Junior Ray. John Pritchard

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СКАЧАТЬ or for shoot’n turtles offa logs. Nor was it intended for some silly-ass target practice. It was designed for one thing and one thing only, and I was not about to carry that side arm around all my life and not at least once’t shoot the shit out of somebody.

      I didn’t figure I was no different from them old sumbiches in the Bible. They didn’t let a day go by that they didn’t run out and slay or otherwise smite somebody. In fact, the biggest smiter of ’em all was old God, hissef. Now that’s one advantage of going to church all the time, I learn a lot. Turns out I ain’t too much different from old Jehovah, personality-wise. ’Course, I’m the first to admit there’s also some major differences, too. But if you want to know about smiting, take a look at Deuteronomy and at Joshua. Those two coksukkas were experts at it.

      Now, though Leland Shaw was not—as he bygod ought to have been—dangerous, he was crazy as I don’t know what. I got no sympathy with a sumbich that goes crazy in the first gotdamn place. That’s one thing I had against him. He goes to war and loses his mind. Shoot, I’d about lose my mind if I didn’t. But you probably know the story—I had a bad back . . . if it hadn’t have been for that, I’da been right over there in Korea shoot’n them little slant-eyed muthafukkas and pokin’ their women sideways and havin’ me one helluva time. And that’s just what Jehovah woulda done. I forget where he says it, but he tells the chosen people to go into a place and put all the men and boys to the sword and to take the women and the animals for themselves. If I’da knowed all that, I’da been goin’ to church a lot sooner. It just goes to show that the Lord does work in mysterious ways. I’m livin’ proof of that.

      In fact, one time a sumbich said to me that I was absolute proof that there wuddn no such thing as evolution. I took that as a compliment. I guess he was some kinda preacher.

      Anyhow, here’s what that crazy sumbich Leland Shaw done. He comes home from the war, that’s Dubbya Dubbya Two, and goes to live with his mama who was getting on up in years. It turns out he has been shellshocked or something because, even though the town put on a big celebration for him and called it welcome home leland shaw day, he didn’t seem to be too sure about what was going on. And when they asked him what he was going do now that the war was over, he said, “I’m going home.” They thought he meant his mama’s house.

      Unh–uh. Think again, muthafukka. That sumbich was talkin’ about St. Leo, the actual town itself. He, it seems, did not believe he was home. And that is partly what led to the whole buncha stuff that followed some time later.

      You know a sumbich is crazy if he’s set’n right there in his mama’s house and don’t believe he’s home. But, get this, as it turned out, he not only did not believe he was home, he thought he was still over in Germany. How a sumbich could hang around here and swat these crow-size mosquitos and think he was in Europe is a mystery to me. I ain’t ever been to Europe, but I read about it and I seen plenty of things about it on cable, so I know that it ain’t nothin’ like it is here in Mhoon County, Mississippi, in the Delta.

      Nevertheless, that’s the way he was. And on top of it, he believed they was some German soldiers following him around and was after him. Occasionally he would have a real spell of that, and he’d go hide. After a while, we got to where we would know where to look, and we usually was able to get him to go on back to his mama’s house, where he would disappear for quite some time.

      But she died, and that’s when things really started to go from bad to worse. For a while, he seemed to get along okay. He worked up at the lumber company and wouldn’t never say nothing to nobody—he just come to work every day, did his job, and went home, back to his mama’s house. Nobody never paid him a whole lot of attention, although some people expressed concern, sayin’ they didn’t know how he was going to get along in the years to come, not havin’ anybody to look after him and all. I heard about it, but I didn’t give a damn what happened to him one way or another.

      Why? I’ll tell you why. Here he is, a soldier home from the war. They give him a parade, such as might be called a parade in St. Leo, and had a buncha people make speeches—all about how Leland Shaw was a hero and had this and that medal give to him, and all the time that crazy sumbich is sit’n up there on the platform not believing for one moment that he has come home at all, and, at that point, nobody realized he was that way. Hell, first time I laid eyes on him when he got back, I knew he was nuts.

      And what really gets away with me is that there he was, born with a silver spoon up his ass, his great-grandfather the founder of the town, and him, the asshole in question—the so-called hero—growing up a little clipped-dick sissy livin’ with his mama and daddy and them crazy old aunts of his next door. And the worst one of them was that gotdamn nigga-lovin’ Miss Helena Ferry. She was somethin’ else.

      How can a sumbich like that turn out to be any crazier than he is in the first place, much less become a coksukkin overly decorated war hero who’s done got back home and don’t even know it? I mean, even though he seemed to recognize ever’thing, he still, somehow, didn’t know where the fuk he was and didn’t believe you when you’d tell him.

      Anyhow, there it was, Leland Shaw livin’ what appeared to be an all-right life day to day, yet, unbeknownst to the town, at this point anyway, thinkin’ German soldiers was following him around trying to get him, and thinking, too, that he was still somewhere in Europe. “Silesia” he called it. Maybe that explains why he picked a gotdamn silo to hide out in when he run off. But there ain’t no explainin’ what a crazy person thinks. All I know is that sumbich ruined my life.

      Well, maybe he didn’t do it directly, but I’m where I am today because of him. And I don’t know where, or even if, he is.

2

       Shaw’s Notebooks — Bone Face — Shaw Runs Off — Sheep

Now I’ll say something about them “Note Books” we found in Shaw’s hidy-hole he had up there under the roof of Miss Helena’s silo. I’ll show you a little bit of what that crazy-ass muthafukka put in ’em, and I’ll show you some more as we go along. This’ll give you a better understanding of what I was up against*:

      Call it day; it is the blinding and the time when one cannot navigate the farther [sic] of waters; it is the time when time as binder and as image cannot be seen shining in the night, for, as I recall, time is in the light, and I am called to find the point in all the scattered starburst where home is racing out of reach, where light cannot be caught except by theory and with sighs, to be held only and forever in the arms of infinite longing, which is where I, the lone and infinite longer, may have found my place.

      About the myth, however, or the lack it,

      it was in the flight and in the call of birds.

      It lay in the shadows of the high grass,

      and it thrummed at night

      when the windows of the car were down.

      It was in the silence of summer afternoons

      and in the hands of Negroes who moved

      like solitary dreams

      above the rising heat.

      I can see where it used to be,

      though now, when I look,

      it appears much like the exoskeleton

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