the jig is up cracker jack

by duncapher

it starts with sailor jack and bingo and in twenty minutes my blood has turned brown.

i want to chop off his head and feed it to the crows. they could clean the fray from his synapses while i took photographs, because they’d be awfully beautiful photographs. then the crows would fly away, carrying the entrails and viscera of a lifelong tragi-comedy. i mention the great american hero, johnny appleseed, and that molerat john drain takes off on some tangent about apples and how american they are. ‘once,’ he says, a whiff of suspense slitting between his gap teeth, if he had gap teeth, ‘i actually had apple pie for my birthday cake!’ and on that last syllable i want to dive into his gut head-first with a kraut helmet, one of those saucy numbers with the spikes. this kid thinks he’s somebody. i ought to tell him that i’ve eaten apple pie every birthday i’ve ever celebrated, but it’s not something worth mentioning, and i know better. then he quickly mentions jack kerouac, and on the road. oh, you haven’t read on the road? it’s one of the great american novels! kerouac was really more underground, but yeah, on the road is one of the greatest novels you could read. i’m surprised you’ve never heard of it. on and on and on johnny drones, and none of the locals give a goddamn and i don’t give a goddamn and it all balls up into sympathy for the poor little philistine, lost in the world of mediocrity and scholasticism. he talks jack kerouac up like some kind of hero, and explains that in on the road, kerouac stops at american diners along the way and always eats a slice of american apple pie. johnny, you hack, you don’t even know what kind of apples to use in pie. you don’t know a thing about kerouac, you don’t know a thing about words, you don’t know a thing about knowing, or the majestic not-knowing that i so blessedly have come into acquaintance with, and the more you ramble on the more transparent your discussion becomes. i balls up and say, ‘on the road is shit.’ i think about telling him to read the dharma bums, or anything from burrough’s cut up period, or even wolfgang fucking puck over that nasty little dime novel ‘on the road,’ but i do not, because it will do no good. burrough’s a hack anyway. if on the road was good when i was fifteen, and the dharma bums was good when i was eighteen, then i’m sure they’re all nonsense anyway. the only book left is the bible, or the bhagavad-gita, so fine for its poetry, or the beginning of sartoris, or the back of a bag of golden flake sweet heat barbecue chips, or the lines in her palm or the ingredients for balsamic vinaigrette. i’m worried about my future. i’m worried about the smell of lemongrass. it’s coming back to me. it’s like i can smell it on my fingers. i need to bathe them in some woman. or strap a leather bookmark to my back and hike across the great divide. break my teeth on golden nuggets. some night soon i will make a trip to the lithuanian border to impress my russian princess jekaterina, with her spider hands and christmas ribbon hairpiece, if she wore christmas ribbon hairpieces(it would be adorable if she did). she does not, however – she wears leather and fur, good orthodox animal hide, thinly cut to shape itself to her thinly cut figure. in some light her shadow is the slant of sunshine through a basement window’s blinds. i need more drawing pads to put the idea into image.

we step outside for a cigarette.

tenev is wildly drunk. he’s the great american drunkard in his denim jacket and navy blue bandana. we’re talking and shooting the shit for a minute while we drug and drag our fags until the nicotine slips like butter through our senses. while we’re talking, a candy bar falls from the sky. ‘uh – ? did that just fall from the sky?’ and a few more fall down around us. they’re lion bars, coagulated chocolate/caramel/crispy wafer bullion for fifty pence a brick. ‘i’ll be,’ i say. tenev looks up and sees a few girls hanging out a window on the fifth floor, dropping the candy. everyone’s getting giddy from the serendipity in a rain of candy, and they throw us some more while we make charming jokes and put on an air of friendly good-heartedness. tenev is drunk. ‘say,’ he shouts at them, ‘i know your flat. someone was spitting at me the other night from your window. who the fuck was that? where is that guy?’ but the girls don’t know who it was.

‘yall, someone was spitting on you? that’s not cool, man,’ i say.

‘yeah man, it was bullshit. some faggot tried to spit on me and then told me to go back to my country. it’s fucked.’

‘damn cuz that’s fucking bullshit. them’s fighting words man. he insulted your, your pride man, your patriotism. that’s a fucking slur.’

‘yeah, man, yeah, them’s are fighting words! i would’ve, i would’ve fucked him up. i was out here in my briefs, man, my fucking calvin klein briefs, standing here smoking some tobac, and he fucking tried to spit on me. i would’ve fucked him up if he’d come down here. i would’ve fucking, i would’ve fucking destroyed him! kick that shit to the curb. put his fucking teeth on the fucking curb and, and wham with my boots, put his fucking face in the wall. peace sells but who’s buying, you know? i shoulda smashed his head through the window, man, just smashed it up until his skin was glass and the glass was blood and then smashed it some more.’ smash, smash, smash! smash up the bastard! them’s fighting words.

the coca cola cans with the pretty red lips and blue rapidograph eyes would be nice in circulation.