He was a big  Big tall kid

really a young man

  

they enjoyed his unexpected shyness

it was refreshing

                              given his size   he could have been gregarious  overbearing

he could have been dangerous

young men out of high school are often so full of themselves that the only way they might understand Respect was to be throttled

                                                              who gets throttled to-day  --  maybe dissed  --  though apparently few can absorb it  their skins arent thick enough  or theyre not in possession of 

a deeper resilience

it seems if theyre anyone  theres an entourage    to attest to their prowess

growing up   

                   not that he participated

entourages were called gangs 

                                                  and a gang to him was nothing more than a loud colourful admission that they couldnt stand up for themselves

he stood up for himself   by himself

his old man said afterwards that maybe that wasnt a good idea

                                                                                          Youre fast you should have run

the gang beat him up pretty good

he winded up in the hospital

but there was one thing he took from them  with him

it hung in his eyes like cheap Used Car Sale pennants

their faces                 

                  each and every one of their five faces

they didnt give him great odds  5:1

he might have been willing to leave well enough alone when they beat him down

had they stopped pummeling him

but they didnt

on his knees he took their barrage of leather shoe and booted kicks  too lazy he thought  to bend over and use their fists

so he hung their faces in his eyes

until the glare of the overhead hospital lights etched  bleached them onto his brain

he turned them over and over and over like a deck of five cards  

                                                                                                       over and over quietly

they were like dirty wash thrown over a line to air out their repulsive stink

air them out so when time came to wash them the Fels Naptha soap and clear water had a real shot at cleansing them

                                                                                                                    then recovered

he caught up with them one at a time

he gave them even odds  1:1
let them best man win

 

the cycle replete

                                                        which for him made the big Big kids shyness  very refreshing

she said she was drawn to his timidity  his courteousness  thoughtfulness

but as they got to know him better they realised his gentile attributes were only had by a kind of social retardedness 

                                   they were more from a deficit  than a forging of spirit

Denial  enforces its particular aspects

forging tempered steel  eradicating its impurities  forms something Denial can never incorporate

they were slight reveals

never blatant

subtle  delicate

 

if you werent looking for them you might not see them

people hustling around him paid him no matter or attention  and the grocer who needed the bulk moved and unloaded and stacked paid him no mind either

it was as if hed been read fairy tales his whole life

and in this small  cloistered  rural town

weeds were thinned almost as they peeped their uncomely heads from of the ground

Worldliness  she said  of the town  was unnecessary in a household of God and Worship

she was sympathetic

                                    always more compassionate than he

but she had been raised with religion

his parents tried to raise him with religion

and he tried

but during a Catechism lesson telling of the story of Daniel in the Lions Den  he laughed

he was punished

                             nuns held at his shoulders and knelt him on a broom handle

he was tagged

and at home his parents read the pinned note instructing them that he was to recite numerous Hail Marys and Art Fathers  and beg for Gods Forgiveness

                                                                                                              For what  he asked

I know exactly what hungry lions would do to Daniel

it occurred to him then  the astonished glimmer in their eyes

his parents wanted him to have religion   for them

No  he said  

                    recognizing  for the first time  his way was to please himself

before he pleased anyone else

--   Youre very sympathetic babe  I love that in you

But I got to tell you  and you know how my hearing works  when you said  worldliness was unnecessary in a household of God and Worship 

                                                                                          I thought you said   briefly

until I recognised it was too incongruent   

                                                                  a hellhole of God and Worship

And in that thin moment of rapture  I nearly snaked your worship into warship

Whew  from the mouth of babes  huh

--   Matthew  21:16

--   Jesus youd know better than me

                                                              Mayhem  Double aught

  

1544,  Sunday,  15  2. 15 

2222,  Sunday,  15  2. 15

Friday the 13th   Thirteenth   13th        Thirteenth

                                                                      he couldnt decide which way he liked it best

  

