She was born into it. Early she saw everyone was born similarly. She lived in horror at the world’s endless supply of heretics.

Consuming confusion was brilliant in its entrance. The star, the yesterday, the livid hopes all under her banner. She entered stage center, dazzled and smiled the smile of small deaths and caught breath. Mississippi. A single precious tear from Gods face, a single drop of blood from Gods slit wrist. Seemed the whole state was confused, she never understood that. How was all a gods country so turned around. Sometimes she reckoned maybe it was in her eyes.

They were catching a bus Daddy said, but she didn’t figure as much. She held his hand, comforting him. Our Lady of Perpetual Grace was passed without so much as a spit. Daddy wouldn’t look at it. Catholics. Mostly we called em the harlot. She knew what a harlot was. Shed been one.

Grady was supposed to be around Carthage. Hard boys up there, Momma said. Last time he was around he gave Momma some of his teeth. They were always doing that type of thing.

Katherine Robertine Elizabeth Toter-Cobb We was all flummoxed by such a regal name. Mama has some history attached to it but she only showed us the peeking corners and dirty shadows.

She stole books and burned them after eating. It felt like eating anyway. Perhaps the only time she wasn’t listing. She wanted a hero, so bad. Her favorites were the ones who died at the end. Nothing confusing about that.

Katy-Rob they called her. Daddy called Momma pretentious. Or pretty contentious. It was one of the only times she looked at him with love. I magine she thought it witty. Her name was what they had tiffed about today, she went to the pharmacy and Daddy and me went to buy tickets.

Know when you gaze jupon a thing cher you change it.

I know that mama.

Oh youre so erudite, you.

What you say?

Momma was Cajun and though she was supposed to be so smart she talked just like everyone else, cept kinda dumber for that couyon shit. In every picture I every saw of her she was showing her long white teeth, like she was trying to sell something, maybe her damn teeth. Id seen Mama do some sketchy shit, one time she rented Grady out for 3 monthes. In the heat of demon attack mama looked lenocient, eyes seemed more black n shadows licked her profile. Face would be all fucked up.

“Feet pue tan, mi amor”

Mama don’t cuss

There wasn’t ever gonna be any bus, and she was startlingly not shamed by his lie. Heretics. Small feet kicked at a Fanta Orange. Katy-Rob couldn’t be sure if they was black or dirty so she looked up a bit. Confusing who was proper and who wasn’t. She’d heard some ministers ministerin’ on keeping birds with birds and cows with cows.

She wanted to scratch when she itched but she never did.

Holed up at the non-denominational she took a moment to do her 4th dailies while she watched the transactions. Time and money for peace of mind, she knew there was no equanimity in that purchase for how can you sell somin inside the body. Only time she felt that was in the rock and roll church’s, that precious theater inside her heart singing out the most amazing dance numbers. Gold and purple feelings. Like the Tigers.

Bus trip in the crisp suit pocket, they stayed for the Wed. prayer meetin. “Lord, clarity!?” is all she heard.

She let him. In her mind she wouldn’t say any of them words, though she knew em all. School want ever much of an option. She imagined she’d gone some 86 days counting Sunday school. Down in Delta Daddy drove the pickers and Momma would help her people at the gin. She guessed they also make juniper liquor, but she had never seen anybody so much as talking too much.

Usually she let em. Long as Grady wasn’t in the county or parish.

Carthage

Inside of the pain management clinic Momma wagged a smidgen more than usual.

The Cave. Yeah she felt like she understood what that peasant man had been on about. Inside of her the beasts walked behind her eyes projecting outward before the flame. Spirit. It was in there, everyone cept the great harlot believed that, maybe the Jews too. Nebulous, a shadow moving over the death waters.

She loved the swamp. Would try and draw it out on some papers she kept in a plastic sack. She would rub the expensive paper between her fingers and something stirred. The cicadas song was richer there, the air tugged back, weightier somehow. She felt like her house would one day be in the swamp, clapboard painted green with mesh to keep out the critters but not else.

Halogen Incense

It sounded like a side of deboned meat being hit with a Louisville slugger, he’d been there and few people went around with bats. Guns mainly. Breaking his hand had been a salvation. He thought he’d found religion but he’d found instead a boy from Columbia. Alerts rang. Grady felt drugs were a last option. Open but last on line. Everyone he grew up with said “in line” but Grady was careful with his mastery of what he considered the only separation betwixt man and dog.

Manfreid Israel Romele was Russian. Perhaps German. Older. Beautiful. Cement blonde. How is a fighter so beautiful? Grady knew.

Smoldering halogen incense prayed for them. Piss

The boy was a fucking nightmare. Glowed. Darkness. He’d seen it before. Everything was loose when he prayed, like the boy standing feet away, steam roiling off of his neck, with “Molon Labe” tatted across the front of his windpipe, where he got hit 45 seconds later.

The Chevelle was purple and Grady wouldn’t lean on it. Surrounding the Big Red Barn choking the purity of the moment were the ‘chickens’. Grady had said, ”clucking foul” but his folk just spit out the gumbo. Ancient and comfortable. It was more than he could bear of at time he would sit in the pot till he’d eatin it. Particles of hay and heat, cicada’s his private herald. Easy 220. Easy. Against his knees fabric calmed his fingers, he thought of his sister; the smile closed. He thought of Teddy on his horse, the pompous, articulate fool.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

So fucking obvious, like ham-in-hand. Natchitoches. Ham-in-Hand Festival 94. You could walk across the Sabine on boats, smells of the Cajun Microwave’s buried in the soft loam some 100 paces from the water.

He didn’t think it much, plied with Mozi, Xenophon and 1st Chronicles 4:10 kept him tied firmly to many things that were not tied to him. Buddha-less.

She scuttled over the grooved Cyprus, kaleidoscope of man reduced, he saw her; languidly absorbing the violence to come. Beneath her impressive multi-spectacled visage was her load, atwitter. Looked of fine hairs in a sharp breeze, her brood beneath her belly. She leaned back as if to sit or box or pray, front legs circling in the direction of bigger mans dead face.

Lawd have a way, boy you ready?

The man was fat, suspenders framing a whet shirt with no where to go came up on Grady’s boy Ara too fast.

Ok we ready?

Ill kill you ifin you don’t settle back.

Things was tight, Grady knew all bout this here.

Aight then.

Theys a bit a nonsense bout that bet?

No. Straight up.

Mine’ll be in money orda?

Fat man took on a greasy bugger as backward he moved, “that man fittin to fuck you.”

They were car black, and it really aint right, that type a black. Give em almost like invisibilty at night. And nobody wants that nigger-car black African-man leering bouts in the dark., like that shine you can see you’r flection in. Give pause and think about a black you. How fucking mad you’d be. Fat man giggled into his cerchief and sat down on a bale; he thought, looking toward the unimpressive white boy, that this’d be right soon over.

Grady prayed a bit, squatted and thought of something like a dwarf star painted on a canvas the side of the barn.

He knew the boy’d come over the top and heavy, he knew hed move left and the boy’d come in with a quick step and a lunge at his knees. All the cat in that man was now cutting its way to the top the breath was bull-like. The red rims mean he’s a drinker probably and he favored his left knee a bit. Grady felt sorry then. Sorry for his life and his momma, sorry for the man who was gonna try a kill him, sorry for the fat man who bet against his own kind, sorry that Mississippi water that he smelled on everything was growing less pungent. Sorry God was real and poetry was to hang him. Sometimes things seeded afor birth ripen when they aint wanted.

Bo

I read somewhere that poor people typically name their kids names like Unique, Kandy, Sherry and Amber. Later I read somewhere that girls with some particular names wind up being hookers and dancers and porno-people. People are so fucking stupid.

I guess I followed her around some. I remember the taste of bubble-gum scented shampoo and her face. We were protective of each other as should be expected. Daddy woednt too much of a provider, nor a daddy.

“I wish I was in Dixie, hurrah hurrah

Oh way down south in Dixie.”

She loved the word Dixie, long as I knew her though I believe she thought it more of a state of being, like glory or honor. She may ah never known it was holding all our heads under water. Grady knew all about it and loved it anyway. Some things just don’t figure. Soon as I could I got out. Not sure anyone else ever did, not really.

