Other than large earlobes, the only thing the MacTaggarts passed down was the fishing dock their great great grandfather had built with logs from trees he felled himself.
There was a story about a pet raccoon from one of the trees, but Alicia was sure it was fabricated.
Her cousin Sylvia had gotten married on the dock, and the first penis Alicia saw was another cousin pissing off it later that night.
The dock creaked so much now that it had its own language.
Gramma Courtney, sashaying into dementia, claimed the dock could recognize who walked on it and called out a name he had made up for them.
Alicia wanted to restore the dock, but her uncles acted like she wanted to replace the figure on the crucifix that hung in the kitchen.
“Damn thing is gonna collapse one day,” Alicia said, “and take some kids with it.”
Her uncles dismissed that notion, though she noticed they didn’t tie their boats to it anymore, driving their own pilings slightly downstream.
Gramma Courtney started to believe the blood on the ceramic Jesus’s hands was real, and started to believe that the dock’s name was Harry Joe.
She wandered out to talk to Harry Joe, marveling that the best permanent she ever got was from the black girl they hired at Looking Up Salon, complaining that milk was too expensive and how she missed the cow they had when she was a little girl.
The current was fast that day, and the dock was creaking so much it sounded to Alicia like a choir of boys going through puberty singin’ Wings of a Dove.
Alicia took Gramma Courtney by the hand and led her off the dock.
“That old thing is gonna collapse, Gramma C.” She squeezed the old woman’s hand. “I’m sure of it.”
“Don’t say such a thing, Amanda,” Gramma Courtney scolded, legitimately annoyed. “Harry Joe loves this family.”
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