also by steve almond

fiction

Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott) The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories My Life in Heavy Metal
nonfiction

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life (Not That You Asked) Candyfreak

G O D BL E S S A M ERI CA
Stories

Steve Almond

lookout books
University of North Carolina Wilmington

2011 Steve Almond All rights reserved. No material in this book may be copied or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage-andretrieval systems, without the express written consent of the publisher, except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. First printing, October 2011 isbn: 978-0-9845922-3-4 Cover illustration by Valero Doval Book design by Arianne Beros, Meg Reid, and Anna Sutton for The Publishing Laboratory These stories originally appeared, sometimes in different form, in the following publications: Hagars Sons in Ecotone; A Jew Berserk on Christmas Eve in Nerve and the Pisgah Review; A Dream of Sleep, First Date Back, and Shotgun Wedding in New England Review; Not Until You Say Yes in Ninth Letter; Akedah, The Darkness Together, God Bless America, and What the Bird Says in Southern Review; Hope Wood in The Sun; Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched in Tin House; Tamalpais in Virginia Quarterly Review. Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched was selected for Best American Short Stories in 2010. The Darkness Together was included in The Pushcart Prize in 2006. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Almond, Steve. God Bless America: Stories / Steve Almond. p. cm. isbn 978-0-9845922-3-4 I. Title. PS3601.L58G63 2011 813'.6dc22 2011010332 Lookout Books gratefully acknowledges support from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

lookout books Department of Creative Writing University of North Carolina Wilmington 601 South College Road Wilmington, North Carolina 28403 www.lookout.org

for

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contents
god bless america donkey greedy, donkey gets punched hope wood not until you say yes shotgun wedding tamalpais what the bird says the darkness together a jew berserk on christmas eve akedah hagars sons first date back a dream of sleep

1 17 39 55 71 89 105 121 135 151 157 177 195

America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos. max lerner

god bless a meric a

Dont be extras. Be a nation! Cecil B. DeMille

billy clamm had not signed up for drama i ,

he had signed up for a tax-preparation course called Loopholes Ahoy! But the Medford Adult Education facility was a confusing one, full of strange underground corridors and bunkers, and Billy was somewhat easily disoriented, somewhat prone to distraction, particularly during the bleak winter months, and so he had found his way to the wrong classroom. The instructor, Mr. Denzel Hamish, was a short man who leaped a lot and kept tearing off his beret and twirling it on his index finger, and really the only reason Billy Clamm hadnt left the roombecause it certainly didnt seem to him that a taxpreparation instructor should be wearing a beretwas because
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of the way Mr. Hamish spoke, as if his words had been coated in something very bright and echoey. Are you connected? he asked the seven assembled students. Are any of you even the least bit connected to your own lives? Or do you have a sense of drifting? Drifting through this one and only life of yours, dodging the slings and arrows of outlandish fortune? Do you feel a certain emptiness is what Im asking, a certain void that calls out at night to be filled? Billy, standing at the back of the room, allowed to slip from his hand his pops Medford Credit Union promotional calculator. What I can offer you over the next eight weeks is a singular place, a haven, where you can finally start to connect to your lives. That place, ladies and gentlemen, is . . . the stage. With this, Mr. Hamish launched himself onto a box at the front of the room and cried, Have we got trouble? Yes, sir, we do! Right here in River City! And then began singing a song, quite loudly for a man his size, that involved the naming of numerous musical instruments, in particular trombones. Over the next two months of class, Mr. Hamish introduced a variety of topics, sometimes, though not always, with a slight British accent. He addressed the importance of living moment to moment and calling out to the artistic unconscious and remaining connected to your process. In this way, Billy Clamm began to see himself in a new light. His pop had often joshingly called him a useless little poke. But Billy saw now that his supposed underachievement was a function of his disconnectedness and not a deficient attention span, as one or more of his teachers had implied. It was only a matter of hitching his wagon to the right dream; this was how his mother had phrased it. Now that he had done this, his life assumed a new urgency, not just on Tuesday nights, when classes were, but the entire week. He saw, for instance, that his job stocking at the Osco Pharmacy on Locust was a dead end creatively. That was why he had quit and not, as Pop was insisting, because he was allergic to an honest days labor. He spent a
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lot of time at the park off Winthrop Square watching passersby, studying their movements and privately mimicking them, finding the character, as Mr. Hamish put it. At night he watched black-and-white classics on cable. This was how he prepped for class. Not that you could prep for improvisational exercises. No, you just had to let those happen and not deny, which he never did, even if sometimes his fellow students didnt understand what he was getting at, that he was enacting the near death of Red Sox legend Tony Conigliaro at the precise moment his eye socket was shattered by a fastball and not, as was the general consensus of the class, suffering a grand mal seizure. Mr. Hamish understood his aims perfectly, and that was why he sometimes took Billy aside and made comments such as You are an ambitious student, and Perhaps you should let your creative engine cool a bit. He was trying to communicate with Billy, speaking one actor to another, which was what Billy was, he realized, an actor, even before the final class, where he delivered the big Willy Loman speech from Death of a Salesman, the whole time thinking about his pop and how he banged around their apartment, so much so that he even began to improv a few lines in Pops own voice, such as What am I, the worlds dishrag? and Who told you to get born? and Billy was fairly certain that some of his classmates had teared up, though he couldnt be sure because he was in character. This performance, the feeling of destiny it inspired, was why Billy had begun describing his unemployment benefits as a kind of grant. He was not fooling himself. He knew the odds were stacked against him. He was thirty-five years old, for one thing, and not quite five and a half feet tall, and he was losing hair in clumps, and when he got nervous, which was nearly every time he did a scene, a blotch rose on his left cheek that made it look as if he had been scalded, though Billy felt confident this last defect could eventually be turned to his advantage, like Clark Gables ears, or the way Katharine Hepburns head shook around. Also, he had never acted before.
