He always rolled into town like he was going to stay forever, with a new tattoo and his shiny Martin guitar, saying Damn, ya’ll this is allllll right. He might of had a mouth full of chew but he wore cufflinks, even on a $5 shirt from wal-mart. That was him to a T: A high-class hobo.
There was always a new girl, or a story about one. Couldn’t keep his hands off women, couldn’t do it. Some of them were only a few years older than me, girls that were brassy and big – chested. Some of those girlfriends I really liked, Madeline with her hair dyed black and her lipstick called “Flame” or Lila the yoga instructor that rode a motorcycle and wore feathers for her earrings.
I wasn’t ever sure exactly where he’d been, sometimes tending bar in New York at night and betting on horses at the Aqueduct during the day, sometimes working as firefighter in Arizona for the winter, sometimes working as a limo driver and playing black jack in between runs, often living with a woman that wasn’t my mother.
But when he was back in town, he made everything feel like flying, like the wind was blowing directly in your favor. He’d pick me up from school, let me cut class with him, and sometimes we’d drink light beer and smoke expensive pipe tobacco by the river in the middle of the afternoon.
When he came without a girl, he stayed with us; hell even if he did have another girl he sometimes would. I don’t know why my mother let him, with all the women and the money spent faster than a Saturday night and the sleeping all day and the carrying on. She was the most beautiful of them all, streaked with gray, lithe, cheekbones that made you cry. She seemed to have known him from another life, and anyway, she liked his whiskey and his music, and the gold-blue specks of heaven and hell he carried with him wherever he went.
There was a song he always played too about a girl with long blond hair driving a motorcycle down a desert highway, and I always thought that even though it was about a woman, it was also about him, too.
On the Fourth of July, no matter where he’s been, he’d make it back, his ponytail a little longer down his back, dressed to the nines, a clean shave with an American Flag decal on the head on his bike. Kicking up dust from his saddle shoes, his one gold tooth glimmering, making my mother smile like the moon.
It would be summer, the glimmer of ice and gin and watermelon seeds, my mother wearing her romper and good perfume in the heat of the day with a drink in one hand and a half-lit smile on her face. It was the only holiday we usually all spent together, and I can still see his face in the light of the fireworks, one hand on my mother’s knee, a sparkler in the other.
Once my mother told me people like him were like a secret that nobody could keep. She said it like it might not be a good thing but also: that is wasn’t all together bad. I knew right away that’s what I wanted this all to be about.
Photo via: http://pinterest.com/pin/36239971970975597/
Big Barn Love 