i ran back to the dumpster + grabbed my bag out from the carpet remnants.
with a couple of raw hours' sleep in lazy pursuit i was off.
wasn't there a gas station... somewhere here?
radisson innto it and my teeth chattering so bad i could have walked on them. my nose so cold from the (red) cold it was red to be a traffic stopping beacon.
(a buck forty for this cup-- in Perkins, the rememberer notices)
And he was sitting in there already, in the lobby. cold out there, huh? Yeah. Let me tell you, he revealed a fierce bewild-erment./ He spoke in serious tones. from a low square anishinabe jaw. + the silver streaks that told. of an age of a bus stop he had come from. where
asleep. out. permanently.
he settled back in his seat a little. just enough.
the other three, well, 2 gots a bone, the other has nothing. But they won't have that bone for long.
he tried to elaborate on this scenario, but only managed to reiterate. After 3 or 4 recounts, the only thing undergoing any sort of metamorphosis was the fact of the deceased lone dog in the one cage. He would also be asking me periodically, "do you follow me?" to which i would reply, "i think so." Part of me actually did think so, the remainder was afraid to find the monster under the stone of misunderstanding communicated. Also important to the discourse was his editorial opinion: there is no reason to kill the other ones. you already got one dead, now why kill the other ones? you don't want to lose the others now.--delivered, with a tone of deep concern, as you might imagine.?
Let me tell you, he went on. all of what he said would rather not have been heard by the clean cut young brother working the check-in counter. At some point, as i was slumping closer to a 4am sleep in the lobby of this radiasson, 4am sunday morning, he tried a different tack on me:::
(a country song has stolen Pooka's "blue bell" straight up)
(i am munching on a last nights dry muffin with oranges in it. it was horrible to begin with.)
(i am holding onto my coffee mug tight enough that my sore joints sing to it.)
--it's as if the two of them are facing each other w/ guns pointed at each other looking down the barrel, thinking--if you take me out, i'm gonna bring you along with me,.
ok...
you're looking down that barrel... he gestures wildly, pointing finger guns at each other, moving his head back and forth, behind one, then the other. Looking down the barrels. Then:
if the two of us had our lights on
(we both had standing lamps spewing american living room softchoke over our shoulders)
--he reaches back to the lamp--
and then we both shut them off at exactly the same time...
the intensity of his delivery had not missed a beat--but nor had it gained any. nonethelessons, this business about lights and my mounting circulation cued my brain into sleep.
We stepped to it, into the quickness of justbeforedawn. A couple blocks down the street, he had revealed to me the location of a warm Perkins, where i sit now. He was not allowed in there anymore, and i was not surprised by this. He was going to his sisters', straight ahead. i was off to the right. Suddenly, a mourning dove (hasbidii) sent its soft wonder about dawn--gently, but loud--out of the alleyway to our left. from brick and rubble and fire escape, the hasbidii. he paused; then headed directly down the alley, lured like odysseus' soldiers at siren's isle. without a word, we went our own ways and means and in betweens
Saint the Cloud, 3/11/01
