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

Roy has a plan.
His hand tightens on the knob.
By cricky, he is going to do it, too. His plan, that is. And, also
by cricky, it is going to work.
Or not.
Cold though it may be—and it is; wet though it might
be—and how could it be otherwise, for this is Seattle in winter;
nevertheless, his mind is made up.
He sets his face with steely resolve.
Removing his now dented forehead from the leading edge of
the painted, wooden slab, Roy closes the door.
He releases the knob.
The knob, glass-faceted and powered by an ancient spring,
snaps back to its resting place with a sound akin a thunderclap.
(How many times has it done this—a million? Now it is a
million and one.) Roy winces at the sound.
To his super-sensitive ears, it is terribly loud. It is, in fact, a
noisy racket. He is fearful lest it awaken his neighbor in 28/RR.
Or the whole building.
Or the world.
He wants to sneak out unannounced, quickly and quietly, a
drifting shadow, avoiding chance encounters with other souls.
He doesn’t want a repeat of the B THRO M fiasco.
He shuffles over to his bed and sits.
squeak
For a while he stares out his sash window at the rising globe
that, on the other side of the window’s glass, saturates morning
clouds with a pearly opalescence.
He assumes it’s the sun.
An overpowering urge causes him to stand.
squeak
In one, quick stride he is at the latticework of dirty glass
rectangles. He unlocks the catch and shoves up the sash.
The pigeons—deeply engrossed in a discussion about the
overuse of the subjunctive in post-modern literature—are startled
by this event and display their aggravation by thrashing their
wings wildly. As one, they display to the human interloper the
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY