fiction

Dead Game

by
Joe
on Wednesday

Mose Stetley? I never cared a lick for Mose Stetley. Them ole boys’d poison you at the wash, kidney punch you at the weigh in, all them dirty ole tricks, they’ll try em on you like that’s just part of playing. And then they go bringing up some mangy lot of curs like you’d want to pit your boys against such sorry critters. Mean spirited, surely, but not a lick of gameness in the lot. Bunch of tortured souls howl at the moon like coyotes first sight they get. Horrible dogs.

I ever tell you about old Arc that time he run them boys out? Three fights in one night, if’n you’ll believe it. Them boys kept begging for another shot at him. Shoot, he done gave them three pounds. Ole Arc was game even still. Nothing would stop that boy in the pit. He’d tear into anything. I swear he got his hackles up, it was just an insult to him that someone’d bring such a lot to pit. He’d have taken them all at once. I swear on my mother’s bible he won three matches back to back at no more than 10 minutes a one. And it was Mose Stetley holding the last two. He and his boys who weren’t 12 years old at the time but always scrapping.

Now them boys had some gameness. There was more to fear there than any of their dogs. And it was that night Josiah lost Arc. Now you just try to tell me Mose Stetley didn’t have a hand in it. Can’t think of nothing worse than robbing a man of his livelihood in the dark of the night. Snatched him right out his pen and he ain’t been seen since.

It weren’t three years before we seen ole Mose Stetley back in the game though with a fresh lot of dogs looked decidedly like they was sired by ole Arc. They had his red nose and his chest bump like no other dog did back then and he started winning all over Arkansas with that lot and every convention that was all the talk like Josiah should do something about it or we should all just bar the man from fighting, but you know how dog men are, it’s the dogs we love you know and them boys was a fierce sight.

Don’t know what bitch he bred him to, and he weren’t telling, but the result no one would turn from. You didn’t want to stand against them boys. Not long and he couldn’t get a fight off them, but folks was lining up to breed ‘em. If Mose knew a thing about business, he’d a made hisself a rich man, but he was just a mean spirited cuss cause he just turned them all away. All’s he wanted was to fight, didn’t care a lick no more about making money. Wouldn’t let no one near his operation. Wouldn’t bring them to stud, weren’t even selling pups. But weren’t no one gonna pit against them neither. They was so dead game, they was killers plain and simple. They ate up a dozen good dogs cross the state till word got full round what they was made of.

Josiah hisself offered Mose five grand for one of them pups. How’s that for a fine how d’ya do? But what choice did he have? He’d lost his best dog ‘forin he had a chance to prove him bred so he had nothing but a lot of curs long time after that, but that’s the dog game. Take a man ten years to get back what he lose in one night. Finally just wasn’t no use in Mose even come around. He weren’t participating in any way.

About that time, Floyd’s Eli was tearing up the circuit and that dog was smart. He had great technique. Very focused dog. Another dog even blink an eye toward turning and he was finished. All the best dogs is proud like that, just a lick of doubt across the way and the match might as well end there. He was culling some pretty fine dogs heading toward being a grand champion when Mose started showing up to matches again.

By then he and Josiah had started up in secret, like Josiah was to front his dogs in the matches, at least that was what Josiah was hinting like to better the odds and its true he was showing some red nosed dogs about then, but they was curs in my book. He weren’t winning them.

Then he shows up with ole Mose and they standing next to one another though they ain’t talking. Just watching and waiting there and there’s a buzz go through the whole fraternity, They ain’t betting or nothing, just standing like a couple crows. And Eli down in the pit makes Jonesy’s Freighttrain turn and there ain’t nothing but hoots in the air for that dog Eli so’s Mose steps up and challenges him on the spot midst all that caterwaul and how could Floyd back down?

They set it at 55 pounds. They got the ref setting a date two months out. And boldfaced as can be, ole Mose says he’ll pit him out against Arc Jr. Arc Jr.! Josiah standing next to him with a sly little grin and everybody knows they in cahoots. Man, was it exciting. All them old boys just piecing it together looking over at Josiah now like we all been snaked.

