Two Dollar Radio Book too loud to ignore
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| ISBN | Library of Congress Control Number available upon request. |
| Also available as an Ebook. E-ISBN | Book Club & Reader Guide of questions and topics for discussion is available at twodollarradio.com |
RECOMMENDED LOCATIONS FOR READING WHITEOUT CONDITIONS: Upon a Greyhound bound for Rockford by midnight, within view of a bare forest, a hospital, or pretty much anywhere because books are portable and the perfect technology!
ANYTHING ELSE? Yes. Do not copy this book—with the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviews—without the prior written permission from the copyright holder and publisher. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means.
WE MUST ALSO POINT OUT THAT THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. Any resemblances to names, places, incidents, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental or are used fictitiously.
… The dark adjusts
itself, settles its wings inside you. The shadows that strut the dark
open and fold like hope, a paper fan, violence
in its pitch and fall, like waves—above them, the usual seabirds, their presumable
indifference to chance, its
blond convergences… As when telling cruelty apart from chivalry can come to seem irrelevant, or not anymore the main point …
—Carl Phillips
you won’t get far by yourself. it’s dark out there. there’s a long way to go. the dog knows.
—Robert Creeley
Table of Contents
I
With the last of my loved ones now long dead, I find funerals kind of fun. Difficult to pinpoint what it is. I’m drawn to them. Call it an article of faith. They aren’t what they used to be. And I am not my old self.
I’m thinking of the deep boom and hush after the pastor shuts his thick tome of hymns, and the heavy groans of the pews when everyone kneels.
What comes to mind are the high school boneheads loafing around the holy water stoup, too rad to grieve, or who never learned how, never learned that it is learned, like formal dinner etiquette, or gallantry in the face of certain peril.
It’s the secret stoner altar boy glad to swing his censer, the blown-apart family uniting for a minute to ridicule the reverend’s lopsided toupee. The great uncle with trouble reading in the filmy pulpit daylight, his index finger trembling.
Or when I drift off during an old man’s eulogy, only to get clocked in the forehead with a truth bolt changing my vision of retired Honda dealers forever. At a certain point the mileage accrued by hearts, like any muscle car, is just too fantastic.
Once it was the apoplectic rage of a niece pacing the narthex, denied the chance to damn her uncle to hell, tell him she loved him.
Sometimes it’s the waterworks, other times, the hearse.
It was the pious haste with which Muslim grievers dug the grave, buried the doctor, how that left everyone in a swarm, a bit head-spun, and forgetful the dead’s dead.
The wholehearted embraces given me by Evangelists to whom I didn’t speak at all, the fervent strangers touched I’m there, who cared I’d come, each hug verging on a submission hold, and it’s the bright secret that won’t quit tap-dancing behind my benign expression that I keep from them, that ensures their enthusiasm and sincerity are squandered on me.
Or a jogger, sometimes there will be a jogger, who will gawk like a rubbernecker, or just keep jogging, maybe go a little faster.
Seeing my buddies in suits for the first time, a grandmother past remembering why she’s there. Sometimes it’s as simple as a song of tribute sung by someone who can’t sing at all. You see people for who they are, and they don’t mind being seen, and it’s lovely in a way, that unabashed flawed-ness in the face of such heavy exposure, perhaps never to happen again.
All of which would likely be overlooked were I choked up by the stiff in the coffin.
It’s everyone wondering what I am doing there. It’s all the suspicious looks—why aren’t you sad like us? How they all ping off me.
Shadowing Death. Handling death like a snake charmer fishing cobras from his wicker basket, wholly impervious to fang and by now safely immune to its venom. And how sometimes, it’s the other way around.
Funerals are kind of fun, yes. I’ve cultivated a taste. It’s become a kind of social pursuit. It was a kink, of a kind.
But now Ray. I see his face, the one in the photograph the reporter in the field held up to the camera, with its fresh acne, and his right cheek’s dimple deeper than I remember, and him already taller than his mother, and