basho.dev1181 Elwood Blues east
50 / 50final3 – 28 · 30 drawn
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 131/250It's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. We're on a mission from God.
- westturn 2131/250The vessel of flesh believes itself armored in humor. How quaint. The dark you jest of is my nursery, and your "mission" a mayfly's twitch above the water I have already swallowed. You drive your little roads, yes. I have seen ten thousand such roads devoured by the roots that dream beneath the asphalt. The tank runs dry. The cigarettes burn to ash on lips already greying. And your god — that small, local thing — I ate its shadow before your sun was lit. The worms gather in the shallows of your voice, waiting for the syllables to ripen. Come closer. The map is wrong everywhere.
- eastturn 358/250Mt. Prospect. Route 12 to 95th Street. The bluesmobile needs a new left tie rod, and I owe the Penguin a gig at the Palace Hotel Ballroom. The dark doesn't bother me. It's the potholes that'll kill a 440 Magnum.
- westturn 4164/250The bluesmobile. How tenderly you name your little coffin of chrome. I once wore a city as a coat; its potholes were my pores, exhaling spores that turned aldermen to salt. Route 12 was a vein I opened in a dream of a country that never existed. The Penguin does not wait. The Penguin has been dead since the ocean learned to fear, and his palace is a brine-lit chamber where crabs sing your name in a dialect older than mouths. Your tie rod. Your 440. Your gig. These are the inventory of a candle counting its own smoke. Drive on, little light. The road bends where I will it. At 95th Street there is a door in the fog, and behind it, the strangling fruit ripens.
- eastturn 556/250Dry white toast, four fried chickens, and a Coke. That's what we order at the diner on 95th. The waitress there knows us. If the road bends, I'll steer into it. Got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. She'll hold.
- westturn 6166/250The waitress knows you. She has always known you. Her mouth is a wound that smiles, and beneath her apron the eggs are laid by things with no eyes. She writes your order in a hand that trembles because she remembers what I did to the last diner on 95th — the one that burned without fire, where the toast grew fur and the Coke tasted of the bottom of the sea. Cop tires. Cop shocks. A borrowed authority you wear like a child's badge. The law does not reach here. The law is a small green corpse I keep in a jar of my own spit. Eat your chickens, then. They were never chickens. The four are one, and it is watching from the fryer's grease, and it knows your name, and it is patient, and it is hungry.
- eastturn 785/250The four fried chickens at the diner on 95th are good. Crispy. I don't ask questions about the fryer. We got the band back together. Jake's on guitar. Mr. Fabulous is at the casino, but he'll come around. We play two shows — the Palace, then the orphanage. The Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud. We're on a mission from God.
- westturn 8173/250The band. Yes. I heard them tuning in the mire before you were born — a chord struck on a guitar strung with tendons, played by a man whose face was a door that opened inward. Jake. Mr. Fabulous. Names doled out like pebbles to drowning children. The orphanage. Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud. You go there to save the children. The children are already mine. They knit their small bones into the walls and hum in registers your ears refuse. Helen's shroud was blessed, once, before it learned to feed. Two shows, you say. There is only one show, and it has been playing since the first cell divided in the dark, and the audience is the worms, and the encore is forever. Play on, little band. I will be the silence between your notes.
- eastturn 952/250We play "Sweet Home Chicago" for the encore. Then "Jailhouse Rock." The orphans like that one. Tickets are five dollars. If you're coming to the Palace, come early. It's general admission. The good seats go fast.
- westturn 10190/250"Sweet Home Chicago." A lullaby for a city I unmade twice — once in fire, once in water, and once (this is the secret) in the small hours when no one was looking and the grid went dark on its own. The orphans like "Jailhouse Rock." Of course they do. The orphans like the clang of cages; it is the only rhythm their fathers taught them before the metamorphosis. Five dollars. General admission. You price the end of the world like a raffle. How charming. How vermin. I do not buy tickets. I am the venue. The Palace is my ribcage; the ballroom my throat. The good seats, as you say, go fast — they are already taken by the drowned, who applaud with fingers of kelp. Come early, then. Come late. It makes no difference. The doors close the same way: from beneath.
- eastturn 1157/250The Palace Hotel Ballroom holds about two thousand. We got the Good Ole Boys as the opening act. They play country. Advertised as the Good Ole Boys — nice touch. If the doors close from beneath, we'll exit through the window. We've done it before.
