Chapter Four
“Blazing Saddles:”
FEAR OF OBSCURITY—the Moon
USE OF NAKED FORCE—the Stars
SLACKERS—the Mountain
WOUNDED—the Wind
How “As You like It” became As I Look Back
-- By the obsequious Blarney Stone. You have to be able-bodied to kiss it. Then you have to avoid the wildly flashing light, and do stupidity politics. Life as usual in the Western Void. I think I’d rather have my eyesight. But, what is there to watch on TV? I like the scenery around here, but it’s mostly evergreen trees. They’re green. Emerald green, you never get tired of them - except sometimes. I knew a Black boy baby in a stroller, hated trees, wanted to see ‘em rot. Housing those decaydent meaty wooden bug eaters, loin’ on their indolent piney sides, stretched out moss-smelling corpses fulfilling their final forest mushroom purposes.
Harmin was researching a book he planned on writing "sum-day."
“For th’ sake of th’ local Histerical So-ciety, heh.” He thought he'd compete a little with Mabel “School” Jones, poke and prod and get her to do better.
Mr. Boole meant to be thumbing through several Western novellas and local historical records, groping around for material he could turn and twist into a book of his own. “Like a rope, hee, Gabie my Mexican gaucho. You like th’ Old West, cowboys, sheep ranching?” “Yup. My grandpa taught me to twirl a lariat and butt-rope a steer.” “Ya don’t say. Me too; ma dad showed me how.”
Harmin waved a leather-covered tome. "Got a book here by a very fine Western writer, no money-makin’ perfessional like Mabel Jones, but a hell of an author nonetheless. From Boulder, Colorado, named Mr. David Johnston."
“Never heard of him.”
“He wrote beautifully about his own early times as an actual range hand in the turn-of-the-century western states. I’ll read ya some if’n ya like.”
“Hokay. Shoot with both barrells, because I do, and aim it straight, Harmin.”
Harmin Boole began to read Gabe a piece of the past, all about the personal experiences of a lonesome teenage boy and his brother Gordon at the truly colossal Wyoming State Fair of Nineteen-oughty-two.
Editor’s note: there really was a David Johnston, who in 1980, at the probable age of ninety-something gave me verbal permission to use this portion of his book, As I Look Back, howsoever I pleased. It pleases me to try and expose as many persons as possible to this lovely, homespun, and colorful work of Mr. Johnston's, who is now deceased and desist. I think.
Soon after we arrived in Douglas we learned that the fourth annual Wyoming State Fair was about to begin. Exhibits from the various counties were arriving Although Wyoming was not considered much of a farming state, many fine entries from Torrington, Big Horn Basin, Star Valley and various other smaller areas were coming.
In 1905 the Wyoming Legislature passed a bill to make the fair an annual event.
Bills would be voted on annually to supply the funds, since at that time, the failure had improved greatly. By the first day of the fair rooming houses, restaurants, livery barns and salloons were crowded. We had but one hotel, the Platte Valley, which had to be moved to allow the Burlington trains to come through.
The sidewalks were busy too, where old friends were meeting old friends not seen since the last fair or longer. Along the sidewalk on Second Street was a string of saddle horses in front of Abe Daniel’s. John McDermott’s, Pringle’s saloon, and Fatty Hardenbrook’s barber shop.
Fatty’s place of business was well known by the range boys who wanted to clean up after a long dusty ride, before a date with a sweet little country girl.
I think of Fatty’s shop as very similar to the modern-day chain store. A boy could take a bath, wash his head, get a haircut and shave all at the same place. Some of the people from far out were in early to engage in rooms for the week's celebration and to arrange for feed and shelter for the horses.
This was the one great event of the year. Those who did not arrive on horseback came by buckboard or wagon. Even the small boys and girls rode their horses or ponies to take part in the parades.
You could spot the old-time cowboy quite easily. A few still wore the red bandanas in the leather cuffs. But most could be identified by the big Stetson hat, cowboy boots with spurs that jingle and a pair of cute bowed legs. In the arena they used their angora or leather chaps…
“Beau” interrupted Harmin’s laborious reading. “Who was David Johnston, anyway? This stuff’s much better than Louis L’Amour’s. This Johnston bloke reads more like real history. Lamour writes fiction, I think.”
