Looking back, I guess it's pretty easy to see that it was only because we wanted that happy ending that there was any beginning at all. I was nineteen, dumb as fuck kid when I met Marie. She was seventeen and we were both scared shitless of drowning in a world that was sink or swim. It was the sixties you know, and times were different. Kids weren't coddled the way they are today, encouraged, given hand-ups and handouts. We got our asses thrown out into the cold sometimes before we'd even finished our schooling, and that's just how it was. No one was going to take care of you. You had to take care of yourself.

Marie and I were cut out of the same piece of fabric. She was a waitress at a truck stop diner which was one of the only jobs a girl could have back then and live in peace. You pretty much had to be a teacher, a nurse, a secretary or some other kind of service employee... like working at a laundry service or a cafe. The workforce was still pretty much looking at women like hostile invaders; foreign, emotional creatures that made a mess of it all. The sexual revolution still seemed like a passing fad, and even though it won't make me popular to say it now, in some ways, I think it was better like that. When women accepted the roles they were born to fill... wife, mother, nurturer, rather than paying someone else to do it for them. What I want to know is when did those become bad things? Way I see it, women had one of the most important jobs in the world, but for some reason it wasn't enough. Don't make any damn sense to me really. But I guess that's why I'm not in charge of anything, I'm just old Gunner.

So like I was saying, Marie and I were pretty much the gender reversed carbon copies of each other. Grew up poor in broken homes in a time when something like that was still a shameful thing, the oldest of a mess of siblings and with too many expectations on our shoulders. She was small and pale and blonde, kind of washed out and tired looking, even at seventeen, but pretty... in a faded way. Like vintage wallpaper.

We got married in 1968 when she was eighteen and I was twenty and eleven months later we done had us our first baby, a boy we named Joe. Couldn't have been but three months after he was born, a little stranger to me, pink bundle of LOUD and SMELLY too delicate for a hoss like me to bother with. I was out in the back talking to the neighbor when I heard Marie screaming. I can't tell you how quick I was up those stairs, busting in the door of our place (we rented the top half of a two-story house) and I saw her there on the rug holding Joe in her arms but he wasn't pink anymore, he was this awful color. Kind of blue or gray. I knew right off that he wasn't alive anymore, but Marie maybe couldn't believe that, at least not without knowing we had tried so I picked him up and ran him down to the car and we drove eleven miles out to the hospital where they told us what I already knew.

They called it crib death, acted like it was no big thing. I had so many feelings about it, more feelings than I had ever had about a thing before... that I didn't really know what to do with them so I just shut them up and away and let Marie have all those feelings for us both. I'm not sure how long she cried over Joe, seems now it was a long time. I know it was two years before we had us another baby, a little girl we named Brenda; and Marie sat by her bed pretty much round the clock to make sure she was breathing.

Brenda was three when we had us another daughter, Cynthia and then seven when we had our boy, Paul. I never paid a lot of mind to the kids, I was working seventy or eighty hours a week as a machinist and to me they were just more mouths to feed. Marie stayed home with them but she ran billing services for a doctor nearby when our kids were young until he transferred his business to a firm who did that kind of thing.

Even with Marie helping out, which was pretty rare back then, we didn't really make enough to get by and it was always a struggle to keep on top of all the bills. Marie started telling me I wasn't much of a provider and she got bitter and angry so I got bitter and angry too because I was doing the best I could by them, but it wasn't enough. I'm not sure of the exact year anymore but I guess Brenda was ten or eleven when Marie and I got into our last fight and she told me to get on out and not come back.

By then you know, the kids was old enough that I found them kind of interesting. Brenda, she used to climb up onto my lap most nights even when I got home late and jabber on about her school. Cynthia always wanted me to read her something or the other and little Paul, well he was getting to that age where I might have been able to teach him things, how to throw a ball or thread a worm on a hook but like I said, things was different then and after Marie asked me to go, I never saw those kids again.

I rattled around the south for a couple of years thinking I had it pretty good, no family to take care of or wife to answer to. I worked much as I wanted and got to drinking too much, gambling and enjoying the company of a few lady friends who came and went. Guess it must have been the early eighties when I met Judy. She was fifteen years younger than me, what you would call a good times girl, a waitress (and sometimes a little friendly company) at a quiet bar I liked to go to. It started off nice and easy until she got herself pregnant and because that's still pretty much how things were done, we went ahead and got married.

We hadn't been married but three weeks when Judy lost the baby, just nature taking its course. She was pretty broken up about it, but truth be told I was kind of relieved. I thought we might just go on and part ways, same as we had joined up we could walk away but I thought I might just bide my time a while until she realized it too. Problem was, I couldn't keep it in my pants and soon enough she got pregnant again and we had us a daughter, guess that was 85 or 86 when Jenny was born and so I got myself regular work and set us up in a house.

Now I haven't really touched any on my life before Marie, before 1967 but that's because there isn't a whole lot to tell. Thing is, I joined the navy when I was eighteen because that's what you did and I worked as a gunner on one of the big ships which is how I got me my name. My time was up in two years which is when I married Marie. I tell you that now, because you have to know that to understand what happened next.

I suppose it was the late eighties, 88 or 89 when Judy got pregnant again and I was pretty much running out of steam trying to keep a life for us. Then one day, out of the clear blue sky, I got a phone call and who should it be but Brenda, all grown up and in trouble. She was dating this asshole who couldn't keep his fists to himself and Brenda was afraid he was going to kill her. Well I remembered how it was when she was just a little girl so I drove myself back to Alabama thinking to set things straight and scare the pants off the boy. I didn't plan on hurting him too bad, but when a man's got enough wild turkey in him, it's hard to say just exactly what's going to happen and sometimes a man's fists aren't really his you know, they got a will of their own... and I didn't mean to but that didn't matter much by the law and so when I killed that boy they sent me on to prison and because I was an ex-seaman, they said I ought have known better and gave me 20 years... and I never saw Judy again. Don't even know if the baby was a boy or a girl or if she had it or not.

I spent sixteen years in prison for murder, got out in 2005 on parole and headed back to Louisiana. Didn't really have no place else to go, so why not?

Well after Marie and Judy and five kids I don't know nothing about I pretty much considered myself done for any kind of family life so I stuck to myself for a time but a man gets lonely you know so I started to look after strippers and whores, easy girls who didn't mind keeping an old man company for the price of a few hours work wherever I could find it.

Easily enough I wound up in trouble again, this time going in all the time on soliciting a prostitute and it was violation of parole so I had to serve out my last four years. Got out in 2010 and I rambled on back to life as usual but that old thirst is still there. A woman is like a drug, once you've had one it's damn hard to live without, no matter how much it keeps fucking up your life.

I was pretty much bound and determined this time I wasn't going to wind up down the same path so I headed on out to a place where I heard there weren't no heavy penalties for being a man like I am. A man whittling away at the end of his life with whatever amusements he can find. I've never been a real big or strong man but you don't have to be with most women. They spent all these years trying to be everything a man is, just as successful and well paid... but they can't really ever be as big or strong or as devastating with a single blow. That's just how things is.

My first day in Hathian I got me a job at the local auto shop, pretty easy work and not a lot f money but it's something to keep a few bills in my pocket. Haven't bothered really talking to anyone yet, I'm just biding my time looking around to see what I see.

I figure I'll take what I want now, from those who'll give it, and sometimes from those who won't. Just running out the last few years I got left... and seeing what happens. I guess I'm writing out this confession so after I'm gone and someone troubles themselves enough to look maybe someone will understand why I gone out the way I did. In that way I'm pretty much like everyone else I reckon. I just want to be remembered.