Flash fiction: "How We Are"

I don't know how it came up. Tequila? Whiskey? In our family it was always one or the other.

We were sitting on the patio. Late in the day, a hot wind kept whipping tiny dust devils in the dry corners of my aunt's back yard.

I mentioned her two unemployed sons--"the boys"--and asked how they were doing. We called them "the boys" from birth to middle age. Hefty, mean boys who smoked and stole ammo from my dad's gun cabinet.

I said: "Maybe you don’t remember it."

She pretended not to hear this and handed me another drink. Whiskey, or tequila.

Three drinks on, I recalled how "the boys" when they were teenagers used to drive their $400 truck around the neighborhood, grabbing stray and perambulating pets for Saturday morning target-practice in the desert.

I mentioned this, too. My aunt chuckled and walked away as if I'd told her a stupid variation on an old joke.

That's how we are. No hope for the loser who admits feelings for a dog. We would laugh such a soft-hearted bastard right down, and shoot the dog to prove we're not suckers.

That's how we are.