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“Where are you from?”
“Truthfully?” John chuckled, shaking his head. “The curb…”
Well, not so much a concrete curb – but a proverbial one, he mused. The nearest ‘curb’was much closer to town and about a half-mile walk down the single road leading out of the trailer park on the edge of the bayou where he’d grown up.
“What do you mean?” Hot Cakes grinned. “Nobody’s from ‘the curb’. Where’s your home, dude?”
“Here. My home ishere, just like everyone else in this sad unit,” John said, smiling. “But I’m from southern Louisiana originally. Cajun-boy, born and bred…”
“You aren’t going home for Christmas?”
“You weren’t listening,” John said gently, smiling easily at the long-accepted truth that flowed from him as if practiced. “My home ishere. I got kicked to the curb a long time ago, and the Air Force kept me off the streets. I somehow managed to make my way into flight school, and here I am… living the American Dream.”
“Oh wow. I’m sorry, X-Ray…”
“I’m not. If I had stayed, I would have been so much worse off. It’s all about outlook and perspective, you know? I’m on this path because I’m meant to be here…” John shrugged and logged out, smiling at his teammate.
It was true.
If he had stayed, he would have had a very different life.
His mother was on her fifth husband when she finally passed away. He would have never left, worked himself to the bone for minimum wage to make sure his mother was taken care of… and never gone any further.
Being poor was a trap – and he’d been flung out of the net by the one person he never anticipated would actually end up helping him.
John was born when his mother was forty-five and to husband number three.
The kid was a mistake, according to his biological father.
My miracle baby, according to his mom.
When his mother passed on, he was left with husband number five, Ol’ Elmer Natchez, who was the biggest user, loser, and snake-in-the-grass. His new ‘step-father’had changed the locks on the trailer while John was at school, before tossing everything in John’s room right out of the window, into the waters of the bayou.
There was no love lost between Elmer as John was just another mouth to feed and ‘Shoulda been workin’ instead of schoolin’…
Seventeen, not sure what to do, and nowhere to go – the Air Force had saved his life in more ways than one.
“Na-da there today, my friend. I’m heading to the mess hall. Do you want to go? I hear we are having chicken tenders for dinner tonight,” he sighed happily, rubbing his stomach.
“Gosh, I love that stupid gravy. They make it like my grandmother used to… a little lard, some flour, and an obscene amount of pepper,” John admitted, closing his eyes and seeing his Granny’s shack in his mind.
His grandmother would get that coffee can out that she called it her ‘bawlin pot’with her heavy accent, putting it on an old wood cookstove she always kept going.
Granny would drop a spoonful of lard in the bottom, a handful of flour, whisking it, before adding whatever milk she had. It could have been cow, goat, some buttermilk, etc.
He remembered when he was old enough, maybe around ten, that he’d been dubbed ‘the little mister with the whisker’ – and got to whisk the gravy while she cut the biscuits with a juice glass, before wiping her hands on her apron, before hugging him.
Those were the best memories,he thought, smiling to himself as Hot Cakes laughed at his enthusiastic response to dinner in the mess hall.
Sometimes that slop was inedible – and that was saying a lot for him because he’d eaten a variety of things in his lifetime… and he was barely thirty.
“Yep… Let’s grab dinner and talk a little bit more. I’ll tell you how a realrouxis made before turning it into gravy. My sister taught me…” Hot Cakes said, getting to his feet and smiling at him.
Not twenty minutes later, the two men were carrying their trays towards the crowded tables. Sitting down, he immediately scooped up his fork and pushed the peas into his gravy – along with his mashed potatoes, mixing it all together.
“Dude… really?”
“What?” John laughed. “It makes it stick together so it doesn’t fall off your fork.”