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Still, there were plenty of actors who came to the field late, such as Robert Duvall, who hadnt landed a decent role until he was practically forty, and plenty of actors who were on the short side (Hoffman, DeVito) or bald (Malkovich, Brynner, Duvall again!). Most good actors were either short or bald, when you actually did the math, because that kind of adversity forced a person to develop other parts of his personality, which is what Billy Clamm had been doing. Ma would have understood. She was the one who had believed in him, who had insisted, time and again, that he could be anything he wanted, never mind Pop and his dark muttering. It would be two years in August since her passing, but Billy still felt her sometimes, watching over him, her mouth hitched up in that gentle smile as he ran his lines with her sewing dummy. Billy was in Medford for the moment and that was good because it gave him an element of regional identity. But pretty soon, once he got a little cash socked away, hed move out of Pops place and head down to New York to check out that scene, the off-Broadway scene, but not out to LA, because as Mr. Hamish assured him, it was all about image out there, and not about integrity of process: connectedness. This was why hed signed on with Sammy Duck Land and Sea Tours, because there had been an ad in the Herald under the column Actors Wanted, with an address in the North End. The man who answered the door said, You got something for me? Billy said, I brought my rsum. The man, whose cheeks looked as if they had been scooped up with a trowel and then patted down again, said: No funny stuff. Then he placed his hand on the butt of what appeared to be a gun jammed into the side of his waistband. Billys pulse thumped and the room grew damp and he tried to explain, without actually speaking, that he was here about the classified ad. He held out his rsum. Oh, the man said. He removed his hand from the apparent gun butt and drew his coat around him like a cape and led
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Billy into a smaller room, which Billy could not help but notice included a toilet and a sink. The man glanced down at the rsum. William Clamm, huh? Ever done any work as a tour guide, William? Billy tried to focus on the question. But he was taken with the sound of his name, William, and how it rolled off the thick tongue of his interviewer. William Clamm. Names were an important part of the business. Although it occurred to Billy that he might want to do some work on that last name. William Clammato. William Clammentine. Something. I was under the impression this was an acting job, he said finally. What it is, we got this tour. You go around to these sites downtown and also the harborthats what you call the sea portion of the tourexplaining about history. The man opened a desk drawer and handed Billy a pamphlet that showed a large red vehicle shaped like a hot dog bun, with cage-like window slots. Tourists were peering through the bars. The man driving the hot dog bun was outfitted in a red-and-white striped shirt and silver pantaloons and boots and something like an eye patch. He was smiling deliriously. You ever been arrested? the man said. Arrested? Billy said. Fine, the man said. I dont want to know. Then he shook Billys hand and embarked on a brief orientation, which involved Billys signing many non-indemnity forms, and during which Billy learned other important facts, such as that the man interviewing him was not Sam, but Augustino, and that Sam was an older gentleman who started the business years ago but was now legally in a vegetative state and that he (Billy) should never ever discuss method of payment and that Augustino did not carry a firearm, but if he did it was for security reasons only, because the neighborhood was full of young punks who didnt understand basic concepts like respect and had, on occasion, to be taught. Heading out of the building on that chilly March day, with his
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uniform slung rakishly over his shoulder, Billy wandered down to the docks and watched the barges drifting in and the gantry cranes looming in the white mist and he thought about Brando and how Brando could have been a contender, how his brother, Joey, or perhaps Jimmy, should have helped him out, how some opportunities rise up and pass us by, and how, in the end, we have to create our own opportunities and not necessarily wait for our brother to rescue us; and this had special resonance for Billy, even though he did not have any brothers, only a mildly epileptic cousin who lived in Saugus. Being a Sammy Duck tour guide was not technically an acting job, but it had elements of the craft, such as speaking before a captive audience, and interacting with the other guides at red lights, when they were supposed to perform little skits. There was also a reenactment of the Boston Tea Party, which was held at the end of the tour, near the harbor, and was clearly the dramatic highlight of the day. A Tea Party role was something you worked your way up to, in other words, a first step that would lead to more ambitious steps, such as clown gigs, dinner theater, and eventually commercial work. What was most important was your process, remaining connected to your process, and not worrying about the external measures of success, such as whether you had enough money to pay off your Discover card balance. Traffic was difficult to negotiate in a Duckmobile. They cornered poorly. Then, too, there was the microphone clamp, which dug into the side of Bullys skull and caused tension headaches, and his costume, which Pop claimed made him look like a homosexual pirate. But these were small matters. Within a couple of months Billy had memorized the script and even begun to go off script when he felt this would be a lucrative artistic decision. So that now, for instance, as the Duckmobile barreled down Boylston, with the Common yellow-green under the rippling June air, Billy flicked on his microphone and said: Quack! Quack! To your left, Duckies, is the famous Boston Common.
