Economic Downturn

by Barry Basden

I am at breakfast this Sunday morning, a perfectly good morning, though a bit cloudy, and a perfectly good breakfast - some sort of baked casserole of sausage, cheese, and eggs - with fresh fruit chafafah on the side. The Hendersons are not here and the hosts, my brother and his new wife, surely miss them, but we speak awkwardly of family we haven't seen in years, although it is a small world and my other brother - no, not Larry - says his neighbor, an ex-DEA agent, once arrested our cousin who has since died in a one-pickup crash. That poor guy had already suffered plenty of homemade bad luck, leaving one arm hanging in a barbed wire fence he ran his motorcycle through late one night so loaded he got up and was trying to untangle it one-armed and put it back on when his daddy found him and screamed for him to lie down. But we are mostly here looking out across a lovely backyard pool and the water hazard on the empty 13th fairway beyond just to say goodbye to all that and, regretfully, to our sweet yellow Lab who will be staying here with my brother and his new wife when we remove our shoes and fly off to the lowlands of Central America this afternoon, the ultimate downsizing - well, no, that's not quite right, but I don't want to think about the ultimate. No, it's not that bad yet, but we have to go now or I'm afraid it might be; we'll hole up down there while the rest of our stash slowly leaks away because this stuff ain't close to being over yet. I hate to leave but we really must go and I'll be sure to write when I'm not busy praying for all those Wall Street fuckers to jump.

6S

Barry Basden writes mostly short pieces. Some have been posted here and in other online venues. Some have not.