Page 24 of Down and Dirty

Pizza… my favorite! He’s gonna eat my favorite food while I’m sleeping. What a pig!

Samir cracked open one eyelid. His father was already headed toward the door.

“Okay,” he said, sitting up.

He expected his father to smirk when he turned around or say something nasty, but all he said was “Okay what?”

“Okay, I’ll eat if I have to.”

“Have to?”

“I’m not playin’ that Dora the Explorer game, though, I’ll tell you that right now. What do you think I am? A baby? I wanna play Firing Range: Blood and Guts.”

His father laughed. “In your dreams, short stuff.”

Samir made a face, but he kinda liked it when his father called him “short stuff.” He said it in a way that Samir thought other fathers might talk to their sons. “How ’bout Ghosts and Ghoulies?”

“Give me a break.”

“I still hate you.”

“That’s just great.

Samir stood and adjusted his shorts.

“What’s wrong?”

He continued to pull at the waist and legs of his shorts. “Those stupid Superman underpants you bought me are stuck in my crack.”

“Way more intel than I need to know! What did you wear when you were in Afghanistan?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope. When you gotta piss in the middle of a firefight, you don’t wanna take the time to pull your underwear down.”

His father’s jaw dropped open.

“What do you do in the middle of a battle?”

“I wear underwear, and don’t you dare try going commando around here. You’ll give Madrene a heart attack, and the little girls in the neighborhood will be filing sexual harassment lawsuits.”

“That witch needs a heart attack. An’ all the little girls round here are nothin’ but whiny-ass split tails.” Anyhow, that’s what his uncles called most girls.

“That was not nice.”

He shrugged.

“Were you around actual fighting very much?”

“There was always bombs and guns goin’ off. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! Never knew when one would hit. A bomb hit our house one night. Ka-boom! Then we lived in a cave.”

His father stared at him as if he might be thinking about hugging him.

Samir ducked around him and started down the stairs.

“Kid, you’re gonna be the death of me yet.”