—REBELS BEEN REBELS SINCE I DON’T KNOW WHEN

 

 

Big Boy

 

The day a firecracker nearly rips my fingers off, the day I catch the same hand in a Greyhound bus door, I meet my dad for the second time ever, and he drives his rusted truck to Bob’s Big Boy. 

His hands on the wheel look like kindling stained with axle grease, the moons of his fingernails black as tar. This man, my mother loved briefly, like nightfall, a magician’s curtain, or a sudden storm, everything going dark.

Now the sun is too sharp, too angry and observant. Now a sudden, sleepy jerk of the wheel rebounds us back into the correct lane. Tools in back rattle, like metal bones bouncing. 

I am seven and nervous and sore, my voice among other things lost long ago.

 

Grease is good he says

Wash it down with that there shake

How come you say nuthin’?