{"id":22084,"date":"2025-07-26T08:22:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T12:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=22084"},"modified":"2025-07-26T08:45:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T12:45:10","slug":"hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/flash-nonfiction\/hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"HUNGER"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose he didn\u2019t think long about what he did. He wasn\u2019t built that way. The men liked to talk. Trippi, they\u2019d say, Trippi. What\u2019d he do now<\/em>? They had families, but what\u2019d the kid do? His latest was always worth laughs, and a sense of who they were. The kid had something loose.<\/p>\n

I saw him early mornings, the high boots, the walk slow, the feet wide like he meant something. Leaning against that state Forest Service flatbed, he dangled a Lucky and stared into the dirt, five or six around him, half-drunk cups of coffee in their hands. Trippi. Maybe he wasn\u2019t from here.<\/p>\n

I was the boss\u2019s son, a kid whose head barely cleared the kitchen tabletop when I sat, too young to understand the staccato talk much. I was figuring out who I would be, a man like them I hoped.<\/p>\n

I hoped.<\/p>\n

What did Trippi say?<\/p>\n

Dad didn\u2019t give up the goods. Only snatches.<\/p>\n

Was it that life wasn\u2019t broads like the ones in his truck, him at the bar inside downing Gansetts, those broads with red lipsticked lips and needs? He looked right past them. Who the hell wants fatherhood and baby brats? Losers play that tune, he might shoot. No way he\u2019d<\/em> go there. The girls could wait and wait and wait for all he cared. He was after something else. Didn\u2019t they get that?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What did<\/em> he care about? He barely spoke. It wasn\u2019t words, they wasted his time.<\/p>\n

The Staties knew him. And fuck \u2018em, his squint said. He\u2019d blow right past the bastards on Nooseneck Hill, those mother-humping Rhode Island Staties. Screw \u2018em. And screw his sludgeball father. He didn\u2019t know dogshit. Trippi\u2019d bag what that bastard missed.<\/p>\n

Kid rolled every goddamned new truck he drove, Dad said, seemed like every damn week. He couldn\u2019t stop talking about Trippi.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Screw the bills, Trippi might spit. You<\/em> pay \u2018em. You pay the goddamn electric, the insurance, the heat, the phone, the bitchin\u2019 wife. Don\u2019t let me die here in the frigging regulation green you Foresties wear for some damn parade…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The men talked the morning after, a pile of empty Narragansetts in the cab of his Chevy pickup, the Staties said. Had to be doing a hundred and jammed a corner he couldn\u2019t see\u2014the devil up his ass\u2014and sailed right out into the Colorado blues.<\/p>\n

What did Trippi spill when he got back from the hospital? He wouldn\u2019t say much. Maybe smile, play the fool, let life fly. Hunger needs a quiet place to lie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The adult me, the wary one, the party pooper, the cloud maker, sees with sadder eyes and Trippi\u2019s a lonesome dude, shredded by his father and much of the world. A heavy-hearted guy, dragging childhood trauma like a three-hundred-pound boulder and needing an out, a place to go, a place to forget, a place to risk his end. Who would care, anyway?<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t trust \u201cbroads\u201d because he doesn\u2019t trust himself, doesn\u2019t believe he\u2019s capable of much, not in this world where the smart guys do the talking and get smiles, the charmers, the teacher\u2019s pets, the damn asskissers he never liked. He comes from nothing they snort, and something in him has come to believe them. Why not booze up and go for the roses, take the pickup and slam it. Who would care if he dropped from sight? No one makes a big deal of him except the men where he works, and they\u2019re just toying. They don\u2019t want to be him, except for a minute. Except in their heads.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the kid me, the five-year-old me, learned lessons from Trippi that had a glow, and little darkness, and the lessons stuck to me unspoken all these years, lessons I couldn\u2019t pronounce back then. But learned. Courage, honey, that\u2019s what we need. Courage. Foot to the floor. Grab the wheel\u2014your butt in the seat, stick in your hand, the pistons in a roar, the smell of the pines. Smell those pines. Don\u2019t quit, even when you hit the corners. Rebel. Dump convention. Be yourself. It\u2019s dangerous out there. Foot to the floor and your life is yours, only yours. People will love you and then cut and leave you. It may get lonely, but who the hell isn\u2019t. Foot to the floor. Foot to the floor, fruitcake. Be your own.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The men liked to talk. Trippi, they\u2019d say, Trippi. What\u2019d he do now? They had families, but what\u2019d the kid do? His latest was always worth laughs, and a sense of who they were. The kid had something loose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3529],"tags":[4190,4378,4189],"class_list":["post-22084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-nonfiction","tag-butch","tag-forest-sevice","tag-jake","writer-kent-jacobson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22084","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=22084"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22787,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22084\/revisions\/22787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}