At that point, either them old boys were the cleverest lot ever played the game or they was bluffing bigger than shit. Now I ain’t kidding you, stakes on that match was up to three, four grand a head. There was more money floating around than I’d ever seen in a game. Men had their whole stake on that game and there weren’t going to be but the one match that night.

Josiah, Mose and his boys bring out Arc Jr. and damned if he ain’t the spitting image of Arc. But Eli, you know, this is a dog of some renown. Floyd been making money hand over fist breeding him and he’s already a grand champion. This here’s what the games all about.

I’ll be damned if at the weigh in, ole Floyd don’t show two pounds heavy and forfeit the wager. But he’s a clever one all the same. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got the only dog gonna go against Arc Jr. so he knows Mose going to fight him all the same so he’ll take every advantage he can get. Sure enough, Mose goes right on ahead with it, fighting a grand champion two pounds heavy. Any other man would of walked away and counted hisself lucky for the chance to save his dog, but there was a lot at stake that night.

Now I seen a lot of matches in my day, I saw Joshua’s Holler take Randall’s Samson in just under two hours. Some thought that was the greatest match ever run. Back then I was a dog man 15 years already and in that time I had some good scrappers, a couple winners and a whole mess of curs, but nothing even near these dogs for gameness. Here we got the two greatest game dogs on the planet, one of them unproven yet but of the finest pedigree, and every dog man that night is just singing in his heart grateful to be alive. Watching a dog get proved out is exciting, but against a grand champion, well that ain’t something anybody heard of.

Now Mose had his oldest boy Jake in there handling and his youngest over snooping at Floyd’s corner and he and Josiah stood at opposite corners watching the go. Reb was reffiing that match and I don’t envy him down in that pit with them fierce mongrels. I swear, even after 15 years, the gameness of those warriors put the fear of God in me. It was the most unholy sight I ever did see, the way they punished each other. It weren’t 5 minutes in that they’d both lost an ear and were bloody all down their faces. It was clear that once these dogs were done with each other, they weren’t gonna be good for much but stud. And that was the longest match I ever seen. It was two hours like that with Floyd and Mose’s boy Jake just hard eyed willing to stand. Weren’t no one gonna pull their dog out. This was gonna be to the death and it got down right grim with both dogs gone through it all, not a turn. They battered and tore and crushed at each other, getting holds and tearing loose like gods, you know, like little engines of destruction tearing beyond the flesh, like they both wanted to just shed their bodies and pit their raw rage against one another like little balls of light gabbling through the machinery.

Arc Jr. was blind by the first hour mark and he was game all the same, coming on as fierce and cruel as ever but that advantage was sure enough for Eli. Can’t say that Arc Jr. was too smart, but I ain’t never seen a dog scrap so fierce was blinded in both eyes. After that Eli just started picking him apart, pressing him down, punishing his nose but Arc Jr. never cried out, even with bone showing on his cheeks and blood all over him that dog weren’t going to let up.

In a normal fight, the ref would have called it, but there was so much game left in that dog even as gored up as it was, he let it go till you could see skull through on both them dogs and they was cinched up real good shaking blood off onto the ground and the pit wall and the people lined up on the pit. We was all plum wore out from screaming and on they went with narry a holler. That place done slowly got real quiet like we’d filled some vision of what all the sport and breeding was leading to. Like we was watching God hisself part the waters.

There those two skull faced dogs oozing thick streams of blood fought on like there was no such thing as pain, no such thing as dying, just this pure terrible living crying out against itself without end. I tell you the churchs were full the next day. Men were born again after that battle.

There were no concessions. Though it was true that Arc Jr. finally got the jugular of Eli and great rockets of blood geysered from him so he fell slipping, he never stopped fighting, never relented a second, just his body did, just the dumb machine of it let go and it was a damn shame to watch it happen. His guts let him down.

Neither dog lived an hour past that match. Floyd wrapped his mangled Eli in a blanket and took him out. Arc Jr., half dead as he was and quick on to dying, rose for the scratch and the guts and gore scattered all about weren’t nothing to him. He lumbered over and that was that.

Ole Mose had his hands on more than he could know. I don’t credit him with none of it. Arc Jr. was the most dead game dog ever was. There weren’t born another like him in my day. Truth told, I’m glad of it.

