dmseay

what’dya have for dinner…

potatoes and olives…

potatoes and olives…

black olives from a can…

where’dya get ’em at…

Piggly Wiggly…thirty-nine cents…on sale…had ’em up at the front of the store in a shopping cart…just a filled shopping cart of black olives…

that was your dinner…black olives and potatoes…did you bake or boil the potatoes…maybe you fried ’em…

I microwaved ’em…

any butter…sour cream…

just plain…plain old potatoes…thought of mixing the two…

olives and potatoes…

yes…

what stopped ya…

couldn’t wrap my head ’round it…the two called to be separated…by nature alone…and who am I to screw with nature…not me…not me…

he was always worried…bothered by things he’d seen on t.v. ….news casts…talk shows…even situation comedies put him in a funk…didn’t like where we were headin’…saw the world comin’ to a close…knew there’d be trouble…just knew it…

he’d go out and get good and hammered over the events of the day…stories of impending doom…North Korea havin’ nuclear capabilities…Iran…Pakistan…not to mention a guy in the White House with a itchy trigger finger…,A matter of time…,he’d say to himself…,a matter of time…

often you could hear him mumblin’…talkin’ ’bout how once we were the greatest show on earth…then the whole bottom dropped out…an entire moral decay right down to the very marrow…no muscle left…just fat…

the more he drank the more scared he got…til he would just wander home…weavin’ in between parking meters…tellin’ whoever would listen along the way…,we used to be the greatest show on earth…the greatest show on earth….,that’s what he’d say…

he always wondered why she left…real busy career gal…never time for anything but work…guess somebody had to…

she’d take off on the road sellin’ some kind of policies to people…all over the state she’d drive…from one town to the next like some old medicine show…had people lined up to hear her deal…she liked to talk…

roles were reversed somehow…he did all the housework…the cookin’ and cleanin’…tended to the garden in the backyard…raked leaves in the fall…kept the place up real nice…

gave him an allowance…told him not to spend it all in one place…’nough for him to buy groceries and have a little extra for beer and shots come night time…he’d sit there all by himself downin’ cheap whiskey and Old Style…tryin’ to forget his reality…

she’d plan out his week for him ‘fore she left town every Monday…a list of chores were to be tended to…towards the end he was beginnin’ to slip up on his responsibilities…he was startin’ to let things go…the drinkin’ was startin’ to takeover til he couldn’t hide it no more…the chores list was tossed aside…

then one day she was gone…left for the road and never came back…folks said they saw her two or three counties over…some said they seen her down state with another man…some tall cool as a cucumber number…man who wore Polo shirts and cologne…

he always wondered why she left…

spent the night looking at streetlights…a yellowish hue shining down on flat black where parked cars on cement blocks wait for burial…stripped Pontiacs and broken Buicks missing pieces…an old Ford Fairmont with shattered windows and broken mirrors…pickup trucks with flat tires…a gypsy cab drives by…

and voices shout ‘cross the alley-way as cats cringe…an old chained dog barks…wanting badly to bite…rats scurry along for another round of scraps from a Chinese restaurant…opossum waits in hiding…

I sit and listen…sirens yell out…winds curse and chatter…watching red taillights blink quickly at stop signs…glance both ways…a muffler drags…

wooden gates with latches never to be locked swing in the night…they mumble and hiccup…like a drunk on a Tuesday afternoon…wandering home to a flee bit flophouse bed…brown bag on the nightstand beside him…tomorrow’s a new day…

spent the night looking at streetlights…

he’d sit out on a guard rail and watch cars go by…hours of watchin’ old Chevys…Fords…rusted out pickup trucks…polished SUV’s zoomin’ westbound on old 24 while the kid just sat there…hands in pockets…bitin’ his lower lip…

occasionally semis would drive by…the young boy would pull-down on his imaginary horn…truckers would respond…he’d laugh and pull the air down again…a horn blowin’ sound amongst evenin’ cicadas…whippoorwills…geese in a pond…dogs barkin’ in the background…

and at times there was nothin’ there…nothin’ would roll-by…chuckin’ rocks ‘cross the yellow lines…skippin’ stones on hot asphalt that’d just been laid…talkin’ to himself ’bout bein’ some kinda hero when he grows up…an Army man…a Marine…just somethin’ that’d get him outta this town…somethin’…

or maybe one day just take off down the road and never come back…travel from city to city…livin’ off odd jobs like his daddy done…never knew him…heard stories…heard he was crazy and couldn’t accept responsibility…never wanted to pay a price…these tales were told…

he’d take off someday…go out and look for pop…heard he might be out West ropin’ cattle…some ranch-hand in Texas…ridin’ horses all day long and into evenin’…eatin’ beans and drinkin’ beer by firelight…he heard that…heard that…

but for now he’d watch cars go by and imagine…just imagine…keepin’ an eye on his watch for supper time…just waitin’ for supper time…

they said his writing was dark…wrote ’bout lost souls…unfortunate events in life…guys cheatin’ on their wives…wives taken off in the middle of the night with some guys they’d been carryin’ on with…people in poverty…desperate situations…

asked him if this was all autobiographical…if he was spillin’ his guts on the page…lettin’ all and sundry know his faults…shortcomings…wanted to know if he was some vagabond who just roamed from town to town…lookin’ for some place to call home for awhile…just awhile…

