by David Lee
I aint finished yet?
so that Billy said to Larry Joe
That’s what I feared
but you gave me prologue excuse
I sincerely desired to the point of prayer
Which is what? said Larry Joe
The invocation of an element of imagined society
named They
which does not, has not, and will never exist
but whose ultimate authority referenced gives imprimatur
to proceedence from nonsense through hyperbole
to authentication by summons
of the universal arbiter who will allow the invoker
to propound ideology he does not comprehend
and thereby create pretence of knowledge
emanating from the invented sources
he actually on this earth never encountered
nonetheless feels perfectly qualified
to repeat verbatim those elements these ethereal geniuses
of his imagination who incidentally
always happen to agree exactly with him
think, believe, and say to an audience of one
and Billy rising sauntered in search of elsewhere libation
to which Larry Joe Williams opined
What did he say just then
does any of yall known what that was about?
so that Ollie McDougald summarized
To the best of my knowledge
he said They say
you are full of shit
and if that’s what they say
I believe it has to be a fact
and that, Larry Joe, is, exactly as they say,
all they are to it
Idyll Thursday night, Adolph’s, Lake Hills, Texas
This is everywhere I’ve ever been
—John Sims
Do you like being drunk?
Well hell no
where’d you get such of a stupid idea?
I like getting drunk
being drunk isn’t much special
getting over being drunk
makes you wonder
why the hell you did that again
but when you start all over
well that’s where the difference is
* * *
Heard Jane Lynn she’s mad at you
Where’d you hear that at?
Mary Ann
Yeah I trucked in mud
all over the living room floor
She thrown a fit?
She’s quiet for a minute
then the lid kindly blew off to hell and back
What’d you do?
Told her I’d get it cleant up torektly
she said Whyn’t you try to be honest
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 an
d 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
John Sims’ Story: The Oil Well Fire
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 ju
st 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
I’m so burnt they had to put me in the back
and I’m laying in this feller’s lap
who put out the fire in my clothes
we pull out of there driving like hell
was chasing us to get to town
and by then the fire was so hot
it burnt up the whole goddam rig
there wasn’t nothing left and I
seen it bend over just like it was plastic
I wanted to pass out so bad I couldn’t stand it
I didn’t I just laid there and felt it all
and saw it all
so’s we’re racing the devil to town
as fast as we can go and we pass this law
he turns on his red light and chases us
till he gets close enough to see and then
he pulls ahead and leads us through town
about ninety miles a hour to the hospital
