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Show Go Love/174 aware of me, of the moment, of our shared story, everything: all that time on the road to think, to reinvent the world he willed. "Your real father's dead, son." My eyes are adjusting-Mama's bed's a mess. "Buddy Washer. That midget told me last night" I see a postman cursing us from the backseat of a cop car spewing gravel- son of a bitch, son of a bitch. Out of my mouth, "That son of a bitch is nobody to me " The wall dusts O.W.'s shoulder. "I'm sorry. Talk to the little man. Family's family." "Aren't you my goddamn family?" I think to hit him in the face, but instead brush the dust off his shoulder. The look is as solemn as has ever been on a solemn man's face. He says, "Will you help me?" His IceLand tietack's upside down-I've never one time seen him tie a tie in his life For all his life, surely, it was Mama tying his ties At our wedding, we wore twin clip-ons. I take one tongue in each hand, separate and match them, stick the tietack needle through the thick middle "What happened to my Mama?" O W nods "The coroner's report will say accidental drowning. But she had a heart attack. The insurance people won't pay if it doesn't say accidental." "How can you know that?" He wipes one big hand on the other. I've watched him lie to Mama a hundred times, straight-faced, without a twitch. He measures me. "I'm smarter than you'll ever be," he screamed at me once from his recliner, a rerun of Gomer Pyle going on a sad-hot afternoon when the refrigerator'd gone out and the whole house reeked of rotten hamburger. Then he got up and carved a soapbox |