Last Call

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Last Call Page 5

by David Lee


  and lastly, as I have neither faith, use for, nor belief

  in theological anthropomorphism, I have taken exactly that

  as a topic for intensive thought, study, and speculation

  since my recent visit to Big Bend Park

  produced one predominating conundrum, namely

  how many thrones do these desert gods need?

  That’s it? said Clovis

  The magic number being accomplished, can there be more?

  That is the overwhelming question?

  Most certainly not, paisano

  What must it be then, Mr. Eliot, I presume?

  The overwhelming question of the day

  which in this instance you must answer is

  where do you propose to drive this goddam truck

  to a full stop so we can step out

  and consume us some lunch?

  Can you handle that magnificent interrogative, sirrah?

  I shall put mind, body, and perhaps non-existent soul to the task

  and I scuttle to do so

  meanwhile pondering the depth of your proclivity

  Hear hear, well assessed my Yorick

  let us make haste to the appointed hour

  Hark, my genius of the armadillos

  before us I see Miss Lela’s Dew Drop Inn

  the winged chariot draws near

  Idyll

  From the lunch counter at the Dew Drop Inn while one customer visited the lavatory

  Yeah, Clovis had this dog

  that had the habit of running off

  and then getting lost

  so many times

  his wife changed its name

  from Ivan Doig

  to Ubi Sunt

  so he’d quit asking

  every other day

  where’d that sonofabitch go

  this time?

  he can explain in a minute

  the why and wherefore

  if you ask, yeah

  Pain

  Now how’d you do that? said John

  and Clovis told him

  about the pickup being stuck

  wouldn’t start

  how he got mad and put his back

  against the front and started it rocking

  then gave all he had

  heard the discs rupture

  even before the blue pain

  picked him up and threw him

  on the ground

  eyeball to antenna with a red ant

  that crawled up his nose

  and he didn’t care

  I’ve never hurt that way Clovis said

  it was the worst pain a man could feel

  Oh shit said John it is not

  is it Billy?

  you lain back down right now

  how’d you like it if I taken

  and pult on these tractor ropes

  they got you hooked up to

  wouldn’t that hurt just as bad

  or worst?

  and what if that one fat nurse

  name Martha Rae come in

  pull down your covers

  with her crapper pan again

  says Lift up you gotta try some more

  staring at you and you aint got

  no underwears on?

  you gone tell me that don’t hurt some?

  and everbody come in

  says Well that aint so bad

  mine was worst

  or My brother he torn his back up

  like yours and he still caint walk

  or His pecker still don’t have no feeling

  in it and that was twenty years ago

  or the doctor come in

  says We gone have to operate on you

  and everybody you known

  says Don’t let him cut you

  you’ll be cripple for life

  their uncle he’s in a wheelchair

  ever since caint do nothing

  slobbers down the front of his shirt

  nothing below his neck works

  all the doctor’s fault

  you won’t never be the same no more

  you gone tell me that aint the worst

  to hear truestories like that

  and you just laying on your butt

  in the bed taking up space

  from people that’s really sick

  no that aint the worse

  it aint even the worse I heard of

  I’ll tell you about some pain

  everybody knows about that feller

  set down on a crapper

  at Possum Kingdom Lake

  got blackwidow spider bit

  on his privates and the whole end of it

  come off with the poison

  but I known a man

  had cancer in the mouth

  hurt so bad he chewed

  half his tongue off before he died

  got blood poison and gangrene

  anothern had to chop his leg off

  with a hatchet to get out

  of a beartrap or he’d froze to death

  died anyway in a car wreck

  going to his mother’s funeral

  a year later so it wasn’t worth it

  and old Dan Walker

  when his tractor wouldn’t start

  hit it with a sledgehammer

  missed and broke his shinbone

  crawled a mile to his house

  and they’d unhooked his phone

  because he’s behind on the bill

  that’s pain

  but they’s some

  kindly hurts a different way

  sometimes even worse

  it was this boy in the fifth grade

  who was being called Johnny Mendietta back then

  he would of stoled his daddy’s pickup

  given it to you

  for this one little girl name Danella Hagins

  to say hello to him

  but he’s a Mexican and that’s too bad

  for him back then

  so he helt it in all year

  here comes Valentine Day

  what’d he do? goes down

  to Bob Collier drugstore

  taken and bought her a box

  of red Valentine candy and a card

  given it to her at the class party

  we all remembered

  because she cried and had to go

  to the nurse’s office

  she’s so embarrassed to have a Mexican

  do such a thing to her

  he never come back to school

  the rest of the year

  I think that hurt pretty good

  that aint the worse

  I known of

  I hurt just as bad

  over Thelma Lou Shackleford

  when I’s seventeen

  we all went out to eat fish

  we’d been messing around all day

  it was that night I known

  I loved that girl more’n life

  we all order oysters and horse relish

  except Thelma Lou

  she orders catfish and the man

  says You want that broil or fried ma’am?

