THURSDAY: Alex

BY JOHN BRANTINGHAM

Copyright is held by the author.

ALEX TELLS his wife he’s building houses because if he told her he got hired on the crew putting up the border wall, she’d probably leave him, and he wouldn’t blame her because half the family’s on the other side even her mother Carla who went to the University of California at San Diego, and a lot of good that did her because back in the day the only job she could get was picking fruit, and that’s where she met her husband whose cousin died after he got lost crossing the desert, but his son Felix made it and was hitchhiking on the highway nearly dead himself from thirst when Alex picked him up and gave him water and food and a place to stay, and he returned the favour by introducing Alex to his wife, but Felix who is a Ph.D. in literature now got fed up with the politics in this country and tried to convince Alex to come with him to Mexico, but it’s not like Alex speaks Spanish and besides Alex would rather stay here and fight, or so he said, but maybe that’s all bullshit because he’s building the wall, but his mother has colon cancer, and he’s got to pay his share of the bills, and jobs aren’t just dropping out of the sky, which is why Alex finds himself stopped at a stoplight smashing his steering wheel with his fist yelling “God damn it” over and over.

4 comments
  1. …and all in one sentence. It works well. Thank you ?

  2. My old brain has trouble with the long sentence.

  3. Meh.

  4. A great story, told me everything in one paragraph. I really loved the lack of a period it made the story flow, gallop along to its conclusion. I will try that out.

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