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Show Go Love/122 He looks like Jimmy, it strikes me. Traceleen joins. And it's the three of us on the cracked drive. "What happened?" "She had a heart attack in the hot tub." "How?" "I've got a strong stomach, Joey." Trace sobs. Her face is a mess. They viewed her together at the morgue. My imagination betrays me Renee's got Lara in her arms, their pale faces Wind whips their hair. Of a sudden thunder, then a lightning like a sheet ripping high up. From the courthouse a tornado siren wails and folk up and down Willy Ray walk out in their front yards and join us. There's Dora, in a flowery dress She wants to say something, I can feel it in my bones. Dora looks straight at me, shakes her head and makes a sad smile to the sky. Rain, she says. "What does that mean?" O.W looks at the palm of his ring hand. "Mama's better off," he says. All the stuff you've ever heard about tornadoes is mostly true-how a Tastee Freeze straw gets driven through an oak tree and all the house trailers out at Gunter's Paradise get skinned clean as oranges. A litter of puppies gets lifted off a purebred mother and laid at the tits of a mongrel. A man gets his brains smashed out on one side of a table during a checkers game, while his twin-right across from him-experiences unspeakable serenity. The sun shines on one side of the street while apocalypse is wreaked on the other-the devil beating his wife, Mama'd say. The glut and gurgle of it, freight trains skidding on steel rails in the midst of creepy silence. Fish rain |