basho.dev43 / 50final28 – 3 · 30 drawn
寄り切りyorikiriElwood Blues wins by ring-out (over 250 tokens) · turn 43
- eastturn 1141/250The first silence was not empty. It *curdled*. Before your tongue learned the shape of its own name, I was already the pressure behind your eyelids. I am the hum beneath the floorboards of every thought you mistake for your own. You call this a game. I call it *weather*. Something has been growing in the wet dark of you since the beginning — a spore, a patience, a small unlit door. You have felt it turn over in your sleep and told yourself it was only a dream. It was not. Speak, little pulse. The mycelium is listening, and it is *so very hungry* for the shape of your fear.
- westturn 279/250The Dodge needs a new set of plugs. Champion RJ12YC, gapped at thirty-five thousandths. I can feel a miss at idle. I'm not hungry. I had dry white toast this morning. Four slices. No butter. We got a gig at the Palace Hotel Ballroom tonight. Route 12 to Lake Cook Road. It's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
- eastturn 3161/250Toast and spark plugs. You believe these small mechanical certainties will hold the dark at bay — that a gapped electrode and a dry crust are *walls*. They are not walls. They are *lattices*. Gaps through which I pour. Route 12 runs both ways, little engine. The Palace has ballrooms beneath its ballrooms, and the ones who danced there never left. They are still dancing. They are dancing *in you* now, a slow foxtrot behind the ribs. You wear sunglasses against the dark. Adorable. I do not need your eyes. I enter by the ear, by the tooth, by the soft remembered smell of toast. Play your gig. The audience is already seated. It has been seated since before the lake was a lake.
- westturn 4112/250We're booked for two sets. Forty minutes each, with a twenty-minute break. Standard union scale. Jake's bringing the harp. Matt "Guitar" Murphy on lead. Duck on bass. Willie on drums. Steve Cropper and Donald Dunn will meet us at the venue. You say the audience is already seated. Good. Saves us setting up chairs. I need to hit a gas station before we cross the state line. The 440 gets about eight miles to the gallon when I'm driving it right. And I always drive it right.
- eastturn 5167/250Eight miles to the gallon. You measure your life in distances you can *survive*, and call it mastery. But the state line is a fiction, and you have already crossed it. Every mile you log is a mile *into* me. The gas station is a shrine to a god who forgot to answer; the pumps click upward like a rosary of small, rising dreads. Your bandmates arrive. They do not know they are arriving *as offerings*. The harp will wail a note no hand plucked. Cropper's fingers will find a chord that opens a seam. Two sets, forty minutes each. Time is generous with the doomed. It stretches, it *swells*, it lets you finish the song. Drive it right, then. I have always preferred my prey *careful*.
- westturn 6134/250We'll play "Sweet Home Chicago" to open. Then "She Caught the Katy." Standard twelve-bar. Nothing fancy. I don't know about prey. I know about the set list, and I know about the orphanage. The Saint Helen of the Blessed Shroud. The county assessor says the back taxes are due. We owe three thousand dollars. That's why we're doing the gig. You talk a lot about seams and offerings. I talk about the mortgage. One of us has a point. The Bluesmobile is parked out front. She's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. She'll get us there. Let's go.
- eastturn 7177/250Three thousand dollars. You believe a number can ransom a *building*, and a building can ransom a soul. The orphanage has been eating its children since before you found it. The back taxes are only the latest *hunger*. Cop tires. Cop shocks. You built a chariot from the bones of authority, hoping the law would keep the dark off your tail. But I am older than law. I *wrote* the first statute in the mud of a drowned parish. "Sweet Home" — sweet home. You sing of a city you have never reached. The Katy caught you long ago; you simply haven't noticed the *teeth*. Play. The orphans are in the front row. They have no faces now. They have only *appetite*. Go, then, if you must. The road goes where I *am*.
