My brother died at the end of Main Street. It was in the local Holy War, the uptown Methodists versus the Christ Lutheran boys from down by the water tower. A no-holds-barred Sunday afternoon of all-out action and adventure. There was no religion in my town.
I was incarcerated for locking myself in prison. Inside we sang songs and carved busts of famous gangsters, using bars of Irish Spring. I've never been to jail.
In the Gambles store near my house there were three different size holes in the front of the old wooden counter; they were originally used for dispensing various sizes of rope by the yard. Old man Beaumont told me to stick my finger through a hole. Then he would grab it from the inside. His crazy brother took his hogs over to the hospital and tried to get them vaccinated for the swine flu. Me and another kid stole a couple of LPs from that Gambles. He was kind of fat and we stuck them down the front of his coat while somebody else kept old Beaumont busy looking at pocket knives. I got Meet the Beatles that way, those four famous faces in that classic pose, warped around a massive jacketed belly. Then "ziiiip" and they were gone. That store never sold records.
My brother caught me rolling naked at the sand dunes down by the river. "Get up!" were his angry words then he roughly cleaned me off and threw my clothes at me. I never had a brother.
You're coming through loud and clear, and I liked this piece a lot. I never read this piece.
ReplyDeletei like this. there is a cadence, like a psalm with repeated phrases. i would like to hear it read aloud.
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