Jamestown (28 page)
Don't forget, when people laugh they bare their teeth. And that wasn't no dead tongue, that was a parody of
y
'all's crude pronunciation of the language we both speak. We have a cadre of songwriters whose job is to make up humorous songs about current events. The one they sang to you that day goes
You come to us on your rude bus
You starve and fart and steal our land
You say you mean no harm to us
But now we've drawn a line of sand
We hope you're not too blind to see
How very close you all have come
To making us your enemy
Your strength won't save you if you're dumb
and is not called “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow” but “Fuck You, New York Shits.” The topical songwriters of the Chesapeake are guys and gals too weak to fight and farm, respectively, which, as you can see, is no guarantee they'll write good songs, especially songs of the top-down variety wherein the leadership says to them, “Put this dire warning in song form,” but they do make their point, however crudely, which you might want to pass on to the New York leadership, in case they, too, hasn't understood the words.
>Are you not
>Indians? You all have red skin.
You know who I am. What Indians were on this land the Europeans' microbes killed; and who was left the Europeans' microbes' hosts killed; and who was left after that the bombs killed. We're red cuz we smear ourselves each day with SPF 90 red goop to stop the sun from burning us alive, but take a closer look, Mister. You know who I am. I'm the etcetera and the so forth. I'm just an Irish Negro Jewish Italian French and English Spanish Russian Chinese Polish Scotch Hungarian Litvak Swedish Finnish Canadian Greek and Czech and Turk and Injun Injun Injun. My dad's more black than red, my aunt's more yellow than red, my uncle's more tan than red, Frank's more brown than red, Joe's more white than red, I'm more bled than red, y'all are green and not well fed, and some of y'all are almost dead.
Meet me by the thing today at thing o'clock. Big kiss and a hug and fuck you every day in every way,
Poc
23:19:47
Knock-Knock from: Internet user G
REASY
B
OY
G
REASY
B
OY
has sent you an Instant Message not bound by your Terms of Service Agreement. Would you like to accept the Instant Message from GreasyBoy?
 | Yes |
 | No |
| G REASY B OY : | What you doing right now? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Scouring pots with my friends. |
| G REASY B OY : | I thought you were banished. |
| C ORN L UVR : | Girl still got to help her sisters do the dishes. |
| G REASY B OY : | Does your father know you're there? |
| C ORN L UVR : | No. |
| G REASY B OY : | So all the girls you're scouring pots with are acting in defiance of your dad? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Girls value the community above the individual. |
| G REASY B OY : | Have they told him so? |
| C ORN L UVR : | That would be counterproductive. They'd have to start a war with him to get him to listen to them and girls don't start wars, though often they participate in them. They just welcome me when I come around, and we farm or build a house or cook or wash dishes or fold clothes or put on skits or babysit the little boys and girls. |
| G REASY B OY : | The little boys and girls don't tell on you? |
| C ORN L UVR : | The little girls know not to tell because they're girls. The little boys know because they haven't yet learned to be the sort of louts whose asses you filled with buckshot, nor the sort of louts who'd fill boys' asses with buckshot. |
| G REASY B OY : | What if you're found out? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Every time a man comes near, a girl will stop him in his path, do a sexy dance, tell him to meet her in an hour by a certain tree. Usually he goes off right away to wait by the tree, a tree of his own sprouting all the while in his crotch. If that don't work she'll suck his dick on the spot, he'll come and fall asleep. Sometimes by the end of a dishwashing session five or six men will be asleep in a pile on the path outside the kitchen door. |
| G REASY B OY : | Speaking of waiting by things, I waited for you today by the thing and you didn't show. |
| C ORN L UVR : | I waited for you by the thing. |
| G REASY B OY : | Which thing? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Fallen log. |
| G REASY B OY : | I thought you meant thorn bush. I missed you so bad it hurt. |
| C ORN L UVR : | Don't get sentimental on me. |
| G REASY B OY : | I'm not. Sentimentality is when you give more tenderness to a thing than God gives to it. |
| C ORN L UVR : | You monotheists, man. |
| G REASY B OY : | So you disagree with the definition? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Right. |
| G REASY B OY : | Why? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Let's say you're God. |
| G REASY B OY : | Never happenâI've got poor management skills. |
| C ORN L UVR : | Then let's say the truth, which is that there's not one God, there are many gods, each with its own temperament, so one god will give a lot of tenderness to a thing to which another god may give none. But that is not the whole substance of my disagreement. |
| G REASY B OY : | What else? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Can't articulate it in your meager language. |
| G REASY B OY : | Blow me. |
| C ORN L UVR : | Gods aside, I believe the essence of human emotion is excess. |
| G REASY B OY : | What does that mean? |
| C ORN L UVR : | It means that it is in the nature of the feeling of sadness, for example, to be in excess of whatever in the world is causing the sad person to feel sad. |
| G REASY B OY : | How can you know this? |
| C ORN L UVR : | I know it by feeling it. |
| G REASY B OY : | But you just got done saying feeling is excessive by nature. |
| C ORN L UVR : | Ya, and that's what makes it the truest form of knowing, since knowing is excessive too, and awful, and if you don't believe me, believe your own myth of the world's first couple and their life-ruining encounter with knowledge. |
| G REASY B OY : | What do you scour the pots with? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Sponges. |
| G REASY B OY : | Where do they come from? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Where do what come from? |
| G REASY B OY : | The sponges. |
| C ORN L UVR : | How should I know? |
| G REASY B OY : | And soap? |
| C ORN L UVR : | What about it? |
| G REASY B OY : | You use it? |
| C ORN L UVR : | We use soap! |
| G REASY B OY : | Does it smell like anything? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Lemon, sometimes mint. |
| G REASY B OY : | So, fragranced soap. |
| C ORN L UVR : | The miracle of dish soap. |
| G REASY B OY : | And do you know where your soap comes from? |
| C ORN L UVR : | This is very deep and all. |
| G REASY B OY : | Which do you think is an index of the more advanced civilization, knowing where the soap comes from, or not knowing? |
| C ORN L UVR : | Meet me tomorrow by the thorn bush at thorn bush o'clock. Bye! |
Johnny Rolfe
I'm just sitting and thinning by this prickly thorn bush. Ow, a spider bit my ass. I wonder if this is the end, just like all those other times I wondered if it was the end, and those other other times when it
was
the end. I borrowed the car. Hope she likes the car. Wanna get her in the car and drive her out somewhere far away and show her the sky as if it were mine. How stupid, to want to pretend to own the sky. Wanna drive her out somewhere far away and cower with her in my arms beneath the sky that would crush us to death. Yeah! Love those pits in her face where the pocks used to be. List of things in her I love: 1. those pits in her face; 2. she's cross-eyed and ugly; 3. rough high cheekbones; 4. big bony calloused feet against my ears; 5. she does not, like New York girls, go “Aaahhh” or “Oooooh” or even “Ohhhh,” but “Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” Here comes that clutch of scary boys, the ones who'd spit on me as soon as pull the legs off a spider and pop its writhing thorax in their mouths. But I'm not what they're after now. Among themselves they toss that three-inch hard rubber ball which if whipped against your thigh would raise a welt. They play a game with it I've seen them play before that might be described as a marriage of handball and chess, though into the gap between one English word and the next disappears this game they play: swift, slow; swathe of silent thought, knee to groin. Twenty yards from the thorn bush beneath which I sit and wait for my girl, they bounce the ball off what once must have been the side of an office building or parking garage. But I've got my trusty car I drove in on. Here she comes running from deep in the woods. 6. Hairy arms. Swiftly do my filthy pants rise. Must not touch her, as she asked. How I regret the filth of my pants. The closer she gets, the more I regret.