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    Self-Conflicted
    Self-Conflicted
    Self-Conflicted
    Ebook55 pages39 minutes

    Self-Conflicted

    By Dick Hoffman

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    About this ebook

    Stories about inlaws & outlaws, playing the lottery, learning about race, and discovering who you're married to. Plus poems on related topics.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTrueHoff Books
    Release dateJun 1, 2018
    ISBN9781386814320
    Self-Conflicted
    Author

    Dick Hoffman

    George Richard (Dick) Hoffman was born in Oklahoma and grew up (or at least older) in Texas except for a couple of years in California, which hardly slowed him down at all. He attended Texas A&M before it became a university. Before it had a creative writing program. Before it discovered women. After A&M, the Army sent him to fight the Battle of New Jersey. When he won that, they sent him to West Germany. Some say that's the main reason the Russians stayed on their side of the Iron Curtain. Others say that's BS. In any case, after he returned to the Dallas area he fought with one hand in the Real Estate Appraisal Wars for 39 years and 10 months, not that he was counting. With the other hand, he wrote poems, stage plays, screenplays, short stories and novels. He’s now writing with both hands. That is, between honey-do's and walking the two mutts, who must remain nameless because they're in the Witness Protection Program.  

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      Book preview

      Self-Conflicted - Dick Hoffman

      DADDY’S PEOPLE

      AS SOON as I turn off the freeway, it starts, deep in my gut. Not a pain, more like something pulling at me, at my insides. Toward what? Away from what?

      This is Ardmore, the town where I was born, where Daddy’s people come from. After we moved down to Dallas, he and Mama used to bring us up to visit when we were kids, Nancy and I. We loved to run and play with our cousins, but never learned to appreciate the fragrance of snuff that seemed to permeate our grandparents’ lives.

      Once, chasing each other through their house, we kicked over a spittoon and watched a dark, smelly, lumpy liquid spread across the linoleum floor, quickly followed by the contents of our digestive systems. Somehow, we never felt as carefree in that house from then on.

      So as we grew up we visited less and less. Eventually only for weddings and funerals, then just funerals, and lately selected funerals. After moving all over the country, and to Europe and back, I haven’t been up here in twenty-five years. Jetta, of course, kept in touch, because that’s what Jetta does. Lucky for her, she’s only a Hoffman by marriage.

      The funeral was three days ago, but Jetta was in Albuquerque when they called her and by the time she checked her messages and reached us, all we could do was send flowers. Well, I could have come by myself, but I didn’t. Now, behind the wheel of her big Lincoln Town Car, I look warily at the shops and houses along the streets. Everything looks pretty normal, though I feel I am somehow driving into the past.

      Isn’t that the motel Bill Byrd used to run?

      I think this is the corner where Daddy had his grocery store.

      No, that’s somebody’s garage.

      The house on Drew Street has two driveways, one on each side of the lot. It’s one-story, with a covered porch all across the front. The dead woman was Allie Mae Cox, eighty years old, the prettiest and sweetest of Daddy’s seven sisters. Jimmy Dale, her son, waits for us on the porch.

      We shake hands. Looks like we’ve grown up, he says, smiling.

      Seeing that his hair is as gray as mine, I say, I guess so.

      Uncle Perry, the new widower, holds the screen door open, smiling. He is thin-haired and thin-bodied at eighty-three, and I can’t help ignoring his outstretched hand and giving him a hug instead. Realizing I’d never done that before, I feel like an imposter. He seems surprised, but quickly resumes his usual teasing manner. Dickie, he says, I’m so glad to see you turned out to be a decent-looking man. I was worried about you.

      Jo Ann, or Jody, the youngest of the seven, is still baby-faced but now as wide as she is tall. Perry calls her Tiny. Bent forward from where her waist used to be, she stands long enough to give us a hug, then sinks back in an easy chair for the duration of the visit. A couple of missing teeth don’t diminish her constant smile. Her husband Charles shakes hands, then speaks only when spoken to. He reminds me of myself, in that way.

      Jimmy Dale had ordered pizza, so he and Charles leave to pick

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