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Molly’s Place
Back when bebop had overcome me and
rockabilly was not that far behind, in the summer
of my 15th year on this earth, Charlie
and I spent most of our afternoons down at
Molly’s place: a “colored” whore house on
the other side of the B&O railroad tracks in
Vincennes, Indiana. We’d sit under her big sycamore
tree listening to the jukebox sounds of Muddy Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Billie Holiday, and Lead Belly coming
from her screened in porch, where her johns
waited for the pretty young black girls. Oh, what soul jarring
sounds they were!
But at school, we both cringed under the desks after films on
the H-bomb, that were shown between films on
dental hygiene. What tooth decay had to do with total
annihilation of the human race, I have yet
to understand. I would much rather have been down
at Molly’s with Charlie listening to the throbbing sounds
of real life.
Molly spoke to us only twice, though she
must’ve past us a 100 times. We were always
trying to melt into the tree. “What you
boys doin’ out here?”, she asked. I
told her we were just listening to the music.
She laughed. Her laugh was strong and
open. The only other time she spoke, was when she
was fuming at one of the girls inside. She stormed
down the steps of the house and down the walk
passing us behind the tree. “Hope music
is all you boys hearin’.”
One day that 15th summer, Charlie died
in a fall from his bike, head first, onto a concrete slab,
that his mother hung the clothes out to dry over.
His brother, a few days before, had found
Charlie and I sitting under that sycamore
tree. He yelled at us about “niggers” and
disease. Charlie just blinked and followed
him home. My dad, drunk one day, asked me where I was spending
my afternoons. I could do nothing but lie. A few days later
at the funeral, I helped carry Charlie’s casket:; a
pallbearer for a weird white kid like me, who liked
music and young black girls.
The next day after the funeral, I was back at Molly’s sitting under the tree.
She came out smiling sadly and handed me a plate of the best
peanut butter cookies I’ve ever eaten. I ate four of the ten
cookies in honor of Charlie much later that night, as I
listened to Little Richard over the radio from Nashville. I rocked out,
moving into my darkened room in a frenzy ... with tears I am
not ashamed of, and with laughter that was like the tooth decay
and the bomb, something else I will never understand.
Pretending The Apple Pie Is Fresh
Pretending what can only be pretended
in the hollow cave of
a diseased mind, and laughing
like a crater on the moon: dead and
deep and treacherous.
War mongers and whore mongers
dine with presidents and kings
on lavish tables.
Meteors and broken stars are buried
beneath the junkyards of the world.
Dignity is something sold on back streets
and in dark crevices.
No matter how often flowers wither and
die in the presence of politicians,
no matter what the earth is destined to
spew out of its bowels, no matter what price
the death of innocence,
the horror continues unchecked by the
appointed and elected guardians of society.
Legions march heads-up past the viewing stand
where the decked-out
dignitaries are seated with chests full of medals,
wearing thousand dollar suits, their wives
smiling beside them
like vampy Vegas whores.
Doug Draime
Email: Doug Draime
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