Free 33 Snowfish by Adam Rapp Page B

want them stealing their money, and when the Rockdale suckers die the pit bulls eat their bones, and then the Joliet suckers catch the pit bulls and turn them into hamburgers and French fries and eat them and they get so fat their money suits don’t fit them no more, and then they gotta buy some new ones, and that’s what it’s all about down here on Earth — some rich Joliet suckers getting richer so they can buy cell phones and emails and fatter money suits.
    Them spacemen probably got stronger hearts than humans, too, cuz they don’t got no pit bull worries or no money suit worries or no Bob Motley worries. All them worries make your heart small, and the smaller your heart, the less it glows.
    I think that’s how come Jesus always has that glow around his hair in them Bible pictures — cuz his heart was so big it made his
head
light up and shit.
    This one Rockdale hippie man called Jerry who hangs out down by the Speedway used to go around saying Jesus was a nigger and that all them people in the Bible was niggers. I told him how Bob Motley says you can’t get no halo if you’re a nigger cuz of all that motor oil they put in their hair, but Jerry just looked the other way and kept handing out Jesus pamphlets to all the suckers at the Speedway.
    Bob Motley said that niggers don’t got no hearts. He said that their chests is filled with donkey shit instead.
    Curl says that you get a halo by growing your heart big, and that halos don’t got nothing to do with the color of your skin.
    When I’m in the van keeping Curl warm I get to thinking about everything that’s happened; about all the driving and Dumpster diving and all them vending machines we tilted and that highway hiss and Boobie always putting green Gatorade down his dickhole cuz of his clap and the otel Motel and Curl’s lung frost and the baby and about skeighty-eight other things and I get worried that one of them migration headaches is gonna come and never leave my head.
    Doing them thirty-threes helps sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes they do.
    If it ain’t too windy, once in a while you can hear a train whistle. And you’re like, “Damn, a train,” and you look around but all you see is trees.
    Sometimes I wonder what happened to the little kids who was in the van. They probably got their heads chopped off or some shit.
    I think some big tall man in a black coat walks over the earth with a axe, and when he finds some little kids crashed in a school van, he pulls them out all nice and friendly and they think he’s going to use that axe to chop down a wall and save some little girl who’s trapped, but then he lines them up shortest-to-tallest and talks to them all soft with that trust in his voice and maybe even gives them some gum or candy or a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar like Sidekick, and just when they think he’s going to help them get back to their school he creeps up behind them and —
whop-whop-whop
— he chops their heads off instead.
    Curl’s lung frost smell is skanking up the van pretty bad. Boobie still does her, though — even with that yellow crawling under her eyes and her insides dripping all over her dress. It’s cuz that love he’s got for her is stronger than her lung frost. He won’t french her, though, no matter how much Curl begs for it.
    I saw her frenching her hand last night like she wished it was Boobie.
    I guess that’s cool.
    When everything’s all skanked and the trees is dead and you got a lung frost and the snow keeps falling sideways and you don’t got nothing but a sheepskin and a couple of curtains to keep you warm, you can always french your hand.

A gentle breeze from Hushabye Mountain
    Softly blows o’er Lullaby Bay
    It fills the sails of boats that are waiting
    Waiting to sail your worries away
    It isn’t far to Hushabye Mountain
    And your boat waits down by the key
    The winds of night so softly are sighing
    Soon they will fly your troubles to sea
    So close your eyes on Hushabye