Soul of a Whore and Purvis by Denis Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

                        Simon’s brother!
    But it’s a little early, don’t you think?
    Official hours—
    WILL :                            I drove down from work.
    Been floating on that road since midnight, after
    the post-injection wrap-up drinks at Mursky’s
    Bar and Grill but definitely mostly Bar,
    Drifting through the general emptiness
    From Huntsville: Seven hours in the rain
    and more than slightly drunk, and I saw never
    A single car. Or house. Or tree. Or star.
    NURSE : O well, that’s Texas! It’s a long old ways
    Between and not a whole lot when you get there…
    My niece got married to a Huntsville man.
    WILL : I’m over at the Unit. At the Walls.
    NURSE : The Walls?
    WILL :                    The prison?
    NURSE :                                    O. The prison? O!
    They executed someone there last night!—
    Some crazy feller killed his wife and all
    His little children…Well, my niece’s husband
    Thomas Hill works at the Walls. I guess
    He goes around confusing people, too,
    Looking like the uniform of something else.
    â€¦Well now, since you’re a tech, you’re probably…
    There’s things to do the fam ily might not…
    We like to avoid unsightly sights —
    WILL :                                                          The bag.
    NURSE : I’m gonna change the bag, and such.
    WILL :                                                             OK.
    NURSE : His little children! God Himself can’t tell you
    Why that feller killed them. Well, he did,
    And now it’s eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
    They strapped him to the slab and—life for life.
    WILL : I’d say that’s pretty much it, in a nutshell,
    That’s what we do.
    NURSE :                              You do? You do? Do you ?
    WILL : With his last breath he proclaimed his innocence.
    SIMON : A whitetail deer goes walking past in the rain
    A dream of volcanoes rides past on a train
    A spider crouched alive betwixt her lungs
    NURSE : I’m sorry; but it stops him—
    WILL :                                               When you yank
    His crotch a couple yanks, it shuts him up?
    NURSE : Manipulation of the scrotal— well —
    I know! The whole world’s highly entertained!
    He’s quite a favorite hereabouts. A team
    From Dallas, on the first of every month,
    Descends upon us, specialists from Dallas—
    WILL : How about that!—lining up to plunk
    The magic twanger of my brother’s scrotum!
    My helpless brother’s balls! Nurse…Vandermere:
    I’m not here visiting the vegetable.
    This thing they’re gonna do—I’m here for that.
    NURSE : What—thing?
    WILL :                          Wal now I don’ perzackly know.
    I would assume the staff would know.
    NURSE :                                                          The staff?
    WILL : The personnel employed here. Such as you.
    NURSE : I don’t know any thing about a thing .
    WILL : A medical procedure, I presume,
    At which, for reasons they have not explained,
    They want the whole damn family to assemble.
    NURSE : But…nothing’s scheduled…
    WILL :                                                Nothing.
    NURSE :