The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

Sometimes your daddy’s just an alcoholic Jed. It don’t make no sense nohow how you’re daddy is an alcoholic and you don’t know where you gonna go next or nothing and you think it’s all gonna be over soon, but it never does, Jed, it never does. It never does go over like a good summer storm does, no, it don’t go over like it’s no great white buffallo over the hidden plains like you sing about, Jed, no, it don’t go. It don’t go. It just don’t go!

There’s a million reasons not to cry, Jed. Ones your daddy. You shouldn’t cry over your daddy anymore, Jed. I know it must have been hard and all having all that happen to you when you was a kid, but still, you can’t take it with you forever, Jed. If you do then you end up old and mean and maybe dead because you take heroin or drink too much like my daddy did. You don’t want to end up like that, Jed. That’s not the way to be.

Dink’s right, Jed. Dink’s daddy beat him real bad and then he went and did to our daddy what he did and Dink had to pay for it too. Both our families been paying for it all these years and you would have known too if you hadn’t of left like you did, I know you had to go…

Yeah. I had to go, I guess. It was too hard growing up in that house with mama. I figured I could make it better on my own. And I did. But I also took a lot of drugs and fried my brain up. Took a long time to get it back. Then Moxy took me back. That’s what saved me. I thought she would never take me back in a million years so I just started walking. I figured if I fell down cold dead all the better. But then something started happening to me, know what?

What?

I started feeling better. All those drugs had been poisoning my body and now that I was getting off them I had no choice but to try and feel better so I run.

You run?

Yeah, I run. I run through them woods like a wildman, faster than anybody you know. I would jump for tree limbs and they would break off and I would fall into the water. I did that for a good two states almost, well, maybe it was only one, but by then I couldn’t do it anymore because winter was coming on. I needed to save my heat. All the animals I caught with a special slingshot I made, I’ll show you sometime, I used to cover my body. So when the time come for me to have found Mars I was already good and covered up. I don’t know, maybe it was October by this time. I’m not sure. You lose track of time when you wander like I did.

So what happened?

What do you mean what happened?

What happened…next.

I met Tom.

Tom?

Tom ____ .   I met Tom inside Ohio and he took me in and I worked in his woodshop making desks and stuff for him and he taught me how to make my very own guitar and that’s the one I give to Moxy.

You made that fuckin’ thing?

Hell yeah I made it. Made it with my own two hands. Tom had someone paint Moxy’s name on it though because I can’t draw very good.

No, Jed can’t draw good.

So you made the guitar and you left.

Over three months.

Oh.

I left in the springtime. There was still snow on the ground, but I didn’t care. I realized that I had to go get that chair.

What chair?

Kirby’s chair.

Whose Kirby?

Kirby?

Yeah, Kirby. Who’s Kirby?

Kirby is Ken and Rose’s dad. And he’s got this chair. God, did I really do that? Jeezus H. Christ. I must have been nuts. Albert, I was nuts. Jesus. I was simply, certifiably nuts.

You’re not necessarily nuts if you think getting something will help you, Jed, no matter how stupid it might seem to other people.

A chair.

Don’t matter. I once had a marble that was so big that it fucking almost qualified for a clacker, man, this mother was the biggest actual puree you’ve ever seen. Only kid who ever challenged me had a cannon ball. What I wouldn’t have done for that cannonball, so I said, fuck it, I called him on his cannonball and he got first shot and you know what? He missed. It was my turn. I shot my shot and I missed. Then he missed and then I missed and then he missed and then it was my turn and I aimed that puree as well as a boy can humanly attempt such an aim and I said to myself that I”m getting that cannonball and I threw that puree perfect and it hit just on top of the cannonball, it went way up in the air and when it came down it hit a rock and went out on to the sidewalk and we both watched that thing fall right down into the manhole grate and down into the water that was moving. What I’m trying to say is that I got that cannonball and it was heavy and it didn’t look anything like my puree and I was sorry I ever wanted it and I never got another one again.