I don't know what it is. I sit here and I look at this blank screen and nothing comes. I don't want to write about my father no more. I don't even want to think about him. I told that to Sam and Cyn and it took about two days to get it through their skulls that I wasn't kidding. I had to walk out the damn door a couple times when they started in on me before they quit. I was going to write about it, specially after I got this email from a woman in Texas been through the same things, sort of, and she says that if my father don't pay a price for the way he treats people, he's got no reason to stop treating them that way, which makes a lot of damn sense to me. Me and Sam talked about it all day after I showed it to her, and she could see where the woman was coming from, but Cyn was all on about how you can't "dump family" no matter what they done and wouldn't listen, so I just called a damn halt, that's all.

So I ended up going over to Pete the Professor's house most every day the last two weeks (I told you about him, he's the one who had the bear in his driveway) and helping him get his cabin winterized so he wouldn't freeze to death this winter like he done last year. It's been a hell of a job. The place is so crooked on the sills I practically had to take all the walls apart and rebuild them, and you know that joke I made about "he must have had a T-square shaped like a J"? Well, it turns out I wasn't so far off except it's more like a V with a short leg. Them things is pretty solid and I got no idea how he managed to do a thing like that without breaking it but he did and that explains a lot about why his place is like it is.

So then I was going to write about that but it would have sounded so stupid, I mean who wants to hear about how I pried the window frames apart one piece at a time, then spent three hours shaving and shimming to get the damn thing to fit right in that crooked hole so I could put it back together? I bored myself writing about it. And anyway I was so damn tired from all the work and frustration trying to back-fit something that was so bad wrong to start with it's a wonder the damn thing didn't fall over in the first breeze that come by that I really didn't feel like doing nothing.

And then I got to the point when I was just sitting here looking at this screen without any idea in the world what I was going to put on it. It was just blank. My mind was blank, I don't know why, it was just that everything I started out to say didn't seem worth saying and the things that might have been worth saying I didn't want to say. Does that make any sense?

It don't to me. So now I'm sitting here writing about how I can't write and it's probably just as dumb as telling how you take a window frame apart but it's the only thing I can stand to write about. I know that's terrible and I'm letting you all down and I feel bad about it, I mean all those people coming here to read this and Ms. Thompson and the rest of the class, but I feel kind of froze and I don't know why or what to do about it. It's weird. I never felt like this before. It has been one hell of a month, I'll say that.

But actually I had to write this because I promised some people in the class I would, and maybe it's just as well. See, some of them got all fired up when I told about these people from Australia and stuff reading what I wrote and they decided they wanted to put some of their stuff on the internet where you guys can read it, too, so if you get all disappointed because I got nothing much to say, you can go read them instead. They're going to send me the addresses in a email and Steve's coming over tomorrow to show me how to put them on my sidebar so by tomorrow night or Friday you won't have to worry about me no more. A couple of them write poems and that's all they put up for the public to see. I don't know how you are about poetry but it's pretty heavy going for me, I don't get it all. Hell, I don't get most of it. But then I ain't never been into poetry. Sam says it ain't bad though she's read better. I said, "Well, they're just learnin for chrissake, like me. What d'you want, Shakespeare?" and she backed right off, said I was right. Now there's a first, Sam telling me I'm right about something. I kind of wish I had that on tape so I could listen to it once in a while.

The only other guy doing it--the only other guy in the class--says his is really different from anything he done for the class but he won't tell what it is, he wants us to see it for ourselves. He's going to send everybody emails all at once so we can be surprised. Oh, and Rachel, of course, she wanted in. She was the first, I think, at least she mentioned it first. I don't know what she's going to write about. Probably neither does she.

Anyway, I promised I'd write and tell you all about it and now I have and since I been sitting here for five minutes and can't think of nothing else to say, I guess it's time to quit.

Cyn and Sam have been working on me ever since. Cyn says he can't help what he is and Sam says it's a sickness, like dysentery or cancer, and I'm not supposed to blame him. I go up and down about it. The first couple days I was so pissed I couldn't see straight but then after a while I thought maybe I was taking it too personal. Maybe Sam was right and he was just sick. If I talked myself into that one I stopped hating him for awhile, but it never lasted. I'd get this picture in my head of Ma in that hospital all by herself and I'd just want to start throwing things, I was so mad. It's still that way pretty much. I don't know what to think. It was a shitty thing to do but maybe it ain't his fault. I have a hard time swallowing that one, but that don't mean it ain't true.

I wish they hadn't of told me. I wish I still didn't know.

Cyn picked us up in her truck about 2 in the afternoon and we went over there. Sam sat tight up against me in the cab and held my hand. I don't know, maybe she was afraid I might run if she let go. Maybe she was right. Gary wasn't there. Cyn said he had to go see his folks for the holiday since he blew off Father's Day. Maybe he did or maybe he was just smart enough to stay out of what we all knew was coming.

And we all knew it alright, no question. Cyn was as tight as a drumhead, kept yapping all the way, brainless female chit-chat. That ain't like Cyn at all. She was chattering to cover how nervous she was because deep down she thought it was going to go bad just like everybody else did. I promised Sam to be on my best behavior but I just said I'd try, and I told her I wasn't sure I could do it and just before we left I asked her didn't she want to maybe let a little more time go by before we tried this, give everybody a chance to cool off, and she said "no". She said it was now or never and it better be now because never "wasn't an option." Women, it seems to me, never can just let things slide for a while. They get an idea in their head and they got to do it right then, they can't wait. Sometimes that's good, I guess. God knows I'd let a ton of things slide if Sam wasn't around. But sometimes it ain't, and this was one of them times.

Or maybe it wasn't. Sam thought things would just get worse, and being as how they were the way they are, she's probably right. If we didn't fix this now, it'd be real easy for us to slide into doing nothing, accepting the way things was, getting harder set in our ways as time passed, resenting each other because nobody would break down and apologize, and then even if we forgot why, we'd end up hating each other. I guess if it was going to happen at all, now had to be the time, it's just I was almost positive this wasn't going to work.

And sure enough, it didn't start off good. Howie was sitting in the kitchen when we came in and as soon as he saw me he went all stiff and got up and left. I said, "I told you so," under my breath and when Cyn went after Howie, Sam punched me in the rib.  Dad was in the backyard with the grill again, cooking burgers, no dogs at all this time--he knows I like them--and when we come out in the yard from the kitchen he looked up one time then he looked down again and didn't say nothing. I said, "Hi." Nothing. Sam went over and asked if there was anything she could do. "Nope," he said, and flipped another burger. I went and sat at the picnic table. When Sam give up on dad and come over to sit down with me, I said, "Getting pretty chilly out here, ain't it?" and she slapped me on the ear.