I remember him takin pictures of her holding onto a lit lighter and a squeeze bottle a lighter fluid.

I remember when the men came in and he couldnt protect us. He tried. Grady says, “tryin dyin.” I read an article somewhere bad things happen to poorer people more often, it was more nuanced than that but that’s what I got.

“Katy-Rob, bring us that phone.”

“your cellular phone?”

“We aint go no…little smart-alec.”

She was always doin stuff like that. I couldnt ever figure who she was making fun of, Daddy or our Democratic Republic.

Momma was a Rhodes Scholar, I do not know how.

The slovenly way she met my laughter got her a lick. She called herself red velvet, not a nickname her color. Said mamma was white as the driven snow cept a little Cocoa and a dash’a red food colorin. At a certain age I started realizing that I was gonna be mostly for myself, like my cousin Fay. I took to strippin like anybody’s business. First night in, this little Indian girl told me we do private parties, all naked. I couldn’t see much difference anyhow. It was illegitimate and the girls were indifferent to the men sucking on their titties and stuff. It just suited me fine.

I told Grady that he was to keep my little sister outta my world. There was only room in Port Allen for one of us.

The striker clicked down and something happened but it sure did not fire a round. White slipstream stepped quickly and quietly inside and hit the man with the gun in the throat. That noise is a thing. Everyone knew he’d done killed him. Grady remembered Niccki Bercham getting punched just so and dying,

There were eight all said but they slithered off, most of em anyway, to Bama and Nam and Peru. Doesn’t matter too much because once they left sight of the Mississippi River, they was good as dead.

Why’d they decide to try and kill him? Grady had a small warrant out on him that left the Boss little choice. That’s what I heard.

THeys four of us around and we all came.

Grady said they’d maybe come for one of us

They got Katy Rob two nights later, sent in her fron tooth wit they diamond set in it.

Similies was supposed to be a real swanky joint but it was not. Owner by strategery has built a damn motel in the back. Lord have mercy, sulphur factory. I went to pills in the first month. Once you have gonna church and believe, shit gets real hard to do…after the first couple times anyway.

Grady wadnt blood related to all the girls and he knew to divide his attentions. You cant just go around fighting the whole wrestling team. Amber was neck-tatted and out from around at 14. Our older cousins had done some strippin down on the redneck riveria and I reckon it called her harder’n dope.

Katy took to the hard life too but came back to me and Daddy, Momma and her never cared to talk to one another. She came back quieter and only wore beige and grey. She wrote long letters to Amber and cried some but I would have had her cry all the time if’n she’d just stay.

You'se too young buddy.

I knew you'd say that shit.

Amber drove up in a fucking Infinity with something clanking under the jappy hood. I knew Grady wouldn’t even look at her, not even one time.

Amber and me gonna go talk to Joe-Block. See if we can figure something out.

There wasn’t any reason to hate Grady for being what he was but I had me a weapon too.

I never knew a way to complete the things that cannot be completed. When I saw those men take Katy and beat Daddy, there was some sort of wet click and I seemed of a sudden to be able to see it all. The vast expanse and the precipitous nature of the wealthy and the bright left us all killing each other over a double wide and an abortion.

I watched myself, knowin somehow I had made a decision that was about being a man, about being a Cobb n' a Toten but there wasn't anything movie about it. I stole a ladies cruiser out front a the Winn Dixie and played with myself all the way to Biloxi. I felt greasy and popped a pimple on my back. Somehow the Ruger felt lighter the further south we went, like it was becoming less offended by its own.

I was in love with the purity of my little brother. He would never talk to me in front of other people but in private he asked after my girlfriends and me. Once I got a bit too graphic and he whitein up so I was sure he was gonna kill me. I think he’s still a virgin at 24.

Kidnapping

I had made 1200. I have no damn clue where that fucking money is now. Jessie and I were working on a routine, she had this idea for a ‘concept piece’ with Moors and an allusion to the Hearst family but we just wound up kissing and smoking cigarettes till it was our turn.

They could see her now. More whispers to Letty, “This place gone turn out.”

“mmm”

“Im gone go bump up into dat doe man and see if he got a piece.”

Letty smiled a ray of rancid rainbow.

5’1 or 5’3 he guessed. Wadnt no 5’2. Tatted up like her momma didn’t give a fuck. A little bump in his chest somewhere reminded him of another girl, another stripper, another piece of meat in the wily trades of men.

She caught his eye and may have winked, which sent Letty whom everyone called Lessy to the potty to laugh in the stall.

Men with huge dicks walk a bit different she whispered to man sticking a 10 in her g. Lets the whole world who cares to know. The roxi’s in her were turning everything a little less than, like life was amped up but she was at regular speed. Pulling his head she thought momentarily of licking his ear but these was Halibuton boys, fresh oft the rig and in Hub City to be jackass’s but not to take a good shower.

When she threw up the front row moved toward anywhere that wasn’t there. Same time a rukus in the john and a gunshot out the back.

A week later a tall boy walks in and politely asks after Robert-Earl. No one really wanted to tell him.

Everything I did the hardest I ever done. I worked all my life with Daddy at whatever we was doing then so I always knowed I could throw a bale a bit harder than most. I was always taught to be polite even if they wernt, so I thought Id just ask after Katys old boss. Figured with his lip Id go on ahead. His eye popped out with that first one, his ocular cavity crushed, and I walked toward the back looking at the mirrors for boys coming up on me. I know I punched some girls and I hope to high hell they aint no videotape a me but when it started in earnest it couldn’t be helped. I know one of em kissed me on the back of my neck while I was stomping on this colored boys. Heard later he got paralyzed some. Gottim a check anyway.

I learned that night why mama said them Carthage boys is hard. Robert-Earl. I had a drown his brother in front a him and it wernt no easy thing.

Amocitea

People said the Cobbs, least our branch, all thought on the same things in the same light

Inside of the pain management clinic Momma wagged a smidgen more than usual.

The Cave. Yeah she felt like she understood what that peasant man had been on about. Inside of her the beasts walked behind her eyes projecting outward before the flame. Spirit. It was in there, everyone cept the great harlot believed that, maybe the Jews too. Nebulous, a shadow moving over the death waters.

She loved the swamp. Would try and draw it out on some papers she kept in a plastic sack. She would rub the expensive paper between her fingers and something stirred. The cicadas song was richer there, the air tugged back, weightier somehow. She felt like her house would one day be in the swamp, clapboard painted green with mesh to keep out the critters but not else.

Halogen Incense.  I always thought how beautiful those two words were.  Like Cellar Door or Rise Up.  I always liked Aragorn's line in one of those movies when he said, "you are a shieldmaiden of Rohan, I do not believe that will be your fate."  Plain faced girl was worried that she'd die without honor and without her family.  We all worried on that.

It sounded like a side of deboned meat being hit with a Louisville slugger, he’d been there and few people went around with bats. Guns mainly.   Its just wet and the sound is hard, aint much more to say. Breaking his hand had been a salvation. He thought he’d found religion but he’d found instead a boy from Columbia. Alerts rang. Grady felt drugs were a last option. Open but last on line. Everyone he grew up with said “in line” but Grady was careful with his mastery of what he considered the only separation betwixt man and dog.

Manfreid Israel Romele was Russian. Perhaps German. Older. Beautiful. Cement blonde. How is a fighter so beautiful? Grady knew.

Smoldering halogen incense prayed for them. Piss hissed, boiled up.  

Hand still wadnt right but he had some new skills.

The boy was a fucking nightmare. Glowed. Darkness. He’d seen it before. Everything was loose when he prayed. The boy standing feet away, steam roiling off of his neck, with “Molon Labe” tatted across the front of his windpipe, barely visible on the purple skin.

