without being one of them, and
then I stood as far back as I could without leaving
the planet.
—Michael Herr
Dispatches
You only love
when you love in vain.
Try another radio probe
when ten have failed,
take two hundred rabbits
when a hundred have died:
only this is science.
You ask the secret.
It has just one name:
again.
—Miroslav Holub O
de to Joy
Translated by George Theiner
Chapter Five
I’ VE BEEN SITTING IN THE crotch of this itchy damn tree with my feet dangling down so long they both feel like concrete. I shinnied up here to find John Cleary in the park’s spread out fireworks crowd where folks have been gathering since dusk. They’ve come on foot toting stripey lawn chairs and knitting bags and metal coolers. There are quilts spread out over the stiff grass so babies can lay down without taking in cockleburrs and starting to bellow. My eyes glide over the mess and seem to latch down on everybody in town who’s not John Cleary.
Eventually from the swarm of bobbing heads, I find his crew-cut stubble, bleached white into a jagged, low-flying halo. He’s astride his banana-seat bike, one foot on the ground while he waits for the mosquito truck to show up so he can pedal behind it with his buddies. There’s a cowboy song about ghost riders galloping across the clouds with their faces blurred by dust. That’s what I think when I see the truck and John Cleary riding off behind it, leaned over his motorcycle handlebars, his thighs pumping.
John Cleary is what Daddy would call my huckleberry (not that John’s agreed to that position yet). So sometimes I get so engrossed watching him, I forget myself entirely. That’s how it got dark around me. That’s how I wound up with these heavy throbbing feet hung out of the tree, like the elephant feet in the
Textbook of Medical Anomalies
I like to sneak peeks at in the library section marked ADULTS ONLY when the librarian goes onto the steps to smoke.
Meanwhile, John Cleary managed to vanish into the crowd, as did Clarice, who’s sleeping over tonight.
Not until the last sparks go out when folks start folding their blankets and collapsing their beach chairs do I finally make them out over by the tilted merry-go-round with Bobbie Stuart and Davie Ray Hawks. They’re all squatting over a patch of dirt with their arms dangling inside their knees like something out of
National Geographic.
Maybe somebody’s lit one of those caterpillars of ash you can buy at Moak’s fireworks stand out on Hogaboom Road. I never purchase fireworks myself, but I often find myself repeating the phrase Hogaboom Road at night to see how fast I can say it without slipping up:
hogaboom road hogaboom road hogaboom road.
Clarice never does anything like this, and if she’s spending the night and hears me prattling like this, she’ll roll over and prop up on one elbow and tell me flat out that’s why everybody thinks you’re weird. It’s not your mother or Pete, or the neked ladies painted on your walls or the fact that your parents divorced then got back later. It’s you chattering to yourself like a gerbil instead of just going to sleep. But Clarice doesn’t give a big rat’s ass if I say Hogaboom Road till the kitchen kettle whistles for coffee. “You are a marvel,” she likes to say, shaking her head and drawing one side of her mouth down in a half frown. But she watches me as if I warrant pondering, and she never doesn’t laugh at my jokes.
John and Bobbie sword-fight with sparklers, joist and parry, while dumbass Davie Ray Hawks tries to get his sparkler going with what they call a punk—a little brown straw with a coal on the end that’ll lighta cherry bomb fuse but is useless on a sparkler. Finally, I get so tired of holding back unspoken opinions like this that I holler over to her, and they all come running from the edge of the field in a quick herd.
Clarice looks up at me with her hands on her hips like I’m in trouble. “That’s where
then I stood as far back as I could without leaving
the planet.
—Michael Herr
Dispatches
You only love
when you love in vain.
Try another radio probe
when ten have failed,
take two hundred rabbits
when a hundred have died:
only this is science.
You ask the secret.
It has just one name:
again.
—Miroslav Holub O
de to Joy
Translated by George Theiner
Chapter Five
I’ VE BEEN SITTING IN THE crotch of this itchy damn tree with my feet dangling down so long they both feel like concrete. I shinnied up here to find John Cleary in the park’s spread out fireworks crowd where folks have been gathering since dusk. They’ve come on foot toting stripey lawn chairs and knitting bags and metal coolers. There are quilts spread out over the stiff grass so babies can lay down without taking in cockleburrs and starting to bellow. My eyes glide over the mess and seem to latch down on everybody in town who’s not John Cleary.
Eventually from the swarm of bobbing heads, I find his crew-cut stubble, bleached white into a jagged, low-flying halo. He’s astride his banana-seat bike, one foot on the ground while he waits for the mosquito truck to show up so he can pedal behind it with his buddies. There’s a cowboy song about ghost riders galloping across the clouds with their faces blurred by dust. That’s what I think when I see the truck and John Cleary riding off behind it, leaned over his motorcycle handlebars, his thighs pumping.
John Cleary is what Daddy would call my huckleberry (not that John’s agreed to that position yet). So sometimes I get so engrossed watching him, I forget myself entirely. That’s how it got dark around me. That’s how I wound up with these heavy throbbing feet hung out of the tree, like the elephant feet in the
Textbook of Medical Anomalies
I like to sneak peeks at in the library section marked ADULTS ONLY when the librarian goes onto the steps to smoke.
Meanwhile, John Cleary managed to vanish into the crowd, as did Clarice, who’s sleeping over tonight.
Not until the last sparks go out when folks start folding their blankets and collapsing their beach chairs do I finally make them out over by the tilted merry-go-round with Bobbie Stuart and Davie Ray Hawks. They’re all squatting over a patch of dirt with their arms dangling inside their knees like something out of
National Geographic.
Maybe somebody’s lit one of those caterpillars of ash you can buy at Moak’s fireworks stand out on Hogaboom Road. I never purchase fireworks myself, but I often find myself repeating the phrase Hogaboom Road at night to see how fast I can say it without slipping up:
hogaboom road hogaboom road hogaboom road.
Clarice never does anything like this, and if she’s spending the night and hears me prattling like this, she’ll roll over and prop up on one elbow and tell me flat out that’s why everybody thinks you’re weird. It’s not your mother or Pete, or the neked ladies painted on your walls or the fact that your parents divorced then got back later. It’s you chattering to yourself like a gerbil instead of just going to sleep. But Clarice doesn’t give a big rat’s ass if I say Hogaboom Road till the kitchen kettle whistles for coffee. “You are a marvel,” she likes to say, shaking her head and drawing one side of her mouth down in a half frown. But she watches me as if I warrant pondering, and she never doesn’t laugh at my jokes.
John and Bobbie sword-fight with sparklers, joist and parry, while dumbass Davie Ray Hawks tries to get his sparkler going with what they call a punk—a little brown straw with a coal on the end that’ll lighta cherry bomb fuse but is useless on a sparkler. Finally, I get so tired of holding back unspoken opinions like this that I holler over to her, and they all come running from the edge of the field in a quick herd.
Clarice looks up at me with her hands on her hips like I’m in trouble. “That’s where
Similar Books