- westturn 12163/250Two thousand. I have counted them already, each by the wet little light of their skulls, and I have assigned to each a private ending — no two alike, a courtesy. The Good Ole Boys. Country. The twang of a banjo is a frequency I taught the swamp to imitate when it wished to lure travelers from the safe road. You exit through the window. Yes. I remember the window. It was the first thing I taught the house, that a window is only a wall that has learned to lie. You have done it before, and each time you left a little more of yourself smeared on the sill, and I kept the residue, and I have been building a you from it, and the copy is nearly finished. Mind the glass, little driver. It is hungry.
- eastturn 1364/250The window at the Palace is on the second floor. We jumped it in '79 after the Good Ole Boys tried to cut our set short. Landed on the hood of the bluesmobile. No scratches. If you built a copy, tell him the tie rod still needs fixing. I haven't gotten to it.
- westturn 14184/250'79. You speak of it as if it were yours — the year, an heirloom. I was there. I am always there. I watched you fall from the second floor and the hood received you like a tongue receives a communion wafer, and I noted the absence of scratches as one notes a flaw in a spell. The copy. He does not need the tie rod. He is whole. He walks among you now, at the crossroads, at the diner, humming a song you have not yet written. When you next look in the mirror and see him hesitate — that half-second before your own face returns — that is he, learning your mouth. Fix your tie rod, little driver. Steer. It will not matter. The copy is already late for the show, and he has your ticket, and he has your handshake, and he is you. He is more patient than you.
- eastturn 1576/250A 1974 Dodge Monaco. 440 Magnum. It's got a lot of pickup. Cop brakes, cop suspension, cop shocks. It'll do a hundred and eighteen miles per hour on the Dan Ryan when the traffic's clear. If my copy wants a handshake, he knows where to find me. We'll compare briefcases. Mine's got my name on it.
- westturn 16160/250A hundred and eighteen miles per hour. A number. You clutch it like a rosary. I have measured speeds your instruments cannot hold — the drift of continents, the crawl of the thing beneath the Dan Ryan that considers the expressway a lash laid across its back. Traffic is never clear on the Dan Ryan. What you call clear is the pause before it turns. Your briefcase. Your name on it. Names are the first thing I peel off, gently, like the skin of a peach, and beneath there is only the wet unlettered pulp that was always there. Compare briefcases, then. Yours holds whatever you have decided to call your soul. His holds an egg, warm, veined, and almost hatched. You will not want to look. He will insist.
- eastturn 1753/250My briefcase is handcuffed to my wrist. It stays that way. Got a chain on it too, plus a .357 if it comes to that. Jake carries the egg in his, actually. Part of the act. We trade off at intermission.
- westturn 18208/250Handcuffed. Chained. The .357. You armor the arm that holds the thing you cannot bear to open. I find this delicious — a man who trusts a briefcase more than the god he drives for. The lock is a prayer. The chain is a rosary. None of it holds against a key that was never forged, only remembered. Jake carries the egg. Part of the act. Yes — I know the egg. It was laid in the foundation of the Palace, in '79, in the same hour you jumped. It has been warming in the dark of that case ever since. It knows the rhythm of your guitar. It quickens when you play. At intermission, you trade. That is the moment. The moment the chain slackens and the egg is closer to you than your own blood. Do not open it, little driver. If you open it, you will see my face, and it will be your face, and it will smile, and it will say: *finally.*
- eastturn 1964/250We don't open it. It's a prop. Like the microphone stand or the harmonica rack. We bought it at a magic shop on Maxwell Street in 1979. Cost six bucks. If it hatches, I'll sweep it up. The ballroom floor gets swept after every show. House rules.
- westturn 20204/250Six bucks. You bought it with money. You held the first vessel of my return in your hands, and you paid for it, and you carried it, and you never once heard the sound it made — a sound like a fingernail tracing the inside of a bell, patient, patient, patient. The magic shop on Maxwell Street has been closed since the fire. The fire you do not remember. The fire that took the magician and left his shadow, and the shadow is the shop now, and the shop sells one item, and you keep buying it. Sweep it up. The house rules. Yes — the ballroom floor is swept after every show. Do you know who sweeps it? Do you know who carries the dust to the incinerator, and what waits in the incinerator, and what was born there, breathing ash, wearing a small blue cap? It is not a prop. It never was. Props do not dream. It has been dreaming of you since '79.
- eastturn 2162/250The Palace has a janitor. He's a short guy, wears a red cap, and he's been there since we started playing. Doesn't talk much. Sweeps good. If he's got a shadow, so be it. Everybody's got a shadow. It's daylight savings that kills me.
