Earwigs and Goutweed

When he was a boy the shamble leg man liked nothing better than a white bread honey sandwich with the crusts removed. He ate delicately, taking small gingerly bites. His mother made him honey sandwiches with a sliver-plated butter knife she kept in a kitchen drawer next to the refrigerator. She spread the butter, sometimes so cold it stuck to the butter-plate, on the bread, daubing on the honey with the end of a spoon. He liked orange Kool Aide sipped through a straw twisted into a loop-to-loop. He’d seen a television commercial for whirly straws and connived his poor mother into buying him one by wailing until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She bought him two, one blue and one red and blue. Sometimes his mother bought cone honey goutweed with bees’ stingers and wings, twigs and puffballs and things that looked like earwigs without ears or wigs.