people, and she was finding this one not so different after all. She could please him. It would be good work to please him. Who had she ever pleased who needed it more than this boy? She placed her hand on his chest, and was gratified to see his eyes close as her hand began to rub, massaging its warmth into him.

”You like that, don’t you?” There was no response from him, but she was not fooled. She correctly suspected that he had never been touched in this way. After a moment she allowed her hand to slide down to his stomach, and her thigh to slide up his until it touched his nether region, pulling an audible moan from the poor boy, followed by a puff into the tube in his mouth, which brought a beep from the box attached to the IV stand. This was going much easier than she could have expected. She blew lightly into his ear then, causing another moan, and another puff, and another beep. She whispered into his ear then, that thing every man wants to hear from a woman, “You are very big down there.” She wondered what it must feel like to hear that, and to be unable to respond? To be unable to reach for the woman who said it, unable to climb atop her at her invitation, unable to take her in any way that a man might take a woman.

In that moment Angel understood the mother, why she would go so far to give her son this, this… most beautiful of things… for this was, in it’s very essence, love... the joining of two into one. And in this moment Angel found herself loving the boy, her heart swelling for him and his condition, her throat choking for him, and her tears welling for him, almost as though he were her own. And in this moment, alone together in this room of death, and in this bed of love, wasn’t he was hers and no one else’s? And wasn’t she his, and wouldn’t she forever be his? Unabashedly then she went for it, going down and taking him into her mouth. If she would be the only lover the boy ever knew, then she would be a proper one! Through her tongue, and through her lips she felt the pulse of life in him, and she smelled the familiar smells of man and woman, and she heard both his puffing and the beeping of the infernal box through her own blood-stoppered ears, and as she felt his weakened body stiffen to climax she pulled away and climbed atop him, sliding herself onto him with her own audible moan. He felt good inside her, normal. Emaciated he might be, but he was a man, she was a woman, and they were meant to be this way together... only it was at that very moment that realization struck her.

Opening her eyes, she watched with an increasing curiosity as he puffed into the tube, inhaling through distended nostrils, exhaling through tightened lips. Like before, her eyes followed the tube down and around to the little white box which emanated its annoying beep with each of his breaths. Continuing on, she saw where the IV entered the box, and where it exited on the bottom side. And closer to his arm, with each puff of his mouth, and each beep of the box, she watched as liquid was pushed through the needle in his arm, into his veins, into his blood. His eyes were closed now, his body relaxed, the heart monitor sluggish for a moment before suddenly turning frantic. Oh, shit!

“Christian?”

Nothing. No movement. No tenseness, and only a limpness inside her. “Christian? Are you there? Open your eyes if you can hear me, Christian?” Despairingly she leapt, more than climbed, from the bed. What had she done? What had they made her do? What had they done to her? To him? On trembling legs she begged, “Christian? Please Christian, answer me?” And then more urgently, “I need you to answer me, Christian!”

Nothing. She screamed then, Angel did. She screamed, and she cried, standing naked and alone beside him, but the boy never woke, and the mother never heeded her calls, and God, as ever, ignored her, He having new and more important matters to address, and new souls to welcome…

She had chosen poorly, Angel had, both in name and profession. This loving humans is no easy task.