he told ’em he wrote honestly…wrote ’bout the american experience…everything from bedroom communities to small towns…big cities where commerce is king…just wrote ’bout what he saw…witnessed…in bars…homeless shelters…psych wards…bein’ a passenger in a pickup truck drivin’ on old Route 66…hearin’ different types of language…different kinds of stories…

truth is…everybody has a story to tell…,he said…,just gotta listen…

I can’t put my finger on it…, she said, you look different….maybe it’s the hair…have you lost weight…,her emerald eyes gave him a good going-over…

do you remember when we used to stay up all night talkin’…like it was nothin’…as if we didn’t have jobs or responsibilities in our lives…,the blonde’s feet shifted back and forth in the gravel…

no…we’d just talk…talk and talk and talk as hours of darkness became light…,she pulled out a cigarette and offered him one…he shook his head…she shrugged her shoulders…,’member those times…not too long ago…not like we were kids or somethin’…just man and woman talkin’…

why don’t we do that anymore…,a flask was pulled from her purse…she took a swig…,we don’t talk anymore…I never know what to say…cat’s always got my tongue…and you…you’ve become this silent type…like some western cowboy…,he smiled…

what do you make of us…,she placed her hands on his shoulders…,what’s gonna become of us…think we’ll just vanish like ghosts…you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine…,their eyes locked…

bye bye Eddie…I’ll talk to you later…,crushed her smoke with her boot…,give me a call sometime…sometime…,he just looked at her as she walked backwards waving at him…she blew him a kiss…

he’d go through money like water…there was never enough…sometimes go for days with nothin’ at all…livin’ off handfuls of dry cereal…taken right outta the box…generic knock-offs of Fruity Pebbles…or Cap’n Crunch…didn’t care…all the same…

just sit and watch antennae t.v. til 3 in the mornin’…commercials for cleaning products…seminars on how you too can be rich…rich…rich beyond your wildest dreams…he particularly took an interest in those…he’d start to dial the number…then just hang-up…

now it was just days of livin’ on dreams…midnight thoughts of a better life…like Johnny Carson…have some big house in California with a fancy car parked in the driveway…some wife who looked good in a swimsuit…homemade bread and butter served at every meal…he liked bread and butter…

and sleep…all he wanted to do was sleep…never to awake and face a day again…same old clothes…a bar of soap whittled down to a sliver…he just wanted to sleep…just sleep…

he’d spend hours lookin’ out his window in silence…no music…just quiet…listenin’ to trains rattle through town deep into the night…watchin’ cars roll through stop signs…talk to himself every once in awhile just to make a sound…slight whisper…a murmur…clear his throat…

say things like…,look at that one…, or…,what’s he doin’ up…,seein’ lights on across the alley….hearin’ a cat whine in the winter winds…shadows cast from streetlights on corners…a golden hue on the hood of a car…parked Buick that never moved…

woke up every night at this time…just past the late late show on the local yokel station…auto dealers stressin’ low financin’… just colors flyin’ through the air…mouths movin’…not a peep…had it on just to have it on…glance at it every once in a while…

wandered how he got so lonely…didn’t cry or stew ’bout it…just wandered…she took off with some insurance salesman…livin’ in some bedroom community outside of Phoenix…they play golf everday…rejoice in their leathered skin…he didn’t miss her…didn’t miss her one bit…

or did he…

she told him he’d die out there…said hitchin’ rides was no good…didn’t matter if you were goin’ south or east or west just wasn’t any good…tried to disuade him…talked ’bout those strange men drivin’ pickup trucks ‘cross america…white vans with no windows in ’em…said these men had records a mile long some of ’em…others didn’t have a trace connected to their names…went on this scavenger hunt for victims a long time ago…just drivin’ from town to town on 80 West or 95 North…maybe 55 South…collectin’ bodies along the way…markin’ grave sites with stones and pebbles…stones and pebbles…

he didn’t listen to her…didn’t care whether he lived or died…just wanted to be alive again…hit the road like in the old days when he was just a kid…towns like Joplin…Carthage…Batesville…Huntington…Paris, Texas and Paris, Tennessee…he’d been stuck in all of ’em before…sometimes it’d take days to get a ride goin’ somewhere…just driftin’ along…bag of clothes…a toothbrush…maybe a book or two…always waited it out…always…just knew that good fortune would come his way…he knew it…

met his old lady on the road…she picked him up in Kentucky just over the border where the Ohio River seperates the two states…down there by Cincinatti…he’d gamble on baseball games and get into wild bar fights over in Newport…women would dance for dollars and men would oblige…she was one of them long leggy dancers…drove from town to town bumpin’ and grindin’ to music into the purple hours…he appreciated her poise…thought she was poetry upon the stage…some kind of unspoken language…he wanted her…and he got her…they took off for Chicago and all points west…she danced in Denver…small towns too out in Nebraska…Kansas…Oklahoma…everywhere and anywhere she could get a job…he didn’t contribute much…just a go getter way of talkin’ that kept her inspired…for awhle…awhile…

his luck ran out though…she left him for another ball-n-jack…guy who had his own pickup truck…money to burn…said he’d be her agent…look out for her and all…she fell for his silver tongue…leavin’ him high-n-dry…nothin’ to live for…’cept for the thrill of hittin’ the road one more time…just one more time…

she told him he’d die out there…