Del Murphy awoke in room so dark it made his eyes hurt. He lay on a futon that smelled of stale sweat, in a strange house and he stared into that black hole, his mind burning through money he didn\u2019t yet have in a life that lay beyond the day. The house belonged to a biker named Butch, who at one time dated Del\u2019s wild sister May. Del was there babysitting seven garbage bags of wild growing pot that he\u2019d harvested and was waiting for the deal to go down. He\u2019d never had more than a dime bag in his possession, so when he lucked into that much weed, he had few options. The pot grew on some orange groves outside of Tampa and the farmer wanted nothing to do with it. He let Del have it for a share of the profits.<\/p>\n
Del and Butch were not friends, nor had they ever been, but Butch had a place to stash the stuff and he was the only one Del knew who could sell it all. Butch wore thick, steel rings on the fingers of his right hand and had once used them to make ground meat of a man\u2019s face and skull in a bar fight, and though this knowledge left Del leery, he was determined to see the deal through.<\/p>\n
The cell phone briefly illuminated the dingy room. It was Eula. Del ignored the call. He lifted the blackout shade letting golden light fill the room. There was something hopeful about mornings and he liked being up early. He just didn\u2019t like getting up early. The crank to the jalousie window was rusted and it took some effort to let in a little fresh air. His right hand was sore. Too many hours gripping power tools. Del grabbed a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lit one. The cell phone lit up again. It was his old man calling to warn him that Eula was looking for him and she was spitting venom. He wished his old man hadn\u2019t opened his mouth. Del had walked out on Eula and the boys again about three weeks before and she wanted the money he\u2019d promised her.<\/p>\n
The room had a dank pungency to it, but even through the foul residue of sweat, body odors and other remnants of a biker whorehouse, Del smelled money. Enough to get him right with Eula, get him the hell out of his old man\u2019s house and maybe buy a used pickup. Something he could use to deliver cabinets. Nothing fancy. Even in his imaginings, it had a rusted fender. His old man already said to use the garage as a shop. That would work fine, he just didn\u2019t want to live there. Too many rules. He\u2019d gone down a couple times for small stuff and he knew what it was and didn\u2019t want Del tracing his footsteps.<\/p>\n
Three hard knocks at the front door echoed through the house and Del stiffened. Cops were always busting this place for prostitution or drugs. Del stared at the .38 on the nightstand. Butch left gun with instructions to shoot anyone who comes in the goddamned house.<\/p>\n
\u201cDel, I know you\u2019re in there,\u201d Eula said in a twang that revealed her as a transplant to Florida from up in the South. Her voice muffled by the front door.<\/p>\n
\u201cShit,\u201d Del said quietly. \u201cAlright. Gimme a minute.\u201d Del\u2019s voice echoed through the house. He dropped his feet to the cool terrazzo where he could feel sand and stickiness from an origin that he didn\u2019t want to contemplate. He looked at the other three futon couches crowded into the small room, each with stuffing bulging from worn seams like cotton aneurisms and he wondered about the business conducted here. He stuffed the gun in the drawer and looked at a framed painting of a sad clown that hung on the wall. It looked to be one of those paint by number art projects and seemed oddly out of place.<\/p>\n
A series of muffled pops came from Del\u2019s body as he stretched his sinewy frame, with the cigarette hanging in his lips and smoke rising in coils. Two nights previous he\u2019d worked until two in the morning loading cabinets at his former job and then spent the next day installing. Work for which he had not been paid and the reason he quit. He wasn’t mad at Johnny or Robert about that. Del understood the cabinet business and thought maybe once he got his own shop running they\u2019d sub work to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome on, Del,\u201d Eula said, pounding on the door. \u201cI got the boys in the car.\u201d Eula leaned against the door frame with a long cigarette in her hand. She wore skinny jeans with slits in the knees and thighs, her long, mousey hair pulled into a ponytail.<\/p>\n
Del stood in front of the blue toilet, shirtless, in his gray boxers, white chested with sunburned forearms. The commode had no lid or seat and the inside was stained with black mold and rust. The only sound in the house was that of toilet water running in the fill tank and Interstate traffic traveling close enough to cast moving shadows through patches of dried weeds and gray sand that passed for a front yard. Del pissed and smoked while alternately looking at the bloated vanity door that leaned against the wall and the collapsed remnants of a dead rat that lay beneath the rusted plumbing in the cabinet.<\/p>\n
He made his way to the front door thinking of the last words his mother said to him before she ran off with that Cuban lawyer from Miami. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead and said, \u201cLife is too goddamned short to be unhappy.\u201d She glared at his old man, kissed May and disappeared from their lives.<\/p>\n
