the dream. âTen dont do you no good, Emilio, lessn you got another underneath,â dealing Emil a ten of clubs. Deals Charley a seven, making a pair of 7âs on the top. âYou better have a queen underneath,â which Charley doesnt have, stripped bare and queenless, turning up a 10 apologetically. âAnother pair of Sevens!â dealing Sagely a 7 of hearts. âIf he has another 7 underneath,â opines the rednosed dealer from Butte Montana, âheâs got his own deck a cards hidden in back of his ear inside that curly hair, yass. Which, would a left me with the Ace of Jokers,â dealing himself, for the hell of it, the final fifth card tho heâs out, the Ace of Spades, Death. âGentlemen,â seeing heâs inadvertently emptied his flask without realizing it in the heat of what he was doing, âis there any beer in the house? No beer?â
âWe got some left, yeh Bull, in the box there.â
And Emil rakes in the pot, cigar in teeth, big body tensed forward in chair to affairs of the night, as goldpots strew the blue beginnings with incense of aurora and dawn creaks up to crack and boom over the black sad earth now irrevocably Gerard was, enfleshed, sacrificed and given over to, O moanin shame.
âIâm the one shoulda got that spade,â comments Emil in the alley, as they urinate.
Bull, pointing up the dawn sky: âMore ill fated than in all your dreams youâd a bitterly hoped her to be.â
Then they get drunkâIt happens all of a sudden, on the spur of nothing but a cryââSlup a slug, son!ââThe high white mists of Spring morn over the redbrick roofs of downtown Lowell make them dizzily glad, they go (Manuel in the middle bawling) staggering down the alleyâIn two cars and the ridiculous motorcycle they go careering thru the mists and over the bridge.
âWhereâs that Irish club?âWhereâs that dog with the pipe in his mouth and the blue eyes who sits by the stove in theââ
âYou mean Bob Donnelly, if he aint asleep now with his arms around his milky wife Iâd bet and be damned and be called Tarzan if he wasnt still up and jawin his Jewâs harp somewhere the other side a townââ
âAnd Murphy! Where are the river boys?â
âNever mind! Itâs a mystery!â
âBe Jesus Christ it makes me feel good, they lit the furnace in my damp cellar.â
âAll the blowers of hellâll send it thru the vents and veins and youâll come out with a true face at last.â
They rave and scream as the wind ventilates them across the bridge, theyâre looking for the Polish Club thatâs supposed to open 24 hours a day, down on LakeviewââThat place with the chairs in front.â
âAh who needs a ga dam clubâcome down by the carnival grounds and piss in the bushes.â
âSuits me fine, termagant.â
âManuel, what you doin, you almost got us to the end of our holes.â
âThey been swallowin a long time!â
âThen why not swallow more, lover.â
âWith my wife in hell everything suits me.â
âYou got eyes like a dead potatobugâwake up and watch the road!â
âEat the damn road!â says Manuel whoâd as soon the road ate him so theyâd be where they were going sooner.
Irrelevent conversations meanwhile rage in the cars, driven respectively by Sagely and OâBrien, Old Bull Baloon in his red-eye cups now reconstructing adventures of six decades with the invention of sixtyâThey all spill out on the field at Lakeview Avenue, across from the mills, on the river, just as the blazing red sun kisses and peeps over the window roofs of all Centervilleâ
My father reels about from snort to snort, the earth morning under himâ
My father with straw hat in big gnarled veiny hands, collar bursting out soft and unstylish over his coat lapels from folds of
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