They ended up at the ballpark, okay. Forty miles north of the river. This was after the drunk had worn off. First time in six years. Empty bottles still in the backseat. Looking at each other in that light that makes a person sick. You know that light, that goddamned liver-disease parking lot light. Saying like a benediction:
You are not a solution-minded person. And I have sadistic tendencies.
You know that kind of light?
*
What else did they say?
Well. They told me about a couple of people. Just east of Arizona. Hanging out, you know. Trying to see how many licks it takes to get to the bottom, not of a tootsie roll pop, but a case of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. They took what little money they could steal from those Lion’s Club displays at the optometrist, you know where you can put a quarter in?
And they invested it. In a motorcycle.
*
I don’t know if I told you guys this story before.
But this song is a true story—kinda—but I switched the persons. ‘Cause I didn’t want to tell some story about, ‘oh, I was suffering so much, and I was in a terrible suffering position,’ though I’m now writing those songs. But I thought I would just flip it and change the person who was suffering to the second person, so.
But this is a story about how I woke up one morning and I saw my friend Joel’s mother. It’s not what you think. I woke up and I saw Joel’s mom and she’s a nurse and I was in the hospital, and I said, ‘oh Mrs. Huschley, can you get them to take off the handcuffs?’
And she said, ‘No, John, I’m so sorry.’
*
I don't know. I don't know. I only know that when I'm not with you, I'm a total wreck.
And when you are with me?
I'm a different kind of total wreck.
*
Lockman without too big of a lead at second, but he'll be running like the wind if Thomson hits one . . .