Shorty
He was from Hungry Horse, Montana. He died about three or four years ago, I don't like to keep track, but the anniversary just passed again. This was where he lived, when it worked. He built a custom barnwood camper on the back of a '49 Chevy truck, with details like antique lavender glass doorknobs and ornate brass hinges scavenged from old torn down houses. The truck was so delightfully unique that everyone around town knew it, but he thought himself invisible. Maybe that was because he wished he was. Shorty had the face of a bulldog, and the body of a troll -- short, of course, all belly, hardly any legs and no butt at all. His spooky blue eyes bulged out intensely over the top of his halfmoon readers, from underneath eyebrows like two tumbleweeds. He was grumpy a lot.
I don't have any pictures of him, because he wouldn't allow anyone to photograph him. He had been known to confiscate the cameras of people who ignored the warnings. Or to bean them with his cane. "Dirty Motherfucker!" he'd scowl. I did sneak a couple of caricatures from memory over the years, after I'd left his place, but somehow he always KNEW. He knew right away, too. He probably wouldn't like me telling you about him, either. I keep a tin with some of his ashes in it in the house, and I'm always a little scared he'll do some hooligan poltergeist thing... That's the kind of guy he was. Sometimes I think he's visiting when I tune in to what used to be his favorite radio show, "Honky Tonk Heroes," on Saturday morning, and the words to a particular song will match a memory I'm having about him. Then I always say, "Hi, Shorty. Miss you," and look up at this picture I drew one time, which I keep hanging on the wall by my desk. I think he spilled coffee on it. A friend discovered the picture in his cabin after he died and brought it back to me.
I will tell you more about Shorty some time.
7:02:14 PM 
|
|
