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

THE SONY TAPE PLAYER
attached to Roy’s belt gives up the ghost and dies.
Suzi’s voice slows and slows and slows—
click
The circumstances could not have been less tragic. Roy’s new
residence is in sight, and he has already listened to both sides of
the tape five times.
It took forever for him to get home—today is a Game Day, a
day for the Seahawks to play the very costly game of football—
and his bus spent forty minutes traversing a stretch of SR-99 he
could have walked in ten.
Not that Roy minded, except when his batteries were low, or
he needed to pee.
Sometimes he wonders why they don’t put urinals on buses.
(Roy has a colorful cardboard box in his duffle bag that used
to contain Parodi cigars, but is now filled with juiceless batteries
he can’t bring himself to throw away. He figures that that many
batteries thrown away all at once would rip a hole the size of
Australia in our planet’s fragile ozone layer. And when the
authorities found out he was responsible for the Australia-sized
ozone hole—and they do check on these things—he, Roy, would
probably have to go to jail for a long, long time. Possibly forever.)
Styrofoam boxes with remnants of rice glued inside, crushedout
cigarette butts, packages of squeezed-dry mustards and
ketchups—all wind-delivered—rest in the corners of his
building’s entryway, an entryway that had, maybe a hundred
years ago, been clean and inviting.
Fishing for his keys, Roy bounds up the chipped granite steps
to the scarred front door.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY