the fats

Lardy is in love for the first time and is busy in his bedroom writing poems about all the ways this makes him feel.

 

Happy Fat is scaling a fish. Lake trout, he thinks it is.

 

Baby Fat is starting forest fires with a magnifying glass and the sun. He's squatted over and his legs start to feel tingly and heavy, almost dead.

 

Two-by-Four is trying to square dance while perched high on a pair of rickety metal stilts. The one he loves will not do-se-do. Not with him anyway. She looks a vision as the sweat peels down her face, cutting through orangey-pink powder as it courses over her cheeks. Her arm is knotted in Al Stallioni's, who so awesomely balances brute force and grace that her choice can't be debated.

 

Sad Fat is playing a waltz on a second-hand tuba, two measures behind everyone else, in the echoic auditorium of an elementary school near downtown. Mom's at a meeting again and dad's at the tavern, but he looks up from the movement of his hands and imagines them there, high in the aluminum bleachers, beaming at him, cheering him on. They're holding hands or their arms are entwined or his palm cups her shoulder and hers his, and they look almost psychotically in love. Sad Fat is not embarrassed by any of it.

 

Back Fat is driving a convertible. What hair he has left stands straight up from his forehead, is if he's electric.