My father peed like a horse.
“My father peed like a horse. His urine lowed in one great
sweeping dream that started suddenly and stopped just as suddenly, a
single, winking arc of shimmering clarity that endured for a prodigious
interval and then disappeared in an instant, as though the outflow were a
solid object—and arch of glittering ice or a thick band of silver—and
not (as it actually approximated) a parabolic, dynamically averaged
graph of the interesting functions of gravity, air resistance, and
initial velocity on a non-viscous fluid, produced and exhibited by a man
who’d just consumed more than a gallon of midwestern beer. The flow was
as clear as water. When it struck the edge of the gravel shoulder, the
sound was like a bed-sheet being ripped. Beneath this high
reverberation, he let out a protracted appreciative whistle that
culminated in a tunneled gasp, his lips flapping at the close like a
trumpeters. In the tiny topsoil, a gap appeared, a wisp entirely
unashamed. Bernie bumped about in the cargo bay. My father moved up
close to peer through the windshield, zipping his trousers and smiling
through the glass at my mother. I realized that the yellow that should
have been in his urine was unmistakable now in his eyes.
“Thank goodness,’’ my mother said when the car door closed again.
“I was getting a little bored in here.”
―
Ethan Canin,
A Doubter's Almanac
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