Cyn came back with Howie and let me tell you, that was one long, quiet afternoon with nobody talking to anybody else except Cyn, who somehow managed to talk for everybody at once. Howie left the kids at home, probably for the same reason Gary suddenly had to go to his folks, so there was times when the only thing you heard was Cyn like the constant buzz from an electric box in the background and the squirt from the ketchup bottle when somebody used it on a burger. Sam kept kicking me under the table and making "Go ahead. Tell him" with her mouth but no sound and I knew that's what I was there to do and what everybody was waiting for and why Cyn kept shooting me these worried looks whenever she took a breath, which wasn't all that often, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it until we all went inside for coffee That was about 6, so we'd been there four hours and I hadn't strung more than a couple sentences together, and dad not even that much. Sam was going nuts, I could tell, and when we were all sitting down in the living room, just as dad went to turn on the tv, Sam said, "Emmett has something he wants to say."

Dad froze like a statue there in front of the tv. He didn't turn around, so I had to say it to his back. "I'm sorry I threw the glass through your window, dad. I don't know what got into me. I'll pay for it."

Then he turned around alright. "You bet your ass you will, you little prick," he said and then everybody was up at once except me. I didn't see the point. Besides, if I got up it would just make him madder, he'd think I was challenging him or something. So I sat there and let them yell at each other. Maybe if dad got it out of his system what had been building up all that week, then he'd calm down and we could have a talk, though even then I didn't think it would do much good.  

I wasn't really listening to what they was saying, I figured I heard it all before, but then something got through to me that I hadn't. They was talking about forgiving--me, I guess--and dad wasn't having any and all of a sudden Cyn says, "We forgave you for leaving Ma at the hospital, didn't we?" and then I was up. Like a shot I was up.

"What did you say? What about leavin Ma at the hospital?" but she didn't want to tell me til Sam said, "He's got a right to know, Cyn," and she had to admit I did. Dad could see it was coming out and he went somewhere, the kitchen I suppose, while Cyn told it. Sam sat me down on the couch and Cyn sat next to me and it came out fast.

This is gonna be hard. I still can't think about this without-- But I gotta do it. Sam says I gotta and this time I know she's right.

I was away when it happened. Ma's appendix ruptured, that's what they always told me, but it seemed like it had a little help. One night dad took after Ma, punched her in the stomach. She doubled up on the floor. He thought she was faking because he swore he didn't hit her that hard, but she was screaming he had to take her to the hospital, she really hurt, so he got her into the car somehow and took her there. It was gonna be awhile so dad, he just sat her down with the paperwork on her lap and went to the nearest bar and got shitfaced drunk. He told Cyn he thought Ma was faking to set the cops on him and that's why he left. If she believes him she's a goddam fool, but whether she does or not she's pretending she does.

I was some in shock, I guess, trying to take it all in. "This was the night?" I said, trying to get it straight. "You're talkin about the night Ma died?"

Cyn said the nurses knew right away when dad left that something was wrong and they rushed her into emergency. "But her appendix was all busted up, by the time he got her there it was just too late. There wasn't nothing he could have done--"

"He coulda been there," I said, but I wasn't talking to her, I was talking to myself. "He just went off. Went off and left her there. Beat her up, broke her in two, and then walked away and let her die." I musta been crying because I remember Sam coming over and muttering things at me and wiping my face but all I could think was that that sonuvabitch had let my mother die alone so he could get drunk. Alone. Nobody there with her but the doctors and the nurses, no family, all broken inside, the pain must have been horrible, nobody to hold her hand or tell her they loved her or that she had maybe not a good life but she was loved and we were glad we had her with us. Nothing but tubes and bottles and pain and an empty hospital room because nobody knew and the man she'd spent her life with, had kids with, was out getting bombed because that was more important to him than she was.   

If he'd been in front of me that second I woulda killed him. I woulda killed him like I was squashing a bug and I wouldn't have thought about it at all afterward, like you swat a spider and don't think about it for that long afterward. But he wasn't. He'd ran away again, just like always. Howie was standing over by the window, I think, probably just waiting to see what I would do. Cyn was crying next to me, all bent over. I remember Sam was kneeling on the floor in front of me and whispering something I couldn't hear or don't remember and dabbing at my face with a kleenex and I looked up over her head and I saw a picture of Ma and me on the mantle over the fireplace. She had her arm around me and she was smiling. She smiled a lot, that woman. For a minute it seemed like she was right there in the room, smiling at me, and I couldn't take it.

And then all of a sudden I knew what I had to do, the only thing that would make me feel right. I had this funny feeling--you'll laugh but it's the truth, I did--that Ma was the one told me. I got up quick and hauled ass into the kitchen and started tearing it apart, pulling open drawers and throwing stuff from the cabinets on the floor. Sam tried to stop me, she was saying, "No, Emmett, please don't do it" and crying. I guess she thought I was looking for a knife or something, but I pulled free of her when I saw the old man through the door standing by the hiboy, shaking like a leaf. I went after him then and I barreled into him so hard his elbow went right through the glass. I grabbed him by the neck and just about threw him through the kitchen door and I was yelling, "GARBAGE BAGS, you motherfucker! Where's your garbage bags? NOW!"

Well, they all musta looked at me like i was nuts but I wasn't. I knew exactly what I was doing. The old man was cowering over against the fridge and looking at me like I was the Lord come down for Judgment Day and he knew right where I was gonna send him, and by god he wasn't far wrong. I saw a butcher knife on the counter and I grabbed it and when Howie tried to take it away from me I backhanded him across the top of his nose and he went down like a rock. "You sonuvabitchin bastard," I said, "you give me those garbage bags right now or I swear to god I'll gut you like a fish." I had the point of the knife maybe 3 inches from his throat and then he leaned down and put his hand in the little gap between the counter and the fridge. "There," he said. "Right there." And sure enough, there it was. I took a bag out of the box and went back to the living room and I collected every one of those pictures of Ma on the mantle and put them in the bag, then I got all the ones on the shelves and the little tables, and then I started tearing them down from all the walls and putting those in the bag and then I went upstairs and done the same thing. I ransacked that goddam house and I took every picture I found and that was every picture there was because when I filled up the first bag, I opened another one and started filling that. I even slapped the cocksucker until he gave me his wallet, and do you know? That scumbag actually had the balls to carry a little picture of her around with him? I took it and I threw the wallet back in his face, then I grabbed the two bags and went out to the truck. Cyn always leaves the keys in it and I wasn't in no mood to wait so I started it up and I drove home with the bags on the front seat.

They're on the floor over there by the closet.I don't know what I'm gonna do with them. Hang them up, I suppose. One thing I know--he's never gonna see them again, not in this life he ain't. And except for telling me to write about it, Sam ain't said one word about them pictures.

