My Cardboard Balcony

Get Out Of Here, Kid by Belinda Roddie Skullman's out looking for you, boy. He's dressed in black and pissed as Hell. He's carrying two Colts as slick as your hips, and he's ready to stud your waistline with steel. You better think about rushing your ass down to the border, hide yourself in a bag of grain and get shipped to Mexico. You'll be fed like the cattle on a small, remote farm, and when you're old enough, you'll head back with your belt drooping and your eyes blazing under a cowboy hat, so you can jam a shotgun barrel up Skullman's bony nostril and fire three times in a row just to make sure he's dead.

Matthew kept a little buddha in his desk - a red, carved trinket he had bought at a stand in Thailand, and already collecting dust like it was accumulating a new robe. Matthew grew older and forgot about the figurine - that is, until he was pushing the old furniture to the garage when he heard a rattling in the top drawer. He curiously fished the buddha out of its hiding place and held it in his weathered hand, not noticing at first that his vision was beginning to blur.