Rita and Patsy Reinvent the Jukebox (423 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1.17 on 7 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Sarah Prejean <derivablezero.at.gmail.com> (View user info) at 2005-05-08 11:58:21 EDT
(perspective fiction)
Sometime after midnight, in a powder blue Bel Air, top down, roaring down highway one eighty two we are inconspicuous as the soft sound of insects hitting the window like rain. Patsy's voice, loud over her guitar, sang Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues." I guess I was sort of star-struck.
When we cross the Tennessee border, she says to pull over so she can walk in the blue grass and says she thinks heaven is in blue or lavender, but not white. Somewhere, she says, in some lounge, people are listening to her music on some jukebox and in her next life she wants to be the dog with her ear to the victrola. She says someday people will be saying they are the reincarnation of her.
I drive beside her and turn up the radio. I am far away from the coal fields, the company store, washing other people's clothes, and it has been a long while now since I picked strawberries with migrant workers. You get to this point where you know you could win a blue ribbon with the one right in your hand, and some might just spit on it, but you put the perfect fruit in the basket with the rest of them, mostly because the fruit is not yours to own.
Right now, I am so far away from my first twenty dollar guitar and garden raising and canning cucumber, corn, pickles, preserves, tomatoes and sauerkraut and eating what is raised in the fields that I don't notice the stars. Patsy sees them first.
"Lawd," she says in her rich Virginian tongue pointing the guitar neck up, shooting down the stars, trying to sing Elvis's "Jailhouse Rock" but it sounds like she's on seventy eight, doing a movie in her head far away from drugstore dreaming. This is not Butcher Hollow or any other one of those "Hollers" people are screaming inside shafts to get out of.
We are not just cut out for state fair blue ribbon competitions. We are not making babies or picking apples, today. We are just two honky-tonks you can't stop, like the direction of a frog once it has leaped. I can tell her now that we are alone that the twins, Patsy (her namesake) and Peggy have discovered the toilet and putting things in and that they got some honky-tonk in them.
I know it's not crazy to feel this way for another woman, both of us have men at home. It's just a swirl in my sternum, happy driving her wherever she likes under the sky, knowing I owe my soul to no one. "Retta," she says, "we're going to reinvent the jukebox."
User Reviews
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-05-24 19:05:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
well, I like it
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2005-05-16 17:06:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2005-05-08 18:40:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
No Comment
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2005-05-08 13:43:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-05-08 12:37:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Loren1 (user info) at 2005-05-08 12:18:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You did not deserve the -2 that fucker Howto gave you. He's a prick.
Submitted by howto (user info) at 2005-05-08 12:03:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
RITA & PATSY REINVENT TEH JEWKBOX!