Rat Bastards and Little Girls

Thirsty.  My tongue is swollen.  It fills my mouth.  Oh, oh.  What is that?!  The goddamned rooster!  It's dark.  Motherfucker shit piss damn.  What the hell happened?  I feel like I was in a train wreck.  My tongue's so big, I wonder if I'll be able to talk.

"Cockledoodledoo!"

I'd kill the sonofabitch if I could get up.  Man oh man am I thirsty.  I don't have to pee.  That's dangerous.  I think back.  My cousin.

"Cockledoodledoo!"

Why do they call it "medicinal"?  He's a rat bastard, that cousin.  Hillbilly humor.  Tells my mother,

"Why is your boy eating so much?  Why's he all chink-eyed?"

The sonofabitch.

I'd been drinking whiskey, too.  I'd be sleeping if it weren't for the goddamned rooster.

"Cockledoodledoo!"

I stay in bed dozing off and on.  The rooster goes silent for a while.  I know I will feel like shit when I get up.  When I wake again, the sky is turning.  Fortunately, my cousin's husband's brother has been up and made coffee.  I grab a cup and quickly disappear back into the bedroom I am using.  I turn on my laptop and read CNN and the New York Times.  I have been thinking I'd go to the beach and run, then swim.  Not now.  A long walk, maybe.  Perhaps I'll swim a bit.  Just to clear my head.

On my way out, my cousin's husband says, "You'll be lucky to get parking."

But he is wrong.  At ten o'clock on Thanksgiving day, I find a spot easily.  I pick up my small pack and head for the beach.  The sun is already bright.  I have no sunglasses and can barely open my eyes enough to see.  I should drink water, I think, but strangely I can't bring myself to do it.  I have become hydrophobic.  I've had nothing but coffee--lots of coffee.  The fine sugar sand of the beach is cool.  I make my way across the long strand to the hard packed sand by the water.

The crowd is much different than the afternoon before.  Older.  There are the middle-aged joggers in their matching outfits and baseball caps.  And there are the brown, wrinkled people who have lived in this sun.  And me.

I walk the curved beach for an hour, until I get to the end where you must go into the water to get past a monstrous house that has been built on the point over everyone's objections, and turn around.  Midnight Pass.  It is a lovely, evocative name.  Walking back is better, the sun at my back.  I do not have to squint.  The water is true blue.  Suddenly, I see an old woman walking toward me.  It seems she is not wearing a top.  Nope, definitely, this woman is not wearing the top to her bathing suit.  I am horribly curious.  As she gets closer, I'm sure I don't want to see and know I won't be able to help myself.  Closer.  Wait a goddamned minute!  That's a man!  He's got titties hanging halfway to his belly button.  I think about the future.

I make it back to the car.  Little time before dinner.

Back at the house, there is concern.  My mother's sister says she is not coming over.  She has been ill, but it is not that.  Maybe she is mad at someone.  Nobody knows.  She's always been like this.  Hillbilly madness.  And there are others who are not coming, too.  Still, there is a full house.  I shower and prepare to eat.  I open the first bottle of wine.  Not so many people are drinking.  Me.

I've got to straighten things out for you here.  My hillbilly player cousin is actually my second cousin, the son of my girl cousin.  Her brother, my boy cousin, has cooked the turkey.  He has children, but only his daughter, a high school senior, is coming. She is bringing her boyfriend.  She is seventeen and trouble.  She is a petite girl who weighs ninety-eight pounds, and she is a little knockout.  She wears a small dress that shows nothing really but suggests everything.  I shouldn't be looking at my cousin's daughter.  That is what I keep telling myself.  Nothing but disaster there.

I eat like crazy.  But the wine is gone.  Who drank the wine?  Still, I cannot bring myself to drink a glass of water.  Player's brother, another second cousin, comes in with his wife.  New wife.  They freak me out a bit.  She has just finished an online degree from a state university in computer programming.  He did not finish high school.  He rarely works.  His wife is a manager of a Walmart.  He likes to sit around and play video games.  And no shit, he tells me that they just featured his 80's game room on CNN.

??????????


"Cockledoodledoo."

I don't care.  I'm sleepy now.  Everyone goes into the living room and sits on the leather forever furniture.  I am falling asleep.  I hear everyone laughing.  Apparently, I keep twitching.  I wonder what is wrong with me.  This is surely what is happening to me in the night.

Then Player's girlfriend comes in.  I open my eyes and see her soon-to-be five-year-old daughter, a toe head who is beautiful.

"Look at you," I say, and she looks at me gruffly.  Nobody talks, so I talk to her.  She is a pip.  She is dramatic.  She is trouble.

"Who are you?" she asks me.

She is contentious.  I am good with kids.  Wonderful, really.  I usually win them over right away.  But this kid is really something.  She picks on me.  Why this, why that.  I give up.  Then she comes over to do my hair.  Her mother does not care for me, I can tell.  She doesn't smile, is sullen.  She yells at her kid a lot.  Don't do that.  Quit it.  What did I tell you?  Bad juju, I think.

They all decide to go to see a second cousin.  No, I say, I will stay here.  I want to read.  The little girl comes up and wants to know where I am staying, where I sleep.  I walk her downstairs.  I ask her if she is coming back.  "No," she says, "we are going home."  "Well, it was awfully good to meet you," I tell her and she grabs my legs and gives me a big hug.  This makes me very sad for some reason, and I am uncertain.  It is dark.  They are all gone.

I realize I still have not had a drink of water.  I pour a scotch.  I will pay for this, I think.  How much and for what is not that unclear.  I keep thinking about the little girl.

"Who are you?"

It is pitch black outside, though it is early.  There is a lot of night ahead.  I don't know.  I don't know.