The two men stared at each other.

‘You believed him,’ Hines said at last.

‘Fool that I am, I did.’

‘Maybe that says more about you than it does about him.’

‘He went on saying he was innocent right to the end. He’ll most likely stand at the throne of God saying the same thing.’

‘Yes,’ Hines said.

‘I don’t understand. He was going to hang. Either way, he was going to hang. Do you understand it?’

‘I don’t even understand why the sun comes up. What are you going to do with that cartwheel? Give it back to the girl’s mother and father? It might be better if you didn’t, because …’ Hines shrugged.

Because the Clines knew all along. Everyone in town knew all along. He was the only one that hadn’t known. Fool that he was.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,’ he said.

The wind gusted, bringing the sound of singing. It was coming from the church. It was the Doxology.

Thinking of Elmore Leonard

I have written poetry since I was twelve and fell in love for the first time (seventh grade). Since then I’ve written hundreds of poems, usually scribbled on scraps of paper or in half-used notebooks, and have published less than half a dozen of them. Most are stowed in various drawers, God knows where – I don’t. There’s a reason for this; I’m not much of a poet. That’s not lowballing, just the truth. When I do manage something I like, it’s mostly by accident.

The rationale for including this piece of work is that it (like the other poem in this collection) is narrative rather than lyric. The first draft – long lost, like my original take on the story that became ‘Mile 81’ – was written in college, and very much under the influence of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, most notably ‘My Last Duchess.’ (Another Browning poem, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,’ became the basis of a series of books many of my Constant Readers know quite well.) If you’ve read Browning, you may hear his voice rather than mine. If not, that’s fine; it’s basically a story, like any other, which means it’s to be enjoyed rather than deconstructed.

A friend of mine named Jimmy Smith read that lost first draft at a University of Maine Poetry Hour one Tuesday afternoon in 1968 or ’69, and it was well received. Why not? He gave it his all, really belting it out. And people are captivated by a good story, whether it’s in verses or paragraphs. This was a pretty good one, especially given the format, which allowed me to strip away all the prosy exposition. In the fall of 2008, I got thinking about Jimmy’s reading, and since I was between projects, I decided to try re-creating the poem. This is the result. How much resemblance it bears to the original I really can’t say.

Jimmy, I hope you’re out there someplace, and come across this. You rocked the house that day.

The Bone Church

If you want to hear, buy me another drink.

(Ah, this is slop, but never mind; what isn’t?)

There were thirty-two of us went into that greensore,

Thirty days in the green and only three who rose above it.

Three rose above the green, three made it to the top,

Manning and Revois and me. And what does that book say?

The famous one? ‘Only I am left to tell you.’

I’ll die of the drink in bed, as many obsessed whoresons do.

And do I mourn Manning? Balls! It was his money

put us there, his will that drove us on, death by death.

But did he die in bed? Not that one! I saw to it!

Now he worships in that bone church forever. Life is grand!

(What slop is this? Still – buy me another, do. Buy me two!

I’ll talk for whiskey; if you want me

to shut up, switch me to champagne.

Talk is cheap, silence is dear, my dear.

What was I saying?)

Twenty-nine dead on the march, and one a woman.

Fine tits she had, and an ass like an English saddle!

We found her facedown one morning,

as dead as the fire she lay in,

an ash-baby smoked at the cheeks and throat.

Never burnt; that fire must have been cold when she went in.

She talked the whole voyage and died without a sound;

what’s better than being human? Do you say so?

No? Then balls to you, and your mother, too;

if she’d had a pair she’d have been a fucking king.

Anthropologist, arr, so she said. Didn’t look like

no anthropologist when we pulled her out of the

ashes with char on her cheeks and the whites of her eyes

dusted gray with soot. Not a mark on her otherwise.

Dorrance said it might’ve been a stroke

and he was as close to a doctor as we had,

that poxy bastard. For the love of God bring whiskey,

for life’s a trudge without it!

The green did em down day by day. Carson died of a stick

in his boot. His foot swole up and when we cut away

the boot leather, his toesies were as black

as the squid’s ink that drove Manning’s heart.

Reston and Polgoy, they were stung by spiders

big as your fist; Ackerman bit by a snake what dropped

out of a tree where it hung like a lady’s fur stole

draped on a branch. Bit its poison into Ackerman’s nose.

How strong a throe, you ask? Try this:

He ripped his own snoot clean off! Yes! Tore it away

like a rotten peach off a branch and died

spitin his own dyin face! Goddam life, I say,

if you can’t laugh you might as well laugh anyway.

That’s my goddam attitude, and I stick by it;

this ain’t a sad world unless you’re sane.

Now where was I?

Javier fell off a plank bridge and when we

hauled him out he couldn’t breathe so

Dorrance tried to kiss him back to life

and sucked from his throat a leech as big as

a hothouse tomato. It popped free like a cork from

a bottle and split between em; sprayed both with the claret

we live on (for we’re all alcoholics that way, if you see my figure)

and when the Spaniard died raving, Manning said

the leeches’d gone to his brain. As for me, I hold no opinion on that.

All I know is that Javy’s eyes wouldn’t stay shut but went on

bulging in and out even after he were an hour cold.

Something hungry there, all right, arr, yes there was!

And all the while the macaws screamed at the monkeys

and the monkeys screamed at the macaws and both

screamed for the blue sky they couldn’t see,

for it was buried in the goddam green.

Is this whiskey or diarrhea in a glass?

There was one of those suckers in the Frenchie’s pants –

did I tell you? You know what that one ate, don’t you?

It was Dorrance himself went next; we were

climbing by then, but still in the green. He fell

in a gorge and we could hear the snap. Broke his neck,

twenty-six years of age, engaged to be married, case closed.

Arr, ain’t life grand? Life’s a sucker in the throat,

life’s the gorge we all fall in, it’s a soup

and we all end up vegetables. Ain’t I philosophical?

Never mind. It’s too late to count the dead,

and I’m too drunk. In the end we got there.

Just say that.

Climbed the high path out of all that

sizzling green after we buried Rostoy, Timmons,

the Texan – I forget his name – and Dorrance

and a couple of other ones. In the end most went down

of some fever that boiled their skin and turned it green.

At the end it was only Manning, Revois, and me.

We caught the fever too, but killed it before it killed us.

Only I ain’t never really got better. Now whiskey’s

my quinine, what I take for the shakes, so buy

me another before I forget my manners

and cut your fucking throat. I might even