How It Goes

A love of fast cars that he could not afford led him to be a poor fourth place in his own race. He once lived in an ancient Toyota van, just for a week, but long enough to establish that he was weak, and needed an older woman to finance any future souped-up muscle car. A woman with a sloppy caboose mature enough to own a patch of land, adopted him to tend a spread of dirt and raise chickens. For a while he thrived in a mediocre way until cock crows came between them. He financed a much used Mercedes. but the payments were too tight for his loose life style so he buried it at night in a mud pit at the side of I-75. What he really wanted was a girl dumb enough to love him prematurely as if he were a thing to be worked upon, but then grey hairs in an otherwise flaxen field foretold the end of those country songs. In a grungy bar of lost hopes he hitched-up with a slow thinking quick drinking woman, someone’s ex on a reliable government check. Eventually settling down with her in a holler in West Virginia. He took his Stetson off, dutifully plowed her and the land while collecting motor parts for his perfect fantasy car one he could never quite toggle together or ever drive.