My best friend is a religious man. He doesn’t live here. I stay at the Alamanda and he stays at the Birdsong, however I can see his window from mine.
We take the bus to work in the mornings and sit with Mexican ladies who watch us from the corners of their eyes. My friend is not much for conversation, though he’s set on making good with one of them. They dress in maid uniforms. They wear panty hose with open-toed shoes and sleep when they are not watching us.
We move stumps for a thin-lipped tyrant with property out of town. An electrician. She keeps chords and fuse box casings in the back of her truck. We can hear that racket going on when she’s miles down the road. We always know when she’s close. She has said to us more than once, “You boys are money in the bank.” She does it with a belly laugh and almost always seems to separate her jaw. I’ve had bosses tell me before, “Shape up or ship out.” I am not certain which is more productive.
I’ve been trying my luck at the OTB. My best friend, the religious man, does not gamble. He keeps his money in his shoe. I have no problem pushing my money through the window. Usually it’s no luck though, just heavy waits. When the numbers come in my friend almost always says, “We really learned something.”
He is concerned for my moral map. He says I haven’t one. He says, “You are completely without a moral map.” I want to hit it big. If I could win a little every now and then I’d have a haircut, shave my face, and pay one of those Mexican ladies to fold brown paper sacks and stuff them under my kitchen sink with other paper sacks though this is not what I’d pay her for.
When it rains we do not work. We have a disagreement in regards to the Earth. I argue mud is for easy digging. He argues the digging is slow. But on rainy days the thin-lipped tyrant is always hung over and doesn’t want to see our faces. She gives us a ride into town. She drops us off underneath the bank clock and says that thing she says and I say, “Thus always to tyrants,” as she pulls away.
I almost always take my money to the OTB. My friend almost always goes to the doctor. When he comes out of there he seems happy enough. Once when I asked him what for he said it was personal. Just then my numbers came in and I said, “Saints alive.”
He said, “Jesus wept.”
I think he has a disease. I’m almost certain he has a disease.
He has only ever told me two stories. One, he was married before. He and his wife gutted a utility van and made room for a couch and a stove. They were going to drive to Alaska and sell cooked meals out of the back. She was going to sing organizing songs. The other story, as I remember, involved his children. During thunderstorms they would sit on the porch and sing what they knew. He’d tell them if it thundered then God didn’t like what they were singing.
We can both agree the Earth is unforgiving.
There are nights I fall asleep on the couch and make a pistol at my friend through the window. He is always moving furniture around. He is a hinge, swinging out of one empty space and into another. And he might have a disease, counting to himself the money in his shoe and I in mind wonder if I have something else to be hopeless for more than hope.