He saw a stranger, a young buck of a redneck in overalls with paint and grass stains covering the fabric. He wore no shirt, revealing a broad, ruddy and work-toned chest. He had on heavy work-boots stained with mud. His dirty blond hair was long and scraggly. Then he cleared his throat and spoke, in a deep, lowcountry South Carolina accent, but sounding like he was trying to speak as politely as he could.
He was a dirty-blond redneck with dirty skin, dirty clothes and a ripped, lanky body, his six-pack showing from underneath his torn t-shirt. Despite his look, he smelled like cologne because, he said, he had spilled most of a bottle on these pants a year ago and the smell still hadn’t worked its way out.
The hitchhiker’s ropy muscles dripped with sweat. He looked homeless, or rather, he looked like he had no stable address — he didn’t look quite dirty enough to be a hobo, but he looked like he drifted between halfway homes, homeless shelters and various girls’ houses, maybe interspersed with an occasional kindly priest’s couch. He kissed the St. Christopher medal dangling over his chest as he settled into the passenger seat. He didn’t put his seat belt on.
Tommy was a broad shouldered white man with skin tanned brown as a Mexican, or a Texan at least. He was dirty, like all the rest, with greasy hair and smudges of filth all over his skin. He wasn’t exactly skinny, but he was lean, ropy-muscled and long-limbed, with a square jaw and deep-set, dark green eyes. He spoke with the accent of his native South Carolina, with a Low Country drawl that Carlos found alluring.
From The Hobo
Tommy’s deep voice boomed. He was tall and big-bodied by nature, but with the lean, ropy build of a drifter. He was white but with very sun-tanned skin, burnt and reburnt by his days of shirtless work. He was missing several teeth. His accent was so thick it reminded Rob of the incomprehensible hillbilly, Boomhauer, from King of the Hill. He talked incessantly too, as though he was required to verbalize every thought he had.
From The Drifter