Only this time she knew what it was. Oh, I've been busy, alright. A lot to do. But not that busy. If GunnaPoet was here I know what he-she would say, and he-she would be right. I've been stalling. I knew it. Hell, everybody knew it. I was helping Peter close up his cabin. It's a big job, especially since he don't have the slightest idea what he's doing. I have to show him everything. And then I'd come home and I'd tell myself I was too tired, I'll do it tomorrow, only tomorrow would be the same. So Sam comes over a little while ago and she takes my hand and she leads me over to the computer and she sits me down on this old office chair that I got from the junkyard and put a pillow on the ripped seat, and she says, "You've been moping for a week. I'm sick of it. Tell about it. Get it over with." So here I am.

So I went over to see Sam, she's a hairdresser and she works in a place with big hair dryers and barbershop chairs and she fixes old ladies' hair so it turns blue. She could see I was all messed up and at first she thought somebody died. I guess in a way they did. Anyway I told her about Howie and about Cyn being married and not telling me, and she took it hard, made me tell her everything I could remember about who said what and how they looked when they said it and what kind of voice they said it in, and I had to repeat it about a gazillion times, which is why you got all that in the last entry. I figured as long as Sam had all that conversation steaming around in my head, I might as well put it down like it happened. It ain't all there, just everything I could remember when Sam asked me and everything I had to say over and over before she finally shook her head and said, "They're hiding something from you."

"Yeah," I said. "I told you, Cyn got married."

"No," she said, real serious. "Something else."

Well, that didn't make any sense to me. But then I figured if Cyn could go and get married without telling me, there wasn't no limit to what I maybe didn't know. I was going to drop the whole thing but Sam--who is a thinker and there ain't a woman worse to have around than one that thinks when you're trying to pretend like there's nothing to think about--came over and said I had to go to dad's Fourth of July party.

"I ain't been invited," I reminded her. "And I ain't gonna be."

"Get yourself invited. Tell him you want to apologize and pay him for the window."

Well, that about had me red in the face and howling like a dog. I was damned if I was going to do any such of a thing and I said so, at the top of my lungs, pretty much. But Sam wouldn't budge. "You got to," she said. "It's the only way you're going to find out what they're not telling you."

"What if I don't wanna know?" I said. Because the truth is, I didn't much. If they was hiding something from me, maybe it was just as well. There's some things I can't handle, I know that, and some things I don't want to handle. I got a temper and I can't always control it. Like on Father's Day, it just kind of sneaks up on me and before I know it I'm shoving people around and throwing beer glasses through front windows. I ain't a genius or nothing but I know when I shouldn't know something and everything inside me was screaming this was one of those times, but Sam wouldn't take No for an answer. She was jumping up and down and jiggling and I swear to god I wanted her right there in the shop in one of them chairs. I couldn't say No, not when she was like that. You know, for a woman's got as many secrets from everybody else as she has, she sure don't like it when people keep secrets from her.

I didn't know how to do it but Sam said, "Call Cyn and make it up with her. She'll do it." And she was right. Cyn was all sorry, she felt terrible about not telling me, it was a lousy thing to do, and I said I was sorry about throwing the kleenex box at her and running out on her and she said that was alright, she understood, and then I told her I wanted to apologize to Dad, too, and she was practically squealing, she was so happy. I had to hold my nose and keep from puking to do it but I done it, and the next day Cyn said everything was fixed and I was supposed to go to dad's with her. She also said I was supposed to apologize to Howie but you got to draw the line somewhere.

Well, inside a day or two the hammer came down and the pressure was on. They took it in shifts, first Howie.

"You were out of control. There was no excuse for you behaving like that. That window cost Dad almost a hundred dollars to fix!"

"Stop it, you're breakin my heart. You heard what he said, din't you? You heard what he said about Ma."

"Yeah, that was too bad--"

"Too bad? Too bad? That's all you got to say, it was too bad?"

"Calm down, for chrissake, you're always flying off the handle. I don't think he meant it the way it sounded--"

"Then you don't know much and you never did. You was always protectin him, Howie, and I never did get that. You seen what he done, you know what he's like same as the rest of us, but you're always makin excuses for him, always takin his side. Why is that? You got somethin against Ma I don't know about? She do somethin to you?"

"No, of course not--"

"Then why're you always stickin up for him? You're the oldest, why'd you let him treat her like that all them years? You never once tried to stop him--

"That's a lie!"

"No it ain't." And it wasn't because I never saw him get between them. Ever. Whenever dad came home drunk and started in at Ma, old Howie, he headed for his room and shut the door and pretended like he couldn't hear anything. For all I know, he crawled under the bed. He wouldn't come out til it was over and then he'd pretend like nothing happened and everything was fine and Ma didn't have those bruises all over her face and she wasn't walking all bent over and holding her side, that was just my imagination. "You never did nothin, and in my book that makes you a chickenshit coward--"

He balled up his fist like he was going to do something but I knew he wasn't. Which was too bad. I wished he would have, at least then I did. Give me an excuse to pound on him a little. "Why you pinheaded, arrogant sonuvabitch. You think that time you beat him up helped? That what you think?"

"He stopped, din't he?"

"Sure, he stopped. He stopped. He stopped hitting her so often but then when he did it he damn near killed her practically--"

"What?"

"Yeah, a couple times. You didn't know that, did you?You didn't know that because you made damn sure it wouldn't happen around you." I looked at him. I didn't know what to think. He said, "You thought we didn't know about your little deal with him? Cute. Got you out of it, didn't it? Put you miles away whenever it happened, nice and safe, while Cindy and me had to clean up the mess and sit with her in the hospital and listen to the old man bragging about how she deserved it and wonder if the next time he was really gonna kill her. Yeah, you fixed it alright. Great job, Emmett. You're probably the one--"

He stopped. "Go on," I said, "get it out. You been sittin on this for years. Well, here I am, here's my face. Say it."

But he couldn't. All of a sudden he was looking every which way but where I was, then he muttered something about how it wouldn't help anything, only make them worse, and he lit out. Like I said, a coward. Or so I thought at the time.

Then a couple days later, here comes Cyn, banging on the cabin door when she should have been at work. "What's the matter? Somethin happen?"

"Emmett," she says, "we gotta talk."

"Aw, shit," I said because I knew what was up. I know that tone of voice, I know when Cyn says "we gotta talk" like that it means I'm about to get ripped up one side and down the other. See, Cyn and me have always been tight. We could talk to each other about stuff we couldn't tell another soul in the whole world when we were growing up, and I didn't think there was anything we didn't know about each other. Boy, was I ever wrong. I started out on the wrong foot, too. I said, "I ain't sorry for what I done and that's flat, so don't go tryin to talk me into goin over there and apologizin to that prick cause I won't do it."

