Boom, I say.
I’m in pain, he says. Some pain.
I’m sorry.
Sometimes I have pain. And then sometimes I don’t.
OK, I say.
OK, he says.
I’ve seen to the sick and studied sin. I’ve sailed my boat around the Cape of Good Hope. I’ve fly-fished in Chile dropped from a helicopter. I’ve played nine holes before lunch. I know the right way to drive a sports car, when to fold ’em. But now life is just people with their eyes begging for answers I don’t have. Each day seems an easier one to let go, but still on and on. The lights never go off at the neighbor’s and there is never anything good to eat on this boat.
Here’s the problem with modern medicine, Eli. It keeps you alive longer but it’s not pretty.
Tuesday is in the river washing her hair. White Mike Johnny drowned last week and she mourns him. Clemson beat Auburn. A man dances on the roof of his Honda in the church parking lot, chugging Cutty Sark, blasting The Rush Limbaugh Show. The creek looks weird and fluorescent. The neighbor girls play Lewis and Clark, molest a male Sacajawea. Then a peach sunset.
Let’s talk about this country’s problem with love. Let’s talk about the silver-haired blowhards on the street making deals, getting ahead at the office. Best case you end up on a feeding tube watching reruns of Jeopardy.
I thought you were the shepherd, you say, Eli.
Yes, but they are still the lambs.
I’m a lion.
No, you’re not.
Well, I damn well fucking am.
What were we talking about before Jeopardy?
Love?
I’ve formed a little band called Roy G. Biv. It’s a noise band kind of thing with a man who just stands nude, a girl on trombone with unshaven legs, and a man with a bullhorn named Finger. We are on the bandstand at the bar after a bluegrass act and there are shouts of hate and we love the hate. The main purpose of the band is to be despised.
Tuesday’s broken me. I’m out here on the poop deck looking at blue blank sky. I can’t find a bright side to this. I call her.
We could’ve done some things, I say.
Like what?
Walked out of restaurants together, not paid the bill.
That’s love to you?
It’s a kind of love, yes.
I’ve sailed to New York in my mind. Nice to be out on the water and look out at the old Lady Liberty and the new phallic Freedom Tower, a sweet erection up to heaven.
St. Blanchard is caught between the river and the road then dragged back to town by all the women whose hearts he’d broken. They tie him to a raft, pile yellow roses, and light them on fire. They love him but want him to never break another heart.
A fugitive walks through the football stadium filling with snow. A trillion stars flicker in the theoretical multiverse. Eli, I wonder if Jesus ever had a wet dream?
A fat kid brought a sword to the snowball fight. I walk around all day with my sweater on backward. The Holy Ghost creeps in the shadows of my house. I am under my bed and she opens my drawers. A Chinese woman named Nono at the snowball fight wants to ask you something, Eli. She wants to know your name.
Eli, you say.
I’m Nono, she says.
You stare into her eyes.
I want to play chess today, you say.
I’ll play, says Nono.
Strip chess, says Eli.
Set up the board, she says. Your move.
I have a dream about Tuesday wearing nothing but a magician’s hat.
Come love me, she says. Abracadabra.
We can die out here of hypothermia, I say.
You never want to do anything where you might die, she says.
In the hospital Boom wears a fake mustache with his chemo bald head. There is a fire at the travel agency and the acrobat with HIV is doing somersaults in the graveyard. I feel like Charlie Chaplin I’m so weak in the knees. I am fading in and out of sleep. Thanksgiving was a bust.
There is bliss out there somewhere. Take this, the waitress with the sapphire eyes from the Starlight has entered the confessional. I light a spliff and we chat.
A bear dream visits sometimes, she says.
What is the bear doing?
Catching salmon in the river.
Are you the salmon or the bear in the dream?
I am the river.
Eating is the worst thing you can do to your teeth. Living is the worst thing you can do to your body. The best thing for your health is to never have been born.
I only love the ugly pretty girls. Too much beauty makes me sick. If a woman has no scars she doesn’t interest me. The greater the flaw, the greater the beauty. I grab a stool and listen to the old men place their orders at the Starlight. One can’t eat wheat and the other wants his toast dry. A woman in an eye patch screams for Albert but no one looks up. Maybe there is no one named Albert or maybe Albert is tired of answering her. The girl with the sapphire eyes takes my order. Cup of coffee, black. Two eggs, scrambled. She’s in a short dress, blue, intellectual. Her father owns the place. She steals philosophy from the bookstore and devours men. Her real name is Honeysuckle, but everyone calls her Darling.
2
Eli, everywhere I go, dirty looks. These people that pray in restaurants before their meals. These people with their ideas about ideas. Asking me for forgiveness? And what are these people’s great sins? Men forget to put the toilet seat down. Women use up all the hot water. All domestic hell breaks loose and they’re pounding my door. Keep a clean heart, I tell them. Whatever that means.
Failure is the most interesting trait. Like the story of the serpent and the two orchard thieves. Sometimes you’re like Texas, Eli, one vast contradiction. Sometimes you’re like nothing at all. In the confessional Tuesday says I am emotionally crippled. How can the lamb diagnose the shepherd? These days this preacher could use a nurse. A morphine drip and a kind bedside manner.
The big moon, Eli. The supermoon. The one you’ve talked about for so long. Only happens once every four hundred years and now it’s cloudy. Boom calls and says he’s half in heaven and Christ has sky-blue eyes. He says heaven is 72 degrees and has really good Italian food. Let’s head to the bar with the dueling pianos, Eli. Let someone sing that awful, beautiful song by Billy Joel and weep. I feel I could rob a Dairy Queen right now, but I’m too drunk to drive.
Boom will never go fishing on a lake again. He is close to death but cannot die. He has been dying for fifteen years. I was asked to give him ease in his final months but he just keeps on dying.
Seize the day, Eli. Break a leg. Put the pedal to the metal where the rubber meets the road. Pull my chain. Pull a fast one. Pull the wool over my eyes. Put a cork in it. Buy the farm. Bite the dust. Eat my dust. Kick the bucket. Sharp as a tack. Stiff as a board. Sweating blood. Sweating bullets. Happy as a clam. Raining cats and dogs. Buckle up. Buckle down. Play with fire. Go with the flow. Easy come, Eli, easy go.
Things are so bad and then I remember the secular saints: Beethoven, van Gogh, the drummer from Def Leppard.
I am trying to keep to the root of things. There’s spit on the corners of my mouth. I’m reciting Lucky’s speech from Waiting for Godot.
It’s OK that you’re going mad, you say, Eli. But can you stop doing it so close to me?
Sports of all sorts, I say. All kinds of dying flying sports.
St. Simon is killed with a saw. At his wedding Jesus turned water into wine. His screams are heard a mile away.