1. The Porch
There is a column on the front porch that is half-stone and it holds up the heavy, worn roof above it. It’s safety for the roof which is safety for people who happen to find themselves underneath that very roof, discussing, fighting, fucking, crying, and all of the other things that humans can do. There is a block of stone within the lower section of that column which is marked by the shallow-carved letters: ‘C.B.’ They are my father’s initials, and when I visit that column my fingers always find their way to them.
My cousin Roberta and her fourteen cats now live in the house that my grandfather had built for my grandmother on South Fouring Street. Well, he didn’t build it himself; he had hired a company to do it. That was his way: if he could pay his way out of having to do something, that’s what he’d do. And I found myself sitting on those old wooden stairs one evening with Bert - that’s what her kids now found fashionable to call their old-cat-lady mom - and we were sipping on cheap vodka from plastic pint bottles, and my fingers slid along those initials, and I was tired of a lot of things.
“What’s a decade now?” Bert whispered between her cracked lips and a swig.
“About a week, I’d say,” I said back, after really taking a minute to comprehend what she was truly asking me. “Do you remember your first kiss?”
Bert let out a loud, one-note cackle.
“Fuck you,” she said. “I got finger-blasted before I ever got kissed. Shit.”
“I’ll bet you did!” I quipped, taking the last long, deep swallow of my pint. “Fuck this. I’m going to Shiny’s.”
“Already? It ain’t even midnight yet.”
“I’m ready to raise some hell,” I said, stood up, and chucked the pint into her banged-up recycling bin that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades. I’d never remembered it existing anywhere but the corner of the porch with the same exact labels always facing the same exact direction.
“Be fucking careful,” she said.
“Not like I have anywhere to be in the morning like you.”
And giving her a strange-ass look of disgust, one we always gave each other since we were kids, she returned it and laughed and I was off into the windy dark of the night.
Copyright (C) 2021 Matt Croyle. All Rights Reserved.