dressing the debutantes

I think “dressing the debutantes” were born of necessity. It is mathematical, but since we aren’t mathematicians, we made up our own charts and graphs. We write our own theorems and hope to God they aren’t true. It has something to do with how humidity affects a 90 degree angle. It gets warped and all bent outta shape such that high school geometry just packs it up and goes home.We should have been meteorologists and been paid for being wrong most of the time. Shining bright in the studio lights while having an affair with the sports guy’s wife. But we are men of honor, so instead of shacking up with some bleached out floozy, we’re gonna veer straight for the ditch. Empty our pockets into the broken water fountains. Wash our hands in Avalon and hitchhike to Eldorado.As far as plans go, this is it. We are gonna pull our own puppet strings, get em good and tangled, then laugh if someone ever tries to make something out of it. Then, for the grand finale, we’ll win the lottery without ever scratchin’ a ticket. How are we gonna do it? Wouldn’t you like to know. In the end, it will have been our worst kept secret. We’ll beat the odds without playing the game with invisible tickets in our empty pockets.We’ve driven between Tallahassee and Jacksonville so many times that I think we got lost somewhere. There is nothing out there, so the horizon sucks up what it can get as we race across trying not to get caught. But once we had to stop for gas near the half-way oasis. Sitting on a bench at the gas station was a decrepid fella who looked like he coulda been Job’s brother.“I think the dead can dance,” he said to us as we headed in to pay.“No doubt, how the hell else would we be walking around.”“If you’d heard just what I seen, that tongue of yers wouldn’t be so sharp.”He had an old metal resonator guitar leaning against the wall next to him. A piece of yellowing notebook paper taped to the body said “Property of Deaf Boy Williams”.“If you boys got somethin’ to say, best spit it out or swallow that saliva ‘fore it dribbles down your chins.”“Steal that from a deaf man did ya grandpa?”“Hell no, that’s my name. And you might recognize it if you ever took your eyes off the road.”“Well, since you can hear us making our fun, I’m guessing you aren’t really deaf.”“I can’t hear nothin’ else when I’m strummin’. Just my voice and the knife scrappin’ down the strings. Sounds like heaven on a Monday mornin’ after all the freeloaders have quit rubberneckin’. You could be Jesus standin’ in front of me with a one-way ticket and I’d just keep on singin’. Guess that’s why I’m still here.”I proceeded to stand in front of him with my arms stretched out in the crucifixion pose.“Knock that shit off ya damn fool and pay attention. I also can’t hear no one less I speak to um first. That’s why I can hear you boys now. “This guy was getting more biblical by the second. Maybe he was munching on a bag of locusts and honeysuckle before we pulled in.“So you play that guitar or just carry it around for exercise?”“Yup, learnt the blues from Charley Patton hisself,” he said while thrusting out his chest, with a sense of pride that surely equaled his years. Of course, the likelihood of this statement was far-fetched to put it mildly.“Oh yeah, well we just learned about Tahiti from Gauguin, so I guess that makes us even.”“Besides, you look more like Job than any bluesman I’ve ever seen.”He snorted and spit in response. “Well, I guess I could be. I ain’t mad at nobody,” he paused and showed us a yellow-toothed smile before finishing his thought, “unless you wanna blame me for something!”The hazy eye-ball sun was shining heavy on the scene, and we felt a gravitational tug-of-war pulling us back and forth between the faux bluesman and the interstate. We were sinking fast in the I-10 quicksand and as wavy as the highway heat. He must’ve sensed our newly split personalities and quickly got to the point.“I don’t think the sky is fallin’, its just settlin’ down for a rest. Just remember, you’ll never see less than you’ll ever be and don’t you think for one second that you can be found ‘fore ya get yerselves good’n lost. There’s only two typesa people, them that’s lost and them that’s found. All these fools runnin’ round like decapitated chickens, askin’ for directions to their house while they’s standin’ in their own damn yard!”“Which one are you?”He scratched his stubble, lookin’ up and slightly to the right for about 30 seconds before answering.“Well, I been lost for a long time now. Suppose my wife’s wonderin’ why I never came home for dinner, but I’ll get back there one’a these days.”“How long since you left home?”“Ain’t rightly sure, but I saw a cop last week that coulda been my son. I tend to travel in tiny increments. Gotta move so I can see where I been, but not too far cause my eyesight’s failin’.”“Well Deaf Boy, we might be headin’ west or east, you wanna take your chances and hitch a ride?”“That’d be good of ya.”“How far you going?”“Just a little bit further then where I been. Bout a mile outta do.”So we dropped him off about a mile down the road. He wouldn’t take any food or water we offered. He just said we’d done more for him than we’d ever know. So we each shook his hand, and haven’t washed them since. The last thing we heard of Deaf Boy Williams as we were driving away has been oozing out of our ears ever since.“Keep feedin’ that disillusion, it’ll take ya places you never thought you’d wanna go.”Right angles, dew points, I-10 hallucinations. If necessity is the mother of invention than Deaf Boy Williams was our dead-beat dad. We play all the songs he never wrote. Every drunken confession is put to tape, shouted in empty churches, and whispered in big city crowds. We feel pretty guilty, so if we haven’t done anything lately we’ll just make it up.Who would’ve thought that this is where we’d want to be?-DTDI edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4