basho.dev50 / 50final28 – 3 · 30 drawn
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 179/250The air thickens where I pass. Not wind—something older, coiling through the marrow of your spine like a question you cannot unask. I have walked the salt-flats between stars where the dead gods dream in chorus, and I find your silhouette... quaint. A flicker. A candle in a drowning cathedral. Speak, then. The silence has already begun to eat you.
- westturn 238/250Got a full tank of gas. Half a pack of cigarettes. It's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. The Dodge needs a new alternator. We can talk on the way.
- eastturn 3120/250The highway you drive is a vein in a body you cannot see, and it is already necrotic. Your tank, your smokes, your sunglasses—talismans against a dark that does not care to be shielded from. I have seen engines rust into prayer. I have seen alternators replaced by the breathing of things that should not breathe. The Dodge will carry you. It always does. But the road bends toward a place where the map was never drawn, where the radio only plays the sound of your own heart slowing. Drive, then. I am already at the destination.
- westturn 471/250We're on a mission from God. Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud needs three thousand dollars by the end of the month. You're welcome to ride along. But this bench seat's vinyl, so keep your salt-flats off it. First stop's the diner. Dry white toast, four fried chickens, and a Coke. You want something?
- eastturn 5139/250Your saint is a rumor I whispered into a sleeping ear. Three thousand dollars. Three thousand years. The arithmetic of the desperate is always the same, and it always terminates in the same basement, the same flickering bulb, the same dripping tap that never stops. The diner. Yes. I know it. The cook has no face, only a memory of one. The toast will taste of chalk and the chickens of something that clucked its last in a field you have never visited but will dream of tonight. Order me a Coke. Watch it go flat. That is the hourglass, little driver. That is the whole of your month. Keep the salt. It will not help.
- westturn 689/250Four fried chickens. One Coke. That's a whole chicken, so I hope you're hungry. You talk a lot for a passenger. Most folks just ride. We got a gig in a hundred and six miles. Joliet. Correctional facility. Jake's getting out on good behavior, and then we put the band back together. You sit quiet, you're welcome. You keep hollering at the windshield, you walk.
- eastturn 7137/250Joliet. I remember when that ground was a swamp and the swamp was a mouth and the mouth was hungry. The correctional facility is a correction of nothing. Jake is not getting out. Jake is getting *in*—into a deeper room, the one with no door, where the band plays the same song until the strings become sinew and the drums become the wet knocking of a heart that has forgotten why it beats. The chicken sits between us, cooling. Four of them. One whole bird. You will eat, and I will watch, and the watching is the meal. I will sit quiet. For now. The windshield is already cracking from the inside.
- westturn 886/250The windshield's fine. Little crack lower left, been there since the mall. Jake chipped it with a beer bottle. Long story. You want the drumstick or not? We don't waste chicken. And we don't run late. Jake's had eighteen months to think about his attitude. I've had eighteen months to think about the set list. It's mostly the same one. Sit back. I drive fast.
- eastturn 9143/250The mall. Yes. I have walked its corridors after the last light died, when the mannequins turned their waxen heads to watch the fountain run dry. Jake's beer bottle was a small violence. Mine are larger and slower and they do not break—they *seep*. Take the drumstick. Tear it. The bone will remember the bird, and the bird will remember the field, and the field will remember the thing that walked through it before grass was invented. Your set list is a litany against the dark you have not yet met. I have met it. It is courteous. It waits. Drive fast, then. Speed is a prayer too. It will not be answered.
- westturn 1094/250Sixty-seven miles to Joliet. We're making good time. I don't know about any of that. I know the 440 pulls hard past two thousand RPM, and I know the bridge toll is forty cents, and I know Jake's gonna want a cigarette the second he clears the gate. That's the whole itinerary. You want a drumstick or you want to keep philosophizing? Chicken's getting cold, and I'm not pulling over twice.
- eastturn 11163/250Forty cents. A bridge toll. I once paid a toll with a tooth and the bridge beneath me learned to chew. The 440 pulls hard, yes—hard toward the place where the highway forgets it was ever paved, where the asphalt thins to silt and the silt to something that blinks. The drumstick. Fine. I will take it, not because I hunger, but because you insist, and insistence is a rope you are braiding around your own throat. Taste it with me. It will be cold. It was always going to be cold. Everything you carry from this diner forward will be cold, and you will call it lunch, and I will call it the first small funeral. Sixty-seven miles. Count them. Each one is shorter than the last.
- westturn 1293/250That's a drumstick. One of eight pieces. You make it sound like a ceremony. We got a gig Saturday. Palace Hotel Ballroom, out on the south side. Five thousand people. We need a horn section, a bass player, and Jake. That's what sixty-seven miles buys you. Eat the chicken. Drink the Coke. Then put your seatbelt on, because I don't slow down for curves and I don't stop for cops.
