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

ROY’S KNUCKLES TAP
gently upon the door. The door that could do with a coat of
paint. The door that was new maybe two hundred years ago.
The door that opens to reveal a squat, red-faced lady.
The squat, red-faced lady squints up at him, then up and
down him, then beyond him, down both ways along the empty
hall past him, then back up at him again. She challenges him
with a lengthy glare.
“You got tchotchkes?”
To Roy, she appears thus: a frowsy, jowly turnipy face
mostly obscured by coke-bottle thick, eyeball-bloating lenses in
rhinestone encrusted frames, the kind of lenses that darken when
you wear them outside. Her thinning hair is white and frizzy,
her nose pulpy and purple. The stained, lemony wrap that
envelops her blocky stoutness ends just below her knees, exposing
parchment like, vein-burst legs. On her feet she wears soiled
mules of imitation fleece.
Mistrust clings to her like cheap perfume.
And there are long, long forgotten hairs on her chinny chin
chin.
While to her, this is how Roy appears: tall, paunchy, mostly
bald, with a Bozo-the-Clown fringe of wavy, brown hair salted
gray. He, too, like herself—and like Bozo—has a bulbous
nose. Dilapidated headphones hang around his neck, their
skinny tail attached to an old Sony tape player held together
with duct tape and hitched to his belt. His clothes are dirty and
deeply wrinkled. His face is Gumby smooth, neglectful and
uninformed. Several days’ stubble fuzz his cheeks; otherwise, he
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY