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Show Go Love/144 "I'm not from Lonoke. But if I was, I'da known you." Shurl takes my hand and gives me the look, the way a poker dealer says hello when you sit down to the game and it's time to make bets. "Where is she?" O.W. asks. The overhead lights have a tick, like something's sucking way to much juice. "Mrs. Harvell," Shurl says, "rests now in our Exquisite Farewell Room." Her little heels make no sound on the carpeted floor. "This a-way." I say, "I don't want to see her." Shurl's smile is inflected in her voice. "We understand," she says. They must give lessons for this at those national conferences in Las Vegas where mortuary people unite by the thousands for meetings about the big news on DNA certificates and the lowdown on how to do twins. "I'll be right back for you." Here's what it's like-I'll try hard. Take acid, add maybe half a gram of cowpie mushrooms and a dozen black beauties on three cups of expresso after smoking a whole pack of clove cigarettes and eating has brownies while smoking the rugby teams four-hitter bong loaded with skunk and watching Vertigo six times after midnight, throw in a gutted garr singing "Elanor Rigby" on the side of the road by the concrete sign at the county line that says PREPARE TO MEET GOD on one side and JESUS IS COMING SOON on the other, only somebody's painted I LOVE TO COME on the Jesus part, and add to this the semi-truck rolling uphill and all the dreams where undertakers wash their wive's hair and sew styrofoam into gum slits and maybe, maybe, maybe you can get close to seeing this shiny-toothed Shurl walk up the hall, the whole time looking me in the face and smiling the smile that knows the ins and outs of things. |