Trouble
She named him Jack after the bottle of whisky she drowned herself in whilst he, bloody and screaming, slipped out from between her thighs and exclamations of “Oh Lord Jesus Christ!” His eyes grew up attached to drips of crackling television; watching men being thrown around on bulls like a leaving-home-bag in the back of a pick-up. His first word was “Rodeo” followed by “mamma.” Never said “Dada.” Wrote music about his times on the ranch: smoking away the coffee-coloured sky, riding bulls the wrong way, listening to the peppery crowing of Billy’s harmonica. His blood type was A-whisky-positive; woke up most mornings pants soaked in his own piss, with bruises he couldn’t remember the names of. He drove a pick-up truck with a faulty wheel cap and smoked his black and rotting room in the air. Found a girl in the bar of a northern highway: uptown, off the Jelm Mountain Road (Highway #10). She wore red cowgirl boots the same colour as her lips, and had black eyes the same colour as her humour, and she told him he was “trouble.” Ended up between his thighs, pressed against a bottle of Jack, feeling like her saddle was the wrong way up, riding beneath a horse. After nine months, she was there with a bundle and a frown, handed him the bundle, left with the frown. He called the bundle “trouble.” Put whisky in her bottle to make her go to sleep. Took her to the rodeo, let her sit on his shoulders so that she felt taller than the world. Took her dancing, plaited her hair for her though bits always ended up sticking out, drove her to her friend’s house, listened to her when she cried about an older boy she liked.
They called him at five sharp, the sky streaked with red like finger nail marks down a wall. There had been a fire, they said. We found a body, they said. She had such dusty lips when he saw her and they never moved. Coffin was red like her mother’s cow girl boots. Billy played harmonica drowning out the day. In the evening, he drove his car to the nearest cliff and watched the sun set and told himself he would drink as much alcohol as the amount of sky.