Late night thoughts from the road...................

It's been a minute. Then again, I've been on the road every night since my last post. They've been working me like a white mouth mule. I wrote a long post on the trials and tribulations of this newish job, it's still unfinished and I'll probably get around to wrapping it up eventually. But first I want to tell you about a kid I knew way back when. Funny thing about this new gig, it gives me huge chunks of time to think, to recall, yet it leaves me with little time or desire to write it down. This past 5 or 6 weeks, I've spent the better part of nearly every night driving the rural roads and highways that wind through Missouri and Kansas. There's little to see at night, just dark shapes slipping past, and the occasional deer jumping out in my path like a hoofed kamikaze. I pass through these small towns, that are already sleeping well before midnight. Small towns at night are the exact opposite of city nights. Even late into the night and dark early A.M., the city doesn't sleep, it dozes. There's always someone out there, moving. It's still lit up. Small towns go dark at night, save the occasional motel sign, it's neon partially lit. Vacancy glowing in red, maybe a letter or two missing. I suppose passing through these towns at night reminds me of my youth, summers spent in Oklahoma with my grandparents. And Brent Riley. It all reminds me of Brent.

I don't know if Parents still send their kids off to stay with the grandparents for the summer. From the age of 6, up to about 12 when I just became to much to handle, I spent virtually every summer in Marlow Oklahoma. I made maybe 2 or 3 friends during those years. Brent was one and probably the only one I'd really count as a friend rather than just some kid I hung out with for a few days, before they annoyed me with that Okie twang and Opie Taylor like personality. I just never was able to find any common ground with small town kids. Ironically, I picked up that okie twang as a kid, still carry it to this day.

Brent was a wild kid, fearless as rough neck kids from working class roots tend to be. His father went by the name Pee Wee, short guy who ran a D X service station on the east edge of town. I remember him as a quiet type. Always smelled of oil and gasoline, never much to say. In 6 summers I imagine I saw him sleeping in a chair in his living room, more than I saw him up and moving. Brent's mother on the other hand never seemed to stop moving, and talking. Really more like yelling. She yelled everything. Not in a particularly angry way, she was just a loud woman. What I recall about her is strange, the things our memories attach to people. She had gray hair, was probably in her mid 30's and completely gray. She was also the first woman I'd ever seen who didn't shave under her arms. She wore those shapeless summer shifts that were common back then. Some kind of floral pattern, the material thin and the color all but washed out. She had hair on her legs, and even on her chin and upper lip. An attractive woman she was not.

The Riley's were strict, or at least the mother was. She was quick to the belt, and more than once I noticed Brent or one of his brothers walk stiffly from one of her getting your mind right sessions. That said, I don't think she was a cruel woman, I just think it was how she was raised. It was what she knew. Also it was a reaction to an older son who had died in a car wreck on some Oklahoma dirt road. Liquor and the wrong crowd cost her a child, and she would be damned if it would ever happen again. At least that's how I see it now. They never talked about that lost brother. I heard about it from Clara, my grandmother. For some reason Brent's parents thought I was okay, I was one of the few kids ever allowed in their house. One of the few friends that Brent was allowed to have.

One of Brent's older brothers, by a couple years, was a fat kid. The thing I recall about him is that he would eat just about anything. A couple miles outside of town was a spot we would all go hang out at. Beaver creek. The local swimming / fishing hole. Okies noodle, everyone else fishes. Noodling is when you get down in the water and feel for holes in the bank. Feel in those holes for large catfish, and pull them out with your bare hands. Brent noodled, or at least tried to. While I never witnessed him catch a fish I did see him stick his arm up to the shoulder in holes along the banks of Beaver creek. Brent's brother on the other hand was a bait fisherman. We would stop off at Pratts Redbud grocery store and the brother would buy a box of frozen bait shrimp. Brent and I would go about the business of swimming and unsuccessful noodling, while his brother would thaw the block of shrimp in the warm brown water. He might bait his hook once. Beyond that single shrimp, the remainder of the shrimp found it's way down his gullet. He would start a small fire and roast the sand filled shrimps like marshmallows on a stick. He was fat for a reason, and like I said, he'd eat anything in his path.



It was during a trip back for a funeral, I don't recall which one, that I heard the news about Brent. He had also outgrown his childhood, if not his small town roots. His mothers belt no longer to be feared, no longer enough to keep him in line and safe. Not even in a small town like Marlow. The details were sketchy, and I recall it was my aunt that informed me of Brent's death the previous summer. At the local drive in , where the small town kids hung out, filling their coke cups with cheap whiskey. A fight broke out, Brent was stabbed once through the heart and bled out in the gravel lot. A good kid, from a simple background. Belts, protective parents, and a sleepy town wasn't enough to keep him safe.

It was while driving through a string of small central Kansas towns the other night, that I thought of Brent. Just me, the dark shapes sliding past my window, and ghosts from the past. Funny how a kid like Brent could meet such a fate, tucked safely away in some small town. While I tempted fate on a daily basis, year after year, and grew old enough to try to make sense of it all. Driving through the night, thinking of people and places in the distant past. Trying to make sense of it all. Coming up blank.