“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

- Damon Runyon

Girl brings home suitor. Father tries to frighten suitor. For real or for jest. With harsh words. An intimidating stare.

Pa used arms the size of tree trunks and a highly arched brow. A friend’s dad employed over the counter drug tests. “Here. Pee in the cup.” The old codgers from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers used guns. Lined up the boys and whipped out the rifles.

Mine used dynamite.

T was the first and last guy I ever brought home to meet the family. I was 25. We’d been together for two years and it was his first visit to Appalachia. I should have been shocked by it all. I wasn’t. Not that I expected my father and his pack of dark-eyed brothers to blow up the mountain, close down the only road out and block any chance of escape for a good portion of the day. But I didn’t not expect it either.

• beetle-headed, flap-ear'd knave


• quintessence of dust


• canker-blossom


• poisonous bunch-back'd toad


• a fusty nut with no kernel


• clod of wayward marl


• roast-meat for worms


• infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker


• anointed sovereign of sighs and groans


• foot-licker


• lump of foul deformity


• highly fed and lowly taught


• all eyes and no sight


• all the infections the sun sucks up


• elvish-mark'd abortive, rooting hog


• veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth


• mountain of mad flesh


• light of brain


• bolting-hutch of beastliness


• not so much brain as ear-wax


• long-tongu'd babbling gossip


• thou are a boil, a plague sore


• I do desire that we may be better strangers