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Show Blue Run/68 "Rich," I said. "In love," she said "Mary Kay driving a pink Cadillac." "Double trouble," I said. "Mother Teresa." "The happy hooker." Jimmy was an honest genius, real smart, but people cocked their heads when he talked, all those hard consonants locking down. Over the microphone, the queer little singer boy mocked Jimmy's stutter, kept saying d-d-d-daddv. And it dawned on me we were going back again, O.W.'d called saying it was time to come home. I can't tell vou why, he'd said. Isn't life just one goddamn hilarious roaring good time. I'm good natiifed. I have a sense of humor, even with all thebullcrap. And that's very necessary for living. Have a sense of humor. Stay on the sunnyside. By Fort Smith we had the same driver who'd driven us part way out. I was sitting beside this new, old friend-maybe telling her about the day my daddy got his leg cut off, or how to make chocolate gravy biscuits. "It's hell, ladies, idn't it," the driver said out of the blue, his bright pink mouth stretched over the yard-long rearview. "What do you mean? How so?" we asked. "Week ago, week and a half, I drive you out of Little Rock, and very next thing your house burns to the ground. A hell of a thing." "Lord." I said, "God." I thought he meant the woman next to me~her house, and started blurting how we'd help out, get some money together and clothes and toothbrushes. Tomatoes, I said, I don't know why. This sticks to my ribs, how I reached out and touched the woman's face, |
