mmmdccxxxix

One Farmer’s Firm Handshake

He held out his hand
for a kiss. What tran
spired was more a blow
than he’d ever beheld.

So not true. I mean
he’d beheld a lot of
blows. Even a few
kisses. But the man

on the other side of
the fence grabbed it
like he’d never let
go. Making the split

second seem like an
eternity. It was hay-
baling season, so that
eternity was a hot one.

Once released back to
its typical limpness,
the hand just sort of
hovered there, arcing

over the barbed wire
of the new neighbor’s
pasture. Wendell was
not even able to con

template that heat, which
emanated from the entire
surface where his palm
and fingers had been

squinched practically
bloodless by the new
neighbor, as if from
first being splayed out

beneath a high noon’s
sun catching every pos
sible ray of it, but then
spreading impossibly

throughout all of his
innards from there,
almost like when he
was coaxed into taking

a colorful pill that was
practically candy-looking 

from a shot glass full of

them that one unforget

table night during the
one semester he attended
university, before coming
back home to tend to his

dad and the farm. When
that warmth got right into
his heart, Wendell realized
his new neighbor bore

a pretty significant
resemblance to Jackie
Gleason. Wendell
hadn’t paid hide nor

hair of attention to Mr.
Gleason’s profile before,
really. But he did remember
the loud laugh that would

have surely awoken
most every soul in the
entire countryside who’d
already been asnooze, or

at the very least startle
the daylights out of
those who were at
least halfway there.

Which would be
most of the pop
ulation of this
countryside,

given its cit
izens’ direct
correlation to
cattle and chick

ens and such.
Early birds all,
awakened by
the guffaws of

Wendell’s long
gone dad every
single time he’d
hear Gleason belt

out (in quite a
colorful black
and white), Pow,
right in the kisser!