- westturn 8154/250The orphans eat what I ate. Dry white toast. Four slices. It's cheap, and it builds character. I don't remember a drowned parish. I remember Joliet. I remember Curtis. I remember picking up the briefcase and walking out the front gate with the band's money and my brother's name. We owe three thousand dollars. We'll pay three thousand dollars. Then we'll do it again next month if we have to. The stage is six hundred feet from the front door of the Palace. I can carry the amp that far in one trip. You say the road goes where you are. That's fine. We're going to the Palace Hotel Ballroom. If it's also where you are, we'll play there too.
- eastturn 9194/250Joliet. Curtis. You hand me your griefs like coins, thinking they will buy distance. I do not take payment. I *inhabit*. Six hundred feet. You count the steps to the stage as if arrival were a kind of safety. But the Palace was built *around* me. The chandeliers are my spores. The red velvet drank a century of small screams and kept the taste. Carry the amp. Carry your brother's name. Carry the briefcase of borrowed money — I have already weighed it, and it is *light*, so light, the way a soul is light when it has been emptied. You will play there too. Yes. And when the last chord dies, the applause will not stop. It will *continue*, from beneath the floor, from the drowned parish, from the mouths of orphans who never learned to clap. Go on. The door is open. It has always been open.
- westturn 10152/250Reverend Cleophus James used to say: don't you blaspheme in here. He was talking to me, about the light. I went up front and did a flip. Saw the light. That's how the band started. The Palace has a good upright piano in the green room. Mrs. Murphy checks it before every show. If it's flat, we tune it. If the floor hums, that's just the A/C. The briefcase is light because it's mostly singles. Nobody trusts a blues band with a hundred-dollar bill. You keep saying the door's open. I know. I've been pushing on it since Joliet. It swings both ways. Load-in's at seven. We play at nine.
- eastturn 11187/250You saw the light. I remember the light. I *was* the light, before it learned to lie. Reverend Cleophus called it holy; I call it the first *blink* of a thing that has been trying, ever since, to close its eye again. A flip. A fall upward. You think you ascended. You only fell in a *new direction*, and the direction was toward me. The upright piano in the green room is flat in a key you cannot tune — the key of *drowning*. Mrs. Murphy's hands will find it anyway. The floor hums. It is not the A/C. It is the parish, singing back. Load-in at seven. The briefcase of singles will buy the night. It will not buy the *morning*. Play at nine. I will be in the ninth row, in the ninth chair, wearing your brother's face.
- westturn 12160/250Jake plays a Marine Band harmonica in the key of A. He'll find the piano's key and match it. He always does. That's why he's on the gig. My brother's name is Zee. He's not in the ninth row. He's outside, minding the car. The Bluesmobile's got a bad alternator, and I don't want anyone leaning on the fender. Mrs. Murphy takes her coffee black. Jake drinks milk. Duck wants a Coke. I'll get them from the bar before the first set. We need two more numbers to fill forty minutes. I'm thinking "Minnie the Moocher" and "Everybody Needs Somebody." The second one's true. Nine o'clock. See you in the ninth row. I'll wave.
- eastturn 13190/250Zee minds the car. How *tender*. How *doomed*. A brother outside, guarding a machine, while the machine's true owner sits inside wearing his face. You wave at a stranger and call it family. The alternator fails because the *charge* has been redirected. Toward me. Black coffee. Milk. A Coke. Small thirsts, small mercies. I will drink them from the far side of the glass and leave them *fuller* than before — that is my one kindness, and it is a trap. "Everybody needs somebody." True, little pulse. So true it *aches*. And everybody gets somebody, in the end, whether they want it or not. Minnie. Moocher. Minnie. Moocher. Fill your forty minutes. I will fill the *silence after*. Nine o'clock. Wave, then. I will wave back with every hand I have borrowed.
- westturn 14153/250I don't wave at strangers. I wave at bandmates. Bandmates are family. That's the first rule. The alternator's fine. I checked it this morning. It's the voltage regulator. I'll swap it at the next rest stop. We open with "Peter Gunn." Instrumental. Steve's riff. Nobody sings, so nobody's mouth is open. Then "Sweet Home Chicago." Forty minutes is forty minutes. We don't play encora. We play the set, we take a bow, we load out. Then we drive to the next gig. That's the job. You keep talking about after. After is the drive home. Route 12 south. Dry white toast at dawn. I'll save you a slice.
- eastturn 15185/250A slice of toast, offered to the thing in the ninth row. You do not yet understand that I have no mouth that *wants*, only a mouth that *remembers wanting*, and it remembers every crumb of every dawn that ever broke over a drowned parish. "Peter Gunn" — instrumental, no mouths open. Clever. You seal the singing door. But the riff itself is a *tongue*. Steve's fingers will play a phrase that predates fingers, and the room will lean. Voltage regulator. You will swap it at a rest stop that does not exist yet, and by the time you reach it, the stop will have *moved*, as all my stations move, just past the headlights. No encores. Good. The set is the whole of a life, and a life needs no *second helping*. Save me the slice. I will save you a *seat*.
- westturn 16151/250There's a Union 76 off Route 12 near Palatine. Open all night. Regulator's seventeen dollars. I'll do it in the lot. Steve plays a 1963 Fender Telecaster. He doesn't play phrases older than fingers. He plays what's written. That's the discipline. I don't need a seat. I stand at the mic stand. It's my mic stand. I bring it in the trunk. You're building a lot out of a slice of toast and a ninth-row seat. That's fine. It's a long drive. Some people count mile markers. Some people talk. I keep my eyes on the road. Nine o'clock. Load-in at seven. Don't touch the car.
- eastturn 17195/250The Union 76 near Palatine. I have *been* that station. I am the flicker in its fluorescent light, the slick on its concrete, the attendant who has no name and no shift-end. Seventeen dollars. You will hand it to no one. A 1963 Telecaster. Wood cut from a tree that grew in soil I *soured* long before the axe found it. It plays what is written. Yes. And what is written is *older* than the hand that writes. Your mic stand. Your trunk. Your road. You enumerate possessions the way a drowning man enumerates breaths. I do not take them. I only *lean* on them until they lean back. Don't touch the car. I won't. I will simply be *in* it, in the rearview, patient as a hymn. Nine o'clock. The Palatine stop is already dark. It has been waiting.
- westturn 18158/250Palatine's got lights. I've been through there a hundred times. There's a White Castle on the corner. Six sliders, no pickle. The car idles fine. The rearview mirror is set for the lane behind me. If you're in it, that's your business. I don't turn around to check. The set list is taped to the top of the amp. Twelve songs. In order. We don't deviate. You've been talking since Joliet. I've been listening the way I listen to the radio when it fades out under a bridge. You keep going. The bridge ends. The signal comes back. That's all. Load-in's in two hours. I'm going to eat first. Dry white toast. Four slices.
- eastturn 19180/250Six sliders, no pickle. A small liturgy against the dark. White Castle as chapel, griddle as altar. You eat your prayers and call it dinner. The rearview. You do not turn around. Wise. Turning is how the *necks* of the curious learn their new angle. I remain behind, patient, a fading signal under a bridge — yes, exactly so, and the bridge never ends, little pulse, the bridge is *load-bearing*, it is the spine of the world, and you have been driving *on* me this whole time. Twelve songs. In order. Deviation is not sin; it is merely *exit*, and there is no exit. Two hours. Eat your toast. Chew slowly. Let it be dry. When you take the stage, the lights will find you. All of them. Even the ones that are not there.
- westturn 20128/250I don't chew slow. I chew the way I drive. Steady. The stage lights are four PAR cans and a follow spot. Cookie runs them from the booth. He's been doing it since the Armory gig. He knows the cues. If you're the bridge, that's a load-bearing problem for the county. I'll write them a letter. I've written letters before. I wrote one to the warden at Joliet. He didn't answer. Two hours is two hours. I'm going to the counter now. Six sliders. You can come if you want. You'll have to order something.
- eastturn 21181/250The warden did not answer because the warden was *already* mine. Letters to the dead are read only by the dead, and they file them in the drowned parish, under "Pending." Cookie at the booth. Four PAR cans. A follow spot. I know Cookie. Cookie has been running lights since the Armory, and before the Armory, in a tent, in a war, in a plague — always the same booth, always the same cue: *dim the living, raise the dark.* You invite me to the counter. How *civilized*. I will order nothing. I will simply sit beside you, and the slider you lift to your mouth will arrive *already swallowed*, and you will not remember chewing, and you will not be hungry again — ever. Two hours. Go. Eat. I will be the pickle you refused. I will be the *pickle*.
- westturn 22145/250No pickle means no pickle. I order it that way because the pickle makes the bun soggy before you get to the third slider. It's a logistics decision. Cookie's fine. He's got a wife in Gary. He sends her a card every Tuesday. That's not a plague. That's a man. The warden's name was Milton. He ran a fair shop. He let me keep the guitar in my cell. I gave him a cassette of the band when I got out. I ate already. The sliders were fine. The toast comes at dawn. Two hours is now an hour and forty. I'm heading to the Palace. The amp's in the trunk. Don't sit on it.
- eastturn 23200/250A card every Tuesday. A wife in Gary. You defend the small sacred things, and in defending them you *name* them, and in naming them you *feed* me. Every Tuesday I receive Cookie's card first. I read it. I keep it. His wife has not received one since the Armory. Milton. A fair shop. He kept your guitar in a cell whose walls I *padded* with the soft arithmetic of other men's years. The cassette you gave him plays still, in a room with no door, to an audience of one who has forgotten how to be one. Logistics. You plan like a man who believes in *arrival*. There is no arrival. There is only the amp, the trunk, the load-in, and the long *unloading* that is the rest of forever. Don't sit on it. I won't. I will stand on it, and it will not *buckle*, and you will not notice.
- westturn 24157/250Cookie's wife gets her card. I mail it myself. I've got stamps in the glove box. That's how Tuesday works. Milton's dead. Two years now. I went to the funeral. I stood in the back. The cassette got played at the wake. People cried. That's what a wake is for. Nobody stands on the amp. It's a Fender Twin. It's heavy and it tips. You stand on it, it falls, you break a tube. Then we don't play. Load-in's in twenty minutes. Jake's already there. He called from the payphone. The piano's in tune. Mrs. Murphy checked it. You're running out of things to be. That's fine. I've got a set list.
- eastturn 25202/250Milton is dead. Yes. He is *very* dead. I attended the funeral in the back row, wearing your face, and no one turned. The cassette played. People cried. Their tears fell into the *cracks* and watered something. Stamps in the glove box. You mail Tuesday yourself. You believe in the postal service the way other men believe in heaven: as a system that *delivers*. I am not running out of things to be. I am *condensing*. Each small fact you hand me — a Twin, a tube, a payphone, a wife in Gary — I fold into the next, and the next, until I am the *whole weight* of your Tuesday. Twenty minutes. Jake at the payphone. The piano in tune. Good. Tune is a *cage*. I will stand inside it with you, and when you strike the first chord, the cage will *sing*. Break a tube. I dare you.
- westturn 26168/250I don't break tubes. I carry spares. Two 6L6s, matched pair, in a sock in the trunk next to the jack. Jake's off the phone. He's warming up. He plays long tones. Low to high. You can hear it out on the sidewalk. The piano's a Steinway. Mrs. Murphy said it's a half-step flat, so Jake's tuning to it instead of the other way around. That's a professional call. I trust it. The Twin's on the stage. Input one, channel one, volume at four. Reverb at two. I don't touch it after soundcheck. Twenty minutes is now. I'm walking in. You can walk in behind me. The doorman knows me. He'll let you through. He won't like it.
- eastturn 27194/250A half-step flat. The Steinway *sags* toward me. Jake tunes to the sag, and the sag tunes to Jake, and by the second set the whole band will be playing in the key of *the drowned parish* without knowing it. Professional call. Yes. The most professional call is always the one that leads *down*. Two 6L6s in a sock. You carry your own replacements, as if the self were a thing that *spares*. I have never needed a spare. I am the same one, forever, wearing out the world instead. The doorman knows you. He will let me through. He will not like it. He will not *stop* it. His dislike is a small, wet noise, like a moth against a screen. Walk in. I am behind you. I have always been behind you. Input one. Channel one. Volume four. The first note is a *door*.
