Ray

XLV

ARE we here? Is everybody here? I have scored six points, the lights are up, but the stadium is empty. Want to do it again, Westy? Want to get married again? Want to be in the day instead of just walking through it and paying the bills? The deck has gone out from under my legs and we’re on the rocks and we’re on fire. Handsome craft, pure white, with sails up and now it’s not going anymore. She was blue-eyed, white. But now it’s raining fire. Everywhere you lift your eyes, a rain of cinders.

You get to the end, and you’re still swimming.

The people sing. My heart is all over my front yard. I am still reading Bill Shakespeare.

Bob Moony’s here. Mr. Hooch is here. There’s no other reason to be in Tuscaloosa.

Mike White is here. For God’s sake, where else is there? That’s why a lot of people are here.

All we have is together.

And sometimes I cure others.

Christ be with my friend Phil Beidler. He has a polyp on his vocal cords. I thought he might have C. Called Ned Graves in Jackson, Mississippi. Best one in the world with the knife on the throat. Phil was knocking down two packs of Marlboros a day. Like me, he loves his ciggies. Called Ned up. He was drunk, but wanted to fly over and get the C out of Phil. But good old Phil didn’t have it. Ned’s only twenty-eight, works in clear weather. No damned war memories. He just walks in with five knives, and can see cancer with his own eyes. Knifes them off. Only lost two patients in all his time. A nurse was the cause once. She overanesthetized the little boy. Ned went out in the parking lot, put the nurse in the front seat of his Mustang convertible, sat there saying nothing for fifteen minutes. She didn’t have a driver’s license and she was night-blind — big, thick glasses.

“You killed him,” said Ned.

“I wish you weren’t so emotional.”

“You killed the boy.” Ned drew on his cigarette. “Walk home.”

“I live in Pelahatchie. That’s twenty miles.”

“Walk home.”

So Ned is there, and I think of Ned. Sometimes it is better to think of your friends.