I flick paper
plates like a Vegas dealer, sliding them to the edge without sailing off. More
often than not, paper towels double for napkins, and they’ve got nothing on shirt
sleeves. I look at my plate; creamed chipped beef and peas on toast. “Shit on a
shingle,” my father says. “We had it in the army. Eat it.” As I maneuver pea
grenades off my toast, the male species lower their heads and shovel shit, and
my mother perfects the art of looking pissed at our barbarism. Howard Cosell’s nasal
cadence extols Mohammed Ali’s rope-a-dope from the Magnavox. We’re three minutes
in, adjusting our ass cheeks and scraping our plates for the last bit of lumpy
cream, when our German shepherd, Slider, begins heaving. My father leaps from
the table. “Jeee-zus!” he shouts from the living room.
The pile of vomit is
rotting woodchuck carcass. It’s a tossup on what’s more disgusting—the puke or
the smell—when the vomit starts moving. My brother, the offender who let the dog
out, moans at the task before him. I pull my shirt over my nose and go in for a
better look. Maggots writhe in the creamy muck. Shit.
Dirt wedges
beneath my nails. It’s rained recently and a musty smell rises from the hole. I
carefully extract a worm and toss it on the grass. I remove the bird from my
pocket and stroke its yellow breast. It’s smaller now, curled into itself. I
cover it with dirt and mumble a prayer of ever-lasting salvation and add a flat
rock for a tomb stone. It’d be perfect for skipping. I lay on the grass and
look at the sky. A sliver moon is silver against a violet sky. Someday I’ll be
in the ground, dark, suffocating, eaten by worms. I smell my bird hands and realize what the vomit
smelled like; Death. Life’s a lot like fighting. Float like a butterfly. Sting like
a bee.
No comments:
Post a Comment