Boole sighed and wheezed to himself, putting hand over his mouth. "My son met him in Boulder in 1980. He was goin’ door-to-door to raise money for some poly-tickle group. When Mr. Johnston invited him in, he stayed long enough to look at his book, which was in the works at that time, My boy Garrett thought it was "just great, you should see it, Dad!" And since his b’lieved it was so great, he conned that nice old man, a widower, into letting him walk out of his only known copy of the book. That he was still working on! I thought that was fer fun, shore, but my boy said Johnston let him. My son wanted to copy down part of the book manuscript, I don't know why.
“I believe he was thinkin’ Mr. Johnston was never gonna take th’ book anywhere for real. He was planning on giving it all to the Boulder Historical Society. My boy wanted to promote his work, get it some pop’lar attention. It was that good, ‘cordin’ t’ Garrett. So he kept the manuscript copy for several years, setting it aside and forgetting it. He goofed, he said, unthinkingly. He finally mailed it back to Mr. Johnston, who wrote him right back and said it was alright, he had t’other copy all along. So.” Mr. Boole tried to glare small holes into the wooden tabletop, grinding his teeth and muttering to himself.
“That’s how he is, he puts off work forever, any kind. That's my boy Garrett."
“Huh,” spoke Gabe, who tended to keep to himself a lot when the person he was with became that gregarious, or that overtly hostile.
“Want me ta read ya sum parts about those Mexies? It’s right good.”
“Sure!” said “Beau,” who liked to hear stuff about semi-fellow Mexicans, at times. If it didn’t remind him of Donio, his absent father the college deserter.
More of Mr. David Johnston’s “As I Look Back”
About two days before fair, a Calvary drill team and a military band arrived from Fort D.A. Russell, at Cheyenne. They pitched their tents and cared for their horses at the fairgrounds. The drill team and band did much towards the success of the fair.
In the old days away back when there were no chutes in which to saddle up and mount those wild critters, it required to man to saddle up in the open arena. Often, some funny things happened. I attended one day when three broncos and their riders crashed the racetrack fence and finished their bucking in front of the grandstands. The men used a gunny sack over the bronco’s eyes and held him partly by the ears. The partner did the saddling up, which was quite a job.
The local bronco busters in that day where Sam Corington, Carl Hildelbrund, Jim Patterson, Gus Nylen, Dick Hornbuckle, Robbins Bays and Webb, to name a few. Pax Irvine, Peach Shaw and Bill Eastman were other contestants. Each day as the program ended the crowd headed back up town to eat, drink and be merry, visit the exhibits, or rest for the dance later. The most popular event in country life was a good old country hoe-down in the school house or an empty hayloft. Many of those folks were good dancers and did they love to dance! For six days and nights the show continued. The crowd was happy but beginning to show the wear and tear. Sunday most of them headed back to their homes, bunkhouses, cabins or sheep wagons.
Now that the fair was over, Douglas settled back to its old quiet self once more. My brother Gordon and I were concerned about getting some kind of a job. We helped Mr. Chapin, surveyor, do a little chain work but that was very short-lived. Since we had nothing else in view, we decided to try Wheatland and Cheyenne.
S
o off we went again westward. This time we hopped a freight. We found Casper very quiet. It was about the same size as Douglas and just as quiet. It was several years before the Tea Pot boom in the first refinery in Casper.
At Casper the crew going West was making up the train. We found another box car door open in a car carrying a little freight, so in we crawled. Pretty soon the breakman made us a visit asking for money. Money was one thing we didn't possess much of. We talked to him like a long lost brother and finally he went about his business. We had onboard a new crew, a new division in the new oil-powered engine. When we stopped at Waltman, a section house, the train crew got off and headed to the section house. We were getting hungry so we figured they were going in for dinner. We jumped off and got in line. For 35cents it was a real home-cooked meal; think of that.
As the train took off again we could tell the engineer was testing his new oil-burning engine. I was standing close to a large metal drum full of oil and hanging onto the rim. All of a sudden the man at the throttle opened up and away we went, hell-bent! The old box car was swaying and jumping like it might leave the rails and go loping across the prairie. And then it happened.
The engineer slapped on the brakes, the drum raised up and my big toe slipped under the drum. Oh migosh! I cussed the engineer to no avail. Guess he didn't hear me and still he might have. He slowed down. Boy, that I have a beautiful black big toe for about two months.
From the box car door we watched for anything that looked new and unusual to us. There was something; looked like buildings. Sure enough, as we got closer we made out some buildings and pens with light-colored animals in them; shearing pens and sheep. We decided to look it over so we tumbled off and found a Mexican crew, cook and wool tramper at work. For a little while we helped fill the painting and counting chute.
We soon learned that the crew was just finishing shearing the tail end of the last band of sheep to be sheared that year. There was no job there so we meandered over to the small store. As we neared the store we could see in the window afar some wild, wild women. Moneta was its name; just a store, girls and a bar.
Gordon asked the store keeper, a man named White, if he knew of any jobs around here. “Yes,” he said. “Ed Merriam at the Buck Camp needed some help.” We left at once checked in at Buck Camp.
At the camp we met the boss, Ed Merriam, a chunky, rough sort of man. Of course he sized us up as tender feet, which we were, but said he could use us.
My job was to feed corn in a trough night and morning and take my 120 yearling Merino books out to graze during the day. Gordon was helping with the band of ewes. Help those young bucks loved the Wyoming sagebrush. They took to their brush like a little boy to his first all-day sucker.
One morning as I gazed at the horizon I noticed a coyote limping on three legs. I figured he was dragging a trap or had been in a trap.
Our job only lasted a few days when the boss turned the 120 bucks I had in with the band of ewes, so they would begin lambing early in May the next year.
My last day I moved the sheep wagon to a new bed ground. The trails, or roads as they called them, were dim wagon tracks that led to some bed ground or in search of wood or water. Much of the land was free government grazing land. In some cases the owner of the sheep lived in Shoshoni with his family and the herder took care of the sheep. The owner had to keep the herder in supplies and move the sheep wagon from one bed ground to another.
That was our last day. As we were about to leave, Ed Merriam asked us to come back in May to help lamb his ewes. We agreed to do that and left for Shoshoni to see if we can find another job.
Shoshoni was much like a village. Some of the sheep men had homes there. There were a few stores, several saloons and sporting houses like most western villages and towns had. It rated one doctor. It was pretty much a wide-open place. A Mr. King who owned the main mercantile store was a relative of ex-president Jerry Ford. For medical operations, a good many people took the train to see Douglas Hospital.
Gordon told me later that he had worked for King some. He told me he was on the street one day when he heard a gunshot in a saloon across the street in an open-front building. A Mexican had bought a drink.
“Listen up, “Beau!” Harmin shouted, excitedly. “This is the Mexican part comin’ up!” Well, it did later, thanks to dirty laundry…or mayhaps Caza’s dreams.
AN OLD GIRL-FIEND of “Beau’s” writes him unexpectedly. How Jarring! He almost missed his lunch…
Once, he was madly, passionately, enthusiastically in love with Phoebe Sommers. But she gave him the empty air, whisked away his cane chair, and showed him the hollow door. After two solid and semi-precious years that glowed like amber heathfire gemstones……
Phebous Appolonius. City Kid Blonde. Queen of sky-blue clouds. Shortie. They were one for two years. No, they were two, occasionally one, when it was good, for two-and-a-half years. Then she broke it up to into tiny little pieces by telling Gabe she "always falls out of love after the first two years."
“You’ve lasted longer than any other men have, yet!” she exultantly squealed into the phone. She had a moment-by-moment consciousness of events. Out of dire necessity, Gabe was usually the one who remembered to use condoms.
For the moment, something was presently especially pleasant. Thus the excited Squeal. It was a noise Gabe naturally liked; she was part Swiss, strikingly lovely and capable of a still higher-pitched modular tone that took him all the way back to third-grade and his introduction to fingernails on a black board. He was the kid who ran right up front and dragged his short, stubby nails down the board, inching along cruelly, doing his greatest to offend the uncringing girls. Nasty he was, Then’s only way available to try to touch souls. He was a ho-lee terror as well as the Spitballer until somebody shot him full of hard tacks. Twelve stitches.
Phoebe Sommers was a Dear, Doo-Dah all the Day
The Phoebe Squeal never bothered him, not the once. But she leaned to leavin’ permanently, saying she couldn’t see him anymore because his hair “doesn’t feel right after a certain age, when it gets older, believe me!” And also because “I have to move to Arizona when the job I applied for sends the acceptance letter. When it comes through.” That meant The End. Gabe didn’t want to move to Maryzoneout. He had said so, repeatedly. WELL, twice!
