[UA] Unknown USA 3

[Bryant Durrell]

Dear Brother:

I am putting this in first because I know sometimes you just read the
first and the last to save time and it is very important that you read
this.  Do not go near Memphis until Bill Ruby has had a chance to calm
down.  While it is not my fault or your fault that Black got a little
bit carried away in the poker game, I am thinking that Bill Ruby will be
in no mood to see it that way.  So it would be best to stay clear of
Memphis for a while.  It is a dying city anyhow.

Now I am sure that you will now be curious about the poker game so I
will tell about that first.  Ruby gave Black some of that Confederate
money that we brought back from the old Baron and told him to make this
Texan happy at the table.  I think Black thinks this kind of thing is
disrespectful to his skills and I would agree, but Ruby offered a good
deal of money so Black said yes.

The game was on that old riverboat and Ruby will not set foot there.
Also everyone there was gambling with Confederate money.  I wish I had
been there because I am suspecting Ruby knows more about things than he
would admit to.  The Texan I have mentioned called himself the
Kingsnake.  One of the other players at the table was Leo Gold.  Leo is
the lion who is king of the animals.  The signs are coming clear.  And
the worst of it was this Annabelle girl Black met in the Ochopee post
office was the dealer.

Now that you know about the poker game I will leave it for a while and
tell you what Ben and Blind Joe did.  Well, the first thing they did is
found themselves a stray puppy named Annie who is a good Southern girl
who got herself in with a bad Southern boy.  No relation to us, ha ha.
But I do not think you or I would desert a nice girl like Annie just
because of some rock and roll groupies.  Ma raised us better than that.

The second thing they did is all went to the Sun Record Company to
record an album.  I am not too clear on this but I guess since Blind Joe
Biscuit is famous the folks at Sun let him do this.  Annie sung backup.
Ben has the song somehow on his little computer and what they made is
something powerful.  I did not really think the old man had it in him,
to be honest.  It is the kind of music you would not want to listen to
after midnight, but it sure would like to be played right around that
time.  It is like a long straight road that somehow you can't see more
than a few yards down it but you know where it's going anyhow, and at
the end of the road there is nothing but a plain of ash and tears.  I am
of the opinion that Blind Joe knows what he is doing but I would not be
in his shoes for a second.  It is no wonder that he drinks.

Oh, and that makes me remember that some snake oil salesman came up to
Ben and Annie and Blind Joe and tried to sell them some Amway scheme.
Well, you will say, that is no surprise in Memphis.  Well, I will agree
with you, but the salesman called this thing "I AM."  You will remember
that I did not tell you a piece of the story in my first letter, and I
will not tell it to you now, but that man who owned the White Castle was
a servant of I AM.  These are more signs.  I think there is a bad rain
coming.

After the music the three of them bought some old folk album from one of
the Sun Music gentlemen.  It has Blind Joe on it, and it is all covered
with symbols that Ben says are of alchemy.  I guess it has meaning but
it is no meaning I can puzzle out.  I will let the man with the college
education reckon on it.  Also on the brown record (which Ben says is
Jupiter) there was a song called Dan Siegel's Grave, and if I have not
said yet that Ben's last name is Seigel then you know now.  It was on
the record right next to Blind Joe's song.  I guess it is good those two
met.

Now I will tell you what I did during all this time, but this is another
thing you should not tell Ma, not because I did anything to be shamed of
but because of what happened and she will not understand.  I had to get
patched up for my leg was paining me fierce and Ruby knew someone who
could do a quick job of it.  Not a doctor, but a hoodoo man.

I went to him and he said he could do something for me but he would not
charge me anything for it.  Well, nothing comes for free.  The deal as
he set it out to me was that I would buy a tattoo from him and he would
fix my leg.  The bad part was that I could not choose the picture.  It
was like being in Key West with no choices, so I siad I guessed that
would be fine.  I know where he works so if he put anything I would be
shamed of on my back I know where to go.  I do not think that he did,
though.  He seemed like a decent man.

