We buried him out in the oilfields, where the wells thrum up and down in a steady metronomal pulse. We buried him in the clothes he wore. Into the grave we threw the gun, the sheet we wrapped him in, his passport, his collection of lepidoptera, shards of bathroom tile.
“Don’t let Roger, or the sadness of these walls ever take that from you,” she said. She shuffled past me and I watched her stop and tap a bony index finger on the door to 24H.
There are this many means of exerting your will on the world and only one very quiet, lush way the world wills it back in again. Under the scrub pines, I evolve: I hear every scale of rust flake from the backhoe and fall into the dirt like thunderclaps. A furious wave of cells, splitting and dividing—human, vine, rust, dirt.
Corey is teaching me how to shoot his father’s gun. We haven’t got bottles or cans to shoot because Corey’s dad would notice anything missing from his liquor cabinet. He keeps that locked up tighter than the guns. So we shoot the trees in the backyard.
The 45th President of the United States and I went to Baskin Robbins. I got a mint chocolate chip milkshake and the 45th President got a hot fudge sundae with chocolate ice cream. I grabbed some napkins and we sat by the window. I slurped at my shake and the 45th President shoveled his hot
