Read Online The Fat Artist and Other Stories by Benjamin Hale - Free Book Online

some more, a bottle of whiskey came out, they did a shot together and talked about the Delta blues. They were going to cover her body in silver paint, drive out to the woods, and do light paintings. Fred’s plan was to set up the camera on the tripod in a dark place and take shots with very long exposure times, and Lana in her silver body paint was going to flit around in front of the camera like a forest nymph and Fred would shine the flashlight on her and turn it off, burning her ghostlike image into the celluloid.
    The Alan Lomax recordings ended, and they moved into the living room, where the turntable was, and started rifling through the record collection that covered all four walls of the room from floor to ceiling. As Lana flipped through records, Fred mentioned Tommy Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Skip James, Son House. Fred mentioned Blind Blake, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Gary Davis, Blind Lemon Jefferson. Fred mentioned Lightnin’ Hopkins, Pink Anderson, Leroy Carr. On the turntable, Robert Johnson sang:
If I had possession over judgment day
Lord, the little woman I’m lovin’ wouldn’t have no right to pray
    “Is this song about the end of the world?” said Lana, the bottle of Wild Turkey in her hand. She was sixteen. Fred was forty-nine.
    Fred spoke to Lana about what Federico García Lorca called duende : an untranslatable word for the ineffable graveyard mysticism of only the truly great flamenco music: irrationality, earthiness, a dash of the diabolical, and a heightened awareness of death. That duende, he said, is present in these blues songs in a visceral and immediate way. All truly great music has it, he said—that skull and crossbones, that eros-thanatos, that love of darkness that infuses the sound and sentiment behind the downbeat, the minor key, the doomsday lyrics, making them so lush and so dangerously alive: a heightened awareness of death.
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    So next day we’re at work and Kelly’s telling me this bullshit about how he wants to “kill” Caleb Quinn. Kelly’s pissed, I mean pissed the fuck off , and on top of all that he aint got no sleep cause he works his other bullshit job at night throwing newspapers in people’s driveways and I’m sittin here thinkin he’s gone all psycho on me here and I’m all like, hold on, slow down, motherfucker. What? No. I already told you . The thing is, Kelly don’t understand women. A bitch is the only thing in the world that loves you more the worse you treat her. That’s like the first fucking thing about understanding female psychology, and I don’t know why but Kelly never got it. Kelly, that motherfucker is whipped. Kelly thinks he saved Maggie from a bad life, like Caleb is the bad-guy cowboy and he’s the good-guy cowboy and Maggie’s the bitch tied to the tracks in her panties and dun-dun-dah!, here comes Kelly on a white horse. He don’t understand the bitch’d rather have a bad-guy cowboy in a black hat to come around and fuck the shit out of her than a good-guy cowboy to save her. That’s the first fucking thing about like, human psychology, period. Nobody really wants to get saved, right? But whatever, she don’t respect his ass and Kelly hates that she sits around all day getting fat and toking up with the kid in there. And I’m all like, what the fuck did you expect, dog? You marry a bitch and of course she’s gonna get fat. But he don’t even know about half the shit she does. Like, case in point. That skank calls me up on my cell some night when Kelly’s gone throwing his stupid-ass newspapers and she asks me if I got any coke I wanna sell her. I say, no, fuck you , not only do I not have coke, I aint ever going to now cause I just got out of motherfucking jail, if they catch me doing anything while I’m still on probation they’ll fuck me in the ass ten times worse, and furthermore, you stupid cunt, I know for a fact Kelly don’t like you snorting yay or