Mockingbird Wish Me Luck Read Online Free PDF Page B

artifice of fiction
    let’s call this fiction so like all good boys and girls
    we can relax

                    i was in frisco a dandy place with lakes or something
    i could see the gold bridge and it wasn’t teeth from my window
    enough to drink almost always enough to drink

    i wrote the old man down in l.a. you might as well get a story
    ready for your god damned neighbors because i am not going to yr
    war

          if it were not for the war the last war you would not be here
    i would not have met your mother and you would not have been born
              SON, YOUR COUNTRY IS AT WAR ! ! ! !

    the fact that i was born because of circumstances of war
    did not seem to me a proper argument to create further circumstances
 
          i went out and got drunk properly
     

    then the next morning i went down to the draft board

    a boy fainted when they took blood out of his arm and i looked at the
    needle dip into my vein and watched the red of me run up into the tube
    and felt rugged
 
    they looked up my ass
and then i went in to see the sike
     

    u have yr shorts on backwards he told me
    i got up and switched them
he sat there looking at me
     
    WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PICASSO?
at first i said all right now not much
     
    do you write or paint?
yes
     
    and?
        and what? I ASKED IF YOU WROTE OR PAINTED. leave me alone
    i told him
    WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN PUBLISHED? PAINTINGS HUNG?
        nothing accepted
nothing accepted anywhere
     
    do you believe in the war? he asked no i said
    ARE YOU WILLING TO GO TO WAR? he asked no i said
    WHY DON’T YOU BE A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR? because i said
    i am not sure there is a God
    NEXT WEDNESDAY NIGHT WE ARE HAVING A MEETING, A PARTY
    FOR DOCTORS, WRITERS AND ARTISTS I WANT YOU TO BE
    THERE I AM INVITING YOU WILL YOU COME?
 
    no
     

    all right he said u don’t have to go
    u mean i asked the party or the war?

    either one he said you didn’t think we’d understand did you?

    no

    he wrote something on a slip of paper and folded it and stuck it to my card
    with a paperclip give them this, up the line

    he had written a hell of a lot on the slip as i walked i managed
    to lift the edge of the slip but all i cd see was
HIDES AN EXTREME,
     
    SENSITIVITY UNDER A POKER FACE
which was news to me
     
    and then some guy in a uniform screamed at me
    ALL RIGHT SON UNCLE SAM DOESN’T WANT YOU
and i walked out into
     
    the clear and beautiful air

    are you going to war my landlady asked me no i said bad heart
    that’s too bad i’m sorry she said and i went upstairs and poured
    a good one

          bad heart bad heart bad heart have u done the wrong thing
    maybe u ought to go maybe you ought to go and walk right into it
    hell, friend they turned you down uncle sam does not want you
    you are insane
i smiled and poured another one
     

    i don’t know how much later but some time later i am sitting in another
    cheap room philly i am drinking a bottle of port have a record
    player and i am listening to the 2nd movement of brahms’ 2nd symphony
when there is a knock on the door
    it is a very polite knock
     

    and since i do not know anybody much i figure it is either
    one of the whores down at the corner in love with me
or somebody come to give me the nobel prize
     

    and i opened the door and 2 big men were there and one of them said
    F.B.I. and the other one said yr under arrest

    i went over and took the needle out of brahms’ arm
    we want to question u they said downtown
    all right
    u better put on a coat you might be gone some time

    we walked down the stairs and out into the street and got into the car
    and it seemed as if each window had a face hanging out of it
    and there was another guy in the back and he said keep one hand
    on each knee and don’t move them
we drove along a while and then
     
    i reached up to scratch my nose
WATCH THAT HAND! one of them screamed
     
    this guy is pretty casual another one said
    i think we got a good one yep i think we got a good