There\u2019s a man that used to drink where I used to work. I\u2019ve never been more terrified of anyone in all my life. I am thinking of him now because I want to hurt someone very badly.<\/p>\n
In the years that I knew him this man\u2019s gout had gotten so that he\u2019d arrive on a scooter and walk in, best he could, with a cane.<\/p>\n
He liked to talk about women.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d say, \u201cBoy, after you left they all sure did come in\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
And I\u2019d ask him who.<\/p>\n
And he\u2019d say, \u201cThe women, son.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he\u2019d tell me more. That they\u2019d been monstrous last night and something has happened. They\u2019ve gotten stronger and their teeth are all so white. Laughing like they\u2019ve got nothing to hide, like what\u2019s inside isn\u2019t a secret no more and ought to be let out and known. He\u2019d say he\u2019s got the lesson they all should learn and that he\u2019d like to give it to them, because the boys that\u2019re left can\u2019t hardly be trusted to teach it.<\/p>\n
The boys that are left are a lot like myself and his son, but he\u2019s worried most over the ones most like his son. There\u2019s still hope for me. I\u2019ve got what he calls fire. His son, though, has got no fire. He\u2019s all fumes. Or ash. Or maybe wasn\u2019t ever aflame to begin with and that\u2019s a shame. See, you can only do what you can do, and you ought only to do what you want, and if that boy\u2019s gonna be high up in his inertia, then the hell to it and bless him. Takes after his mother, anyhow.<\/p>\n
Now that was a woman and he\u2019s proud to say it. And he\u2019d say it. She\u2019d been soft and everything was in its place. Her hands knew where they were going and always found something to do. Even in her grief\u2014yes, her grief\u2014she\u2019d been biscuit dough and he\u2019d rolled her around in it. Her grief, he said.<\/p>\n
In those early days, everything just raw enough, she\u2019d weep. In his arms, heaving. Ribs rising to shadow and pale xylophone ridge, nose a glimmering and run, just full up with what she\u2019d lost, empty of what she\u2019d not yet come to know she possessed .<\/p>\n
And he\u2019d say things so sweet to her.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d say things like, \u201cYou\u2019re beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things like, \u201cYou remind me of the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or, \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, \u201cI know it\u2019s not fair. I miss him too.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had to remember that he\u2019d been his friend. It was difficult and, being honest, getting it out of his head lost him sleep. Wouldn\u2019t say he was heartbroken, though.<\/p>\n
She hadn\u2019t even seen him afterwards. They closed the casket and everything.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d been spread out, broken right to pieces. Splashed, in a way. All the glass and bits of him stuck onto the blacktop, but quiet. One side of his face rubbed to raw bone and his legs like they ought not have been. Eyeball out the socket, crushed and smattered like sledge-smashed gelatin.<\/p>\n
Got out the car and walked over to him dead there on the street, folks starting then to pull over and make sure everything\u2019s alright.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d gunned the shitty little sedan right into that tree. Wasn\u2019t thinking straight, but remembers it being willful. Remembers he had his seatbelt on and figuring if he did die then it\u2019d be the both of them since his friend wasn\u2019t cinched in none, had his feet up by the windshield, just talking and talking and talking.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d been telling how good the honeymoon\u2019d been, how she\u2019s just a hell of a girl and a hell of a woman. The way he said woman\u2014maybe the last thing he got out, saying it over and over\u2014something about the way he\u2019d said it and how before it had just been the two of them and now he\u2019s gonna be on his own since he went and got himself a real hell of a woman.<\/p>\n
They, the two of them, had for so long been the two of them. They just took, too. For so long, whatever it had been that they wanted they made a way to make it theirs.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s how the story ought to end, though. A tale of brothers always ends with brotherhood broken\u2014all the better if it\u2019s broken by the other brother.<\/p>\n
But he\u2019s got fire in his eyes. There would be something beautiful and tragic, a real flavor, in all this if this man didn\u2019t have so much fire in his eyes burning it up when he told it.<\/p>\n
His whites are yellowed and the irises, maybe once green, are all grey and speckled and one of his pupils droops like maybe he\u2019d been hit. There\u2019s things he never mentions, like what happened to his wife, and I can only assume that she\u2019s dead, that she died, that their son is a coward because he misses her and lost her too early.<\/p>\n
This man who scared me so much told his talk through a mouth black and blasted. He\u2019d grin through it and drink. He\u2019d cough into his hand and wipe whatever\u2019d come up on his pants.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think he ever changed pants.<\/p>\n
He had very large hands and I remember once, while he was laughing, another of his teeth fell out onto the bar.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d sometimes say that what made me better than his son, what made me a man to hope for, is that though I may never do it, I at the very least know what I\u2019d have to do to get what I want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s how the story ought to end, though. A tale of brothers always ends with brotherhood broken\u2014all the better if it\u2019s broken by the other brother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-k-hank-jost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19639","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\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20191,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19639\/revisions\/20191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}