The Chevelle was purple too and Grady wouldn’t lean on it. Surrounding the Big Red Barn choking the purity of the moment were the ‘chickens’. Grady had said, ”clucking foul” but his folk just spit out the gumbo. Ancient and comfortable. It was more than he could bear of at time he would sit in the pot till he’d eatin it. Particles of hay and heat, cicada’s his private herald. Easy 220. Easy. Against his knees fabric calmed his fingers, he thought of his sister; the smile closed. He thought of Teddy on his horse, the pompous, articulate fool.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

So fucking obvious, like ham-in-hand. Natchitoches. Ham-in-Hand Festival 94. You could walk across the Sabine on boats, smells of the Cajun Microwave’s buried in the soft loam some 100 paces from the water.

He didn’t think it much, plied with Mozi, Xenophon and 1st Chronicles 4:10 kept him tied firmly to many things that were not tied to him. Buddha-less.

She scuttled over the grooved Cyprus, kaleidoscope of man reduced, he saw her; languidly absorbing the violence to come. Beneath her impressive multi-spectacled visage was her load, atwitter. Looked of fine hairs in a sharp breeze, her brood beneath her belly. She leaned back as if to sit or box or pray, front legs circling in the direction of bigger mans dead face.

Lawd have a way, boy you ready?

The man was fat, suspenders framing a whet shirt with no where to go came up on Grady’s boy Ara too fast.

Ok we ready?

Ill kill you ifin you don’t settle back.

Things was tight, Grady knew all bout this here.

Aight then.

Theys a bit a nonsense bout that bet?

No. Straight up.

Mine’ll be in money orda?

Fat man took on a greasy bugger as backward he moved, “that man fittin to fuck you.”

They were car black, and it really aint right, that type a black. Give em almost like invisibility at night. And nobody wants a be around a pack a purple black cousins leering bouts in the dark, like that shine you can see you’r flection in. Give pause and think about a black you. How fucking mad you’d be. Fat man giggled into his cerchief and sat down on a bale; he thought, looking toward the unimpressive white boy, that this’d be right soon over.  In truth he would like to see that boy get fucked but he kept his eyes on the ground with that thought.  People'll smell that shit.

Grady prayed a bit, squatted and thought of something like a dwarf star painted on a canvas the side of the barn.

He knew the boy’d come over the top and heavy, he knew hed move left and the boy’d come in with a quick step and a lunge at his knees. All the cat in that man was now cutting its way to the top the breath was bull-like. The red rims mean he’s a drinker probably and he favored his left knee a bit. Grady felt sorry then. Sorry for his life and his momma, sorry for the man who was gonna try a kill him, sorry for the fat man who bet against his own kind, sorry that Mississippi water that he smelled on everything was growing less pungent. Sorry God was real and poetry was to hang him. Sometimes things seeded afor birth ripen when they aint wanted.

Boy pulled a dang gun.

Bo

I read somewhere that poor people typically name their kids names like Unique, Kandy, Sherry and Amber. Later I read somewhere that girls with some particular names wind up being hookers and dancers and porno-people. People are so fucking stupid.

I guess I followed her around some. I remember the taste of bubble-gum scented shampoo and her face. We were protective of each other as should be expected. Daddy woednt too much of a provider, nor a daddy. I guess she burned out that wild streak cause she came back directly.

“I wish I was in Dixie, hurrah hurrah

In Dixie land Ill take my stand to live and die in Dixie.

Oh way

Oh way

Oh way down south..... in Dixie.”

She loved the word Dixie, long as I knew her though I believe she thought it more of a state of being, like glory or honor. She may ah never known it was holding all our heads under water. Grady knew all about it and loved it anyway. Some things just don’t figure. Soon as I could I got out. Not sure anyone else ever did, not really.

I remember him takin pictures of her holding onto a lit lighter and a squeeze bottle a lighter fluid.

I remember when the men came in and he couldnt protect us. He tried. Grady says, “tryin dyin.” I read an article somewhere bad things happen to poorer people more often, it was more nuanced than that but that’s what I got.

“Katy-Rob, bring us that phone.”

“your cellular phone?”

“We aint go no…little smart-alec.”

She was always doin stuff like that. I couldnt ever figure who she was making fun of, Daddy or our Democratic Republic.

Momma was a Rhodes Scholar, I do not know how.

The slovenly way she met my laughter got her a lick. She called herself red velvet, not a nickname her color. Said mamma was white as the driven snow cept a little Cocoa and a dash’a red food colorin. At a certain age I started realizing that I was gonna be mostly for myself, like my cousin Fay. I took to strippin like anybody’s business. First night in, this little Indian girl told me we do private parties, all naked. I couldn’t see much difference anyhow. It was illegitimate and the girls were indifferent to the men sucking on their titties and stuff. It just suited me fine.

I told Grady that he was to keep my little sister outta my world. There was only room in Carthage for one Cobb stripper.

The striker clicked down and something happened but it sure did not fire a round. White slipstream stepped quickly and quietly inside and hit the man with the gun in the throat. That noise is a thing. Everyone knew he’d done killed him. Grady remembered Niccki Bercham getting punched just so and dying,

There were eight all said but they slithered off, most of em anyway, to Bama and Nam and Peru. Doesn’t matter too much because once they left sight of the Mississippi River, they was good as dead.

Why’d they decide to try and kill him? Grady had a small warrant out on him that left the Boss little choice. That’s what I heard.

THeys four of us around and we all came.

Grady said they’d maybe come for one of us

They got Katy Rob two nights later, sent in her fron tooth wit they diamond set in it.

Similies was supposed to be a real swanky joint but it was not. Owner by strategery has built a damn motel in the back. Lord have mercy, sulphur factory. I went to pills in the first month. Once you have gonna church and believe, shit gets real hard to do…after the first couple times anyway.

Grady wadnt blood related to all the girls and he knew to divide his attentions. You cant just go around fighting the whole wrestling team. Amber was neck-tatted and out from around at 14. Our older cousins had done some strippin down on the redneck riveria and I reckon it called her harder’n dope.

Katy took to the hard life too but came back to me and Daddy, Momma and her never cared to talk to one another. She came back quieter and only wore beige and grey. She wrote long letters to Amber and cried some but I would have had her cry all the time if’n she’d just stay.

You'se too young buddy.

I knew you'd say that shit.

Amber drove up in a fucking Infinity with something clanking under the jappy hood. I knew Grady wouldn’t even look at her, not even one time.

Amber and me gonna go talk to Joe-Block. See if we can figure something out.

There wasn’t any reason to hate Grady for being what he was but I had me a weapon too.

I never knew a way to complete the things that cannot be completed. When I saw those men take Katy and beat Daddy, there was some sort of wet click and I seemed of a sudden to be able to see it all. The vast expanse and the precipitous nature of the wealthy and the bright left us all killing each other over a double wide and an abortion.

I watched myself, knowin somehow I had made a decision that was about being a man, about being a Cobb n' a Toten but there wasn't anything movie about it. I stole a ladies cruiser out front a the Winn Dixie and played with myself all the way to Biloxi. I felt greasy and popped a pimple on my back. Somehow the Ruger felt lighter the further south we went, like it was becoming less offended by its own.

I was in love with the purity of my little brother. He would never talk to me in front of other people but in private he asked after my girlfriends and me. Once I got a bit too graphic and he whitein up so I was sure he was gonna kill me. I think he’s still a virgin at 24.

Kidnapping

I had made 1200. I have no damn clue where that fucking money is now. Jessie and I were working on a routine, she had this idea for a ‘concept piece’ with Moors and an allusion to the Hearst family but we just wound up kissing and smoking cigarettes till it was our turn.

They could see her now. More whispers to Letty, “This place gone turn out.”

“mmm”

“Im gone go bump up into dat doe man and see if he got a piece.”

Letty smiled a ray of rancid rainbow.

5’1 or 5’3 he guessed. Wadnt no 5’2. Tatted up like her momma didn’t give a fuck. A little bump in his chest somewhere reminded him of another girl, another stripper, another piece of meat in the wily trades of men.

She caught his eye and may have winked, which sent Letty whom everyone called Lessy to the potty to laugh in the stall.

Men with huge dicks walk a bit different she whispered to man sticking a 10 in her g. Lets the whole world who cares to know. The roxi’s in her were turning everything a little less than, like life was amped up but she was at regular speed. Pulling his head she thought momentarily of licking his ear but these was Halibuton boys, fresh oft the rig and in Hub City to be jackass’s but not to take a good shower.

