Saturday, October 25, 2008

Imbeciles and Gadabouts

Dejesus awoke from troubled dreams. Before falling asleep he’d eaten a queso de cabra sandwich and swigged a bottle of Horace Bitters. The day began its slow decline, the sun a yellow stain in the bluing sky. The littlest dogmen awoke with a start, the sky having fallen on top of his sleeping head, men with hobbled legs, ogres and imbeciles, pips and gadabouts, men in hats and men without hats, woman and children, grandma’s and grandpa’s, fishmongers and abattoir hands, handcart pullers and pushcart pushers, brothers and sisters, all and every, every and all awoke.

Some days are less rainy than others. Some days it doesn’t rain at all. Other days it rains so hard that no one, not a puller or a pusher, leaves his home. On those days when it rains, and rain it does, the sky awash with heavy gray clouds, the pushers and pullers push and pull, their carts full of pushed and pulled things. Gadabouts and imbeciles, ogres and pips, the hobbled and sleepy, all and every, every and all awake, pushing and pulling, the sky awash in rain.

For breakfast Dejesus cooked a skillet of bacon, three eggs, two slivers of toast, as he cut his bread in small slices, saving what he could for tomorrow’s breakfast, and a glassful of brown turbid water, culled from the bottom of the aqueduct. He ate with tolerable relish, as eating, especially in the mornings, was not something he took great joy in. At 27½ minutes past the littlest hand Dejesus was meeting the man in the hat to discuss the likelihood of the sky falling, the man in the hat convinced that it would, knocking his hat off his head, Dejesus convinced that skies only fell in theory, not practice, and theories weren’t worth the foolscap they were written on.

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