Mocking

Mocking
Mark Coleman

My friend lights up a Black Hawk, so I light up a Marlboro. I suppose that we’re trying to recapture our youth. If only I could relive my first kiss as sloppy and inexperienced, though it was. Still kind of beautiful. My hand in her hair. Her hand on my bald cheek. Our lips awkwardly locked, tongues dancing within our own mouths, wondering how uncouth their venturing out would be viewed by the other.
I inhale the smoke into my hurting lungs, and give a little cough. Nicotine greeting the liquor in my bloodstream. Little curtsy, little obeisance learned in preparatory school. She was so damn proper. Always standing on ceremony. I’m in my coonskin hat, hollering and raising Hell. She’s in a little pinafore, having tea with dolls.
Meet at the creek where I show her the craw-dads that I caught that afternoon. Tell her that she can play with my BB gun, but she doesn’t want to. So I content myself with shooting at the crows in the willows. Go wander around the dilapidated plantation house that’s supposedly haunted. Looking for signs of hoodoo, or ghastly faces peering out of the windows.
Don’t see a thing. She goes skipping through a field, picking forget-me-nots, which she carefully arranges in her basket. Places one willy-nilly in her bonnet. I just chew a bit of weed, and squintingly watch her prance about. Saunter out along the road, me with my craw-dads, her with her forget-me-nots. She tosses pedals along the way. A very picture of Hansel and Gretel.
Standing on her verandah. Munching her mother’s proffered corn bread. Her pops sitting in a rocking chair drinking mason jar whiskey. The moon bleeding all over everyone and everything. Pipes giving glimpses of the people’s faces who sometimes pop out of the house across the street. Music drifting along with the smoke.
A piano sometimes soft and jazzy accompanied by an air of melancholic silence, sometimes loud and boisterous accompanied by stomping feet and hooting. Must be throwing a party of some kind. All those women dressed for hooch drinking aren’t anything besides my girl dressed for tea drinking. I’d hold her hand, if it wasn’t for the watchful eyes behind us.
I bid her good night, and we make plans for the morrow. Slip into my house, then into bed, staring at the ceiling. Envision an old, wizened mockingbird mocking away. It’s song lulls me to sleep. The sweet slumber of young, if stillborn, love.