OCR Text |
Show Go Love/154 20. O.W. sits down beside me, he joins me on the Love Wins All bench. All is quiet. And it's one hot mother, I mean it, people just don't know how weak-kneed Arkansas can make you in the summer time, when the snake doctors ride each other across the bermuda grass and a lawn sprinkler reminds me of Mama's one legged daddy, how he'd hop through one set up in his tomato garden, squealing who-ee' who-ee' after hulling purple hulls. O.W.'s father was a driver just like him, had in fact got him started at East Texas Motor Freight straight out of high school. I remember the old man's decrepit Cadillacs and whiskey breath, how he'd put me on his lap and work the accelerator with his feet and let me drive the back roads outside Little Rock. And once, on the bright August morning while Mama birthed Jimmy, I picked six or seven bloody red tulips out of his front yard~a gift for Mama and my new brother. He lay me across a bed and whipped my ass with the buckle end of his belt for a good long time. Mama hit the fan-"he beat my son for picking damn flowers?" she screamed at O.W. while Jimmy squalled in the basinet she'd made from her wedding dress lace. "Eight Royal Burgandies," O.W. told her, "He'd a shot me." And ever after, the tulip was a sign between us. Out of the blue one would show up with a note saying |