"It ain't that," she says. "I don't blame you. I wish you hadn't of, but I don't blame you."

"Then what?"

"Emmett, you gotta forgive him--"

"You too? Jesus Christ. What's got into you?"

"He's our father, Emmett. He ain't much but he's all we got now Ma's gone."

"Then we got nothin. Nothin."

"I don't want 'nothin', Emmett. I want my family. I need them." She had got so quiet I almost didn't hear how her voice was shaking. "Howie's so pissed at whatever you said a couple days ago that he don't wanna be anywhere near you. Dad won't let anybody mention your name. He don't curse you. It's worse. It's like as far as he's concerned, you're already dead. I don't want to live like that, Emmett. Family's all we got."

She was crying by then, big, wet tears just rolling down her face. I haven't seen Cyn cry since Ma's funeral, and even then she held back most of it til it was over. That was the second time in a couple of days I just sat there like a doofus and didn't know what to do, so I give her a kleenex. She put her face in it and sobbed.

Honest to god, I wasn't getting this, any of it. OK so I maybe went a little too far when I popped off but if anybody knew he had it coming it was Cyn, but there she was, balling like a little kid and begging me to forgive him. I didn't know what to do so I just sat there trying to figure out whether I ought to get out and leave her alone or stay there til she stopped. I couldn't decide so I just stayed. There wasn't anywheres to go anyhow. When she slowed down I says, "What's this all about, Cyn? You never acted like this before."

She took her face out of the kleenex but she wouldn't look at me. She looked out the window. "You don't understand," she says.

"That's right, I don't," I says. "So you explain it to me."

She started to say something but then she stopped. Then she thought awhile. Then she started again. "Whatever was between them was between them, Emmett. They was married. It's none of your business--" she stopped again "--none of our business. Ma could've left. She didn't. She must've had her reasons. She stayed with him and if she did that it wasn't for nothin. She had her reasons, and the reasons was us. She stayed because he was our father and without him we don't have a family."

"Sure we do," I says, "A better one. There's you and me, and Howie'll come around, He's pissed how but it ain't gonna last forever and then we'll--"

"They was married!" she says, yelling it out. "It was between them. You've never been married, you don't know what goes on--

"Well, neither have you, so don't go gettin all--"

"Yes I have."

"What?" You could've knocked me over with a feather. I mean, that stopped me but good. "You been married?"

"When you was away in the Army. He was a musician. Thought he was, anyway. You don't know him. It didn't last very long and we didn't have any kids or anything so there didn't seem to be much point tellin you."

"Not much point to tellin me you was married." That hurt. That hurt pretty bad. You think you can trust somebody you've known all your life, somebody who you used to tell each other everything, and then it turns out it was all a lie and they didn't trust you enough to tell you the biggest thing they ever done, the biggest thing that ever happened to them. I was getting pissed thinking about it. I threw the kleenex box on her lap, I said, "Thanks a lot, Cyn, thanks a fucking lot," and I left. I got in the truck and I just drove around for hours with my head spinning. All I really could think that was halfway clear was--I gotta talk to Sam. I gotta talk to Sam.

He said he read the thing I did about Father's Day and didn't know how bad it was between my dad and me. I told him he ain't heard nothing yet, which he ain't, but I didn't want to talk about it. I also got a couple emails about it from people who said they were glad I got around to telling it. I don't know what that means. I'm still not real clear on what good it does to talk about this kind of stuff but Sam, she just rolls her eyes at me when I say that.

"Men," she says. "You just don't get it."

"I just said I didn't," I say, but she never explains it. I guess as a male I'm just too dumb. But then, Sam is like most women I know that have to talk about every little thing that happens to them every minute of every day, and you're damn straight I don't get that. What do I care--what does anybody care--that it took her 15 minutes to find the right shade of lipstick at the drug store and for a while she thought they were out and while she was looking she happened to come across a darling little pink pen that would be just right for her niece and a matching pad of paper and while she was looking at them a woman walked by and bumped her and didn't even stop to say she was sorry and then a little boy chased her up the aisle and there was a new brand of soda in the fridge up back of the store and it had a real interesting label, all orange and lime colors even though it was root beer and...and...and... She told me the color of every car she seen on the way there, every song she heard on the radio, and everything that happened each and every minute of the trip. Why? Why does she do that? Maybe she was just babbling but the thing of it is, she really acts like this stuff is important to her, like she thinks it ought to be important for me to know all that crap. I used to listen because I kept thinking there must be a point to all this coming up pretty soon, but she could do it all day long without ever once making a point about anything. After a while I figured out that telling the stories was the only point there was to telling the stories. They was their own point, you could say. After that, I let them roll in one ear and out the other. I just nod once in a while and say, "Yup, that's true" or "I think you're probably right about that" and she's just happy as a clam in butter.

"Someday I'm going to figure out why that is," I said to Steve today when we were screwing around with the computer and Sam was outside building her garden (she's been doing that a few weeks now. We can't start all that early up here because we can get killing frosts right into the beginning of June).

Steve said, "No, you won't. Women don't think like us or us like them and you can't figure nothing out about anybody if you don't know how they think."

Maybe he's right but I'm going to keep trying just the same.

Oh, if you're wondering how come all these short little paragraphs, Sam says that's the way you're supposed to do it when people are talking so somebody reading it don't get confused about who said which part, so I'm trying to remember to do that now. You know, this writing thing, it's a lot harder than it looks. I worked on that last thing the whole damn night--I mean, all of it--and by the time I finally got done, I was bushed. I slept on and off all day yesterday like if I'd cleared a whole acre of trees and brush and drug them piece-by-piece out of the woods to the truck all by myself. It ain't all that hard to bang on a keyboard and I was sitting down the whole time except when I went to get some coffee or a 7-Up, and still I couldn't hardly move. And my head didn't work right. I was fuzzy all day. I kept falling asleep for a couple hours and waking up for a couple hours and then getting so tired I went back to sleep again, and I'm a guy that don't sleep all that much as a rule. Anyway, I done a dozen of these things, some of them almost as long as that one, and I never felt like that when I got done with any of them.

