volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

What Old Guy does instead is he pats the tape in its resting
place between his white, doughy flesh and his Cowboys and
Indians towel and says:
“This here’s some valuable shit.”
Roy reckons this must be true, seeing as how he’s never heard
anything like it before, and he’s heard lots and lots of tunes, or at
least thinks he has, so all he can do is nod in agreement.
Sensing as how Old Guy is, like, starting to be almost friendly,
he decides to take the bull by the horns.
“If I can’t have a copy, why’d you give it to me?”
Old Guy’s face darkens.
“Give? I didn’t give. I let you borrow. Because of—th’ food.”
Roy brightens.
“You liked the lasagna?”
Cooks love to know what people think about their creations.
“That what it was?”
Roy’s smile falters.
“Uh. Yeah.”
Old Guy nods, cranks open his door.
“It was OK. I like broccoli.”
Roy’s smile vanishes completely.
“Zucchini.”
Old Guy’s naked, white shoulder rests against his door.
“Whatever.”
He seems to be lingering.
WWJFD?
If Old Guy was John Ford he would, besides being dead, go
inside his room and slam the door and lock it and get roaring
drunk for the next three or four weeks.
But this bald dude doesn’t seem so bad, really. And he likes
his music—strangely, not everyone does. And that really was a
damned fine whatever-it-was he cooked.
Maybe a tad salty.
In the silence that colonizes the space between them, Roy
strains to say something. The birth pangs of this thought,
whatever it is, appear to be incredibly painful. Beneath the dim,
straw-yellow light, he’s looking pretty green.
1 ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY