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Show RIVER strange women all living, evidently, right here within a ten mile radius of Columbus, Kentucky. Ernest offered to set me up-"An' she's goood lookin', son," he assured me-but I declined. He gave me a verbal walking tour of the bootlegging establishments of western Kentucky. After he finished his pint the old man got sick, his thin body shook and gagged till I thought he was about to die, but he finally settled down, his head in his hands, exhausted. I felt stupid as hell and asked if there was anything I could do for him. He mumbled "Nothin'," and sat motionless for several minutes more. After a while he began to move again, He pulled another pint out of his pocket, took a drink, and came back to life. Ernest told me his troubles. As the night got darker he talked about dying, how he was ready to welcome it. I didn't know what to say. When he started to leave I asked if he wanted me to go down the bluff with him, but of course he didn't, and he went off into the dark alone. I felt bad about drinking all his beer and then leaving him to stagger off into the woods, but there wasn't much else I could have done. The next day I saw him riding the ferry back and forth across the river, a regular American Siddhartha, and altogether he didn't look much worse for the wear. Since the sky was threatening, I spent the next day at the Columbus park. I liked the place. The overlook was as fine a view of the Mississippi as I'd seen in my travels. I could see all the way back up to Cairo and some dozens of miles to the south where the river took a bend to the west. I sat there most of the day, writing and working on a song. I went up to town to get some crackers and sardines, but downtown Columbus wasn't much to see, just a post office and a couple of gas-station groceries. I found a plaque in the park that said that in the -153- |