Regrets

All right you fucknuts, here are some of my regrets:

I regret forgetting my roots.

What are my roots? Here are my roots:

Crawling under the house to find the puppies.

Standing in the front yard pissing off the porch with the coyotes and wild dogs howling, me and Nate and my drunk-ass Pop.

Running scared-ass out to Pop's truck to fetch his cigarettes. Knuckers, I tell you, it takes a lot of ballsack to run through pitch dark one-hundred yards, worrying about stepping on copper heads and rattle snakes, hearing the dogs howl, to fetch some cancer sticks for a man who's gonna fart on you when you get back.

Devil went down to Georgia. Yeah. I've met the Devil. I beat his ass, left him crying on that hickory stump.

Standing in the back yard shooting AA batteries off a fence post with a .22 rifle.

Standing in the back yard shooting cans of beer off the fence post with a .22 rifle.

Metal spears, sharpened on a grinder, the real-mutherfucker, pierced into the tin on the shop and the barn and trees trees trees. Never killed a rabbit with one, not that we didn't try. Sharp mutherfuckers.

Dad beating our ass for shooting his beer and stabbing holes in his barn and shop and chasing the hogs with real-ass spears.

Dead hogs, hung up and bleeding.

Dead calves.

Shorty the bull. Frankie, the stunted cow. Pop was gonna butcher her, but Bro & I named her. Mom said, Keep the cow. The boys love her. She bore us a calf every year. We ate the calf. Her face was God's own.

Slopping the hogs with restaurant slosh.

Trading in Pop's beer cans for about $2,000,000 bucks.

Dead bunnies.

Cow pattie fights.

Fish fries.

Pellet gun wars. Man. Those fucking rocked. I don't mean those Red Rider one-cock jobs, either, I mean pellet guns. Rabbit killers. Squirrel killers. No pads. No helmets. No goggles. You dodge or get fucking shot. One pump rules got dumped when one asshole pumped it ten times. If you don't understand that comment, then there's no sense explaining it to you.

Running across the round bales.

Climbing the barn.

Hay forts.

I could cross a barbed wire fence as easy as you can open your bedroom door.

Dogs under the porch.

Brush hogs and round bailers and square bailers.

My roots.

God, I miss em. I'm in a suburb in Dallas.

And God, He's laughing and shaking His head. I'm a boxer dancing ballet, a fisherman cleaning fish tanks, a writer banging out emails. I'm nothing I was meant to be.

I forgot my roots.

- Saul