When she threw up the front row moved toward anywhere that wasn’t there. Same time a rukus in the john and a gunshot out the back.

A week later a tall boy walks in and politely asks after Robert-Earl. No one really wanted to tell him.

Everything I did the hardest I ever done. I worked all my life with Daddy at whatever we was doing then so I always knowed I could throw a bale a bit harder than most. I was always taught to be polite even if they wernt, so I thought Id just ask after Katys old boss. Figured with his lip Id go on ahead. His eye popped out with that first one, his ocular cavity crushed, and I walked toward the back looking at the mirrors for boys coming up on me. I know I punched some girls and I hope to high hell they aint no videotape a me but when it started in earnest it couldn’t be helped. I know one of em kissed me on the back of my neck while I was stomping on this colored boys. Heard later he got paralyzed some. Gottim a check anyway.

I learned that night why mama said them Carthage boys is hard. Robert-Earl. I had a drown his brother in front a him and it wernt no easy thing.

Amocitea.

People said the Cobbs, least our branch, all thought on the same things in the same light.

The slovenly way she met my laughter got her a lick. She called herself red velvet, not a nickname-her color. Said mamma was white as the driven snow cept a little Cocoa and a dash’a red food colorin. At a certain age I started realizing that I was gonna be mostly for myself, like my cousin Fay. I took to strippin like anybody’s business. First night in, this little Indian girl told me we do private parties, all naked. I couldn’t see much difference anyhow. It was illegitimate and the girls were indifferent to the men sucking on their titties and stuff. It just suited me fine.

I told Grady that he was to keep my little sister outta my world. There was only room in Carthage for one Cobb stripper.

The striker clicked down and something happened but it sure did not fire a round. White slipstream stepped quickly and quietly inside and hit the man with the gun in the throat. That noise is a thing. Everyone knew he’d done killed him. Grady remembered Niccki Bercham getting punched just so and dying. He guessed he coulda just knocked the gun away. Somewhere, someone was probably holding a little nigglet waiting on daddy to call. Itd be a wait.

There were eight Cobbs all said but they slithered off, most of em anyway, to Bama and Nam and Peru. Doesn’t matter too much because once they left sight of the Mississippi River, they was good as dead.

Why’d they decide to try and kill him? Grady had a small warrant out on him that left the Boss little choice. That’s what I heard.

Theys four of us around and we all came. Amber, Bo, Katy, and me. Grady stood up from a Shaker stool he loved.

Grady said they’d maybe come for one of us.

They got Katy Rob two nights later, sent in her fron tooth wit they diamond set in it. Fucked up but shed done talked about rippin it out her own self.

Similies was supposed to be a real swanky joint but it was not. Owner by strategery has built a damn motel in the back. Lord have mercy, sulphur factory. I went to pills in the first month. Once you have gonna church and believe, shit gets real hard to do…after the first couple times anyway.

Grady wadnt blood related to all the girls and he knew to divide his attentions. You cant just go around fighting the whole wrestling team. Amber was neck-tatted and out from around at 14. Our older cousins had done some strippin down on the redneck riveria and I reckon it called her harder’n dope.

Katy took to the hard life too but came back to me and Daddy, Momma and her never cared to talk to one another. She came back quieter and only wore beige and grey. She wrote long letters to Amber and cried some but I would have had her cry all the time if’n she’d just stay.

You'se too young buddy.

I knew you'd say that shit.

Amber drove up in a fucking Infinity with something clanking under the jappy hood. I knew Grady wouldn’t even look at her, not even one time.

Amber and me gonna go talk to Joe-Block. See if we can figure something out.

There wasn’t any reason to hate Grady for being what he was but I had me a weapon too.

I never knew a way to complete the things that cannot be completed. When I saw those men take Katy and beat Daddy, there was some sort of wet click and I seemed of a sudden to be able to see it all. The vast expanse and the precipitous nature of the wealthy and the bright left us all killing each other over a double wide and an abortion.

I watched myself, knowin somehow I had made a decision that was about being a man, about being a Cobb n' a Toten but there wasn't anything movie about it. I stole a ladies cruiser out front a the Winn Dixie and played with myself all the way to Biloxi. I felt greasy and popped a pimple on my back. Somehow the Ruger felt lighter the further south we went, like it was becoming less offended by its own.

I was in love with the purity of my little brother. He would never talk to me in front of other people but in private he asked after my girlfriends and me. Once I got a bit too graphic and he white’nd up so I was sure he was gonna kill me. I think he’s still a virgin at 24.

Kidnapping

I had made 1200. I have no damn clue where that fucking money is now. Jessie and I were working on a routine, she had this idea for a ‘concept piece’ with Moors and an allusion to the Hearst family but we just wound up kissing and smoking cigarettes till it was our turn.

They could see her now. More whispers to Letty, “This place gone turn out.”

“mmm”

“Im gone go bump th doe man and see if he got a piece.”

Letty smiled a ray of rancid rainbow.

5’1 or 5’3 he guessed. Wadnt no 5’2. Tatted up like her momma didn’t give a fuck. A little bump in his chest somewhere reminded him of another girl, another stripper, another piece of meat in the wily trades of men.

She caught his eye and may have winked, which sent Letty whom everyone called Lessy to the potty to laugh in the stall.

Men with huge dicks walk a bit different she whispered to man sticking a 10 in her g. Lets the whole world who cares to know. The roxi’s in her were turning everything a little less than, like life was amped up but she was at regular speed. Pulling his head she thought momentarily of licking his ear but these was Halibuton boys, fresh oft the rig and in Hub City to be jackass’s but not to take a good shower.

When she threw up the front row moved toward anywhere that wasn’t there. Same time a rukus in the john and a gunshot out the back.

A week later a tall boy walks in and politely asks after Robert-Earl. No one really wanted to tell him.

Everything I did the hardest I ever done. I worked all my life with Daddy at whatever we was doing then so I always knowed I could throw a bale a bit harder than most. I was always taught to be polite even if they wernt, so I thought Id just ask after Katys old boss. Figured with his lip Id go on ahead. His eye popped out with that first one, his ocular cavity crushed, and I walked toward the back looking at the mirrors for boys coming up on me. I know I punched some girls and I hope to high hell they aint no videotape a me but when it started in earnest it couldn’t be helped. I know one of em kissed me on the back of my neck while I was stomping on this colored boys. Heard later he got paralyzed some. Gottim a check anyway.

I learned that night why mama said them Carthage boys is hard. Robert-Earl. I had a drown his brother in front a him and it wernt no easy thing.

Amocitea

Your Daddy aint gonna recognize you.

Still that little girl. When under all of it, peach flame tripped along at the word. She wanted so much for him to swoop, it was pure. A clean thing, her vision of Daddy just doing what all real animals did. Maybe he was too human.

That golden blanket that she just expected to keep on being, didn’t; and she stepped out really believing that they was gentlemen in this South, in this here state. One night looking deep in her own eyes while everyone elses in the room were on her crotch she realized that this southern thang was a crock. She spected Margaret Mitchell probably just cold wishin like every other Dixie brat split-tail. It was a precious pity that she thought in that manner, she thought…probably affecting her self-image or the like.

She’s hurt I felt. Hurt people, hurt people but with such a swirlin tide, a man just got to decide when to jump in, not if.

Once I heard that Grady involved everybody in his business, I knew I hadda get us outta town. I didn’t really think Momm’d come wit her doctors here and whatever else she was into. Since Id come back from the Wilderness I had taken to wearing full length skirts and not shaving. I know my flesh well and I knew that just like this skirt, I could put it back on rrrrrreeeeeaaaalllllly quick. And that’s the plan, back to the hotel to make us some money.

Half-way from the bus-stop to the club I thought just maybe I was being a bit drastic, but I cant remember what my next thought was after that.

Bo adjusted the mirror on the 91 Olds to see if he’d indeed gotten dip on his collar. A birth canal in the back seat caused him to blink for a second longer than average. The strip-club owners Daddy used to be a Marine and it showed. Punching and biting his way out of the trunk into the car was a feat, Bo’d be the first to tell ya. He’d blindfolded, zip tied and hit the man with 75000 Watts but this Minotaur was now in the backseat. Fucking Carthaginians.

