“I can’t tell your mama shit no more. She done got clever.” Hammer cursed and spat a fat wad on the dry dirt. He rubbed it in with his steel-toe. “How you think she got so clever?”
I grunted at him.
“You don’t know?”
I squinted at his mud-spit and chewed on my cheek. “I reckon I might’ve told her you ain’t never told her a true thing in all her life. I reckon I might’ve said something like that.” I watched his boots to know when or if I needed to duck. I shrugged my 17-year-old shoulders. I felt strong.
He laughed. “You told your mama I been fucking around on her?” He wiggled a foot at me. “You done snitched on your old man?”
My daddy made me start calling him Hammer when I turned 13 because he said I was starting to stand up too straight. Said I needed to round my shoulders to carry the weight of his name. Said he’d be the Hammer and my back’d be the nail. Hell of a way to enter my teens.
I looked down at him, him almost six inches shorter than me, him with shoulders as big around as a barn. I nodded and spat by his foot.
Hammer put his hands on his hips and whistled. “You done let some little girl make you feel like a man, ain’t you? Now you standing up to ya old man like you got a pair. Like I ain’t the one that gave you that pair. Don’t be unwise, son.”
Don’t be unwise, son. That’d been his mantra to me since grade school. Any time I did anything acting like I might be getting some kind of independence, like my first black eye or my first girlfriend, he’d sit me down. Put a big wad of chew in, making his bottom lip swell like a cancer had taken root. He’d spit. Put a hand on my knee and say real slow, “Don’t you be getting proud on me, boy. Don’t be unwise, son.”
I shook my head at him. “Ain’t being unwise, Hammer.”
He squinted at me. I watched the vein in his neck protruding, the muscles in his jaw twitching. His fingers curling and uncurling, fisting and unfisting. His mustache wiggled. My daddy was mad.
“You done told on your daddy then,” he said.
“Ain’t like it mattered. Mama ain’t left has she?” I stood up straighter, looking down my nose at him. A boy can stand straight sometimes
“You just remember that, boy. You didn’t do nothin but hurt your mama. That’s what getting wise does for ya, son.” He squinted at me and shook his head before turning and walking away.
I stared at his back and wondered if Hammer might not be the wisest man I’d ever met. I swallowed and decided I hope he ain’t. I hope he ain’t even close.
