Pick Yer Sin

Chapter One: Tote It

All characters belong to SHARP productions and TLC.

He walk’t up the drive in back agin, haulin’ with him all matter of things. The junk from the yard done a good turn when he came out and did a ramble all over the place. He had a tall look about him and weren’t afraid of hisself, knewed that all o’er God’s kingdom men like him made their ways. Nothing about the earth beneath his feet were too strange. Seemed that a man had to bear through life to get to the after’un.

His sister was an old dried out barleycorn fifteen years his senior. Daddy’d been prolifigatin’ all about the county, said he had some thirty some odd sisters and brothers. They called daddies like him rollin’ stones, as because they’d taken to tumblin’ through the hay with a new missus every few turns up that thur moon up high, twinklin’ and a flirtin'. He’d had thought maybe it weren’t so bad to have too many kins in the county. Good things came like to brother’s keeper, or so it seemed at least.

But his sister were one of the older ones, an a more dried out lady ne’er did anyone e’er see. Had a hard time keepin’ herself, it seemed to him. Time laid waste to all but on her it laid tire marks. She’d been mudded o’er too many times. She had bosoms like hanging socks stuffed with quarters, but real big and curving over her belly. They pulled her chest down and there were cracks like dry’d up clay in bet’een them titties. Her ol’ body was like a wedge, all big and sagging on top but with itty bitty hips and legs real short and veiny. She musta been keepin’ up with her beauty shop visits becoz her hair was always real yellow. Country girls like her’d been takin the bleach to they heads since before they knew anything else.

He imagin’d his sister like a girl he’d knew when he was a youngen and his mama was keepin’ house by herself at the time. That girl grew up near ‘em and had been the kind to be staying out tanning since she was in the fourth grade, dressing in women’s bikinis on the front lawn with all her nails painted. She was always dancing and having boyfriends too old for her. Her brother’s friends liked to catch a peak of her asleep. Her mama was ‘a remarried and her new daddy was a nurse at the state hospital. He had some kids in a trailer park ‘cross town who didn’t come by much.

Anyway, his sister was probably like her. She danced tables too on the interstate when she made eighteen. Them kinds of girls get along with the men whether they’re pretty or not. They just have a thing about them, like something that smells real sweet covering up the smell of a garbage can. He knew all them girls who grew up to be skanks working the rat tail interstate bars. He’d been doing those joints since he was old enough to be let up on the turntables.

Daddy said he had an artistic temperature and so he’d best do something to express himself. Daddy said he’s known more than a few almost Van Gogh types drink themselves blind from constipation. Better be honest with yerself. So he’d took’d it to heart when Daddy said the Blue Lady Showroom had space for a morning DJ and that what a good titty bar needed was someone with a good ear for the tunes during the breakfast boo-fay, that them poor girls stuck shaking it on the eggs needed someone who weren’t sleeping on the music plates to help them keep roofs over they head.

Daddy had a good sense about him of those things, that roofs weren’t nothing to scoff down. E’ryone needs a place in this Earth and the good lord lik’d seeing of a man who didn’t hide his talents for the swine. So he took to them bars and started doing real good for himself, even getting himself in on Friday and Saturday nights, when the highway’d just rain into these little places. With him up on stage they weren’t just no greasy juke joint but like the real clubs in Dallas or New York prob’ly.

So it weren’t no surprise then when his sister came t’him and said that she’d gone and done it finally and she’d be needing of his services.

“Hey Doug! Ya in there or what?” she shouted up at his trailer. He’d made good on some childhood dreams and had built himself a trailer-inna-tree type deal, up on stilts in the oak grove. Seemed to him like when he was a youngen that the good Lord’d smile on him if he got real close to the earth. Having an artistic temperature and all he didn’t give a squint what no one thought of him, say what they want. They’d call him a queer one but he didn’t take no mind to it as he’d taken to the women like his daddy had and he was happy to sire the young ones when they wanted one. Never landed him in court, neither, on account of him not paying child support. A lot of them wanted the extra benefits from the county and a new bairn’d be good for the a’cuisition of such a thing.

“Yuh I’m up ‘er!” he hollered out the window, not peepin’ out at her. “You just sit tight won’t ya?”

He bent down to pull up his pants over his draws. Too damn hot for a shirt in the month of June. Hot and soggy as the bayou. He kept a floor fan running at night but didn’t much want to run the damn thing during the day. He’d better have it so that he got a good sweatin’ with the day.

“Hurry up Doug!” she shouted, chuckin’ a beer bottle at this side of his house. She got real impatient with the heat as it made for hard manueverin’. He got down off the trailer in a hurry before she started in on a hollerin’.

She leaned against his Silverado, panting into her elbow. The heat’d had a ill effect on her already. Her yellow hair was braided into corn rolls on her crown. She’d a group with her this day, a man with a video camera and another one holdin’ a boom microphone and a little lady dressed too rich for the scenery. She came at him with her hand all outstretched like, toting a clipboard in her other.

“Hello Mr. Nelson, my name’s Megan. I’m a producer with SHARP productions, I’m so happy to meet you.”

Her hand met with his in a robust shaking.

“Doug’s my name. Daddy’s Mistur Nelson.”

“Boy is he ever.” huffed his sister into her arms, still helplessly restin’ on the side of his pickup.

“Do you mind signing these before we get started?” Angela clicked a pen at him with the clipboard.

“What am I signing away?” The little lady started in on telling him real quick about the wheres to put his Dale Earnhardt Jr., pointing with her scrubbed finger to the lines where he jotted his name.

“Doug, I’mma ask ya to be my wedding DJ. I need ‘a sit down and refresh a minute. Lord, Doug, ya ain’t thought to bring me nothing down to drink?”

The way Doug figured it the good Lord gived to the man who lived his life such that he didn’t pass up on his betterment. The way he’d see’d it the good Lord’d seen to it his bounty and the rest was going to fall on him like rye.

Angela weren’t a bad gal, despite bein’ all dried up and like an old fat mare. She was of the hot blood like the older ones, before Daddy’d discovered inner peace and like. She’d taken in their sister Darlene’s boys when they own Daddy had too rough a go at ‘em, so it seemed that in the balance hung her goodness. She’d roughed a lot of her times alone, as the women folk get worn before the men. Didn’t seem fair to him, but that was his particular way of seein’. The good Lord gives of ideas and a man without a good one is a man who’s bound to struggle.

She’d started making good use of the new marvels of the internet age and found herself a gentleman caller who lived clean across the globe in Africa that wanted to extend a hand in marriage to her and she’d agreed to it. She’d been working nights at the hospital as a rounds nurse and saved every penny to buy plane tickets and send her fancy man under draws with the president’s face on them. What’s done in the name of love, figured Doug, must be henceforth blessed, and he didn’t see no reason to doubt his or her intention.

Most of the other kin kept talkin’ about him being in it for the greencard, but Doug weren’t sure that was too fair a thing to say. Seemed to him that a man that was willing to leave the country of his birth must have a great need in his heart. Doug felt twinge-pangs of sweet feelings for a woman in his time but never enough to leave his own way of being. It seemed to him that it would have to be a trans-continental type love for them types of thoughts to take hold, leaving one’s homeland and what all.

What with Angela’s momma being dead and all Doug’d been happy to share his own momma with her. Seemed that a momma with a heart to raise one had a heart to raise them all.

“Here’s the one a me and him,” swiping them pictures on the phone, “oh momma, he made me so mad. Said he ain’t never been on a boat but he had pictures of him with women at that same place.”

But she was laughing and Doug had noticed that her bridgework in her mouth looked real good and kept up with. Could see it clear across the room. If she were laughing she couldn’t be too sore about her groom on a boat with women.

“Said he ain’t never been on a boat. My ass momma. Oh, here’s the one of me and his momma.”

His momma looked as old as them hills and was smilin’ so big for the camera. She had the look of a real lady. She wore a bright blue turban and a cloth wrapped around her dress.

Doug was on the couch with Bobby Jim, Seth and Dale. Seth had taken a good bruisin’ that morning from Angela on account of him getting gum in his rat-tail braid. He was still actin’ all sore about it and Doug remembered them childhood feelin’s of being all tored up inside on for having done this or that wrong. They were all takin’ turns with the video controls for the old super Nintendo that Momma kept out for when the little one’s came around.

The camera people kept real still. They’d sent folks to Momma’s place and had them tidy it up a bit and get to some redecoratin’ what to make the house look TV ready. Momma didn’t bother getting all done up though, as the good Lord knows what each one looks like on the day of her birth so he should recognize her on television, too. Sometimes the TV people’d stop on an idea and have them re-say their thoughts or ask questions of them.

“And Doug’ll play me some music I can get my dance on to!” Angela yelled them words to make sure Doug heard her right.

That made momma laugh real hard.

“You gonna break your coochie if you try to shake your ass.” she said.

“I ain’t gonna break shit momma. I’ve gotta keep everything in line if I’m gonna tote a egg for him.”

“What you mean, tote a egg?” momma weren’t laughing now.

“We gonna have a baby, momma. Believe me, them doctors over there already seen to it and I can tote. I’m bringin’ new life forth from the fruit of my loom.”