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

ROY DROPS HIS DUFFLE,
and causes his face to smile.
The filthy window he looks through, up at which he had
previously peered, back before he had been a tenant, is now
beaded with rain.
Just made it.
This fact causes his face to smile because he’s glad he doesn’t
have to sleep in the rain out in a park on a bench, or hiding in
bushes beneath an overpass’s parallelogram. He bends his knees
and sinks onto the dinged, dilapidated brass bed’s mattress.
squeak
And he stares hard at his new room.
He wishes he knew names of all the colors so he would know
what to call the piss-yellow peeling wallpaper, besides ugly.
The floor is wood, with paint spots and water stains,
depressions and divots and nailheads sticking out. Asleep
beneath the window, a silver radiator coils. Heat leaks from it
like electricity from a potato. There is writing on the wall, spraypainted,
none of it enlightening. The sagging ceiling looks like a
badly-stained sheet holding a bowling ball, or a boil in need of a
lance.
There is still light outside, but it’s Northwestern light, icy city
light, pale blue, tawdry light. Roy read once a long time ago, for
he does occasionally read while keeping warm in the library, that
Eskimos have a hundred names for snow.
Northwesterners should have as many for their flat, gray skies.
There is even a bathroom down the hall.
If only he had a kitchen.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY 11