“November 8th”

It was always hard for him to be pleasantly drunk once the stories began and when the porch was crowded with the cousins and uncles and fathers in those nights after long family dinners in one of the restaurants in town at the bottom of the mountain where they served bloody quail and squash from the hills but everybody ordered the pork chop and biscuits because he had to be careful not to laugh too loud or to slur a word or ask the wrong question that he didn’t know the answer to.

     Say, boys, your grandmother sure can talk I mean damn I don’t think she stopped asking questions all night, and then she started answering her own questions and then she forgot the questions she already asked me and started all over again, I mean wow dinner took three hours, and all I could think about was why didn’t I sit at the other end of the table, I’d rather talk to my wife than answer all those question three times I guess that’s the price when Grandma is buying dinner.

It was always getting harder and harder for him to be pleasantly drunk on this porch when there were many open beers and a few cigars ashed on the wooden railing and he looked at an uncle rocking back and forth and resting his feet on the big dog that stayed at the house and he saw the cowboy boots and old bleached jeans and leather belt and tucked in denim shirt and brown trucker hat from the barbecue place and growing line of empty red Budweisers and watched him laugh and envied him and wondered how that could be his uncle by blood.

     I remember, I must have been no older than six, say, Jimmy you remember this? we used to walk down the train tracks to get across town, and there were some bridges but you had to walk across because that was the fastest way home, and sometimes the trains would come and there were little crannies on the sides and you would have to run to the cranny before the train and only two people could walk at a time cause three couldn’t fit and there were some close calls, but good thing I’m so damn fast I always made it and that’s why I’m still sitting here.

The danger of getting too pleasantly drunk was that the stories would always turn a way they weren’t supposed to and he remembered the first time he told one that went too far and he was halfway through it and his cousin started laughing and the uncles started frowning but he had to finish the story once he had started it but he didn’t say much else for the rest of that night and now he could tell things were headed in that direction because the night had sunk in and the sky was black and there was no more warmth from the day hanging around and everyone had a jacket on and cigars were beings smoked more quickly for the warm smoke and when it got this late there was never any telling who would start things heading in a way they probably shouldn’t.

     I tell ya, you’re not fast any more, Steve, too many steaks these past few years, you would be dead on those trains tracks so fast, but I guess that’s why nobody goes back to that town since nobody wants to get damn near killed by a train everyday, but I bet ya I could outrun those trains, I remember in college when I was still playing football I used to make a killing racing fools out back of the bar, they would get drunk and tell me there was no way I played football and I’d bet them a twenty I could outrun them and damn near every time I took that twenty and it bought me a few more rounds until those boys got tired of being hustled and one too many started eyeing me from the door and it was time to cut my losses and leave a nice tip and get out of there but I’d be back for a few more races the next weekend and they’d all line up and try again and I’d just keep taking their money.

The uncles were starting to one-up each other and second cigars were lit and the younger cousins were sent back to refrigerator in the garage for more red Budweisers and it was getting colder and some of the aunts were sticking their heads out the back door to ask when everybody was coming inside because it was getting cold and there would be a long day tomorrow but the uncles waved them off and the aunts said they were heading to bed and blew kisses goodnight and the youngest cousins were back with more cans and some of the other cousins were wanting to tell stories.

     None of y’all were ever as fast as I was, and y’all are all sixty now and can’t touch me in a race, let me tell you you’ve never seen somebody as fast as I was last year you should’ve seen how fast as I was running this one night I was at this party and we had been drinking all night and we were at this guy’s house and I knocked his glass out of his hand, and all his friends were there and this dude was four inches taller than me and thirty pounds bigger and I ran out the front door so fast you’ve never seen anything like it, and I thought he was about to beat my ass the next day at school but he forgot all about it but everybody saw me book it out of there, trust me, I’m the fastest one in this family by a mile.

The stories were silent for a moment and an aunt opened a door and one of the cousins stumbled onto the porch and this one was one of the little young cousins with a head of hair that was still patchy and growing in and he walked unevenly always but especially now on this new surface and he grabbed onto the leg of a second or was it a first no probably a second cousin who swung him out towards the railing and over the edge of the porch and the little cousin smiled and shrieked and swung out his arms and knocked over a bottle and an ash tray with half a cigar and an uncle grumbled and the tray and the bottle clinked in the air as they fell the long way to the grass below but the grass was soft and they did not break and the little cousin looked all the way down to the grass below and was happy to be put down and to be safely in the lap of one of the uncles back away from the railing and the grass all that way below and he looked around at all of the uncles and sons and fathers and cousins with his eyes that were always wide because he was young as they started to speak again.

