he smells of Coppertone, charred hamburgers, the wet sock stink of Frito-Lays. He\u2019s not the blond boy standing proud in the photo on your mantelpiece, seven swim-suited cousins holding hands like a daisy chain at the summer reunion, knuckle crunching your hand because you were the two oldest boys, the game being if he kept smiling, you kept smiling, the game being who\u2019s the tough guy here? He is, not you, you poofta standing in a pink donut ring, not you, you poofta, who cries when he smiles at you and knuckle crunches a tree frog and you know the game but you also know your lips are trembling by the time the frog\u2019s eyes bulge and film over.<\/p>\n
When your dead cousin visits, you\u2019re pleased he doesn\u2019t smell of garbage-strewn alleys and rank BO, like his late-night poundings on your door when he\u2019s all Come on cuz, you\u2019ve always had it better than me, share the wealth. And it\u2019s true, at least you had a mom til you were fourteen, at least your dad kept his fists to himself. And it\u2019s true, he always shared what he had, taking you to the playground after your mom\u2019s funeral, sitting on the swings and chugging the oaky sting of his Jack Daniels. He knew bad. Didn\u2019t need to pretty it up. Just let you swing and sob and chug. You took turns pushing each other on the merry-go-round until the world spun into a whiskey-soaked swirl, until you puked and puked, your insides on the outside. He gripped your shoulder, You\u2019re okay now, and led you home.<\/p>\n
When your dead cousin visits, you say How\u2019s it going, and you\u2019re pleased that your voice is low and gravelly, not a tremor. His hair scraggles to his shoulders, collar bones like railroad tracks. He comes at you loose limbed, like he\u2019s held together with rubber bands, and clasps your shoulder. Still a grip like a vice and you try not to flinch, tell yourself that the game is if he\u2019s still smiling, you keep smiling. You break out the Jack Daniels and offer him the first gulp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When your dead cousin visits, you\u2019re pleased he doesn\u2019t smell of garbage-strewn alleys and rank BO, like his late-night poundings on your door when he\u2019s all Come on cuz, you\u2019ve always had it better than me, share the wealth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-cole-beauchamp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140","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=22140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22143,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140\/revisions\/22143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}