If All Else Fails Read Online Free PDF Page A

the garbage can. He keep looking.
    Then he find a pair
that are all perfect. He put them on and leave his old pair of holes beside the robot clerk.
Stone­cloud nods friendly like at the clerk who look like activat­ing mechanism of white liberal
freedom fighter. And then like a ghostly gift giver he walks out of the store, like he bought
something. Stonecloud act like it too and keeps going away.
    And it hit him
suddenly; it was hell easy. Stonecloud was hit, as he had not known it as hell easy as even
telling a lie in public office. But in three-part harmony, all surrounded, all piled high and so
many, more than ten times his fingers and double his toes, it was hell easy.
    Stonecloud spring
down the street bouncing on his new shoes like a basketball. He get feeling like old self again,
and he remembers how all the time all the women used to tongue snap when he come bounce with
credits in one hand and fancy suit all slicked up like a crooked dog tied side­ways. Didn't they
just snap tongue when he rode high in tourist time. Good remembering, his feet unswimming, all
smiling, somewhat bouncing all went to the cleaner's when his stomach kicked him in the back
remembering him he was hungry as a perpetual-motion stomach-pump machine.
    Wouldn't he go to
bite something or, hungry as is, some­body? He mad for food and that make him think of mostly
somewhat-drinking-to-stupidness Aztol and his garage with the fruit locker full of obsolescent
oranges and too-long-remembered bananas. Even rotten as is make him water all over the mouth and tongue hum like piano-tuner attach­ment.
So he bounce twice for extra traction and then he making like an arthritic fire engine and scoot
scoot scoot through the ever-bouncing rain like a winded frog.
     
    Aztol was sitting
in a chair in his garage talking to his dog which he got in trade for the funny boy he won in a
tum­bling game. The dog was asleep as it wasn't much of a dog on account you can't expect no time
to get an undamaged one for a funny boy, and this was nobody's noise of an ex­ception. Most he
was bent up and lean forward when he walk, like he trying to see down the front of some
hyper­ventilating midget lady's dress which there was not many of on hand. Aztol was tongue
flapping like big-time brag stuff about time when the old Tourist Center burn down during party.
Aztol was trying remember if was himself set fire or what. He couldn't remember so
good.
    Stonecloud bounce
in like something crawled off break­fast cereal box.
    Aztol look up and
think he see a drowned bird and is smelling maybe a long dead one. Aztol roll up his lips like a
soggy cracker.
    "What about ten
credits owed me? What? What? What?"
    The smile on
Stonecloud's face sail to edge and fall off the world.
    "Oh the horse!" he
curse. "You knowing I good for it when all time of season come!"
    Aztol drop eyes
like a plum bob and down looking he see new shoes, and eyes light up like free pinball game. It
makes him hot. He roll a nasty thought in his head. "Twenty-five credit brick on the hooves!" He
roar like a hydroelectric plant. "Twenty-five credit and got no money for old guy Aztol! Who who
you?"
    Stonecloud look
hungry at fruit locker and see a picture of a fruit locker standing in its place. He groan as he
realize art imitate life but get screwed
in here and now. Name being pretty to look at but doing nothing to stomach, he sigh and flap arms
like wings of gilded rooster, mating with lesser angel.
    Says he, mouth
unwatering, "I flew them from captivity."
    "You steal! Not
pay! Steal?" Aztol look stomach kicked.
    "Broke. Had to.
Wave my knees in the trees if I lie. Broke," said Stonecloud, dropping his arms in a bowling ball
throwing motion.
    "Can you not wait
for tourist?" asked Aztol.
    "Plant me drowned
from bottom up if waited six weeks. Old shoes holes with laces. Had to. Had to." Stonecloud
shrugged, dripping rain for emphasis.
    "You a disgrace
being Indian,"