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

Just a little bit higher
Little bit higher—
Every time Rick beat the shit out of Roy, the next day he
acted as if nothing happened. And the reason for this was Rick
didn’t remember. He carried in his brain absolutely no memory
of what he did, or said, while drinking alcohol. He would never
recall hurting Roy. He had no recollection of breaking a pool
cue over anybody’s head. And he always woke up saying how the
fuck did I get here on those occasions when he had been arrested
and found himself in a holding cell filled with big, ugly, black
motherfuckers.
Unlike Roy, Rick’s brain does not have a remarkable memory.
It was only by the best possible luck in the world that Roy
found peace through Punk.
One night he wandered into a bar where the music was so
loud he couldn’t hear what the bartender was saying, and the
bartender was yelling his ass off. That was OK with Roy, who
didn’t want to drink anyway. Because of his brother, Roy never
drank. They were brothers, after all, which meant they shared
genes. Roy was afraid if he got shitfaced like Rick always did
then he, too, might turn into a werewolf and start hurting people
and not remembering it. And, because Roy was so much bigger
than Rick, it was conceivable he might wind up accidentally
killing somebody while he was Lon Chaney, and then he would
have to go to prison where he would be physically humiliated
and maybe even wind up on death row where they strap you
to a gurney and put a mask over your face and give you two
injections—one filled with syrup that will not let you scream, the
other filled with nightshade that turns your blood into molten
fire.
No. Roy did not want to drink.
Roy just wanted to listen.
What was cool about listening to Punk was not what it
sounded like, but what it did.
And this is what it did—: it made Roy forget.
It numbed him, knocked loose the grit and grime and birdshit
that accumulates in the cracks and crevices of human brains,
1 ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY