WEBVTT

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This is something
very different.

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It's the first chapter of
a novella, at the moment

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unpublished.

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But I plan on
publishing it soon.

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Actually, I plan on writing
some stories to go along with it

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and making it into a book.

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But anyway, there are a
couple of things about it

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I'd like you to know.

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The story takes place in
Butte, which is a small mining

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town in Montana.

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It's very much like your Bisbee.

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Butte is down on its
heels at this point,

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and it's home to an
extraordinarily large

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toxic lake, where a mountain
has been mined to nothing.

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And the story is told
from two perspectives.

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One is that of
Lenore, a woman who

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has come to Butte to find her
recently disappeared sister.

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And the other is that of the
ghost of a Native American man

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who haunts her hotel room.

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The missing sister's
name is Ruby,

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and the ghost was also
once in love with a Ruby

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70 years before.

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And I'm going to--

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we begin with the ghost section.

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Lenore has a section, and then
we end again with the ghost.

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It's called Two
Halves of a Dead Fox.

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"I was a ghost of a
man before I found her.

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I had been touched
by women, first

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for the boys on the
reservation, then

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for the ones I called friends at
the government boarding school.

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I went for the joke of
it, the words for it.

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I wasn't so
impressed with women.

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They're soft, turning
over like a puppy letting

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a larger dog sniff
everywhere, nudge anywhere.

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Cigarettes reminded
me of Ruby because I

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used to smoke while I waited for
her on the cobblestone streets

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that crisscrossed Butte, watched
the front door of her father's

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big house on the
corner, followed her

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along Granite to Main, left
on Mercury, down Venus Alley.

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She didn't smoke, of course.

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No lady would then.

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But the full, empty feeling
of smoke in my lungs

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and throat as I caught
sight of her was all I

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could hold on to later,
mopping the brew house floor,

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sucking down a scoop at the bar.

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The cigarettes made me sick,
but I thought idiotically

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that death would release me.

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My insides finally
did twist together,

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puckering up like
the insects I killed

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with boric acid, the
beetles tiptoeing

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between the bottles
of Butte lager.

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The worst moments
hadn't been nose down

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at the Arizona or
the M&M but when

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I glimpse some small beauty.

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Beauty killed me, not the lace
influenza made of my lungs.

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That winter morning, silky fumes
billowed from the seven grade

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stacks of the Never
Sweat, and I could just

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see the outline of
some of the others--

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mountain consolidated
Cora Colusa parrot.

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In a half hour, the
first shift of miners

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would begin their journey
from the scattershot shacks

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up toward roll call, a whole
congregation of devotees,

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a herd of animals
walking toward water.

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The sun came up like a spider--

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golden, gangly legs reaching
around the blacked out hill.

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I weakened at the
knees and toppled over.

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My mouth open to the grit of the
road outside my boarding house,

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a crust carved out of
the soil, the memory

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of hooves and wheels.

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That sparkle of sun
over the mountain

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cut me like a second string
of vertebrae, a fault running

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the length of my body--

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the communion we might
have had, the way

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it could have been
if we were together.

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When I heard the name
again, Ruby, it had already

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been in me 70-something years.

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That was all I had become--

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an echo, a stuck dream.

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Then this one ricochets down the
hall, cowboy and Indian time,

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carnival freak out, Buffalo
Bill's Wild West Show.

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She was one of those white
chicks with the Spirit Call

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oil and the silver bangles.

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She nearly knocked old Emily
Olsen over on her way in.

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Then she kept running
back and forth

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between the front
desk and room eight,

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my room, my fucking room,
asking Mrs. Olson where

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she got her pretty dress, and
wasn't this neat old furniture,

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and where again was the shower?

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She opened all the dressers to--

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she opened up all the
drawers to the dresser

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and slammed them shut again.

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And when she did that,
I sat up, so to speak.

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Bang, bang Ruby.

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She heaved her
backpack onto the bed

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and flung clothes
out until she found

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what she was looking for--

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a smudge stick, something she
had bought at the airport,

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maybe, authentic Indian
artifact written on the wrapper.

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Now this old hotel would
get what it didn't need.

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She lit the dried sage with
a purple plastic lighter

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and waved it around.

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No smoking in here,
I wanted to mention.

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And her long blond
ponytail swung,

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and her little T-shirt
cinched up to show her waist,

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and her cowboy
boots hit the floor.

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She stayed with me two or three
weeks, whispering Ruby, Ruby,

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Ruby.

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And when I could,
I'd collect dust

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by her eyes and nose and
mouth to make her sneeze,

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or I'd hold back the
water from the faucet

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and then release, splashing
and startling her.

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And I spent all my time
thinking of ways to bother her,

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to erase her.

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When she left, life went
on in the empty hotel room

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at the Red and White--

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day, night, day, night--

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and I didn't care
about Ruby Robbins.

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And I tried not to
think about what

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happened to her a few months
later until one night,

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in crept her sister.

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