Del opened the front door as far as the security chain would allow and squinted through a blast of sunlight at Eula\u2019s backlit figure. Her ten-year-old minivan burned oil on the gravel driveway. The shadows of cars flowed steadily across the gray sand yard like the workings of some giant piece of machinery.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoddammit Del, I\u2019m in a hurry,\u201d Eula said trying to see into the darkness. \u201cWhat\u2019re you hiding in there anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019d had an on-and-off relationship for the better part of ten years and Del still couldn\u2019t figure out where they were going. They\u2019d never talked about love or said the words. When they first moved in together she brought up marriage and he said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between this and that?\u201d And that\u2019s where it stayed.<\/p>\n
Del unlatched the chain, stepped out of the house in nothing but his boxers and ran a hand through his tussled blonde hair. When they first met, Eula said he looked like that blond dude from Hall & Oates<\/em>, and though Del took the compliment for what it was, he\u2019d always hated that fucking band. He looked Eula up and down. She was agitated and shifting her weight from side-to-side, but had makeup on and smelled nice, sweet like magnolias. Eula\u2019s face was plain as cabbage and somewhat forgettable, but she was built like a stripper, all tits and ass and that picture was indelible.<\/p>\n \u201cDel, what are you doing here?\u201d Eula asked, gesturing to the house. \u201cButch scares the hell out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s off doing biker shit, so don\u2019t worry about it.\u201d Del mindlessly picked at flaking paint on the doorframe.<\/p>\n \u201cYou promised money for the boys.\u201d She shook her cigarette at him and he stared at the red lipstick that stained the filter. \u201cAnd you won\u2019t pick up my goddamn calls.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHell Eula, only one of em\u2019s mine.\u201d Del waved to the boys who were jumping up and down in their booster seats shouting Daddy. One was a redhead with freckles and the other had dark skin and kinky hair.<\/p>\n Her face dropped and she lowered her voice. \u201cIf I was a man I would punch you right in your face. Those boys love you and you abandoned them. I need these boys in daycare. I\u2019m a week late at Kiddie Castle and I gotta give Mrs. Mona something. I will report you this time. Don\u2019t test me.\u201d<\/p>\n Del looked past Eula at the boys. Delbert was his. That she lumped Carl in the deal was okay too. He liked being a sometime dad. Del said he had fifty-bucks and disappeared back into the house to get it while Eula waited on the porch to keep an eye on the boys. Del came back wearing a gray T-shirt and faded work jeans. He produced two twenties, a five, and two ones, which he counted into Eula\u2019s extended hand like a store clerk, explaining that the cops were out and he stopped to buy mints on the drive over. She stared at the money and asked for the twenty he kept in the side pocket of his wallet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all the cash I got,\u201d Del said.<\/p>\n \u201cGoddammit, Del,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Del produced the Jackson and asked if she was maybe thinking about going back to dancing. The money was good and she always had cash back then.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat world are you livin\u2019 in, Del?\u201d Eula said. \u201cBobby\u2019s clientele don\u2019t care to see a dancer who\u2019s thirty-two and had two C-sections. I\u2019ll keep waiting tables \u2018til I get out of school.\u201d Eula was a fast talker and she spit the words out like one of those auctioneers selling livestock.<\/p>\n \u201cI quit the cabinet shop,\u201d he said out of nowhere, thinking that she might take something from that.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s just brilliant.\u201d She turned around clutching the money and cursed words that Del couldn\u2019t hear, then shook her head and turned back to him with that stunned expression of a person whose house has been robbed.<\/p>\n \u201cLook it,\u201d Del said. \u201cI\u2019m working something big with Butch. After that, I\u2019m going to open my own shop and work out of my old man\u2019s garage. He\u2019s got that detached garage out on his property. It\u2019ll make a sweet little shop.\u201d<\/p>\n Eula\u2019s eyes widened a bit and her face relaxed and for a moment, Del thought that she could see his dream as vividly as he could. She said, \u201cI gotta say, that\u2019s a good idea, but it doesn\u2019t help me out and it sure as hell doesn\u2019t get you out of your responsibilities. I didn\u2019t even have goddamned milk for the boys this morning.\u201d Her voice cracked and she turned as if to walk away, then turned back around. \u201cGoddammit, I spent the last of what I had on tuition.\u201d<\/p>\n She blurted this out in the way of a confession it seemed to Del. Eula was close to getting her hygienist certificate and needed him to help pay for that. Her eyes welled as she ran out of fight. She leaned in and wrapped her arms around him. Eula wasn\u2019t one to give hugs but she took them when she needed to. Del put an arm around her and flicked the nub of his cigarette into the yard. She felt nice in his arms. The soft parts of her body felt good. Suddenly three weeks away seemed like a long time. Del watched curiously as Carl rolled down a window in the minivan and stuck his head out.