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Winesburg, Indiana: Burt Coble, Catman

Greg Schwipps

Abstract

Yeah, I seen your little town at night. It's usually me and the moon coming up through there about three, four in the morning, boat on the squeaking trailer behind me, still dripping green river water from its bunks, and I notice your Dollar General lit up for safety, pole lights shining down on the empty yellow lines, feral cats slinking around the Dairymart, and one of two cars of high schoolers still hustling split-tail in the parking lot of the school. Used to be every buck wanted his Cutlass jacked up on air shocks. That or a lifted four-by-four. Now about every kid I see gots a foreign job, all lowered so the bumpers scrape pulling into the post office. Course, what's kids today got to mail anyway? But one more thing on them feral cats: more than once, I seen two or three toms circling an old mama cat in heat. They say a cat screams like it does when it's getting mated because a tomcat has a barbed penis. They also tell you a possum has a forked penis, but I don't even know how something like that would work. But yeah, I seen your houses all dark, everybody inside sleeping away, drooling on pillows. I know which places got them little baby blues, cause I see the light on low in some corner, mama rocking her baby don't want to sleep. I seen all that and more.

Cover Page Footnote

Note: "This story is exclusively available in the anthology, Winesburg, Indiana, published by Breakaway Books, an imprint of Indiana University Press, in the spring of 2015. Available wherever fine books are sold, borrowed, or used as dowry."

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