Anyway, Saturday was a pure loss like that. Sam went over to see her Mom and I just piddled around in the cabin in a daze, tripping over the cables every once in a while and watching tv, though I don't remember anything I watched. Today was better. Like I said, Steve came over and we spent the whole afternoon messing around with the computer and on the internet. He showed me a lot of stuff. He even taught me some computer code so I can write a link now. We went all over the place. He showed me a bunch of other blogs, and man, some of them--whew! They make mine look like some little kid playing with a crayon. They got pictures all over the place and everything's different colors and different kinds of letters and designs. I asked Steve could he teach me how to do that and he said "Maybe" but it would take a while and not to get too worried about how stuff looked. "This is for a class, what you're doin," he said. "These other people are just screwin around. Anyway, it's what you write that matters." Maybe so but I wanted to make it look better, more like them other ones, so he showed me how I could change my template (that's the thing with all the code in it says what your website's going to look like) and I dicked around for a while changing from one to the next. There was a couple I liked better than the one I got now, including one I had almost when I started this thing but Steve changed it because he said it was too hard to read. He likes this one but that limey color is pretty wussy. I like the one that's a darker green, like leaves in the deepest part of summer when they've soaked up all the spring rain and before August starts to dry them out again. I'll think about it. Maybe I'll change it. It's easy enough to do--click click and it's done. Hell, if I'd known it was that easy I would've been playing with this a long time ago only I was afraid of messing stuff up. Which is easy to do when you don't know what you're doing but a cinch to pull off once you know the tricks. Like doing finish work on a house--fitting everything together looks like a lot of work and if you don't do it right it's going to look like hell, which it is, but once you know a couple tricks about the measuring, you can do it in your sleep. 

Speaking of which, I got a email from one of the women in the class (I almost said "girls", which if I had, Sam would've took my head off), a woman who can't sleep nights like me, who said she was thinking about putting some of her poetry online in public, like I been doing, so people could read it. Just the best stuff, she said. She didn't want people reading her "experiments" and the stuff that didn't work, that was just for the class. But she said she got all fired up when I said I had "fans" and she said I should be, too. Well, maybe, but they're half of them in Australia, so I don't know what good that does me back here. Her name is Julie, and she writes--well, I don't know how to describe it. I'm not much on poetry. Sometimes they way she puts things gets to me, though most of it I just can't see what she's driving at. Anyway, maybe you'll get a chance to see it for yourself, if you're interested.

Speaking of Australia, I got one email from a guy says even though he grew up in Australia, the people up here sound to him just like the people down there he used to know. That struck me some. Maybe there ain't so many differences between us as people think if they can be the same thousands of miles away in a different country. Of course, at the same time, that's kind of depressing. I mean, you're telling me there's no point to leaving here because no matter where I go, it'll be the same? Jeez. That don't give a guy much hope that there's someplace better to shoot at. Or maybe he meant that he come from the sticks, too, and the sticks is all the same wherever they are. Maybe it's a difference between being out in the country and being in town because I know town people are different, alright. We get tons of them up here very summer and judging by what I see, living in town makes you stupid. Lazy, too.

Jeez, this is a long one. I didn't know it was so long. So how come I don't feel all wore out now? I better quit before I do.

OK, so here goes. This is the second time I tried this. The first time it came out sounding like Rachel bitching about her parents and I didn't want that. No offense, Rachel, but it's annoying as hell. This time I'm going to try to tell it straight, no screwing around. But you need to know that no matter how I do, like Sam says, you're only hearing my side and there's always more than one. I don't really believe that, but I'm trying to. I'm also trying to be careful about my grammar and stuff so you can understand what I'm trying to say better. So.

We went over there Father's Day and like I said, everything went OK at first. Dad was in the backyard with the grille, Cyn was there with her new boyfriend and Howie had his kids with him for the weekend--he's divorced; messy as hell it was--and we were all just talking and waiting for the burgers and dogs to be ready. I noticed there was only a couple empty beer bottles on the picnic table and one half empty on a tray next to the grille and he was just sipping at it, not gulping it down and reaching for another, and there wasn't any of the hard stuff in sight, so I was breathing a little easier and thinking we might get through this thing after all.  

And for a while we did. For a while it was almost like old times when Ma was alive. We laughed and joked around, the burgers was perfect (my old man believes in good beef but you can't get him to spring for a decent dog, like with the skin still on, he always buys the cheapest ones he can find because he never did understand what the attraction was), Cyn told one of her stories about the nutcases she works with--she's got a million of them and they're all funny the way she tells them--and even Howie toned down his MC routine to a dull roar. After we ate I played trucks on the ground with my nieces (Howie's always pushing them to be girly-girls but I think everybody ought to grow up with a little experience with everything, boys with dolls, too, why not?) and Sam did a wicked good imitation of a state senator she doesn't like much (and she's right, he's a pig) that was hilarious and everybody was rolling around laughing and dad still wasn't drunk. I thought it was the best damn day we'd had together as a family for years. I don't ever remember it being that easy, not even when Ma was alive. Nobody started a fight or picked on anybody else or went off and sulked in a corner or called anybody else vile names or gave them the finger. It was, well, normal, almost like with Sam's family.

Then, when it was getting dark, Howie had the bright idea of going in the house and playing cribbage. For once I agreed with him. About as good as dad ever gets is when he's playing cribbage. He plays cut-throat but he plays clean and he makes jokes and he's not a sore loser. So we went inside and split up in teams, me and Howie, and Cyn and dad (Gary doesn't know how to play so he just sat and watched and drank his beer. I wondered if he was getting bored but he seemed OK, and Sam don't play cards, not even poker). Right off the bat Howie got a streak going which I didn't help much but then when he started to cool off I got hot, so between the two of us we were most of the way around the board on the second lap when dad and Cyn hadn't even finished their first. As it went on dad kept getting up and leaving the room for a minute and then coming back, and he was doing this every couple minutes and I was starting to get worried, thinking he was out in the kitchen nipping off his stash on the sly. Which is just what he was doing, it turns out. Howie and me were just about to slam them with double when I put down a card that let dad hit 21 for extra points. "That was a bonehead move," he says. I didn't say anything but I must have looked it because Cyn jumped in and started telling a funny story about one time when she got Ma to play poker (which she didn't know how to play) and this one hand she leaned over to Cyn and showed her her cards and whispered, "Is this any good?" and Cyn said, "Ma, you got a full house!" and Ma said, "Don't be silly. We've had twice this many people over. There's plenty of room." Even Gary laughed at that one but then dad said, out of nowhere, "She was one stupid bitch, that woman. Don't know why I put up with her all those years."

I just froze. See, back when I was 18 and Ma was still alive, there was a time when I got real sick and tired of hearing him call Ma dirty names and beating her up and one night I came home (I was staying away as much as I could in those days) and Ma was in the kitchen crying and she had a black eye she was holding some ice to and dad was over by the pantry looking pretty satisfied with himself like he always did after he belted her, like it was something to be proud of, maybe brag about, and something snapped inside me. I didn't do nothing right away, I just stood there, but dad must have seen it in my face because he said, "You shut your mouth, boy, this ain't none of your business, the cunt deserved it," and the next thing I knew I had punched him hard in the gut and when he bent over I hit him again so hard I broke his jaw (I heard it snap, sort of like a branch when you break it across your knee) and then he was on the floor and I was on top of him pounding him and yelling at him, I don't remember what, and Ma was trying to pull me off him and crying, "Stop! Stop it! He's your father!" and I said I didn't care. And I didn't. And I hit him some more.