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In days of yore, cows were led to graze here. Its bucolic wonders inspired many of Ralph Waldo Emersons essays, as well as a little-known skirmish during the War of Independence, the Battle of the Lawn. What do you think about that? From in back Billy heard a group of child Duckies burping in unison, which wasnt a thought, technically, but did reflect a spirit of improvisation. Quack! Quack! We are now entering Beacon Hill. This stately neighborhood of redbrick and cobbled streets was the original home to Bostons aristocracy! It is named after Ebenezer Beacon, who, coincidentally, is the same person who inspired Charles Dickens to write the novel Ebenezer Scrooge. He was a stingy grocer who would not allow poor families to borrow against his larder until he had a vision of God. He then wrote the song Amazing Grace, which many black churches sing to this day. Further along in life, when he penned his memoirs, Billy would look back on these days fondly, as an era full of the material necessary to the actors craft. He was not one of those stars who had made it too easy, thank God, and spent his life behind a wall of security personnel. He was more like a young Brando, who learned his parts by spending time among stevedores and roustabouts and other interestingly named laborers. At night Billy would return home and stand before the mirror in his room, practicing accents. Pop was suspicious of this and banged on the door and sometimes threatened to throw Billys clothing out into the street. This was his way of working through some unresolved issues. Billy pulled up to a red light, next to another Duckmobile. He gave his horn a toot. The other driver, a man named Jacomo, who was quite possibly the worst-tempered person Billy had ever met, refused to look over. It was unfortunate that not all the guides shared Billys enthusiasm. But what Billy had learned by studying his countrys history was that America had been built by opportunists. It was a large and prosperous country and one that could accommodate
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the less enthused, people like Jacomo, or, for that matter, his pop, who had never showed much enthusiasm for anything aside from Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra. Billy had once caught Pop sitting in his bedroom with the lights out, just after Ma passed, singing This Is No Dream to himself in a shy, reedy voice, his socks twitching on the floorboards. Probably Pop had wanted to be a singer; and in another era, one with lots of little villages and people like bards and so forth, he might have been. But this was America, the land of opportunists, and here it wasnt enough to want something. You had to fight for what you wanted and fight hard, fight through your own resistance and the jeers of others and physical adversity, which was what the Pilgrims had done vis--vis the whole Thanksgiving situation, and after them the colonists, who had bucked the most powerful empire on earth even though they were basically just a bunch of underfed tax evaders. And then the pioneers. No, you couldnt forget the pioneers, who had traversed vast prairies and mountains, and battled Indians and grizzly bears and inclement weather and various kinds of pox, and some had even starved and had to eat each other to survive, which, by the way, would make a terrific film treatment, Billy thought, because it said so much about the indomitable spirit that had built the country. Not that cannibalism was part of the indomitable American spirit, but it showed how far some people would go to find good property. It was a pity that so much of the country was now run based on convenience. Or, more than that, it was really ironical. But now that Billy had hitched his wagon to the right dream, he felt much more connected to history, much more like a pioneer, though he was just starting out on his long journey west, and might someday starve and even be forced to eat another person, not literally, but metaphorically. He hoped he would never have to eat another person metaphorically. At the same time, he was aware of the possibility. The next step for Billy Clamm was to land a role in Sammy Ducks Boston Tea Party reenactment. It was quite ingenious
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how they staged the performance, especially considering that they used a different boat every day and none of the crew seemed to speak English. The Duckies were hustled on board and Horatio Higgenbottom, intrepid revolutionary agitator, appeared on deck in a long buttoned coat and breeches, and delivered a stirring soliloquy, then flung a wooden box labeled tea overboard, following which the Duckies joined in until dozens of boxes bobbed in the water and cheers issued forth and the boat spluttered off into international waters, where, if they so chose, guests could gamble by a variety of means while a British lackey, usually the ill-tempered Jacomo, sallied forth in a motorboat to fetch the tea. Higgenbottom was clearly the plum role, and sorely in need of a stronger presence. The current player, a Panamanian named Esquivel, lisped his lines. Nothing against Panamanians, but it was an insult to the dramatic moment, the way Esquivel made tyrannous tax sound like tyrweenis tax and the way he kept scratching at his powdered wig when he should have been in the moment, projecting the glory of his role in the coming revolution. Whenever Billy asked about securing a role, Augustino shook his head and held a finger to his lips and peeled Billys pay from a roll of twenties as fat as an onion. The light turned green and Billy clicked on his mic and yelled, Quack! Quack! How many of you Duckies have heard of the Boston Massacre? Well then, weve got something to learn, havent we? Coming up on our right, youll note the Old Custom House. It was here, in 1704, that British troops opened fire on a mob of angry colonists. A man named Amos Tuck was struck in the mouth by a bullet. Tuck was a street dancer, and the character on whom Mr. Bojangles was later based. Any Ducky questions? A voice behind him said: Why are the cops arresting your pal back there? Billy looked in the rearview mirror. Sure enough, a pair of police cars had pulled over another Duckmobile. Just a routine