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marauders

by
severnspoon
on Tuesday

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The Revolution

by
severnspoon
on Tuesday

Everyone was prepared. They each had weapons and some defense, strips of old tire rubber strapped down their arms, a gun, a knife, football helmets.

We raced into the trees and hacked through them. We ran them down with ATVs. We swung machetes from the back of motorcycles. We blazed through dark shadows among the trees and nobody fell.

Everyone was strong and confident, had put all fear away and kept going.

We came across the field with strong gestures like professments of faith. We stood together as the whole street came into view, full of strategies:

Men raced on motorcycles dragging tripwires. Bicycling boys with bats, geriatrics in reinforced golf carts, a woman in hysterics guarded by chainsaw-wielding muscle men. The night was full of triumph. Everywhere people became symbols of activating forces.

My own troop arrayed on the slope, renegade champions one and all, regrouping, catching their breath, surveying what went on below along a row of suburban lawns.

Everyone was a whirling razor. We skirted what we could. It was best to keep our distance from the others. Leave each to his determination. We found a two story ranch house with a lower deck giving out to the field and a pond.

It was cleared and barricaded. We were tired. We slept in the mud and the blood. Some bathed in the pond while others stood guard. It was a good place for the moment. Room enough for all of us.

We preferred it cramped. We liked to pack against our neighbors in the warm safety, the swaddle.

It was hardest in the kitchen. Everything was eaten before most had awakened. We would need to barter weapons for food, begin the work of constructing new safety. We lost some good people right off as they raced into new opportunities. Some never intended to stay with us. They went off deeper in their directions. We never saw them again.

In my dream, there was a membrane that held us apart from the others. An impossibly thin, nearly invisible bubble we pressed against to no avail. We could not be parted, nor could we bother with what lay beyond the will of us all.

In my dreams, sometimes I am beyond the membrane trying to get back in. But it is impossible. The membrane exists, a veil that distinguishes an impossible distance of space, a void that will not suffer return.

I am mainly concerned with this membrane that separates, the most substantial of all materials and no material at all. The zero to hold among the aces in cosmic certainty.

Sometimes I dream I am all of shadow and the false choices of the past have led me to believe untrue things of an essential nature. Sometimes I am so shocked by panic and shame that I believe I have taken up the Hindu Zombie Fever.

Mainly, I am here to study the membrane. I am here to draw the invisible line of some just importance. I am a discerning instrument in the hands of this scattering troop. I am a surgeon and the infection is clear. I can tell at a glance.

I am Adama, giver of names.

When the troop came together, we laid claim to each other with such names as could be conjured. We forged a new language with just these names. Our names are what we belong to.

We have a symbol. I have sewn it on everyone’s jerseys and jackets so I can know at a glance who to worry over:

It is the river that flows into the cave and the cave itself. The flow of water into the emptiness where it is again purified, through a myriad permutations, into just itself.

It is the membrane and the flow of life, the forces dwindling in the darkness. Where man will grow back into the light perhaps, back in the caves.

I am always counting us. Our numbers rising. Our numbers falling through chance, accident and urgency.

If someone falls among us, I cannot cure them. I can only point and stare, hysterical. I can only cry out:

“The membrane! The membrane!”

I shine my fear like a beacon in the night.

Sometimes, when fear is at its worst, the others start when they see me, as if they had lost certainty of just those things which I can answer to.

Each day, I count them. In truth, I just count the symbols. I know by their disposition which are in deepest doubt. I urge them to polish their symbols, keep them sparkling, so I can see the change. All will be safe if they revere the symbol. They need only fear a stain. They wash them every chance they get.

It was important to discern those to call in times of particular alarm. Sometimes we are well spread out. Some wear two symbols and are counted twice. We need a certain number to stay safe.

There were those among us who had fought in many battles, whose limbs had been severed, who had lost so many things and yet kept on, perversely racing with no other concern than the race, ancient soldiers who would bear all and sacrifice themselves to the membrane one day. Their worst shame would be to survive to the last. They must choose how best to save us, which tree to vault from, what dim spark to blow into new flames. They stood among us, half-recovered from heart attacks, staunching fresh wounds.

There were those that broke and rolled against the membrane for some fleeting glimpse of something lost teasing them beyond. Some abomination of the past haunted still to scar the membrane, claws tearing for release.

Sometimes a scratch was just enough.

I heard the sound of thudding against the double pane glass of the slider.

Beyond the membrane, some chrysalis melted down to essentials, whatever goo next things would manifest from, whatever form sought flesh.

The cage of my thoughts shook with each thud. Wavelengths of sound filled with intention, boiling over with desires, just those forms I am most afraid of. I peek from behind doors. I am always spying. I just want to know where we stand. What is the situation? What is our number?

I smell worst of all of us. I haven’t changed my clothes since the troubles began.

The one I call Henchman stared out into the darkness, not seeing anything to be riled about, in fact, just sleeping, standing on her feet, in that place of ultimate vulnerability we lapse into at the end of exhaustion, strung out on worries, dead tired and no longer afraid. Sometimes we get to have that time.

The thudding grew more pronounced. She did not stir. There was only shadow heaping on shadow beyond the membrane, scraping the walls of the embankment, darkness growing denser, nothing signifying, no purpose, no symbol.

I touched her sleeve near where her symbol was pinned. She started and snapped to attention. She saw my face and trusted it. I was never in question. That was the rule. I had the one job and if it were inviolate yet, then we were safe. If not, then what else mattered? The membrane rent open, each on his own.

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unfamiliar language

by
severnspoon
on Monday



unfamiliar language

Originally uploaded by severnspoon


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Play

by
severnspoon
on Saturday
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Jailer

by
severnspoon
on Sunday

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Napoleonic hustle

by
severnspoon
on Sunday

Napoleonic hustle

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An Appeal for Change

by
severnspoon
on Tuesday

We had asked for more time in preparing this document, but it was deemed too important to obstruct whatever progress it had to offer for the cultures of the world. Whatever is faulty or wrong may be viewed in the light of history. This is a historic moment, the release of these documents can be construed as the by-product of 12,000 years labor. We can only guess as the societies that existed back then, only conjecture at the moral codes that bounded behavior. We offer our humblest apologies for whatever stain we’ve left on this document by our careworn attention to the details.

Endless details are the true story of this work, the meticulousness of Dr. Jack Baard of the Blithe Institute whose understanding of the nuances of 12th Eurgho urban humor have led to some of the lightheartedness of the original arriving intact we hope. It was deemed important that this work have its intended effect most of all. That we organized the intentionality into a meaningful conveyance is our own great failing as much as success, for we have the powerful concern to keep our advisors happy as their patronage makes any revolutionary appeal of this text rather self-defeating.

Still, we put our faith in the hands of men and women everywhere, to validate this document and act accordingly.

Whatever actions are provoked by this text must reach their fruition in time to save the rest of the work from destruction. We wish only to share this with you. We have no political or ethical dilemmas in this act. All should recognize the call that is made through their own filter of reason. What is done is nothing more than a dream perhaps, some fantasy of some far off imagination. Perhaps this document is nothing more than some popular literature of the day, some entertainment.

We believe the people whose generation authored these declarations were not discovered in their own time. In fact, hundred, perhaps many hundreds, of generations would pass before they were discovered and made into the holy relics of a fringe culture.

We call the time of the documents’ declaration the First Eurghep after the cliffs where these documents were found in their many bottles, caught in the great whirlpool of the northern lake shore.

It was during the excavations there that Vanspronsen’s mirror assemblage was first used to look clearly into the depths of the deepest, most turbulent seas and show all the detritus lying there on the dark floor. Laser guided probes were sent coordinates and retrieved artifacts of over 10 tons from as deep as 20 foot of silt. It was a miracle of engineering.

This is how we learned of many lost cultures. We saw at last true confessions from the deepest past, the most direct, immediate voices crying for truth in unreasonable circumstances. We witness first hand certain traits of the evolutionary process. The sand disrupters just had to touch the ocean floors and the soil would scatter from the rocks, revealing everything pristine and undamaged. The deposits just floated away. By the time the objects were at the surface, they had been analyzed and efficiently repaired by robotic processors.

What came into our hands was just the beauty we were meant to see. A whole generation devoted itself to their study.

