LIMTUCKY: Double Wide

A fat man walking his cat on a leash.

"Look for yourself."

-- Hank looks through the screen.

Hank looks back at Mert, "Maybe he's walking through his truth."

-- Mert didn't follow. "Walking through truth?" 

He imagined man and cat walking through a wall of snot - ectoplasm was truth.

-- Mert had many cousins. Hank was one his own age. They could have been brothers, (there were those rumors about daddies). They were sometimes a team: Mert (thought he) drew bitches, Hank (thought he) was a tough guy, (Ironically they shared a distaste of former San Francisco 49rs free safety Merton Hanks; it wasn't that they disliked the 49rs per se, and neither thought himself a racist, but both regarded long necked black folk as mystical and uncanny. This is no non sequitur, it is a matter of their bond).

They had always been friends, now they were roomies as well, ever since Juanita sent Hank packing to the other side of the park, to Mert's double wide, (bequeathed to him by one of his alleged Pa's).

"When you say, walking with his truth, what does that mean?"

"Well, (and here, Hank thought over his answer), it just means being awake. Being awake to what you are in some fashion; to what you are in some way that allows you to do things such as leash your cat. There's a fine line between a free man and a slaving fucking poseur. You read me?"

Powdered vanilla creamer for the coffee. Blueberry bismarks. Sulfurous water. Chew. Menthol cigarettes.

"I think if the cat walker comes back by I'll go down and introduce myself."

"You do that," Hank says to him, "But I got to go."

"You working?"

"No. I'm looking. Maybe go to Home Depot, see what's what."

"If you worked at the Home Depot, what aisle would you choose?"

"The aisle would be mine alone?"

"You its master."

"Good question. I'd say tools. I wouldn't want some girl to get her dad the wrong lithium ion batteries. And I'd up-sell the Black and Deckers just for laughs."

"What's the worst aisle?"

"Lumber. All those warped boards."

"That's quite a metaphor, Hank."

"Yeah it is. I'm a regular Juice Newton."

"Hank?"

"Yuh?"

"I don't know if you're being sarcastic about Juice Newton."

"Neither do I. Perhaps living in my truth means admitting I don't know what I mean; maybe I feel nostalgic for the target of the joke I'm making even as I make it, and maybe, after saying the joke, I regret it, despite I don't know the target -- because, if it is meaningless, to speak lightly of another person's work, a stranger, well then, maybe we all are just a bunch of soulless turds."

"Hank."

"Yes?"

"You serious about getting this job?"

-- Hank lights another cig.

"Last night I was thinking about that kid got drunk and fell off the roof of the church."

"This again?"

"But Mert, who hasn't been drunk on the roof of the church?"

"I was last February."

"But this kid died. Why? A good kid! The reason can't be, no reason. No reason? God just folding his arms like a woman, shrugs, and says, No reason."

Booze.

Yes.

Yes.

Fine.

I'll see you later.

After Hank leaves, Mert calls over to Hank's trailer, and tells Hank's wife, Juanita, he can't see her today.