Kickass and Dark Memory by Bill Stokes

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, steps aside as the keeper notes that a dark memory can remain buried forever, like a seed planted too deep, and then one day sprout up as a mental weed: and it is so that the images emerge of the bloody fist fight between Bud Brady and his father in the vacant lot behind Ben Lusby’s house.

I happened there on a childhood coaster-wagon patrol of the small-town neighborhood, and the memory includes Bud beating his father into a bloody heap, and then shouting in anger at a cluster of nervous observing neighborhood women, “Is that what you came to see!”

That sad scene somehow mingles with the unrelated memory of Mrs. Brady winning a new Ford sedan–a 1938? in the annual Legion raffle. I remember seeing it parked in the Brady driveway.

What to do with such memory mishmash?

Save it for Fathers” Day?

Write a “Brady” novel?

If only there were time!