Clear view of the constellations.
He says go to Hell if you calling me a liar, go ahead and don’t believe me if you simple and left it at that. He’s lying for sure; I know he’s lying cause he makes a big deal, begging me please to believe him when he ain’t lying, boozed up proper hollering about. It’s Jenny word too, it ain’t like she a liar. She’s a friend and she said she seen what she seen. Also, I got real good natural instincts for these things, finding out lies, a gifted whatchamacallit—a whiz kid with good genes. My Pa was a police in town, upstanding one kinda, before he retired to losing fishing tournaments and crying the blues about his own Pa who treated him more like a handy helper than a son if ya know what I mean. Shame then, dinner was no more lemon butter catfish after that, only fried bologna sandwiches until our guts rusted. Until we done something about it. Jones and me that is. Jonesy. I hope he and that lady of his, that fine as all outdoors redheaded lady, are sitting somewhere fat and pretty. That face full of freckles of hers always did remind me of the constellations. Ones like this here night when I’m on the porch and need good company for a good cry.
He was a good man, Jonesy, and I deserve a good man too gosh darn it; even if I ain’t no princess peach; so, it’s a gosh darn kick in the uterus to be here rolling his lies off my back like some possum playing dead after the dog walks away as he broods on about how hard he got it. Again. Another night of me saying I’m done and knowing I ain’t.
His life is buckshot, I’ll call that there a spade. Shit, pardon me, shucks, mine is too. Buckshot. Difference is though I can handle it. I know this here life ain’t all purebreds. You gotta find the silver linings but no matter what tune I sing that song in, he don’t hear it...like he got lint in those little round ears of his. I try I think and such, plan ahead and write stuff down. I roll with the punches life throws me and his lies all the same. I ain’t got much, but I got what a man needs that much I think so, my goodness I do. I keep a clean trailer, real tidy. I got the best crockpot in the park. I don’t never forget the essentials like toilet paper and Bengay for his back when I take the car into town after Church and he’s cussing after a day of riding. I make it so he gotta look for things to fuss over so I ain’t but asking for more than just a little. I ain’t one of them girls and he knows it. Don’t need much. I like our ‘nothing too fancy’ nights drinking smoking and singing to the radio on whoever’s porch is having. It’s a little thing and I don’t have to, but I light myself up anyhow for our ‘nothing too fancy’ nights and then throw the flame on his pile of junk in the corner; his ‘projects’ and rusty car parts and dirty clothes and broken appliances and he don’t even bother to sweep up the ashes when it’s all neat and easy for him when we get home. Says he’s gonna fix em and sell em someday. Even when I make riddin’ em so easy I let him lie. After lighting myself up. After still wanting him sometimes after all these years and even when I don’t want him and he wants me I don’t got no problem with him having me any which way. I’m not afraid to give no blowjob neither. Man has it rough and sex as much as a man can’t live without it boy he has to work hard doing it with all that pumping. I don’t mind, frankly I love telling a man who’s earned it, a man who went to work all week and called me on the phone and came home when he say so, to drop his pants around his ankles and lean back. I’ll take any man back to the back of the county fair, back behind the Ferris wheel, oh you bet, especially my man, especially if my man acting like a gentleman. Sometimes there be the silver linings, little mischievous moments of wonder. Sometimes the life’s you live in your head better than the one that God have in front of you. Sin to say it but it’s true.
I came back inside. Too much constellations on a night so clear can be a treacherous thing for a superstitious girl like myself. He was sitting by the window, his hair up in a straggly ponytail looking like something you could flay for food but I still found him cute as he drank his whisky like always—with his eyes closed and a big gulp and a large swig of cola right after. Looking all constipated. Getting it all down cause he can’t enjoy whisky like no real man. He can’t enjoy the taste and he can’t sip it slow. Still drinks like a college boy and still acts one too. Never bothered me, usually makes me laugh, except for how it turns him sometimes. He looked at me then, eyed up my legs and spit into a cup. I sat down took out a smoke and turned on the radio. Song we both liked, uncanny to come on, played through some static. I figured it might be the stars giving me good memories, a song that reminded me of young sunny days dancing barefoot in special places. Don’t know it exactly but it’s something like, “But the dreams that a young girl should dream were just the dreams of a child yesterday,” something like that. He spoke, said he didn’t like the song no more. I could tell in his face, the one he usually makes after his gulps of rye now too topped with the saddest of eyes, that he was turned some way. I tried to say something and maybe I shouldn’t have. I said I thought it was a song about coming to the know life is silver linings and it ain’t all purebreds. He didn’t like that and maybe it wasn’t called for in the moment, advice and being nosy, I can get carried away to the sound of music and boy he can too. I almost minded for a second but then I was fine. His hands from a hard day’s work were thick with callouses and felt like gloves as they helped my waist over the kitchen counter. The counter was clean, real tidy. And it was that real tidy counter along with the constellations through the windowsill that made it easy, hard as it was, to find the silver-lining. Because what life does is it passes and the strangest things happen every day and you’re screwed if you don’t find em where you can.
