Still Here, For Now

Play me a song, he says.
He hands her a harmonica.
What, now? she asks
Yes now. he says
She plays Old Susannah, passably.
He taps his foot along to the music.
She laughs when she finishes and claps her hands.

My pa taught me that. I forgot that i even knew!

They are lying on black satin sheets, a rarity for the time. Sensuously slippery. Only the best for the top earner! That’s what the madam says. You earn me money and you can have anything you want.
Until the day she slips and starts to age, and she leaves the grand house with the satin sheets and the beautiful dresses and men who cherish her to work the streets, the alleys, a new long-term resident of a hog farm out in nowhere. And then man after man after man after man.

You were my first choice,  he says

Tonite maybe. she teases. Usually you go with Tomato.

Yeah, she’s so plump. It’s fun.

Yeah it hurts my feelings, she says noncommittally. Well...

But you are always my first choice. Somebody else always gets to you first.

This isn’t our first time or anything! You sound like you’re trying to make it fanciful or romantic.

I’m not! maybe i am. he said. Sorry.

I don’t mind! It’s ok, you paid for an hour. So....

Well it’s just that i want you to know i think you’re really pretty and i always...wanted to....

We have already! don’t you remember? Oh, you were too drunk weren’t you you naughty roughneck...

Yeah. Yeah.  But that doesn’t mean i don’t remember it at all, I just don’t -  I want to remember it better. I want to lie with you and then take it with me in my mind complete, to the next place and the next and the next. Do you understand? I never know if i’ll ever make it back to this place.

Ha, of course you will. Stop it. And guess what, I’ll still be here.

Promise?

The sheets were cool and slippery. There was a cigar burn hole in the middle and it would chafe his thigh. Or her back. Neither of them knew what it was and they didn’t care. They didn’t even look.

*********************************

thank you Daniel Connors for your art

In the Morning

I love the mornings, I just do, they're ever so much better than the afternoons or even the evenings!  Even when they're sweet and cool.

Everything seems brighter, and cleaner, and it's like.........

......it's like there's more of a chance for things to go right, do you know what I mean?

I pull the water from the well, I feed the chickens, I collect the eggs.
Water the garden, you know those vegetables get really thirsty.

Later is when the other starts.
The other.........yes.
That's usually after dark.

But the mornings are all mine, just like the flowers and the sunrise, they're mine too.  Sometimes I even watch it from my window,  I know they don't want me too!  I, well, I pretend sometimes that I am going to ride away and never ever come back, I'll just go off and disappear into the sun.  Do you think that could happen?

Maybe when them others show up that night they'll look for me in my room and I just won't be there.  I just won't!
Wouldn't that be something.

Well.....

Anyways the mornings are nice, and there'll always be another one of them.
Tomorrow's not that far away.

Right?











*********************

End of Me

I lived amongst the pines for many a year until I died.

Right there! is where it happened.

Squashed flat by a railroad engine.  Can you beat that?

No, didn't hurt, much.  Seemed to happen pretty quick.

 Left this old body behind soon afterward.

Nowadays the grass is still brownish and the pines smell as sweet as they ever did.

But I just don't get it.

How can a all these things continue on when I'm not here in a body to witness em?

I puzzle this out daily, not much better to do.

No whitlin' or smokin' no more.

Can still smell them pines, tho.

*****************

She Thought!

She thought it was a real job!
No kidding!
See, what happened was that she spent all her money getting out here, and then the "job" that she came all the way out here for turns out to be...you know.  "Something" else.
What?
You know! Don't play dumb, you're faking! You know.
She thought it was a governess job.

I heard those postcards of hers were selling for 50 dollars in some places!
I know. There are only so many of them.
They show her tattoos!
(hushed)
Brady bought one.  He doesn't know I know.  He won't tell me how much he paid.
He did!
go get it.

It actually just costs 20 dollars, to, you know....

Really!

Brady has a  friend,  a fellow that he drinks with, he said he knew firsthand that she'll

(whispered)

do it for free, for love.

