{"id":16934,"date":"2021-11-03T10:33:14","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T14:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=16934"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:09:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:09:45","slug":"a-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/a-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eugene and Carol sat on their sagging porch outside the house they bought when they were young and oblivious to the permanence of this flyover country. Their land was hard, but Carol, at least, remembered when it had been harder. Hard in a way most had already forgotten. Maybe Eugene had earned some sort of uncounted blessing, she thought. The sweet freedom of forgetting. She looked at her husband, who vacantly watched the evening light hang itself from the black locust trees towering in the yard before them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Helpless to her memory, like a staggering addict, Carol recalled a thousand warm days in the soft grass under those trees. Irretrievable days. Days so far in the past they could have been fictions\u2014twisted into nonexistence by their distance from her. Watching Eugene absently smile at the dying light, she felt jealous and alone, and she stared at him until darkness slithered up the cracking boards of the porch and engulfed her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope God strikes you down,\u201d she said suddenly.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope God strikes you,\u201d Carol repeated. \u201cSmites you like he used to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Bible times?\u201d Eugene asked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Bible times.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes you think he\u2019d do something like that to me?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCause you deserve it.\u201d Carol said. \u201cAnd he kind of owes it to you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow come you think I deserve it?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCause of what you done,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019d I do to you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know. And the Lord knows,\u201d she said. \u201cYa\u2019ll are the only ones who matter.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, looks like you know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know shit about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou seem to know enough to judge a man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t take much to do that,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

He paused, trying to hold onto the thought, but Carol saw the light quickly leave his eyes. It was like watching the power go out in a house, rendering it black and empty and blank.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She hardly even had to search for it anymore. For the loss. She could picture the way his brow would tighten in angry lines as he tried to hold onto a thought before it disappeared\u2014washed away like lowland crops in a swift spring flood with nothing but devastation to give.<\/span><\/p>\n

He looked up at Carol as if he\u2019d forgotten she was there: \u201cHow come just now you wanted God to smite me?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just got to looking at you,\u201d she said. \u201cFelt sorry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor who? Me or you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She closed her eyes and considered this.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBoth,\u201d she concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d Eugene asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou got different. Got ugly, in a way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou ain\u2019t much of a pageant queen yourself,\u201d Eugene said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI never was.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNeither was I. They wouldn\u2019t let me in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou could have been though. The equivalent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe man equivalent?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. Could have been a prom king or something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNever would have met you if I was a prom king,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cNo, you wouldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWould that have been better for you? Never to\u2019ve met me?\u201d he asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI never said that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you\u2019re the one wishing down smites on people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t mean I wished I never met you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou still love me?\u201d he asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThen why\u2019d you wish God\u2019d smite me down? Over here calling down lightning on my head.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCause right now I hate you, too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, there was no reason not to tell him how she felt. They would sit on the porch until the stars peeked out from the clouded sky, and the next morning they would drive into town and a young doctor would tell her Eugene had Alzheimer\u2019s. In the months and years to come, her husband would steadily rot from the inside. She hated him for it, and she often told him so. But he would not remember, and this was her only freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eugene and Carol sat on their sagging porch outside the house they bought when they were young and oblivious to the permanence of this flyover country. Their land was hard, but Carol, at least, remembered when it had been harder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-stanton-yeakley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934","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=16934"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16979,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934\/revisions\/16979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}