They realized quick they’d done fucked up with this one. She prayed aloud all day long, was unfailingly polite and every chance she got she tried to kill em. Lessy had knocked her tooth out purely on accident but after he reckoned the diamond to be fake, he sent it to the boss. More had received some care from a witch the Dixie Mafia used for dogs. Little bitch had fought harder than any man ever would. In the end she’d ripped of a testicle and with that they put her in box. She calmly told em she couldn’t breath.

from gods slit wrist

Halogen Incense

Daddy stopped when he left her car seat on the roof.

She was born into it. Early she saw everyone was born similarly She lived in horror at the world’s endless supply of heretics.

Consuming confusion was brilliant in her entrance. A blinding that you tried to look through. The star, the yesteryear, the livid hopes; all under her banner. She entered stage center, dazzled and smiled the smile of small deaths and caught breath. Mississippi. A single precious tear from Gods face, a single drop of blood from Gods slit wrist, dropped in th mud. Seemed the whole state was confused, she never understood that. How was all a God’s country so turned around? Sometimes she thought maybe it was in her eyes.

They were catching a bus Daddy said, but she didn’t figure as much. She held his hand, comforting him. Our Lady of Perpetual Grace was passed without so much as a spit. Daddy wouldn’t look at it. Catholics. Mostly we called em the harlot. She knew what a harlot was. She’d been one.

Grady was supposed to be around Carthage. Hard boys up there, Momma said. Last time he was around he gave Momma some of his teeth. They were always doing that type of thing. They hugs was long uns.

Katherine Robertine Elizabeth Toter-Cobb. We was all flummoxed by such a regal name. Mama has some history attached to it but she only showed us the peeking corners and dirty obscurities.

Momma stole books and burned them after ‘eating’ them. She’d whisper that it felt like eating anyway. She’d say this every time. Perhaps these were only time she wasn’t listing. Momma believed in divine winds. She wouldn’t ever fight em. She wanted a hero, so bad. Her favorites were the ones who died at the end. Nothing confusing about that.

Katy-Rob they called her. Daddy called Momma pretentious. Or pretty contentious. It was one of the only times she looked at him with love. I magine she thought it witty. I know I did. After that look she went on to the pharmacy and Daddy went to buy tickets. I caught up to her looking real intent on some new tennis shoes on this dude with a Cat hat n’ those damn sequined jeans.

Know when you gaze up and on a thing…cher, you change it?

I know that mama.

Oh youre so erudite, you.

What?

Momma was Acadian and though she was supposed to be so smart she talked just like everyone else, cept kinda dumber for that couy’on shit. In every picture I every saw of her she was showing her long white teeth, like she was trying to sell something. Later I came to see she was trying to prove to the world she wasn’t poor.

Id seen Mama do some sketchy shit, some wicked shit…one time she rented Grady out for 3 months. Stabbed a girl in Germantown outside a Memphis because she was too high. In the heat of demon attack mama looked sinistral, eyes seemed almost all black and shadows moved about her profile like they was alive. Face would be all fucked up. I hated looking at her like that. You just wanted to put yourself inbetween her and that.

I wote a poem for her. She loved to dance. Long lines a sweat in every right place. Everyone looked at her when she was dancing… like they everyone wanted to hump ’er…momma had dat juju.

We leak through the clicks you clock

and mourn for the rocks

we see carried about

Demure with reverence

but cannot rationalize

just feel within

as we all watch our loved ones spin

to try and place an eye on the thing

That produces the suffering

and in this spinning habitual

it metastasized into ritual

and the dance

in its ignorance

is beautiful

lenocinant

sinistral

and i wish we could all be still

“Feet pue tan, mi amor”

Mama don’t cuss. Never would.

I loved lines like that. The whole lot of us lived on that line.

There wasn’t ever gonna be any bus, and she was startlingly not shamed by his lie. Heretics. Small feet kicked at a Fanta Orange. Katy-Rob couldn’t be sure if they was black or dirty so she looked up a bit. Confusing who was proper and who wasn’t. She’d heard some ministers ministerin’ on keeping birds with birds and cows with cows.

She wanted to scratch when she itched but she never did.

Holed up at the non-denominational she took a moment to do her 4th dailies while she watched the transactions. Time and money for peace of mind, she knew there was no equanimity in that purchase for how can you sell somin inside the body. Only time she felt that was in the rock and roll church’s, that precious theater inside her heart singing out the most amazing dance numbers. Gold and purple feelings. Like Mamma’s Tigers.

Bus trip in the none-to-crisp suit pocket, they stayed for the Wed. prayer meetin. “Lord, clarity!?” is all she heard.

She let em. In her mind she wouldn’t say any of them words, though she knew em all. Not anymore. School want ever much of an option. She imagined she’d gone some 86 days counting Sunday school. Down in Delta Daddy drove the pickers and Momma would help her people at the gin. She guessed they also make juniper liquor, but she had never seen anybody so much as talking too much.

Usually she let em. Long as Grady wasn’t in the county or parish.

Carthage

Inside of the pain management clinic Momma wagged a smidgen more than usual.

The Cave. Yeah she felt like she understood what that peasant man had been on about. Inside of her the beasts walked behind her eyes projecting outward before the flame. Spirit. It was in there, everyone cept the great harlot believed that, maybe the Jews too.

The connection with the nebulous. A shadow moving over the death waters. Spirit. All of us believed in it, we just didn’t know what it did exactly. People loved to say ‘god-bless’ or ‘Lord have mercy’ without any effect registerin’. To my mind that just made it a cuss word.

She loved the swamp. Would try and draw it out on some papers she kept in a plastic sack. She would rub the expensive paper between her fingers and something stirred. The cicadas song was richer there, the air tugged back, weightier somehow. She felt like her house would one day be in the swamp, clapboard painted green with mesh to keep out the critters but not else.

It sounded like a side of deboned meat being hit with a Louisville slugger, he’d been there and few people went around with bats. Guns mainly. Breaking his hand had been a salvation. He thought he’d found religion but he’d found instead a boy from Colombia. Alerts rang. Grady felt drugs were a last option. Open but last on line. Everyone he grew up with said “in line” but Grady was careful with his mastery of what he considered the only separation betwixt man and dog.

Manfreid Israel Romele was Russian. Perhaps German. Older. Beautiful. Cement blonde. How is a fighter so beautiful? Grady knew.

Smoldering halogen incense prayed for them. Pissing on the carhood altar.

The boy was a fucking nightmare. Glowed. Darkness. He’d seen it before. Everything was loose when he prayed, like the boy standing feet away, steam roiling off of his neck, with “Molon Labe” tatted across the front of his windpipe, where he got hit 45 seconds later.

The Chevelle was purple and Grady wouldn’t lean on it. Surrounding the Big Red Barn choking the purity of the moment were the ‘chickens’. Grady had said, ”clucking foul” but his folk just spit out the gumbo. Grady did not respect a man who watched blood-sports.

Ancient and comfortable. It was more than he could bear, of at time he would sit in the pot till he’d eatin it. A marvel of his power, kneeling on the commode in communion. Particles of hay and heat, cicada’s his private herald. Easy 220. Easy. Against his knees fabric calmed his fingers, he thought of his sister; the smile closed. He thought of Teddy on his horse, the pompous, articulate fool.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

So fucking obvious, like ham-in-hand. Natchitoches. Ham-in-Hand Festival 94. You could walk across the Sabine on boats, smells of the Cajun Microwave’s buried in the soft loam some 100 paces from the water. Whole hogs stuffed with chickens and doves. Grady wondered if dogs trusted smell the way humans subscribed to sight. It was over tween them and he should have seen it. Grady looked coldly at his need. Only the slightest of scowls. Chemicals he thought, chemicals and blips.

He didn’t think it much, to go to war. He was plied with Mozi, Xenophon and 1st Chronicles 4:10 early. Daddy leaning over him and pointing to sketches momma had drawn to go with the Gideon Bible which was in constant circumlocution with others of its ilk. He always walked hunkered down, tied firmly to many things that were not tied to him.