<\/p>\n \u201cDelbert\u2019s gotta go potty.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRight now?\u201d Eula pushed away from Del and checked the time on her phone.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s holding his pee pee.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEula, this house ain\u2019t kid friendly,\u201d Del said. \u201cHe can go in the yard.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot in sight of the whole goddamned freeway,\u201d Eula said. \u201cNow open the door your son has to pee.\u201d Eula hustled down the porch steps, shut off the Town & Country and unbuckled the boys from their boosters. Delbert, the redhead, was four and Carl, the result of Del having previously walked out on Eula, was five. The boys ran toward the house as Del\u2019s brain worked hard on a lie. Initially, he\u2019d flirted with the idea of showing Eula the pot just to see her expression. To prove something. That was before he knew the boys were there. The boys grabbed Del around the legs shouting, \u201cDaddy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood morning, Carl. Morning Delbert. I miss you boys.\u201d Del rubbed the boys on their heads and squeezed them. They looked cute as hell in their plaid shorts, T-shirts and Converse All-Stars and they barraged him with questions.<\/p>\n \u201cIs this your house?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe paint is peeling.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre we going to move here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI like our old house better.\u201d<\/p>\n Del explained that he was watching the house for a friend and braced himself, swinging open the door. \u201cMake it quick. Straight down the hall. First door on the right.\u201d The boys stepped in and became two statues gawking at the mysterious spectacle.<\/p>\n In the living room, there sat two sawhorses on which rested a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. Mounded high atop the plywood was a bright green mound of marijuana that nearly reached the ceiling.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is it?\u201d Carl asked, while Delbert ran to the bathroom.<\/p>\n Eula stood in that doorway and her lips parted. Her expression of disgust conveyed more than any string of expletives. Del shrugged with a hangdog look.<\/p>\n \u201cGo with your brother right now,\u201d Eula said to Carl.<\/p>\n \u201cBut,\u201d the boy stammered, \u201cwhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s oregano,\u201d Del said. \u201cYou put it on pizza.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre you a farmer?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGo on now,\u201d Eula admonished the boy, who ran into the bathroom.<\/p>\n \u201cDelbert, our daddy\u2019s a farmer,\u201d Carl announced. The sound of pee hitting water echoed through the house.<\/p>\n Eula stared at the mound of pot with her arms crossed and her lips clenched and her head shaking side-to-side. \u201cHow much is there?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSeven garbage bags or so. Maybe twelve kilos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell that is about the biggest pile of stupid I have ever seen in my life. You are in way over your head. You\u2019re a cabinetmaker. You don’t know a damned thing about being a drug dealer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, that just makes it sound a whole lot worse than it is.\u201d<\/p>\n Eula said she was getting the boys the hell out of there and that Del should do the same and walk away from this. \u201cIt\u2019s a black cloud,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n There was no use explaining. Eula was beyond reason. \u201cEula, it\u2019s a one-timer, to get on my feet,\u201d Del said, as she collected the boys. \u201cI\u2019m just babysitting it \u2018til Butch gets here with my money, then I\u2019m out clean.\u201d<\/p>\n Eula marched Carl and Delbert out and upon her departure sucked the air from the room, leaving Del staring at his pile of pot. He walked out to the porch and watched Eula buckle the boys in their booster seats and then climb in the minivan. He was happy they were leaving. Butch and the Renegades were a nasty bunch. Eula turned the key, but the ignition made that clicking sound that signaled immobility and bad luck, and her body deflated into the steering wheel.<\/p>\n \u201cDamn,\u201d Del said softly, seeing the idea of his day take a hard left. He walked out to the minivan and looked in the window at Eula, who seemed on the verge of a breakdown. He said he\u2019d drive her up to Kiddie Castle and pay Mrs. Mona with his credit card and then drop her off at work and she smiled at him in a crazy, giddy way like everything in her world had been taken away from her and then given right back.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOld MacDonald had a farm eieio.\u201d The boys sang and bounced up and down in their booster seats while Del drove. \u201cAnd on that farm, he had some\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOregano!\u201d Carl sang out.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s enough singing, boys,\u201d Eula said.<\/p>\n Del\u2019s Chrysler K-car, a sun-faded blue with one shiny red door, limped along with the windows open, while the burgeoning heat of the day swirled through the vehicle like a warm hurricane carrying with it bits of ash and smoke from their cigarettes. In the back seat the boys fanned the flying ash away from their faces. They had not been on the road more than two minutes when Eula started in with the right-lane-left-lane thing. Del liked the right lane. He was never really in a hurry. Eula argued that too many cars turn in the right lane so you\u2019re always having to stop and that was frustrating.<\/p>\n \u201cWould you stop telling me how to drive?\u201d Del finally said, thinking of all those little things Eula did that drove him away in the first place. \u201cYou find the most insignificant things to control.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t control anything,\u201d she said. \u201cNot one goddamned thing in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kiddie Castle was a freestanding, rectangular block structure with the fa\u00e7ade of a medieval castle depicted on the front. A handsome blond prince rested on one knee and gazed up at a beautiful princess who looked down on him from the tower window. Lurking behind the tower, a green dragon breathed fire into the air. Del studied the illustration as he and Eula walked the boys inside. He paid the bill and let Eula keep the cash he\u2019d given her. On the way out, Eula held Del\u2019s arm as he escorted her through the illustrated drawbridge. When they were on the road to Alibi\u2019s, the place where Eula worked, Del told her to look in the brown grocery bag that sat between them. While Del was in the house staring at the pot, he had an idea. The way he figured it, all that pot was his. No one really knew exactly how much was there. The only one who\u2019d seen the pile was Butch and he wouldn\u2019t know the difference. So, he stuffed a few handfuls of fat, green buds into the bag thinking that some of Eula\u2019s clients might want to buy some.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you wake up and take a stupid pill?\u201d Eula shouted. \u201cI am not selling drugs. I am going be a hygienist.\u201d She lit a cigarette and stared out the window and they drove on in silence.<\/p>\n Del watched the world moving through the windshield; busy people doing busy things headed to who knows where. At an intersection, he watched a Ford F150 drive by hauling a flatbed trailer loaded with cabinets. The guys in the cab were laughing about something and Del thought, that\u2019s how dreams work. They pass before your eyes and it\u2019s up to you to catch them and make them yours. He made a mental list of things he would need besides a pickup truck, like a table saw, a compressor, power tools, wood clamps, and as the list grew he decided he\u2019d have to write all this stuff down.<\/p>\n Del pulled into Alibi\u2019s parking lot and found a spot under the shade of an oak tree and the car crunched its way over the acorns that covered the black asphalt. Alibi\u2019s was a squat, white building with a flat roof, and nude Bond-girl silhouettes painted in glossy black in various dance poses all the way around. A pink neon-sign on the street corner flashed: nude girls. Inside the place was plush and attracted a mixed bag of clients, from Porsche drivers to those driving beaters as crappy as Del\u2019s. The place was located in an industrial area along with warehouses, lumber yards and manufacturing plants and was directly in the path of Tampa International. Landing planes passed so low that the sound was deafening and it seemed as if the landing gear would skid over the roof of Del\u2019s car.<\/p>\n Del remembered the night he\u2019d met Eula at a place like this. She was dancing and naked and mesmerizing. Though the girl was laid bare for all to see, soulful eyes revealed more to him than the symmetry of her veneer. She had on her ankle a scripted tattoo that read Never Again, and bruises on her arms that betrayed a bad situation. He spent all his money on her and asked her out to breakfast and when it came time to pay he told her that she had all his money and they laughed about that. It was the last time he saw her dance. After that it bothered him to watch. She admitted that she was living out of her car and he invited her home.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll get your car fixed and pick you up later,\u201d Del said.<\/p>\n She reached her hand toward him and he put his leathery hand in hers. Their hands rested in front of the brown grocery bag. Del looked at Eula then and made an obvious nod toward the pot. She pulled her hand away and said goddammit. \u201cI can\u2019t risk it, Del. Can\u2019t you understand that?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEula, look it. If the opportunity arises, get rid of it and all the money is yours. And that\u2019s way more than what I owe you.