Weekly Student Writing Sample

Please enjoy this week's writing sample from Carly C. A CCSWP East Hartford graduate.

He leans his body into a squiggled column and reclines, yawning and itching at nothing. I’ve had charge of Daddy since birth. I know what it is to pull up a weed.

“I’m getting your pills,” I say, walking too quickly to allow an objection from those pocked chops. Some funny murmur skims my ears, and I laugh considering what Daddy might’ve said. He’s always got loads to say.

Our kitchen’s got this cold about it, all cabinets and drawers empty but for the pills. It’s a tiny pharmacy I run, open to any and all who’d like a bite. But mostly only if I trust. And mostly only if you pay. Where’s the harm, so long as I make the bills.

I’ve been a man too long to indulge in the kid business, so once that Sophomore clock struck twelve, I’d abandoned that scene eternally. Daddy understood. He was iron back then. He held molten metal in his fists and laughed at the burn. He built cities, goddammit. He taught the glory of it.

As we cut through the heart of the state, he’d gesture out the windows of our rust-bucket Chevy and say, “Lookit that, boy. Daddy made that.”

More than once, more than a thousand times, he peered toward his creation and let it be known:

“Hartford looks the way it looks because an Egger made his move.”

Egger men make their moves. Like a giant’s stride, we leave nothing unchanged.

Popping the lid from the ginger tube, I finger an Oxy or two into the dead of my palm. Daddy’s been taking them dry since ’96 so I don’t bother with a drink.