bURGEE's mEDICINAL tONIC7*

She, the shamble leg man’s mother, died from impetigo and a virulent strain of whooping cough. She died corrupted; her lungs prowl with spirochetes and blackness. After her funeral mass, he read up on thalidomide and spirochetes, and virulent strains of whooping cough that blackened lungs like roofer’s tar. His shamble leg was his penance for not having grieved for his mother, for burlap skirts, vinegary breath, whooping, and the uneasiness in the crucible of her stomach.

One day among many, the man in the hat was out for a walk when he came across a beggar sitting with his hands crossed over his chest. When he asked, ‘why are your hands crossed over your chest like that?’ the beggar replied, ‘so my heart doesn’t jump out and run away’. ‘Oh’, said the man in the hat, ‘I see, you’ve got a fast heart is it?’ ‘No’, said the beggar, ‘I’ve got diabetes and my legs are all shaky and full of holes.’ The man in the hat tipped the brim of his hat and said, ‘better than a hole in the head, I suppose.’ ‘Any day’, replied the beggar, ‘shaky legs, too.’ A gun metal blue-gray sky and the man in the hat without an umbrella or cover for his hat; if it were to rain, which it might, he’d be left drenched and sopping. He looked down at the beggar, who was busy rearranging and sorting through his alms-cap, and smiled. ‘Might you have a spare plastic bag for my head?’ The beggar looked up, eyes straining to see the man in the hat, as the sun was broiling, and said, ‘why of course, yes, yes I do.’ He fiddled and scrounged through his belongings, a rucksack with string tied round the zipper eyelet, an old potato fermenting in a plastic bag, and his alms-cap, red and black with the coat of arms of the Vatican on the brim tip. ‘Here,’ he said, offering a grocery bag to the man in the hat. The man in the hat took the bag from the beggar’s hand and smiled, ‘so kind of you, so kind indeed.’ ‘You need some string for that?’ the beggar said, his eyes like moths. ‘Might be a good idea,’ said the man in the hat, ‘a good idea indeed.’ ‘You can use it to tie it round your chin, that ways it won’t blow off.’ ‘Right,’ said the man in the hat, ‘right you are.’