????? No one knows who I am as I walk these streets. I pass these people, and they don't even bother to stare me in the eyes. They don't even glance at me. Maybe it's because I'm wearing what everyone else is -- white v-cut shirt, dirty cowboy pants and the snakeskin boots my dad gave to me a couple of years ago.

????? It's been awhile since I've been in this part of the South. Hell, it's been a few years since I've even been *in* the South. I've stayed away from this place, running away from the memories and the ghosts and the shadows. But that old saying about how you can never run away from the past tends to come true when one least expects it.

????? Walking down these dusty, cracked sidewalks and observing all the mildew-stained stores, the chipped streetlights, and the solemn faces of the people I once knew... all of this brings me back. I sound older than what I am physically, but it's a trait I got from my dad. Like father, like son.

????? He's always been a wandering spirit, going from place to place, making money, soaking the rays of fame and gnawing away at Fortune's leg. He's always been that way, a guy who wanted to survive and didn't give a rat's ass what others thought. Mother said I was just like him, physically as well as emotionally.

????? I know the truth, though. I may appear to be like him, but we are not alike. I know it for a fact.

????? He's there in the distance, smoking a cigaretree or drinking alcohol-- something I really don't pay attention to. I notice his unshaven goatee and the long, oily locks of his dirty blonde hair. He melts into the wall, the scenery, the heat and the sun and the desert of the South. He's home, and he closes his eyes and smells the mixing scent of the country and the toxin. And I can tell with that look in his eyes that he's alive.

????? But that gleam hidden within tells me something else.

????? He sees me out of the corner of his vision, and he smiles, waving me over. We embraced, we kiss each other's faces, and we talk idly. We never talk about anything else. We never get to the bare facts, to the things I want to talk with him.

????? Why did you leave, dad? Why did you leave mom? Why did you leave me behind and never return? You left the company because you wanted to come back home with us. Instead, you turned the blind eye and left mother and I in the dust, the Southern dust that you love and embrace more than you did with us.

????? I don't really tell him that. I want to, and once in awhile, I imply it, slowly drifting the conversation towards that certain direction. He's like a snake, though, even in his old age. He knows exactly what I'm trying to do, and he stops it immediately with something so stupid I don't even remember what he does. But he does it, and I can never strike back at him. He just stops me and bites my head off before I can ask one simple question.

????? He says hello to me, but never calls me by my name. Thanks to him -- possibly good, rather than bad -- no one in the world knows my name, nor my mother's name. To them, I'm just his son. And honestly? Dad gave me a name. But sometimes I think he doesn't know it anymore.

????? We say our goodbyes. He goes off somewhere down the street, turns a corner, and I know he's going back to the liquor store around his house. I know I'm going to go back home where my wife and my newborn baby girl are waiting for me.

????? One of these days, I'm going to tell him the truth. I'll tell him, "Dad, you gave me a name, but that's all you gave me. Mom always told me that I'm you, but I'm not. You walked away, but I won't. I wasn't the same when you left us, and I don't think I'll ever get over it. You don't know what you've done to me, or mom, but that doesn't matter. I'm a grown man now, with a child of my own, and I swear I'll never make her go through the pain that I went through. Thanks, Dad. Thanks a lot."

????? But then again, I'm not my dad. He would say it, because he's my dad. He's Kid Kash. I'm not him, though. I'll never be him.

????? And you know what? I'm glad.


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