Last Call (6 page)

just drive the hell on, paisano, see

if you can find us a back road

where we can stop to bleed our lizards

and then carry on toward the coming of the night

You won't sell it to me

can I come look at it?

Anytime

Any?

Yep

All right then

Billy on a loquacious backroad beatup Dodge pickup day proclaimed:

the current mode of intellectual meandering

evidently modeled upon the trilogy or triptych

that being the full much ado length and breadth

of the average politician's remembrance

or number of words he can clearly inscribe

upon the indigent palm of his left hand

or write on a note card with crayon

therefore I shall appropriate the format of favor

in order to introduce my current universe trembling

trinity of fears and speculations without development

or undue and unnecessary political commentary

followed by the day's overwhelming question

hence I shall proceed with a postulation:

behold my nominations for the two greatest

potential evils our society faces today

those being the threats of anorexia and

exercise addiction against which I daily strive

to arm myself and fight the good fight

a battle in which I am proud to claim temporary victory

followed by my greatest personal psychological fear

namely acrophobia, an advanced paranoia

that preoccupies me daily as I watch

Willy John climb his sculpture like a fucking

derrick monkey and no matter how I turn

he seems a half slip from plunging oblivion

to the point that my terror has become my nemesis

having chosen my dreams in which to live

and lastly, as I have neither faith, use for, nor belief

in theological anthropomorphism, I have taken exactly that

as a topic for intensive thought, study, and speculation

since my recent visit to Big Bend Park

produced one predominating conundrum, namely

how many thrones do these desert gods need?

That's it? said Clovis

The magic number being accomplished, can there be more?

That is the overwhelming question?

Most certainly not, paisano

What must it be then, Mr. Eliot, I presume?

The overwhelming question of the day

which in this instance you must answer is

where do you propose to drive this goddam truck

to a full stop so we can step out

and consume us some lunch?

Can you handle that magnificent interrogative, sirrah?

I shall put mind, body, and perhaps non-existent soul to the task

and I scuttle to do so

meanwhile pondering the depth of your proclivity

Hear hear, well assessed my Yorick

let us make haste to the appointed hour

Hark, my genius of the armadillos

before us I see Miss Lela's Dew Drop Inn

the winged chariot draws near

From the lunch counter at the Dew Drop Inn while one customer visited the lavatory

Yeah, Clovis had this dog

that had the habit of running off

and then getting lost

so many times

his wife changed its name

from Ivan Doig

to Ubi Sunt

so he'd quit asking

every other day

where'd that sonofabitch go

this time?

he can explain in a minute

the why and wherefore

if you ask, yeah

Now how'd you do that? said John

and Clovis told him

about the pickup being stuck

wouldn't start

how he got mad and put his back

against the front and started it rocking

then gave all he had

heard the discs rupture

even before the blue pain

picked him up and threw him

on the ground

eyeball to antenna with a red ant

that crawled up his nose

and he didn't care

I've never hurt that way Clovis said

it was the worst pain a man could feel

Oh shit said John it is not

is it Billy?

you lain back down right now

how'd you like it if I taken

and pult on these tractor ropes

they got you hooked up to

wouldn't that hurt just as bad

or worst?

and what if that one fat nurse

name Martha Rae come in

pull down your covers

with her crapper pan again

says Lift up you gotta try some more

staring at you and you aint got

no underwears on?

you gone tell me that don't hurt some?

and everbody come in

says Well that aint so bad

mine was worst

or My brother he torn his back up

like yours and he still caint walk

or His pecker still don't have no feeling

in it and that was twenty years ago

or the doctor come in

says We gone have to operate on you

and everybody you known

says Don't let him cut you

you'll be cripple for life

their uncle he's in a wheelchair

ever since caint do nothing

slobbers down the front of his shirt

nothing below his neck works

all the doctor's fault

you won't never be the same no more

you gone tell me that aint the worst

to hear truestories like that

and you just laying on your butt

in the bed taking up space

from people that's really sick

no that aint the worse

it aint even the worse I heard of

I'll tell you about some pain

everybody knows about that feller

set down on a crapper

at Possum Kingdom Lake

got blackwidow spider bit

on his privates and the whole end of it

come off with the poison

but I known a man

had cancer in the mouth

hurt so bad he chewed

half his tongue off before he died

got blood poison and gangrene

anothern had to chop his leg off

with a hatchet to get out

of a beartrap or he'd froze to death

died anyway in a car wreck

going to his mother's funeral

a year later so it wasn't worth it

and old Dan Walker

when his tractor wouldn't start

hit it with a sledgehammer

missed and broke his shinbone

crawled a mile to his house

and they'd unhooked his phone

because he's behind on the bill

that's pain

but they's some

kindly hurts a different way

sometimes even worse

it was this boy in the fifth grade

who was being called Johnny Mendietta back then

he would of stoled his daddy's pickup

given it to you

for this one little girl name Danella Hagins

to say hello to him

but he's a Mexican and that's too bad

for him back then

so he helt it in all year

here comes Valentine Day

what'd he do? goes down

to Bob Collier drugstore

taken and bought her a box

of red Valentine candy and a card

given it to her at the class party

we all remembered

because she cried and had to go

to the nurse's office

she's so embarrassed to have a Mexican

do such a thing to her

he never come back to school

the rest of the year

I think that hurt pretty good

that aint the worse

I known of

I hurt just as bad

over Thelma Lou Shackleford

when I's seventeen

we all went out to eat fish

we'd been messing around all day

it was that night I known

I loved that girl more'n life

we all order oysters and horse relish

except Thelma Lou

she orders catfish and the man

says You want that broil or fried ma'am?

she said Fried

I can still hear the way that sound

slid off the front of her tongue

I's so ashamed eating raw oysters

I couldn't hardly hold one

in my mouth and Tommy Wayne Clayborn

ate his and half of mine

slopped saurcet all over the table

like a hog licking his fingers

I watched her eat every bite

of her fish begging myself John

ask her to go for a ride

but I's too ascaired

afraid she might say no or laugh

when she's through

Tommy Wayne says Come on Thelma Lou

let's go up Sawmill Road

she never said a word

got up and walked off with him

it wasn't nothing I could do

but watch her go

and that's not the worse

Thelma Lou was my sister's bestfriend

I known for a fact

because Thelma Lou told her

and sworn her to a life secret

so she told me

how when she's twelve and come in

first time how she never known

what it was

nobody done told her

she thought she's busted something

bleeding to death

she went in the kitchen

told her mother

her mother never turnt around

said You get out of this room

you shut the door behind you

caint you see I'm cooking supper?

I think that's worse

but even worst than that

was Tommy Wayne Clayborn

knocked her up and I think he done it

that night I couldn't say nothing

on the Sawmill Road

they didn't know what to do

everybody in town known about it

before they got around to telling their folks

finally Tommy Wayne told

his daddy name Shirley Clayborn

he's the sheriff back then and a good one

about the toughest man in town

partly because of his name

you'd say Morning Shirley

he'd look right in your eye

if it was sparkling any

it wouldn't be purdy quick

so Tommy Wayne told him

he said What you gone do, boy?

Tommy Wayne said Gone marry her, Daddy

Shirley said Is that what you want?

Tommy Wayne said Yas she's a hell of a girl

and she was goddammit

Shirley Clayborn called her family over

they all talked it out and said okay

if that's how it is

and nobody got his ast kicked

like he should of

when they left Tommy Wayne

was just standing there in the room

with his daddy

Shirley went over and poured

two glasses of bootleg whiskey

he'd confisgated out said You want a drank?

Tommy Wayne said Yas I do, I think

and they did

then Shirley Clayborn said

Boy, do you know what's worst

than doing what you did to that girl

in the backseat of my Chevrolet car?

and he said No Daddy, what?

Shirley Clayborn said

Not doing that to that girl

in the backseat of my Chevrolet car

and that's pain.

All my life I've had to known

I never had a daddy like that

and it aint no way I know how

to be one either

and you caint tell me you hurt worst

than I do about that

and besides

I busted my back up

like yours

and I think mine's worst

when I got home

I couldn't set up in bed by myself

so LaVerne she put a screw in the ceiling

we hooked up a comealong

to help me get up and a belt around my chest

so I needed to pee and I hit that ratchet

belt slipped down around my belly

I done comealong my back up off the bed

I holler and here comes LaVerne

she don't know how to undo

that ratchet and let me down

she hits it three licks there I am

my head and feet touching the bed

and the rest of me

pretending to be a rainbow with slipped discs

me needing to pee

the only way she could think of

to get me down so I'd quit hollering

was with a hacksaw

neighbors a mile off heard me and come down

fore she got me cut aloost

seen where I couldn't help it

peed all over my bed

I couldn't do nothing but lay in it

so don't tell me or Billy about no worst pain

because it aint never the worse

it's always something better'n that

you can bet on it anyday

besides, here come the fatnurse

so you better be getting ready, now.

Once in his mind

an open window

moonflooded

upon a sweat and sex stained

flat twin bed

sheet curtain

made at Postex Cotton Mill, Texas

and shipped to J. C. Penney

in San Antonio

paflumped its belly

against blacksnake wind

crawling forty years backward

into the tornado crazed

Algerita Hotel bedroom

of his darkest memory

you just bed not go back in that place again

she might be Eve in the garden

or that Lilith or mebbe the bruja they say

even though he knew

he would find his way

through the nightmare maze

many times

to learn if the story's end

might change

she beside him

lying upon a moon shard

in the Duffy Hotel in Bandera

instead of locking him outside

her mind's door

where he stands, still