Heartaches and Grease

I start every day with at least four eggs and three pieces of bacon covered in roasted chili peppers. When I'm feeling the need for more mass, I fry up pan biscuits and use the rendered fat of the bacon to make gravy. In my defense I use whole wheat. On occasion, I have a beer or a little whiskey with breakfast. Just enough to open up those chilis.

I am aware this is not healthy. That being said, my family with it's tradition of longevity, barring production of ever more creepy charcoal self portraits in a mirror and then giving you brain a buckshot ride at a young age, is based on various rendered animal fats swimming in flour and whole fat milk. Gravy for those of you uninitiated. As well as over easy eggs, breaded and fried animals adorable enough to find their way into bitch-ass zoological parks on the Coasts. Whiskey gets an honorable mention. As does homemade fruit wine.

I look out of the window of a life that seems to have found its way good and gone anymore. The Jcrew crowd is closing in. I have gravel and grit where others have polish. Listening to me read poetry is like using an adz for trim work. Hearing me use pretty words is like watching a surgeon with a cleaver. Like RDX, aluminum oxide, and polymerizer trying to usher in peace and democracy.

As soon as my short arms could reach the trigger around the butt of a gun, I was taught to shoot. I've been hunting longer than I've been reading, and that is impressive as my mom taught me how to read in the sleeper of a semi hauling flammables through the scorched silver highways lost in miles of red desert around the age of three. When I was possibly four, I was hunting out on the rim of the Escalante with my father and a few other of the Brethren. My brothers and I had the job of walking unarmed through the bottom of a draw, the wardens were out and were weren't of legal hunting age. We were to flush the game while my father and one of the Brethren walked above us on the ledge ready to shoot down into the draw should food present itself. By far, I was the youngest and smallest there. Bear and mountain lion were pretty heavy down there back then. I asked, as tough as I could muster, what I should do about the cougars if they decided I was food presenting itself to them. My father, with some great ceremony, pulled from its holster a bone handled hatchet. He put it in my hand, which was barely able to grasp the thick handle. He put his diesel smelling hand on my head and told me with preacher's conviction in his eyes, “If you don't fight back, you ain't my son.”

We got a couple does and a buck.

In the fading orange sun of Colorado dusk in wildfire season, he would drill us. We had to know how to fight, how to speak, how to introduce ourselves, and how to treat ladies. We also had to know how to field a grounder, how to grab the ball by the laces and send it flying, how to leg tackle, how to chop block, and how to suck it up when we got beat up. If we cried or limped out
when us boys were engaged in the fray of brother wrestling matches, he would jerk us up to stand up straight and threaten us with something to cry about. He would remind us of our one immutable family law: If you ain't bleeding, you can't cry.

I wish he had taught us more important skills. Like how to chisel a customer. How to lie. How to bring your conscience under control when principle gets in the way of comfortable living. How to leave a woman and leave her casual. I have none of those important life skills.

On the other hand, I'm doing alright. For a kid who got his first pocket knife when he was still in onesies.