Beginning by Michael Farris Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

gathered, none of them appeared capable of much more than hopefully getting back to wherever it was they came from. All men. Unshaved and dirty and with sunken faces but not the menacing faces of power. Some stood with bicycles. One had a warped guitar on his back. A few more stood in a circle and tried to light cigarettes while pointing at an old Chevrolet truck that must have belonged to one of them. A couple of other trucks off to the side. Another man, an older, hunched man, stood a few feet away from the back of the U-Haul, next in line, and he wore a sign draped around his neck made of plywood that read THE END IS NEAR . But NEAR had been crossed out, and written underneath was HERE and all the words were streaked.
    Cohen put the shotgun back underneath the seat as it wasn’t allowed. He then got out of the Jeep and pushed back his hood, took off his sock hat and left it on the seat. He rubbed at the hair stuck down on his head and then took the empty gas cans from the backseat and he walked over to where the other men stood in a staggered line.
    He watched Charlie. The same old Charlie. Much had changed but not him. He was the cow trader, the horse trader, the guy who sold used cars and used tractors or whatever else he could scare up right out in his front yard. No wife to complain about killing the grass. Just Charlie and his land and his barn and his storage shed and his knack for hustling a dollar. Cohen had sat between his father and Charlie on the bench seat of the truck. Both windows cracked. His father driving and smoking with his left hand. Charlie’s arm propped on the door and smoking with his right hand. This was how they rode up to Wiggins to the sale, the trailer hitched to the pickup, sometimes getting rid of cows, sometimes buying. Sometimes bringing home a horse. Always looking for something better than what they already had, the haggle the most anticipated moment of the day. They would ride up to Wiggins and pull into the big gravel parking lot filled with more trucks and more trailers, and his father and Charlie would toss their cigarettes and tuck their pants in their boots and tug at their belts and light another cigarette. Let me have one, Cohen would say each time. Hell no, his father would say. Let him have one, Charlie would argue. He ain’t but ten, Charlie. And the next year his father’s answer would be, He ain’t but eleven, Charlie. And so on until Cohen was big enough to find his own cigarettes elsewhere but it was still fun to ask. He would walk with the men across the parking lot toward the giant metal-roof building, his father and Charlie waving and making small talk to the other men who all seemed to walk at the same lethargic pace, as if they were in slow motion or maybe some type of pain. They walked slowly and kinda crooked, smoked slowly, spoke to one another in half sentences. Cohen watched and listened and sometimes felt like he was in one of those black-and-white westerns his father used to watch as he mingled with the rough-faced cow traders of southeast Mississippi.
    He watched Charlie now. His pants still tucked in his boots. Still hustling for a dollar. Still the man you needed to see.
    â€œI told you, I ain’t got no power cords today. You gonna have to wait till next time,” Charlie was saying to the heavyset man, who looked at him dumbfounded. Charlie wore his glasses on top of his head, and his face had the wear of a man who had worked outside his entire life.
    â€œWhat about right back there in that box?” the large man asked and pointed.
    â€œAre you goddamn deaf?”
    â€œNaw I ain’t deaf but I know you got some. You got some every time.”
    â€œI got some every time when I leave out, but this ain’t the only place I stop. I had em when I left out this time but sold em all before I got here. Hell, it’s a wonder I got anything by the time I get way down here. You understand that?”
    The man shook his