  she said Fried

  I can still hear the way that sound

  slid off the front of her tongue

  I’s so ashamed eating raw oysters

  I couldn’t hardly hold one

  in my mouth and Tommy Wayne Clayborn

  ate his and half of mine

  slopped saurcet all over the table

  like a hog licking his fingers

  I watched her eat every bite

  of her fish begging myself John

  ask her to go for a ride

  but I’s too ascaired

  afraid she might say no or laugh

  when she’s through

  Tommy Wayne says Come on Thelma Lou

  let’s go up Sawmill Road

  she never said a word

  got up and walked off with him

  it wasn’t nothing I coul
d do

  but watch her go

  and that’s not the worse

  Thelma Lou was my sister’s bestfriend

  I known for a fact

  because Thelma Lou told her

  and sworn her to a life secret

  so she told me

  how when she’s twelve and come in

  first time how she never known

  what it was

  nobody done told her

  she thought she’s busted something

  bleeding to death

  she went in the kitchen

  told her mother

  her mother never turnt around

  said You get out of this room

  you shut the door behind you

  caint you see I’m cooking supper?

  I think that’s worse

  but even worst than that

  was Tommy Wayne Clayborn

  knocked her up and I think he done it

  that night I couldn’t say nothing

  on the Sawmill Road

  they didn’t know what to do

  everybody in town known about it

  before they got around to telling their folks

  finally Tommy Wayne told

  his daddy name Shirley Clayborn

  he’s the sheriff back then and a good one

  about the toughest man in town

  partly because of his name

  you’d say Morning Shirley

  he’d look right in your eye

  if it was sparkling any

  it wouldn’t be purdy quick

  so Tommy Wayne told him

  he said What you gone do, boy?

  Tommy Wayne said Gone marry her, Daddy

  Shirley said Is that what you want?

  Tommy Wayne said Yas she’s a hell of a girl

  and she was goddammit

  Shirley Clayborn called her family over

  they all talked it out and said okay

  if that’s how it is

  and nobody got his ast kicked

  like he should of

  when they left Tommy Wayne

  was just standing there in the room

  with his daddy

  Shirley went over and poured

  two glasses of bootleg whiskey

  he’d confisgated out said You want a drank?

  Tommy Wayne said Yas I do, I think

  and they did

  then Shirley Clayborn said

  Boy, do you know what’s worst

  than doing what you did to that girl

  in the backseat of my Chevrolet car?

  and he said No Daddy, what?

  Shirley Clayborn said

  Not doing that to that girl

  in the backseat of my Chevrolet car

  and that’s pain.

  All my life I’ve had to known

  I never had a daddy like that

  and it aint no way I know how

  to be one either

  and you caint tell me you hurt worst

  than I do about that

  and besides

  I busted my back up

  like yours

  and I think mine’s worst

  when I got home

  I couldn’t set up in bed by myself

  so LaVerne she put a screw in the ceiling

  we hooked up a comealong

  to help me get up and a belt around my chest

  so I needed to pee and I hit that ratchet

  belt slipped down around my belly

  I done comealong my back up off the bed

  I holler and here comes LaVerne

  she don’t know how to undo

  that ratchet and let me down

  she hits it three licks there I am

  my head and feet touching the bed

  and the rest of me

  pretending to be a rainbow with slipped discs

  me needing to pee

  the only way she could think of

  to get me down so I’d quit hollering

  was with a hacksaw

  neighbors a mile off heard me and come down

  fore she got me cut aloost

  seen where I couldn’t help it

  peed all over my bed

  I couldn’t do nothing but lay in it

  so don’t tell me or Billy about no worst pain

  because it aint never the worse

  it’s always something better’n that

  you can bet on it anyday

  besides, here come the fatnurse

  so you better be getting ready, now.

