Brooklyn enjoyed the peace before sunrise.  It was hunting season and he sat in his cold duck blind looking at his faithful companion. No, it wasn’t his wife. She was back home getting ready for the season as best she could, looking through catalogs.

Every year Brooklyn took to the lake in southwest Oklahoma and forced her to come to the lake house. Well, forced is a weak explanation. Sara spent most of her time smoking her Virginia Slims and waiting for Brooklyn to come home with the bounty. On the days that he was home early she could hear the laugh in his voice as his hunting friends came through the door with stories and the quick peck on the cheek as he laid the ducks one by one outside on the patio table. Once for pictures and once to start the destruction to dinner. He took such care in preparing his favorite duck egg rolls and fried rice and Sara knew to kept out of his way.

“Good morning honey,” she always say to him.

“What a day, you should have seen Lucky here. I shot one group bout 30 yards out and before they hit the ground he had claimed them and was bringing them back to me,” Brooklyn said as he put a piece of smokeless tobacco in his mouth. He petted his jet black lab and watched as Lucky started his pattern of patrolling the premises before he laid down on his cushion near the door. Brooklyn knew that with the workout that Lucky had this morning he would be passed out before long.

Sara got out Lucky’s favorite chew bone in the form of a duck and put it right next to him.  He didn’t move. She walked into the bedroom and Brooklyn started his work on the fowl.

“Now don’t be spoiling the beast babydoll, we limited today, but he’s got plenty of hunting left in him.”

“So I get to have you the rest of the day,” Sara said coming out of the bedroom with nothing but a camouflage hat , a pair of pink camouflage waders and a beer in her hand.

Brooklyn had his hands filled with feathers as he turned around nearly swallowing his chaw.

“Now why do you do that to me, just when I start cleaning the birds?”

“Because I know that if I give you incentives that we can do what we need to get done today,” Sara said as she put the bottle of beer to Brooklyn’s lips. He took a swig from the beer, kissed her and told her , “Rain check?”

“You better not be hoping for rain today Brooklyn, you still haven’t finished fixing the roof in the double wide from the last storm that came through here,” Sara said as she found her way back into the bedroom to change into something a little more appropriate for cooking breakfast.

“You know Sara, between the hailstones and the tornadoes, God must hate us in Oklahoma,” Brooklyn said as he finished step one of removing the first birds down.

“You can’t blame God Brooklyn, you knew that the storm was coming and you didn’t repair the roof the last time, so you can’t blame God for your procrastination.” She started to brew another pot of strong coffee and reached into the refrigerator for the eggs and bacon. “Boys coming over?”

“Yeah, as soon as Tiny can convince ‘The Queen’ that he is appropriately cleaned.”

Tiny was Brooklyn’s best friend. He was a modern day pig-pen. ‘The Queen was the latest in Tiny’s ongoing women, he had never married but in 45 years never was short for having a beautiful woman on his arm. Brooklyn didn’t know how he did it. He didn’t know if it was a matter of pecker size, sweet talking or just bullshit, but Tiny was never without a woman.  However ‘The Queen’ as everyone called Cynthia wasn’t a country folk, she was a city girl who liked to have her hair in pig-tails on the weekends smoking Swisher Sweets and drinking homemade shine on the porch while enjoying sushi and fine dining during the week. She was a banker and nobody in the entire country could ever put the two of them together.

But when Tiny got drunk, he would attempt to sing Karaoke with Brooklyn at one of the best, low down, country , in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma bars and that’s where he met Brooklyn and “The Queen” when she was drug down to the bar with one of her so called friends to see how the “lesser halves lived.”

Funny thing was “The Queen” felt more at home where she didn’t have to prove anything to anyone and she could just sit down at the bar, get felt up by the female bartender and enjoy free beers all night until Brooklyn would beg her to take Tiny home.

Even at 313 lbs, Tiny couldn’t handle his alcohol and Ann-Marie had already gone through two jukeboxes before she just gave up bringing them to the bar. Because after Tiny would lose the woman of the week, he would demand to hear some sad country song on the jukebox and would play it over and over and over again until the cd would start to skip. The last jukebox had his size 17 right shoe still in it when it was taken out of the bar.

But then that’s why Brooklyn was there. He would bring his Karaoke setup and it didn’t matter if you could sing or if you couldn’t everyone was a star with Brooklyn and Sara.  He had you singing, had you laughing and even would give you pointers for a free beer. He was the richest poor man in the world.

And thus that’s the reason why he had to go onto the roof that afternoon. He had to get the roof done before Karaoke started at 9. You see, the weather guys had said that it would be unreasonably warm for January and that it was going to rain. But Brooklyn didn’t want to spend his afternoon fixing the roof, he wanted to watch his Dallas Cowboys play in their first playoff game in years.

But that wasn’t going to happen if Sara had her way. Because if he didn’t fix the roof, and it DID rain, every drop that hit that trailer floor would be followed by a drop of his blood from her fist.

Now Sara wasn’t a big woman and Brooklyn out weighed her by nearly 150 lbs, but when a fist from a quick 114 lb of fury hits you, she will draw blood. It isn’t a matter of how, just when.

So Brooklyn sat on the roof, nailing roofing tiles, fixing that one hole that he knew would cause him trouble while Brad Sham told him of Tony Romo’s touchdowns and fumbles.

As the sky grew dark and the hail began to fall, Brooklyn cursed.

“So today it’s the hailstones, eh God?”