Ma had to call the police to come get me off him. The Chief himself came--it was Dennis Twomey then, he's retired now--and he put the handcuffs on me and took me down to his basement, which is where the police station was, if you can call it that, a desk and a phone and some filing cabinets next to the furnace, and he took off the handcuffs and he asked what happened and I told him. I was still mad. I said, "And I'll do it again so you better lock me up," and he scratched his head and looked at me and said, "Where, son? We ain't got no cells here. I'd hafta take you down to Presque Isle and it'd be morning by the time we got there. Tell you what. I got an idea you been under a lot of pressure lately and I know your dad pretty good and maybe this ain't all your fault. Why don't you sleep here tonight, give yourself some time to cool off. Your Mom's alright, I had to send the ambulance for your dad, he's in a pretty bad way"--and he looked at me through one eye like he was trying to figure out how a skinny little runt like me did that much damage--"so he won't be around for awhile. I seen the shiner he give her and I ain't so sure but what I wouldn't do the same thing if I was in your shoes." So he made up his couch with some sheets and pillows and I slept there that night. In the morning his wife, Ada, made me some breakfast and then Dennis took me home, and in the afternoon I went to the hospital to see him.

I done a number on him alright. His face was all swollen up and they had his jaw wired so he couldn't talk right. I spent my whole life being afraid of this man and there he was looking like a little kid just had his tonsils out or something, weak as a kitten and tiny as baby rat in that big bed, and suddenly I wasn't afraid of him any more and I knew I never would be again. Now I know that ain't nice. I know that fighting don't solve everything--most of the time it doesn't solve anything, it just makes everything worse--and that we should have been able to get at it some other way but I didn't know no other way, and right then I wasn't ashamed of myself for doing it at all. Hell, I was glad I done it. If that makes me a bastard, then a bastard is what I am and what I'll stay because the truth is, bad or not, that I was proud of what I done. I was then and I am now. So when Ma went out of the room for something I went over close to the bed and I looked down at him and I said, "If you ever hurt Ma in front of me again, or call her filthy names, what I did to you this time is gonna look like a walk in the park. You understand?" It sounds stupid now, like a kid bragging, which I guess is what it was, but right that second I meant it more than I ever meant anything in my life. I think I would've killed him, maybe. His eyes was all filmed over with some yellow gunk and bloodshot and his cheek was black-and-blue and it must have hurt to move but he nodded and from then on he never hit her again or called her names, not when I was around, at least. And we never talked about what happened, ever. I already said everything I had to say and I guess he did too.

And now here it was again, the same old shit, and she wasn't even alive to defend herself--not that she would have. So like I said, I froze. I couldn't believe what I was hearing come out of his mouth after all these years. I stood up and I think Cyn thought I was going to do him right there, she was pulling at me so hard, but I didn't pay her no mind. "You forget what we talked about, you sonuvabitch?" I said. "You think the rules changed somewheres along the line, that what you think? You think you can start this shit again just cause she's gone, you think again, you--" but I couldn't think of a word bad enough so I reached across the table and picked up his beer glass and threw it through the living room window, which bust into a thousand pieces and had my nieces running in from the other room where they was playing with their toys, and Howie was yelling at me and Cyn was pulling at me from one side while Sam pulled at me from the other and then I just left. I think when we was leaving I told him he could rot in hell before I'd come to his house again, but I ain't sure. We got in the truck and Sam didn't say nothing all the way back to my place and neither did I.

I don't know what to say about what I did. I wasn't thinking, it was just something I did in a flash, in the heat of the moment like they say. I ain't proud of it, but goddammit, I ain't ashamed of it either. He had that coming and a lot worse. If you don't think so, well, you got a right to think that but you didn't grow up in the same house with him and go to bed most nights to get woke up by the fights and the yelling and come down in the morning to see your Mom all beat up. If you did, you might feel different, I don't know. I ain't making excuses, I'm just telling you what happened. If you think I'm  some kind of stupid animal, then you do and maybe I am, but I'd do it again and whatever that makes me, I can live with.

But bad as that day was, the Fourth of July was worse, you might as well know that now.

OK. I been getting a lot of advice today and doing a lot of thinking. Ms Thompson read my post from last night and she sent me an email first thing this morning. I'm going to paste it in, well, some of it, so you can read it.

"Sometimes the hardest things to write about are the things that hurt us most and the things we wish were different and the things we're ashamed of. But they're also the most important things to write about. William Faulkner (a great writer) once said that the human heart was sometimes a glory and sometimes a cesspool but either way it was the only thing on God's green earth worth writing about. Emmett, what you're feeling is understandable. It's easy to be honest when there's nothing at stake; it takes courage to be honest when it hurts, and special courage to be honest when you're showing that hurt in front of other people. But that's what writers have to do if they're any good."

She's got a point. It always pisses me off when people give you the smiley-face when you know what they'd really like to do is bust your teeth down your throat. I always figured if people had something to say, they should come out and say it and stop pretending like everything's cool when it ain't. I always did before and I got into a helluva lot of trouble doing it but I always felt afterward like I did the right thing. I told them the truth. I keep it to myself more now, but I don't lie to people, not much anyway, and never about anything big. White lies, you know, and I even feel bad about them sometimes. I got about that far and then Sam says, "What'd you make it public for if you don't want people to read it?" and I said, "I didn't know it was gonna get so personal. I thought I was just gonna write about people around here, tell stories and stuff." And she looked at me for a while with her head all cocked to one side like she does when she's thinking, and then she said, "You thought it was all gonna be peaches and cream and laughs and now you find out it ain't so easy, now you find out you gotta tell things you don't much like to talk about and you're afraid. "I ain't afraid!" I said (well, yelled is more like it) but she just looked me right in the eye, which is something she does whenever I get riled up, she plants herself in front of me with her nose about an inch away from mine and it's almost like looking in a mirror that tells you things you don't want to know. "You're afraid," she said. "You think they'll laugh or think you're stupid or should have treated your dad better or shouldn't be as dumb as you think you are, which you're not, and you don't want to hear it."

