High listeners, this is Jake Weber, and I have a story I want to tell you.

A story about a sickly neighbor and the secret sea bears.

So gather round and listen close.

Dear son, you cannot come. I know the last time we talked over the phone.

You discussed coming back to spend time with me before I went away, as you so awkwardly

placed it. You were right when you said that our relationship hasn't been the same since

your own boy was hatched into this world. You couldn't have realized it, but all I can see when

holding him is the face of butch powers, my childhood neighbor who infected our lives forever.

You cannot come when I know the only way is for you to understand just why that is.

So here it is. Oh, come. Here it is.

Butch powers was our neighbor in the year of 1968. Back in those days, the word neighbor applied

to the two houses you could make out on the horizon. If you stood on the front porch and squinted

your eyes just right, we lived in form country and capering all around us was the unwavering flicker

of wheat and corn. A single dirt track road stretched out east and west like the world's oldest

snake skin. During particularly hot days, dirt spewed up in heavy clouds and you could see the

arrival of a guest five minutes before they cuffed their engine onto your plot. Black diesel fuel

fumigating the air as they throttled down in the first gear. As a 16 year old boy,

I'd spent my summers and winters working under my father. We tended a plot of land that would

be laughed at in comparison to today's massive lands. But we managed what we could.

Often I took up odd jobs for other farmers helping pick rocks in the osolven fields or bailing hay

and Mr. Gilfrey's barns which were festered with wickety boards and damp smells.

The hay nettles scratched at your arms like poking fingers that left dark red rashes.

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