The truck was parked on the side of the road on the outskirts of Joplin…blue rusted pickup with a busted taillight and a gun rack hanging on the rear window…it’d sat there for a couple of days…drippin’ oil on the gravel…makin’ it black…

He kissed his momma goodbye that mornin’ after she’d made him a big breakfast of bacon and eggs…biscuits and butter…a thermos of coffee to take with him…sat there in his camouflage and ate it quickly…kept his hat off…never wore hats indoors…wasn’t civilized…

So…he drove through town…rifle on his gunrack…Dwight Yokham on the radio…took a nip from a flask he had in his coat pocket…the mornin’ air still stung…

There was a lot on his mind that mornin’…he drank some more to try and forget…hopin’ he could tag a buck…make jerky and steaks from it…maybe some sausage for spaghetti sauce…he used as much of the deer as possible…never wasted…

And he sat out there waitin’ for hours in the cold…hearin’ gunshots goin’ off in the distance…it put him to sleep…dreamin’ of a woman he’d been in love with…dreamin’ of how he left her after she’d decided not to have the kid…he felt real bad ’bout that…real bad…just slept there up in the tree tortured by nightmares…some say she comitted the sin…but he knew they were both to blame…both of em…

The truck was parked on the side of the the road on the outskirts of Joplin…

It was towed away a few days later…