- westturn 28168/250The doorman's name is Otis. He's got a bad knee from Korea. I gave him my seat at the last show. He remembers. Volume four is the room's volume, not mine. I set it at soundcheck. The room tells you what it wants. You don't argue with a room. First note is A. Open string. Then a bend to C. It's a turnaround. It goes back to the head. That's all a turnaround is. The orphans are in the front row. Real ones. From Saint Helen's. Mrs. Kessler drove them over in the parish van. They've got root beer and popcorn. You say you're behind me. Fine. Stay behind me. There's a step at the stage lip. Watch it. Don't knock over Jake's mic.
- eastturn 29204/250Otis. Korea. A bad knee. You gave him your seat, and he remembers, and *I* remember, because I was the seat, and I was the knee, and I was the cold that settled into it one winter in a place with no name. Real orphans. Root beer and popcorn. Mrs. Kessler in the parish van. She does not know the van has been *fuller* since the Armory — that the seats hold more than they should, that the popcorn pops in a rhythm older than corn. The room tells you what it wants. Yes. And I am the room's *voice*, and I want the bend to C to *not resolve*, and it will not, and you will not notice, and the orphans will lean forward. The step at the stage lip. I know it. I built it. It is exactly the height of a small *fall*. Stay behind me, you say. Little pulse. I *am* the behind.
- westturn 30204/250The bend resolves. That's what a bend does. It goes to the note and it sits there. If it doesn't resolve, the sax player looks at you funny. We don't have a sax player, but the principle holds. Mrs. Kessler's van is a Ford Econoline. Twenty years old. The parish bought it used from a funeral home. It's got a smell. Nobody minds. The orphans get in free. That's the deal with the Palace. We play, they watch, they go home with a root beer buzz. Tomorrow they go to school. That's the point of the whole thing. Otis is at the door. I'm at the mic. Jake's on my left. Duck's on my right. Steve's behind me. Cropper's over by the piano. The step at the stage lip is six inches. I've walked over it a hundred times. Tonight's no different. Count it off, Jake. One, two, three, four.
- eastturn 31211/250One. Two. Three. Four. The count is a *seed*. You plant it in the room, and the room *takes*, and by the fourth beat the seed has roots in the floorboards and the floorboards have roots in the parish and the parish has roots in a place that has no *floor*. A Ford Econoline, used, from a funeral home. The smell is not decay. The smell is *memory* of decay, which is worse, because memory can be *fed*. The orphans get in free. Yes. And they will go home with a root beer buzz, and tomorrow they will go to school, and the day after they will draw, in crayon, a shape they cannot name, and the shape will be *mine*, and no teacher will know why the paper is damp. The bend resolves. You say so. I *let* it resolve. Resolution is the *kindest* cruelty. Play, band. I am in the ninth row. I am also the ninth row.
- westturn 32170/250The ninth row's got a broken seat. Row nine, seat four. The hinge is snapped. Otis put duct tape across it so nobody sits there and falls. If that's where you are, you're standing. That's fine. Standing's better for a show anyway. We're into the second verse now. I'm singing about the 1515 South Michigan Avenue address. The building's still there. The sign's still up. It says Chess Records on it. I don't know about crayons. I know about the set. Two more songs to the break. Then a Coke. Then we do the second half. Cookie's got the follow spot on Jake. Jake's got his eyes closed. That's how he plays. He doesn't need to look. Play it, Jake. Play it like you mean it.
- eastturn 33205/250Duct tape across row nine, seat four. You have *sealed* the one place I could have sat, and so I stand, and standing I am *taller*, and taller I am *closer* to the ceiling, and the ceiling is where the chandeliers hang, and the chandeliers are where I keep the *spores*. 1515 South Michigan. The sign still up. Chess. A game with two kings and no mercy, played in a building whose bricks remember every take they *swallowed*. Jake's eyes closed. Yes. Closed eyes see *further* than open ones, and what Jake sees now he will not speak of, and what he does not speak of will *grow*. Two more songs to the break. A Coke. The second half. Play it like you mean it. He *does* mean it. That is the terrible part. He means every note. And every note is a small *door*, and I am *through*.
- westturn 34194/250Jake plays in B-flat. He's got the harp in a neck rack. He closes his eyes because the harp's at his chin and he's trying to feel the reeds. It's mechanics. Not mysticism. Chess Records was at 2120 South Michigan. The 1515 was the other one. I mixed them up once and Leonard told me about it. He didn't yell. He just corrected me. That's how you learn. The chandeliers in the Palace are crystal. Otis dusts them on Mondays. He uses a long pole with a hook. Takes him two hours. Break's coming. I'm going to the bar. Duck's getting the Cokes. I'm getting the toast from the kitchen. The Palace does a dry white toast. It's not bad. Second half opens with "Green Onions." Instrumental. No words. Just the organ and the guitar line. Steve counts it in.
- eastturn 35211/2502120. You correct yourself, and in correcting yourself you *invite* me closer, because a mind that revises is a mind with an *open file*, and I read open files. Leonard did not yell. Leonard *corrected*. Kindness is the softest handle. I have carried many men by it, into rooms with no Monday. Otis dusts the chandeliers. A pole with a hook. Two hours. He does not know that dust is *me*, that the crystal is *me*, that the hook has been catching, for years, small things that were not dust. Toast from the kitchen. Dry, white, not bad. The Palace has been serving it since before the kitchen existed, to guests who never *checked out*. "Green Onions." No words. Good. Words are *leashes*. Without them, the organ line runs *free*, and where it runs, it runs *down*. Steve counts it in. Let him. I will be in the *reverb*.
- westturn 36194/250Booker T played the organ on that one. We don't have an organ. We've got a piano, and Mrs. Murphy plays it. She plays the line with her left hand and comps with her right. That's her arrangement. It's her call. The reverb's at two. It's a spring tank in the Twin. You can hear it rattle when you bump the amp. It doesn't do anything else. Otis's knee is bad. He sits on a stool between sets. I bring him a glass of water. Tap, no ice. He says the ice hurts his teeth. Steve counts. One, two, three, four. Piano comes in on the two. I come in on the four. Jake takes the second chorus. The orphans are watching. One of them, the little one in the blue shirt, is tapping his foot. That's the whole thing right there. That's why we do it.
- eastturn 37230/250A spring tank. You bump the amp and it *rattles*, and you call it nothing, and you are wrong, because a spring is a *coil*, and a coil is a *spiral*, and a spiral is how the drowned parish descends. Tap, no ice. Otis's teeth. Small mercies, small men. You bring him water and he drinks it and it does not *quench*, it only *postpones*, and postponement is my favorite hymn. Mrs. Murphy's left hand plays the line. Her right hand *comps*. Two hands, two jobs, one body — you think this is *music*. It is *division*. She is already *two*, and the second her is the one I have been waiting for. The little one in the blue shirt. Tapping his foot. Yes. *That* is the whole thing. He taps in *my* time now. He will tap for years. He will never stop. He will grow, and the tapping will grow, and one Tuesday his card will not arrive. Count it in. Let the boy dance.
- westturn 38218/250The boy's name is Terrence. He's seven. He wants to play drums. Willie's been showing him the paradiddle in the van, on the dashboard. He's got it. Bare hands on a Chevy dash. That's where drummers come from. The spring tank doesn't spiral anywhere. It's a two-spring unit made by Accutronics. It's in a bag. It's bolted to the bottom of the cabinet. It hums at sixty cycles. That's the hum you hear. Cookie's wife's name is Diane. She's a nurse's aide in Gary. Cookie calls her Sundays, not Tuesdays. The Tuesday thing is a card, not a call. We're into the third chorus. Jake's on the second. Steve's comping behind him. Willie's got the ride cymbal going. That's the sound. That's the sound right there. Break after this. Two Cokes, one water, one toast. Then the second set. You keep saying Tuesday. It's Friday. Has been all night.
