Redneck

If redneck were in the dictionary, it would be saddled between "red meat" and "redo".
My mom married a redneck. He is a true, raccoon shooting, camouflage wearing, Busch beer drinking, Skoal chewing redneck. I was in shock. I was traveling when I received her letter with a photograph. There stood the redneck, in his stiffly ironed Wranglers, thin polyester plaid shirt with fake pearl snap buttons and his rat tail ponytail showing over his shoulder. He had his arm around my mom. Behind them, my brother and his wife stood somberly as witness to the day.
Beyond the shock of what I considered to be a poorly constructed choice on her behalf, I quickly realized that if I wanted my mom in my life - he was now a part of it. Slowly I began to swallow the impact of the newness of hunting wildlife - what it felt like to have a skinned, but otherwise in tact, deer hanging in the carport. And how you can spit on someone when they make you mad. And you don't have to take off your muddy boots when you come in the house. I felt as if he were the un-training of all the values my mom had taught us - her children.
Dirt and oil replaced the scents of a simple single-woman. In-bred dogs mingled among our surviving childhood cats. A spittoon sat on the kitchen cabinet among wild mushrooms, cigarette packs and tattered work gloves. I once counted all the curse words he muttered in the span of an hour. On a secret piece of cardboard, as his conversation carried on, I made little tick marks next to the letters "sob", "b", "ah, "s", "mf", gd", "f" and "h".
In time I have learned to adapt to his rough cluelessness. I have turned his actions into art and his reasoning into science.
If redneck were in the dictionary, the definition would begin "goddamn son of a bitch".