Ah, I sit on the porch smoking a cigar and ponder all the women who have fallen for my books as the stars light up and a shadowed hush rises from under the pines.
A screech owl calls. An earthworm turns. I flick my ashes over the side. Waves slap against the gunwales, spraying me with fresh salt from the creation.
My many books are all trash but they seem to captivate the ladies and for that I am grateful to Ernie, a ladies man who taught me all he knew. He was a bank robber my mother married in Kansas in 1933. She was more than 70 years old when she had me. Maybe 80. It was written up in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Life magazine, with photos by Margaret Bourke-White.
My mother looks surprised in these disturbing photos, holding her Mason jar of stewed tomatoes. I actually have the originals, piled in the damp basement on a shelf. The salt water has gotten to them so I hate to see them. They remind me of something really weird.
I never inhale. Life is good. Time for another novel, this one about the defenseless Japanese farmer my step-father shot in his rice paddy as the Marines went in after the bomb.