Something in My Eye: Stories Read Free Page A

just couldn’t help myself anymore. “I apologize for using the word ‘atrocity,’” I said.
    â€œTry to remember. Maybe something he was watching set him off.”

    â€œThey were reporting a story about a cat stuck in a tree. This happened in the ghetto, I think, and no fireman would try and save it because they feared the people who inhabited the ghetto. So for several days, and without the fire department’s help, the ghetto-dwellers fed the cat by means of a long pole. ‘And for the time being,’ the reporter concluded, ‘the cat is fat and happy on its perch.’ The story was going to be continued the following day.” This was a complete lie. I could not remember what I was actually watching.
    â€œDid he say anything to you while you sat at the table?”
    â€œYes,” I said. “Yes, right before he left, he stood over me and put his hand on my shoulder and said—”
    But before I could begin, the door opened once again, and another one of them came in. He was dressed like the others—nicely, in a crisp suit—and he whispered in the ear of the person nearest to him. Then the person who received the initial message whispered in the ear of the one closest to him, and so on and so on until the entire room sat up very straight and began to fidget.
    â€œWe apologize for interrupting,” they said, “but we have just received word that a lynch mob has broken into the jail and done unto Buddy what he has been clamoring for all day. Please continue, but do make it brief. We’ve lined up interviews with several mob members.”
    I was not ready, at that moment, to begin considering what all of it meant. Buddy was a fine acquaintance, but was he something more? It was difficult to know. We were roommates, and then we were not. I ate several pieces of cheese. I took a long swallow of water. I looked down at my lap, where my inky fingers clutched the inky towel. I looked out over the restless crowd. They seemed to require something more. So I took a deep breath and said, “He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Goodbye, dear roommate, I’m leaving this place, striking out for new country, settling the outer banks. Goodbye good roommate, I’ll remember the long lost ribbon in your hair, playing gourd and hatchet in the gazebo long ago, oh
roommate of mine. Though we didn’t even know each other, didn’t know each other’s minds. It’s such a shame, that we might have lived for so long together and been ignorant of each other. I am feeling so mournful, so solemn, sweet roommate. I want to believe in the future, but I can’t see beyond my watch. I want to bite from the essence, the true root. I want to ride through the city in a caravan at dawn. I want the drums to encircle me, the vultures to wheel over me. I want the bitter bile of betrayal to flee from me. I want the warm expansive language of joy to radiate around me. Recall, oh roommate, that fine fellow down the hall who used to show his skin to anyone who’d cross their eyes. Recall that evening sun that set golden, golden, golden, then red in the west. Recall how we once shared this dim corporeal property together. Goodbye my sweet devil with flies in your eyes, you who saw everything as it should be instead of as it was. May there be some noble path shining somewhere for you; may the Lord keep a nice nasty watch over you. And to all my sweet darlings plunging from rooftops, to all my good ghosts forever ascending fearless: goodbye.’ Then Buddy left for the atrocity.” This was a bald lie, but it felt right somehow. As right as anything could, anyway, given the circumstances. Buddy had actually said nothing that morning, had really just abandoned me there at the table.

Contemporary Country Music: A Songbook

Title: SUPPORT THE TROOPS
    Lyrics: could it be john walking though that door / at long last our son is home from the war we all