here in the village. It seems there are enough twisters and chiselers loose on the roads these days trampling graves of honest respectable people that I don't mind telling you the old folk are a loss. And condolences. The Clergy say they will be in touch with you later with the details.
Mary Needles (Miss)
Of The Post Office
With deepest sorrow.
Out the window the highway dips down under a stone bridge and up on hills stand lavish houses surrounded in grey brown thickets of trees. George Smith's tear fell plop on the paper. Out of a weak left eye. They never had a chance. None of us have. For what. A private telephone like the one in this car. Didn't want to worry me. When Shirl's father died she spat on me. Out of the blue. Right across a table in a drug store. Had I known her better, I would have punched her. She was having a chocolate soda. Had her father and mother died at once I would need an umbrella. News comes like this, and something is saying I knew all the time. I knew. Just as I went then back to our apartment with Shirl after the spitting and lay on her in the afternoon till she went fast asleep crying and crying. Waking when a warbling bird came pecking at a pot on the window sill. She said hear that sound. I had a hand on her young breast. I said it was a bird dipping in a dish. She said it's my father tapping on a tomb. I listened again. She said it's dark, birds don't come out at nights. I said bats do. And rearing up naked and thin in my arms she said O George it isn't a bat, please tell me it isn't a bat, bats come out for blood and get in your hair and God I don't want that, no. I held her down close underneath me. Just as we'd lain night and nights together clutched. And suddenly she bit me and I screamed. She said I hate you.
Chauffeur turning and with a white gloved hand pointing to a sign. George picking up his microphone. Clearing his throat because nothing came out at first.
"Next turning driver. Cross between the fences of the golf course. And straight at the next traffic lights."
A little touch of the peaked cap. Had this driver before. Not servile but civil. Keeps an even ready eye on the road. Minds his own business. For mine is properly sad. And when I married Shirl my parents sent her beads on which to say prayers and later my mother's pearls. Shirl stood over them in the brown wrapping paper, wondering if they were real. I had hoped she would have die good breeding to take it as a gesture on the part of my mother and father. And not as she did one day at her jewel box whisper loudly, I wouldn't be caught dead in this junk. On the part of my parents it had been a sacrifice. And now one after the other they've been carried along the sea road and up the ancient lane in their coffins. And if Shirl stood in the cow pasture nearby, in her shimmering green and oriental amethysts watching them go, I can hear what her lips are saying, his God damn peasant parents without a pot to piss in. Shirl this one's jade which I send to you now. Use in their memory.
Two trolley tracks in a cobbled stone road. Smith's car crossing them to tall iron gates laid open. Man in a grey uniform kicking his black booted feet together and clapping his hands in the cold. Looks and makes a gesture of pushing the gate wider which weighs three tons at least. But I appreciate that. Nod. He nods. Salutes. Never knowing I suppose if it's proper to smile as well. And one more letter here to peruse before further business.
i Electricity Street
December 22nd.
The year is irrelevant.
Dear Sir,
Obviously you intend ignoring my communications. I do not think you quite understand who I am.
Yours faithfully,
J J J. & Associates
I dispute that this man is the result of what his mother and father did. Joyless as it must have been. If you get slammed with one thing. Another, don't worry, is on the way. Where once there was no hope there is horror now. And if you are sad and remembering, wham, not long till they wake you. One brief