Read Online Give Us a Kiss: A Novel by Daniel Woodrell - Free Book Online
Authors: Daniel Woodrell
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is, it’s gotta catch fire somehow.” I could tell she was looking right at me when she spoke. “You should understand that, Doyle. Your books are as good as any I know, but you never had a hit, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“That’s ’cause you need to catch fire somehow.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, and man, did I. “I need a hook. A publicity hook. ‘Doyle Redmond is the true voice of the ABC Generation,’ or whatever. ‘A kingfish poet who channels tales of yesteryear’s fragrant underbelly.’ Something that’ll get some key profiles written. Something that’ll get the public imagination keen on me. I really need that hook.”
In the truck a while after, driving blind on the creek bed, she said, “Could be you’ve met your hook, Doyle. Hold on to your hat.”
The gang decided to bunk me in the spare mobile home alongside the deck. There was a bed in what should’ve been the kitchen that had a few lumps in it but would do well enough. That was it as to furnishings, as the trailer basically was a storage bin, crammed with boxes and furniture that had no usefulness until somebody got around to doing a mass of repair jobs.
I liked it okay.
My move-in was swift. I had only the blue pillowcase of my traveling clothes and one box of books in the Volvo trunk. I immediately displayed the books on the kitchen counter, as these books I never left behind and made any crap hole I landed in home to me. There were a couple of Elizabeth Bowen novels, a quartet by Edward Lewis Wallant, one volume of Pierce Egan’s Boxiana, The Williamsburg Trilogy by Daniel Fuchs, Carson McCullers’s oeuvre, a stack of Twain, a batch of Erskine Caldwell’s thin li’l wonders, some Liam O’Flaherty and John McGahern and Grace Paley and Faulkner, all of Chandler, and a copy of Jim Harrison’s A Good Day to Die . Also, a jumbo volume of Robinson Jeffers poetry, and various guide-works to flora and fauna. Dictionary and thesaurus, of course, and my boot-camp yearbook from Platoon 3039, which would’ve been my junior year in high school. Plus, copies of my own output.
In about seven minutes I had relocated and settled in cozy.
The next few days were a joy to be in, a series of simple pleasures and funky interludes.
Big Annie expressed concern about my eternal spirit and went about trying to buff it up to full health. She hung a dream catcher over my bed. The bed one night was strangely painful, and I flipped on the light and found crystals under the pillow and mattress. I left them there, and when I thanked Big Annie for the supernal aids she’d planted near me, she said, “You’ve got an old soul, Doyle. Many lives.”
My ears felt hot, hearing that, but I said a lie. “I don’t buy into that bullshit.”
Some considerable concern was expressed about the safety of the money garden, and Smoke said, “They’re too lazy to rip before the harvest, Springer an’ those Dollys. If I’m right, they’ll let us harvest and square up the pounds, then we gotta worry.”
But as a rule, Smoke and me iced down beer in a cooler and played golf close to daybreak to escape the heat. The contests on the cow-pattie links became serious, as competitions between brothers most always do. We belted the balls around that white pasture, acquiring local knowledge of the course, and soon we both broke one forty. The day after, one thirty looked possible. Smoke was the better athlete, but I’d actually played real golf quite a bit with a fellow writer in California, a perfectly mannered societal reject from Palo Alto with a trust fund and several private memberships, so I won every round.
Smoke thought it was unfair, once I let slip about my level of experience.
“But you designed the course,” I said. “Nobody designs their own golf course lookin’ to be beat on it, either.”
“I might just design it over,” he said. Then he snatched onto me and lifted me above his head and twirled me, and I had this ghastly
“No, I haven’t.”
“That’s ’cause you need to catch fire somehow.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, and man, did I. “I need a hook. A publicity hook. ‘Doyle Redmond is the true voice of the ABC Generation,’ or whatever. ‘A kingfish poet who channels tales of yesteryear’s fragrant underbelly.’ Something that’ll get some key profiles written. Something that’ll get the public imagination keen on me. I really need that hook.”
In the truck a while after, driving blind on the creek bed, she said, “Could be you’ve met your hook, Doyle. Hold on to your hat.”
The gang decided to bunk me in the spare mobile home alongside the deck. There was a bed in what should’ve been the kitchen that had a few lumps in it but would do well enough. That was it as to furnishings, as the trailer basically was a storage bin, crammed with boxes and furniture that had no usefulness until somebody got around to doing a mass of repair jobs.
I liked it okay.
My move-in was swift. I had only the blue pillowcase of my traveling clothes and one box of books in the Volvo trunk. I immediately displayed the books on the kitchen counter, as these books I never left behind and made any crap hole I landed in home to me. There were a couple of Elizabeth Bowen novels, a quartet by Edward Lewis Wallant, one volume of Pierce Egan’s Boxiana, The Williamsburg Trilogy by Daniel Fuchs, Carson McCullers’s oeuvre, a stack of Twain, a batch of Erskine Caldwell’s thin li’l wonders, some Liam O’Flaherty and John McGahern and Grace Paley and Faulkner, all of Chandler, and a copy of Jim Harrison’s A Good Day to Die . Also, a jumbo volume of Robinson Jeffers poetry, and various guide-works to flora and fauna. Dictionary and thesaurus, of course, and my boot-camp yearbook from Platoon 3039, which would’ve been my junior year in high school. Plus, copies of my own output.
In about seven minutes I had relocated and settled in cozy.
The next few days were a joy to be in, a series of simple pleasures and funky interludes.
Big Annie expressed concern about my eternal spirit and went about trying to buff it up to full health. She hung a dream catcher over my bed. The bed one night was strangely painful, and I flipped on the light and found crystals under the pillow and mattress. I left them there, and when I thanked Big Annie for the supernal aids she’d planted near me, she said, “You’ve got an old soul, Doyle. Many lives.”
My ears felt hot, hearing that, but I said a lie. “I don’t buy into that bullshit.”
Some considerable concern was expressed about the safety of the money garden, and Smoke said, “They’re too lazy to rip before the harvest, Springer an’ those Dollys. If I’m right, they’ll let us harvest and square up the pounds, then we gotta worry.”
But as a rule, Smoke and me iced down beer in a cooler and played golf close to daybreak to escape the heat. The contests on the cow-pattie links became serious, as competitions between brothers most always do. We belted the balls around that white pasture, acquiring local knowledge of the course, and soon we both broke one forty. The day after, one thirty looked possible. Smoke was the better athlete, but I’d actually played real golf quite a bit with a fellow writer in California, a perfectly mannered societal reject from Palo Alto with a trust fund and several private memberships, so I won every round.
Smoke thought it was unfair, once I let slip about my level of experience.
“But you designed the course,” I said. “Nobody designs their own golf course lookin’ to be beat on it, either.”
“I might just design it over,” he said. Then he snatched onto me and lifted me above his head and twirled me, and I had this ghastly
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