My motto is excellence and at first I excelled at the man internship because Rudy excelled at letting me do whatever I wanted as long as he could talk a lot and drink from his cans. His truck was even louder than the school bus which I didn’t have to get on that special day when my teacher heard Rudy’s truck coming and said, Jesus, just get a friggin muffler. Rudy didn’t get out just honked his horn and said, Hop in, twerp.

Bexley said, I thought you didn’t have a dad, and I said, He’s not my dad, he’s my friend. He has oh about ten chain saws, how many does your dad have? I didn’t let him answer I just got into the truck, real cool like a dog with a bandanna.

About that, Rudy said on the way home. Do you ever wish you had a dad?

I wish I had a chain saw, I said. I wish I had a wizard chiseled from the very stone. But do you wish you had a dad? asked Rudy. My dad was a turkey baster, I said. Oh hell, said Rudy. Don’t make me puke. I wish I could fight really bad, I said. I could teach you to do that, said Rudy. Like ninjutsu, I said, or like elfin fighting skills from the back of a wolf. Rudy said, Something like that.

We went up the pipeline past the fruit tree buckets way up into the woods at the top of the ridge, and Rudy sat with his back against a tree and he drank from his can and he made me practice my moves. Then he licked the droplets out of his beard and said, This sissy stuff where you lie down and get up really quick and do push-ups, that’s not going to get you anywhere. So he taught me the uppercut the sucker punch the right jab left jab the duck and protect your balls. It’s an ancient martial art, he said. Trust me, it’ll come in useful. Just don’t pull hair or slap like some kind of pussy queer sorry but you know what I mean. He opened another can.