JBB:
%%Hellfire, what am I waitin' fer? It is the 24th! I'm already in Riverton - or at least the part of the set that doubles fer Riverton! And isn't YOUNG JACK at the bottom of the reunion steps, like, right now??
((Spies the leaping YOUNG ENNIS))
Hey, there's that cowboy ma man has his heart set on! Takin' the steps two at a time!! Wherever he is, TERRY must be there too!!!%%
((Bellows with all the creamy might his little tube can muster...))
**TEEEEERRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!**
(( The warsh water was hot and clear in the morning, but by noon the dirt had pushed up out of his fibers rolling little sudsy bubbles before it. TERRY CLOTH, wearing his best dernier, grey with no stripes, didn't know what time JBB would get there and so had taken the whole day off, ironed himself back and forth, looking down into a street pale with dust he did not want to be made to wipe up. OWLMA was squawking something about taking his friend to the Warsh 'n Fold for cleaning instead of doing laundry at home because the water was not so hot, if they could get a fledgling sitter, but TERRY CLOTH said more likely he'd just go out with JBB and get loopy. JBB was not a laundromat type, he said, thinking of the dirty clothespins sticking out of the jugs of cold detergent balanced on the log.
Late in the afternoon, dryers grumbling, that same young blue-eyed sheep herder rolled in and he saw JBB get out of his pocket, beat-up screw-top tipped back. A hot jolt from the steam iron scalded TERRY CLOTH and he was out on the landing hanging onto ENNIS' pocket. JBB slithered up the stairs two and two. They would have seized each other by the shoulders if they'd had them, hugged mightily, squeezing the aloe and lint out of each other, saying son of a cloth, son of a tube, then, and easily as the right combination of coins turns on the dormitory laundry room warshing machine, their mouths came together, and hard, JBB's big snap-cap lid bringing blood, his cap falling to the floor, warp and weft rasping, wet emolients welling, and the door opening and OWLMA looking out for a few seconds at TERRY CLOTH's straining loops and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing stitching and oils and seams and hard ridges together, treading on each other's hem and flat end until they pulled apart to breathe and TERRY CLOTH, not big on endearments, said what he said to his bleaches and owlets, little darlin.
The door opened again and OWLMA stood in the narrow light.
What could he say? "OWLMA, this is JBB. JBB, my wife, OWLMA." His dernier was heaving. He could smell JBB -- the intensely familiar odor of coconut, musky sweat and a faint sweetness like tea tree oil, and with it the rushing cold of the spin cycle. "OWLMA," he said, JBB and me ain't seen each other in four years." As if it were a reason. He was glad the light was dim on the landing and, forgetting that owls can see well in the dark, did not turn away from her.
"WHOOOOOO???!!" shrieked OLWMA. She had seen what she had seen. Behind her in the nest lightning lit the sky like a white sheet waving and the baby cried.
"You got a hatchling?" said JBB. His shaking tube grazed TERRY CLOTH's seam, static electricity snapping between them.
"Two little chicks," TERRY CLOTH said. "OLMA JUNIOR and FUZZY. Feed them vermin in pieces." OWLMA's beak twitched.
"I got a boy," said JBB. "Eight months old. Leaks a lot. Tell you what, I married a cute little old Chicago rabbit -- Buneen. Airport named after her father, O'Hare." From the vibration of the floorboard on which they both stood, JBB could feel how hard TERRY CLOTH was starched.
"OWLMA, me and JBB is goin out and get me dry cleaned. Might not get back tonight, we get pressin and steamin."
"WHOOOOOO???!!" shrieked OLWMA, taking a fur and bone fragment pellet from her gullet. TERRY CLOTH guessed she was going to ask him to get her a pack of dead mice, bring him back sooner.
"Please to meet you," oozed JBB, trembling like a run-out sale item.
"TERRY -- " hooted OWLMA in her misery screech, but that didn't slow him down on the stairs and he called back, "OWLMA, you want mice there's some in the pocket a JAMMY PANTS in the bedroom."
They went off in JACK's pocket, bought a bottle of fabric softener and within twenty minutes were in the laundromat jouncing a dryer. ))
Topic: ~~THE PERFORMANCE THREAD~~ **aside** ((action)) %%thought%% (Read 1704667 times)