But there were skeptics from the start. The unfortunate Grant wars were a low point in current memory. The camps that blew smoke day and night were secrets best forgotten. What lives at the bottom of the ocean is likely best left forgotten. There was too much to forgive among all the detritus, all the secrets, too much to rage over.

I think man will be known in the end, when his course has run, as a revolutionary spirit. Plucky. Full of surprises. Amusing, hopeful, like a child really. Till then, the secrets rise and we must rise with them to learn their lessons, no matter the cost.

Jimmy and me

by
Joe
on Tuesday

August 1, 1992
We’s, Jimmy and me, supposed to write about ourselves, our feelings or whatever. I ain’t nothing but a scribbler, but what the hell. I got me a stubby pencil and this here little book that folds up nice in my pocket. Trucker’s log book I found in a reststop. Might well fill my time with it. Jimmy weren’t none too fond of the idea either. Jimmy’s my best friend. We was up the VA in Saint Louis. I got a nervous condition. It’s like a disease and ain’t none a my fault. I can’t deal with people too good is all. They make my throat dance like a ballerina. Can’t be helped, so I keep real quiet and out of sight. Jimmy’s problem’s a little different and he don’t mind the people so much as I do so I follow where ever he’s going. It’s easier that way. Sometime he don’t know I’m there, sometime he do. It’s like that is all. We’re good friends. I watch his back. We split up a long while there. I thought he went up Chicago way, but I couldn’t find him so I walked to Rock Island thinking I might find him at his mom’s place. It took me awhile, but I’m real patient. I don’t mind waiting for a good thing.

Up Rock Island I heard you could float a log down the river and sell it at a mill for a hundred dollars. Some people do that in the spring when the river’s high and the trees fall over along the shore. Well, I was lying under a bush in a park and they had this big old trimmed log chained along the shore and it was a good size chain was blocking the mouth of a little stream for some reason. Well, there was just this curl of metal hooked in the ground to hold it all together and you know, I’m thinking about that hundred dollars and I dig out that hook with a big stick and away I went, holding onto that log for all my life.

It’s a funny thing, riding a log down the Mississippi, I found it best to hug that log with all I got and drag my feet deep in the water, try to face forward is all. Don’t think anyone saw me. No one hollered at least. Lots of things slide by on the river in the springtime. It was right pretty sometimes all pink and purple over the burbles like some fleshy flow but the bugs was bothering me too and the waters was so fast I was coming up on Keokuk before you know it and right hungry at that. By then I could kind of steer the thing leaning to the side a little and dragging lower on that foot. It was a big log and took a might of work to get to shore, but a bend helped dump me on a sliver of island and I tied my log up to a tree with that hunk of chain like a good steed. Later, thought I’d find Jimmy and get him to help me get my hundred bucks.

I don’t know why Jimmy and I got on so well. I guess you need to trust someone and we was buddies after all. We knew each other during the war and even before that. Seems like we always been knowing each other. We had some strange times there in Saint Louis after we skipped out of the VA. They wasn’t doing us a lick of good. We was just all going crazy feeding the ducks and freaking out. So Jimmy and I decided to just walk away. I was desperate to go and it seemed real important that he help with that. He’s real smart when he’s got something to do and he don’t have anything to do at the VA, so we come up with a plan and it was no time before we was holed up in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Saint Louis.

It was real cool there. I liked it a lot. You could come and go and weren’t nobody going to see you or give you a hard time or anything. I set to work digging a hole behind some old machinery. The concrete was all broke up where they’d pulled out some big machine and it was just sand underneath and the sand was cool on my face and I liked to sleep there and I thought I might dig a tunnel or something but mostly I just liked digging. It was real interesting. I can’t explain.

Jimmy didn’t much like it at first, he wanted to move along right away, but then them dogs showed up. There was four of them. They must have lived there but we scared them out. They hung around though and Jimmy wanted to trap them or just get his hands on them somehow. It was real important to him. He liked dogs. It took him a long time to get close to them. He’d give them whatever food he’d scrounge and one day this white one come up to him. Mangy dog you know looked half dead and the others was keeping it from the food so it was sidling closer to Jimmy till it finally just took to him and he buried his face in that mangy nasty filthy fur like it was a woman’s crotch or something and I swear he was just weeping away like a baby. But that’s ok. Jimmy got some mixed up problems is all. He’s a good friend and I won’t let no one bad mouth Jimmy. I just let him be.