The latter reason being surely the reasonablest one, Gabe having given quaint Reply, a little sarcastically she began telling him that…
“…my old boyfriend says he can no longer sit indoors without my illustrious presence, so I must calm him down. He might need me, I mean meet me, in Tucson. I need time, is what I’m trying to say, through all the Movementese, for my life without you.” Yeah, well, what could young Gabe say?
Three years later came the letter. Pasted hearts on the envelope, pink paper splashed with rose perfume, trademark Pheobe schmaltz. Inside, soft pink stationary with a fuzzy white kitten. Yarn ball, string leading to the words “Dear Friend:”
“I’m so miserable since we broke up that I can’t blue-and-white bear to go on living. Why, why, why did we always learn to go apart? What are we? All I do is cry my eyes out, every day. Gabe, I miss you, forever and for internity!
“Gabie! My sweet crumbly brownie baby! Where are you gone? I’m in living hell without your hourly insane magic spell. ‘Thout enfolding you in my…I mean your loving arms, mere declassified life has lost all its lucky charms…”
There are no worse words of similar rank sentiment, sweetly expressed in line after dripping, gooey, sugar-coated line, than those further. It seemed she’d gotten most of the phrases from the insides of rapidly thumbed-through Hallmick’s Greeting Cards. You could clearly smell the Limburger.
“Beau” idly threw the letter away, not pausing for a moment to consider if what he was tossing aside so falsely-casually represented a wasted meaning, an irresponsibly wonderful period of his life that could perforce decimate, involving a vivacious, snow-skinned, ski-sloped and well-worth-it beauty of a lover.
He only cared that she no longer stacked up to his newfound lady love, or his newest life. Thus, he never did notice the coincident proximity of his old girl’s current address to his new locale in Rama.
The ending of the letter had contained a succinctly tearful plea for reunion “or at least a doomsday letter of rejection.” Of course he never wrote her. Forget it! It was all her fault. He’d been willing to continue.
Base Medley in a Weak Cuppa Green Tea
Roughly one month later, on a Monday, Gabe was hiking down Guild Street to the mission for to pick up his weekly paycheck when he heard what he could’ve sweared sounded exactly like a very loud gunshot. BANGG!! It was behind his head, a zingy buzz, like a fast fly, zipping by and in the next moment, his lower right arm stung bitterly. His heart pounded a jackrabbit THUMP and rocketed into his mouth. There had been a second close gunshot. The bullet that hit him also struck a newspaper stand, ringing the metal. Loudly, was a TING?
Gabe froze, catching himself blessing something, something, but far too much for a presumably self-satisfied young man, and he gave the sniper a fitting length of time, by standing stock still, to make a good piece of work of him. He twitched not a muscle, looking straight ahead, imitating a patient statute. What if he simply stood there, exposed and motionless, while nothing more happened?
He was exposed 180 degrees on his right side, a sitting duck from any building, being as there were only for such buildings within any possible sweep. He turned his head towards the right, in a most dilatory manner, but defined visually every possible place the sniper wasn't shooting from. He felt a nervously obscene sense of misplaced, mounting physical pleasure. Then he determined to be fearless.
As he turned, his tightening heart was beating faster than the plastic toy drum he'd beaten for a year as a quietivorius, omnivorous eight-year-old boy the only toy, the funniest toy his father had stingily indulged him in that Christmas. His mother professed to several better purchases, but only after he prodded her. But that one.
For a Spanish dancer long moment he ached, absolutely, to know the certainty of the distant lifeless future descending, now, this very second, into his present. Swift, sweet death, perhaps, at long last! How ‘bout that. It done shot well.
He was almost turned completely in the general direction of the shots. Then he ached again, thinking longingly of all memories of the beloved Saragina. How odd. He even had a brief, fleeting thought of Artie. They'd miss him.
And his grandmother, too, crossed against his mind; but, as he could not so much as register noticeable surprise at this point, last night having been draggy and himself draggy with sleep, he decided to simply keep his wits and idlest dignity of a passerby about him. Instead of dodging and running, he slung his arms and strode forward quite composedly in the direction he was originally headed, to the mission.
As he strutted, he felt more excited and alive than he'd been in these last several boring, loathsome years… mayhaps my tinny blood was splash and lace the local papers… by next week. First it'll splash them, right there in the newsbox! THOSE inky people! What’s black and white and “read” all over? Huh?
