Soul of a Whore and Purvis (22 page)

And Katie Elder came from Davenport.

All this dust, the hopeless distances,

This bloody tommy-gun-style criminal

Deportment. The hypnotic wheat

Of Kansas, Illinois, that's where these boys

Rise out of, and they're mean. They come for blood

With the innocence of sucklings. Charles A. Floyd

Hardly blinked, so say the witnesses,

When he and his accomplices gunned down

Four noble cops, including one of ours,

That day at the Kansas City station.

Killing suited him.

Of violent resistance to arrest.

The same for Gillis—alias Baby Face—

The same for Dillinger.

Had my photo snapped with Mayor Kelly;

And he—that is, the mayor—raised the name

Of Michael Green, the officer on hand

With you when Dillinger was shot. Mike Green? Chicago cop?

Officer Green, in turn, has raised the name

Of Jimmy Lawrence—ding dong!—Jimmy Lawrence?

And to my practiced eye the difference

Between your face and that of a liar is vast,

So vast I might be staring into the face

Of Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein,

That's how monstrously rare a face you have.

It's not the face of a liar. I believe the name

Of Jimmy Lawrence is not familiar to you.

You work a self-deception practically

Hallucinatory in its intensity.

Argosy and I no longer view

Your world as one in which I'm possible.

Cowardice, no—
effeminacy?
—what?

Honey. I can't breathe. Where's a breath?

Outside this room I spoke this way;

But you are false, sir. What you do is a falsehood.

You are a lie. I want you to understand

I've lived. You never will. I'll die.

You'll neither live nor die. You'll simply

Fade as the truth comes out.

…I can't say what I've fought to save,

The right things, the good things, the people who hope for them,

But I know what I've fought against,

I've seen it animate

The heart of a gangster with seventeen bullets in him,

And I didn't come here

To knuckle under to its latest guise.

You are the Dark, the Death.

Devil—but sophistication robs you

Of a name for me and leaves you stammering.

You're so mundane, you're so unworthy, so

Ignoble in your vision, so one-eyed.

Don't you see that we shall minister for gods

That
we
create? We'll don the heads of beasts

And speak with new tongues, dancing in the smoke

Of sacrificial fires!—while outside

The glowing pyramid the multitude

Feels the pull and trembles and bows down.

I curse you, sir. I raise you high above

The flames and break your body!

From all this corn, do you suppose, that is,

If it were corn, if we weren't standing in a waste

Of stubble? Half the county could get good

And cross-eyed. Have a whiskey-mashin' bash.

Fiddler scrapin' up a waltz, one voice singing,

Thump of the one-string washtub bass, and the tuba basso

Too of the jug old Granddad blows across

The mouth of—oompapa oompapa oompapa—and

The revelers tromping up from the elderly

Floorboards a sprinkling of oaken dust.

—Oaken? Or alder? What do you build things with

Here in the Midwest, here in the treeless plains,

Out here 'mongst the plowed infinitude?

What are your floors and walls constructed of?

Corncobs? Cornstalks? Mortared with the drool

And cud of cows? If I took you back home

With me to visit, down in South Carolina,

I fear you'd deeply miss this place. You'd anguish

Wretchedly for flatness. You'd tell how

In west Ohio at sunset you can see

Clear across to dawn next Saturday.

But South Carolina's way past Jupiter

Tonight…How are you, Pretty Boy?

Many's the night I've lain all night in the cornrows.

Plenty of times I've tapered off a spree

All ragg'd up and dreaming in the chaff.

You just wind
up
here when the times get jolly!

It's soft as feathers till you get to squirming,

Then it bothers and pokes a feller. Well,

But I won't squirm, because I'm paralyzed,

Because you shot me in the back. My hero!

There's a little town in Iowa called Lone Tree.

Now, I've been through Lone Tree. And the tree is gone.

Someday the name will be Forgotten Tree.

It's round and black like a bowler hat.

It's good for me, and it's good for you,

And it's what they call the ring-dang-doo.

Now, looky here, I pissed my pants!

If you've done crimes as yet not laid to you,

You'd best own up and shed the burden.

When I was a lad not seventeen

I met a gal from New Orlean.

She had blond hair and eyes so blue

And she let me ride on the ring-dang-doo.

I wish I
had
a few big things to say.

I wish I had a book to read a speech from.

I wish last April this poor dirt-scratcher

Owns this place had plowed the alphabet

Under these rows so all around would stand

Important words. All I can tell you is

The dirt feels natural to lie here dying,

And why so many shooting stars tonight?

Like match heads dragged along the leg

Of dungarees so fast they pop up blazing.

