Somewhere in America,
a disgruntled, overwrought man and his booze-pickled wife listlessly marinate
on the decaying front porch of their foreclosed double-wide. Silently
pleading for an apocalyptic boulder-shower to cascade from the heavens before
the bank shows up, her vacuous sneer belies the fact that her mind has been
running in circles for the extent of the evening.
"Go down to the mart and git me another six-pack, Margaret," he roars
as filthy locks of unkempt, sun-weathered hair drift down past his addled,
red-rimmed dog-eyes. In lieu of a verbal response, she slowly re-directs
her reptilian gaze towards the man she once loved and unleashes a scathing,
atavistic scowl.
After a long pause, inchoate sentiments bubble from the depths of her bile, slowly
form into words, and begin to recklessly tumble out of her like gumballs from a
faulty confectioner's dispenser. "I will do... no such thing... for a low,
low man like yerself. In fact, Robert, you can git your ass unglued from
this here porch, find a rusty blade, and fall on it for all I care."
Immediately following the outburst, Margaret clenched her fists and prepared
for the worst. Robert had a penchant for
vintage violence, but this stream of unexpectedly passionate vitriol didn't
infuriate him. In fact, it elicited no response.
Immediately succeeding his terse demands, her derelict husband had drifted away
into a moment's revelry as a passing Oldsmobile lurched by on the unpaved path;
sending pieces of errant gravel shooting into the ether as a familiar tune
escaped from aged, stubborn windows that refuse to roll up. Crooning along with
the ecstatically swift, pitter-patter cadence of the Hank Williams classic, Robert hadn't
even digested her proud moment of unabashed defiance.
Simultaneously bullying, demanding, and aloof, the proud husbands of America sigh,
crack open yet another can of lukewarm beer, and patiently wait for the end of
the world.
