
The Spill
Huckster (Oil Spiel)
Ryn Holmes
A transplanted Californian, Katheryn is adjusting to life in the Deep South-one can tell by her frequent use of “y’all” and how high she styles her hair. She is amazed at finding herself with 6 children, 19 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. Life is a trip.
Some say he arrived early
in that quiet between time
when color is still washed away,
the soft hum of a well-oiled machine
breaking the silence of the dark,
slipping into town in a limo
with tinted windows dark as night,
the smell of cheap cologne arriving
before the toe of one foot
preceded a shoe with a hole in the sole -
He was a shiny-suited
glad-handing man
having slicked-back coal-black hair
and a pencil-thin mustache
over a cheap smile showing gold teeth -
crude,
clearly on the make
and slippery as snake oil,
you know the type -
a fast talking
shifty
never-look-you-straight-in-the-eye
kinda guy
smoking a stogie as long as your arm,
perhaps in compensation
for lesser endowments -
he carried a bulging suitcase in one hand
and worried a pocketful of change with the other.
She was the local girl
sun-kissed and sandy-haired,
a natural blonde
with eyes the color of emeralds,
been around the block a time or two
and not so young anymore,
her careless and impulsive way
the perfect mark for a con -
a good-time party girl
rolling over and giving it up to his easy promises
before reading the fine print,
she lived out the consequence
of that foul exchange
as just another sorry sister,
tainted,
polluted by his essence
with no undoing the coupling -
a deal was a deal for all that,
signed and sealed -
she tried to find him once
but he was long gone,
only a bastard spawn remaining
as reminder that he was ever there -
no one remembered seeing him go
but some folks recalled
that in the dusky hours before dawn
they could hear the receding soft hum
of a well-oiled machine.