UNREMITTING FAILURE

There is only one "i" in Sammy Davis.

I have been all around this great world, if you count visits to Germany and London as having been all around this great world, and soon I will be going to Vienna Austria, which Thomas Bernhard, in a speech celebrating his winning the state's highest literary prize, gaily denounced as a nightmare and a whore, which caused a riot amongst the politicians who should have expected as much from Bernhard, that dirtier of his own nest, with fat men in suits storming from the theater, shouting epitaphs, and I cannot wait to see Bernhard's grave, the final resting place of a man who saw hypocrisy everywhere he turned, this one a hypocrite and that one a hypocrite, Nazis and their Catholic collaborators claiming to have been victims of Hitler, Hitler's first victims in fact, which is a laugh because they were all hypocrites, the world is filled with hypocrites but Thomas Bernhard declined to toady up to the hypocrites that fill the world, but instead denounced his country just as we should all denounce our homelands, frauds every single one of them, it was E.M. Cioran said, "A fatherland is birdlime..."

We all get bent this way and that by time, like that gnarled old buckeye tree on the curve of West King Street, split by lightning and scorched, and it's hard to believe I was once the little kid who ran the whole way home past that tree in the dark, scared of spooks, from John Brody's house. And what I'd give to go back there, to wake up and find out this whole twisted life of mine has been a dream, but no, time is the swamp that sucks us all under, and we can't turn the clock back by as little as a minute, oh life, I'll never forget the day we sat on the porch and watched the Klan march past, or the day my sister and I tucked a metal box full of not much into the hollow of the willow tree out behind the garage, long gone now that willow, along with lots of other things I used to love, the sight of my father burning trash in the 55-gallon drum by the willow, because history shows no more mercy than the jury that condemned the kid down the block, who grew up to kill a guy and almost kill a woman, just to get up the money to pay off some gambling debts, to life in prison.

I rode the train to Pokeville in the rain, the wind bending all those poor trees outside my train window sideways. I had the money in my satchel, the gun tucked into the back of my pants, and no plan except to get out of there alive. Lightning split the sky, I took a nip from my flask, then a nip from my other flask. Just got out of the looney bin, and I'm coming to get you Doreen, Darlene, whichever one of you is sitting on the porch swing when I get to your house by the bend in that muddy river. I had a dream once I was being led off to the gallows tree, and a band was kicking up a merry storm behind me in the dust of the road, and the women were lining main street and waving handkerchiefs and smiling, and I turned to the preacher and said, "Say a prayer for me." And he replied, "You're in the belly of the whale now, son, and don't you worry. It'll all be over in the blink of an eye." And when I woke up the sun was shining through the dirty sheet of a curtain, and I was still drunk, and somebody was coming up those creaking roominghouse steps, and I just knew it was the sheriff, and I'll be damned if it wasn't.

THE CULPABILITY

The culpability, blame, whatever you want to call it, accrued to Bill, or William, or whatever you want to call him. That's the way nature is. It produces people like Bill, or William, unless you want to blame nurture, what the heck it's your nickel. He's the one who came up with the germ of the idea to rent the camper to Donna, and her boyfriend Larry, that dumbshit. Nature, or nurture, produces Larrys too, who cannot pull their own weight minus 100 pounds, if that. Anyway the trailer burned. It burned in the campground while Donna and Larry, who saw fit to mess around with roman candles inside the trailer, watched. It was pretty exciting. But Bill, or William, and this is the thing, knew Larry, and knew Larry was a dumbshit, and still saw fit to rent the trailer to Larry, whose brains never arrived from the manufacturer. Which is why Wanda, who actually owned the trailer and was Bill or William's wife, blew a gasket at Bill or William, for renting the trailer to Larry who promptly burned it to the ground, and with no insurance either. If there'd have been insurance Wanda would not have minded, but there was no insurance, not a nickel. And it's not as if Larry or Donna for that matter was in any position to pay for the trailer they burned right down to the wheels, they were lucky to be able to scrape up a dollar in spare change from the cushions behind their sofa. How would they like it, said Wanda to Bill, you idiot, she called Bill, if I was to go over to their house and set off roman candles in their living room? In fact, she told Bill, I think that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to go over to their house and set off roman candles in their living room. Bill ventured no opinion on this idea, he knew better than to stand in the way of Wanda, whom nature or nurture had made as tough as iron. Anyway, Larry called, to apologize, and Wanda grabbed the phone, and there was an atrocity perpetrated on Larry's character, by means of Wanda's mouth. She gave him an earful, and more. She said if I ever see you I intend to kill you, those were her very words. Then she said to Bill, the same goes for you.

