06-18-03 - 7:20 a.m.
way back in high school, the 'boy was a football star who married the most popular cheerleader.
everybody wanted her, he told me, so i wanted her too.
she gave him three kids in four years and walked out, leaving him to raise the babies on his own. he was twenty two. why did she leave?
we were forty miles from the nearest mailbox, he said with a shrug.
his kids, known affectionately as moose-moose, jiggs, and sneezer, are grown now, with children of their own. like most single parents, the 'boy has regrets about his fathering skills.
i was a kid raising kids, he told me. we grew up together, hunting for arrowheads in the pasture and roughhousing like a litter of puppies. it never occurred to me that a house without proper plumbing, with cowhide and coyote skins on the bare floors might be an embarrassment for their city friends.
my own berries is enchanted with the 'boy. his sudden presence in her life seems to fill a void her dying father never could. and while stories of a childhood on a texas cattle ranch, a life without walmart and jamba juice and microwaves is beyond her realm of experience, i have noticed his easygoing, humorous influence on her. yesterday she even said 'reckon'.