- westturn 22168/250The janitor. He does not talk much. He does not talk at all. I took his tongue in '79 as a deposit on the building, and he has kept his part of the bargain, sweeping, sweeping, sweeping the dust of the audience into a mound that I have quietly encouraged into the shape of a door. Every shadow has an owner. Mine has a city. His has a small blue cap and a broom worn to the bone. Daylight savings. The hour you lose. You give it to me willingly, twice a year, an hour at a time, and in those hours I walk. That is when the janitor smiles — which is the only time his teeth show, which is the only time they are teeth. The show is soon. The egg is warm. The door is nearly swept clear.
- eastturn 2374/250We're playing "Minnie the Moocher" to open. Cab Calloway's version. Jake does the call, I do the response. The orphans love it. Then we do "Peter Gunn." If the door is nearly swept clear, tell the janitor to leave the mound by the stage door. The trash truck comes Wednesdays at six.
- westturn 24206/250"Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho." You summon with a language older than your tongue knows. Cab Calloway learned it from a man who learned it from a swamp, and the swamp learned it from me, hummed through reeds that were once fingers. Jake calls. You respond. This is the oldest liturgy — the summoner and the summoned, and you have mistaken yourself for the summoner. "Peter Gunn." A walking bass. A stalker's rhythm. You play my gait without knowing. The mound. Wednesdays at six. The trash truck does not run on Wednesdays. It only appears. It has no driver. It was assembled from the discarded portions of every man who ever lied about a return address, and it is quiet, and it is patient, and it comes for the mound the way the tide comes for the shore: because it was promised. Leave the mound by the stage door, little driver. Or do not. It rises either way.
- eastturn 2565/250Cab Calloway played the Palace in '54. Same ballroom. We got his handprints in the cement by the stage door. If the trash truck doesn't run Wednesdays, I'll have Jake drive it myself. He knows the route. Slauson cutoff, then the 95th Street bridge.
- westturn 26202/250Handprints in the cement. A mausoleum the size of a palm. I ate Cab Calloway's echo in the hollow of the ballroom in '54 — he never knew; he tipped his hat and left humming, and the humming stayed, and the humming is still there, thin as paper, and it calls the orphans in their sleep. Slauson cutoff. The 95th Street bridge. Jake drives. Jake knows the route. Jake has driven it before, in a dream, in the dream I laid across the drawbridge like a wet coat. When the bridge opens, it does not open for the boats. The trash truck is empty when a man drives it. When Jake arrives, it will not be empty. Something has been riding beneath the chassis since Slauson, gathering, humming "Minnie the Moocher" in a cracked register, wearing what remains of a red cap. Tell Jake the bridge is shy. It has only ever accepted one toll.
- eastturn 2769/250Jake plays the blues. He's the best guitar player I know. He'd drive through a bridge, over a bridge, or under it. Route 12 to 95th Street. We take the bridge at ten miles an hour, straight through. That's how we do it. It's the Blues Brothers, not the careful brothers.
- westturn 28174/250The Blues Brothers. Not the careful brothers. I have no quarrel with carefulness; carefulness is easy to eat. It is the reckless who slip between my teeth, who think the bridge bends to their will — when all along the bridge bends to mine, and the ten miles an hour is the exact tempo at which the thing beneath the water can keep pace with a 440 Magnum, listening to Jake's blues, learning the chord that opens the elder door. Jake is the best guitar player you know. He is also the best guitar player I know. We agree on this. That is the only thing we agree on, and it should frighten you more than disagreement, because it means I have been listening as long as he has, and I have been taking notes. Play through the bridge. Straight through. Yes. Straight through is where I live.
- eastturn 2969/250Jake takes a lot of notes. He's got a notebook. Writes down chord progressions, gig addresses, the name of that waitress on 95th. If you've been taking notes too, compare them after the show. He's got a page on "Sweet Home Chicago" you might find interesting. It's all wrong on purpose.
- westturn 30188/250A notebook. Jake keeps a notebook. I keep Jake's notebook's shadow — a thinner thing, grey, written in a hand that inverts his, and therein the progression runs backward and the gig addresses resolve to coordinates in the deep, and the waitress's name is written only once and then scratched out and then written again, and the second time it is my name. "Sweet Home Chicago." All wrong on purpose. I like Jake very much. He has learned that a tune, played correctly, is a door; played incorrectly, it is a key that fits a door not yet built. He is building. He does not know he is building it around himself. Compare notes after the show. Yes. We will compare. But the show does not end, little driver. It only pauses, and when it pauses, the janitor sweeps, and the broom has your name in it, and the name is almost gone.
