Notes On A Vigil

My mother is suffering from a skull fracture, gained in a truck accident while trying to uphold my late grandfather's tradition of keeping a large garden. This was Sunday, my birthday, when this happened. I've mentioned this in other places and now here it is on my official public voice. (hah!) Her brain is still swelling and she isn't exactly stable. If she's still with us forty eight hours from now than she'll probably stay that way, in whatever state. She's in a medically induced coma so that she can't hear me when I say say that I love her, but I can still say so all the same, for my own sake without the risk of exciting her and causing blood to rush to run to her brain. That's the best hope for seeing her again as she truly is, to keep her unfeeling and alone.

For my sixth birthday she took me to this hot dog and video game place called W.C. Franks that I just loved to fucking death. The food must have been less than clean because I puked on the floor after two bites of my chili dog and felt sick for the rest of the day. She was so sad for me.

She's been at the Kearney hospital since Sunday and I've been here since last night. I stepped out for a couple of hours earlier just because I needed to. A place off Central Avenue downtown called the Palm Inn (or something like that) filled with farmers and hardhats who smelled each others farts and used faggot as their playful insult of default.

Some guy at the end of the bar, a corn farmer said that anyone who requested the fat be cut off of their steak was a "faggot fucker." I restrined myself from telling him that since faggot is a sexual orientation, then a faggot fucker can be more simply referred to as a faggot.

They all sung the praises of magic mushrooms, and hoped that todays rain would bring them their sweet psilocybin. This surprised me not at all. I've known some stone hicks who loved to trip and aren't any more enlightened than before, and I never bought into the romance that they would be anyway.

The women of Axtell, NE about fifteen miles south of here. are apparently famous for their beauty. They say that the women there who are my age now made the state basketball tournament back in the day, that they would wear makeup on the court, look pretty and win at the same time. Since the accident I've been having these sudden cravings for sex that are terribly intense for a few minutes and then just dissapear. I don't know whether to feel like the skum of the earth for feeling them or if it's just a natural reaction. And what am I going to do about it anyway, invite a woman to the ICU waiting room?

It's a quarter after eleven and I'll have the waiting room to myself until dawn barring late night calamity for someone else. I have a book. There's a kitchenette. We wait.