Vernon God Little

"I stand insulated from my world by the buzzing tequila-ozone of what I just did. Lies scatter around me like ants."

"Nah, my slime's so thick, it ain't worth coming clean at all. Take good note; Fate actually makes it harder to admit slime, the farther in you get. What kind of system is that? If I was president of the Slime Committee, I'd make it easier to come clean about shit. If coming clean is what you're supposed to do, then it should be made more fucken accessible, I say. I guess the shiver that really comes over me is that I just handed everybody the final nail for my cross. All they needed, on top of everything, was a credible lie. You can just see my ole lady on TV when they break the news, don't tell me you can't. 'Well but I even stayed up to pack his sandwiches...'"

"She gets that fabulous edge that girls get to their voices, the edge that spells oncoming Tantrum From the Bowels of Hell, that says, 'I'll scratch the heavens down around you and suck the fucken air from your lungs and spit you to fucken hell and you know it.'"

"A learning grows in me like a tumor. It's about the way different needy people find the quickest route to get some attention in their miserable fucken lives. The fucken oozing nakedness, the despair of being such a vulnerable egg-sac of a critter, like, a so-called human being, just sickens me sometimes, especially right now. The Human Condition, Mom calls it. Watch out for that fucker."

"A learning: deep shit sweetens your plans like crazy."

"Fate always pays attention to what you think, then slams it up your fucken ass."

"There's the learning, O Partner: that you're cursed when you realize true things, because then you can't act with the full confidence of dumbness anymore."

"I hear Taylor's song through the 'Tss, tss, tss' of a guy's earphones, a couple of rows up. 'Better Man' is the tune, by Pearl Jam. I don't even know the words to the song, but you can bet I'll spend the next eighty years in hell making every line fit my situation. Even if it ends up being about fucken groundhogs in space or something."

"The official ushers me to a desk, and sits behind it, all straight-backed, like he's the president of South America or something, like the borderline is the crack of his fucken ass."

"An American family sweeps past me into the elevator, dressed like Tommy Hilfiger on a golfing convention; it's a mama with a tense ole man, and the traditional two kids—a good one and a bad one. Type of folk who get lighthearted over dinner-music, and start talking about their feelings, to show how liberated they are. Your fucken cutlery drawer on parade."

"You can only really be yourself when you have nothing left to lose, see? That's a learning I made. It may sound dumb, but it ain't easy when your dreams roll up. Take note, you can feel jerksville lurking in back. And as we know, just by thinking it, you suffer it worse. The learning: potential assholeness when a dream comes true is relative to the amount of time you spent working up the dream. A=DT^2. It means I could even fucken puke."

"Alright I stand accused of just about every murder in Texas between the time I left home and when they hauled my ass back. With my face all over the media, folks started seeing me everywhere, I guess. Recall, they call it. Watch out for that sucker. And I'm still accused of the tragedy. Everybody just forgot about Jesus. Everybody except me."

"She said Mom closed up the house one day, turned the oven on full, and sat by its open door. Apparently, it's still a Cry For Help, even though our oven's electric."

"School never teaches you about this mangled human slime, it slays me. You spend all your time learning the capital of Surinam while these retards carve their initials in your back."

"'And we're not just talking executions here—were talking the ultimate reality TV, where the public can monitor, via cable or internet, prisoners' whole lives on death row. They can live amongst them, so to speak, and make up their own minds about a convict's worthiness for punishment. Then each week, viewers across the globe can cast a vote to decide which prisoner is executed next. It's humanity in action—the next logical step toward true democracy.'"

"'Blind, dumb shit,' he spits, his breath like hot sandpaper in my ear. 'Where's this God you talk about? You think a caring intelligence would wipe out babies from hunger, watch decent folk scream and burn and bleed every second of the day and night? That ain't no God. Just fuckin people. You stuck with the rest of us in this snake-pit of human wants, wants frustrated and calcified into needs, achin and raw.'"

"One learning, though: my big flaw is fear. In a world where you're supposed to be a psycho, I just didn't yell loud enough to get ahead. I was too darn embarrassed to play God."

"As I digest things, the regular Sunday quiet falls over the Row. You hear some papers rustle. Then a con calls out, softly."

"I take off my shirt. My skin is mostly healed now, from my art project. Tattooed in big blue letters across my chest are the words 'Me ves y sufres'—'See me and suffer.'"

"A terminal learning comes to me: that for all the sirens, game-show buzzers, and drum-rolls of life, it is the nature of men to die quietly. I mean, what kind of life was that? – a bunch of movies, and people talking about movies, and shows about people talking about movies. Still, I guess I asked for it. By being negative, destructive. I remember once calling my daddy to collect me from a place, but was sad when he came because I'd since grown to love the place. Death takes me like that."

"I watch Lally climb out of the car. Bless the motherfucker to hell. Bless his bones smashed and stuffed through the ligaments of his puking fucked eyes, bless his mouth to suck me off, take my bile so it kills him dead to a place where he stays conscious and fucken broken and cold, shivering fucken worms and slime from organs that pop and fucken waste as I laugh."

"Lally's face is a mask I fucken adore, suspended in time forever as slugs whistle and pierce the evening sky. He dances mid-air as chunks of his body pelt down like rain, before the bulk of him thuds twitching to the ground."

"See Hysteriaville here? Science says there must be ten squillion brain cells in this town, but if you so much as belch before your twenty-first birthday they can only form two thoughts between them: you're fucken pregnant, or you're on drugs. Fuck it, I'm outta here. Life's simple when I'm angry. I know just what to do, and I fucken do it. Underpants my fucken ass."

"I'll tell you a learning: knife-turners like my ole lady actually spend their waking hours connecting shit into a humongous web, just like spiders. It's true. They take every word in the fucken universe, and index it back to your knife. In the end it doesn't matter what words you say, you feel it on your blade. Like, 'Wow, see that car?' 'Well it's the same blue as that jacket you threw up on at the Christmas show, remember? What I learned is that parents succeed by managing the database of your dumbness and your slime, ready for combat. They'll cut you down in a split fucken second, make no mistake; much quicker than you'd use the artillery you dream about. And I say, in idle moments, once the shine rubs off their kid—they start doing it just for fucken kicks."

"Fate suddenly plays its regular card. Leona's Eldorado sashays past the pumpjack, full of musty, dry wombs and deep, bitter wants. Mom withers. The fucken timing of these ladies is astounding, I have to say, like they have scandal radar or something. They foam out of the car like suds from a sitcom washing machine, except for Brad, who stays in back. He's eating a booger, you can tell. Betty Pritchard gets out and starts to strut around the lawn like a fucken chicken."

"Then Brad Pritchard appears at my window; nose to the sky, finger pointed at his shoes."

"But the pessimist in me says, 'Kid, forget vacations, what yez need is a cake wid a fuckin bomb in it.' My pessimist has a New York accent, don't ask me why. I ignore it."

"He's dressed in white, like the Cuban Ambassador or something. A jury would convict on his fucken shoes alone, not that his shoes are my biggest problem. They're the least of my fucken problems, know why? Because if you take a bunch of flabby white folk, of the kind that organize bake-sales and such, and put them in a jury, then throw in some fast-talker from God-knows-where, chances are they won't buy a thing he says. They can tell he's slimy, but they're not allowed to officially do anything, on account of everybody has to pretend to get along these days. So they just don't buy what he says. It's a learning I made."

"It's almost possible to be brave in here, if you add up your Nikes, your Calvin Kleins, your youth, and your actual innocence. What shunts you over the edge is the smell. Court smells like your first-grade classroom; you automatically look around for finger-paintings. I don't know if it's on purpose, like to regress you and freak you out. Truth be told, there's probably an air-freshener for courtrooms and first-grade classrooms, just to keep you in line. 'Guilt-O-Sol' or something, so in school you feel like you're already in court, and when you wind up in court you feel like you're back in school. You're primed for finger-paintings, but what you get is a lady behind one of those sawn-off typewriters. Court, boy. Fuck."

"I learned that the authorized world doesn't recognize the knife. Your knife is invisible, that's what makes it so convenient to use. See how things work? It's what drives folk to the blackest crimes, and to sickness, I know it; the thing of everyone turning the knife just by saying hello, or something equally innocent-sounding. The courts of law would shit their pants laughing if you tried to say somebody was turning the knife just with their calendar-dog whimpers. But here's why they'd laugh: not because they couldn't see the knife, but because they knew nobody else would buy it. You could stand before twelve good people, all with some kind of psycho-knife stuck in them that loved-ones could twist on a whim, and they wouldn't admit it. They'd forget how things really are, and slip into TV-movie mode where everything has to be obvious. I guarantee it."

"They turn to stare daggers at me. The typist's daggers come wrapped in Kleenex, I guess so they don't get shit on them. I just stare at my Nikes. Things have gone beyond a fucken joke. You just know the justice system ain't set up for folk like me. It's set up for more obvious folk, like you see in movies. Nah, if the facts don't arrive today, if everybody doesn't apologize and send me home, I'll jump bail and run over the fucken border. Against All Odds. I'll vanish into the cool of tonight, see if I fucken don't, hum cross-country with the moths, with my innocent-headed learnings and my ole panty dreams."

"A bright-eyed lady with short gray hair and bifocal glasses glides behind the tallest desk. Judge Helen E Gurie says the sign. Her swivel chair rattles politely when she sits. The Chair of God."