She scuttled over the grooved Cyprus, kaleidoscope of man reduced, he saw her; languidly absorbing the violence to come. Beneath her impressive multi-spectacled visage was her load, atwitter. Looked of fine hairs in a sharp breeze, her brood beneath her belly. She leaned back as if to sit or box or pray, front legs circling in the direction of the bigger man’s dead face.

Lawd have a way, boy you ready?

The man was a fat, suspender framing a whet shirt with nowhere to go came up on Grady’s boy Ara too fast.

Ok we ready?

Ill kill you ifin you don’t step back.

Things was tight, Grady knew all bout this here.

Aight then.

Theys a bit a nonsense bout that bet?

No. Straight up.

Mine’ll be in money orda?

Ara’d get it after the fight now, cause I’ll be on my way, Briar Rabbit style, gros cul.

Fat man took on a greasy bugger as backward he moved, “that man fittin to fuck you.”

Tingle. Mmmmmmm. Grady felt like Ehud preparing to assassinate the fat king Eglon of Moab.

Hear that Schvartze, eer dat fat man.

God give me a verse. He chewed a small hangnail.

Ha. He knew it. 2 Kings 9:20, 20 The watchman [a]reported, “He came even to them, and he did not return; and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously.”

The Lord gave this verse a lot.

Ehud and Jehu. Lawd have mercy son.

This boy was car black, and it really aint right, that type a black. That sheen of purple that made Grady think of dinosaurs and that painter Turner. Give em almost like invisibility at night. And nobody wants that shit. It’s like that shine you can see you’re reflection in… but it gives pause cause it’s a black you staring back. How fucking mad you’d be. Grady wouldn’t look at those shiny black cars, he even avoided dark purple.

Fat man giggled into his cerchief and sat down on a bale; he thought, looking toward the unimpressive white boy, that this’d be soon over.

Grady prayed a bit, squatted and thought of something like a dwarf star painted on a canvas the side of the barn.

He knew the boy’d come over the top and heavy, he knew hed move left and the boy’d come in with a quick step and a lunge at his knees. All the cat in that man was now cutting its way to the top. the breath was bull-like in intensity but shallow. The red rims mean he’s a drinker probably and he favored his left knee a bit. Grady felt sorry then. Sorry for his life and his momma, sorry for the man who was gonna try a kill him, sorry for the fat man who bet against his own kind, sorry that Mississippi water that he smelled on everything was growing less pungent. Sorry God was real and poetry was to hang him. Sometimes things seeded afor birth ripen when they aint wanted. He always felt tears was fine where laughter was.

They drummed him out of the military for being too young. Sure at that time it would be the catalyst for a life riding the dark horse, he considered killing himself but didn’t. Grady’d look in the mirror most days to check and see if it was time.

I read somewhere that poor people typically name their kids names like Unique, Kandy, Sherry and Amber. Later, I read somewhere that girls with some particular names wind up being hookers and dancers and in the porno’s. It bothered me it took two studies to not say that poor girls went to stripping a shade faster than rich ones. Academicians are so fucking stupid. Not only this but everyone knew that strippers changed their names. I thought then and think now I should be in charge of a hair more.

I guess I followed her around some. I remember the taste of bubble-gum scented shampoo and her face. We were protective of each other as should be expected. Daddy woednt too much of a provider, nor a daddy. I guess she burned out that wild streak cause she came back directly.

“I wish I was in Dixie, hurrah hurrah

In Dixie land Ill take my stand to live and die in Dixie.

Oh way

Oh way

Oh way down south..... in Dixie.”

She loved the word Dixie, long as I knew her though I believe she thought it more of a state of being, like glory or honor. She may ah never known it was holding all our heads under water. Grady knew all about it and loved it anyway. Some things just don’t figure. Soon as I could I got out. Not sure anyone else ever did, not really.

I remember him takin pictures of her holding onto a lit lighter and a squeeze bottle a lighter fluid.

I remember when the men came in and he couldn’t protect us. He tried. Grady says, “tryin dyin.”

I read an article somewhere bad things happen to poorer people more often, it was more nuanced than that but that’s what I got.

“Katy-Rob, bring us that phone.”

“your cellular phone?”

“We aint go no…little smart-alec.”

She was always doin stuff like that. I couldn’t ever figure who she was making fun of, Daddy or this Democratic Republic. Maybe Jonny Locke.

Momma was a Rhodes Scholar, I do not know how.

The slovenly way she met my laughter got her a lick. She called herself red velvet, not a nickname, her color. Said mamma was white as the driven snow cept a little Cocoa and a dash’a red food colorin. At a certain age I started realizing that I was gonna be mostly for myself, like my cousin Fay. I took to strippin like anybody’s business. First night in, this little Indian girl told me we do private parties, all naked. I couldn’t see much difference anyhow. It was illegitimate and the girls were indifferent to the men sucking on their titties and stuff. It just suited me fine.

I told Grady that he was to keep my little sister outta my world. There was only room in Carthage for one Cobb stripper.

The striker clicked down and something happened but it sure did not fire a round. White slipstream stepped quickly and quietly inside and hit the man with the gun in the throat. That noise is a thing. Everyone knew he’d done killed him. Grady remembered Niccki Bercham getting punched just so and dying. He guessed he coulda just knocked the gun away. Somewhere, someone was probably holding a little nigglet, waiting on daddy to call. It’d be a wait.

There were eight Cobbs all said but they slithered off, most of em anyway, to Bama and Nam and Peru. Doesn’t matter too much because once they left sight of the Mississippi River, they was good as dead.

Why’d they decide to try and kill him? Grady had a small warrant out on him that left the Boss little choice. That’s what I heard.

Theys four of us around and we all came. Amber, Bo, Katy, and me. Grady stood up from a Shaker stool he loved.

Grady said they’d maybe come for one of us.

They got Katy Rob two nights later, sent in her fron tooth wit they diamond set in it. Fucked up but shed done talked about rippin it out her own self.

Similies was supposed to be a real swanky joint but it was not. Owner by strategery has built a damn motel in the back. Lord have mercy, sulphur factory. I went to pills in the first month. Once you have gonna church and believe, shit gets real hard to do…after the first couple times anyway.

Grady wasn’t blood related to all the girls and he knew to divide his attentions. You cant just go around fighting the whole wrestling team. Amber was neck-tatted and out from around at 14. Our older cousins had done some strippin down on the redneck riveria and I reckon it called her harder’n dope.

Katy took to the hard life too but came back to me and Daddy, Momma and her never cared to talk to one another. She came back quieter and only wore beige and grey. She wrote long letters to Amber and cried some but I would have had her cry all the time if’n she’d just stay.

You'se too young buddy.

I knew you'd say that shit.,

Amber drove up in a fucking Infinity with something clanking under the jappy hood. I knew Grady wouldn’t even look at her, not even one time.

Amber and me gonna go talk to Joe-Block. See if we can figure something out.

There wasn’t any reason to hate Grady for being what he was but I had me a weapon too.

I never knew a way to complete the things that others completed. I reckon I’m slow or I ain’t totally grown up yet. Somin’. When I saw those men take Katy and beat Daddy, there was some sort of wet click and I seemed of a sudden to be able to see it all. The vast expanse and the precipitous nature of the wealthy and the bright. left us all killing each other over a double wide and an abortion.

I watched myself, knowin somehow I had made a decision that was about being a man, about being a Cobb n' a Toten but there wasn't anything movie about it. I stole a ladies cruiser out front a the Winn Dixie and played with myself all the way to Biloxi. I felt greasy and popped a pimple on my back. Somehow the Ruger felt lighter the further south we went, like it was becoming less offended by its own.

I was in love with the purity of my little brother. He would never talk to me in front of other people but in private he asked after my girlfriends and me. Once I got a bit too graphic and he white’nd up so I was sure he was gonna kill me. I think he’s still a virgin at 24.

