Fiction by Michael Braswell

Michael Braswell is a retired professor from East Tennessee State
University and former prison psychologist. He has published books on social
justice issues as well as four short story collections. He has been
nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His most recent books include The Light
that Remains: Stories of War and Consequence and When Jesus Came to the
Cracker Barrel. Visit michaelcbraswell.com.

Winslow Perkins’s Last Words

Since his stroke three years ago, Winslow Perkins’s health had dropped off a cliff. He lived on the sharp edge of life. When he worked, he worked hard and when he didn’t, he drank hard. You never knew if Uncle Win was going to give you the shirt off his back or take yours. Sometimes when he got too deep in his whiskey, his open hand could become a closed fist. He always paid for the damages in bars and taverns, but not so much the damages that hid inside him and his kin.

Win’s time was as short as the rasp of his breathing. What was left of him lay on a cot in the shack he called home. His nephew, Tully, the only one that would still have anything to do with him, sat in a broke down rocking chair next to where he lay. 

After the stroke, Win’s eyes had turned a bright, crystalline blue. His body was a wisp of what it had been, the wiry strength of his youth replaced by a frail contraption of arms and legs and a face full of white whiskers.

Reaching out, Win Perkins squeezed Tully’s knee. Holding up three fingers one at a time, he repeated what he always said when he saw his nephew, “Win, lose or draw.”

Tully smiled as he reached for his uncle’s hand.

“Thanks for seeing me out,” Win rasped.

Tully nodded in soft silence.

Win turned to look at the open door as if expecting a visitor.

“I could have done better.”

Closing his eyes, he squeezed his nephew’s hand and whispered, “No doubt about it, I could have done better…but I did do less damage than I was inclined to.”