Fried Chicken For Bossman
Oh it's hot believe it. Hotter than frog gizzards on a George Foreman Grill. Taking a water break boss. Parking vehicle in the shade boss. Checking pool viscosity here soon boss. Hey boss, took those gates down out front this morning. For shit boss, going to the burn pile. A part of history that is history boss.
We lookin ahead now, down that road of gateless entries. Nothing between us and mayhem but that rusty-shotgun wielding crusty ole bean pole of a caretaker. Katy bar the door. My name's not Katy.
Yardman was bragging about his fried chicken yesterday and I said prove it, then cut him up a chicken and he did. Wish he would of bragged about potato salad and some big fat home grown tomatoes too. I would salt those tomatoes down like they were slugs suffering inexplicable cruelty and I would eat them and the juice and the seeds and that slimy snot-like septum stuff would be all over my chin and down my neck and on my shirt front. There is nothing precisely so sad as a man dreaming about fat warm salty tomatoes on a hot summer day while he eats unaccompanied cold chicken with extra salt. And the sadness can be unrelenting as he suffers thereafter the smell of vegetable oil such that it seems to clog his nostrils and block out future possibilities of goodness. The man begins to lose all hope for a world not pervaded by the stale smell of vegetable oil. What kind of world will that be. Not a good one he answers.
I did too eat those kid's potato chips yesterday, like I said I would, guiltlessly. Towards the end of their stay, while their father was cooking chicken, and their mother appeared to be suffering heat stroke, I picked up the second half of the bag and said come gather round children, it's Chip Party USA time. And we feasted on the chips leftover from my earlier ravaging of the bag. The children lined up single file, sort of, and when it was their turn dug their little hands into the bag and stuffed their faces, broken potato beige pieces adhering to their brown sweaty cheeks. They say I throw the best chip parties this side of Old Rag.
The youngest is walking now but not talking. The next one up, the one I used to call hard head, has an imaginary friend and a speech impediment, which is a misnomer, speech impediment is because he talks a blue streak, enthusiastically, doesn't seem impeded one bit, and truly the fact that I don't understand much of what he says makes him no less interesting a conversationalist. That he says hey Jim, hey Jim, to get my attention doesn't hurt either. Even now I'm wondering about his imaginary friend Robbie. I wonder what Robbie is doing right now. The birthday boy was sitting next to me, on the wicker couch on the back porch overlooking the pool, and reached over to get his chips whenever my hand was not in the bag. The oldest boy, the Yardman's stepson, son of a local boxer recovering nicely from last year's stabbing, was shy in his asking, could I have some chips? Hell, they were his chips really, but I didn't remind him of that, I just said, chips for everybody, all day long, I throw the best chip parties in the county. I could tell the Yardman's wife was ready to leave and in her perfect world would not be waiting on her husband to finish cooking me, his bossman, fried chicken.
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