(shriek!)

You trickster! You don't say!

Is that how the other stuff happened?

You heard about that?

Oh, yes.  I find myself getting a little weepy about all of those goings-on.

Well, she certainly has kept her looks, I will give her that.

Yes, but you know what the bible says.

Of course! That's very true.

Well it's lucky her folks aren't here.
Nobody knows her, really.  We shouldn't even be talking about her.
It's scandalous!
Yes, and except for what happened in the desert...
Yes, that.
(silence)

Oh, well with the way she was living, it's no wonder...
When you're promised a job though...Lord, what are you supposed to do? Not work?
Heavens.
Was she that naive? If she thought that she could ever be anything else
(closer)
I've heard they're born that way.

She must enjoy her work, don't you agree?
Yes, 20 dollars is nothing to sneeze at.  But for love!....
Really.
May I see the....again...
Well I'd better get...
Yes me too.
(parting)

a Fairy Tale

************************

Once upon a time,

...from the directions he'd been given, he thought he knew which way to go, but -

...coming upon the bitter sweet sameness of the hotel, he-

.

...and felt distracted by the 

...and the walls seemed to press and the-

...while seeming to stretch for miles, 

as a hole in the ceiling, unpatched, leaked

.. all", she yelled from the other side, "it just takes one turn and-

Take off your boots.

I like to leave them on.

...and laughing, he wondered aloud what it was that had driven her to this, to this-

...holding his arm, pressed to the wall, the sign was so clear that he memorized the-

...painful memories, and he hurried past it.

...she said, and maybe this town wasn't the place for him, maybe she was right.

The End

********************************************

Ghost Vacation

We took our family out to Tombstone Arizona and

had a pretty good time.

The locals were a bit vicious,
 but that can be expected of a former town that is a bit jealous of all of you that still live in a normal town with real people.

But ordinary people used to live here doing
everyday things just like we do at home.
They seem so foreign and antiqui-y now -
It kind of gives you a sense of....perspective
I guess.









We saw some strange stuff that's for sure.

The definite highlight was when Dory got her photo taken

at the old timey photo place.  She had her own money

and she new exactly what she wanted the picture

to look like.  She even told the photographer

how to take the picture!

Ready?

Here it is:





Cute huh!




She's a pistol, always has wanted to be a drinker
like her mom!  Just like Mama we told her!

But it does kind of creep me out, the way that

 people can be in one place and fill it with all the stuff of their lives, and then in 100 years, poof! it's all gone. Like they were never here or if they were, they would be like aliens to us, they were so different.

And we'll one day become the ghosts.

I don't think I'll go back to Tombstone, that  feeling was too weird.  I don't like thinking about that kind of stuff, boring!
Next year we'll go to Hollywood California, and look at the movie stars!
There's no ghosts in Hollywood,

is there?

******************************************************

The Quick Walk

I never  thought it would end.

The trudgery,
the drudgery
of that walk.

I felt as though I had been moving forever, I
could barely remember a time BEFORE THIS.

I saw the slanting streets pitch off on one side.
I saw the
 fathomless mining pit darkening in the gloom on the other.

I was trying to get home.

Yes the streets slanted, they
were so steep
I felt like
a mule or a very lame horse huffing and puffing
up that hill.
It was late and dark and chilly and sad.


I was trying to......
well, I guess it doesn't really matter anymore.










Because I never made it.











So I get to hang around here,
yes forever.
This town, this street, this hillside.
I know it very well!

I'm not bitter. I don't hurt.

Everyone's got to go sometime.

I get to see the local ghost tour, that's

something.

(Every night)

Someday maybe YOU"LL be walking
up this hill.
Trudging and Drudging.
I'll speak to you,
whisper by your ear.
If you're lucky.
If you linger.
If you'll spare some
time for me, I'll
flow through your hair.

whoooooooosh.

I told you it doesn't hurt!
Cry baby!

Try not to make it
too quick of a walk, ok?