Field Dressed & Undressed

A quirky East Texan with white and black striped knee socks wrapped around my waist, helped me become this adulterer, in her bed, which was a mattress thrown on the floor. I think she was a hippy, very hairy pussy. Offered me warm beer and a back rub, George Harrison plucking in the background. I couldnt resist her Eastern vibe. She was an amateur photographer with a vintage Pentax camera. I took photos of large, brown-nippled, titties and a pale fleshy stomach stretched out into raunchy poses she had created. Absolute hairiness making me disquited. I instantly regretted this and ran out into the bitter rain and drove home bawling, to my warm bed, where wife was breathing gently, asleep. She was my third and desperate wife. Exhaustively trusting and utterly ignorant. Dear, woman. I woke up early to a black Arkansas morning to hunt with a cousin of mine in the tall piney woods we cherish here. Frosted grass and breath you could see floating in front of your nose. We parted when we entered the trees to sit in our stands and await the deer we yearned for all seasons long. Slow in coming. A tangerine sun bursted through the bare limbs and thawed my mustache, at last. I smoked my Pall Malls shakily and dozed. An explosion erupted the stillness and echoed through this fiery forest of darting squirrels and swift bluejays, stirring all the living. I climbed down. Dried leaves crunched under my boots as I walked towards the West, where Cecil, my cousin, should be. The metallic smell of blood was filling the air and my empty stomach was churning brutally, mouth watering, near vomiting. Cecil's dark figure sat squatted and arched over the grey lifeless deer. Blood stains from fingertips to elbows, drying in clots and clumps on the hairs of his arms. He pulled a lustrous knife through the ribs and up to the neck. Skin, bones, and tendons popping like a taut rope exploding in an empty room. From behind he seemed to be a creature feasting on a corpse. He pushed the deer onto its side and slippery organs slid out on the frozen grass, steam hissing and fizzing. Carefully, he cut the bladder out and tossed it away. He turned to me with indifferent eyes and cut me callously. I threw up on my boots.
"Sissy." he laughed.
"Fuck you. Redneck!"
We toted the field dressed eight point back to our cabin and embarked on a drunken stupor that led to us driving back to Little Rock to rouse up some kind of worried affliction. We found our poison in a ramshackled little dive that didnt shy away from large camoflauged adults with facial overgrowth and orange hats aglow. With our bloody fingernails we handed wadded cash to the tender for the stinging whiskey that awakened the soul and opened our eyes to the brawny brunettes peaking at us from across the abandoned dance floor. They both wore too tight halter tops and short, cut- off blue jeans that rode up high into fat camel toes. Tan muscular legs like gymnasts and freshly painted pink toes, both. We mozied over to where they sat, hands pocketed, and slid next to each over the torn vinyl seat covers. Come to find out, they were a mother and daughter tandem. Mom being thirty seven and daughter nineteen. I sat next to the ripe daughter, with intentions. She whispered in my ear.
'You wanna suck my pussy?"
"And your toes!" I shouted.
Her tongue melted in my mouth and she gripped me quick as we stumbled out the door tangled and intense. She smelled like syrup and her skin burned with rapture. Cobalt eyes fearless and ardent. Cecil and Mom staggered out behind us and we four squeezed into the old Ford and followed directions given from Mom. The house was small and dogs lay scattered in the blotchy yard like heathen children.. Paint silently flecked off the wood siding. Cans of Budwieser were stuffed in the ancient refrigerator and a porn was mutely displayed on the giant flat screen TV in their tiny living room, flashing on the opaque walls. Daughter peeled off her shorts, pushed me onto the depressing couch, and jumped on my face, legs wrapping around my head, and I sucked, and sucked. Finished sucking, it hung down two inches and was ruby colored and raw. I passed out and dreamed I was sleeping. A rumbling snore from daughter woke me and she lay naked by my side, with mouth agape, and I noticed in the light she may be younger than she told. Fretfully, I dressed and searched the disheveled house for cousin Cecil. Down a dark hallway I found a door locked, a retched smell escaping from underneath. I knocked, Cecil appeared, eyes frantic, through a slight crack where an odor attacked my senses. I vomited on the door.
"Sissy." he chuckled.
I pushed into the room and saw Mom field dressed and splayed out on the blood-soaked sheets. Intestines unraveled and strewn. Walls smeared and hand printed. Cecil muttered to himself and licked his knife clean. Outside, flies landed on the glacial meat of the deer, buzzing in the hushed doldrums of daylight erecting from the far away skyline.
