Clarence Major My Amputations (epub)

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.Hard-headedness made the hit come easily and irreversibly: his “innocence” became irrecoverable: he'd traded it in for an existential shot in the dark: A bidet was not a toilet without a seat; whores didn't necessarily kiss better than housewives; but.yeah, you're getting warm (take your time—as Mississippi Fred McDowell used to say: time, time.), even hot: keep the Clean (Church) separate from the Dirty (State).Point: early Mason lost faith in both.Remember, he was a rat from the get-go.The separation itself: his stepfather, for example, never taught him anything except the separation part: his sensibility was a peephole through which you could see frost gathering on military sternness.He polished his old army boots every Saturday morning although he'd been discharged twenty years before: spit-shined, spotless dude, he was, who chopped beef, not pork, not lamb, for Swift's at the stockyards.Could barely write his name: connected crudely printed letters with cross-bars: was not visibly intelligent either: just noble—full of nobility.Mason's mother caught her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed on it thoughtfully: held it that way, puzzled by the demands of the Church on one side (forced connections?) and the State on the other: that lasted for two, no, two and a half years.Mason's youngest sister, Maureen (never thought of her as half), was the offspring of that civil wedding made holy between Wilbur Young, The Man of Rules, and Melba, Woman of Blues.In six months he'd be fourteen: after school Mason walked to the cleaners—Rapid Magic Delux—his mother and stepfather owned on Forty-Fourth and Langley, South Side.It was December—it had snowed heavily three days before: snow now muddy, slush.He had the sniffles, a runny nose, chills.His pea jacket, though warm, had no buttons.When he entered Rapid Magic he saw Melba—thin, chilled, with folded arms, walking toward the pressing-machine, barefoot.At first glance nothing seemed unusual.As Mason went behind the counter, Melba turned and came toward him.He knew instantly: something was wrong: her eyes: it showed in her eyes: they'd never been that way before: they were, how d'ya say, blank crazy.! He spoke: “Are you all right?” She gave him a glazed look—unfocused.His mother didn't know him.He felt shot-through-the-grease.Mason watched his mother count the money in the cash register; then she wrote down the total on a scrap of paper alongside the machine.He stood at her side: she'd already totalled the same amount eight times on the same sheet.Had she forgotten? Obsessive fear of—? Mason's fear raced out of him, flapping, bloody, like a rooster with its head just chopped off.He felt desperation: a mindless mother meant being at the mercy of The Man of Rules.As usual, Mr.Young left his gig at Swift's at five, got to Rapid Magic at quarter-to-six.He normally ran the deliveries in his old car.Today when he came in, he casually spoke to his wife—who didn't return the greeting, didn't seem to recognize him—then turned to the boy who was pretending to read Catcher in the Rye.Mason quickly put his book aside, seeing that his stepfather hadn't even noticed the change in Melba: Mister Rules was busy gathering garments for delivery.Mason went to him.“Mister Young” (they were that formal) “uh, mother is.there's something wrong with her.” Young continued to sort through dresses, suits, jackets, slacks on the rack, separating them by address, street, city section.Young said nothing.(Melba, though able to hear this conversation—she was perched on the high stool by the cash register—was clearly not hearing it.) Then without looking at the boy, Young spoke: “Get the bucket and mop.The floor is dirty.” Mason, tenderfoot, foolish, didn't get the connection, he stood there with his mouth agape.“But—” “I said get—” Young turned his violent deadfish-eyes on Mason—the skin of his thick, bulldog face, which was the color of potato skin, sunk to a splurgy purple-brown.Mason wiped a tear—which tasted like salt-pork—out of the corner of his mouth.“But look at her!” Young raised his hand, as though ready to strike.Mason turned and ran to the toilet at the back of the shop where the mop and bucket were stored.Trapped, framed, he filled the bucket at the sink, dumped Liquid Magic from its plastic bottle into the water.He was sobbing.Taking his equipment out by the pressing machine, he dropped the mop, then lifted the bucket with both hands and threw its contents across the shop, on Young and the garments he was fussing with.Before Young could respond, Mason ran out the back door, dashing through the smelly gangway, he reached South Parkway (later called Martin Luther King Drive); and it was while running, as though carrying the pigskin of his future tightly gripped under his arm, that he had a vision: Celt CuRoi would guide him firmly from the middle ground of separation sprawled there between Church and State.He would not fumble—would kickoff with skill unbound: would not need the protection of anybody else—ever.It was midnight before he climbed the steep stairway of the apartment building at Church Avenue and State Street where the family lived in Apartment C.But it was only a vision.Before long, in Cheyenne, on an Air Force base, he sat at a typewriter.Knocked up girls floated through the balloon of his thinkbox.In high he'd already impregnated three or four fast members of The Jailbait Society.Each night now, while asleep, Pony Express gallopers brought him summons to appear in civil court to answer contributing-to-juvenile-delinquency and bastardy charges.It was hard to get up early enough to be there on time.He couldn't get permission to leave the base [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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