Au Pairs and Impatient Mothers

Klickitat clack Klickitat clack, the no-legged man punted his way up the sidewalk, his hands feverously paddling the asphalt. He held a bottle of tic-tac between the stumps of his legs, the label, frayed and in tatters, whipping like a kite-tail in the warm August wind. He drank like a Mormon heretic, cast asunder into the depths of Dis’ hell. He understood the depths a man would go to outcross the cross and took a long slow gargle from the mouth of the bottle, his lips making a pocking sound against the fibrous glass. He lived an elbow-width from purgatory, in desecration of ghosts, specters and gods. He paddled and punted and poled his way up the sidewalk not stopping for pedestrians or dogs, or small children tethered to lampposts by overworked au pairs and impatient mothers.