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Show Go Love/178 Flying Too Close to the Ground," and ZZ Top and Bonny Riatt singing "Angel From Montgomery"-I've been to long at the fair. She requests "Amazing Grace" the old number I heard sung when they lowered Mama Stepwell down into the ground and we all stood there on astroturf saying I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see Her briefcases's three-digit combination is nothing-it pops smack open with one pry from a fingernail file, the latch snapping the way a mousetrap goes off behind a chest freezer. I smell her And I feel for all the world like she's trying to tell me something this second, that this instant is crucial, somehow, in understanding who I am, and what I come from and where I'll be going and how it will be for Lara, even I'm to move slowly, to be alert to what I'm doing I drink deep from the water bottle on the night stand. It's cold and good and I remember how Mama craved icewater, was always getting up for a drink in the dark. The contents of the briefcase are carefully arranged, which surprises me because Mama usually let things lay where they fall. But not here-there's a set order, a clear rhyme and reason-call it a progression- Razorback tickets, an invitation to Oaklawn courtesy of Governor Jim Guy Tucker, office briefs and legislative notes, two letters from me and a big sloppy heart Lara drew for last Valentine's Pictures from Traceleen's prom, the one she attended the day after Jimmy died with Stumpy Stumpfield who'd asked her at the last minute-my sister manages a smile; a Cohiba cigar scotchtaped to a piece of vellum on which she's written On election night. November 5, 1996. in Little Rock, Arkansas, on the Excelsior Hotel terrace, four friends and I shared this hand-rolled Cuban cigar with our friend and newly re-elected President, Bill Clinton. Love. Mama: and beneath all this, down past the breath mints and ID badges and dried mother's day corsages, under the insurance settlement papers and the bank notes with O.W.'s name crossed off the accounts, down on the very bottom |
