I rolled into my driveway yesterday just as Meat was coming out his front door. He was pushing a brand new bicycle.
"The last time I saw you pushing a bike was the time you tried to steal mine to catch a bus to Texas."
Tater was exiting the house as those words left my lips. She jerked her attention toward me. "Was this the time Obama was going to declare martial law in Texas?"
I stopped and smiled at her. "Bullseye."
Meat remained quiet. He dropped the kickstand and let the bike lean while he stepped back into the house.
"Sometimes I long for those simpler times of crazy. Don't you?" Tater motioned a beverage in my direction as she plopped into a porch chair.
Meat came back onto the porch with a bicycle pump. He unscrewed the cap on the rear tire and attached the hose, then pumped the tire full of air with the pump trapped between his size thirteens.
"Who'd have thought Meat would see the light but a million others would be blinded by it." I took her offer and settled in next to her.
"That's because none of those million others found a Tater," Meat declared as he repeated the pumping ritual on the front tire.
Tater looked pleased for a second with a quick glance at Meat. Then she turned back to me.
"He's laying it on because I bought him a bike to ride to the beer store. I had to put him on alert. The price of gas is too high to be wasting it driving around Elkhorn."
I winced. "I'm glad my car gets 30 miles a gallon, I'll tell you. Gas companies have got us over a barrel."
Tater's eyes flashed. "Yeah, the knothead on the corner tried to tell me we wouldn't have this problem if Biden didn't stop the pipeline. That pipeline wouldn't even be online, it'd have another year of building left."
"People are going to blame Biden no matter what's the truth. Gas companies have approved drilling permits they're sitting on. And they can't find enough people to do the work even if they wanted to drill."
Meat leaned his pump against the house. He pushed up the kickstand and walked the bike down off the porch. He turned and looked at us sitting on the porch.
"Y'all are way off base here. Everybody knows this is Biden's plan to make us all buy electric cars because Hunter Biden has a secret deal with the Ukrainians. Putin is the only man in office with enough vision and power to stop it."
Tater and I stared wide eyed at Meat, then at each other. His sincerity barely wavered until he grinned at us. We both broke into a laughing fit as he pushed off on the bike, jumped on and started slowly pedaling down the street.
Tater called after him, "Good one honey, that was pretty believable."
Meat looked over his shoulder, "I believe. You believe. We all be leaving."
Neither of us have any idea what that means.