WEBVTT

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And for the grand finale,
I will read to you

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from this new book
that's coming out which

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I'm fond of at the moment.

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The first chapter of what
was meant to be a novel.

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I gave the publisher a
book of short stories

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and a novel to choose from
and you put them together.

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I didn't know that was
a bad publishing idea.

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Nobody buys a novella but
anyway, it's a good novella.

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"Trailer girl."

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"I talked like a lady
who knows what she wants

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and other things
which I would mention,

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but Ernie's charging over
here with kids behind,

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screaming like they're chasing
him and not vise versa and him

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whipping a cut area
like a wild man.

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I get the tea instead.

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My hands hold the tea
and a can and an opener

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as I make my way backward
rear first out the front end

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and down the cinder
pile that is my stair.

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I heap it all onto my card table
and yell, what's the story?

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Ernie is huffing and puffing
all the way down my trailer side

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and the aerial is blowing
for or against me, I duck.

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Those kids, he says.

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And almost gets one
but they disappear.

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There's no thin air around
here but kids have a way

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with the edges of things.

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By the time Ernie's huffed and
puffed his button down self

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across the four corners of my
frontage, they've hightailed.

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It they've gone.

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See this, they broke it off.

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Clean off the front.

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It's not that the
truck was ever going

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to win any fancy costume contest
or ever even turn over again

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but to take the aerial.

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Tea, I ask.

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Being at the water I got
going on the card table

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is boiling away and I do want
to drop before it's gone.

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He says, no thank you.

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Then he says, why don't you
get the fence barb clean?

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That's what you're here for.

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But not nasty, no.

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Just in a kind of
drone that he goes

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into when being the guy
in charge comes over him

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and he has to say
something especially

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when his first something
doesn't mount up the way

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it should given his
position and the kids

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and theirs and the
aerial now down.

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I think out my answer
so I don't jerk

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back in a bay and
snort in wonderment

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either at his
backhanded harping.

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I will clean the fence
on Tuesday, I say.

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And I put my already used
three times teabag into my cup,

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and pour the hot
water all over it.

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Missing with some,
dredging the dirt.

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Why I keep my table
outside in the first place.

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Is Tuesday, OK?

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Tuesday is soon I
guess he says and he

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walks right up to the fence and
pokes at it with the aerial.

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Nothing of the stuff
stuck on it comes off

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but he keeps on poking.

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I opened my can a turn
and four cat show.

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Want some?

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I say to Ernie.

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Instead of to the
cats or me which

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is who this is for
a nice hot cat food

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lunch in a pot on a hot plate.

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Ernie sees it's tossed
can and his nose

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wrinkles his whole face.

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Instead of saying, he produces
what from his back pants pocket

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from under that button flap
men sometimes wear back there.

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He produces a wad
all stapled together

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of tickets he has sometimes.

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Tuesdays when these
are due, he says

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and he flattens the
wad in my table.

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Smiles up at me with my tea in
front of my cat food cooking.

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How about a chance?

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I sip.

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Behind me tack to the jagged
open front flap of the door

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are plenty of chances.

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Oh, pardon me.

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Some for girl scouts,
some for jamborees,

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some just chances taken for
turkeys like a turn of the slot

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machine for anything.

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I shoo the cat that's
pawing the pot.

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Do I have to be present?

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They say no but it never hurts.

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It's only in town for
the clinic in town.

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You know these places.

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They need these things to
keep on with what they do do.

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I know these places, I say.

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I look around my breast front
with my finger for money

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being in an institution
brings for a while.

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It isn't real money anyway.

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Money that I make or must keep.

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Two please, I say as long as
I don't have to be present.

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Two is good.

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They're giving away hams and
a Frigidaire at this one.

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You could use a Frigidaire.

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He is looking at the
hole in my trailer

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where glass should be
that I have plugged

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with bags you can see through.

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I have this trailer for
free because of that hole,

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but I know he's
not really looking

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that high into my trailer
because he is casting

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his eyes down again over
the shelf of my bosom

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where the money came from and
it isn't so much the money

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he is interested in.

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He gives me my chances.

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I put them up on the board with
the others, move a tack off one

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and stick to two under it.

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He puts my money in a
clip then in his pocket.

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The kids giggle from somewhere
one then two of them.

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He grabs the aerial
where it has been

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lying between the green
bottles of my bottle garden

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and turns to face the giggling.

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So fast the aerial slaps him.

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This causes him to
say many things which

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the children although used to
hearing a lot of everything

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stop giggling to
hear and thereby

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with their silence as a
frame, give themselves

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and their whereabouts away.

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Ernie's off with the
next giggle tearing

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through the court
like his button

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down pants pocket spouts fire.

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His leaving fast like
that, aerial whipping,

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dislodges some of the
chances tacked to my door

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and there they go in flight
out over the fence that

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is so full of other
stuff that the wind here

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works to stick to it but the
chances don't stop and stick.

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They fluff up and go
on off over the gully.

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It's the gully where the cows
stand with the wild girl."

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