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

iefly present him with her Automatic Smile. Her eyes then
return to the check writing infinity that looms before her and lose
focus as her mind wanders to a nostalgia for nectarines and how
nice it’ll be when it stops raining and how much booze did Old
Blue Hair have to drink to get a nose like that?
Old Blue Hair ultimately triumphs over her check. With
fingers that look like root vegetables she rips it from the book and
shoves it across to Robyn/Supervisor who, returning from her
interior musings, taps a key on the register. When the drawer
clicks open, she slides the check under the twenties then bounces
it closed with her polyestered hip.
Now Old Blue Hair has to put her checkbook away.
This is a difficult and complicated business, one that makes
Roy’s changing music tapes seem trivial by comparison. Robyn’s
bored, aqua eyes slide once again to Roy, then over him, then
beyond him and onto the rest of the endless line of customers,
ultimately to return to the slow-motion checkbook disappearing
act.
Robyn/Supervisor is desperate to get through her shift so
she can go home, burn one, and pleasure herself with her new,
eighty-seven dollar vibrator.
“OK.” Old Blue Hair says this conclusively, her wallet now
buried in the vastness of her enormous orange bag. “We’ll see
you next week, hon.”
The wizened bagger tugs on her forelock and pushes the
creaking cart after old wattle woman who may still to this day be
looking for her 1989 white Cadillac DeVille with 29,347 honestto-God
original miles on its odometer.
Roy never unloads his basket. Since he refuses to use the little
plastic dividers the store provides—as if your food’s got cooties—
he never unloads his basket.
Robyn, the taste of maryjane already on her tongue, a buzz
already between her legs, unloads his basket for him.
“Did you find everything you need today?”
There are so many ways to answer this question, Roy doesn’t
know where to begin.
How he wishes his tunes were in his ears.
0 ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY