Last Call (10 page)

just oncet?

* * *

Yall hear about Melvin Ray Bird

falling and busting his ribs?

Yeah heard you found him first

what happened?

He was in his pickup all bent over

like he was ahorseback with kidney stones

I said Do you need help?

he said What does it look like to you?

* * *

They say now that Odus Millard's dying

he got religion and's making plans

about going to heaven

Being close to death don't mean

you know one goddam thing more

about heaven or hell

than a man who's been married

for fifty years knows about sex

he's trying to remember forward

that never does work worth a damn

* * *

Melvin Ray Bird's a tough one

Oh yeah he's tough

got two layers of hard bark on him

that's just the part on his hide

* * *

Was he hurt any?

If he wasn't it'll hold him over

till the good hurt comes around

* * *

I remember how Odus would set

on his porch furniture awaiting

for whatever might come next

dull as a sop

but alert as a shadebake dog underneath

waiting for any incentive to be abark

any notion come up he could use it as a excuse

for what rurnt his day

I guess I'll miss him anyway

* * *

What's a matter his leg?

Aint his laig it's his foot

What's a matter his foot then?

He runned over it widge a wagon

A wagon?

What I said

What'd he do that for?

It's a rolling backards he stuckt his foot out

to stop it and it mashed it

Mashed it widge a wagon

Hauling wood

Godamitey

Mash it flat as a duck

Widge a wagon

Full of forewood

Godamitey

Said it hurt all to hell and his daddy

he had to cut his shoe off his foot

Mashed foot

Widge a wagon

How old?

Bout s'em or nine mebbe back then

Godamitey

Why he limp so bad

I imagine

They lose any wood?

Not that I heard of

his daddy was particular but his mama was pissed off

that shoe'd belong to her brother and it was rurnt

I imagine

You'd be right doing that

* * *

Billy you sure been quiet tonight

I'm trying not to explain to myself

but just understand

how a life that long could have

almost no meaning

beyond the immediate fading of memory

even before absence

You're in it pretty deep I'm guessing

a fire burning in your head

Something like having

the beginning part of a definition

hung up in the cross tangled web of a waking dream

without even finding a word it belongs to

That's a little scary, is it?

then it says Here I am

there I was

and precisely what is it

you're planning to do about it?

That's good enough to be quiet about

I believe so

and I believe I won't be saying

There seemed no man

busier than he was

and yet he seemed busier

than he was

with any reference whatsoever to you

who have been wading with hip boots

tonight I believe

It's a little bit like something

one of us might have done

or thought about doing

just exactly over a dozen times at least

That one I agree with

* * *

You drunk enough to soliloquize?

I believe so

What's the topic?

Pick one

R. B. you'n Ollie come on over

Billy's feeling loquacious

maybe even Lucretian

or Menippean

What about?

I expect it will be either the Grand Inquisitor

or the lockbox of creation

or something similar pretentious as hell

it's his speech which he'll deliver unpremeditated

and dictated unimplored by his celestial patroness

whilst slumbering he'll decide

Will we be able to understand it?

Nope, not a word

We'll be right over then

I think I'm thinking about that sculpture Willy John made and how it's wrapped up in time and space. We had to have time and space so we could have a world and live in it. If we didn't have time everything would happen all at once and you'd be your own daddy and son with you smashed and squashed up in between, which, ironically and poignantly, is exactly the way I feel at this particular critical juncture of my near-to-end life, as I constantly feel the press of legacy at my back and my hopes for the future smashed into my face with the mandatory rejection of a considerable portion of my own earned and personal beliefs and ideology by my beloved progeny, all being necessary, intimidating, and, to a somewhat uncomfortable nature that I must come to embrace, repulsive in order to maintain a dynamic world and universe. And if we didn't have space everything would be a swallowing hole with the sun and the moon and every damn one of the stars coming right down on top of us, which, once again, I have come at this juncture to realize is exactly the way I find myself, trapped in a body that is shrinking, crushed, and rotting around me while, in spite of the steady accumulation of evidence to the contrary, I am doing everything possible to maintain a sense of personal strength and dignity whilst living within that confinement, continuing to wage war against the scientific facts of chronology and gravity, fighting the good fight against my persistent fears of exercise addiction and anorexia, yet realizing no longer year by year but week by week at an accelerating pace that ultimately and finally, there is no fucking way I'm even going to win a battle. That's why they are the most important. Without them we wouldn't have Newton's Third Law of Physical Motion. All other things came next, after that. They're all waiting to happen or they've already happened but neither one did until there was a when and a where so it could, and if there wasn't a that, everything immediately becomes a wasn't because there would be no documentation. Thus, it couldn't have been, at least in any objective sense. And that's how his sculpture works for me, with all his assemblage of the paraphernalia of the past thrust up into the ether in a manner worthy of mythological ponderance, what I think it was he was trying to say and how and why it is. So, gentlemen, there you go. All of which I've come to understand in the course of an evening which has perfectly convinced me that I cannot, should not, and will not ever deserve a claim on any part of that monument or its significance, which in like manner has brought me to the realization that for that very reason the one thing I will desire and lay claim to for the rest of my life is personal aesthetic and enduring mental ownership of that very object, and I've made up my mind that I don't have to think about that any more tonight.

What'd you think, Ollie?

I thought it was purdy good

whatall of it I understood

worth a beer I believe

what about you, Clovis?

It was almost a Stay,

thou art so fair moment

glad I asked for it

In the words of the prophet

I believe we heard

something almost being said

I'm drunk enough to almost shed a tear

over that one

Nope, tears are salty

you have high blood pressure and can't tolerate it

besides it's all gravel road

leading to mere oblivion

let's go home

I like it

sayeth all but Jacques

I'm about ready, Billy

let's call it a quit

and get it over with

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

—Dante Aligheri,
Inferno
, 111, 9

Don't yall leave yet, come over a minute

and pretend to act like you think

we might actually want you to stay

here, I caint get the top screwt off

this beer I got out of the cold box, Billy

can you or Clovis help?

that's the onliest thing I miss this finger for

I got cut off I just haven't got no grip

to twist off these beer lids

they put them on too tight for me now

they was this guy I heard about

who was a miner or trapper or something

anyways he lived alone up in the hills

I guess mebbe he's a trapper and got it

caught that happens now and then

so he just picked up his finger

stuck it in his pocket and went on home

when he got there he took out his needle and thread

he sewed that finger back on

his hand but it didn't work

two, three weeks later it all swolt up

green and the finger fell off

so's he built a fire in the stove

held the stump agin it

till he burnt all the green poison out

I think a feller'd have to be

pretty much of a man to do that

I knew this other guy loading up

a sow hog and she wouldn't go

he was trying to waller her into the truck

he grabs her by the tail

with one hand, the ear with the othern

she's screaming like hell the whole time

him getting pretty pissed off

he does this a time or two

then grabs her again but

gets the one hand in her mouth

he feels something pinch

pulls back his hand

his finger's gone that damn sow's

bit him off he looked all around

didn't find that finger nowhere

he guessed that sow swallered it

I don't much like to talk about how I lost mine

it still bothers me some

mebbe I'm just too drunk but I started

thinking about it

this all happened before

I went to work for the lectric company

I was younger and hired on for the oil

oh I made good money it wasn't bad work

I don't think I'd do it again

anyways we's up on the panhandle

had a rig drilling about eight miles outa town

we'd work thirty six on and twelve off

at least I would cause I could make so much

I'd run chain awhile and then crow-nest

never made no different

I was just after the paycheck on Fridays

I'd do about anything they wanted as long

as the money kept coming in and they

seemed to like that

anyways we was down over a mile

damn near seven fousand foot

we knew the oil was right there

we had to be coming through any time

you just get the feeling it's gonna blow

here comes the foman cause we sent for him

cause he has to sez when we can cap off

to get ready for the last push through

so we don't blow all to hell and mebbe catch fire

that foman he's so damn drunk

he caint tell dog puke from crap

starts raising all kind of hell saying

You get this goddam rig running right NOW

we won't hit no sonofabitching oil

for two weeks nobody paid you to think

that's what I'm by god paid for

you just drill till I say stop and then

you just ast how long that's all

now get back to goddam work and stop

trying to set round fucking off

he left and we's so mad we couldn't see straight

for a man to talk to us that way

whether he's drunk or not didn't matter

so we set the bit back down in the night

and let her go what the hell

about midnight the crewboss he says to me

John you go up to the crow-nest we lifting

that pipe out I aint getting blowed up

for nobody and that was fine by me

we's all getting ascairt to where we's just working

not saying nothing just thinking

about how long fore morning or till we got off

it's funny how you think the day'll take

the being ascairt away but it never really does

anyways I climbt up the derrick to the top

we's getting ready to pull that pipe out

all of a sudden the whole thing starts shaking

where I'm about to get slung off

I can hear the crewboss yelling

Get down get DOWN this mama's gonna blow

by god I burnt the palms off my hands

coming down I slid the wire guy rope

to the platform and then jumped off on the ground

the rest of the crew's arredy running ahead

so's I try to catch up and then I hear

that big devil's mother touch off K_BOOM

right behind me and caught on fire

it blew me down on the ground and started

me burning by god I was ascairt

I jumped up and started running and I'd of

burnt to death if this man hadn't grapt me

throwed me down in this ditch and

put the fire out on my clothes

so we look and the whole rig's burning

we can see two guys from the crew laying

between us and the rig burning up

we know they's dead

the rest of us burnt bad where we might die

crewboss he takes off running into the fire

we can see he's gonna try to bring the pickup out

he goes to it and grabs the doorhandle

it's so hot part of his hand

sticks to the door and just comes off

but he gets in and somehow

he gets that damn truck started and drives out

of that fire I won't never know how

all the wires was burnt up

it got so hot that truck's paint was all

scorcht off where you couldn't tell

even what kind of a pickup it was

he brings it to us and we get in