/lit/ - Literature

>>12566831

I think he got better as I got older
his prose is pure American
his imagination is delicious

A true gullywasher passed through our town last night, the kind we are known to get from time to time—a great black shuffling of the deck, a screaming which plucked our houses right up into the air, spun them around, and then planted them back down again in all manner of peculiar configurations that we will need to repave our roads for, by the Lord’s own Merciful Designs, and now in this storm-fresh morning our boy, Sebastian Clates, is out for the creek and for the finding of crawdads. He sets forth under purple clouds just as the still-living townsfolk are getting around to peeping out their doors and assessing the new layout of the burg. They greet the neighbors their homes have come to rest beside or on top of. They clap backs and whistle appreciatively and describe cloud formations observed the evening before. Shoulda known, lordy-lee we shoulda known. They ask about their friends and parents and children. Make it, did-um? Any sign? They nod at the news or the lack of news, just the same. They collect their dead pets from culverts and other such necessary civic measures. Good People. This town will survive, sure. Sebastian scoots past them chirruping through the gap in his teeth. In one hand he has a bucket for crawdads, the other is busy in greeting. He waves to Mister Telerock who is lugging his mailbox from his old housing plot over to his new one, somewhere off by the white knolls, carrying it athwart his shoulder like a baseball bat. “Aloo, Mister Telerock, aloo-aloo,” sloshing water from his bucket at the man’s feet. “I’m at them shellfish today. Reckon the storm’ll have set them to crawling, sure nuff. Turned them out-a their holes just like it did us, eh? Gonna wrustle up a nice batch and bring them on over to old Missus Cleftin who I heard wailing this morning on account of her daughter getting sucked up by the cyclone. Sweet Clementine took flight in her night shift, I saw her alight like an angel, and now her good old mama’s out looking for her in the tree branches, screaming somethin awful. Gonna have us a nice crawfish boil and forget all about it.” In response Mister Telerock only glances at Sebastian through eyes which the stormy night has filled with runnels of blood and says, “Fuck off away from me, little retard.” So off Sebastian skips, leaving Mister Telerock to his duty, the poor maudlin alone with his endless reordering of the earth—away, away, feeling the ground wet and springy beneath his heels and the birdsong escaping through his teeth. Tweety-tweet with every puff of the boy’s chest. Mouth so busted-up the child can breathe through his smile.