The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

They lay on the floor, mostly turned inside out. Something gleamed in the mess. Barclay leaned closer and saw it was a silver dollar. He reached down and plucked it out of the crap.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Hines said. ‘Sonofabitch was locked up almost a month.’

There was a chair in the corner. Barclay sat down in it so heavily he made a little woof sound. ‘He must have swallowed it the first time when he saw our lanterns coming. And every time it came out, he cleaned it off and swallowed it again.’

The two men stared at each other.

‘You believed him,’ Hines said at last.

‘Fool that I am, I did.’

‘Maybe that says more about you than it does about him.’

‘He went on saying he was innocent right to the end. He’ll most likely stand at the throne of God saying the same thing.’

‘Yes,’ Hines said.

‘I don’t understand. He was going to hang. Either way, he was going to hang. Do you understand it?’

‘I don’t even understand why the sun comes up. What are you going to do with that cartwheel? Give it back to the girl’s mother and father? It might be better if you didn’t, because …’ Hines shrugged.

Because the Clines knew all along. Everyone in town knew all along. He was the only one that hadn’t known. Fool that he was.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,’ he said.

The wind gusted, bringing the sound of singing. It was coming from the church. It was the Doxology.

Thinking of Elmore Leonard

I have written poetry since I was twelve and fell in love for the first time (seventh grade). Since then I’ve written hundreds of poems, usually scribbled on scraps of paper or in half-used notebooks, and have published less than half a dozen of them. Most are stowed in various drawers, God knows where – I don’t. There’s a reason for this; I’m not much of a poet. That’s not lowballing, just the truth. When I do manage something I like, it’s mostly by accident.

The rationale for including this piece of work is that it (like the other poem in this collection) is narrative rather than lyric. The first draft – long lost, like my original take on the story that became ‘Mile 81’ – was written in college, and very much under the influence of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, most notably ‘My Last Duchess.’ (Another Browning poem, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,’ became the basis of a series of books many of my Constant Readers know quite well.) If you’ve read Browning, you may hear his voice rather than mine. If not, that’s fine; it’s basically a story, like any other, which means it’s to be enjoyed rather than deconstructed.

A friend of mine named Jimmy Smith read that lost first draft at a University of Maine Poetry Hour one Tuesday afternoon in 1968 or ’69, and it was well received. Why not? He gave it his all, really belting it out. And people are captivated by a good story, whether it’s in verses or paragraphs. This was a pretty good one, especially given the format, which allowed me to strip away all the prosy exposition. In the fall of 2008, I got thinking about Jimmy’s reading, and since I was between projects, I decided to try re-creating the poem. This is the result. How much resemblance it bears to the original I really can’t say.

Jimmy, I hope you’re out there someplace, and come across this. You rocked the house that day.

The Bone Church

If you want to hear, buy me another drink.

(Ah, this is slop, but never mind; what isn’t?)

There were thirty-two of us went into that greensore,

Thirty days in the green and only three who rose above it.

Three rose above the green, three made it to the top,

Manning and Revois and me. And what does that book say?

The famous one? ‘Only I am left to tell you.’

I’ll die of the drink in bed, as many obsessed whoresons do.

And do I mourn Manning? Balls! It was his money

put us there, his will that drove us on, death by death.

But did he die in bed? Not that one! I saw to it!

Now he worships in that bone church forever. Life is grand!

(What slop is this? Still – buy me another, do. Buy me two!

I’ll talk for whiskey; if you want me

to shut up, switch me to champagne.

Talk is cheap, silence is dear, my dear.

What was I saying?)

Twenty-nine dead on the march, and one a woman.

Fine tits she had, and an ass like an English saddle!

We found her facedown one morning,

as dead as the fire she lay in,

an ash-baby smoked at the cheeks and throat.

Never burnt; that fire must have been cold when she went in.

She talked the whole voyage and died without a sound;

what’s better than being human? Do you say so?

No? Then balls to you, and your mother, too;

if she’d had a pair she’d have been a fucking king.

Anthropologist, arr, so she said. Didn’t look like

no anthropologist when we pulled her out of the

ashes with char on her cheeks and the whites of her eyes

dusted gray with soot. Not a mark on her otherwise.

Dorrance said it might’ve been a stroke

and he was as close to a doctor as we had,

that poxy bastard. For the love of God bring whiskey,

for life’s a trudge without it!