“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 134: Ithaca

Our previous chapter of this Gold View Award-winning memoir closed with its hero Arnold Schnabel -- freshly shriven by Father Reilly, and carrying the loquacious doll Clarissa safely in her cardboard box under his arm -- trying once again to get back to the Ugly Mug and his friends therein, at approximately 10:42 PM on the night of August the 10th, 1963, in the quaint seaport of Cape May, NJ...

I let this remark pass without response. She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.

I continued on down Washington Street.

“By the way, why are you limping?” she asked.

“I had a fall today,”* I whispered. “But I’m fine.”

“Oh good. Now, tell me about this lady friend of yours.”

“Look,” I said, trying to keep my voice low but audible while trying not to move my lips, in other words, sounding and acting like a madman, “I can’t really talk to you like this while I’m walking on the street.”

“Oh, but you’re such a stick-in-the-mud, Arnold! No one’s going to notice you. It’s Saturday night for God’s sake. Everyone’s quite merry and jolly!”

“Listen,” I said. On the other hand perhaps passersby took me not for a lunatic but merely for an incompetent ventriloquist practicing his act. “I just don’t want to get sent back to the nut-house. Understand?”

“Oh, but do tell me, what is this business of your being committed? Did you really go insane?”

“Yes,” I gasped.

“Not very pleasant I suppose.”

“No.”

We had come to Mr. Arbuthnot’s shop. I quickened my pace.

“And was it the insanity that was unpleasant or the 'nut-house' as you call it?”

No one else was very nearby, so I answered as truly as I could manage.

“The insanity was something I learned to get used to. But I couldn’t get used to the hospital.”

“And so you did what you could to get out?”

“Yes,” I said.

I was getting a sore face from trying not to move my lips, but at least now we had come to the northern corner of Decatur and Washington. Catercorner across the street was the Ugly Mug, my Ithaca. I started across Washington with the light.

“And you determined never to go back, didn’t you, Arnold?”

“Well, let’s say I determined to try not to go back,” I said.

“No matter how mad you became?”

“My daily goal is not to become that mad,” I whispered.

By now I was across Washington, waiting for the light to change on Decatur. The Ugly Mug waited welcomely there right across the street. The light changed and I stepped off the curb.

“Now please stop talking, Clarissa, we’re getting ready to go into the bar.”

“I so love it when you call me Clarissa.”

“Quiet.”

“Oh, mum’s the word!”

Believe it or not I made it across the street and to the entrance to the Mug, finally, and opened the door.

“So we’re here then?” she piped.

“Yes, now --”

“Oh, Arnold, who are you talking to?”

It was that Jack Scratch fellow, and with him was St. Thomas Becket.

“No one,” I said.

“Talking to yourself, Arnold?” said St. Thomas.

“I guess so.”

“We were just heading on over to Pete’s Tavern to score some gage,” said Jack Scratch.

I noticed that the little bumps on either side of his forehead had become more pronounced.

“Well, good luck,” I said.

“Would you like some? Some muggles? It’s probably not great shit, but --”

“No thanks,” I said.

“What’s in the box, Arnold?” said St. Thomas. He seemed much drunker than when I’d left.

We were all still standing in the doorway, St. Thomas holding the door open.

“It’s a doll,” I said.

“A doll? Win it playing skee-ball?”

“No. It’s -- yes, yes,” I said, “I’m sorry, yes, I won it at skee-ball.”

“Brilliant,” said Mr. Scratch. “Come on, Tom, let’s go, I feel like getting baked.”

“Okay,” said St. Thomas. I noticed the top of his head was slightly awry again, from when he'd had it chopped off in his martyrdom. “Catch you later, Arnold.”

“Yeah, later, guys,” I said, and finally they went out.

“Who were those two weirdos?” she asked.

Fortunately it was very noisy and crowded in the bar. The band was offstage but the jukebox was playing “Blame it on the Bossa Nova”, very loud.

“One of them was St. Thomas Becket,” I said.

“Oh, right.”

“And the other was a fellow named Jack Scratch.”

“I know him!”

“I’m sure you do,” I said. “Now, look, I’m going down to join my friends now, so clam up.”

I could see them, still there in that booth near the small bandstand; there was Steve, gesticulating as vigorously as an orchestra conductor in mid-symphony, Miss Rathbone smoking and looking at him --

“All right, Arnold,” said Clarissa, “all right. God, you’re such a broken gramophone record!”

Elektra had moved over to the seat I had vacated next to Larry, and both she and Larry at least seemed to be listening to whatever it was Steve was saying.

