Soul of a Whore and Purvis (4 page)

Doesn't hire clerks to sit in judgment.

She was in for worse stuff than my mom.

They needed to close the book on it, they needed

A simple picture for the media,

And so they put my mother in a frame.

Is what the TV wants for me to know,

Like all Americans everywhere. That girl

Was sort of innocent, too—I mean, the years

Of booze and dope had bleached her brain to white,

To where she couldn't even tell her name.

She'd woken up in bed with some deceased

Farmer with the handle of a dagger

Jutting from his neck—or, I don't know,

A belly full of buckshot—anyhow,

The whole bed squishy with his murdered gore

And this amnesiac harlot rolling in it

Like a log in a flood. So, you say the crimes

You can't remember? Well, she did her time

Without a memory of
any
thing, until

Another prisoner kills her with a broomstick.

These are the details of a blameless life.

And if your mother's blameless, too, another

Innocent heading for the axe—all right:

Now you know what universe you're in.

But I will listen to the radio.

Washed in saving blood! And turned out blank

And white as platinum on a sunny morning—

[
As
FIRST BUS DRIVER
enters
]

Which bus is this?

Materializing most miraculously.

Have I got everybody's vouchers here?

Has everybody got their tickets? [
To
MASHA
] Ma'am?

He's gonna want a ticket. Ma'am?

I'm hardly pausing to relieve myself.

Line 'em up and march 'em on, let's roll.

Folks, come on, I haven't got till Xmas.

You wanna get your big old cross aboard?

Hearts-and-arrows, circles, figure eights—

It pays, it rides. This ain't no limousine.

'Board for Houston, Texas! Rock and roll!

You want the Dallas bus, then be prepared

To languish. This day, everybody's Houston.

Yeah—sooner or later, everybody's Houston.

Git it while you can! Last call for Houston!

Your vouchers say to Dallas. And, now, ma'am:

I'd like to write you up for Dallas, since

The fact is otherwise you're loitering.

Fact is I'm here to use the phone.

Folks, we're on the bus schedule from Hell.

Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra…Yeah.

This ain't the 'hood.

H-O-L-M-E-S. Get it? “Holmes.”

Just call me John like
John
. Like it's my
name
.

I think your family may be known to me.

You wouldn't have a brother?

From California. Actually, I shot him.

Actually, more than once. I shot him twice.

Not twice on one occasion—once

On each of two quite separate occasions.

Once by mistake—the second time, on purpose.

Popped him like a Coney Island clown.

To fill 'em up, but what I lack is time

To mess around and all, so git along,

And all aboard, and off we go, and so on.

The glory train don't carry no religious

Signifying statues of any type,

No banners, emblems, images, or icons,

No crosses, crescents, Hebrew hexagrams,

No Guadalupey Ladies, no Buddhistic

Eight-armed elephants from Hindustan;

None but the uncreated, changeless, true,

Eternal, kind of gray and kind of blue

Dog in flight. I guess you could say pewter.

Pewter is the color of the greyhound.

Houston! Austin! San Antonio!

Houston, Texas! San Antonio!

That
she
was the Houston bus.

A Dallas driver will generally lie.

That's why I stay the heck away from Dallas.

Heck, they killed the president in Dallas.

Houston's the place you need to be.

Yes. I could be a lying Dallas driver…

Aboard for Houston! If thou dost believe!

[
Exits; fading O.S.
]

…Ten nine eight seven six five four three two…

That's a fact of nature here in Texas—

I'm speaking as a Mississippian—

But, also: Don't you ask for disrespect

By traveling your way in prison whites?

I speak now as a Mississippian

With nothing but the highest, deepest, fullest

Regard for your West Coast Cassandra clan,

Excluding, naturally, that full-on, rank,

Hellborn, Hellbound slut-soul, your brother Mark,

Who spawned his own self fucking his own mother.

The prison preaching holds, and I stay Christian!

Making himself such goshdarn fun to shoot.

A crook himself. But, now, revenge—

Revenge is something I'd be counting on.

It's truly amazing he passed up on that;

It's basically miraculous he failed

To hunt you down and gut you like a frog.

That's partly why I let him have another.

The first time was by accident, and then

Instead of letting bygones just be bygones,

Here he comes
again
—

…That's right. My brother's sober now

About a year and seven months: I'm
proud
.

Number nine, you go and make amends.

He never said.

Stole near a pound of my cocaine, then
flushed
it.

How was he going to make amends for that?

And shaved your beard, but I think you're the man

Stood on the roof of a parking ramp in Dallas

Shooting folks and threatening suicide.

Happened to be strolling by that day.

A simple conversation to a riot!

—Why? Because you want to stop your ears.

And hide your heart from the Holy Spirit's prompting.

He lets you skate, but you get busted later,

Exactly at the proper time and place

To land you in the Walls the same as me,

And get you
out
the same as me, and put you
here
—

The same as me. Is this coincidence?

You and I are strangled up together.

We've got our fates in a knot. And here we stand.

Guided by the Holy Spirit, here we stand.

I guess the record proves that much, but, God,

I hope to Christ by now I've learned enough

To leave that Holy Spirit shit alone.