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traffic violation, Duckies! As Billy said this, though, he spotted Jacomo beside the vehicle, being jerked into handcuffs and held at gunpoint. Probably his temper had gotten the better of him. Either that or he had warrants. He could see Jacomo as a man with warrants. Nothing to worry about, he assured his audience. But just then Billy realized there was indeed something to worry about, because Jacomo had been heading in the same direction he was, to the harbor, which meant that there would be no one to play the British lackey unless he . . . unless Billy himself . . . Oh, life was good! Life was supremely good, if only one allowed life to be so, and didnt complain incessantly and hit inanimate objects, as Pop so often did; if you didnt deny life, most of all, and remained connected to your process, because life was really just as much a process as acting was, and maybe even more so in certain settings. Billy saw his chance, and like Lou Gehrig in that wonderful film Pride of the Yankees, he was determined to make the most of it. Not that he didnt feel a kind of kinship with Jacomo, cursing now and spitting at the cops. Jacomo, after all, was really more like poor Wally Pipp. But then Lou Gehrig hadnt had the easiest time of it, either, and had gotten that terrible, vague disease that was in fact so vague they had named it after him. The scene at the little alcove near the harbor was confusing. A new boat was there, the gangplank down, but Augustino was nowhere to be seen and Esquivel, never a tranquil sort, seemed especially agitated, shouting ndele! and Vmonos! and some of the more colorful Panamanian expressions Billy had recently become acquainted with. Quack! Quack! Billy exclaimed. Time to get your feathers wet, Duckies! He hurried toward the little dock where the motorboat was moored and thought about how this was his first big break and how years from now some interviewer, perhaps Diane Sawyer
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herself, if she were not dead, would look at him meaningfully and say, What about your first big break, William? Tell America about that. And he would think back to this very moment and grin modestly and say, Diane, I remember as if it were yesterday . . . Then he lowered himself into the little white boat and waited for the action to begin. The Duckies shambled up the gangplank, grumbling, which was not unusual, because it was one of those Boston summer days that made you feel as if you were walking around inside a giant mouth. They were met by Esquivels minionsmen in tank tops and shorts, outfits that totally ruined the mood, frankly, the spellwho herded the Duckies onto the bow, or maybe it was the stern. Oddly, none of the other Duckmobiles had appeared. Esquivel checked his watch and frowned. The Duckies sweat quietly under their plastic three-cornered hats. After a tense consultation with his chief minion, Esquivel launched into his speech. Billy Clamm sat in his motorboat, murmuring along and putting the emphasis on the right words, the words with dramatic valence, and feeling certain that if he were the one on deck, with the clip-on microphone and the long buttoned coat, he would be using his arms more, because this was a historic moment after all, the individual throwing off the shackles of anonymity and catapulting himself into history, and for the actor to properly convey this required broadness of gesture. Higgenbottom finished his speech and his minions roused the Duckies and thrust tea boxes into their hands and led them, or in some cases shoved them really, to the railing, and down tumbled the tea into the water. Higgenbottom fired a musket into the air and the ships engine snorted. This was Billys cue. He hurried the motorboat out into the bay, waving his own musket about and crying, Higgenbottom, you bloody scoundrel! This shant stand! That is when the police cars first appeared, tires yelping and sirens and popping lights, though Billy didnt notice them,
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occupied as he was in demonstrating his British indignity and simultaneously snagging the tea boxes with a small butterfly net. He ignored the commotion around him and focused entirely on finding his inner British lackey. Ill see your hide tanned upon the royal gallows! he bellowed. Knaves, I say! Do you hear me? Dastardly knaves! Billy wasnt sure what a knave wasit sounded like a fancy flavor of jambut he was busy brandishing his musket. Up above, Higgenbottom and his men were scampering about, as if on fire; the Duckies had clamped themselves to the deck. A rippling much like gunfire sounded from the shore. And then, equally distinct, bits of the larger boat began to rain down on him. Billy turned toward shore and saw the police cars. A thicket of rifle barrels poked from above their flung-open doors, and he tried to recall whether any of the previous versions of the Tea Party reenactment had featured this daring postmodern element. Then a strange whizzing kicked up and the net Billy held in his left hand burst into shards. It was at this point he realized something might be awry. Probably there had been some confusion involving Jacomo. That was Billys hunch. In any event, once things settled a bit, he would zip back to shore and explain the mix-up, which was, once you got past the use of live ammunition, quite humorous. But then Higgenbottom let out a shriek and hurtled overboard in a cloud of . . . was that actual blood? Billy watched him in awe, admiring the incredibly realistic posture of his falling body and the red swirl created by his flailing limbs, before coming to the reluctant conclusion, as Esquivel smacked the water and torpedoed down, that he was not going off script so much as drowning. Billys reaction was immediate: he dove beneath the gunwales. A voice, amplified via bullhorn, urged the suspects to halt at once, urged the suspects to remain facedown on the deck, urged the suspects, in Spanish, to do something festive-sounding. Then the gunfire started up again and Billy
