Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
said, “never wound. Fold a three-flush after five. Don’t give women
gifts. Always throw the first punch.” Stuff like that he’d tell us,
useful stuff that we were supposed to never let go of. I didn’t, but
Little Elvis can’t remember much from day to day except food. Once
he forgot how to ride a bike and I had to learn him all over again.
One morning we found Daddy asleep in a borrowed car
behind the house. He let us help him take parts off it, and we threw
hubcaps, headlights and bumpers in the river. He unscrewed a
quarter panel and put me and Little Elvis to tearing it up with tire
tools. We beat and scratched until the car was stripped down like a
go-cart and you could see how the gears worked. We broke all the
glass out, too. Daddy stuck the big pieces in the back of his truck and
drove away.
He came back with half-melted ice cream cones and we ate
what was left of them, looking at the car. Daddy said we could make
a dune buggy of it. He’d drive us anywhere we wanted to go--
wherever, we’d just go with sleeping bags, fishing rods, and night
crawlers. We’d see the world living on fish and ice cream, siphoning
gas at night.
While we sat there watching the river, two police cars came
to block our road. A big bald-headed cop told Daddy to sit on the
grass while the short cop talked on a radio. Daddy didn’t say
nothing, he just sat. Two more cars showed up, not police cars but
regular cars. The men weren’t wearing cop suits but they acted like
they were, and when one took his coat off against the heat, he had a
pistol on a strap that went over his shoulders. He put the jacket back
on when the bugs got to him. They’re bad on the river but they don’t
bother me and Little Elvis because Daddy said we’re river rats and
mosquitoes know better than to fool with us.
The two cops who weren’t cops had clipboards. They looked
that car up and down with me watching and Little Elvis riding his
bike and singing, “Police car squashed my daddy, police car
squashed my daddy.” He rode in a circle which he’s not good at, and
kept wrecking until Daddy took him in his lap.
The man with the hid gun said, “It looks like the car all
right.” Then he asked me how long it was here.
“What,” I said, “the river?”
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