The Hostage

Indians took me hostage. They couldn't decide whether to skin me alive or drag me behind a horse or just plain use me for tomahawk practice. This was over near Black Creek, which was crawling that year with the seven-year locust. They finally decided to take me in. They gave me a new name, White Man Stumbles. I learned their savage ways, how to bring down a buffalo and all that crapola. In the meantime I taught them computer diagnostics, and how to use a spreadsheet, and where to go for the best gelato in town. And their music, you wouldn't believe all that tribal drum drum drum. It was like a Bow Wow Wow concert all the time. I turned them on to Grand Funk Railroad, got them into post-hardcore, warned them off of Huey Lewis and the News. Then trouble came. Gold was discovered in the nearby hills, and prospectors started encroaching on our land. There was violence, arrows and guns and all that foolishness. Gold hunters wound up looking like pincushions, people just like me only with no paint on their faces. I was torn. I was truly torn. I was in my buckskins, I was screaming like a crazy person, I was screaming like I did at the Genesis concert I saw back in 1979 or thereabouts. I can't remember if Phil Collins or Peter Gabriel was singing at that time. I had my bow and my arrow, and I was dangerous. I think it was Phil Collins, God forgive me.

The Final Words of Riley Puckett

Some people lack the foresight to know life is killing them. I remember a bellboy with a busted wing in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, back in 1946. Give me the phone number of a lady of easy virtue, who said, "I got a pussy on me, buster, that'll burn your good life down. Make you scream like a busload of school kids going off a cliff." Now here we are on Rank Mountain Road, you and me baby, and when you take off your dress, well, I must confess, you make me feel like a seafaring man. They say there's a lion roams the Plattsville Woods, escaped from the circus over in Vinegar Bend. A girl out picking wild gooseberries saw it savage a rabbit. I'd like to see that. Hell yes, I'm drunk, baby. I fell out of my mama and I started to drinking, and I haven't stopped yet. Preacher come to me in the hospital once. This would have been, let's see, 1953. I smashed my car and nearly killed my damn self. Said he'd say a prayer for me. I told him, "You can bring the whole congregation to the banks of the river, let 'em put their hands together and sing a hymn for my liver." Always did have a way with a rhyme, I did. You wouldn't believe the way I've lived. I come flying out of my mama's pussy like a man out of a burning house. I shouted, "I wanna live! Let's break some shit! Let's burn this mother down!" You spend your whole life surrounded by clowns, all pretending they're not wearing bright orange balls on their noses. Nobody round here knows shit. Everybody's playing make believe. But not that busboy. That busboy done me a favor. He give me the number of a memorable whore. That woman taught me the New Memphis Moan. And if I wasn't so busy dying, I'd show you how it goes.

From Unremitting Failure, where else?

TEXAS BOUND AND FLYIN'

Dope and shit ate up our paycheck pronto, so we packed up the GTO and carried the blushing bride across the threshold of Texas. Where things promptly turned to shit, no job no money no dope it's as simple as that. So we turned to crime, the other white work, in the form of burgling urban environments while their tenants were not in residence. We mostly took jewelry, but we would most definitely stoop to electronics, despite the simply breathtaking drop in resale value of such commodities. Because dope don't sleep, and the shit simply never stopped piling up, in the form of our bride's getting a DUI with the kid in the backseat with $200 worth of vicodin stuffed down his diapers, which got us mentioned, and not in a positive light, in the newspapers. So we had to get her out, and promptly cut and run, but the GTO kicked the bucket about an hour outside Dallas which made us wish we'd taken that night train to Memphis, or hunkered down and signed up for the methadone, but no instead we had to abandon practically everything, including our precious collection of Jerry Reed eight-tracks, which that was eight years and two stints in prison ago but we still regret it more than anything, including the end of our marriage, a bust for grand larceny, and the loss, in a fall from a third storey window, of nine of our good strong teeth.

THE CHICKEN AND THE FLOOD

Your chicken does not possess a sense of humor.

He is steadfast and true, he is trusty and brave, and he voted for Calvin Coolidge and attended the special chicken university over in Huntsville where he studied agronomy, which combines elements of agriculture and astronomy and is (or so we're told) some complex, hard on the brain shit.

But do not tell the chicken a joke and expect him to laugh.
Your average chicken is a pecker at the earth, he likes to peck at the earth and he's an accomplished pecker at the earth. He spends most of his time pecking at the earth. So that, and this is just a theory mind you, he doesn't find too many things funny. Your peckers at the earth tend to be solemn types, life is not just shit and giggles to them, they look gravely to the earth and peck gravely at the earth and there's not much there to laugh at so far as they can see, you will never find a chicken chuckling to himself like a chunk-cheeked morning egg man over the funny pages.