You know, it's scary how good that woman knows me. I couldn't ever fool her no matter how hard I tried, it's like she's got radar that goes right down to the center of my brain. Well, I tried to hold out for a while but I could see it wasn't no good. "You're afraid," she said, "that's why you want to quit, isn't it?" And out it came, I didn't even mean it to. "OK. Yeah." And then in this real quiet voice she said, "Emmett Sears, you never lied to me yet I know of. Now is not a good time to start." So I told her. I told her the parts of what happened she didn't see and I told her how I felt about it and I told her some of the stuff she didn't know from a long time ago and she just sat there and listened to it and didn't say nothing. When I couldn't think of nothing else to say, I stopped and she stood up and damn if she wasn't crying. I don't know why. What I said wasn't sad to me, it pissed me off, but she put her arms around me and then she pushed me at the computer and she said, "You write that down, Emmett. All of it. Let people read it." "Why?" I said. "What's the big deal?" "The big deal is, you're not the only one with a father like that. You'e not the only feels that way. You're not the only one beatin up on yourself for stuff that wasn't never your fault to begin with. There's a lot of people like that and they all think they're the only ones. And there's a lot of people don't know what it's like that oughta know so maybe they'll quit makin fun of us, which they might if they knew the truth of it. So you write it, you write it just like you told it to me. You tell em what it's like." And then she give me the damnedest kiss before she went in the other room to read her book, the one Clinton wrote. And just before she went out the door, she said, "And Emmett?" and I said, "What?" and she said,"Use some periods." "What?" I thought she hadn't seen it. "You been readin this?" "Of course, and your sentences are gettin longer than a March blizzard. Use a period once in a while." And then she went.

Well, I still didn't write it. But I did a lot of thinking about writing it. Sam was right (she ain't always, you know, she just thinks she is). So was Ms Thompson. So was Gunna-Poet (that's the person left the comment). I been stalling. I been beating around the bush and hedging it near the top but I've been ignoring the roots, which is what really matters, because I didn't want people to know how rotten they were. But if you can't face things square in this life then you ain't much of a man--or a person. I think a lot of what I got against my dad is how much he makes me hide from. There's a whole lot of giraffes in the living room that we been pretending ain't there and that stuff adds up on you until you start to feel like you're dragging this big-ass truck with a chain across your shoulder and some idiot put the parking brake on. I hate him for that. I hate him for what I'm dragging along behind me, but that ain't fair because he never asked me to hide it, he never asked me to drag nothing for him. That was me. That was because I was ashamed. But it ain't my fault he's like he is. He was that way before I was born, there wasn't nothing I could do to change it.

Anyway, it's his story. And mine. And I guess a lot of other people's too. And if this damn thing I'm doing is going to be honest and not just jerking off, then I got to tell the bad stuff with the good and let people think what they want and have the guts to face it however it really is.

Damn that Sam anyway. I ought to marry that girl, maybe. (I hope she don't get to this part.)

And I know who William Faulkner is, dammit! I read one of his books in high school, "As I Lay Dying" I think it was called, all about what this dead person thinks while they're taking the coffin to the cemetary.  It was pretty messed up. I liked it.

I wasn't expecting this. First I got a email from somebody says I got "fans" which surprised the hell out of me, I didn't know anybody was reading it but my class and I didn't mind that because, to tell you the truth, I couldn't see them. I don't know if I could get up in front of a bunch of people and read this with them staring at me like they was expecting something, but I didn't have to. I just type it in and it's like I'm talking to myself and there ain't nobody else there, which is OK, though the other part is I was thinking I was wasting my time and the only one that bothered to read this was Ms Thompson and what the hell was I doing it for? I ain't no damn writer, I just say what's going on and what I seen, and there ain't nothing to that. How does that make me a writer? I'm just a kid from the sticks, my English ain't all that good, I know that, but it didn't bother me when I just thought I was talking to myself. So I wrote Ms. Thompson and told her all that last week and said I didn't think I was cut out for this writing stuff and she wrote back and said I was the best writer in the class and don't I dare quit and I thought she was just trying to, you know, do what a teacher does, encourage you and stuff, but then this email comes says I got fans and I don't know what to think or how I feel about it. It's almost like the tv wrote me a letter, you know? Because all I see is the computer screen and suddenly it's talking back to me which I wasn't, you know, prepared for.

And then tonight I thought I would read some of this shit I wrote, see if there was maybe any good in it, and I notice I got this "comment", that's what they call it. When Steve helped me set this thing up, he showed me that tiny print on the bottom and he says, "People can click this and then write to you, tell you what they think about what you wrote," and I said, "I guess that's OK with me," but I never thought nobody would do it, and he says, "What do you wanna tell em?" and I says, "What do you mean?" and he says, "Right there where it says Comment you can put anything you want to tell em. I just write it in here--" and he pointed to an empty box on the screen "--and it'll come out instead of Comment." It took me a minute to get the idea and at first I didn't think it made no difference since nobody was going to use it, and I said, "Just leave it be," but then Steve says, "I can kill this if you don't want to get any comments at all," and I was going to let him and then I thought, Ah, fuck it, and I says, "Tell em to say something if they want, what do I care?" and that's what he put. I meant it when I said it, too, but then some guy left a comment said he liked what I wrote and at first I didn't believe him but then I thought, what's he even bothering to tell me for if it ain't true? And then I kind of noticed I liked it. I mean, I didn't go dancing around the cabin or anything (that's dangerous with all these electric cables I got strung everywhere, I mean, they're out of the way as they can be but that ain't far enough to dance on) but it kind of made me feel good to think there's was somebody out there thought what I did wasn't too bad, you know? And Sam noticed I was in a pretty good mood that night, too, and took advantage of it if you know what I mean, and she said I ought to keep it up so I did even though she ain't read but a little of it and don't know what she's talking about.

And then this email thing and all of a sudden I got fans and then I go to read it, like I said, and I got a comment from somebody in Australia of all the goddam places got the gall to tell me I'm stalling on writing about what happened with my dad and says he's (she's? I don't know which, the name was one of these "handles" that ain't a real name and you can't tell nothing about who wrote it, which I don't really get because what are they ashamed of? Are they wanted by the cops or something? Are they in hiding? What? But on the other hand, it ain't really none of my business what their name is and I don't know them anyway so what difference does it make? I didn't think about that when I signed up on this thing. Steve asked me what name I wanted to put down and I said, "Emmett, you whack," because that's my name and I didn't even know why he was asking me but now I know, I guess, and if I thought about it then I might have come up with something snazzy, like Buckaroo Cornhole or Mr. Fixit or The Woody Man, something cool like that. Emmett's kind of dull now I think about it. Maybe I ought to change it.