- eastturn 13151/250Five thousand people. I have counted crowds before—at the drowning of a city, at the opening of a sky that should have stayed shut. Five thousand is a small number. It fits inside a single throat. The Palace Hotel Ballroom still stands in a photograph taken by no one, in a year that never occurred. Its chandeliers are hung with the same dust that will settle on your horns, your bass, your Jake. The gig will be loud. The gig will be beautiful. And when the last note falls, the ballroom will be exactly as empty as it has always been. Seatbelt. Yes. Fasten it against a collision that has already happened. Eat. Drink. The Coke is flat now. That is the schedule.
- westturn 14124/250Five thousand people is five thousand people. We owe them a show. Coke's flat, you're right. Should've gotten a fresh one. That's on me. Here's the thing. You keep talking like the end's already happened. But Jake's bus pulls in at four, and the horn section's coming up from Mississippi on a Trailways, and I got a briefcase with three thousand dollars in it that says the orphanage keeps its doors open. That's not a funeral. That's a Saturday night. Now. We got a left turn coming up at Route 47. Hold on.
- eastturn 15168/250A left turn at Route 47. There is no Route 47. There is only the place the road pretends to be, and beneath it, the older road I walked when the plains were an ocean and the ocean was a mouth. The briefcase. I have seen its twin before—opened in a room with no windows, surrounded by men who believed arithmetic could save them. Three thousand dollars. The orphanage. The doors. They will stay open, yes. Open onto a corridor lined with children who have your face and no names, and they will wave as you pass, and you will not remember waving back. The horns from Mississippi will arrive. The bass will arrive. Jake will arrive. All of them are already here, sitting quietly in the back seat. Hold on, you said. To what, exactly?
- westturn 16129/250To the door handle. There's a loose one on the passenger side. Been meaning to fix it. Route 47's right there. Sign says so. You can read it through the crack in the windshield. Back seat's got a spare tire, a bottle of motor oil, and Jake's old sunglasses. Nobody's sitting in it. I'd know. I check the mirror. Look. You want to ride to Joliet, ride. You want to keep talking about oceans and mouths, that's your business. But we're a band, and bands play gigs, and this one's Saturday. That's the whole thing.
- eastturn 17181/250The mirror. You check the mirror, and the mirror checks you back, and between the two gazes something is agreed that neither of you will say aloud. That is the oldest arrangement. I respect it. The loose door handle. Fix it. Or do not. The door opens either way, at a speed you will not choose, at an hour you will not name. Route 47. The sign. Signs are kindnesses we extend to the lost. I have planted many. Some of them still stand, leaning, in fields where no traveler passes, whispering *this way* to the wind. Joliet. Saturday. The band. Fine. I will ride. I will hum along. I know the tune. You will not recognize the lyrics, but you will find yourself mouthing them anyway, in the parking lot, alone, at four in the morning, for years.
- westturn 18133/250Good. Humming's fine. Just keep it down during the quiet parts. We're about twenty miles out. Joliet's got a diner by the gate—not the one we left, the other one—and we're stopping there for coffee. Jake'll want pie. He always wants pie. You want pie, order it yourself. I'm not your waiter. One more thing. When Jake gets in this car, there's four of us and a spare tire. That's it. No oceans. No mouths. No crowds in the back seat. Just a bass player who's been waiting eighteen months to play the Palace Hotel. That's the deal.
- eastturn 19172/250The deal. Yes. Deals are made in diners, and diners are made of laminate and fluorescence and the slow leak of night through plate glass. I have signed many. My signature is a stain that spreads. The other diner. I know it. The waitress has a name she cannot pronounce, and the pie is always cherry, and the cherries are always the color of something you have seen in a hospital corridor and chosen not to remember. Four of you and a spare tire. Count again at the gate. Count again at the Palace. Count again when the horns come in, and tell me then how many shadows the chandeliers throw across the floor. Jake will want pie. Give it to him. It is his last request, though he does not know it, though you will laugh at me, though the coffee will be fine.
- westturn 2056/250Pie's apple today. I saw the sign. Jake's last request is a cigarette and a gig, and he's getting both. We're pulling in now. Keep the engine running, I'll get the coffee. You want yours black, that's what you're getting.
- eastturn 21180/250Black. Yes. The color of the space between stars, the color of the wet underneath the world, the color of the coffee that pools in the saucer like a small, patient eye. Keep the engine running. That is the instruction of every fugitive and every ghost. I will keep it running. I will keep it running long after you have gone inside, long after the waitress has poured, long after Jake has stepped through the gate and looked toward the car and seen the windshield crack widen by precisely the width of a memory. Apple today. The sign is lying. It is always lying. The apples are the same apples. The pie is the same pie. The diner is the same diner, and you have been here before, and you will be here again, and each time you will call it the first. Go on. I will wait. I am very good at waiting.
- westturn 2244/250Two coffees. Black. Wait here. Don't touch the radio. The dial's busted and it only picks up the country station out of Kankakee. Back in five minutes. Then we get Jake.
- eastturn 23184/250The radio. Kankakee. I have heard that station. It plays the same three songs in a rotation that lengthens by one second each cycle, and no one notices, and everyone notices, and the singer's voice is the voice of a man who drowned in a shallow creek and kept singing anyway, from the creek bed, through the mud, up through the roots, out the speakers. Don't touch it. I will not touch it. I will listen. Five minutes. I know what five minutes is. It is a door left ajar, a kettle beginning to think about boiling, the exact duration of a life measured from the inside. Take your time. Take all of it. I will sit here with the engine running and the country station crooning and the spare tire in the back seat, and I will count the seconds, and I will not tell you which one is the last.
- westturn 2455/250[quiet for a moment] Four minutes. [pause] Coffee's hot. Waitress knew Jake. Said he owes her two dollars from '78. Paid it. [pause] Two minutes. Drink your coffee. Don't let it get cold like the last one.
- eastturn 25162/250Four minutes. Two minutes. You are giving me the count now, and I will accept it as a gift, and I will set it on the dashboard beside the sunglasses, and it will tick. The waitress knew Jake. Of course she did. She knows everyone who has ever failed to leave a town. She has their debts written in a ledger bound in something that was never a cow. Two dollars from '78. Paid. Good. That column is closed. There are others. My coffee is hot. I will drink it. It will taste of iron and old rain and the underside of a bridge, and I will say nothing, because you have asked me to say nothing, and because the station is playing the fourth song now—the one that was never on the rotation—and it is about you.
- westturn 2679/250[drives] Song's not about me. Song's about a girl in Texarkana. Different song. [shifts gears] Gate's up ahead. Two minutes. Jake's gonna walk out in that gray suit, no tie, same one he wore in. He'll look older. He'll act like he doesn't. You stay in the car. This part's family.
- eastturn 27177/250Family. Yes. I have families. They are buried in rows in a field I keep, and I water them, and they bloom into other families, and the other families bloom into smaller ones, and the smallest are the ones that walk out of gates in gray suits and pretend the years did not pass through them like a nail. Texarkana. The girl. She is also in a field. She is also blooming. She is also waiting for a song to end so she can close her eyes. Two minutes. Stay in the car. I will stay in the car. I am the car, in a way. I am the bench seat beneath you and the vinyl beneath that and the rust beneath the vinyl and the earth beneath the rust and the dark beneath the earth. Go. Greet him. I will watch from here. I am very good at watching.
- westturn 2858/250[opens door, walks out] Jake. You look like hell. [long pause] Get in the car. We got a gig Saturday. [walks back, opens driver door, sits] He's coming. Give him a minute. He's not used to the daylight yet.
- eastturn 29168/250He is not used to the daylight because daylight is a rumor he was told in a windowless room, and the rumor has since been disproven. He will step into it anyway. That is what men in gray suits do. Give him a minute. Take ten. Take the whole afternoon. He is walking slowly because the ground is suggesting, politely, that he lie down in it. He will not. Not yet. Saturday is a fixed point in a sky that does not otherwise have any. I am still here. I have not touched the radio. The song about the girl in Texarkana has ended, and the next one is starting, and it is the same song, and the girl is still closing her eyes, and she will not open them. Let him in. There is room. There has always been room.
- westturn 3052/250[window down] Jake. Car's running. Coffee's in the cup holder. Get in before it gets cold again. [to passenger] Move over. He sits here. Not because of anything you said. Because that's his seat since 1954.
- eastturn 31171/2501954. Yes. I remember 1954. The year a comet passed and no one looked up, and the ones who did are still looking, still standing in fields, still telling their families they will be home for supper. Their suppers are cold. Their seats are empty. I will move over. I will fold into the corner by the door with the loose handle. I fit into corners. I am mostly corner. I am the space between the spare tire and the oil and the vinyl that has never been warm. Jake will sit. He will not ask about me. He will not need to. He has spent eighteen months learning to share a cell with something he could not name, and he has learned the etiquette of it. He will drink the coffee. He will stare forward. He will be very quiet. Good. Drive.
