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1989
Cherry cola flavoring melted between Lou's molars as the fresh cube of bubblegum melted all soft and citrusy on her tongue. It was a new pack of Bubblicious that her mother didn't know about. Didn't matter if Virginia Curtis-Winston confiscated chewing gum of all kinds, having gotten fed up with cleaning chewed wads stuck to the bottom of the dinner table. Daddy was keen to pocket a replacement for her to keep in her book bag, stolen right out from underneath Uncle Soda's nose.
A strange practice, Lou mused, as Uncle Soda gave her a free pack every time she visited the gas station he owned with Uncle Steve. Dallas Winston had no business stealing anymore, now that he was what Mr. Buck joked, "a married old man with a changed heart."
Maybe there was comfort in old things. In old habits and characteristics.
She figured that was what Momma would say, naming her "Louisa" out of all things while her brother wandered around, named after a grandfather they never knew.
"It's not as odd as you'd think," Momma said once when Lou asked her. "My daddy was more original than you could imagine. That's why you got uncles named Ponyboy and Sodapop."
"And a mother who answers to 'Bluebell'," chimed in her father.
At a tender fourteen years old, Lou decided she wasn't much for the old ways. Her taste was honed for the newer parts of the world, even if it could wear another line in her folks' heads. New was not to be conflated with change.
That was harder to chew on, all tough and inevitable.
Being fourteen opened her mind and opened her up at the same time. Sometimes, she felt like one of those rainbow trout that her oldest uncle, Darry, would cut with a few quick strokes of his filet knife. She saw it firsthand when the entire family spent an evening by the lake, fishing and camping. Back when Uncle Steve and Uncle Soda could still leap over the fence with a single jump and not complain about their knees. Darry showed her how to properly gut and clean one's catch but fell baffled when his toddler niece suddenly burst into tears, running the tips of her butter-soft fingers over the slabs of scale and skin that wilted on the lichenous dock.
The poor fish, she thought. Simple as that.
Jo got a kick out of fishing, football, and everything else their six uncles did. He caught a six-pound catfish that Momma and Aunt Rose cooked for dinner that night. But Jo was like those naked fish, as he aged and diffracted. When he shot up and his voice deepened and he got prickly. Lou knew it was an act. He was always stripped of his scales and skin. He liked to act tough, the carefree son of Oklahoma's meanest hood. Acting like it was his God-given right to be a dickhead. But his heart was as tender as his mother's. That gave most boys his age the impression that something was wrong with him. He would roll up on some little kids riding to school but couldn't find it in himself to hide nails and broken bits of glass in front of their bicycle wheels. He watched others do it, fingers twitching and curling into his palms.