\u201d<\/p>\n Eula got out of the car, leaned in the window and waited for the roar of a jet to pass. \u201cYou know, I go to hygienist school with Indian girl named Ananya. She\u2019s a Hindu and she said, \u201cKarma has no menu. You get served what you deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDamn, Eula, you\u2019re going to give me bad luck talkin\u2019 like that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m only on a four hour shift today, so pick me up at two o\u2019clock and we\u2019ll get the boys,\u201d she said. Del nodded and Eula stared at the bag and frowned. \u201cDamn it. Bobby will buy all this shit in a heartbeat and he\u2019s got the cash too.\u201d Eula grabbed the grocery bag and headed into the club and Del watched her pissed-off ass shake all the way to the door.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Del\u2019s mobile phone rang and the caller ID read Butch.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere the fuck are you?\u201d Butch said. \u201cAnd whose fucking car is this?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMan cool down,\u201d Del said. \u201cEula pulled in to get some dough and\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou let her in the house?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo. You got any jumper cables?\u201d The line went dead. \u201cButch?\u201d<\/p>\n When Del got to the house, Butch stood next to his chopper holding a pair of jumper cables. Butch was thick, with a ratty beard, tattoos on his arms, a pretty good sized gut, and he wore a black leather vest with the Renegades\u2019 colors on the back. He had a gamey smell about him. Butch dropped the cables on the ground when Del pulled up. He hocked up a loogie, spit it on the hood of the minivan and said, \u201cGet this the fuck out of my driveway.\u201d Then he walked in the house. Del pulled his car next to the minivan and got it started then asked Butch if he\u2019d follow him to the gas station for ride back. Butch gave him the finger and continued rolling himself a joint. Del drove the minivan to a Firestone and walked three miles back to the house. Heat waves shimmered like mirages over the asphalt streets, and with every step under the pounding sun Del got closer to the house and the sickly feeling of having made a mistake. It was like being on a bad acid trip and all he could do was ride it out. By the time he arrived, sweat burned in his eyes and his jeans and T-shirt were stuck to his skin. He walked in the front door thinking about a cold Mountain Dew and stopped to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Then the room went black.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Del wasn\u2019t out long, at least he didn\u2019t think he was. His right eye throbbed and his head felt like the worst tequila hangover he\u2019d ever had. He sat up and spit blood on the floor from the hole he\u2019d bitten in his tongue and the metallic taste of it made him nauseous. He looked up with his good eye to see Butch sitting a chair with the .38 revolver in his lap. Del touched his swollen eye. It was purple and the whites were red where blood vessels had burst.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fuck did you do that for?\u201d The words slurred from Del\u2019s mouth.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pile looks light.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat why you hit me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI hit you cause I don\u2019t like you,\u201d Butch said. \u201cI know you fucked the deal with May. She liked it up the ass too. Hard.\u201d Then he chuckled and Del realized that was the first time he\u2019d seen Butch\u2019s teeth. There were a couple missing, but they weren\u2019t bad teeth considering, and he thought about Eula and how she could identify which teeth those were. She would have known that one was a cuspid and the other a bicuspid or something like that.<\/p>\n The room teetered. Del tried to rise but felt the blood rush from his head and plopped back to the floor. Blood and saliva seeped from his open mouth like bright red syrup. He pushed himself back against the wall and focused on Butch with one good eye. Butch accused him of stealing some pot.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil I get paid it\u2019s my pot,\u201d Del said. \u201cSo, fuck you. How did you know anyway?\u201d Del surveyed the pile.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t, you stupid fuck,\u201d Butch said.<\/p>\n Butch shifted the revolver in his lap and smoked a joint. Del looked at the gun and asked if Butch was going to shoot him and Butch said he might. Del said that would be stupid seeing how he was the only one who knew where the pot grew and when it\u2019d be ready to harvest again. Butch rocked in his chair, pointed the gun at Del\u2019s face and cocked it. Del stared at the barrel. His stomach cramped. He got tunnel vision. He didn\u2019t want to crap his pants but felt he might.<\/p>\n \u201cYou pussy.\u201d Butch waved the gun. \u201cGet the fuck out of here. When we figure this shit out you\u2019ll get your cut. Or we might just kill you and your fucking bitch in your sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n Del wavered and reached for one of the saw horses to lift himself up. His legs wobbled like one of those wooden puppets held together by rubber bands. The burning pot smelled good. Blood pooled in his mouth and he spat on the floor. \u201cThat\u2019s about thirty pounds of pot. I want a third or next time I take the deal somewhere else.