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Show Go Love/179 of it all are letters written in Shawn Terrence Lord's flowery hand, postmarked from San Diego and Dallas and Ft Lauderdale and Barcelona, Spain-one of which I scan long enough to know what they all say, how it goes The letters line up chronologically-they've been read and thought about Beneath Lord's letters, stacked domino style across the bottom of Mama's briefcase, envelopes bulge with photographs from Jamaica and Washington, D.C. and the Little Rock inauguration-big, glossy western size prints of Mama and Shawn Lord drinking big fruit drinks with umbrellas on a white sand beach. Lord in a workout room, straining under a bench press. In dinner dress, they pose with Hillary Clinton and the woman from Little Rock who starred in that movie An Officer and a Gentelman. whoever she is. A dim-lit run, maybe three photos, show Lord in red bikini underwear, on a hotel bed, his legs spread out and a come to me look on his face I tear this photo to pieces and those pieces into pieces, shove it all into my pants pocket where an unwrapped cough drop has melted. I shut and lock my mother's briefcase and put it back exactly where it was before, in the cleaned away spot beside the table where the peanut butter and jelly sandwich attracts tiny fruit flies. I shut Mama's door, pull hard so the doorframe squeals and the bolt clicks and I walk away, up past my own old bedroom where I'd lay on the floor on afternoons after house framing or finishing concrete and dream up schemes for getting the fuck out of Arkansas forever. Sunburned, I'd lay there on the carpet with the sounds of my family going on outside, in summer time, the cool air whirring through the air conditioner vent, and when the sun went down, the night noise, and somebody'd wreck their scooter just over the train tracks across town, and I'd hear Mama and Daddy laugh at something and Jimmy'd walk through the hall from his back |