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knew that he was best to remain still and wait for law enforcement to get it all straightened out. He could feel the red stain aflame on his cheek, and with it, the voice of his mother suddenly returned to him. Thats just your way of telling the world youre alive. She had said this to soothe him, of course. But the words now seemed to have a different intention altogether. They were her way of recognizing the depth of his passiona call to arms, or at least to action. Billy watched his hand, in something like amazement, as it grabbed the steering wheel and angled the boat away from the shore. Then his foot slammed the gas pedal. He was pleased at how well the motorboat handled, especially because he was entering the bay proper at the busiest of times, close to five, when the trawlers from New Bedford made their way in and the frigates and cargo ships lined up for freight. He wended his way among them, watching the dockworkers haul things and spit merrily, and he thought again about Brando and the need to get inside the character, and how the great ones never appeared to be acting, only moving through an exquisitely rendered second life. After an hour trying to locate a place to dock, Billy was hungry. Dusk was coming on, and soon Pop would be wondering where he was and cursing and gazing moonily at the TV. The smell of french fries from the Mickey Ds along Mystic would come wafting in the space left by the window unit that had fallen out two summers ago and allegedly struck Miss Jaworski. But there was nothing to eat in the boat, and no place to dock. Billy focused instead on the dusk, which was quite a thing to see, long shadows and strips of cloud ripening toward purple and the ocean itself reflecting this, turning a color his ma would have called aubergine. Billy had always liked the sound of that word, its connotations, and he realized, with a start, that he had just discovered his stage name. He turned south, away from the bustle of the bay, down toward the Cape, and when he couldnt see or hear any other boats
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he shut off the engine and sniffed the salty air and rooted around again to see if Jacomo might have left some emergency rations. The only thing around was a faded life jacket and the boxes of tea. Billy pried one open and inside was a little white vacuumpacked brick. His first thought was that it might be flour and that, if he were a pioneer, he could combine this flour with saltwater so as to produce a sort of primitive bread batter, which, using the heat of the engine, he could bake. But that seemed perhaps far-fetched, given that he had only an outboard motor, and besides, it was probably just baby powder, and so he slit the edge and poked in his pinkie and took a taste. He nearly gagged. Then his gums started to tingle. So now William Aubergine (n Clamm) was drifting off the coast of Boston at dusk in possession of approximately seven pounds of cocaine. The boats fuel gauge read close to full, and there was still an hour or more of light. It was all a little daunting to consider. Old Billy Clamm, predictably enough, was telling himself to turn around and head back immediately and try to get all this sorted out. But to William Aubergine, such a course felt like exactly the wrong one, a retreat from the dramatic moment and its possibilities. He was being given a chance here, the entre into a new sort of life, and he wasnt just considering the possible proceeds to be had from several pounds of cocaine, though that was not to be overlooked. No, he was considering the new direction his life had taken since hed decided to act. With the sun dipping toward the water, he did a quick inventory of the coincidences, the remarkable coincidences, that had lined up in his favor and brought him to this point, and the responsibility, really, that he faced in living up to such good fortune. That was the special thing about this country, that you could dream, and that they couldnt take those dreams from you, and the only price was that when the chance came along, the gold ring, or the brass ring, you had to grab at it and not be a
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scaredy-cat content to live the rest of your life in the sour air of regret. Pop would just have to understand that, and Augustino, and the guys down at Osco. This was America and this was how things sometimes went in America, how the entire enterprise had gotten itself started and grown and prospered. William Aubergine turned the ignition key and listened to the engine rumble, then purr, and he pledged not to forget where he had come from, or the people who lived there, pledged, in other words, to remain connected to them no matter what happened next, and he whispered a little prayer of thanks to his ma above as his boat cut a white thread through the water, and imagined himself at the end of a long and arduous day of filming, riding off, as it were, into an actual sunset, or gliding, and feeling that the recent odd events of his life and his gratitude for them would probably seem hokey up there on-screen, especially given the lighting, but that the right actor, rising to the role as required, breathing into it the necessary sense of wonder and hope, would be able to bring the moment off.

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