Sweet Apple Wood (as told by Sonny)

"'Sucker never could dance - he just hopped around until everyone was tired of seein' him sweat, and then he'd sing outta' key and I'd be none too surprised if he pissed himself."  Damon and Daryl would say things like that when they got to drinking, you know.

Sure, you know it, you damned fool.  But you know that they only said it to explain why that black-haired muffin designer from the big city always wore navy blue trousers.  When someone urinates all over himself while wearing dark blue trousers, you can hardly tell.  It is made especially difficult if the trousers are polyester, and you knew that was what every last pair of his trousers was made of.

That raven-tressed sculptor of muffins would stand there at the urinal sometimes, so relaxed...so relaxed.  He got to thinking that he was dreaming, and that the restroom he was in was just a figment of his dream.  He would be so relaxed, and the urine would flow, and then something deep inside his brain would prod him with the question "am I thinking about dreaming while urinating, or am I urinating in a dream?"  He would snap out of it with a start, and shake his head as though he were trying to make sure he was awake.  Damned fool.  That was just how he was.

And you knew it, and Damon and Daryl would say things like that when they got to drinking - they would laugh, and their big, saliva covered lips would jiggle like fatty, greasy slabs of hog flesh - straight from the cutting floor.  My old neighbor (growing up) was a "belly grader," did I ever tell you that?  Yeah, he worked at the packing plant and he graded bellies.  Not nearly as bad as my friend Chris who worked there part-time and was issued a small, sawn-off baseball bat to keep the hogs in line when they unloaded them from the trucks.  Chris had to give 'em a good smack between the eyes to settle 'em down when they got all riled up.  Damn.  You can hardly do that very long and not develop some kind of problem.  So shake those fatty lips, you fools.

The pieces of flesh looked a helluva' lot like they came from hogs, but when the police put that tape up we all knew better.  The greasy, fatty lips cut from a face and left on the rim of that urinal were bad, but that bloody, sawn-off baseball bat on the urine-covered floor of the restroom was worse.

A lot worse.