This is not my best work. I apologize. Been having some troubling times at home, which has taken a toll on my mental health and my writing. I won't go into what as that is personal, but it's been hard. I'm sorry for not writing this sooner, but I had nothing to give to you.
Thank you for reading, if you have taken the time.
-Endlessly
WILD HORSES
Momma always claimed us boys were like horses; rough with one another, yellin' and hollerin', never taking the time of day to listen to anyone but ourselves.
Yeah, we had minds of our own, I guess. Dad never liked it when Momma called us hooligans or made us stop beatin' on one another; said it was somethin' a boy had to learn to do. He always preached self-defense and protection over the younger boys––which, in our family, only meant me until Pony came along. But that was a less enjoyable time, after Dad and Momma almost separated 'cause of Dad's...issues. I guess gambling and horsing around was too much for her, but it was never too much for any of us.
There was a time where things weren't going as usual. Whether it was because Dad was constantly leaving the house with a wad of cash and then comin' home with nothin' but a few pennies or because Momma suddenly got pregnant, I'll never know. Darry and I knew they loved one another deeply; we'd never encountered a love so strong and endearing as our parents. Their love was like a fine wine––the older it gets, the more you want to drink, and God, did Darry and I get drunk on their love just as much as they did.
But there soon came a time where everyone stopped feeding off of it––Dad especially. There came a time where Dad wouldn't come home until four o'clock in the morning, and Momma, the sweetheart that she was, waited every moment of those sometimes twelve hours for him. Even when the blood started running to her eyes, her body started to deteriorate because she a) wasn't eating, b) wasn't sleeping, and c) definitely wasn't caring for the baby inside of her with both of those things combined, she still waited. There came a time where all she did was wait, wait, and wait, and Dad, the drunk he'd become, didn't seem to give a damn.
Darry and I watched her and him, him and her, and knew that the love was gone. It was gone from Dad's heart, replaced by the tipping of a bottle and the flicking of cards onto a table; but it was still within Momma. It was still there, the fine wine still aging as she did, but Dad had stopped drinking that wine and had moved to a harsher, more livelier substance.
He stopped preaching of self-defense and protection and instead preached about the wonders of beer and whiskey. He stopped his talk of how a man should never grow a beard, for it made him look like a pussy; and instead, he grew one, a long one at that, and allowed himself to become one. He stopped his praise for our good deeds, only praising us as "his good, strong boys" when he heard the fridge opening and the clanking of beer bottles against one another.
Momma claimed Dad was the wildest horse of all, and we were still her small colts, in need of love and care that only she could now provide. He was wild, all right; drunken rages were common when Darry and I were growing up. We hated the way he talked to us, so much to the point that we answered out of fear rather than genuine curiosity. Momma took the beatings, the cryings, the spittings and the eventual hailing to God as he finally––finally––passed out on the couch.
To be continued.
Thank you again for reading.