Your chicken drives a 1932 Ford coupe and doesn't hightail it around the corners but always drives the speed limit, your chicken is a law-abiding citizen who attends church (Methodist usually) on Sunday in his Sunday best which is humble but always creek-washed and starched, it began to rain that Monday and by Thursday all the roads were flooded and the bridges swept away, you had cows lowing on the roofs of floating barns and a fat man in a tree with swear to god a live billy goat in his arms, and the water at his ankles gushing and sluicing by, and a bent brown busted brim hat on his head, and we'd have gladly talked more about chickens and their lack of a sense of humor but the flood come, with heartbreak in its wake, and guess what?

Now nobody's laughing.

THE HISTORY OF MY DISEASE

It was a hot, dry summer. The crops panted in the fields. The country doctor made the rounds in a carriage drawn by his horse, a notorious morphine addict. The old physician's name was Lurdock, he saw omens, farmers missing occult numbers of fingers, a barn burned and the locals muttered about a firebrand on the loose until the distraught and indeed deranged wife of the farmer confessed, no charges were filed and she was packed off to the lunatic asylum in Crouchville.

Lurdock saw it coming, he knew the woman, it was obvious she'd been driven mad by the awful isolation of the district, the crushing awful isolation that constituted life in the district and drove everyone mad sooner or later, thought Lurdock, one day all the barns would burn. That life was impossible in the district for anyone living in the district was obvious to all, Lurdock thought, in the end it came to down to a choice of noose, lye, or pistol shot, that was life in the district for people living in the district, thought Lurdock, a choice not of whether but of method.

It was after dark, Lurdock was passing the old Portepoint place, the Portepoint dogs were barking, his horse was muttering, it was time for his shot. What a tender hour! The treetops swaying in the dry breeze, the sweet smell of the corn, the bells of the Lutheran church sounding in the distance, it was Luther who said he was first visited by the holy spirit while taking a shit.

Lurdock reached home, you call it home, he gave his horse his shot of morphine, then sat down to a dinner of cold meat. Then he retired to his room and at his desk wrote, "I have again set about the task, impossible I'm afraid, of writing the history of my disease. It's boiling outside, the crops pant in the heat, I turned 62 yesterday. It is too late, I fear. Too late to again set about the task, impossible I'm afraid, of writing the history of my disease. Sixty-two is too late, I should have set about my task sooner, and indeed I did set about my task sooner but to no avail, again and again I have set about the task, impossible I'm afraid, of writing the history of my disease, which has destroyed my life, blighted the landscape of my mind, and brought me again and again to this place of despair, only to abandon the task, in despair over my ability to write the history of my despair.

All my life I've failed to live, I've lived not to live but only to prepare myself for the task, impossible I'm afraid, of writing the history of my disease. As a child born unfortunately not stillborn and later as a teen afraid to employ the noose I failed at everything, so otherwise occupied was I with the deadly and ultimately I fear abortive work I am still engaged in, that of somehow explaining myself to myself, in words, so as to finally save myself from the condemnation of that lifelong nemesis, my disease, which demands that I write its history, a task which I fear is impossible.

To live only to do that which can not be done is to live in despair, I have treated the sick of the district and treated their terrible injuries and pronounced death in the fields and in the barns and in the shabby farmhouses of the district, and yet I have not completed the task, impossible I'm afraid, of writing the history of my disease. The lame and the maimed and the terrible mental monstrosities of the district amongst whom I have toiled, and whose unspeakable sufferings I have attempted in my faltering way to ameliorate, like Sisyphus with a stethoscope, for in this district alone there are more crippled, whether it be in body or mind or spirit, than Jesus could cure in a lifetime.

The history of my disease is an impossible history, how to put into words the not rightness of everything, indeed the extreme wrongness of everything. For everything is and has always been extremely wrong, that is the long and the short of it. Existence is a disease. And you can never die soon enough, die at the very beginning and you have already suffered too much, you might as well hang on for the fireworks, exploding your soul to bits as a grand finale.

The telephone is ringing, someone must be sick or dying, or has discovered a body at the end of a rope secured to a stout beam in a dark barn, the extreme wrongness of everything. Existence is a disease. All my life I have been attempting the impossible, to set down in words the history of the disease that is my life, the telephone is ranging, the crops are panting in the fields, at least my horse is happy, the task I have been assigned is impossible I fear, simply impossible I fear, I have been condemned, I dare say and I do say it, to do the impossible.