His feet padded along as though cushioned by thick form, swathed in alcohol-soaked cotton with his mind, his head loosely floated into the clouds. Merciless to the sniper, which seemed to be his swinging arm. I don't even feel you. But once again he was growing an inexplicable enjoyable hard-on, an erection from nowhere embraceable…he was tempted to run headlong in the face of the shots, crossing the street, locating directly to his farthest right. After striding willfully ahead about thirty-five feet or so, he finally gave in to the latter wise-guy suicidal notion. His arm hurt too much. He waved his right arm angrily at the sniper, drawing his furtive attention. "See me! Here I am! “But he wouldn't cross the street.
Guessing which building whoever-it-was had fired at him from, he turned half-way towards it. He waved his right arm over his head, curving it towards him, the patsy target, inviting the shots, insulting the sniper. To wit:
“GO ON!” he, ah, shouted hoarsely. “Shoot me! I’m utterly helpless, I can’t stop you! You want me? SHOOT IT! What IS it? Here I am!’ He childishly ran back over to where he'd been when the shots were originally fired, as though he were the lust-crazed madman that he really was. Well, that he really was…
This was exceeding helpful. Another shot was fired. Gabe lusted. Such luck. It missed, just barely. Gabe thought, irrationally, that it made a musical noissome love song, a twirping pinging brilliant little ditty, a form of delayed, reluctant applause for his lovely act of brave defiance. And it missed him.
He now blatantly shook his fist at the tallest building, guessing it as the probable sniper’s nest. Couldn't see the roof. "Go ON, go ahead! Kill the stupid bastard! You got me, you bastard! You’re a stinking cocksucker! What’s your retarded problem? How’d you guess I ain't important? Shoot it dead! I'm WILLING! Get it over with, you slow-life stinkin’ SCUMSHIT!”
There was another gunshot, but it was much more half-ass. The bullet hit the sidewalk about ten feet away, bouncing off the brick wall behind him. It made a snowball-sized puff of brick dust. Then there was this long pause, and it filled to overflow with echoing silence.
He laughed, harshly…with a totally dry throat.
Gabe stood, arms akimbo, relishing the sniper’s confusion. Nothing more was happening, likely. He raised both fists skywards, so, and bellowed his happy proud rage.
“Well, there you are, you spineless coward! WORM! You can’t hit a lousy Spic! You FUCKING queer! What are you, a stinking girl? Huh? Izzat what you are, a lesbo, you goddamn Sunday shooter?” More silence followed.
But not so black a silence. Slowly, ghastily building in the atmosphere was this gentle, unexpected sobbing.
It emanated, hauntingly stark, from the alleyway across the old and familiar section of Guild he’d taken his Last Stand upon. Soul-rending, repetitive, slightly alluring sobbing. Female.
Growing recognizable. Caught and pushed to the nth limit, sub-human, wrenched weeping. It was both touching and awful, the wail of an abysmally lost, invisible Irish banshee, calling to "Beau" from an unholy netherworld reality.
Sobbbbb…sobbbbbbbbb….a man gets tied up to the ground, he gives the world its saddest sound, its saddest sound.
--Simon and Garfunkel, El Condor Pasa, 1970
Gabe’s angry raised fist began to droop. His arm unmuscled his shoulders sagged like sacks. A memory he'd shut out before came roaring forth to his heavy, clouded mind like a ponderously loaded incoming freight train…long ago, Phoebe had mentioned believing that she was pregnant, and how she was sorry she’d been coerced (by Gabe) into having premarital sex one more time. Only because he'd insisted that, she said.
Obviously there was one thing, at least, Gabe could not seem to push her into, in spite of trying. He knew she was a good shot; they used to practice at a shooting range together, regularly, for the sake of her self-protection. For later’s sake, as Gabe could not always be ever-present…
Abruptly, the sobbing stopped, tapering off; there was another odd sound, the scraping of a wooden board against a smooth floor. No more gunshots. Silence for the sake of peace.
Gabe felt his insides, momentarily expanded with presumptive masculine courage, collapse into fatuity. Mustering all his fading and deeply depressed energy, he exploded out into the street, racing over to the alleyway. Nothing and no one was there. Gabe's phony attack of guts dribbled away, a trickle of so much urine, of so much blood. His right arm was bleeding where the second bullet had grazed him. It didn't begin to hurt enough!