“I’ll keep quiet,” said Clarissa, “but you have to take me out of the box.”

“I will,” I said, doing my bad Edgar Bergen impersonation, again, and I headed down the bar to my friends.

“By the way,” she said, “I don’t think you’re insane.”

“Great,” I whispered.

Finally I reached the booth.

Noticing me, Steve stopped himself in mid-sentence and mid-gesticulation, and his eyes widened.

“Arthur! The prodigal son! Returneth!”

Miss Rathbone, Elektra and Larry all turned to look up at me.

“Arthur, we thought you had been captured!” said Steve. “By the evil people!”

“His name’s Arnold, Steve,” said Miss Rathbone, lowering his upraised arm with a gentle hand.

“Arnold!” said Steve.

Elektra put her hand on my side, looking up at me, and I felt my heart swoon, although I managed to remain standing or not to float away.

“Hey, lover, you made it back,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry I took so long.”

“Wasn’t all that long.”

It sure felt long, but I suppose she was right, in normal human time I suppose I had only been gone a half hour or so.

“What’s in the box?" she asked. "Sit down.”

She moved over, closer to Larry, and I sat down, with the box on my lap.

I took the lid off straight away because I didn’t want Clarissa to start complaining.


* See Episode 82.

(Go here for our next thrilling episode. Kindly look to the right hand side of this page to find what very well might possibly be an up-to-date list of links to all other extant chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™; grateful thanks to the Arnold Schnabel Society of Philadelphia, PA.)

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 128: requiescat

Larry Winchester, that master literary ventriloquist, now reverts back to the third-person semi-omniscient, on this fateful night in September, 1969, in the desert some several miles beyond the outskirts of a wretched little town called Disdain...

(Go here for our previous chapter, or here for the first chapter of this Gold View Award-winning epic.)

No one was especially surprised to see the headlights of what proved to be Big Jake’s Cadillac approaching across the dark desert and emerging from the still-descending cloud of dust. And for once in Jake’s life people were genuinely glad to see him. After all, it would have been a long walk back to the ranch.

Anyway, he pulled up and got out of the car, leaving the headlights on, and, after he greeted Dick and Daphne and Harvey, he and Mr. MacNamara looked at each other quizzically, their heads a bit tilted. They knew each other from somewhere.

Then Buddy spoke up.

“Hey, if it ain’t Staff Sarn't Johnstone.”

“What in hell,” said Jake.

“Goddamn,” said Mr. MacNamara, “so it is. Howya doin’, Sarge? Still makin’ a few francs?”

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” said Jake.

“Probably,” said Mr. MacNamara.

“Major MacNamara,” said Jake.

“Private citizen now, Jake.”

“Well, put ‘er there, sir.”

Mac put her there. He’d done business with Jake back in the war. Jake had been the primary supplier of wine, liquor, tobacco and girls for the OSS officers’ club Mac had set up in Paris back in ’44.

“Damn, sir, that was you in that there space ship?”

Mac still held Jake’s hand. He now put his left hand over Jake’s as well.

“Jake, I trust you’re still the loyal American you always were.”

“I damn well am, sir.”

“Then I’m gonna have to ask you to keep all -- all this -- under that ten-gallon hat of yours.”

“You mean --”

Mr. MacNamara finally released Jake’s hand.

“That’s right, Jake. Top Secret. Let’s just say we were testing out a new experimental aircraft for the government, and, well, I suppose we’ve still got a few bugs to iron out.”

“Shee-it. And here I thought you was all spacemen.”


“Just good Americans like yourself, Jake. But you know how it is. If the Russkies were to get wind of a project like this, well --”

“Major, as far as I’m concerned, none of this ever happened, and as long as I got some say over what happens in this county none of it ever will happen, and like they say, a nod’s as good as a wink --”

“Good,” said Mr. MacNamara. “It’s tough about those motorcycle fellows, but something tells me they won’t be too sorely missed.”

“Well, I think you’re correct there, Major.”

Jake nudged Moloch’s body with his boot-tip.

“Fact is,” he said, “there’s plenty folks around here’d probly like to give ya the Distinguished Service Medal for bumpin’ off this piece o’ shit.”

“To tell the truth we didn’t bump him off. He was just about to shoot us all with that Sten gun there when a baseball came out of the sky and brained him.”

“No kiddin’,” said Jake. “Wonder if it was that ball Lefty Schiessen hit tonight?”

“Who the hell’s Lefty Schiessen?”

