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Juice

What-are-ya-gunna-do?
    It is what it is.
    Time to quit. Really gunna hafta.
    Winners don’t quit but for this time.
    Days spent drinking juice instead.
Healthy juice, he guesses, because that’s what it says in a way. The label says defense. Defense against what? He asks himself like he has the answer, and he does, he knows what it means. It’s for the immune system.
    He thinks, typically, I am defensive.
    What about an offense? Is there offense juice? A juice that powers the offense in the body. On the attack, but in a good way? He remembers watching basketball highlights, as a kid, top 10 plays on cable before breakfast.

This morning, he pours some juice, walks to the table, sneezes, tries to stifle it and spills some juice. And again a sneeze starts coming on, tries to stifle it, spills, sneezes, tries to stifle it, spills. Now the cup’s empty. Shit. Juice is kind of expensive.
    Still, pours another cup of juice. Hopefully it doesn’t all spill.
    Hopefully he doesn’t spill it all.
    It’s actually a mug of juice, a tall cup, half full might've been easier to manage than a short and shallow mug overfilled. The nice brown cup he had from the place he used to work 6 or 7 years ago instead of the little orange mug a friend gave him around the same time.

Last month he quit everything, he went to meetings last week. And earlier this week there was a small fire.
    He pauses.
    He should clean up the juice.
    He hates when everything’s sticky.
    Good thing he’s wearing his house shoes.
    Nothing worse than wet socks.

Working and Watching Woodpeckers Work

He thinks everyone knows that woodpeckers’ tongues internally wrap around their brains. It’s not cool to know this. It prevents brain damage.
    They always sound like blue jays mixed with seagulls to him, maybe that’s wrong.
    Seeing a woodpecker always makes him feel better. They make him feel lucky to see one.

At work he’s watching one.
    Guy he’s working with asks what he’s looking at.
    Tells the guy at work, look, a woodpecker. It’s either a downy woodpecker or a hairy woodpecker. I can’t tell. They almost look the same but one’s bigger — I forget which is which.
    The guy at work says, where?
    Right there.
    That’s a woodpecker? That’s not what I pictured, the guy at work says. I pictured Woody the Woodpecker.
    Yeah those ones, that kind lives around here too, they live around most of the country I think, he tells the guy at work. They’re called pileated woodpeckers. They get big, like a small hawk or something.

He likes this guy at work. This guy’s kind of down all the time, younger than him.
    One day he asked the guy, Do you want my old guitar? It’s missing a string, probably works fine otherwise.

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