So I tell her that cussing ain’t a sin, it’s a dialect. Then she says if it is a dialect, it’s the devil’s dialect. I ask her where in that book does it say you can’t liven up a conversation with a little %#$@ manure. She turns pale, and rattles off two or three verses like a shot. I ask her if the book she been reading to me is a story book or a rule book. I remind her of all the times she tells me the one about the Ol’ Splintery Cross, an’ how she says the point was to set people loose of their #%@&*$ chains. “So what are you doin’ givin’ me rules for if the Ol’ Splintery Cross sets you so #*%@-$#@% free?” I asks her.
She’s quiet for a long time, then, real slow, she says it’s not a rule book, it’s a map, and it shows where danger is. An’ she says that cussin’ is marked with a skull and a big pile o’ bones. And I says, “Honey, that’s good for wagoneers who want to avoid bad country. But me? I’m a local! I growed up there!”
When I says that, she just starts laughing. She laughs and laughs for a long time. When she pulls her breath back in, we pray, and I talk to God same as I *%#@$-#$%@# talk to everybody. She starts laughing again, and says since I’m not puttin’ on a show for God, she guesses He’d rather I talk to Him with manure than not at all, and that was good I wasn’t no hypocrite. But, she asks, would I mind trying to talk plain and sweet, just for her sake? And I do try. She broke me of usin’ His name casual — she wouldn’t flinch there, and after a while I came to see her side on that one. But for the rest of it … well, I never was much for new languages. And a conversation without a little $#@&% color just seems so $#%*@# gutless.
(From Lordd’s Prairie.)
One response to “A Monologue”
Fantastic.