Devonne Brown

“You damned idiot, you’d be late for your wedding, if you could find a damned woman who’d put up with your shit” said Cedric. He was trying so hard to be positive. He couldn’t though. He was an old man from out the creek, Clymers Creek. Paul couldn’t pour piss out of a boot. All he had to do was bring the tractor from out behind the barn in front of it, five minutes. It should have taken five minutes. Nope, it was half an hour and Paul was outside in the flower bed pulling weeds and the tractor was still behind the barn. What the hell was the matter with that man? He’d raised a damned idiot.

Most of the time, Cedric wondered what the hell was wrong with Paul. Now, they’d say he had ADHD or something. He’d have a diagnosis. He was curious enough, brilliant even. He could grow the finest tobacco, cows, and garden any man could be proud of, stuff to cherish even, but he couldn’t find his ass with both hands. Paul drove Cedric crazy. 

Cedric was the meticulous sort, Paul almost was. It was that “almost” business that made Cedric crazy. Cedric’s lines were straight, all of them, every last one. Paul’s lines were straight too, except the last three were crooked, always. Paul’s fields looked like they had question marks in the southwest corners. They had since he’d started plowing. Those last details were a flourish to Paul, but drove Cedric up the wall. Those imperfect lines cracked the shield of respect between father and son, father couldn’t hang with son’s laziness. He wanted nothing more than to smack the mortal shit out Paul every chance he got. Those crooked lines that should have been straight fucked up a good relationship. 

Paul didn’t wonder about his dad’s venom. He looked back at the house from the flowerbed full of the Touch-Me-Nots that had grown there since Grandma had her heart attack. He’d tried pulling and plowing the hateful flowers, but they kept coming back, fuller and brighter than before. He’d finally given up and left them as a reminder that you have to put up with shit you don’t want to sometimes, like Cedric’s grouchy ass. 

Cedric had to have been a loving father once. Now he was a wizened, old, impatient man who walked around wincing in pain with a cane. It didn’t excuse him from being a son-of-a-bitch, but it explained some of the grouchiness. Out in the country, people didn’t leave until they died, even now. Paul’s out on that farm looking at the Touch-Me-Nots that killed Grandma fifty years ago and wondering why the world left him.