Audiobooks by Steve Kube

A Cigar Box Full of Short Stories Audiobook

My mom said, 'Don't You Dare!' a lot to me when I was little, but there's this one time she said it that superimposes itself over all the other times... During one of those parts of mass that called for kneeling, I felt an inspiration well up inside of me. I whispered urgently, 'Kit, Kit, …' I nudged him with my elbow to clue him in that I was going to do something that shouldn't be missed, (As it turned out no one in the building missed it). The Fall Festival was hopping every afternoon and into the evening of those three days. Little kids chasing one another and squealing, and the big ones sneaking off to smoke or to make out with a girl and maybe cop a feel, and come back to talk about it. Back in those days, a pack of Harley's was kind of threatening. If a bunch of Harleys were parked outside a hamburger joint, most folks would just go on down the road to the next burger joint rather than risk confronting a bunch of bikers. He turned out to be a reporter from the city paper, wanted to take some pictures, do a little story on my treehouse. I thought for sure if it got in the papers, foremen, and contractors from miles around would recognize their building materials and show up with bills. The full charge of the powerful magneto shot a bolt of electricity through Paul's butt, shocking out of him an outrageous holler that brought peels of laughter from me. Paul didn't need any more prodding to get himself properly seated and he did so, only to have his now flapping shirt-tails get caught in the cooling fins of the flywheel. The engine ripped most of Paul's shirt off and proceeded to slap him with the rags from behind. Paul gave out another outrageous holler as he sped past me. Dad's belt stirred angry, self-righteous vengeance in the air in front of my eyes. As he drew himself up and turned to look down on me I saw that face I never understood as a kid. That sadistic grimace of some sort of evil power over another person. The fish, about twelve inches long, rose head first, gracefully and evenly the full length of Pat's body, knee to nose. At the apex of its short flight, the fish flipped over. Now head down it flapped its tail, slapping Pat once on each cheek, then plunged as gracefully back into the water. I love being a dad. I loved making pancakes for the kids Saturday morning after a spend-over and listening to them make plans for the day and I'm cast back thinking how happy it was and how sad it feels for it to be in the past and not right here anymore and... and I have to stop and be quiet a moment. I've sometimes convinced myself I was supposed to live on a civilized planet this time around, and I think I must have gotten confused on a between-lives mass transit system and popped out on the wrong planet. One night I went to bed wearing a pair of well-worn briefs and woke in the morning with an erection that poked right through the front of the comfortable undies with the loose elastic and I started to feel ashamed of my shabby skivvies, but when I realized I had poked through two layers of fabric on the front of my briefs I started my day with a sense of pride!

Steve Kube (Author), Steve Kube (Narrator)

Audiobook

United States Censuous Bureau: The Adventures of a 2020 Census Enumerator

The snippets below attest that every day was an adventure while doing census work in the wilds of the South during the most contentious political climate of our time. ...Not too many guns came out. I wasn't told to get the hell off my property but for once or twice... ...the driver suddenly wheeled her substantial upper torso around to face me and with all seriousness said 'I'd knock you over for that har.' The mountains are majestic, their colors an infinite blur of enchanting hues that changes as the earth rounds the sun and the sun crosses the sky. One lot had more decaying vehicles spread out higgledy-piggledy than I had time to count, and the space between the crapped-out conveyances was chockablock with other junk. If your smart speaker overhears you asking your dog if he went out and crapped like a boss will it go on your permanent record? ...The next day when the boys got together to smoke, the lizard came back for more. This time all they had to do was hold the cigarette where the lizard could get to it and it came and put its mouth on the butt of the cigarette to get a hit of nicotine. ...It was a small-caliber pistol, so if he was a lousy shot, or a very good one, and missed my vitals, he could have pumped more than a few slugs in me before I hit the ground. A cup of coffee suits me in the morning. Please don't bring me a latte, frappe, mocha-chino, double grande-cuppa-froo-froo, early in the morning. A glass of fresh brewed iced tea and a tomato sandwich, a beer and a burger; onion rings, and hush puppies done-just-right will do just fine, thank you much. And then I came to a freakin' fork in the road. A freakin' fork. No signs, just a fork. I still had no GPS signal, I was back in the old world now, left to my own devices. A lot of my time that day was spent around the Coosa, a lazy flowing river as inviting as any I'd ever seen. It was a good day. Everyone I met was a friend. It was enough to have one let go of the need to cleave to one or another belief about anything and to just let things be as they are. We settled down and went back to watching the night sky for shooting stars and speculating on UFOs, but by that time none of us was particularly interested in believing what the rest of us had to say about anything. We all know what it's like to be betrayed; To hell with that. Fool me once, fuck you. Alabama was somewhat like a seductive and partly dangerous woman who has her way with you because she can, and it's all your fault for showing up anyway. I'd go back to Alabama in a skinny minute.

Steve Kube (Author), Steve Kube (Narrator)

Audiobook