sweet courtship

Andy Dixon

Duncan hates fat men. The kind who have no waist, just a fleshy tree trunk of ass on up to oversized male tits.

He especially hates the way some of them get hammered and take you down in the basement of your mother’s house and blame you for things you didn’t do. Or that never happened. Like pointing to an intact, fully functional lamp and saying “Why’d you break that lamp?”

LeighAnn hates midgets. She has no reason that she knows of. But if she sees one, look out. She might scream, hide, or refuse to serve them if she’s working down at the McDonald’s.

Duncan loves her hate, and she loves his.

So there is something like love between them.

At night, nothing can be between them. Duncan sees to that. He takes an axe to her old bed, big enough for her and a thousand stuffed animals, and replaces it with a cot. They sleep on their sides, pressed together, with no sheets. The green canvas soaks through with sweat. One of Duncan’s arms always falls asleep.

In the morning, he gets up, waits for the bum arm to wake up, and goes to work at the Chevron. Some days LeighAnn, if she’s not working, follows him. One day she sees him spring from underneath the car he’s working on and run right up to one particular fat-ass in the lobby. Duncan wedges him into a corner and yells till his neck turns red and corded. Even the hairs of Duncan’s crew cut stand taut.

LeighAnn watches those veins pulse and thinks “Fry him, baby.” This is the first time she thinks she loves him.

It’s all over from there but the fighting, the sex like a drowning man trying to stay afloat, and the throwing of dishes.