Saturday, January 02, 2016
Vapors
“Borne like a vapor! Can you imagine?
Her hair! Jeannie’s.”
“Yeah, but on the sweet summer air? This is
the desert. That was the Shenandoahs or
something, where you get a bit of blessed
moisture off the trees at twilight! Oh how I miss it!
Don’t you, Gramps?"
Next day, Gramps, retaining the concept of mountain,
found an alley near Commerce Street with a gray-white
smear of one at the end.
Approached Monica, hard in a black pixie cut.
“Jeannie!” implored he.
Suddenly Sheriff Dentz drove at her, red lights spinning.
“Solicitation!”
“I didn’t fuckin say Hello!”
He gave Gramps to Deputy Alice Grimes to un-babble.
“It’s pretty about the hair and everything,” she told
Chuck when he came to pick him up. “Hey! Just
happened to think: my grandma goes to a daycare
over on Painted Horse. Her hair’s not bad, and they play
cards. Poker. For money.”
“He was a shark!”
“No greenhorns there, believe me!”
“You’ve been awful nice. And I don’t wanna drop the ball
from shyness when I meet someone nice. Some coffee or
something tomorrow?”
“No wife?”
“Left a good while back.”
“Had her reasons?”
“Maybe a thousand."
“Here’s my card.”
Gramps only said in the Jeep going home that
he guessed he "went too far, bit haywire," and things
confused him, "but it’s such a lovely lovely song! I can’t
get her outa…”
“Way it goes.”
Labels: dementia, fantasy, gambling, Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair, law enforcement, obsession, prostitution, song, Stephen Foster, Western
