\ from every girl

I always preferred the snow angels in July, knocking down cat’s ears. Today I laid down in the cheatgrass and swung my arms overhead, imagined cattle egrets pecking at my toes.

God, faster, I think I could go. Used to drive a little tractor, foreman done equipped it with a governor, the beginning of my political apathy, I suppose, saw me and thought to himself, ‘This boy’s too fast. Burn the goddamn property down like a wildfire.’ He always looked at me askance as I was digging trenches, thought to himself, Jesus, what the hell are you doing here? You’re too smart for this. Finish your goddamned schooling and move on.’ But we’d ride around, me and this old farmhand, fixing fence posts, pushing up levees, dressing partridges, and still he’d think, ‘Goddamn. Get your head on straight.’ Didn’t understand why I listened so well, why my obedience stood higher on the chart than my ambition. I think I spent years with a shovel happier than I ever spent with a pen. Mightier my ass. Work ain’t ignorance, and it ain’t bliss.

We come across a restaurant once and he said he’d buy me lunch. I went right for the cheapest item on the menu, and he said, ‘Goddamn. You gonna eat what I eat. I’m gonna enjoy my meal in spite of you.’ Try to ruin his appetite, I would have. But sometimes when you are the guest, your only job is to ingratiate, and that’s the few times it’s good to live among these men and women who live for something more than they ever been. I let him order for me, and he bought us both the most expensive thing on the menu, and I don’t kid when I say his final bill was less then $15, and still it was priceless. He smiled with every bite, and thank god. There are still some good, simple folks walking these lands. I’ll never have a meal that good. I was making $4.25 an hour. Made the Dean’s list that semester no less, questioned my trajectory.

If he had been a girl I’d seduced, I would have driven him out past the hills of Fayette and pulled over to watch the fireflies, popped the flask and kissed her lower lip until she questioned her existence. Would have looked into her eyes so deep, through them even, like trying to find the pirate treasure in a stereogram, the shark and the broken ship and at the back of her brown eyes said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you were every girl I’d ever loved, come back to see if I took your advice, worked on my technique.’ And she would have said I kiss like every time’s the last, and I don’t mind. Long sleeves and bandages are in better supply than times like these, they are. Come back to me, and leave those memories behind. Make’em new again.