Chillin' with Bengay

Gramma

Then the neighbor and I got to talking over the fence.  He was drinking rum.  I was working on a case of Stella.  Ben was young enough to be my son.  He worked as a guard at the prison and lived with the Steve, also a prison guard.  Ben was a gym rat and played baseball.  In the summer, the donkey's, alpaca's and llama's kept the grass down in Steve's fenced field.  Ben and I proceeded to get drunk. 

"So are you guy's a couple?" I asked.  Dave and I thought so.  The summer before, they had been painting Steve's fence along the road.  Ben was working in short shorts with no shirt.  It looked pretty condemning. 

"Hell no.  I am not gay."  Dave and I referred to him as Bengay. 

"Don't the guys at work give you shit about living together?" 

"Not really."  Maybe not to their faces.  "Steve is real weird about me having girls over.  I have to go to their places." 

"He brought a girl here once." 

"No way.  What did she look like?  I've never seen him with a girl." 

"She was a little cross-eyed, a little stocky, dishwater hair.  She was wearing a button down shirt with puffy sleeves, like in the 70's.  I think she was a co-worker.  She was into the donkey's and asked Steve if she could come and see them.  She seemed to really like Steve, in spite of his habits." 

"You mean the constant spitting?"

"And he's always adjusting his junk and has a toothpick hanging out of his mouth.  We had him over for dinner one time.  He had his arm around the plate, his face near the food, shoveling it in."  Steve is the youngest of twelve.  It was likely a survival tactic. 

Steve was like a stealth.  I would be doing something outside or in the shed, turn around, and there he was.  When I was plowing his driveway he hopped up on the back of tractor.  Scared the shit out of me.  He reminded me of Lurch, a prison guard where I had been a guest of the state. 

Lurch liked to sneak around and catch women having sex.  Before sending them to the hole, he would let them finish.  One night I was in the basement doing my laundry and stitching a voodoo doll.  He comes up behind me and says to me in his deep voice, "Very good work" then disappeared back into the dark.