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Show Go Love/107 that the thing could commune with the spirit world, so everybody and their mama came to stand in line I hail from a people who're hell-bent on getting the last word in, even if it means they have to speak it into a dead whale's ear. Jimmy pointed at my duct-taped knuckle. "That thing needs peroxide So is it true or a 1-1- lie." "What?" "You know." "It happened You weren't born yet, but you were close." "Bu-bullshit." My brother spat. "You didn't dream it?" "She laid his cheek open with her fingernail." "Shit," Jimmy said. "Why are we here?" "These idiots believe it talks to dead people." A lady up ahead of us lay down talking to the whale's head. She'd got down on her hands and knees, put her mouth up close to one of the filmy eyes. "Daddy?" she was saying. "Can you hear me? Daddy? Are you listening?" "Shit," Jimmy said "Who'd p-pay for that?" I said, "Us " The woman on her hands and knees was crying-the grief was hard on her, you could tell I wondered what I'd have to say to the whale's head when my time came. I was thinking about the other-worldly feel of getting your ass kicked, how Mama's face looked like inside the car-how on a railroad track she'd once hummed a tune from Moon Over Naples. Blue Traceleen in her church dress. And I was thinking how it was to have a brother, to see him grow up to be number 86, |