![\"BULL#4covershot\"](\"http:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/BULL4covershot.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h3>\nI found Mother outside in the chaise lounge, watching a TV she\u2019d strung through the window of the double-wide. Flopped next to her on the patio table sat a large-print book on Astral Projection and a couple of her favorite crystals. This big chunk of obsidian and a thick slab of quartz. She\u2019s getting up there, Mother. Complains about her veins, her arthritis. But she\u2019s got a sharp mind. Still crazy as ever for that off-brand religion. Stray prophets and ancient texts. Alien monuments on the surface of Mars. She was dressed in her usual stretch pants and flip-flops. Had her T-shirt from the Worm Grunting Festival up in Sopchoppy. She was rubbing the crystals and going through the receipts from The Royal Palms. That\u2019s our motel. Or rather her motel. Which I manage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAren\u2019t those our criminals?\u201d she said, pointing at the TV. The screen showed grainy footage from a surveillance camera of two boys waving automatic pistols around a bank in Pensacola. \u201cMaybe you ought to call the police.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey checked out days ago,\u201d I said. Actually, they left in the middle of the night, having absolutely trashed our number 10 unit, down at the end of the motel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a fire fight,\u201d she said. \u201cKilled a guard at the bank.\u201d<\/p>\n
I popped the top off the beer I was holding and scratched my belly through my open shirt. It was one of Dad\u2019s old shirts, covered with Mai-Tais and naked ladies.<\/p>\n
Mother looked at her watch. She shot me this long, deadly stare over the beer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmounts to the same thing,\u201d I said, \u201cwhether you get drunk alone, or you\u2019re the leader of nations. That\u2019s JP Sartre.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should have never gone to college,\u201d said Mother, \u201cif that\u2019s all you were going to learn. Look at Rodger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cock-Doctor?\u201d I said. My brother, the go-getter of the family. Skipping grades and getting scholarships. Now he\u2019s a plastic surgeon down in Boca Raton where he specializes in cocks. Claims he can find you another two inches in there.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be ugly,\u201d said Mother. \u201cAnd speaking of those criminals, have you cleaned out unit 10 yet?\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve got daily rates at The Royal Palms, or you can pay by the week or month. That\u2019s what these guys had done. They seemed all right when I first checked them in, but after a few weeks, this huge pile of garbage lay out front of unit 10. The Astroturf smelled of piss. They\u2019d broken our patio furniture, ripped up the fence, and they\u2019d tossed our pink flamingos into the scrubby junipers next to the Church\u2019s Fried Chicken. Then a few days ago they vanished. I\u2019d only been in there once to plywood the window and stretch caution tape across the door. The unit was a total loss, littered with Sudafed boxes and spent cans of Dran-O. The whole property stunk of ammonia. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s healthy in there,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRodger says not to call the EPA,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ll never hear the end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was probably right about that, though I wasn\u2019t going to admit it. And, of course, that was another good reason not to get involved with the police.<\/p>\n
I drained my beer and slouched off down the blacktop, flip-flops slapping against the soles of my feet. But I sure as hell wasn\u2019t going straight down to unit 10. A man my age who lives with his mother\u2014it\u2019s trench warfare. It\u2019s every goddamned yard. I had to let her watch me screw around for a bit. So I walked over to the bean-shaped pool, stooping to pull a few leaves from the water. Then I wandered out to Highway 98, where I stood beneath our sign, this royal palm tree, painted pink and circled with blinking marquee lights. I listened to them clicking as they made their revolutions. Through the trees I could see the sunlight shattering in the Gulf. I spent a few minutes picking trash out of a squat butterfly palm, and then I leaned against one of our tall sabals. A warm breeze blew against my skin, and I popped the last button on my naked ladies and Mai-Tais.<\/p>\n
I watched this girl from unit 3 step out to the curb for a cigarette. Mostly we get retirees at The Royal Palms. Widows. Old ladies in muumuus, with accents out of Baltimore and Queens. Their husbands have worked hard all their lives, only to drop dead at the age of 64. Alone, they wander the flat white beaches of the Panhandle. Nothing but dog-eared paperbacks full of hot Latin love to pass around the pool. That wasn\u2019t the situation in unit 3.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d cropped her hair down short, dyed it blonde, and lacquered it stiff as plastic. Freckles spattered her cheeks, like something flicked off a spoon. She was thin as a cable whip, stringy-looking, and she was seriously pissed off. Beneath her cut-offs, I could see her legs were a mishmash of thick tattoos. None of it tourist stuff, dolphins and fairies. This girl had etched skulls and medieval crosses into her skin. Indecipherable phrases. Bizarre runes and coiled serpents. Mother must\u2019ve checked her in, as I hadn\u2019t seen her before.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood afternoon,\u201d I said, walking along the units.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s so good about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a piece of shit…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/h3>\n“A man my age who lives with his mother, it\u2019s trench warfare. It\u2019s every goddamned yard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-charley-henley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11474"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12109,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474\/revisions\/12109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}