My shoes make me look like I’m wearing dinner rolls on my feet. What that matters to ya is neither here or there, just thought I’d put it out there for y’all. You know, so’s ya would know something about the person telling this story. I think it always helps to know more about a person than what their dirty dogs look like in a cheap pair of sandals anyways. Regular shoes show how small my ankles are, there, at the bottom of my twiggy legs. I ain’t never been a runner, see.
There ain’t a good way to start this. In fact, there really ain’t anything good about this story at all. So I guess why I’m saying this is that y’all don’t need to gear yourself up for one of them feel good stories. One of them with the heart of gold criminal, or a tear jerker about something going wrong, maybe everything going wrong, forcing a person to do things they regret doing. This ain’t that. Put those idears away right now because Parker Matthews ain’t fixing to tell ya a story like that.
It’s a good name, ain’t it? Named for the county in Texas Mama done squeezed me out in seventeen years ago. Mama didn’t have no idea if I were Man or girl, so she waited patiently for the good Lord to tells her on the eve of my birth. She told me once she was gonna name me after the nurse if I was a girl, the hospital if I was a boy. Then she done gave birth to me in Women of Faith Hospital in Plano, and that sure as heck weren’t gonna help once I popped out with my doodle.
We always used to laugh at that story, Mama and me. I’m already forgettin’ the sound of her laughter, real shame. Less than a year and I gotta think twice about its melody.
Oh. Y’all gettin’ thirsty? Need a break? I never says I was a GOOD story teller, just that I got me a story to tell so it might be takin’ some time for me to get to the grit. I don’t never get thirsty, but I’ll tell you what, if any of y’all got a smoke I could bum off ya, I’ll dance at your wedding for it.
Thank you, kindly. When Mama found out I been smokin’ these since grade four, I thought the rage of the Almighty His Self were working through her. She squared up and said: “BOY! When you’s got yourself your own roof to make smell like them smokes and yo Mama is miles away so’s she can’t smell none of that cancer you’s suckin into them healthy lungs the Lord gives ya, well sir, THEN you’re a man and whatever y’all be doing is between the Almighty and yourself! Right now it’s between you, the Almighty, and your Mama, sixteen years old ain’t got beans on my brains!” She took every smoke she ever found after that and broke ‘em and left the filters on my pillow. She were too sharp to leave the left over tobacco because she knew I’d roll smokes out of it.
Smartest Mama there ever was, even if they done told me I were a man anyway, with or without my own roof.
