"How old a' you?'

"Twenty" 

"Twenny.  Twenny.  Twenny." 

Hoop repeated the word exchanging the second t for a bigger pause after each.   I waited for a fourth twenny but it never came.   Hoop had a knack for telling stories and repeating words, adding dramatic pauses then forgetting the topic, how he started or where in the hell he was standing.  He was drunk.

Hoop was always drunk.  He carried a flask in his boot like I'd read about in a gumshoe novel once only I never thought you could actually do it.  And Hoop carried one in each boot.  His worn, flat-toe boots -- the kind you'd see on a biker or cowboy or utility lineman -- were two sizes too large and would fall off if it weren't for the flasks.  That's how I could tell if he was really drunk or just buzzed:  all pickled he'd walk away from a boot with the flask in his hand, ready to find a shady spot away from everything, everyone.

We painted together for a year and then one day an hour after our boss dropped us off a county deputy showed up and Hoop put up his brush and work bucket and called the deputy by name.

"Gerald.  Gerald.  Gerald."   Only it came out Jurled.

Gerald and I both waited for the fourth but Hoop never came through. 

"'still carry Luckies?"  Hoop asked, pulling out both flasks at the same time, knocking one back then the other before Gerald could come up the porch stairs where we'd been priming wood columns stood up to hold the roof about a hundred years before Hoop or Gerald were born.

"You know I do."  Gerald smiled as if he was there for a visit, like they were gonna' catch up on who was caught with a flask at Sunday's Baptist BBQ.

"I got time for one and these?"  Hoop gestured with the flasks, both of them holding less than a respectable dribble.

"Don't see why not."  Gerald looked at his watch and pulled a crushed pack of Lucky Strikes from inside his open shirt, beneath a sweaty tee-shirt.

"I'm Gerald."  He handed me a cigarette and I smoked it, the second of my life.  "Hoop tell you he's got to go away?"

"Huh?"

"Hoop?"  Gerald lit one for Hoop and himself, handed it to Hoop and and gave a look that I'd seen my dad give me everytime he caught me in a lie.

"What is this, Jurled?  You keep count?  Is it on that writ your carryin'?"

Gerald reached in his back pocket and unfolded heavy legal documents.  I could see his lips move as he read to himself scanning with his cigarette butt. 

"Number ten, Hoop."  Gerald explained to me how Hoop picked up his tenth DUI over the weekend and how his first came up five years before the year I'd been born.

"When I's twenny,"  Hoop slurred.  "I 'scaped a chain gang in Greenville and lived with this ole gal who had six er seven children by me an' some other fella'."

Since we started working together he hadn't said this many words to me all at once, maybe all together.  I puffed on my cigarette, waiting, thinking he was about to share some secret, some magic nugget that would carry me all my days one or two steps ahead of the rest of the world.

"Hoop.  Hoop?"  Gerald had his hand extended and had pulled out a pair of shiny handcuffs.  "It's time."

"So, I'll tell you what I told her the last day I saw her an' them kids...."  Hoop closed his eyes as he stood to go.  "Do-dee-doh-doh.  Gotta' go."

Gerald took his hands behind Hoop's back and off they walked to the deputy's car.  Hoop never said anything else, never asked for the boots he'd just walked out of.