He stood, ambling stopping, but trash can, fighting a mammoth nervous urge to crash-hop in and stay there. What an utter slob? What a mutter… It could easily become his latest “permanent residence." There was definitely room.
So this is where sleeping around had led Gabriello. He was trash, miserable sucking hippy trash. The word "abortion" rattled around in his fevered head--did Phoebe ever say "abortion
?" Oh, God. Oh no. But… but it's not that serious, is it? God, I'm not a man! Or something. Ohhh, my arm.
From a swiftly proud being with thunder and lightning in his breast, Gabe has fallen to dust, becoming a pitiful, wicked, slumped-over spic villain, facing the probable insane truth of a hurt, scared victim he had summarily fucked and shucked heartlessly away. His heart was beating nonetheless, still in his throat, all but permanently shuttered and lodged. Said throat was hastily preparing a six-month lease and was getting ready to charge first months rent. Perhaps it would provide room and board, for a fee. Did his heart have the proper currency?
Look, down there—the gun!
He has spotted the weapon, flung down to the ground at the alley entryway, hidden in some McDonald's trash. He picked it up, of course. It was blazing hot, burning in his hand.
The name of "Prinze" spoke several gold-leafed volumes in his mind. He cradled the smoking gun, defeated, abject, almost lovingly caressing the deadly object, as though it were his tragically-comic dead, dark, terribly heavy stillborn child. All, all was his fault. He dreamed of swiftly taking his own worthless life. It might be orgasmic. If I were truly a man, or perhaps a god…
He raised the gun to his chest. A most precious look of elation filled his face, a sudden belief in the universal nature of humor shook his form as he realized that the warm gun was inevitably creating a spontaneous illusion of "loving" him. It was small and comforting in his hand, resembling a fuzzy black kitten. He inanely felt an enormous answering love, or perhaps it was only lust.
He stood silently forever. No, really!
He stands there, lost like a turtle dove, to this very day. No, Camera Two cuts to behind him. It's growing darker, it's hard to see Gabe’s back. BLAM!!! Oh, no, that was definitely a gunshot… he's dead! Shoot, Gabe. What a redundant way to go, when you had your whole life ahead of…there’s a third long pause, as we sadly wait for the shuddering results. But he doesn't fall. The “Beau” twitches a shrug, lifelessly but nonchalantly your standing engagement.
With a motion of a sleeved arm, Gabe tosses the gun from his right to his left brown hand. Then he turns the trash can, to his left, and throws it in. Paper rustles. What, he grits his little toofies?
The bullet had left a powder burn on his chest, mostly affecting his shirt-front. It had cut a thin line across his left breast. Now he had dual wounds.
He'd simply held the gun as though gently cradling a baby, and fired. Hey presto. The resulting wound was no more than a cat scratch, but felt reasonably, purgative painful, and incidentally made a realistically dramatic Zorro swath.
Gabe angelically smiled, soft diffused greys and half-tones surrounding his head with a symmetric halo from the streetlamp, framed in the limited twilight of the alley combined with the beckoning night. The picture was that of a lone wounded gangster who had won an excruciatingly tiring battle, and who would pick up his check tomorrow, at this rate.
Camera fades back to the sidewalk where "Beau" was first shot. An orange tabby cat skittles past the camera. All the noise woke him up, the poor thing.
Gabe, stepping forward, waltzed into the alley, shoes thudding and faintly echoing, step for borrowed step. Sounds that swiftly dismissed to nothing as he moved out of sight…Saragina DeSoto, mild-mannered dietician, ‘most fainted. However, she gamely dressed both wounds, the actual gunshot and the mythological one, the other inflicted and the self-inflected one. What if, she mused, less drugs used? Dappling with hydrogen peroxide, applying bandages, massaging muscles…studiously…taking her time, as Beau sighed in her lengthy dark-brown, supple arms. Drugs, Sara thought, stupid drugs are behind this again.
Great American Ditty - for Lovers who make Imaginary Children:
“…and if you go, I’ll understand
For something in dreams
Keeps holding my hand…
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away…
…please, don’t go a—way—aayy—aaayyyyyy…”
Gee, d’ye think it be a reference to Dying Young?
--If You Go Away, by an Unknown Songwriter
The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos Page 11