“Yes, sir,” I said.
“I’m proud you stuck with tae kwon do,” Dad said, parking the truck. We sat there with the engine running. “It teaches you coordination. Hell, I’ve seen you’re not flopping around like a beached whale no more, and that’s after only a couple of months of lessons. And you’re quicker too. Not the same slow-footed sow you were at the beginning of summer.”
Dad words, while rough and raw, were the best things I’d ever heard him say to me. I knew Dad, knew how he spoke, and this was as nice as it was going to get. I could live with that.
“That black dyke was tough wasn’t she.” Dad turned off the truck and got out. “She landed some powerful punches. But hell, if you can beat her, you can beat a man.” Dad put his arm around me and opened the grocery store door. “Let’s go get the thickest, bloodiest steak that A-rab’s got.”
About the Author
Hardy Jones attended Louisiana State University, the University of Memphis, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in journals such as Clapboard House:Literary Journal, Dark Sky Magazine, Dogzplot, Paradigm, and The Straitjackets. He has been awarded two grants and is the Director of Creative Writing at Cameron University. He lives in Oklahoma with his wife.
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