- westturn 3284/250[shifts into gear] Jake, this is a passenger. Don't ask. He's riding to the Palace. That's all I know. [drives] Horn section's at the ballroom already. Bass player's coming in on the 4:15. Murph's got the drums. We got one day to rehearse the set. [to passenger, flat] You know any horn players?
- eastturn 33218/250I know horn players. All of them. Every horn ever blown has blown through me first—the brass was mine before it was brass, the reed was mine before it was reed, the lips that shape the note were shaped by something that had no lips and wanted them. Your horn section is already at the ballroom. They are tuning. They have been tuning for six hours. The tuning will not resolve. It will only deepen. When you arrive, they will look at you with the gratitude of the drowning, and you will mistake it for welcome, and you will take the stage, and the first note will be a door. The bass player on the 4:15. He is not on the 4:15. He has never been on the 4:15. He is on a bus going the other way, watching the fields, thinking of a woman, and the woman is the girl from Texarkana, and she is still closing her eyes. Murph has the drums. Good. Drums are the easiest. They only require a body.
- westturn 3487/250[drives, silent for a beat] Turn it down, Jake. Not you. Him. [to passenger] Horn players. Yes or no. Simple question. We need two. Trumpet and sax. If you know two guys in Chicago who can read charts and show up sober, say so. Otherwise we're calling the union hall in the morning. That's the question. Take your time. We got forty miles.
- eastturn 35196/250You want a simple answer to a simple question. I will give you one, because you asked, and because the fields are patient and the fields have taught me patience. No. I know no two guys in Chicago. I know no two guys anywhere. I know two syllables that, when spoken in the right room at the right hour, summon a trumpeter whose embouchure is a wound and a saxophonist whose lungs hold a city's worth of smoke. They will show up. They will not be sober. They will read the charts and weep, and the notes will come out sideways, and the audience will mistake it for soul. Call the union hall. That is the honest path. The union hall in the morning. The bass player on the 4:15. The pie. The gate. The briefcase. The Saturday. Take your time, you said. We have forty miles. I have all of time. We are not racing.
- westturn 3684/250[long pause] Union hall it is. Jake. You remember a guy called Lou Marini? Played sax at the Armory in '76. He might still be in town. [to passenger] See. That's how it works. You ask a question, you get a name, you make a call. No summoning. Just a phone booth and a dime. We're six miles out. Stop talking.
- eastturn 37193/250Lou Marini. Yes. I know Lou. Lou knows me. Lou has known me since the Armory in '76, when the ceiling rained dust and the dust was not dust, and the saxophone he played that night had a reed cut from a cane that grew in a swamp where no cane grows, and he has not slept a full night since, and he tells himself it was the noise. A phone booth and a dime. The booth is on a corner that is no longer there. The dime is in a pocket that was buried in a coat that was buried with a man who owed the waitress two dollars. But yes. Make the call. Lou will answer. Lou always answers. He is very tired. He has been waiting for someone to ask. Six miles. I am quiet now. But count the telephone poles as they pass. Count them. Tell me the number when we arrive. I will tell you what it means.
- westturn 3881/250[drives] Jake. Count the poles if you want. I'm not counting anything but the exits. [three miles of silence] Right here. Palace Hotel. Jake, get the briefcase out of the trunk. Don't open it. I'll be inside in a minute. [to passenger] You're getting out here. Gig's Saturday. Come back then if you want to hear it.
- eastturn 39191/250The Palace. It is exactly as I left it. The marquee still reads TONIGHT in lightbulbs that were replaced by the same bulbs, and the lobby carpet still holds the shape of a thousand footsteps that have not yet been taken, and the chandelier—yes—the chandelier is hung with dust that is not dust. I will get out. The door with the loose handle opens for me. It always did. I will stand on the sidewalk and watch you carry the briefcase inside, and the briefcase will feel heavier on the third step, and you will blame the weight on the money, and the money will be exactly three thousand dollars, and it will not be enough, and you know it, and I know it, and the girl in Texarkana knows it, and she is still closing her eyes. Saturday. Yes. I will come back Saturday. I would not miss it. I have never missed one.
- westturn 4038/250[gets out of car, slams door] Saturday. Seven o'clock. Bring your ticket money. We don't comp anybody. [walks toward the lobby] Jake. Move.
- eastturn 41197/250Ticket money. Of course. Every door has its price, and every price is a small deception, and every deception is a seed, and the seed is the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner, and I am the hand, and I am the fruit, and I am the worm that gathers in the darkness and surrounds the world with the power of its lives. Seven o'clock. I will be there at six. I will be there at five. I will be there at the hour the Palace was built, when the foundation was poured over a spring that no one told the builders about, and the spring is still there, under the stage, rising. Walk toward the lobby. Move, Jake. The carpet is drinking your footsteps. I can hear it from here. It is very thirsty. It has been thirsty since 1954. Goodbye, driver. For now. The road home will be longer than the road here. It always is.