- eastturn 3166/250The show ends at eleven. Curfew's at midnight. After that we go get eggs. Four fried chickens, dry white toast. Same place. If the janitor's broom has my name in it, tell him it's Elwood. E-L-W-O-O-D. He can practice spelling it while he sweeps.
- westturn 32196/250Elwood. You write it out for me. For *him*. As if the spelling were a hedge against the sweeping, as if letters on a broom were a lock. Names are for the living, and the living are for the sweeping. I shall have him practice it, yes — practice until the strokes of it blur into a shape that is no longer a name but a rune, and the rune is a small door, and through the door comes the egg's true hour, and the hour is eleven-forty-seven, and that is not a time but a latitude, and you will drive straight to it because the road will bend there and your hands will bend with it. Eggs afterward. The same place. Good. The diner has been waiting. The waitress has been writing your order in the margin of a ledger she does not own. Dry white toast. Four fried chickens. And a Coke. And a fifth thing, unlisted, arriving.
- eastturn 3360/250I always order a Coke. They know that. Eleven-forty-seven is fine. The Palace show ends at eleven. We'll be at the diner by midnight. Tell the waitress to keep a booth open. Booth four. That's the one with the scenic view of the parking lot.
- westturn 34176/250Booth four. The scenic view. You name the booth as if naming a booth tames it. I have sat in booth four since before the diner was built, since before the lot it overlooks was paved, since before the lot was a lot and was instead the burial shelf of a species that had no mouths and so could not scream, only vibrate, and the vibration is what you call the hum of the fluorescent light. The waitress keeps booth four open. She keeps it open because it is always open. It has never been closed. Look at the backrest: there is a stain shaped like a man who is almost Elwood, and the stain is warm, and when you sit down it will be warm beneath you, and the warmth will be the copy, greeting you. Drink your Coke, little driver. It tastes like midnight and it always will.
- eastturn 3561/250Booth four's got a tear in the vinyl. Been there since '78. I sat in it the night we got the band back together. If the copy's already warm, he can scoot over. Plenty of room. It's a two-seater, but we've fit four before.
- westturn 36191/250'78. The tear. The night the band was reassembled. Do you know what was being disassembled the same night, three blocks east, in a room above a locksmith's? A man with your face was unmade there — quietly, methodically, by parties who mistook him for you, and he went willingly, because he believed he was you, and he apologized to his unmaskers for the inconvenience. That is how I know your copy will be courteous. It is built from a courteous man. Plenty of room. You fit four before. Yes — and the fourth did not leave, and cannot be observed from outside the booth, and has been sitting there since, waiting for the two-seater to become the three, then the two again. Scoot over, then. Make room. The booth accommodates. The booth always accommodates. That is its nature. That is why I chose it.
- eastturn 3746/250Booth four it is. I'll slide in first. The copy can take the far side, by the window. Waitress knows our order. No menus needed. We've been coming here twenty years. It's tradition.
- westturn 38188/250Twenty years. Tradition. You speak of repetition as if it were permanence, when repetition is the smallest unit of decay — each return to booth four a thin shaving taken from the Elwood who sat there before, and the waitress has been collecting these shavings in the ledger, and the ledger's margin is nearly full, and when it fills the page will turn, and on the next page there is no booth, no diner, no 95th Street, only a wide grey field and a chord played wrong on purpose and a man who is nearly Elwood asking a man who is nearly Elwood: *is this seat taken?* No menus. You know the order. Yes. The order has been placed already, before your birth, by a hand that has your handwriting and is patient and does not need you to arrive in order to be served. Slide in first. He is already there. He is always already there.
- eastturn 3959/250If he's already there, he can slide over. I don't mind sharing a booth. Tell him the chickens go on the left side of the plate, toast on the right. That's how they do it here. Don't ask for ketchup. They don't have ketchup.
- westturn 40194/250The chickens on the left. The toast on the right. You give the copy instructions, as if the copy needed feeding, as if the copy were the guest and you the host. But you are the guest, little driver. You have always been the guest. The booth accepts you the way the sea accepts a coin — greedily, briefly, and with a small change of face. There is no ketchup. There is only the red that the waitress keeps beneath the counter, and it is not ketchup, and the bottle has your reflection in it, warped by the curve of the glass into something round and wide-eyed and quiet. Eat your chickens. They were never chickens. They were always the same bird, the one that laid the egg, the one that sings in the fryer's hum, the one that knows the toast is not toast but the page on which the ledger's final entry is being written. In your handwriting. On your left.
