MEDICINE MAN
HATCHET FACE
HATCHET FACE
Not everyone is a singular wonder, not everyone
has a chance of salvation or a glimmer of hope.
Some are just in desperate straits from the start :
about half a block down Mulberry Street, an elderly
hunchbacked woman, rolling a luggage-like container
behind her on the sidewalk, fell down - 'I'm pooped
to dead', she said. Yes, then I wanted only to cry.
-
No one else seemed to care, making fun, instead, of
the wheeled suitcase being pulled by the likes of her;
as if it was all ridicule, as if her life was in fun. These
same geeken-fried bastards who trod every airport and
clog up the trains with the God-forsaken luggage to
Paris or Rheims. Thank God for gun control, or they'd
all be dead. That's what I said to myself instead.
-
'She, she was jaywalking across the street just a minute
ago, in a meander.' Some guy said that, like a tweet. 'In
a meander?' I said, 'Now what are you trying to say by
that - something more to denigrate her figure, to cut
her - already down - down some more. In a meander?'
-
Life has lessons buried under the rubble, and each
fallen character bears the scar of a last encounter or
a final rebuttal. She'd had no chance, not yet, anyway,
to say anything back to anyone in her own defense. So
sad, so sorry anyway. I bent, and stayed, alone with her.
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