David Wallace - Girl With Curious Hair

4. SO IT WENT BACK AND FORTH

So it went back and forth, myself and Glory Joy, Simple Ranger gumming his bottle, his expression moving between vacant and preoccupied, the odd and frequent passing civilian patron getting pulled into the table, beer in hand, whenever Glory Joy rose her six-foot self up to tell what it had been similar to, those lonesome days of trying to run off carrionizers and mop up sheep percentages and run a ranch — admittedly now a smaller spread by a good measure — all herself; she'd rise up in her purple satin midi- and pay public tribute to the resemblance the days after Nunn's undoing and accident bore to hell right up on the grey and psoriatic skin of this world's land.

So it went back and forth, me handling the historical and observational, Glory Joy the personal and emotive. Was me revealed to Simple Ranger how, after the rain of sheep, Nunn was fairly flying in his little Italian Sports Car east on 40 to present to T. Rex Minogue the gift of T. Rex's own personal ass, and how meanwhile, back at Nunn's ranch, a good part of Minogue Oklahoma commenced to arrive and gawk and Kodak and catch mutton-cuts in receptacles ("Honey," this one old Mrs. Peat in yellow rain boots and slicker and a pince nez told me as she adjusted her hairnet she told me "Honey, when it rains bread and fishes, you get yourself a bucket, is what you do.") And how but mean -meanwhile, T. Rex Minogue's benign but sub-digital brother V.V., steeped in post-explosion guilt and self-loathing, plus not a little eau d'sweet potato, was speeding away from T. Rex's enormous spread for the Deep Dirt of Oklahoma's interior to commune with himself, guilt, pain, and a whole big truck full of jelly jars of distilled yam, and was accordingly fairly flying west on rickety 40 in this huge old truck, and at a ominous and coincidental point in time V. V. subconsciously decided, in some dark and pickled back part of his oceanic head, to see just what it was like driving his gargantular three-ton IH home-modified yam liquor transport truck on the left side of the hills, valleys, and sinewing curves of two-lane 40, V.V.'s left side being Chuck Nunn Junior's by right, course; and how here come Chuck Nunn Junior ripping up the highwayed hill right dab equidistant center between the two ranches, and here's V.V., driving in a pickled manner and a inappropriate lane up the hill's other side, and how there was impact at high speed, of a head-on kind, between the two.

"Impact," I said to Simple Ranger. "Plus damage, in no small measure."

And Glory Joy duBoise testified to the feelings she felt upon arriving in my pickup upon the accident scene, some pathetically few miles down 40, and seeing her Chuck Nunn Junior literally wearing his little impacted car; how there was white steam whistling out of his tires, out of the accordion that had been his engine, and out of Nunn's head, which looked on first look to be minus a jaw, consciousness, and two healthy eyes, in that order. How red lights and sirens come emergencying out across Dirt; how the Emergency Folks had to cut Chuck Junior out of his car with torches; how they was scared to move him on account of spinal considerations; how Minogue Sheriff Onan L. Axford announced to some press and media that wearing a safety belt, which Nunn was, had been all that come between Chuck Nunn Junior and eternal flight out a punctured windshield.

She told how Nunn come more or less to, in his little wraparound car, his torch-lit busted eyes in blood like bearings in deep oil;[keep]

"Remember the eyes of Nunn," I interjaculated, and Simple Ranger give me a watching look[keep]

; and as Glory Joy finished up communicating the anger and jus-ticelessness she felt, upon seeing T. Rex's brother V.V. Minogue, listing far to port up against the largely unharmed cab of his IH liquor truck, weepy, shitfaced, scratchless; how V.V.'s accidental ass had been immunized and preserved by how some old International Harvester trucks turned out had one of them air bags in them, that nobody knew about, from a IH experiment in the 1960's that didn't make the economic wash. But so the whole accident that was V.V.'s pickled fault and that impacted Nunn's hairy jaw and busted both his eyes, plus a pelvis, plus concussed the sucker into moral comatosity and undoing — the whole damaging calamity had consisted for V.V. Minogue of just a jillionth-of-a-second sensuous experience of soft and giant marshmallow (the white foaming lumpy bag was still filling up the big truck's cab, at this time, I remember, starting to jut and ooze out the busted windows, looking dire and surreal), of a marshmallow instant, plus a upcoming year of subsequent legalities. As Glory Joy climaxed telling how it felt, and took a deserved grief-intermission, a certain palate-clefted but upstanding civilian turn to me and he say,

"Sucker busted his eyes?" being real interested in physical damage, birth defects, accidental maimings, and the like.

"Sucker busted his eyes?" the Simple Ranger repeated in a rich gritty voice that croaked of advanced Grey Lung, the disease most specially feared by us who spend our lives on Big Dirt.

Out of a consideration for Glory Joy duBoise, who was wearing her pain like a jacket, now, I lowered my voice as I invited civilian and Ranger to picture what two cantaloupe melons dropped from a high height would resemble, if they wanted the picture of how Nunn's eyes got busted out his head via general impact and collision, hanging right out his head, ontojolly insecure.

And was me told the table how except for the eyes, the jaw, and the pelvis, which to our community relief all healed up, prime face, in j ust weeks, leaving good luck bad luck Chuck Junior a sharper shot, wickeder dancer, and nearer to handsome than before, how except for that, the major impact and damage from the accident had turned out to be to Nunn's head, mind, and sensibility. How right there in the post-accidental car he suddenly got conscious but evil,[keep]

"evil," I emphasized, and there was shudders from civilians and Glory Joy,[keep]

and how a evil Chuck Nunn Junior fought and cussed and struggled against his spinal restraints, invected against everything from the Prime Mobile to OU Norman's head football coach Mr. Barry B. Switzer hisself; how even slickered in blood, and eyes hanging ominous half out their holes, Nunn'd laid out two paramedics and a deputy and shined up my personal chin when we tried to ease him into a ambulance; how right there on rickety two-lane 40 Nunn publicly withdrew his love from his Momma Mona May, me, the whole community of Minogue Oklahoma, and especially from Glory Joy, who he loudly accused of low general spirits and what he called a lack of horizontal imagination.

"Chuck Junior was just in a moral coma from the accident, is all it was," declared a Glory Joy known from here to next door for the deepness of her loyalty toward Nunn. She told Simple Ranger how C. Nunn Jr. suffered six evil and morally comatose post-damage days, his sense of right and wrong and love and hate smithered to chaotic, but how the subsequent Nunn thankfully remembered none of those six dark and devilish days of screaming and vandalizing in the Minogue County Hospital, where he was at, as restrained as was possible given the personality and persuasiveness of Nunn vis à vis orderlies. How Nunn woke up familiar and normal on the seventh day and asked about location, which is always a real good medical sign. How we was all relieved.

5. NUNN'S SURFACE HEALED UP, BUT WITH SOMETHING INTERIOR ASKEW

Got dark outside, gritty afternoon dark that means serious wind through high dirt, movement of soil in sky, a swirl that fakes twister once a week and keeps the tourists minimal, and there was a peculiar but occasional black nutter at some of the tavern windows, and Simple Ranger got aroused, disquiet. Me and G.J. was telling the Ranger how Chuck Nunn Junior's surface healed up as fast and fine as the town could expect, how he was back on his post-explosion ranch and inside Glory Joy's affections and limbs by six weeks time; how his broke cantaloupe eyes got put back together via skill and laser by Drs., paid for through V.V. Minogue's subsequent legalities (V.V. was in institutional caring and de-tox up in El Reno, by this time), how the eyes healed together so right and improved that Nunn could claim to spot dust-movement against the sky's very curve. No small claim.