I had made 1200. I have no damn clue where that fucking money is now. Jessie and I were working on a routine, she had this idea for a ‘concept piece’ with Moors and an allusion to the Hearst family but we just wound up kissing and smoking cigarettes till it was our turn.

They could see her now. More whispers to Letty, “This place gone turn out.”

“mmm”

“Im gone go bump th doe man and see if he got a piece.”

Letty smiled a ray of rancid rainbow.

5’1 or 5’3 he guessed. Wadnt no 5’2. Tatted up like her momma didn’t give a fuck. A little bump in his chest somewhere reminded him of another girl, another stripper, another piece of meat in the wily trades of men.

She caught his eye and may have winked, which sent Letty whom everyone called Lessy to the potty to laugh in the stall.

Men with huge dicks walk a bit different she whispered to a man sticking a 10 in her g. Lets the whole world who cares to know. The roxi’s in her were turning everything a little less than, like life was amped up but she was at regular speed. She kept seeing > signs. In the glass of the bowl, in her reflective panties, in her eyes in the cracke john mirra. Pulling his head she thought momentarily of licking his ear but these was Halliburton boys, fresh oft the rig and in Hub City to be jackass’s but not to take a good shower.

When she threw up the front row moved toward anywhere that wasn’t there. Same time a rukus in the commode and a gunshot out the back.

A week later a tall boy walks in and politely asks after Robert-Earl. No one really wanted to tell him.

Everything I did the hardest I ever done. I worked all my life with Daddy at whatever we was doing then so I always knowed I could throw a bale a bit harder than most. I was always taught to be polite even if they weren’t, so I thought Id just ask after Katys old boss. Figured with his lip Id go on ahead. His eye popped out with that first one, his ocular cavity crushed, and I walked toward the back looking at the mirrors for boys coming up on me. I know I punched some girls and I hope to high hell they aint no videotape a me but when it started in earnest it couldn’t be helped. I know one of em kissed me on the back of my neck while I was stomping on this colored boys. Heard later he got paralyzed some. Gottim a check anyway.

I learned that night why mama said them Carthage boys is hard. Robert-Earl. I had a drown his brother in front a him and it wernt no easy thing.

Amocitea

Your Daddy aint gonna recognize you.

Still that little girl. When under all of it, peach flame tripped along at the word. She wanted so much for him to swoop, it was pure. A clean thing, her vision of Daddy just doing what all real animals did. Maybe he was too human.

That golden blanket that she just expected to keep on being, didn’t; and she stepped out really believing that they was gentlemen in this South, in this here state. One night looking deep in her own eyes while everyone elses in the room were on her crotch she realized that this southern thang was a crock. She spected Margaret Mitchell probably just cold wishin like every other Dixie brat split-tail. It was a precious pity that she thought in that manner, she thought…probably affecting her self-image or the like.

She’s hurt I felt. Hurt people, hurt people but with such a swirlin tide, a man just got to decide when to jump in, not if.

Once I heard that Grady involved everybody in his business, I knew I hadda get us outta town. I didn’t really think Momm’d come wit her doctors here and whatever else she was into. Since Id come back from the Wilderness I had taken to wearing full length skirts and not shaving. I know my flesh well and I knew that just like this skirt, I could put it back on rrrrrreeeeeaaaalllllly quick. And that’s the plan, back to the hotel to make us some money.

Half-way from the bus-stop to the club I thought just maybe I was being a bit drastic, but I cant remember what my next thought was after that.

Bo adjusted the mirror on the 91 Olds to see if he’d indeed gotten dip on his collar. A birth canal in the back seat caused him to blink for a second longer than average. The strip-club owners Daddy used to be a Marine and it showed. Punching and biting his way out of the trunk into the car was a feat, Bo’d be the first to tell ya. He’d blindfolded, zip tied and hit the man with 75000 Watts but this Minotaur was now in the backseat. Fucking Carthaginians.

They realized quick they’d done fucked up with this one. She prayed aloud all day long, was unfailingly polite and every chance she got she tried to kill em. Lessy had knocked her tooth out purely on accident but after he reckoned the diamond to be fake, he sent it on to the boss. Almost all his spare time went to kittens. More had received some care from a witch the Dixie Mafia used for dogs. Little bitch had fought harder than any man ever would. In the end she’d ripped off a testicle and with that they put her in box. She calmly told em she couldn’t breath.

I hada shoot him through the seat and we wrecked. He was hurt even worse, so I lit a floor mat afire and ran off in the other directin than Angola, Fuck that, Daddy’d worked there as a guard for 3 days till they done found out he’d been in Parchman for vehicular homicide. Mamma said that great clouds a nephalim hung over those places. I couldn’t see them but I smelled em. Mamma and Katy-Rob always had eyes for that type of thing. Maybe they both lyin though.

I figured theyd run they dogs from around the car so I needed to get gone.

Did not like taken anything from white folks, I did not know how I was gonna pay for that ladies car I done wrecked but it’d get done. The little Kawasaki three wheeler cranked up nice and I left them my hunting license to show good faith.

You aint gonna believe this shit.

Francis-Jean Prichideaux III really could have done without hearing another person say that. It seemed to preface every comment. As a boy he’d felt something akin to the feeling he had now when other nut-brown Acadian boy’s ud say, “Wanna see something…hold my beer.”

Nothing good eva come outta dem type a commentary’s.

What?

Claudius came over with a note. Says here that Similies had another big da-doo.

Whan?

Last night.

Itd been 2 weeks since they colored boys come up in that terrible place and Blanc Bebbette got taken, now what dis shit?

Dixie Mafia used for dogs. Little bitch had fought harder than any man ever would. In the end she’d ripped off a testicle and with that they put her in box. She calmly told em she couldn’t breath. More heard, “I feel free.” thought long and hard about that medicine Melodina gave him, the plan was he was, of a time, to go back. ER out the wustion. She told him he could still sire a brood, if he chose.

Right now the chose was in nose. That moment, eternal, universal, when you know for certain that thing are bout to get lit.

I hada shoot him through the seat and we wrecked. He was hurt even worse, so I lit a floor mat afire and ran off in the other directin than Angola, Fuck that, Daddy’d worked there as a guard for 3 days till they done found out he’d been in Parchman for vehicular homicide. Mamma said that great clouds a nephalim hung over those places. I couldn’t see them but I smelled em. Mamma and Katy-Rob always had eyes for that type of thing. Maybe they both lyin though.

I figured theyd run they dogs from around the car so I needed to get gone.

Did not like taken anything from white folks I did not know how I was gonna pay for that ladies car I done wrecked but it’d get done. The little Kawasaki three wheeler cranked up nice and I left them my hunting license to show good faith.

You aint gonna believe this shit.

Francis-Jean Prichideaux III really could have done without hearing another person say that. It seemed to preface every comment. As a boy he’d felt something akin to the feeling he had now when other nut-brown Acadian boy’s ud say, “Wanna see something…hold my beer.”

Nothing good eva come outta dem type a commentary’s.

What?

Claudius came over with a note. Says here that Similies had another big da-doo.

Whan?

Last night.

Itd been 2 weeks since them colored boys come up in that terrible place and Blanc Bebbette got taken, now what dis shit? Least he didn’t have any crackers around to be yapping about…”oh what now you gonna do colored ssherrff”

The problem we have with God honey is related to expectations and not based in the hard VERITAS of life. See here, what happens when youo to church?

I listen to the preacher

Right, sure but when you’re singing a good Hallelujah song. Or something real once make you cry every time. That jut Him leeting us know that we are cared for.s like that one goes, “Lord You are more precious than silver…

Lord You are more costly than gold.

Together, “Lord You are more beautiful than diamonds.

And nothing I desire compares to You.”

Lord, honey you have a voice like angel blast-furnace. When you get that deep purple swell….

Purple and Gold.

Yesssa, and that is the real thing and it is a thing that belongs in this world yet has a hand fully in the next. But what you looking for there is that feeling to keep on keepin on.

Yessir.

But it don’t.

No.

Is that Gods problem or yours?

I feel like sometimes it is Him.

Cause you just go home and go straight to sinning.

And I wonder why in all His Greatness, I just can’t get a little help in that department.

But you care don’t ya?

