Last Call Read online

  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