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

Pots and pots of the stuff. Apparently, the old lady was nuts about
broccoli. Not about eating it, mind you. She was nuts about cooking it.
Cooking it and cooking it and leaving it to rot. Pots and pots of rotting
broccoli. Broccoli covered with thick fungal colonies.
Roy lost it then and there. First time in his life he ever refused to do a
job. Hell—hadn’t he cleaned up the gelatinous remains of a decaying corpse?
Hadn’t he used bare hands to scoop shit out of toilets? It wasn’t like he was
a wuss, wasn’t like he was afraid of dirty work. But—the smell. It made
his head spin, his stomach heave. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
He had to go out back, white as a sheet, and sit down while the Louisiana
dude emptied all the broccoli pots into big, black plastic bags.
As if frozen, Roy stands staring at the broccoli’s deep green
stalks and tiny BB-shot florets. A crease deepens upon his brow.
He is remembering why he hates broccoli.
A well-dressed Caucasian couple (he in a leather duster and
brown slouch hat, she in a retro plastic, paisley-print raincoat
with matching cloche chapeau) arrive behind Roy’s immobile,
remembering back, and are balked. They, too, would like to look
at the broccoli. Not because they have hateful memories they
want to relive, but because they would like to take some home to
eat. They would like the opportunity—this being a free country
and all—to peruse the thick, succulent stalks to their hearts’
satisfaction before selecting one or two for their very own. But
they are balked by the big, balding man with headphones on his
ears. The big, balding man with headphones on his ears who
could stand a bath. And a change of clothes. The big, balding
man with headphones on his ears and body odor who stands
before them transfixed by a bin of broccoli.
“We’ll come back,” whispers the Caucasian female, who has
spent her entire life avoiding conflict and confrontation, and who
has allied herself with the man in the brown duster because he
reminds her of her father.
“Asshole doesn’t even know we’re here,” grumbles the
Caucasian male, expressing a lick of bravura, the kind he learned
as a boy when he watched his drunken father shove his mother
around. A brown, duster-covered arm squeezes a frail, plasticcoated
shoulder.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY