Free Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson Page B

today?"
    "Who?" she said innocently.
    "I gave him ten dollars and he disappeared."
    "When?"
    "Last week."
    "I haven't seen him."
    "He should be more grown up."
    "He's probably in Tacoma."
    "How old is he, about thirty?"
    "He'll be back tomorrow."
    "He's too old to be yanking people off for a dime."
    "Do you want to buy a pill? I need the money."
    "What kind of pill?"
    "It's psychedelic mushrooms all ground up."
    She showed me. Nobody could have swallowed that thing.
    "That's the biggest pill I've ever seen."
    "I'll sell it for three dollars."
    "I didn't know they made capsules that size. What size is that? Number One?"
    "It's a Number One, yeah."
    "Look at it! It's like an egg. It's like an Easter thing."
    "Wait," she said, looking at my money. "No, right, yeah---three dollars. Some days I can't even count!"
    "Here goes."
    "Just keep drinking. Wash it down. Drink the whole beer."
    "Wow. How did I do that? Sometimes I think I'm not human."
    "Would you have another dollar? This one's kind of wrinkly."
    "I never swallowed a Number One before."
    "It's a big cap, for sure."
    "The biggest there is. Is it for horses?"
    "No."
    "It's gotta be for horses."
    "No. For horses they squirt a paste in its mouth," she explained. "The paste is so sticky the horse can't spit it out. They don't make horse pills anymore."
    "They don't?"
    "Not anymore."
    "But if they did," I said.
     
    Steady Hands at Seattle General
     
    Inside of two days I was shaving myself, and I even shaved a couple of new arrivals, because the drugs they injected me with had an amazing effect. I call it amazing because only hours before they'd wheeled me through corridors in which I hallucinated a soft, summery rain. In the hospital rooms on either side, objects---vases, ashtrays, beds---had looked wet and scary, hardly bothering to cover up their true meanings.
    They ran a few syringesful into me, and I felt like I'd turned from a light, Styrofoam thing into a person. I held up my hands before my eyes. The hands were as still as a sculpture's.
    I shaved my roommate, Bill. "Don't get tricky with my mustache," he said.
    "Okay so far?"
    "So far."
    "I'll do the other side."
    "That would make sense, partner."
    Just below one cheekbone, Bill had a small blemish where a bullet had entered his face, and in the other cheek a slightly larger scar where the slug had gone on its way.
    "When you were shot right through your face like that, did the bullet go on to do anything interesting?"
    "How would I know? I didn't take notes. Even if it goes on through, you still feel like you just got shot in the head."
    "What about this little scar here, through your sideburn?"'
    "I don't know. Maybe I was born with that one. I never saw it before."
    "Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for those people?"
    "Oh, I don't know. I'm a fat piece of shit, I guess."
    "No. I'm serious."
    "You're not going to write about me."
    "Hey. I'm a writer."
    "Well then, just tell them I'm overweight."
    "He's overweight."
    "I been shot twice."
    "Twice?"
    "Once by each wife, for a total of three bullets, making four holes, three ins and one out."
    'And you're still alive."
    ''Are you going to change any of this for your poem?"
    "No. It's going in word for word."
    "That's too bad, because asking me if I'm alive makes you look kind of stupid. Obviously, I am."
    "Well, maybe I mean alive in a deeper sense. You could be talking, and still not be alive in a deeper sense."
    "It don't get no deeper than the kind of shit we're in right now."
    "What do you mean? It's great here. They even give you cigarettes."
    "I didn't get any yet."
    "Here you go."
    "Hey. Thanks."
    "Pay me back when they give you yours."
    "Maybe."
    "What did you say when she shot you?"
    "I said, 'You shot me!' "
    "Both times? Both wives?"
    "The first time I didn't say anything, because she shot me in the mouth."
    "So you couldn't talk."
    "I was knocked out cold, is the reason I couldn't talk. And I still