  Lake Hills, Texas A Tale of Rapunzel’s Lover

  Once in his mind

  an open window

  moonflooded

  upon a sweat and sex stained

  flat twin bed

  sheet curtain

  made at Postex Cotton Mill, Texas

  and shipped to J. C. Penney

  in San Antonio

  paflumped its belly

  against blacksnake wind

  crawling forty years backward

  into the tornado crazed

  Algerita Hotel bedroom

  of his darkest memory

  you just bed not go back in that place again

  she might be Eve in the garden

  or that Lilith or mebbe the bruja they say

  even though he knew

  he would find his way

  through the nightmare maze

  many times

  to learn if the story’s end

  might change

  she beside him

  lying upon a moon shard

  in the Duffy Hotel in Bandera

  instead of locking him outside

  her mind’s door

  where he stands, still

  trying to find a way

  to get back

  into his

  even now

  even then

  after all that

  Zen and the Art of German Engineering

  1

  For his 74th birthday

  Charles E. Carr, Sr. the Second

  received fifteen dollars in the mail

  with a handscribbled signature

  inside a Judy’s Motel notepad tear away

  from your son Charles E. Carr, Junior III.

  which burned an archetypal hole

  in his proverbial pocket

  until he went

  to Hamilton Drug Store

  found the Braun Electric Dry Razor

  he’d heard about on radio and t. v.

  said How much is it?

  Gordon Hamilton said Seventeen seventy-five

  Holy cow he said

  I bought a Remington

  out the Sears catalog

  for six dollars

  not that long ago

  That would have been in 1936

  said Gordon Hamilton

  the cheapest model

  I got one, too

  and it wasn’t worth a damn

  these ones are good

  made all the way over to Germany

  I only got fifteen dollars

  said Charles E. Carr, Sr.

  Gordon Hamilton said

  I’ll think about it

  come back and see me this afternoon

  Charles E. Carr, Sr.

  drove to Bill Edwards Hardware and Appliance

  two blocks away

  said Can you order me

  a Braun Electric Dry Razor?

  Bill Edwards got his book out

  said Yes I can

  it’ll be sixteen dollars and fifty cents

  including shipping

  be here next Tuesday

  Charles E. Carr, Sr. said

  I’ll think about it

  get back to you this afternoon

  drove back to Hamilton Drug

  said Gordon, Ign get that razor

  down to Bill Edwards

  for under sixteen dollars

  Gordon said Is that right?

  Charles E. Carr, Sr. said
Yep

  though I’d of rather do bidness

  with you being a neighbor

  but I still only have fifteen

  What if I sell it to you for fifteen fifty?

  What if Bill Edwards went to fifteen?

  I’ll go fifteen and a quarter, no less

  yougn get a quarter from your wife

  I can?

  Yep

  How’d you know that?

  What if I called and asked her?

  You didn’t do that

  What if I did?

  Can you gift wrap it?

  It’s a birthday present

  2

  On the morning after his 74th birthday

  Charles E. Carr, Sr. the Second

  broke out in a blood bright rash

  head to neck

  down his shoulders, arms

  scratched himself raw and moaned

  like a three tawn cat in heat

  his wife

  stuffed him in the Buick

  drove to Dr. Tubbs

  You got shingles

  said the Dr.

  Is it some pills I can take for it?

  said Charles E. Carr, Sr.

  Yessir, but it’s going to take some time

  said Dr. Tubbs

  How much?

  Dollars or time?

  You’re going to be taking penicillin

  and administering calamine lotion

  for at least a month

  on all afflicted areas

  including some you might not

  know about yet

  Month?

  Yessir and I hope your missus

  will come to enjoy your looks

  because you’re going to get downright scruffy

  not being able to shave the whole time

  3

  Forty days forty nights

  Charles E. Carr, Sr. the Second

  lived in his Barcalounger

  memorizing the schedule

  of every program on Channel 7 and ll

  Ding Dong School with Miss Francis

  Captain Kangaroo soap operas all the days of his life

  Queen for a Day Hopalong Roy Gene Durango Kid

  Cisco and Lone Ranger Howdy Doody

  Liberache and Tennessee Ernie Ford oh my both ways

  Serenaders at 5 Bernie Howell on the Organ at 5:30

  Douglas Edwards Edward R. Murrow See It Now

  Jimmy Issac’s State News and Weather from Lubbock

  Father Knows Alfred Hitchcock Best Loretta Young

  Ed Sullivan Loves Lucy Milton Berle

  Sid Caesar Dizzy Dean Dragnet Gunsmoke

  It’s after eleven o’clock

  will you turn that goddam thing down?

  Yes dear I wished you wouldn’t talk that way

  I’m getting real tired of this I’m warning you

  Yes dear

  his scruff sprouting through

  a peat moss mask of dried pink lotion

  splotches and patches

  in his lap every day, all night

  his Braun Electric Dry Razor

  which during every commercial

  sunrise to midnight, forty consecutive days

  in the wilderness of temptation

 

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