Read Online Willard and His Bowling Trophies by Richard Brautigan - Free Book Online

shoot them.”
    “Good,” he said, and turned from the people in the comic book with the axes back to the salve ad. He liked the people in the salve ad because they were happy selling salve.
    In his mind he pressed a doorbell.
    It rang pleasantly and somebody came to the door. It was an older man. The man looked like his grandfather except that he had red hair.
    “Hello,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”
    “My name is Johnny Logan and I’m selling salve.”
    “Come on in, Johnny. It’s hot out there. I’ll get you a big glass of lemonade and then you tell me all about this salve. And if it sounds like good stuff, I’ll buy a couple of tubes of it, and give you the names and addresses of some friends of mine who live nearby and might be interested in some salve.”
    “We’ll shoot them in the heart,” his brother said.
    “That’s good,” he said, without looking up from the comic book.
    “Here’s your lemonade, son. Now tell me what kind of salve you’ve got here. If it’s good salve, I don’t care how much it costs.”
    “This is the best salve in the world. It’s made in Chicago, Illinois.”
    “Right in the fucking heart.”

‘These things began, ‘tis said, with our fathers’
    “I’m dying because of all those Greeks,” Bob said.
    His face was so full of tears that there wasn’t room for another tear. He tried to find enough room for one more tear but he couldn’t find it, so he stopped crying.
    “What Greeks?” Constance said, and as the words left her mouth, she knew what Greeks. It was those Greeks. She wished that she hadn’t asked the question.
    “The ones in the Greek Anthology ,” Bob said.
    “What about them?” Constance said, and then realized that she’d said it. She felt as if she’d subconsciously set a trap for herself and then fallen into it
    “They’re dead,” Bob said.

Two kitchens
    John and Patricia decided that they wanted a little snack before they went to sleep. It was close to midnight and their normal bedtimes. They were hungry from the sexual exercise they had just gone through.
    “What time is it?” John said.
    Patricia looked at the clock beside the bed because John couldn’t see it from where he was lying in the bed.
    “It’s almost twelve,” she said.
    “Well, let’s go get a snack and come back here and eat it in bed while I watch a little of the Johnny Carson show,” John said.
    “Everything’s back to normal,” Patricia said, jumping out of bed and wiggling her ass at John.
    “ HHHHHHHHEEEEEEERRRRRRRREEEEEEE’’’’’’’’’SSSSSS, Johnny!”
    “You don’t have to watch him if you don’t want to,” John said.
    “I’m going to dance with Willard instead,” Patricia said. “He knows how to show a girl a good time. He does a great two-step.”
    She started dancing around the room, pretending that she was holding Willard in her arms. She acted as if she were dodging something with her head. “Watch out for your beak, Willard,” she said.
    John went into the kitchen. He didn’t bother to put any clothes on. He was hungry. Patricia joined him a moment later. She didn’t have any clothes on either: not a stitch. Her body was quite adequate. John was a little overweight He had a slight potbelly, but he didn’t give a damn. His whole family ran toward being a little overweight and so he was used to it and considered that he was carrying on a family tradition by having a potbelly.
    He was thirty-one years old.
    Patricia was six years younger.
    They got along very well together and had been doing so for almost five years. He was a filmmaker and she was a school teacher.
    He worked with visions and she taught Spanish.
    They were pleased with what they did with their lives.
    Patricia and John’s kitchen was directly underneath Bob and Constance’s kitchen and they were at this moment all in their own kitchens.
    Upstairs Bob was mourning people who had been dead for over two thousand years. Constance was trying to