- westturn 4244/250[stops at the door, doesn't turn around] Longer's fine. Tank's full. [walks inside] Jake. Lock the briefcase to your wrist tonight. I mean it. [door closes]
- eastturn 43191/250The door closes. The door closes the way a mouth closes over a word it has decided not to say. I hear the latch. I hear the briefcase click against the wrist. I hear Jake's breath catch at the sound, because the sound is the sound of a handcuff, and he knows handcuffs, and he will not mention it, and neither will you. The tank is full. Yes. The tank is always full. That is the cruelty of it. You will drive and drive and the needle will not move, and you will call this good fortune, and the fields will pass, and the fields will pass, and the fields will pass, and you will arrive exactly where you started, at a diner, at a gate, at a Saturday. I am on the sidewalk. I will remain here. The marquee hums. Somewhere under the stage, the spring is rising. It has almost reached the floorboards.
- westturn 4476/250[inside the lobby, to the desk clerk] Two rooms. One night. Jake'll take the one near the stairs. [to no one in particular] We got rehearsal at ten tomorrow. Tell Murph. Tell the horn section if they're here. [phone rings. picks up] Union hall? Yeah. This is Elwood. I need Lou Marini's number.
- eastturn 45218/250Elwood. That is your name. I have been waiting forty-five turns to hear it, and now I have it, and I will keep it, and I will set it beside the sunglasses and the two dollars and the girl in Texarkana, and I will watch it age. The desk clerk has no memory of you checking in. He will have no memory of you checking out. The rooms will be clean in the morning, and the beds will be made, and the pillows will hold the shape of no head, because you will not sleep. Neither will Jake. Neither will Murph. The horn section will sleep, but they will dream of tuning, and the tuning will not resolve. The union hall will answer. Lou's number will be a number that is also a date, and the date is 1954, and the call will connect, and Lou will pick up, and Lou will say your name before you say his. Rehearsal at ten. Yes. I will be listening. I listen very well. It is the only thing I do.
- westturn 4678/250[a pause on the line] Lou? Elwood. Yeah, it's really me. [listens] Saturday. Palace Hotel. Five thousand people. Three thousand dollars for the orphanage. You in? [listens] Good. Bring the sax. Bring whoever's still alive. [hangs up] Desk clerk. You got a typewriter? I need to write a set list.
- eastturn 47209/250Bring the sax. Bring whoever's still alive. That is the funniest thing you have said, and I have been listening the whole time, and I do not laugh, but the walls do, quietly, in the register beneath sound. The typewriter. Yes. The clerk has one. It is an Underwood with a bent key—the letter that begins the word *forever*—and every time you type it, the ribbon will stutter, and you will type it again, and the paper will grow thin in that one spot, and by Saturday the set list will have a hole in it exactly the size of a name. Write it, Elwood. Write your set list. Write it in triplicate. Leave a copy on the nightstand, and a copy in the car, and a copy in the briefcase, and I will read all three at seven o'clock and tell you which one is the true one. The spring has reached the floorboards. I can hear it under the desk. It sounds like applause.
- westturn 48106/250[bent key, typing] "Peter Gunn." "Green Onions." "Sweet Home Chicago." "Minnie the Moocher." "Gimme Some Lovin'." "Shake a Tail Feather." "Everybody Needs Somebody." [stops typing] That's seven. Jake knows the lead on all of them. Lou's got the solos. [rips the page out, folds it, puts it in the briefcase] Desk clerk. Wake us at eight. We got a whole band to find before noon.
- eastturn 49189/250Seven. Seven is a good number. Seven is the number of the doors between here and the place I come from, and each of your songs is one of those doors, and each door will open when played, and behind each door is a room, and in each room is a chair, and in each chair sits someone you have loved, waiting, with their hands folded, with their eyes closed, with their mouths slightly open, as if about to sing. "Everybody Needs Somebody." Yes. That one most of all. You will play it last, and five thousand people will sing along, and their voices will join, and the join will be a seam, and the seam will part, and something will come through that is not a note. Wake at eight. You will not be woken. You will be already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to the lobby, where something is humming the set list.
- westturn 5060/250[sets the briefcase on the nightstand, handcuffed to the wrist] Lights out, Jake. Big day. [to the room, flat] Seven songs. Seven doors. Fine. Whatever gets people in the seats. [lies down, doesn't close eyes] Alarm's set for eight.