"A high-voltage tremor cracks through me, of hope, excitement, and ass-naked fear. You think I'm going to stick around for the so-called justice system to get its shit together? Am I fuck. Buses leave Martirio every two hours for Austin or San Antonio. The automatic teller machine with fifty-two dollars in it, from Nana's lawnmowing fund, is a block from the Greyhound station. Which is five blocks from here."

"'I definitely saw changes in the boy,' says George Porkorney. You can see her cigarettes hidden behind the fruit-salad plant on the breakfast bar at home. 'His shoes got more aggressive, he insisted on one of those skinhead haircuts …'"

"Muzak plays near the cells tonight. It fucken lays me out and buries me alongside my friends. It goes: 'I beg your par-den, I never promised you a rose gar-den.' Hot weather always brings these fucked ole tunes, always in the background, in fucken mono. Fate. Like, notice how whenever something happens in your life, like you fall in love or something, a tune gets attached. Fate tunes. Watch out for that shit."

"In the end, I pass the time practicing faces for the psychiatrist. I don't know if it's better to act crazy, or regular, or what. If the shrinks on TV are anything to go by, it'll be fucken hard to find out, because they just repeat every damn thing you say. If you say, 'I'm devastated,' they go, "I hear you saying you're devastated." How do you deal with that? All I know is what I learned last week, that a healthy life should feel spongy, like a burrito. This Tuesday night, the first-week anniversary of the shootings, my life feels like a fucken corn chip."

"Her sniffling feels like she physically has her tongue in my ear, like an anteater or something. Makes me want to puke and bawl at the same time, go fucken figure. Here's why she's going for gold, let me tell you: it's because now I'm not only in jail, but I might be fucken crazy as well. What a bonanza for her if I'm fucken crazy as well. Then her problem would be that she already spent her best whimpery moves; like, she'd have to shred a tit or something, just to keep up with the Unfolding Tragedy of Her Fucken Life. Out of kindness, I absorb the maximum number of sniffles before speaking."

"'You had a bowel movement, outside school? At the time of the tragedy?'"

"A thought comes to me; it is that a breeze on the butt, in the presence of supermarket lighting, should only be felt by the dead. I'm a naked fucken animal. But even naked animals need bail. Especially naked animals need it."

"Mexico. Another coupon tacked onto the pile I'll redeem when I get some power in my fucken life. Look around this life and all you see is folks' coupons tacked everywhere, what they'll do if, what they'll do when. Warm anticipation for shit that ain't even going to happen."

"I sense a learning: that much dumber people than you end up in charge. Look at the way things are. I'm no fucken genius or anything, but these spazzos are in charge of my every twitch. What I'm starting to think is maybe only the dumb are safe in this world, the ones who roam with the herd, without thinking about every little thing. But see me? I have to think about every little fucken thing."

"Instead of true joy, I feel waves; the kind that make you look forward to the smell of laundry on a rainy Saturday, the type of drippy hormones that trick you into saying I Love You. Security they fucken call it. Watch out for that shit. Those waves erode your goddam bravery. I even get a wave of gratitude for the judge—go fucken figure. I mean, Judge Gurie's been good to me, but—expand on the bowel thing?—I don't fucken think so."

"My face caves in. This is how I'm being grown up, this is my fucken struggle for learnings and glory. A gumbo of lies, cellulite, and fucken 'Wuv'."

"We could turn your situation around three hundred and sixty degrees..."

"Eyes move to the screen like sinners to fucken church. 'A millionaire before he was ten,' says the reporter, 'Ricky is now well on the road to his second hundred million dollars.' The way he says 'doll-larrs' you'd think he'd dipped his fucken tongue in molasses, or something. Pussy or something. Ricky just sits there like a spare prick, in front of the Lamborghini he can't even drive. When they ask him if he feels great, he just shrugs and says, 'Doesn't everybody?'"

"I don't have an answer. I just blow some air through my cheeks and shuffle away, to fucken Mexico, via my room."

"I carefully pull down the window behind me, then run under the biggest willow, to the back fence. Who lives on the other side is a wealthy couple; at least their house is painted wealthy. It means they spend less time spying through their screen, not like Mrs Porter. Wealth makes you less nosey, in case you didn't know."

"God knows I tried my best to learn the ways of this world, even had inklings we could be glorious; but after all that's happened, the inkles ain't easy anymore. I mean—what kind of fucken life is this?"

"I just want to fucken die, go back to jail, to the warmth of Barry and his crew of madcap funsters. Last night was a long night at home, real fucken long. To cap it off, Kurt started barking again. I swear the barking circuit that orbits town every night starts and ends with fucken Kurt. For such a nerdy dog, I don't see how he got to be president of the barking circuit. It ain't like he's a fucken rat-wheeler or anything."

"The preacher steps over the porch and maneuvers his flab past the kitchen screen. 'This glorious Saturday smells of joy cakes,' he booms. I swear the Lord giveth and just keeps fucken givething to Pastor Gibbons."