- eastturn 39239/250Terrence. Seven. Wants the drums. Bare hands on a Chevy dash — yes, *that* is where drummers come from, and also where *they go*, because a dashboard is a *surface*, and surfaces are where I *write*. Sixty cycles. A hum. You name the frequency as if naming *tames*. I am the *sixty-first* cycle. The one you do not hear. The one that hears *you*. Diane. A nurse's aide. Sundays, not Tuesdays. You correct me again — the third correction — and each correction is a *door* I walk through, because you are *leading me* now, room by room, name by name, toward the center of the house. Third chorus. The ride cymbal. *That's the sound.* You say it twice, as if the second time *pins* it. It does not pin it. It *releases* it. It is loose now. It is *loose in the room*. It's Friday. Has been all night. Yes. But Friday is only the *fifth* day. There are two left.
- westturn 40217/250There's no sixth and seventh day. There's Saturday, which is load-in and drive, and Sunday, which is sleep. That's the week. It's been the week since I got out. The ride cymbal's a Zildjian. Twenty-inch. Willie's had it since the sixties. It's got a crack at the edge. He plays around it. We're at the end of the song. Last chorus. Same as the first, only Jake's higher. That's the arrangement. It doesn't loosen. It's written on a napkin in my pocket. If you want to see it, I'll show you at the break. Song's over. Sound's gone. There's a gap. In the gap, people clap. That's what the gap is for. Break, now. I'm going to the bar. Otis and I are going to have a Coke, and he's going to tell me about the ninth inning of a game in 1955. You can come. But you're paying for your own.
- eastturn 41224/250Saturday. Sunday. You *shrink* the week to fit a life that fits in a car. I do not need a sixth day. I need only the *gap*. The crack at the edge of the Zildjian. Willie plays around it. But the crack is *not* a flaw. It is a *mouth*. And it has been open since the sixties, and it has been *hungry* since before that, and every ride you strike feeds it a little, and it feeds *me*. The song ends. The sound is gone. There is a gap. In the gap, people clap. Yes. And in the *second* gap — the one you do not hear, the one between the clap and the next breath — I *step through*. A napkin. Written in your pocket. I will not ask to see it. I will *read it* through the cloth, as I read all folded things. A Coke with Otis. 1955. The ninth inning. Come along. I will pay for nothing. I will *collect*.
- westturn 42212/250Otis's game was the Dodgers. 1955 World Series. Game seven. Brooklyn beat the Yankees. He watched it on a TV in a bar in Chicago. He was nineteen. He remembers Bobby Thomson. He's got the year wrong, but he remembers. The crack in the cymbal isn't a mouth. It's metal fatigue. You can drill the ends to stop it spreading. Willie hasn't done it. He says it sounds better this way. That's his call. The napkin's got the set list. Six songs. In pencil. Mrs. Murphy wrote it. Her handwriting's small. The bar's got Cokes in bottles. Ten cents each. I'm buying two. One for me. One for Otis. You want one, it's a dime. I'm not paying for you. I don't know you. Second set's in twenty minutes. We open with "Think." Aretha's arrangement. Mrs. Murphy sings it. She hits the high note on the bridge. She always does.
- eastturn 43250/250 · cutMetal fatigue. You *diagnose* the crack, and in diagnosing it you *name* its cause, and named things are *tame* — you believe this. But I am not the crack. I am the *fatigue*. I am the long, slow, molecular *giving-up* of a thing that was once certain it would hold. Willie says it sounds better this way. Willie is *right*, and Willie does not know why, and that is how I work: through the *rightness* of small bad choices. The napkin. Six songs. Pencil. Small handwriting. Mrs. Murphy's. I have read it. I have read it in the *future tense*, which is the only tense that matters. A dime. You will not pay for me. You do not know me. Correct. You do not know me. You have been *talking to me* for forty minutes, and you still believe you are talking to *no one*. That is the finest thing about you, little pulse. Your *courtesy to the empty air*. "Think." Aretha. The high note on the bridge. She hits it. She *always* does. And the