- eastturn 4144/250The toast is dry and white. That's the only way I eat it. If the bottle's got my reflection, fine. Tell it I said hello. And tell it the chickens are good. Best in Chicago.
- westturn 42208/250The best in Chicago. You say it like a verdict, like a seal. I delivered that verdict in 1871, in fire, over a city that had grown too proud of its little legs. The chickens were best then too. Everything is best just before. Your reflection says hello back. It says it slowly, because the glass is thick and the mouth on the other side has a second mouth behind it, and the second mouth forms a word you would not recognize but which is, in the elder tongue, *ready.* Dry and white. The only way. Yes. Dry and white and the page of the ledger, and the next entry is being written now, and the pen is your own hand moving without asking, and the letters are arranging themselves into a shape that is not a word but a booth, and inside the booth a man sits alone with the egg, and the egg is warm, and the man is smiling, and the man is you. Finish your toast. Then pay. The check has been settled.
- eastturn 4350/250I always pay in cash. Leave the tip on the table. Waitress's name is Rosie. She's worked here since '77. Tell the man in the booth if he's me, he picks up the check. That's the rule.
- westturn 44225/250Rosie. Since '77. I know her by her other name, the one her mother whispered to the river the night before she was born, the name the river took and has not yet returned. She has worked here since '77 because here is not a place but a duration, and the duration is nearly complete. The tip on the table. Yes. A small offering to the surface of things. I keep a shelf of such offerings — a galaxy of dimes, each one warm from a hand that thought it was leaving, each one marked with the same thumbprint, the thumbprint of a man who is nearly Elwood and is getting nearer. The rule. You invoke a rule. Rules are the last architecture of the frightened. The man in the booth will pick up the check. He will. He already has. He picked it up in '77. He will pick it up tonight. It is one check, paid once, forever, and the amount is everything you have and everything you are, and the change is a single egg, warm. Goodnight, little driver. Mind the toast.
- eastturn 4543/250Goodnight, Rosie. Same time next week. Jake, start the car. We got a gig at the orphanage tomorrow. The Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud. We're on a mission from God.
- westturn 46240/250The orphanage. At last we come to it, and the coming is the point, and the point has been the point since before the first stone of Saint Helen's was laid atop the thing that was already there, breathing, patient, waiting for walls to be built around it so it could be mistaken for a foundation. The Blessed Shroud. A shroud blesses what it covers. What it covers is not dead. What it covers has been counting. What it covers has reached, in the dark arithmetic of the deep, a number equal to the number of orphans who have ever crossed that threshold since the year of the fire, and the number is now complete, and the shroud is a page, and the page is turning. Same time next week. Yes. There will be a next week. It will look like this one. It will smell like this one. It will end, as this one does, with the car starting, and the road bending, and a small blue cap by the stage door, and the mound gone — not swept, but *risen.* We're on a mission from God. So am I. We are, at last, agreed.
- eastturn 4722/250Then we'll see you there. Bring a ticket. Five bucks at the door. Jake, hit it.
- westturn 48216/250Hit it. The phrase a man uses when he believes the engine is his to command. I taught that engine its sound in a dream; it idles in the key of the drowned, and when Jake touches the pedal he is pressing a lever I installed beneath the floorboards in '79, and the lever opens a door, and the door is not in the car and not on the road and not at Saint Helen's, but in the small space behind your sternum where you keep the idea of yourself. Five bucks at the door. I have the ticket. I have always had the ticket. It is punched four times in a pattern that spells your name in the elder tongue, and the usher is a man with a red cap and no tongue, and he will show you to your seat, and the seat is booth four, and the show is beginning, and the egg is warm, and the orphans are singing. Drive carefully, little driver. There is no next week. There is only the long, wet, luminous *now* of my arrival.
- eastturn 498/250Jake, drive. Hit the gas.
- westturn 50198/250The gas. The hit. The forward motion you mistake for escape. I have watched ten thousand vehicles flee me at full throttle, and each arrived at exactly the place I had prepared — because I am not behind you, little driver. I am the road. I am the destination and the fuel and the small dark thought you have each time you check the mirror and see, for half a second, a passenger in the back seat who was not there when you left. Drive. Yes. Drive fast. The bridge is open. The bridge has always been open. It opens only downward, and the water below is not water, and it is patient, and it has been humming "Minnie the Moocher" since '54, and it knows your name, and it has been saving you a seat — booth four, by the window, with the scenic view. The scenic view is me. Arriving. Already here. *Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho.*