RIDING

Known it as cruising. Beers straight from cardboard container warm. Loaded as canned snakes spraying driver, shotgun, passengers. Late night. On the tapedeck Black Flag and Waylon and Prince and Slayer. Where to the DQ or Mickey Dees or Burger King. Maybe the Tastee Freeze or Chic-fil-a. Been to Del Taco where Kris works. Heading to old Zesto in East Point. What to do but sit in the lot and drink and smoke and listen to Waylon and trade tonguekisses for beers. Chubby Decker a mess of meat and cheese gone soft and mayonnaise. Lettuce and tomatoe wilted in foil wrapper. Search out more beers. That Kroger in Newnan where Wickett's older brother knows the stocker Denny Alsup. He worked out something for us. Get us another twelve. Keystone. Stroh's. Bottle of Boone's Farm for the ladies.

Out all night. Seen no police. Pull up on the stables and Amanda's zigzag down the hill drunk on boxed wine. She puked herself and passed out and revived with a five hour old chilicheese dog and wiped her white leather fringed jacket down with a double deuce bottle of Ice Man Jake Tamsey stolen from Ingles in Union City. Horses going shithouse crazy. Just sit up on the hill on top the car and finish the beers and Jake talking about how Amanda gives him the horn and how Denny Alsup's going to meet up with everyone later how he's got some smoke. Lay back on the car hood and look up in the night and call out constellations like old friends, names that sound like fatal diseases you'd catch from jungle insects. Smell the horseshit and the hay. Smell the candywine on Amanda's breath as she tell us just how fuckin bad she's got to get in there to see Wiggy, her eyes fixed shocked wide and like old glass blown and warbled. Makeup's run about her eyelids when she teared up while puking. Still fucker sideways, Jake says. An then some.

Duskstill and dove flauting from telephone poletops and there gone Coach Bell still in his old Chevy that truck never gone die. Goddamn you think we gone be two best than five hunnert this season, W.T. says. Whole town might goddamn keel over. W.T. shuffles in his boots and wipes his trousers of invisible debris and runs his hands through his still full head of white hair. He sips his beer. Finely says the kids just don't know how to tackle anymore and then W.T. goes into his ridin story about how he and Kenny Spakes drank up forty-three High Life beers and he smoked a mary juana cigarette on the county courthouse steps watchin the sun go down red in west. Best times of my life, W.T. says. Crow comes cawing out of nowhere and slows and stops in air and settles in the street, hobbling ink smear on asphalt.

He'd thrown out a one-armed negro before the meeting started. Motioned to plastic tray full of food. Other Authority members huddled over packets. Mr Bob Thom cleaning nails with a pocketknife. Gladys bragging about her grandchild getting into Abraham Baldwin. Here's watermelon and some hoop cheese here and some co-colas. Scuse me son why you hear tonight you aint on the genda that I recall. One-arm's got a notebook and a pencil he's whittled a point on. Says he's wanted to keep up with what's going on says Water Authority's first meeting he knew of this month and he speak with general manager Rosalyn Bates Monday week and she said they were open to public so long's they aint gone into executive session for personnel matter. You seen that motherfucker blush when I toss him out on his ear? Goddamn. Aint never seen a nigger blush like that. No one laughs, which is why W.T. laughs harder and harder.

Rosalyn cleans up after the meeting. But we are all the last to leave. There's O Rine, W.T. says. First constellation I learnt. He's got the little red cooler he keeps on his Dodge Ram passenger seat out and he's passed around a few High Life. One time damn I tell you, I got into about ten beers and then ten came twenty directly and we out drivin these old country roads back when this county aint shit and the po lease just let us go own by aint like it used to be goddamn, W.T. says and finishes his beer and crushes the can and tosses it in the truck bed. Ithttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif clinks against the otherns.

Ridin, W.T. says. Aint like it use to be. Got to wheres we ridden all these damn roads. Osley Road and Joe Lane Wisten Road and Hamm Road and goddamn Peskt Travers Road with its dogleg turn and them pissant deer always grown out the middle like statues, green eyes glown at you. W.T. grabs the last High Life out the cooler and cracks it and offers it to me and I wave him off and he says, no really, if you want it son and I tell him that's fine. Finely says he membered it as cruisin. Jus some way to get in some pussy, is what he says. Not boozin an never was none but a little wine we done stole from diddy. Muskydine. Oooo sheeet W.T. says. Taste like cough med cine. Aint never taken to that possumpiss Fin. W.T. points up. Thas Chaldocean therebouts. Seen his nose and fingers crooked like a snake there. Childe what, Fin says. Chal do see un, W.T. says. There aint no star named such, Fin says. What if there is one, W.T. says.