He mixed up with them dogs for a long time and picked up a bad case of fleas, but they was getting on real well. He’d hold them and they’d lick the tears from his cheeks and I just kept digging my hole. It was getting real deep and I was finding tree roots and things, broken bits of glass. Got it in my head there might be something of value down there, like some treasure. That kept me real busy for a long time. I like to keep myself clean you know so I kept my distance from Jimmy and them dogs and one day I realize Jimmy’s gone. Can’t find him nowhere and then I find them dogs. Actually I heard the flies before I saw them dogs. I just followed the sound and there they were. At first I thought they’d killed Jimmy and eaten him or something, but really I can’t rightly say what happened there but that them dogs were dead and all tore up. Looked like they’d had quite a scuffle and Jimmy was gone. All I can guess is that Jimmy won. I never asked him about it, nor do I plan to.

I went back to my hole, but somehow it just wasn’t the same not knowing where Jimmy was or if he was ok, so I set out looking for him. Seems like we was always getting into some kind of adventure and seeing him again always made it seem like he’d been there all along with me where ever I was. You know, because we’re doing the same thing. Because we’re together.

I hear people talk a lot you know and I’m a good learner. I got a way of staying out of sight as well. Don’t nobody set eyes on me lessen I want them to and I hardly ever want anyone to, even Jimmy. That’s just the way I am. There’s nothing wrong with it. Means I have a different sort of living than most people. Jimmy helps me out when I need things I can’t get myself. Mostly I do okay. I mean sometimes I listen in so close it’s like I’m with those people and they know me and see me but they don’t and I like that. I get plenty of learning done that way.

When I first slid up to shore in Missouri on my log it was just dawn and I’d been in the water all night and I had a chill and my legs was all cramped up. I looked like one of them witches people put on telephone poles at Halloween, you know the ones where she’s all smushed up cause she hit the pole. The river’s strange like there’s a temper to it, like it’s looking you over real close. Sometimes it pushes you forward real fast like it wants to be rid of you, sometimes it tries to roll you over and get a look at the other side, sometimes it stops you up short like it’s got an idea what to do next, then it just turns you around, tries to suck you down or something. Whenever it slowed me down, I just gripped on tighter and tried to stay on top best I could and I could hear that chain rattling in the water where the river sucked at it like a bit of floss. Weren’t no telling where I was going to end up, but it sure wasn’t up to me. Must have been the river knew where I needed to go.

I stumbled onto shore there on that island and chained up my log to a tree. It was hard to walk so I kind of stumbled around till I found my footing. There was some kind of fishing cabin there close by and it looked like no one was home so I went on in and sure enough there were some poles by the door and they even had a window that sort of hung over the river and you could fish right there. There was even a place to put the pole. So I tossed a couple lines in and looked around. I found a dry shirt that didn’t smell too good, but was better than mine. I did my best to wash up and by the time I was back to them poles, I had a carp on the line and, I’m not proud, I ate the damn thing. I was hungry. There was a gas stove and everything, pans, you name it.

I thought I might hide out there for a little while. Get some rest and come nighttime, go look for Jimmy. So I laid me down tucked in a corner with an ear to the wall and one to the door and had this dream. I don’t remember much of it but I was flowing along like on the river but I was standing still. I can’t explain.

Turns out there was this kind of road across the cut stream on up to the far shore and you could walk across the water as it was only a couple inches deep and there was this two track under there. It was real interesting how somebody done that. You know, how does a person do a thing like that for themselves? Whoever it was, he had a nice setup and I was real happy to make use of it. It was a little chilly still, so there were no skeeters. I moved up the bank and onto the levee. There was a two track right on top of it, so I walked along for a ways till I seen this man coming along walking his dog. That dog took scent of me and started baying and I ducked back down into the brush. A beagle. Short, fat beagle.

Jimmy likes dogs, not me. They’re always out to find you. I can stomach the strays, they don’t rightly care what you’re doing lessen it brings them some food. But a dog on a leash is the worst, they just got to yammer on about you and there you are singled out in a spotlight and all them dull eyes turning your way. I tucked myself up under these washed out roots to wait them out. Here I sit, cozy as a clam. Getting dark though.

