Where T-Shirt Meets Pants
In the waning winter-like light of a North Carolina day Cantrell Jefferson looked at his frail wrist and squinted to determine if the dot there was a freckle or a flea. His bare feet and the backs of his hands had a glossy clear sheen from the chemical repellent he had heavily sprayed on them. It had been worse once when without a home of his own he entered late at night a friend’s apparently abandoned house in Austin, Texas and laying down on one of the mattresses strewn about the place noticed a barely perceptible muffled clicking sound that turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of fleas jumping from whereever they had prior been to land on his fully clothed body and then work their way to any exposed skin they could find. That experience had set the bar at a level all other flea infestations would be measured against. This wasn’t so bad Cantrell said 20 minutes after finding the gin in the freezer and medicating internally. The swell of all the initial bites seemed to be subsiding and he felt fortunate to be able to sit still staring off into space without the distraction of itchy spots on his feet, his wrists, and belly where t-shirt meets pants.
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