Inbox1 Fr: Colleen

“Talked to Dennis last night, said you send him wacky txt msgs too.”

Sent her one this morning “Give the Bastards Hell;” my friend back in NY, striding among the assholes every morning. Waking up and going out to work
Cause I finally figured out how to do it, change the diaper and type on the phone.
Sent one to Dennis too, “Never Surrender.”

“Hell me & Dennis go all day long. Henry is riding his bike!”

Rather well, down the hill. With helmet, around the mud, peddling past trees, feet spinning as he goes up onto the training wheels. He’s loosing me in the distance as I type.

The trail goes for miles. Opposite the truck across the baseball field, he dumps the bike and runs downhill for the old barb wire. The phone beeps in my pocket:

“Must be nice, hanging out all day”

I get him up the hill, the bike onto my back and we make it across the field, mid February. I am walking beside my son in the middle of wet Tennessee and that boy, right there, can almost ride a bike. His mother is nursing his sister back in the truck. We are going to get burritos in Johnson City. I somehow keep him out of the wet clay of the pitchers mound. We somehow have fifteen hundred dollars in the bank and I can still work the phone:

“Harder now that there are two. Marys work got health ins.”

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Henry and I,

we're striding together through tennessee.