13th   Thirteenth

 

thirteenth   13th

the long even line of thirteenth appealed to him like a straight razor or stiletto with teeth 

the roundness of 13th  of its 3  bulbs mons pubis breasts or a fanny gripped tightly in one hand  the other free to grip another fixation

                                                           fastenation

fastenation upset others   unhinged their pet peeves

Cant you just write fascination

I cant  Its like not watching an attractive woman walking by  Why wouldnt I watch her

obliquely 

 

the thirteenth rarely exhibited for him  his physical being  any downsides

though his old man while a young man had an ungainly penchant for ending up in a hospital

then enduring lengthy stays

to his young waondering mind

                                                  it seemed that this slew of hospitalizations coincided with a raft of major projects his old man laid out for the pair of them to complete

preparing the earth for their large vegetable gardens

thatching their front and back lawns during the Autumn and Spring

not as visually stimulating or as abundant as when raking up their maple and black walnut leaves and twigs

  

scrapping repairing then repainting the white picket fence that divvied up their property from their neighbors to either side of them 

                                                   particularly that year they annexed two feet of their property back from their cop neighbor who had built a fence  violating the property line   and kept it from the family who owned their house prior

apparently it was the rave of the neighborhood  a small ten year old going toe-to-toe with cop in full uniform  badge cap and sidearm  the evening following the day he had finished dismantling nearly forty feet of fence  when days prior he begun bringing it down under the aegis . . .

--   Did you really just say aegis to me

--   I did

--   What ten year old thats what you are right ten uses the word aegis

--   Youre looking at him Mr Betel

he  for the most part  was able to remain respectful of his elders  though it laid the groundwork and spurred his deepseated resentment of anything pertaining to Authority or physically was bigger than he 

                          . . . under the aegis of replacing rotted pickets rails and posts

he ran a stringline according to County assessment of their propertyline  dug postholes set and squared the posts  and anchored them with concrete mixed in a wheelbarrow 

he just finished screwing in the complete upper rail when Mr Betel came flying down the stairs of his backporch enraged

--   You sneaky sonofabitch

 

he had  all along  a second copy from the Assessors Office tucked in his back pocket   that his father had attained before he went into the hospital unexpectedly

but he couldnt bring himself to follow the letter of the Law his father had laid out from the hospital through his mother

                                not to argue with Mr Betel  simply and respectfully hand him the document 

hed know what it was

he was an officer of the Law

then remove himself from the situation

if push came to shove 

                                    somehow his old man left that out of his instructions

if push came to shove

he heard over the kitchen table at dinner more times than he could remember  the irritation in his old mans voice whenever  by the slimmest of possibilities or wildness of gropes  to wend in his outrage that the Settlemeyers hadnt coopted their Own property while they lived there

because the neighbor was a policeman

                                                               and who wanted that trouble

Trouble  What trouble  No trouble at all

or when plans had been set to paint their two-storey wood frame house

side  by  side  by  side  by  side

scrape and use propane flame to boil resistant paint

sand 

apply primer   

sand rough spots and re-prime   

apply undercoat   

apply finish coat

not to mention the dropcloths to gather the scrapings and sanding and keep paint from the sidewalks and plants

or the ladderwork

or putting up and moving and taking down the scaffolding

not to mention the entire Summer that it took

yet somewhere in all of that

among all those times

to his young waondering mind

                                                  he hoped his old man pulled an occasional quick one on him

sprung himself from the hospital  did some carousing  or maybe spirited his mother away on a weekend trip when their grandmother came to stay with him and his seven younger siblings

hospital rules then forbade children from entering its confines  he didnt see his old man once he went in until he returned home and finished out his convalescence

but through the sweat in his eyes and the exhaustion in his body at night  through the obscene promise of more work to do tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

through all of it

                           he liked imagining one of them was out having a ball  for both of them

thirteenth   like a straight razor or stiletto

with teeth

1250,  Friday,  13  2. 2015                                                                                                            1354,  Sunday,  15  2. 15