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Show Blue Run/57 The construction workers are laughing. Lara points and smiles, gets this look on her face that reminds me of me "Dad," she says, "looky " Beyond the construction workers, across the uneven lot, a stork waddles. "He's so funny " Tonight Mama will speak to me the way the dead speak in the dreams of grieving people I don't know this yet, how time will get all holy. How the dead rise up, appear themselves entirely and say, "It's okay, sweetie," and offer pertinent sympathy and understanding for the griever. Sometimes they tell jokes, about salt in your mouth, maybe. Mama'd be like that, a joke-teller, hev. the time of your life-know who I am? Then comes the punch line. Isn't that the whole theory of laughter anyway? Wasn't that a New Yorker essay, before I canceled? Laughter, our best mojo. running interference between life and death? Already in my head, starting to form there though I don't know it, the drop dead fact that I'm going to get up on a stage in front of Mama's casket and deliver her eulogy I'll have to face O W. I'll look him in the eye and see what's there. Trace will be there, I'll see the whole Lonoke County lot, maybe even peckerhead Shawn Terrence Lord who'll sit way in back, scared shitless-with good reason~of O W. Uncle Bold and Aunt Judy'll be there, and O.W.'s little brother, who weighs three hundred pounds and once pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals. All the Stepwells will look up at me from the pews The Arizona Washers, who knew, maybe Buddy'd show up with a foil-wrapped dog. The preacher, Brother Dellwood, he'll be behind my back, very Baptist, which is the worst of the worst of the worst, believe you me. And he'll want to turn Mama's death-her corpse-into an opportunity for sinners to get salvation, some way to make them choke on guilt and hurt real bad He'll ask us to imagine burning in hell for all eternity. The bastards-they'll do it every single time. When Jimmy died, him laying in that open casket with his eyes and lips sewn shut with that fine- |