With dusk now an afterthought and a funereal dawn fixed straight ahead, we drove into the auroral sun with haggard faces, hopeless. Helpless, even. Cecil smoked and ignored his stained fingers smudging the crumpled cigarette he fondled with a facile and sanguine comfort; unlike an amateur murderer. Somewhat like a psychotic assassin. The kudzu scaled the trees that lined the black asphalt. I navigated with trembling hands.
"Dont worry bout it Cousin." Cecil announced.
The stillness in the cab of the truck shattered when he spoke and and reality squeezed back into the moment with haste. Arkansas was dreary with its raw sleeted fields and stripped trees. A setting to match the situation, I guess.
"Oughta head down to Mobile." he added.
The defiant Cecil emblazoned with ideas and sudden sobriety. Gaunt body caved into the ripped vinyl seat with a Winston bobbing up and down between his chapped lips as he spoke, mumbled rather, with callow simplicity. Owner of a dull mind. Ashes flailing to rest onto his scraggly beard. Electric orange hat covering his oily mop of stringy brown. An ungodly sight huddled in the corner of the truck, laid against the door with absent eyes looking out the window, unblinking. Rimmed with vessels etched in the whites of both arctic gray eyes. Empty. A modern cavalier of evil armored in his camoflauge and crowned with a fluorescent cover, militarily speaking. "Vietnam Vet" , was written clearly on his pallid face in a shiny gold cursive scrawl. Jungle sweat still leaked from his pores. Other leaks still oozing too. Rice paddie prostitutes will bring you down my brother. With their skinny almond eyes and black hair thick like a horses mane. With fat lips and a foreign tongue that lolled you into a a vivid and aware coma where nothing mattered. A floating fantasy that stung your veins with a lustful and ravenous longing for more. The sex and heroine coalesced. The damp and heated air stifled. The smell of urine and blood and feces nauseated. The mind far gone, scorched. It was all written on his face. A golden scrawl. Veiled but obvious. Metaphorically speaking. Cecil ,the deer hunter and veteran of a useless war, still wages death upon the languid. This violent man does not bear it away. He pours into a room and seeks the needy with his elite vision for a numb and dumb heart to falter at his feet. Scanning for a subject to maul. To wash over it with a blanket of red hate.. To break it down and destroy it. Layer by layer. Literally speaking.
The morning highway was empty save for a few early rising workers headed to the mills and plants to put in their 8 and 12 hour shifts of misery. Like zombies on autopilot. The sky was ashy gray with the sun still ascending. We seemed to be two hunters departing the woods with our deer in the truck bed stiffening up. Near froze. Dew crystallized on its glistening black nose. A pink strip of ice fell out of its mouth and stuck to the scarred bed. A good size 8 point. The trucks heater blasted and the gun rack shook as we headed home. We pulled onto the mushy dirt road where Cecil lived bouncing through all the dips and holes scattered intermittently. Jolting us awake, or at least more aware. An old bluetick hound emerged like an ethereal phantom from underneath the porch with misty breath puffing like steam as its paws crunched the frosted grass and mud. A corporeal sentry for the dilapidated trailer. Neighboring trailers full of sleeping bodies and innocent hearts under warm quilts. Little babies in cribs with wet diapers; night-lights glowing orange on chunky cheeks as they squirm sleepily. The insomniac elderly shuffling in tattered house-shoes on knobby knees and arthritic ankles with a glass full of buttermilk and cornbread; spooning it into their toothless mouths, gumming it down their throats. Thick wrinkles carved their splotchy faces. Just waiting on death to arrive, to wipe its feet on the mat and come in. Just patiently withering away watching Soap Operas and late night boxing in lamplit rooms. Pill bottles aligned like armies on nightstands; an infinite amount of refills to be phoned in by gnarled and bony fingers punching the numbers in. The porchlights hummed simultaneously in the bitter solitude.
Cecil fell out of the truck and pulled the dog into his arms rubbing its floppy ears spiritedly. The dog licked his bloody fingers in return. The yard was littered with ancient lawnmowers and parts to cars no one needed,or wanted. A couple folding lawn chairs sat around a rusted trash barrel where smashed Budweiser cans lay thrown in a pile.
"Damn, Cecil. Looks like a bomb went off in your yard."
"Aint had the time to fool with it Cousin."
Words wouldnt come as silence ebbed between us a like a wall. Cecil walked up his porch steps and threw a hand in the air, a farewell gesture.
"We'll just see how it plays out Cousin! Don't ye worry bout it!"