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

“You got the look of a man whose innards are bein’ gnawed at
by a badger.”
Roy considers this.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Pete asks,
“Ever seen Bronco Billy, with Clint Eastwood?”
“No.”
Pete sips.
“Life’s all twisty and turny, Roy. You can waste it, you can
drink it, you can smoke it all away—but it’s yours ’til you die. To
ask a man who he is, is to open a can of worms. Once they’re
loose on th’ carpet, there’s no getting’ ’em back inside. You want
that?”
Roy hadn’t thought of it that way.
“It’s just. I got this feelin’. Something’s changin’, Pete, an’ I
don’t know—”
Pete grins, thinks he comprehends.
“You don’t know how to talk about it. So you think maybe if
old Pistol Pete opens up he might jess say somethin’ that’d help.”
He presses PLAY.
The blue screen snaps off and the FBI Warning appears.
It is red and scary.
Roy is disappointed.
Pete glares at the FBI Warning.
“Fuckin’ Feds.”
Roy sits back and digs in for another movie.
To his surprise, Pete says—
“I’ll think about it.”
And so he does.
He thinks about it while Henry Fonda struts around the
desert, and John Wayne lopes around the desert, and Shirley
Temple pouts around the desert, and Victor McLaglen drinks
around the desert, and Ben Johnson gallops around the desert—
he thinks about it until he decides against it—at least for now—
comes instead to this conclusion: maybe they’re on the wrong
track.
Pete surmises Roy’s not ready for Ford.
He seems unimpressed by Wayne.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY 2