“Pitcher on the local minor league team. Hit a ball earlier tonight just as a flyin’ saucer went past -- I mean I reckon it was your, uh, experimental aircraft, and that ball just flew away up into the sky and never come down.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Mac, “that stuff happens. The craft, uh, pulls things into its, uh, gravitational field.”

“No shit,” said Jake. “Well, like you said, sir, these fellers won’t be too sorely missed. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.”

Actually Moloch’s death did in fact sadden Big Jake. He had made a fine shitload of money selling LSD to the Motorpsychos over the past couple of years. Well, there was always another angle if you just kept your eyes open.

“By the way, Major, you folks all right? You got a hell of a lot of blood ‘n’ gore on ya there.”

“Well, we lost someone in there, Jake, and, as you say, there was a lot of blood.”

“Oh. Shame.”

“But we’d like to keep that quiet, too, Jake.”

“Right. I understand, Major. Like none of this never happened.”

“That’s right, Jake.”

Jake turned and looked through the nearly-dissipated dust cloud at the broad dark path the saucer had scored into the desert.

“Well, them other fellas all got pretty squashed up. Whatever’s left the buzzards and the coyotes will take care of, or the desert sands’ll bury. As for ol’ Moloch here --”

Everyone looked back and forth at each other, and then Jake put his cigar in his mouth, reached down, grabbed the Sten gun in one hand and Moloch’s ankle in the other and started dragging the body over to the sink hole. Brad and Buddy came over, and each grabbed a dead arm to help out.

“What’s your moniker, buddy?” said Jake to Brad.

“Brad.”

“You look familiar, too.”

“I got one of those faces,” said Brad.

They had the corpse almost at the edge when Dick said, “Uh, wait a minute, fellas --”

Brad and Buddy and Jake all turned and looked at Dick.

“Um, maybe we should, you know, say something --”

Jake and Brad and Buddy all dropped their respective limbs, Jake let the Sten gun drop onto Moloch’s belly, and they all continued to look at at Dick.

“Oh, I guess it’s up to me,” said Dick.

“Well, it was your idea, Mr. Smith,” said Jake.

“Yeah, well.”

Dick dropped his cigarette, stubbed it out with the sole of his shoe. He drew a blank until he remembered a favorite movie from his adolescence.

“Oh. I know.” John Wayne in They Were Expendable. “Let me see.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, I think I’ve got it:

Under the wide and, uh, starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die.
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
‘Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And --’ uh -- um -- shit -- what the fuck is it?"

“'And the hunter home from the hill', you idiot,” croaked Moloch.

“Jesus Christ,” said Dick.

“Oh, my God,” said Daphne and she grabbed onto Harvey’s arm this time because he was the closest.

Moloch sat up, with that great bloody cavity in his head and with his crushed nose and with his one good eye glaring and glittering.

“See you in hell, sailor,” he said as he took up the Sten gun in his lap and pointed it at Dick.

Then there was a knife in his neck and he sat very still.

Dick stepped forward smartly and kicked the gun out of Moloch’s hand and off it went into the sink hole.

Then everyone, including Moloch, turned to see who had thrown the knife.

It was little Cleb Parsons, straddling his bike about thirty feet away. Attie was on her bike next to him. Both Cleb and Attie just barely glowed a beautiful soft green in the haze of dust illuminated by the headlights of Big Jake’s Cadillac.

Moloch made a noise as if clearing his throat and then, putting one hand flat on the dirt to his right, he tried to stand, amazingly, but failed and fell sideways over the edge of the sink hole and disappeared beneath the sand, joining the Sten gun and Lefty’s baseball and the Thorndykes and their truck, and Testicle and his bike, Colonel Masterson and Lieutenant Perkins and their jeep, Captain Pym, the flying saucer and Frank, Daphne’s riding boot, and God only knew who or what else.


There was a pause of a few moments and then Jake said, “Y’know, Brad, y’know who you look like? Like that feller in The Magnificent Seven, whatsisname.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, the one that thought the villagers had a secret stash o’ gold.”

“Yeah, I've gotten that before, actually.”

“What the hell’s that guy’s name?”

“Uh, Jake,” said Mr. MacNamara, “it’s getting a little cold out here, don’t you think?”


It was so late that Jake told Cleb and Attie they better just stay over his place that night, and he’d ring up Mr. Parsons to get his permission when they got back to the ranch.

Then he remembered Hope and Enid and the Doc and Paco and Derek, out there in the desert by Paco’s overturned station wagon.

(Continued here. Please look to the right hand column of this page for what might possibly be a current listing of all other published chapters of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain™, now a major motion picture starring Michael Parks and Ann-Margret, coming soon to drive-ins everywhere on a double bill with Larry’s Italian-made thriller The Odd And The Odious, starring Franco Nero and Claudia Cardinale.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 133: friends

Let us now rejoin our hero Arnold Schnabel, who (having just barely avoided the fate of Icarus) was last seen being carried through the air by that impish doll Clarissa above the ocean off Cape May, NJ, on a certain long evening in August, 1963…

(Go here to review our previous episode, or here to see the beginning of this Gold View Award-winning memoir.)

We were flying in toward the shore.

“I suppose also you’d like to go back now,” she said.

“Yes, I would, thank you,” I said.

“To your friends.”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll find us a quiet place to land.“

It was odd being carried by her like this, sideways through the air. Not that flying through the air holding her hand hadn’t been odd also. I continued to hold onto the doll box.

“What do you say, by the way?” she asked.

“What do I say?”

“Yes, what do you say for my saving your life?”

“Oh, thank you,” I said, perhaps out of excessive politeness, since she would have never had to save me at all if she hadn’t pulled me up into the air in the first place and then suggested I let go of her hand.

“You’re very welcome, Arnold,” she said. “And, please, do call me Clarissa.”

I wasn’t about to argue while she was carrying me a couple of hundred feet up in the air, so I said, “Okay, Clarissa.’

“That’s better. Now tell me about these friends. There’s a woman, isn’t there?”

“Well, yes,” I said.

“Ha! I knew it. Anyone else, or is this really and in all actuality just a tête-à-tête?”

“Um --”

“Or a date as I suppose you would call it.”

“Well --”

“Perhaps assignation is the appropriate word.”

“No,” I said. “None of the above. There are some other, uh, friends there.”

“A party.”

“Just a get-together,” I said.

“You will introduce me to everyone?”

“Clarissa --”

“Yes,” she said, into my ear.

“How can I introduce you?”

I was twisting around, trying to look into her eyes, so human-looking, and yet I knew better, or at least I thought I did.

“Oh, right,” she said.

"Pardon me?"

“Of course you can't introduce me. After all I’m a mere doll. A plaything.”

“Well, it’s just that --”

“Oh,” she said. “Let’s stop here.”

We were approaching Our Lady Star of the Sea Church. Clarissa began descending and brought us down on top of its square bell-tower, planting me on my feet, but at slightly too fast a velocity, so that I stumbled forward and almost fell over the low brick wall on the rearward side. I pushed myself up from the wall, straightened up and turned.

She leaned back in the corner of the wall above Washington and Ocean Streets, one arm along the top of the wall, and she turned and gazed to her left down at the street.

“The passing parade,” she said.

“Um, Clarissa,” I said. Standing up here on top of this tower made me feel unpleasantly vertiginous, although oddly enough flying through the air had not especially bothered me.

“Yes, Arnold?” she asked.

She drew a strand of curly dark hair away from her eyes.

“I really do need to be getting back to my friends.”

“Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.”

“But --”

“There’s a trap door there in the floor. Just go on down.”

True enough there was a metal trap door in the brick floor, and it had a handle, and maybe it wasn’t locked.

“Aren’t you coming?” I asked, perhaps stupidly.

“I don’t know why I should. You’re not being very nice to me.”

“I’m really sorry if I offended you.”

“If?”

“I’m sorry I offended you.”

She looked at me, then she turned around, put her forearms on the wall and gazed down again at the street and all the passing human beings.

Then she turned her head toward me. Her dark curls floated around her small porcelain face in the breeze.

“Perhaps I’ve been over-sensitive,” she said.

She returned her gaze to the murmuring pedestrian and motor traffic below.

Then she turned around and took a step towards me, smiling.

“Damn it, let’s do go meet your friends!”

“Great,” I said, not adding anything at all about how this was what we had been supposed to be doing all along.

“Open the box,” she said.

I opened the box, she climbed back into it, and with the box under my arm I leaned over and pulled open the trap door.

A metal ladder led down to the belfry just below, which was not completely dark, thanks to the starlight that came through the trap and the three tall gothic windows on each wall.

I climbed down the ladder with the box under my arm.

On the other side of the rack of bells was a railing winding down into a hole in the floor. Going over I saw a spiral metal staircase below, and I headed on down. There was just enough light for me to make my way down slowly step by step.

