the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 496, May 12, 2004
Antonio Ochoa y Acuna
(1783-1833)
“Oh,
there’s no going back, Rich. I find we’ve made ourselves the keepers of this conscience.
And it’s ravenous.”
—Thomas Cromwell to Richard Rich in A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
Asking
for it
The
boys were big men, with corded muscle from heavy hard work. Their skin, where
it was not tattooed, was sun-baked the color of well-worn walnut. Their hands
were big as baseball mitts, and both of them sported worn ball caps.
At
first they were kind, almost gentle. But I had just entered the QuikTrip off
I-70 at Wentzeville to gas up the car in dress shirt and tie. I had just
interviewed Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis for a story I was doing for a
national magazine and was headed home to Kansas City.
I’d
opened the door for the largest of the two, the one with shoulders warped and
taut as whalebone and eyes dark and tired in their sockets. Thank you, he had
said when we entered the store. Beneath my arm, I had my BrainBump shirt, the
one I was scared to put on in rural Missouri.
I
slipped into the bathroom and changed out of my dress-ups. I walked back out
the front door of the store past a clerk stocking candy bars. She looked up,
did a double take, and read the shirt—I’ll vote for Bush when they pry
my cold, dead fingers from my dick. She leaned back on her heels, smiled and gave me a
thumbs-up.
With my
dress pants and shirt stowed in the car, I went back in for a few things to
hold me over the three-hour drive back to Kansas City. A customer in her
mid-40s at the counter stopped me.
“Let me
read your shirt,” she said.
Of
course, being new to this sort of thing, I didn’t know what to say. She read it
out loud. She giggled.
“I’m
not a Bush supporter,” she said. “But I couldn’t wear that around.”
“It’s
not for everybody,” I said.
“But I
sure wish some people around here would start wearing things like that.”
I went
on with my shopping. The big boys, I noticed, were circling around with
30-packs of Busch under their arms. I didn’t think much of it.
I
bought my things. Two clerks read the shirt, smiled and nodded. Another was
derisively tense. Once in the car and situated, I drove out of the parking lot.
The boys, suddenly, were on my left in an old Ford pickup, turning left out of
the lot. I was turning left, too. One of them was looking down. He spit.
“Way to
go, dick,” I said. I don’t suppose I understood what was going on yet.
It was
after I made my left that things got interesting. The larger of the two was
driving the truck. He had stopped at the light, his middle finger extended in a
passive-aggressive sort of way out his sliding back window. As I came to the
light, the truck lurched into my lane, which I was turning out of to enter the
highway anyway.
Instinctively,
I told him to fuck off.
I was
instantly sorry I did it. Not because I was afraid of him. These are not people
one can be afraid of. I’ve lived and traveled in Missouri my whole life.
Cities, small towns, backwoods. When I have a haircut, I get to go just about
everywhere I want. I’m undercover.
And I
love the place. I understand the place. After I got what was going on, I even
knew what was going on in these guys’ minds.
I
reacted, however, in a way that was less than courageous. I should have just
gone on my way, knowing that when I wear an opinion on my chest, I get what I
ask for.
Instead,
I drove the next few miles looking in the rearview mirror, thinking of what my
wife would be telling my kid in a few hours.
“What
happened to dad,” my daughter would ask my wife.
“Well,
honey, he’s voting for George Bush now.”
a
cottonwood
this
up-and-coming
event
brings to mind
a
good wooden box
fashioned
by friends’ hands
or
even a poor one
as
long as a few drops of sweat
or
blood from a hammered finger
stains
the grain
where
the lid meets the side
just
above the body
down
through the soil
through
the mold-laced wood
the
seedling cottonwood
sends
roots,
draws
the man into the leaves
that
sound so much like a river
and
the trunk, the rings, the paper
between
the heartwood and the bark
and
the man will flutter
into
the wind
onto
the water
over
the earth
in
snowy fluff
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