... ... ... And I think of Robert Herbert of Utah. As a boy he spent years on his back in his grandmothers den, staring upwards at a clock with a dog on his chest and his grandfather dead from the cancer. When his hands would touch the carpet he put them to his face to catch an endless string of smell. There was facial lotion, wet feet, the smell of tobacco, sour curtains, cat urine, chicken fat, Lysol and fresh bread. He had winters with his mother and summers with his aunt, and all the while he could think of no better place for a person to lie on his back on a Sunday and watch a clock. He lives in the Southwest now and I miss the time we spent back home.
In the days of Robert Herbert I knew an Irish cook who would wrestle waitresses next to the ovens and tell stories of slapping the British in the face with his penis. He rode bicycles across thin bridges to win small bets in the middle of the night and had once been a champion fencer. He eventually became a father and disappeared in Pennsylvania.
These were greats among others. Men that hate the bus as much as I do and love their hometowns more than most. Mr. Gladd and Jerry Labeck of the First United Methodist Church who built homes for poor families on spare afternoons and sat tired in the pews with grinning yellow teeth. I can remember staring at Labeck as a boy and not knowing why his face was clean-shaven yet a beard grew from his neck and throat. He wore boots, carried a knife, and was a fine example of a man lost in the woods with no intention of coming out.
I rode the bus some months ago and had wonderful thoughts of simple times as I watched a large woman eat half a fried chicken breast at eight- fifteen in the morning. She left fingerprints on the window and talked non-stop about the pain in her legs. My father has bad knees and runs marathons at fifty. I don't believe he has an opinion on buses or clocks or small bets in the middle of the night. He lives on a hill in the center of New Jersey and I miss the time we spent back home.