At the bottom of the stairwell was a door, its knob only just barely visible. I turned it, and, thank God if he was indeed responsible, it opened. I was now in recognizable territory, at the right of the narthex. I closed the tower door quietly behind me. All I had to do was go straight ahead to the front doors and out. Provided the doors weren’t locked. In which case I would have to come up with some new plan.

In any case I was not halfway to the entranceway when I saw Father Reilly come out from the nave. He was still wearing the casual civilian outfit he had been wearing earlier that night, and he had a large ring of keys in his hand that he was shaking up and down like a tambourine.*

He saw me and stopped, stopped shaking the keys also.

“Arnold,” he said.

“Hello, Father.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you were on a date with your lady friend?”

“Well, I was,” I said.

“And you’ve interrupted it to come back to church?”

I had to think fast.

“I wanted to know if you would hear my confession, Father.”

He seemed taken aback.

“I just heard your confession this morning.”

“I know, but --”

“But you’ve just committed another mortal sin.”

“Yes, Father.”

I felt a sort of kick inside the box.

“You know, it doesn’t work this way, Arnold, really,” he said. “You can’t just go to confession, run out and have sexual intercourse, then run right back to church and go to confession again. That’s insane.”

“So you -- don’t want to hear my confession?”

It didn’t matter to me, I just wanted to get out of there.

“It’s not about what I want, Arnold. It’s about -- you can’t just make up your own rules.”

“Okay, well, I can see that. I’ll just be going then, Father.”

“Wait, what were you doing coming from down the other end of the narthex there?”

“What was I, uh, doing?”

“Yes. Why didn’t you just come right into the church.”

“I -- I was -- wrestling with myself.”

“You were?”

“Yes, you know, wondering if I should -- uh -- ask you to hear my, uh, confession --”

“So even you knew you were doing something wrong.”

“Yes, I suppose I did, Father.”

“The wrong being not so much the intercourse, because that might very well have been a beautiful, perhaps even sacred act; no, but rather, the audacity of thinking you could make it a sin by confessing it.”

“Yes, Father.”

I felt and heard a giggling from inside the box.

“Was that you?” asked Father Reilly.

“It’s the beer I drank earlier, Father. A slight case of gas.”

He paused. I prayed she wouldn’t giggle again.

“All right, Arnold,” said Father Reilly. “Take a knee.”

“What?”

“Kneel down.”

I felt and heard another giggle from the box, and, clearing my throat loudly, I got down on one bare knee, on that hard marble floor.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” said Father Reilly, making the sign of the cross, “I absolve you. Again. Ego te absolvo. Say three Hail Marys when you get the urge. Now get up.”

I stood up.

“Come on,” he said, “I’m going to lock up from outside.”

He went to the doorway, opened one of the big doors and waved me through. He came out, closed the door and locked it with a big key from his ring. He put the ring in his trousers pocket and then took his nearly-empty pack of Camels from his shirt pocket.

“Cigarette?” he asked.

I hesitated, even raising my hand, but at the last moment I said, “No thanks, Father.”

He shook one out for himself, put the pack away.

“Do you think you’ll see Miss Evans, Arnold?” he said, as if casually, putting the cigarettes back into his pocket.

“I have no doubt I will, Father.”

He reached into another pocket, took out his Pete’s Tavern matchbook and tore off a match, but instead of lighting his cigarette he looked straight at me and said:

“I want you to tell her something for me.”

“Okay.”

“Tell her I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

He paused, still looking straight in my eyes. Then he lit his cigarette, waved the match, tossed it down the steps. He put the book of matches back into his pocket and exhaled smoke slowly through his thin nostrils as he gazed down toward the street.

He turned to me again.

“And tell her I won’t be able to see her any more, Arnold. If she wants further religious counsel tell her she should see Father Schwartz. He’s a good man. I wouldn’t recommend Father Fahey. He too has a weakness for the fairer sex. Make it Schwartz.”

“Yes, Father.”

“If Father Schwartz has a weakness it’s not for the ladies.”

“Well, good night, Father. And thanks.”

“Thanks? For what?”

“For absolving me.”

“Oh.” He waved his cigarette. “Good night, Arnold. Oh, wait, what’s in the box?”

“Oh, the box,” I said.

“Yes.”

“It’s um, uh, it’s a present for my friend’s girlfriend, a doll. My, uh, friend forgot it, and, uh --”

“All right, good night, Arnold.”

“Good night, Father.”

I went down the steps and turned right on the sidewalk, without looking back.

“That man is a complete goose,” she said, from inside the box. “And you’re not much better!”