While he was doing the inking I had a dream, probably because of the
mescaline he put in the inks.  Another thing not to tell Ma.  You can
tell her about the dream, though, and she might even have something to
say about it.  I was driving on a road, and I came to a place where I
could go two ways, one under the golden sun and one under the silver
moon.  I was unsure for a moment but I realized that I have been living
on the midnight side of life for a long time now and Memphis is no place
to make big decisions so I kept on the silver path.  After all, Daddy
made moonshine all his life.

Then I saw seven cities burning, all across the United States.  One of
them was a fountain and people were sipping at it when they should not
have been, like they were stealing.  One of them was a mountain.  I do
not know what the mountain was but the fountain was that whole mess in
Florida.  Then I looked out to the West and saw something cold and dark
and ancient and evil.  It put a fear in my heart and I am not a coward,
you know that.  But this is the place where the storm is coming from.
So I will have to go there in the end.

I sort of woke up after that.  You know how it is after you have been
messed up on mescaline and things like that.  Some big man who I now
know is called Danny Greer took me by the hand and told me I was the
King's Herald.  I know what you are thinking but this was not part of
the dream.  What he said was that I had to drive, and a bunch of other
crazy things as well, but as much as I might wish that I could ignore
crazy things I think that there is no good exit off this highway.

After that I am still a little blurry.  We went to the riverboat and
took Black out of his poker game, and then we got Annie and Ben and
Blind Joe, and then we got on the old I-40 out of Memphis.  I think we
are going to New Orleans next but I-55 lost all the hoodoo when the
national speed limit changed and it is not the river it once was.  We
can always double back when we need to.  We will need to get another
car, because I cannot fit six people in the Cadillac.

So as I write all this out to you I have been thinking, and this is what
I have thought.  The old Baron told us before he died that he had tried
to make the roads his but learned that was foolish.  That Wallace Church
was the man who owned the White Castle, and that makes him a King.
There were a couple of Kings at the poker game in Memphis, and this
Danny person has something to do with Kings.  Hell, our friend Marlin is
a queen.  It is all too obvious.

Now, America is not a land that needs a King.  You go and look at Elvis
and you will see a man who knew how to handle himself.  He was the King
for sure but he went off into the Army to show that he was not bigger
than the land, and then he went to President Nixon and got himself sworn
in as a deputy.  A deputy is practically the opposite of a King.  Elvis
made sure that he wasn't bigger than America.  He did it right.

I think that there is someone out there doing it wrong.  I do not know
who but the signs are clear.  So I think what I need to do is to go to
all the people trying to be Kings in this land and make sure that they
are not biting off more than they should chew, as they say.  And if we
find anyone trying to suck the life out of the land like those people in
Florida we will do what we have to do.  Because it is killing the roads
and America is nothing without the roads.

Our first stop is New Orleans and maybe we can see if Blind Joe Biscuit
can talk to the ghost of the old Kingfish Huey Long.  I think that would
be a good place to start.  Then there is that Kingsnake from Texas that
Black met, and I am wondering if maybe we cannot kill two birds with one
stone because I bet that Black's problems in Vegas have a King behind
them.  And I read in the paper that the basketball team in Sacramento is
called the Kings and people think they may win the title this year which
cannot be a coincidence.  There is more but I will have to look harder
to see it.  They say there is an old man watching over I-93 up in New
Hampshire, and 9 and 3 are important numbers what with the hoodoo square
and all.  Oh well.  I will not try to think of it all at once no matter
how much the last of that mescaline makes me want to.

Now that I am at the end of the letter I will tell you again to steer
clear of Bill Ruby in case you read this first.  If you want to know why
you will just have to read the whole letter.  Do not let Ma read it to 
you this time because she yelled at me for ten minutes on the phone the
last time you got lazy.

Your brother,
Reese Beulay


-- 
        Bryant Durrell [] http://www.innocence.com/~durrell [] 9/11/2001
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         "A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses
                     interest in students."  -- John Ciardi

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