Big Bad Love by Larry Brown

have seen men pant, looking at her in a bathing suit. Mildred was always naturally hot-sexed. I knew it had to be frustrating for her to be like that. But she said she would be absolutely mortified to have to undergo an operation of that nature or even discuss it with a doctor or nurse. So, sitting there on that stool, I didn’t know much other way to turn. I knew she wasn’t going to like that dead dog lying in our front yard. I thought, Hey, baby, what about your cruel cats?
    By the time I’d had my second beer, I’d thought about going home and hauling the shotgun out and killing every cat on the place. The last time I had counted them, there were lots of them. Rats and mice were no longer a problem. I was sure those rodents came up on the edge of the yard, took one look at all those cats, and said: No way, José.
    Often people in bars don’t speak to one another, and often this is what happens to me. I am extremely friendly. I just don’t know what to say to people. I didn’t know what to say to Mildred the first time I met her. I met her in Destin, Florida, and saw that wonderful ass she had. She did all the talking. I was down there recuperating from my divorce that was almost pending. I was separated from my first wife, but divorce was not pending. It was just almost pending, and I was trying to recuperate from that and was going home to try and patch things up in a few days. When I saw Mildred, everything went out the window, good intentions, everything, the divorce became pending. Mildred represented herself as a virtuous woman with naturally hot tendencies and told me sincerely that she was technically a virgin, but on our wedding night I quickly formed the erroneous opinion that this was simply not the case. As a matter of fact, I thought on our wedding night that Mildred’s puss had simply been worn out from numerous encounters over a period of many years with some enormous number of men, which caused me and Mildred to almost divorce the next day, until she broke down crying at the Continental breakfast and confessed that I was only the first and one-half person to ever penetrate her. I took that as a compliment to mean the other person had only made it in halfway.
    By the time I started drinking my third beer I had thought a lot about Mildred’s womb and had begun to wonder if by some lucky chance she ever got pregnant would the baby fall out prematurely. I wondered if any of the other men in that bar were facing that particular problem and didn’t figure theywere. What I figured was it was a unique problem but not quite out of line with the rest of my life. It seemed for some reason or another I had always been given the short end of the stick. I knew that it had nothing to do with my nature or character and was just an unlucky streak of fate, just like when I had fallen off the persimmon tree limb four feet off the ground at my grandmother’s house and broken my arm and missed my own birthday party, then got back later with the cast on and there were only crumbs of cake in puddles of ice cream that flies were walking over on the picnic table, with all my little friends gone and all the toys and presents unwrapped and already played with.
    By the time I started drinking my fourth beer I did not give much of a damn whether I ever got any more of Mildred’s puss or not. I knew that she had been home for quite a good while by then and was probably wondering where I was. I knew that she had probably already fixed supper and had noted my dead dog in the yard and was probably sitting out on the front porch looking for me to come in. I began talking to some young women shooting pool and took up a stick myself and shot about three racks of eight ball with them, losing all three for a dollar. I was merely hustling these young ladies and trying to get a line of trash going. I thought I could lure some of them off with the promise of a cold sixer in my truck later.
    By the