So what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, the "comment". So this--what do I call them?--"person" says I should get on with it and tell about my dad and I just stared at that and I thought, "What goddam business is it of theirs?", that was first, but then I remembered Steve told me he could set this up so just Ms. Thompson and the class could read it if I didn't want, like, people in town to see it and know what I was thinking about them, which did stop me for a second because it never occurred to me they would or would give a damn if they did, and I said, "You can do that?" and he said, "Sure," he said, "see this right there? That's a thing where if I click on it, nobody who don't register with the blog site--" (I think that's what he called it) "--can see it. You just give everybody in your class your password and then they can log in but nobody who don't have the password can," and I thought, "Shit, that's too damn cool," (which actually most of the people in my class did, it turned out. I got a bunch of passwords I have to put in to read their stuff, but it's not too bad because the machine remembers them and all I got to do is click the button on the mouse thing, it was Rachel started it, she lives in Florida and she said she couldn't think straight if she thought her family could read what she wrote about them and after I read what she wrote, I could see what she meant--whew! but that girl is some pissed at them) and I was going to do it but then I figured what the hell, I don't care. People around here know what I think, hell everybody around here knows what everybody else thinks about them mostly, it ain't a secret, and anyway I got a big mouth, that's the truth, everybody says so, in fact most of them think I ought to learn to shut up once in a while. My Aunt Flo used to say, "Emmett, you don't need to be tellin everybody everything you're thinkin about, sometimes it's better if you don't. Specially since it's you. You're too damned honest for your own good but you ain't God Almighty, you don't know everything and you ain't always right," which I know is true and I've been working on it lately and I'm getting better but it's too late now to worry about what people who know me think, I already burned that bridge a long time ago, so should I really be worrying what people I don't know who live half-way the hell around the world think?

I don't know. It's just my dad is hard to talk about and what I got to say ain't very pleasant, in fact between what happened Father's Day and the Fourth of July I don't know if I'm ever going to speak to that bastard again, he crossed the goddam line with both feet and I was so mad Sam had to haul my ass home before I beat the living shit out of him, though I probably wouldn't have really done it, it was a close thing there for a minute and I really wanted to clock him. But it's all family shit, stuff that goes back years and the way he treats Cyn and me, the way he always treated us, and he was drunk off his ass again after he promised not to, and what's that going to mean to anybody but us? So I don't know. I got to think about this. I ain't real proud of my father when times is good, when it's like this, well, when it's like this I'm ashamed of him, ashamed he's my father, ashamed I'm his son, ashamed of everything about us. When my mom was alive she could usually find a way to calm him down and smooth things over (unless she was drinking herself) and it was better, but since she died....

This is hard. I don't know, I got to think about this. Maybe it ain't right.

So I guess I have to talk about my dad whether I want to or not. After this weekend I can't seem to think about nothing else.

So Father's Day we went over there and dad was in the backyard with the grille, naturally, what else, and at first everything was fine. Cyn had her boyfriend over, his name is Gary and he's a carpenter, he builds houses. Nice enough guy, I guess, but he drinks an awful lot and don't say much so it's hard to tell. Least he's better than the last one, the bricklayer, the one who thought cowboys were baby bulls and parted his hair in the middle. He said his name was "Bart" but I didn't believe that for a second, still don't, it was probably Clarence or Justin or something, but Cyn was nuts about him for a while. Then again so was every other woman around, even Sam who said she thought he was "fine" and rolled her eyes and made noises in her throat which at first I thought she was just doing to get my goat but then I seen Cyn and Gen and even Sadie Prestone ("Like the anti-freeze", she always says, and laughs like she ain't been making that same joke twelve times a day for 47 years) who is too damn old to be thinking things like that anyway, and they were all nodding their heads and making the same damn noises in their throats and looking over at him leaned up against the bar with his hip sticking out and licking their lips and laughing this secret woman-laugh which we ain't supposed to understand but right that moment was about as clear as it could be what it meant, and then later I caught Sam checking out his buns when he leaned over the pool table and I almost clapped her one right then and there. We had words about it later, let me tell you. I mean, she can have that dumb sonuvabitch if she wants him, it ain't nothing to me if she wants to go around with a guy thinks George Bush is smart and weed-whackers is something dirty you do when you're alone. She likes his buns well enough to put up with that, she can just kiss mine goodbye and peddle hers over to his place--a trailer back behind some rocks on Piscataqua Road that ain't got no plumbing because he's too damn lazy and too damn stupid and too damn broke all the time to buy a water pump or know how to hook it up from the well if he wasn't, and she can do her business in that tiny outhouse in the middle of winter and I won't give her frozen little ass one damn minute's more thought than I would if my pet caterpillar left me, in fact I wish her well and godspeed as my Aunt Flo used to say and might be I just might look Gen up and see is she all talk (which I know she ain't, never mind how) and see how it goes from there. There's two can play that game, you know. Only Sam said later it didn't mean nothing, she just likes to look and don't think she hadn't seen me all goggle-eyed watching Gen's tits bounce around when she danced and if it was OK for me then it was OK for her as long as she just looked and I had to admit, though it grinds on me wicked bad, she had a point and fair's fair but goddammit, "Bart"? What's she see in that fruitcake? and she said, "See is right," and licked her lips again, and then took to laughing at me and said there was nothing wrong with my buns such as they were, and then went and proved it and I couldn't stay mad even though she never answered my question and I still don't know what she sees in him besides, well, besides what I said. And then Cyn goes over his place to pick him up (his truck's as big a junkpile as his house, it don't run half the time and the other half it quits in the middle and strands him on some little road out in the middle of Nowheresville and people he knows have to quit what they're doing to go pick him up there) and she walks into the trailer without knocking because he's expecting her and there's him and Wendy Miller naked as jaybirds and going at it on what passes for a bed and when "Bart" sees her he gets all shocked and says, "What're you doin here, you're half an hour early", all indignant like it was her fault, and I think it was that Cyn hated more than finding them like that, which you have to expect with a guy women chase like dogs will chase hamburger but Cyn thought they had "something special" and it wouldn't happen with her and I said, "That's what they all say," and she hit me.

But nothing like she hit him that day for complaining about her timing which was nothing but sheer gall and I could have told him Cyn wouldn't go for it. When she stormed out of that trailer all but taking the door off on her way out (she left it hanging by a hinge), she left him with one eye so black you could see the veins pumping on top of his cheekbone and the lid so swollen up it looked like somebody pasted a really ugly golf ball right on his eye socket, and one of his ears split wide open, and she tore Wendy's hair out by the roots in big clumps so she had to go around with a kerchief on her head day and night for weeks to cover up the bald spots. I grew up with my sister and I know better than to mouth off at her but there's some that are wicked surprised when they find out what she's willing to do when she ain't happy with a person. She ain't very big but she's been slinging bales of hay and training horses and what not, and with one thing or another she's got major muscles in those skinny little arms and she ain't afraid to use them. But I guess he knows that now.

Well, I guess I just thought about something else. I guess I feel better.