pickles and mustard

You’re wrong, you’re decay means everything to me. I’ve built a fiasco of a deck down in North Florida for my parents. Am going back tomorrow, to build it; out of need for money. Went down with Henry, just me and him. Because there is no use for art in our great country so we go and build decks. “I want momma,” he sez. Almost every night. Because I dragged him four hundred miles for money, because an artist father always needs money from somebody. We all sit down on the porch steps eating Krystal hamburgers for lunch one day, I scrape the pickles and mustard off for Henry.

“You’ve got grey hair,” my mother said, astonished, still in her tennis skirt. “I can see it in the sunlight.” “Yeah, I got lots.” I say, and that’s all, because of the same truth that makes people stop behind school buses. Or else they don’t stop.

I am not a whining liberal and I will break your fucking nose if you call me that. I am a full grown American craftsman, doing my best to keep from dying.