Main Street sucked in its collective gut and held its communal breath whenever "Dead Eye" Johnson had been spotted near town. With his Grandpa Jimmy James' beat up Gibson strung on bailing twine over one shoulder haunched usually toward Flowerpin Dry Run, the felt brim of his daddy's aged brown bowler pulled sideways toward one good eye, and a crumpled red white and blue bandana with tattered gold stars tied loosely under his chin, cleted rawhide boots folding up toward his knees, "Dead Eye" set out an aura that made backalley toms head for the sewers yeowling. Staking out his place this evening on the long open porch of warped and peeling Hotel Boone Vista, he lifted his left foot to rest on its gaunt railing and balanced Ole Doober on his thigh. The towns folk sighed aloud to hear what he'd rhyme and warble next about their goings on, hoping that Nashville wouldn't be so interested this time around.
"Dead Eye" knew the temper of a room or ring just by breathing it in, bent it to his need and whim. He knew just how and what to play, but even "Dead Eye" knew it best not to test a queen-high straight or to flush a full-house of aces over kings. To amuse a crowd he'd make deuces wild as long as he was the dealer where every house was his, their decks warm to his thumbing. Cheating to win wasn't a survivable option then.
It didn’t help them at all that as Granny Lopez on her street corner bench murmured, shaking her head over corn stalk dolls she made for sale to passersby always in the lap spread of her ankle-length birdprint skirts from the pile of shucks in the weathered hand-woven basket by her feet, ”’Dead Eye’ could make a guitar cry.” The sound from those strings sent electricity coursing through wires strung over their sidewalks to businesses from the Hicksters’ Produce Market and Canned Goods Store to Mr. and Mrs. Mulrooney’s Home Care Apartments for the Retired over Foodlatte’s Omnibus Department Store with its displays behind tall glass of pale-skinned mannequins sporting trendy bonnets and fancy footwear. One, a dapper male with slicked-back black pompadour wearing pinstripes, always posed leaning back observantly cross-legged on the bench of a light oak spinet piano placed katy-corner toward the rear of the carefully and colorfully attired window panoply.
“Did he really just sing that?” Little Celt Clive queried in astonishment.
”Yep,” Boss Bess confirmed. ”He riddled and fiddled to rhyme that time that the store dolls got to jiving to his tune by the last Harvest Moon and dared the town to prove it isn’t true.”
In the way of small towns, lively imaginations rumored that ”Dead Eye” had once been a neglected begonia on Ed Rudicill’s back kitchen window sill.
Although the children begged Sallie Rose to tell that story, she was busy composing her magnum opus, The Evolution of Ferns Through Cro-Magnon Man to Ex-Governor Sarah Palin.
On pressing the digital f9 button and not receiving forthwith her Amana stove, Sallie Rose attempted to forego those literary efforts, but the haunting lines of “Dead Eye”’s songs returned to move her fingers and her mind.
It’s not how the wind blows,
But how the carousel goes
And winds,
Whining in its circling.
Anyone can see baubles and toes.
Only you see the unicorn bobbing.
A Country Rag Instant
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Main Street sucked in its collective gut and held its communal breath whenever "Dead Eye" Johnson had been spotted near town. With his Grandpa Jimmy James' beat up Gibson strung on bailing twine over one shoulder haunched usually toward Flowerpin Dry Run, the felt brim of his daddy's aged brown bowler pulled sideways toward one good eye, and a crumpled red white and blue bandana with tattered gold stars tied loosely under his chin, cleted rawhide boots folding up toward his knees, "Dead Eye" set out an aura that made backalley toms head for the sewers yeowling. Staking out his place this evening on the long open porch of warped and peeling Hotel Boone Vista, he lifted his left foot to rest on its gaunt railing and balanced Ole Doober on his thigh. The towns folk sighed aloud to hear what he'd rhyme and warble next about their goings on, hoping that Nashville wouldn't be so interested this time around.
It didn’t help them at all that as Granny Lopez on her street corner bench murmured, shaking her head over corn stalk dolls she made for sale to passersby always in the lap spread of her ankle-length birdprint skirts from the pile of shucks in the weathered hand-woven basket by her feet, ”’Dead Eye’ could make a guitar cry.” The sound from those strings sent electricity coursing through wires strung over their sidewalks to businesses from the Hicksters’ Produce Market and Canned Goods Store to Mr. and Mrs. Mulrooney’s Home Care Apartments for the Retired over Foodlatte’s Omnibus Department Store with its displays behind tall glass of pale-skinned mannequins sporting trendy bonnets and fancy footwear. One, a dapper male with slicked-back black pompadour wearing pinstripes, always posed leaning back observantly cross-legged on the bench of a light oak spinet piano placed katy-corner toward the rear of the carefully and colorfully attired window panoply.