Swagger

Doug Barnett had it, swagger, when he unpocketed his

tube of Chapstick in a Kroger check-out line, flashing

his finest Marlon-Brando at a check-out girl whose

name tag read Savannah in black block lettering. Doug

mock-crooned Savannah while applying the Chapstick.

It was summer and he looked good, I guess. Muscled

from a year working in the Sunnyhill Mining Operation,

going underground for a United Mine Workers fair-wage.

I’d better tell you this was nineteen seventy-one. And,

then, the rest is the hard truth of the Draft and the United

States Military, who wrote the book on bullshit-swagger.

Doug had been drafted and dodged Nam and surprise 

surprise thought he was God’s gift to check-out girls.

The woman wouldn’t look up at Doug. Not at first. But

she was someone who understood how it works. Meaning 

she liked what she saw, saw her chance and took it. Maybe

she wanted sex herself, now that I think of it. But then she

leaned over the red treadmill-belt, asking Cash or check?

and displayed her ah-ha moment of revealing cleavage

as if New Lexington, Ohio wasn’t a big enough birdcage.

As if she’d consider bouncing, topless, on a trampoline 

to snag a hillbilly who’d survived the US Army and had 

enough gas in the soul-tank to come on to her. She wanted 

out while she was still young, a grin canceling any doubt.