\u201d He went to the bedroom and grabbed his bag, then took a Mountain Dew from fridge. Butch didn\u2019t move. He sat there with the .38 in his lap staring at the mound of pot with a shitty, half-assed smirk on his face.<\/p>\n Del staggered through the sandy yard like a desperate man emerging from the desert. He sat in the spinning car and with trembling hands opened the Mountain Dew. It burned in his mouth, tingled all the way to his stomach and then came right back up. He leaned out the door and vomited in the sand. The next sip was cold and stayed down, and he started the car and struggled to keep it between the lines. A mile or so up the road he pulled into a parking lot and turned off the engine. The cell phone woke him and he looked around with no recollection of having driven there. It was Eula, who surprisingly wasn\u2019t pissed off that he was late. Though his head ached and his eye throbbed like a heartbeat on his face, the dizziness had subsided. His vision was still fuzzy in one eye but he could drive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eula waved and smiled when Del pulled up, but that all faded when she saw his face. She went back in the club and brought out ice in a baggy which she held to his purple eye, and he thought in that moment that she\u2019d make a good dental hygienist. On the drive to get the boys Eula said she was sorry that the deal didn\u2019t work out and Del said, \u201cIt ain\u2019t over yet.\u201d Then Eula pulled out a wad of cash and beamed. Bobby had given her a thousand dollars for the pot. Del smiled and didn\u2019t let on that what he\u2019d given her was worth twice that. She looked at him then, with discerning eyes. It was a respectful kind of look, and he could tell that she was thinking about being a regular family and that he was someone on whom she and the boys could rely. It felt good to be thought of that way in the short term. To come through on a promise and be admired. He imagined himself vested in that role. The provider. The man of the house. Working out of his own cabinet shop. Del Murphy Cabinets, he\u2019d call it. Yet, even in that moment of imagining, which is usually as good as things get, it was too much to live up to. It wasn\u2019t in him to hold up to that kind of pressure over the long haul. Living with Eula and the boys, it always felt temporary. Like that part of his life was just a weigh-station on the way to somewhere else. Nevertheless, under her approving eyes, he felt the pendulum swing back toward her and the unhappiness that drove him to leave faded.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you hear about the comet that\u2019s visible in the night sky?\u201d she said. \u201cOne of my customers was talking all about it. He\u2019s an amateur astronomer or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI hadn\u2019t heard anything about it,\u201d Del said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s called the Hale-Bopp Comet and it won\u2019t come around again for another 2,400 years. Can you imagine that? It has been traveling that way for billions of years all around the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s pretty cool,\u201d Del said. Though he really didn\u2019t care about it one way or the other. Eula always latched on to oddities like that.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d like to see that comet,\u201d she said. \u201cTo say I did. Because if you miss it now, no one on this earth will ever see it again. Why don\u2019t you come home tonight? We\u2019ll grill burgers and hot dogs and watch the comet. And then we can say we saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019d like that,\u201d Del replied.<\/p>\n They stopped by Kiddie Castle on the way to pick up the minivan and Eula told the boys that Daddy was coming home. The boys asked about Del\u2019s face while he was switching out the booster seats and he explained that he\u2019d had an accident at work.<\/p>\n Del followed the minivan onto the interstate for the ride across town and he thought about Eula\u2019s smiling face and it made him happy. It felt good, the four of them together. Despite his pounding head and failing vision in one eye, he held tenuously to a hopeful feeling. A Tom Petty tune played on the stereo and he turned it up.<\/em> As he passed by Butch\u2019s front yard, he looked down from the raised highway to see a swarm of cop cars surrounding the house, and bikers in handcuffs bent over police cruisers, and Del sunk in his seat, an indelible stamp of that scene imprinted in his mind as the place where dreams go to die. He wondered if others driving past that scene in that moment saw what he did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Del, a struggling cabinetmaker, lucks into seven garbage bags of wild growing pot and sees it as a way to start his own shop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1293,87,2621,1294,1297,1296,1292,1298,1295],"class_list":["post-13787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-cabinetmakers","tag-dreams","tag-fiction","tag-joseph-allen-costa","tag-pot","tag-tampa","tag-tradesmen","tag-weed","tag-ybor-city","writer-joseph-allen-costa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13787","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=13787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14026,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13787\/revisions\/14026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}