Waverly TN

“Thisser buldin’ useta sell guns onna black market round World War I,” the little boy said rocking on his heels and pointing to a black building, “an ma uncle owns a treller park four miles down that roud.”  On alone my rumbling bike I chased was.  

He again says behind me running, “Ma uncle owns a treller park four miles down that roud!” 

Like I said, he was behind me running in little circles in little feet sticking shortly out of his denim overalls which looked like cold water the way night hit them “four miles. Ma uncle owns a treller park jess four miles down that roud.”

He’d said this before when I was on the bench. My feet touching the ground then, one below the other on the lip of a downhill, my bike unturning by my side not waiting or resting for it was and is a bike.  I was on the bench there and he faced gravely and pointed with his whole arm to where the light stopped in a circle of blackness where it began 

on the outskirts with hills and cows.  I think they are hills.  The town begins to stick itself up from the woods and fields with dog legged brick walls with their tops made white; then granite slabs poking sideways out of the river: lonely red and yellow gas stations with one light above them. 

The speeding bike below me pumped toward the hotel as a hundred faces at a restaurant, their picnics laid out on the lawn sprawled basking in the sun that was not there for it was night, turned toward me their voices growing up big across the street and their wide mouths open in dotted calls till I me was behind them.  

Alone I was on the bench and a rugged dirty-looking couple with a small concerned boy in light overalls approached and the boy had a face and and rocked on his heels like a grandfather whistling on a porch with grass poking through the boards.  They told me about a hotel down the hill where the light was.  

Though the man was not a man at all and the girl too had the stain of age behind her small face.  They stood six inches below me and he had a mustache. She wrapped her arms around the boy who looked sadly for me, grewing old and younger when their two heads came one.

Just a children.  All young stood seriously pitch-forked gray in the joyless.  This were not costumes and never were.  Children paced slow like adults in dim in streets in lines, stopping at trees with lights in them to fondle up padded hills with eyes free.

And the boy began to talking fast and metallic as I grabbed my bike he said “jess four miles down that roud, jess four miles down that roud, jess four miles down that road!” raising his arm to point to a dircle of carkness with chills and hows here it all began.

Stepping out of divine then in front of me a line of redheaded schoolgirls all braced up said “I’ve never seen anybody ride a bicycle before!” coming or going from a what, falling almost into me in a line of themselves like a blown stack, the boy merely a baby now silence standing over his feet, "I've never seen anybody ride a bicycle before!” or the sun cutting through buildings, "I've never seen anybody ride a bicycle before!” behind me went I, though she often had, and I know she had, often, seen someone often ride a bicycle before. 

And my eyes and I move suspended to a blue doored motel with a white eyed man inside a smoky television room with cigarettes in a broken machine where a tributary runs by a waffle house in the parking lot and I in the sharp neon lite through the window take sleep until the next day and afterwards when the town was bathed in true sunlight and sitting old folks drank coffee on the streets all around and I humbled walking my bike past all folks homes and slept at the bottom of a hill in hard blue sheets where I’d slept the night before.  

Pretending

We need the power of Jesus to keep us sane.  One who begins writing in this way I suppose is considered religious.  If I began today to write like that and continued until I died people they would say I was a believer.  That is the power of words.  But I’m not a believer.

He woke me up with something I couldn't discern.  A mumble perhaps.  Something about the night.  I told Adam when I'd gathered myself that the men around the corner were good men.  They would give cigarettes to any man who approached them. I'd already asked for two before falling asleep on a bench.  He returned a minute later empty-handed.  His puffy 49ers jacket reminded me of those I would buy from Sears with my mom as a kid and she would check the tag to see if it was down or not those were low times.  

Adam said he was from DEEtroit.  He had a young spirit.  His face looked like the hood of an old car.  One tooth stuck out his deserted mouth at all times like a tic tac.  I told him I was glad it was warming up as if I’d been out there several days and turned a bit on my side.  I said my old lady threw me out.  Shiet, aint that a bitch, he said.  He had a comforting smile.  I lied about how poor I was and made my life plans sound humble.  Like I expected his were.  I was vague. 

God befit me to wander more.  I told Adam (goodnight) that we weren’t to be hopping trains or eating fruit out of the woods together and went in not the direction of home in case he followed me.  

I asked a trash man at La Madeline’ for (surely he would) have a cigarette as the thundering arm crashed down above our heads, he said that no he quit thirty years ago during Vietnam.  I had assumed that war made people smoke. I looked at him.  He was a garbage man who talked like a poet for a brief second and smiled at me as napkins fell down around his head. 

People were setting up signs for various elected offices up and down St. Charles. Figures with mallets drove crosses into the ground and stapled signs to them without looking up.  There was a large circle of hip democrats setting up a tent.  Cool I said, feeling like a creepy uncle, that you’re involved, doing a tango with myself, at the local level.

The republican tent for Fenn French held a sleeping black man in a chair covering his face with his hands.  I looked at the creamy and red cheecked faces of the democrats then back at the cold solitary figure beside them.  The sun was coming up.  I saw flashes of love.  I had a bit of a 24 ounce Bud Lite remaining.  A girl looked at me with wide eyes.  I went home and let myself inside.  I watched some pornography and laid down alone in bed to sleep.