Ray

VIII

How about we have us a nature walk? The trees, the mountains. Or let us dance at Lee’s Tomb, the cavernous saloon near the river and the docking port for trucks.

Sister was there, as were Charlie DeSoto and his girl, Eileen. They are married now. And they look very sad. There is something about marriage that brings on a certain sadness, as if burying the glad part.

Sister is prosperous now that she and Marcel Smith have an album out that is selling big. She has a marvelous suntan and she is wearing jewelry all over her. She looks very self-assured and gives me a self-assured kiss. The Locust Fork Band is playing. That’s Asa, Dwight, Bill. God bless you, niggers, for the music.

Besides the small friendly vagina and the blue eyes, Westy has sympathy. We shall be married forever.

Westy, my wife, my darling.

I hate to depend on another human being this much. But nobody is his own boy. Her breasts, her lovely feet, her cheerfulness, her care.

But I still want to fight. I still want to put it to somebody, duke a big guy out. Like the asshole who came in who had shot two of his children and broken the arm of his wife. He was an alcoholic red-neck and had a lot of Beechnut chewing tobacco on him. He really smelled lousy. Before I could ask him anything, he found a razor blade and came at me, his doctor! Lucky that Ray still has his quickness. The bastard missed me with the razor, and I kicked him in the gonads.

Certain people are this way. They kill everybody around, for one reason or another. He went to the pen, but I would like to see him tortured in a dungeon to get back the suffering he has caused.

The waving grass of the prairies, the moon settling over Minnesota over the lake. Me and my son Barry are having a good time. It is sunset and there are no loud noises. There are only us, and we’ve caught some bass and pickerel. My daughter Lee is paddling the canoe for us. Utter fucking peace.

Debbie, psychotherapist, is another person I’d like to see buried. She thinks you get the best out of people when you get them all in a room and ask them humiliating questions. She’s about six feet tall and drives her Fiat convertible around town, being queen of the world. She’s from Ohio, which is the worst state in the union.

Ohio is silly.

Ken, my nephew, once asked me as we were going to sleep after some snapper fishing in Destin, Florida: “Promise me something, Uncle Ray?”

“What?”

“That when I die I won’t be from Ohio.”