Or
Popular Science
had an article.

They're rarely more substantial than a jot

Of sand.

…I'd like to tell you things I remember. Damn,

The words get smaller down here at the end.

[
Sings
]
The ring-dang-doo, now what is that

It's soft and round like a pussycat

It's got a hole in the middle and it's split in two

And it's what they call the ring-dang-doo

I
were
in Kansas City on that day

But never shot nobody, never knew

A word about it!…Boys, I swear to you,

Laid out in my maker's lap and looking

Death in the eyes, I swear it.

Parlez-vous

O, mademoiselle from Armentières,

Parlez-vous

O, mademoiselle from Armentières,

She hasn't been kissed in forty years.

Hinky dinky parlez-vous.

…“Alouette,” that's a right one for ye.

Would you fellers care to, care to—

[
Sings
]
Alouette, gentille alouette…

Blew by and sucked some rain along behind it.

[
Sings
]
For half a shilling she'll lay her down

Parlez-vous

For half a shilling she'll lay her down

Parlez-vous

For half a shilling she'll lay her down

She'll jolly well kill ya for half a crown

Hinky dinky parlez-vous

I've felt worser after Daddy thrashed me.

I'll tell you the story of something that happened one day.

I hired on a farm one time for getting

The hay into the barns when I were nine

Or thereabouts—tall work for any age.

We scraped from dark till dark eleven days

And didn't pause for Sunday. None but hay:

Cut it, raked it, baled it, hauled it, stacked it,

Breathed it, ate it, and at end of day

Laid down to sleep in it, and by God all

Night dreaming of it too, that itchy, dusty

Hay come up from Hell. So then one day

He says, “Come raking with your hands along

The floor here in the barn and throw them bits

Out in the corral,” and we says, “Farmer,

Why?” and he says, “Folks, because you're done—

Look around!” And I raised up my heavy

Eyes and watched the mounds of hay go marching

Off in every way I looked, and underneath

A golden carpet in the slanty afternoon.

He says, “Them as wants to make for Gaithersburg

I'll pay you out, and there's nine miles of road

To take you walking. Them as likes to go

To Millerton the opposite, jump on

Aboard my wagon and I'll haul you.” Well,

I rode in the back with my legs a-dangling,

Rode past the mounds, all that we made, and then

Past the mounds on the next farms, that we hadn't made,

And it was so restful to be done,

And then on toward into Millerton.

And I hopped off before the ice cream parlor

And went inside to get me something heaped

High in a bowl, and there I saw my uncle

Who'd lost his eyes, my uncle Charles that took

That blinds-you kind of fever in his cradle:

Now he's blind, and having some dessert.

I never said a word hello. I sat right by

And only watched. I watched him fetch

A ball of ice cream in a sugar cone

And eat it in the most…I'm going to find

The word for when you're blind and you eat ice cream.

First you hold the cone and touch it with

Your either fingers, then you hitch your chin

And nose up like you plan to make a speech,

And all you do is smell. And, boys, I think

You listen to it too, I think he heard

The dabs come melting and a-waxing along

The sugar edges of that cone like little

Moons till just that very first sneaked down

And touched his fingers. Then he started;

He tried the drops, the cone, the tippy top

And sides of that ball, and all of it with

The tip, the sides, the under, and the broad

Of his tongue, and every now and then down came

His lips like a babe's over that creamy teat,

And nothing could disturb him. What's the word

For going at an ice cream cone that way?

'Cause then I bought my triple chocolate sundae

For me, and don't you see? I was a child.

And I ate it like a blind man, just as loving,

And when I watched my uncle tasting his,

I watched him like a blind boy who could see.

The word for doing things that way is “young.”

The word for that is “young, when you were nine.”

It makes me kind of glad that I remember.

It makes me wish you wouldn't kill me, boys.

Boys, right here in this here pocket I've

Got over a hundred and twenty dollars cash.

I only wanted to tell you something nice.

[
Sings
]
Mademoiselle from Armentières,

Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from Armentières,

Parlez-vous

She'll do it for wine, she'll do it for rum,

She'll do it for candy or chewing gum!

You ever see them tracers in the war?

A tracer bullet? Man, they look like comets.

Another thing.

Shooting stars are meteors and falling

Stars are comets!

Eat oats and little lambs eat ivy!—Jeez!

[
Sings
]
The ring-dang-doo, now what is that?

It's round and black like a bowler hat.

It's good for me, and it's good for you,

And it's what they call the ring-dang-doo.

…You know, there ain't no moon tonight.

Nor stars, except them meaty-balls…O! Look!