I’m real good at hiding. It’s really just a matter of knowing what you’re hiding from. If you know that, then you know where they look and where they don’t and you just go where they won’t be looking and that’s it. It’s not like they out to find you really. When they are, they trying to figure out where you might be and for that they need to know who you are and where you might go and don’t nobody know me but Jimmy and if he were looking for me he’d have no trouble at all because I’d see him looking. If you want to hide worse than they want to find you, it’s not too hard really. I’ve gotten real good at it ever since I was a kid. People are easy, but a dog on a leash I just steer clear of.

August 9, 1992
This towns a goodun. All sorts a empty houses and such, clean as a whistle. Furniture and everything. What make a person go and up and leave everything, pots and pans included? Just don’t make sense lessen you got to travel real light like sneakin off in the night with someone else’s chickens.

Got something hatchin’. I could lay low here right in the middle of um. Watch it all go on. Theys got a piano in this particular place. It’s all broke up but still, kinda homey some how. Had me a misadventure comin round here. Went in through the back winder and pulled up face to face with a nasty pile of haff et vermin sucked bones and guts and stuff. Well I juss lay low like I always done but I gets to thinking about who’d a dun that and just tear on out. I won’t have no part of it. I move right on to the next un, this un here. It’s real nice, got a pretty staircase, pretty paint on the walls. Musta had a lick a kids. Got all kinds a kids rooms with bunk beds and such. Like summer camp. I even found clean sheets in the cupboard. Clean sheets. Hot damn. No water though. I’m tucked up in this here bunk lookin out at the stars over town. It’s real purty. I always wanted my own room when I’s a boy. Never could get hid real good back then. Nows it come so easy I ain’t got to try. I’s sittin here like this just lookin out over all them houses, narry a one with any light coming out a um. Just huddled here in my clean sheets and some dusty old blankets wonderin what Jimmy’s doin. I just seen a big ole dog come out that nasty house next door. Come out the winder I went in. Jumped on through and stood there a while, nose in the wind. I hid. Never saw what come next. Thought it might be a problem for someone though, maybe Jimmy. Seem like that dog mussa been shut up in there and shore wanted free. Wunder where he got to? Seem like I made something happen there. Just like anything. Boomers’ll catch you don’t keep your head down. Gotta watch myself.

August 15, 1992
Take those others over there. He don’t give a damn bout that. Those there’s not worth a hank of rope. I been lookin, waitin and sittin eatin’ pie. It’s Jimmy there went outside and all. He can have it. I like watchin from here. Them fool folks havin a picnic in broad daylight like it were the fourth of July. I keep my hands to myself is all, like they told me. Keep my nose clean. Wouldn’t mind some of that barbeque but that’s the way is all. You wind up to pitch, you might get that ball in the mitt again. Till then, the whole game is you. That’s where I’m at is all, holding all the cards. I got me this pie though. Makes me glad they’s all painting the church. Left this sucker sittin on a chair like a crown and the king gone to take a piss.

Haven’t had rhubarb pie since I can remember. Maybe mama made it, can’t rightly recall. She had her hands in a lot of pots. No wait, yeah we had that big old patch by the back corner near the porch. All red veined and a killer by the leaves. Just them red fat stems is all. Tighten your lips it sure would. She’d let us dip em in the sugar bowl and eat em like a stick of celery. This here pies plenty good at that. Who knows what else I’ll catch me.

Jimmy’s over there talking like he’s always talking these days, making friends I guess with these here people like he belongs with them. That preacher bending his ear something fierce though, likin to tear him a new one. Must be about them dogs. Shoot, it’s clear as day to anyone look close. They’s got a taste for the hunt is all. Ain’t nothing to keep em from it. They’s just runnin mad’s all, sowin some oats. They’s bound to scuffle, bound to take some lickins and dish em out as well. Why not? Here comes old Jimmy.

Listen, I don’t want no part of this. It all makes me real nervous. I can’t help it you know, it’s just my condition acting up. I’m just going to slide over to camp, see how the Jessop’s tomatoes coming along.