The Perp

The world needs rednecks.  Nothing gets done without them.  They do.  This is a broad category as I'm using it, very inclusive of all sorts of rough necks, crackers, and whatever regional version you have in your area.  You may or may not like them, but you'll need them sooner or later.

I have a fellow working on the house.  He gets a lot of money for it.  He cuts me a deal because he's worked here before and because I hang around and help some and talk shit.  He can do anything, it seems, a general, all around handyman.  He'll say, "Let's take down that wall and. . . ."  What!?  I'll get all scared and jumpy.  "It's nothing," he'll say.  And he'll begin just knocking the hell out of things.  Of course taking down the wall isn't the hard part.  But when he's finished, everything looks good and new.

My Jeep has been sitting for awhile.  It won't start. Actually, it's been so long, I don't remember why it won't start.  He looks at me and says, "Why don't you fix it?"  He can't understand why I'd let it sit.  He'd fix it and take it out four wheeling and crush it all up and fix it again and take it four wheeling. . . . . He's just not afraid of work.  I grew up with rednecks.  If one of them said, "Let's move my house over six feet," they'd just all go over and do it.  No questions. And they'd laugh and tell jokes, get drunk and fight, knock out some teeth, and go to work on Monday.

It's a big surprise when you find out things about people, though.  Tough guys are afraid of things, too.  Sometimes you have to laugh.

So my fellow was looking at some of the pictures I've been working on.  He saw a naked girl and wanted to see more.  After he looked at them for a minute, he said, "Why do they all look so weird?  Why don't any of them smile?"  Well, I said, I'm trying to go for something here.  Then we came to a picture of a naked fellow lying on the couch uncovered.  He jumped a bit.  "Shit!"  I thought he might hit me, but after the initial shock, he was O.K.  I figured he'd just double the price he had in mind to charge me for fixing things.

But again, people will surprise you.  He told me some stories that I won't repeat here that made him a more complex character than I, in my stupidity, had given him credit for.  I didn't think he really liked the pictures as they are a bit odd, but he turned to me and said, "Why don't you sell these?  You could make a lot of money."  Who in the hell's going to buy these, I said.  "Man, lots of people.  These are really good."  What I should be doing instead of playing around with cameras, I said, is learning to fix houses.  "Bullshit," he says.  "You've got a real talent."

What we did for the rest of the day was work and sweat, work and sweat.

When I say the world needs rednecks, of course, I'm acting as if a redneck is a thing.  I've "totalized," to use the language of my trade.  I know that.  I come here so I can do that, so that I can say things I can't say "there."  But there is truth in it, too, I believe.  Where I think, rednecks do.  And in the end, all such categorical, totalizing, reductive thinking tells a story, not about "the other," but about the perpetrator.

Yes, yes, I'm the perp.  The story is not about him, of course.  I will never know enough to tell that one.