Just Below the Hips

There is no cobbler Peeps, hobnailed shoes or cardboard flats, they’re illusionary illusions, things made up in the dark with you’re eyes closed. In this wordless world nothing is as it seems, or so it seems. Coronary bypasses and phlebotomies: the proofs in the pudding, craw-berry and suet, chickpea and scalawag. The man in the hat knew a man who wore culottes’ summer, winter and fall, and a scarf that hid his face from chin to brow. He was legless, having fallen drunk into the path of an oncoming train, his legs sheared off like cog-pins just below his hips. He scooted round town on a small board equipped with wheels, punting himself along with two wooden blocks he paddled along the asphalt beside him, the stumps of his legs braded into the wooden slip that served as his carryall. Porters and ales made from wheat, soybean and malt, distilled in oak casks brushed with lye sealant to prevent seepage and auger.