     Shit, y’all don’t know a damn thing about fast, boys, you aunt never seen anybody running away like they were about to get killed, and I’m not talking about shot and killed, I know some of y’all been in the army, that’s not the type of killed I’m talking about, I’m talking about the type of killed when you got you’re hand on somebody’s wife’s ass at the corner of the bar where you thought it was dark and you thought she was still married but she told you different and you knew better but hell she was drinking the same thing as you and how often does that happen and it seemed dark enough in that goddam corner until her husband comes through the door and shit oh she’s sure as hell still married and you know the husband and I swear to God I out ran three cars and a dog down that street I was moving like a tick bit my ass with all his teeth, I’ll tell ‘ya, none of y’all ever ran that fast, not even on the football field boys.

The stories stopped for a moment and now the uncles that were past pleasantly drunk began to grumble and reach for more beer and the crickets started up for the first time that night and the little cousin looked around and around and began to cry as the crickets got louder and louder because he wasn’t up this late too often and the crickets were a new sound to his ears and his eyes got wider and wider before he started crying again and one of the uncles told another cousin to take him inside and that was the only word for a few minutes until another one of the uncles finished his beer and stood up and said to no one in particular but really to the last storyteller uncle that these stories weren’t worth nothing until they started being worth something to the rest of the family and that before he’d married in these uncles never knew him and didn’t want to hear about anything before that so he might want to stop telling them out here or at least wait until all the cousins were inside his and he flicked some cigar ash in the direction he was speaking and all the uncles and fathers stood up and the cousins sat further back in their chairs and all the beers clanged down hard on the tables but one of the aunts opened the door looking for a cousin and every body sat down deep in their chairs and told the cousin to go inside with his mother and some of the chairs started to rock and creak again on the wooden porch and one of the chairs creaked deeply as one of the cousins who hadn’t been hustled inside yet stood up and set down his cigarette next to his water.

     Y’all don’t know anything, all y’all talking about going fast, y’all don’t know, y’all don’t know fast until you know slow, and not this kind of slow, sitting around on a porch in the mountains drinking and talking and taking three hours at dinner and cracking jokes about your wives, that ain’t this is still fast, soaking it all up for a few days and going back to work before you’ve slowed down, I know more about fast and slow than all of you put together, slow is when you’re just a couple states over from here and five states over from where your parents think you are and you’ve taken so many pills you forgot your own phone number and the names of your friends and you’re sitting on the curb outside your house in boxers and one white sock with a broken foot and a broken ankle and no skin on the foot without a sock, and there’s nobody to call and you just sit there and cars go by real slow but don’t stop and people just turn their heads at you and every minute is slow until the pills wear off and things start to hurt again and you remember to crawl back inside and find someone to put you back in bed and you stay there for three days and the days are slower than they are here and nobody talks until they take you to the hospital.

That cousin’s father looked down and took a long pull on his cigar and looked around at all the other uncles until one of them stood up too fast and knocked the ash tray from the arm of his chair and this time it shattered on the porch but not before the uncle was up with his hand around the throat of the cousin who still had an ankle that wasn’t quite straight and he pushed the cousin to the railing of the deck and yelled that he knew better than to tell that story out here and that everyone knew enough about it already from whispers around their own kitchen counters and hushed voices on the phone that it didn’t need retelling especially in front of his cousins but even more especially in front of his father who had already seen his son with a broken foot and ankle and eyes rolled back in his head and his voice got louder until the only baby cousin left on the porch coughed and burped and let out one of those little shrieks all the uncles had heard enough to know meant a bigger shriek and bigger crying was coming and so an aunt was called to bring the last little cousin inside and now it was just the big cousins and all the uncles and fathers and all the men looked around and could see there was no one upping anymore and the stories where at that point where everything was on the table or nothing was on the table and it was time to put out the tobacco and clean up the beers but it wasn’t dark enough for that so somebody would have to tell one more until it was time to go inside and by morning forget all of the stories from the night before.