February

The barbeque joint up the street delivered a pungent waft of hickory. The place was closed, but they always kept the fire going low. The southeast wind blew the paper mill smell up from sixty miles away and it mixed with the wood smoke concocting a sweet-sickening stench that reminded him of hog killing time as a boy. The bushes against the fence at the corner of the busted up sidewalk where he stood were mostly Burford hollies. The summer before he had worked some day-labor jobs for a landscaping business around Little Rock and during his tenure had come to know the specimen intimately. It had only one "sticker" at the tip where most of the other hollies he had planted and pruned had three. His knowledge of the bush had proven useful in the gloaming of the day as he made his bed between the fence and the hedge. Fairly old and the dense growth would provide good shelter. Unless it rained, sleeted, or snowed, then he was fucked. Just not cold enough to go to Soul Harvest Shelter and sleep in the musty beds yet. He preferred to shiver and rest his head near the earthy odor exuded by the trunk of an old bush rather than suffer a faked mass spiritual awakening of others in order to fill their bellies with soup and contract lice from the flops spread out in the back room of the shelter. He settled in snuggly against the wooden fence and unscrewed the cap from the hip pocket bottle of Thunderbird wine, taking in its harsh stringent bouquet. Just enough left to put him to sleep tonight. Half a honey bun was his supper, saving the pecan roll for tomorrow.

The wine produced a quick slumber pushing back the black curtain to his dreamscape, rarely offering a pleasant experience. Tonight he dreamed that he was seeing through grown up eyes familiar scenes from a job he had worked as a child delivering papers in Newport. He passed a house with a white picket fence covered in honeysuckle and neatly deposited a copy of the Daily Independent at the foot of the drive. As he turned to walk down the sidewalk he was swept away down a dusty farm road sitting in the bed of his father's Chevrolet pickup with its flaring fenders and splintered oily floorboards. Day had turned into a swirling starry night and he felt the the truck being lifted off the ground, floating peacefully above the yellow-lit houses below. It reminded him of a ride at the fair.

"Daddy, we flyin' ain't we?"

"Yeah, son looks like we is"

He closed his eyes and felt his stomach turn, not sick but just move a bit. Opening them revealed the Earth to be a small turquoise ball miles underneath and they were slowly climbing higher in the old truck. His dream had somehow managed to now place him in the cab of the truck with his father and he was holding on to his Daddy tighter than he had ever remembered hugging him in real life. He was crying.

"Daddy, what we gone do?"

"I don't know son. I don't know"

The next morning he woke to the smell of CJ's Country Style Buffet frying sausage and baking biscuits. The wind had shifted to the northwest bringing a slow, steady, clean-smelling wintry mix with it. He lifted himself out of his makeshift shelter, a holly leaf scratching the back of his hand leaving a bleeding mark that made him think of a state highway map. Once on the sidewalk he reached behind the bushes he had previous exited and collected his bedroll. Looking west into the icy rain, he made his way toward the Soul Harvest Shelter in hopes the door would be open and coffee would be brewing soon.