I care a great deal. I expect it’s my conscience.

Yes. But a conscience ain’t a stopper, it’s just a fuse light indicator.

So then where’s the stopper?

That’s the catch.

Meaning its all up to me.

Honey, you ever look at a real life hero?

Maybe Rooster Carley?

Hmm. Ain’t none. He died 2000 years ago, therebouts. Now we just hunker down. Oh you gone sin. I’m gone sin. Yo Mamma, Lawd have a way. Its not about ‘not doin’ its about accepting your place in grace.

My place in grace.

From behind him mamma stepped, lightly, elegant specter. White on white on white, yet the air hovered lightly around it as if mistrusting. Mama’s essence was rebellion. Born with a dead twin boy, she lay never crying once in granny’s arms. Said she wouldn’t look nobody in the eye. They was alarmed from the get go. Mamma was said to have spent some of her teen years in Walnut Gove. She supposed to have found God in there, in the gladiator school. Once when she came home to the Shady Acres #3 after being out for a minute, she took me and we sat behind the dumpster; she told me about the first love of her life while she smoked up a cool bill a rock. Some people get all crazy scared of people on hard drugs, like they got special powers or summin. I ain’t but but a buck and change and I’m telling you I have cold knocked fuckers out who go too close. It’s best just to warn white folks up front, but when mamma slumming or Im at school and we dealing wit regular street niggas, I just stay loose, if mamma grab and go…then well, Im just down wit mine.

Oh Daddy.

I love my Daddy…

What are ya’ll ssscheming on. Lemme see your billfold.

Daddy’s trying to tell me all the war we got with sin is just an illusion.

Woman, that’s not what I said.

That we have to learn to accept our weakness as part of life. And personally for me, cause I listen to all them preachers and I read all them books and I pray on the Bible…I do it all with a knife in my belt and Im down for the clan but I do not wanna keep on living this way.

Ooh its one of them talks, you…what your daddy is remise in sharing is that there are other forces at work in this world.

NO.

Well talk later honey.

We never did.

I believe Mamma occupies some special place in this world, like a gold key that is made for just one lock, the most magnificent things await behind it; but you put that fucker in your back pocket with a handkerchief and they key is lost in the Misty Mountains. Myrrh and aloe and decay and female sex and the heat after summer rain and moss and Cyprus and dawn and linen white. Mamma mind was fine. Mammas body was the problem. She worshipped it to hurt her.

She saw a movie once at the Motel 6 in Latham Springs Texas called Jennifer’s Body, she said that though the metaphor was sloppy and the genre “totally LA” a poor excuse, yet she understood that somehow this connected us, because I was watching her becoming self aware.

Of an aspect only I believe, but a crack in the wall blinked a purple light in my eye and I realized that indeed “the affections of the heart are Divine”. If God dropped the veil once in a while, it somehow ran through my mother.

But even though I am slower than other folks, I can tell you that if Daddy believes that things are moving behind the scenes and mamma sees em too. Man, these things are making them worse…not better.

Man out of trunk

Boy wrecks.

Runs into St Francisville swamp

The kidnapping event

Tearing the tooth

Too much “arm” dead girl

Grady gets pickeup

Amber breaks him out

Bo meets someone unexpected

Daddys lie

Gradys brother is Robert Earl.

Daddys bet

I mean what-the-fuck…Man, these things are making them worse…not better.

CH 5 How

The elders came over to see Mamma. Her and Daddy were lying around, as per usual. The elders song was tied to Mama, daddy never heard it. We all believed Daddy may still be kindling. Daddy was reading Jesus’ Son, he’d stole a copy from the Senatobia library. Daddy and Momma were compulsive thieves. They burned shit too.

The kid weren’t old enough to even be in the club. Somin bout his bold face made the whole ordeal seem like one of those dreams where your arms aint working, or plumb slow. The slinky way the boy moved wernt normal. Whisp-o-white. Quarter to two. Almost made it out. Eyeball hanging, dripping face juice just made the absurd more so. He had a crew cut that wernt lined up, maybe 170. His semi-angelic countenance a bit demonic. Titanium his white. Everything else was neon to his reality. Dancing it seemed. Footwork like one of those Latin dancer wit the thick legs. Yelawolf screaming over the top of dull restlessness in which they all seemed to move cept the kid.

He's watching every move, high-tech redneck.

Run up on him if you want to, i be ready, come on.

It might be dark in the woods. But the lights are on.

The money's counted, and if the price is wrong.

Well then, Billy will get them Gremlins like Spielberg.

He'll take your house down, off of them pillars.

And take your mom to sizzler, and feed her chicken liver.

That's cold blooded love, Billy's a chiller.

He seemed to hover back a bit from each confrontation, legs not resting under but before him. Hands mostly by his sides clenching and unclenching till hed dipped under, around or back and hurled a flurry from shit covered purple. It wasn’t slow motion but there were two different speeds at work in this fight and this white boy was working on a chain with a warped part. Cane syrup then invisible.

Terry-Lee stayed back in the shadow by the john with a hard-on. They aint no way, he thought. He kept his face open, confident of his depth perception. Most of the boys had run off. Some had stayed to get a lick in on either side, but Bo seemed to not need no help. Almost every time he swayed back and forward someone went down. The air in Similies was thick, music deafening and some boys was bad hurt .

4:30 in the A.M., Billy ain't slept for days.

Gotta keep up with the profit, gotta keep up with the craze.

It's a heavy shade, gotta walk through the maze.

Down where the sun don't shine, and the palm trees sway.

And when the wind blew, and the cradle fell.

Down come baby Billy, and up come an able male.

Mama stayed at work, daddy stayed in jail.

Hey, that's a full deck, but you gotta play with what you're dealt.

So Billy dealt the joker, put the sheriff in the choker.

He drank himself sober, and pissed in a SuperSoaker.

And he wet em all up, and left his snow yellow.

That's hard white boy, for the ello.

The boy was silent. He didnt ever talk once. No one really knew if he was a retard. No, dude really. He didnt want to be stupid. He didnt want to be a racist. He didnt want to be looked at like they looked at James, but he knew they did.

They were in a circle, its seemed to be the most equalizing arraignment. The pastor was kind of green, sickly but animated. Momma said she’d been sober for 3 days and everyone clapped. They weren’t real AA people. Those people are real. Ive seen shit in NA meetings that shoulda been in the Holy Word or at least a drip a Rilke. I saw a woman from Caipi, Spain meet her daughter she had put up for adoption 30 years prior. Neither one of them lived in Dallas, which is where the meetin was. They were both addicted to dope. They looked alike. In Oxford a man killed his wife and they pastor in the commode . I aint kiddin when I say an old man stood up and hollar’d, “Listen here. They’s always more room in hell. Yall” he leaned back in his boots, face like a pickled prune, “Jehovah don’t play and them two came up on a hard white boy. “ He sat down in the folding chair, “I reckon we hear one more shot and then we keep on with this here meeting which is the only thang separating me from that poor dead boy in the shitter.”

Momma couldn’t be on the run to save her life and everyone kinda saw that she was gonna somehow slime her way into some small town cops line of fire. Mamma loved Scarlett. She loved Norma Jean. Momma’s ability to be a fucked up decision making whirlpool of liability was eternal. I have sat down and reasoned with her. Straight sober and the brilliant darkness of something strangling her that I couldn’t see was making her decide on the worst option of every option, every time. In my dope days, I saw it like a thick ropy neon burnt umber lizard without any legs. Not wrapped but fat and heavy on her neck and shoulder with a stupid face. The world stupidest demon. I swear if Mamma could’a chose hers, that one wouldn’t be it. Daddy. Man, if he wasn’t almost the Joker himself, he’d a eaten some high powered rat poison.

Well I had got me some high-powered rat poison …I hate everything. The bile of what I’d done ate me. Licked at my open chest. A gaping wound. I had to kill that man, I had killed a few now. On the radio, someone would soon be saying my name and all I could think about was keeping all eyes on me. 

I spun that For onto 55 when I got there.  Everything's messy, ya know.  People talk a lot about peace but rightly, i just want some common decency and cleanliness.