*See Chapter 109 for Fr. Reilly's previous appearance in Arnold's memoirs.



(Continued here, under the close supervision of a crack team of mental health professionals from the Mayo Clinic. Please see the right hand side of this page to find what might be an up-to-date listing of links to all other published episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™; Imprimatur, Cardinal Charles “Chuck” O’Malley.)

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 127: changed

Larry Winchester (”The sage of our benighted age.” -- Harold Bloom), bowing to the demands of his audience, assumes once again the inimitable voice of Mr. Big Jake Johnstone...

(Go here to freshen your memory of the previous chapter. Newcomers may go here for the first chapter of this Gold View Award©-winning masterpiece.)

Everything was just kinda still and quiet like. Great big old dust cloud that the saucer’d stirred up, just kinda hangin’ there over the desert ‘cause there wasn’t much of a wind out, but even so I could see where the saucer’d finally skidded to a stop, because it was still glowin’ this weird kinda soft green like neon or somethin’. The saucer was just restin’ like, ‘cept now all this green smoke starts pourin’ up out of it.

Then, wouldn’tcha just know it, that ol’ saucer just starts slidin’ an’ sinkin’, slow but steady, down into that ol’ sink hole. And then I could see what looked like some kinda creatures runnin’ over the top of the saucer an’ jumpin’ off it.

Then it was gone. The saucer I mean. Disappeared. But through the dust I could see them creatures, five or six of ‘em, standin’ there by the rim of the sink hole.

Well, I had me another hit of that Jack Daniel and, call me crazy or just plain stupid, I started that Caddy up and drove on in to where the saucer’d been. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was on account of that prayer I’d prayed that the good Lord had seen fit to answer. He’d got me out of that scrape and I’d promised to be a good man if he did. And I’ve tried to live up to that promise. You ask anybody in these parts if I ain’t a changed man. And, well, maybe I figured, hell, I got through that pickle alive, maybe the good Lord wants to keep me around a while. And if I’m gonna be around it might just be in my interest to see what these creatures who’d jumped out of the saucer might have to offer. I mean I figured, hey, they are obviously much more technologically advanced than mankind, but still and all maybe they’d appreciate a savvy earth fella to show ‘em around, show ‘em the ropes so to speak. Maybe set up a few business and political connections for ‘em. Set up a few howdy-dos. Whisper a few words to a few people in the right places and grease a few wheels. Wouldn’t hurt just to introduce myself anyhow. Learned a long time ago bein’ shy is a good way to get nowhere fast in this life, and with all due respect to the Lord Jesus, the meek of this world don’t inherit jack shit in a leaky bucket.

So I headed on in.

Took another good jolt o’ Mr. Daniel and headed on in.

Now I wished I could tell ya what transpired next but I’m afraid I been sworn to secrecy. That’s right. Sworn. And a man ain’t as good as his word, well, that man is just about lower’n whaleshit in my opinion, lower than whaleshit at the bottom of the ocean.

Oh, now, I ain’t sayin’ I never told nobody. Somethin’ like what I’m talkin’ about, ya just gotta tell somebody, otherwise the fact of it’ll just keep growin’ in your brain, growin’ and growin’, like a goddam brain tumor. (Known quite a few people hereabouts what’ve had brain tumors. Knew one feller had a brain tumor got so damn big one day his head just split open while he was sittin’ drinkin’ a beer at Burt’s. Split right open right along the top of his skull, sprayin’ out blood and brain matter just like a fountain. Fell off the stool, smacked his head on the floor and out rolled a tumor size of a softball.)

So I told people, sure.

But the thing was I only told prostitutes. You know, lyin’ there, all calm an’ cozy after gettin’ my weezer wozzled, smokin’ a cigar, maybe sippin’ a little J.D., I’d tell some little gal what happened. Usually it’d be some little Mex gal who couldn’t understand what I was sayin’ no how. (All’s said and done I gotta admit I prefer women what don’t speak English. I find it much more, well, restful that way. And chances are they do too, come to think of it.)

Anyway, I’d lie back an’ tell ‘em all about it, an’ even the ones that did speak English probly just thought I was makin’ it all up. But I wasn’t. An’ even if they did believe it and repeat it, it wouldn’t matter none, ‘cause who gives a fuck what a prostitute says?

(Continued here. Kindly refer to the right hand column of this page for what might be an up-to-date listing of all other published chapters of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain™, coming soon to drive-ins everywhere on a double bill with Larry’s bildungsroman bio-pic Young Marcel, starring Toby Maguire as Marcel Proust.)