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Show Blue Run/74 "Honey," I say, "help me," the blues between us And for maybe ten minutes by the clock, as the sky brightened, one old jalopy after another rolled up and died and the door opened and another sister got out and shook her booty beneath God and Jesus and the suffering man and all the laughing angels. We danced for the fools we were to have ever said yes, for our children and our children's children, and mamas and daddies and all we'd ever lost or would ever lose, that's how it feels in this picture I carry to my grave. We danced for the world to come. Must I lose all? Huffing and puffing, the driver girl helped hoist us up into the white work van, a Chevy with blue vinyl seats that made suck sounds when we moved Of course we avoided each others' eyes at all costs for the twenty-five minutes to 1-40 and Maybelline, and maybe somebody thought to sing out oh Maybelline. why can't vou be true All day long in the big cavern of flourescent light, where we worked in lines surveiled by hidden cameras, one or another of us go off, let fly you ain't nothiri but a houndog or everbodv in the whole cell block or, before it was all over, love me tender, love me true We caught fire during the Clinton thing, me and Shawn Terrence Lord. I'd volunteered and somehow ended up in the war room downtown, with James Carvelle kicking trashcans and all those Arkansas Travelers and F.O.B.'s. It was a wild ride from the start, and somehow my mind got off what had happened to Jimmy, that black hole I'd fallen into. Me and Shawn hooked up for not the first time on election night at the Old Statehouse downtown in Little Rock, just across from the Excelsior with its glass elevator looking out over the Arkansas River. It had been a |