Who’s Rob Bobin?
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I, but I hear he took Bret Boner’s award.”
“The Mississippi Medal for Meritorious Media?”
“The very same, I’m told.”
“Was The Ferret involved? Did he have a hand in the deed?”
“I can’t say and wouldn’t if I could, but I don’t want to anyhow just now.”
“Is something amiss in expatriate Kyiv, the capital of comical misfortune? Where else, dear me, would losers flock to feed and regurgitate the truth thereafter. Grease balls, hillbillies and closet Jews abound. Lo – the Diaspora drunk, fat, stupid and full of pride. He trumps them all, so far and wide.”
…
At a nearby hospital, a large and loveable Negro stands bedside clutching several fingers full of dried and stringy daisies, upside down with dirt still clinging to the roots.
Medical men hold council outside in the hall.
“We put a plunger to his asshole this morning…”
“And?”
“No discernable results to speak of.”
“Try the mouth and then go intravenous. It’s got to come out or he’ll die.”
“A surgeon’s on his way from Kansas, they say, the best in the West in his field.”
“Let’s hope and pray he comes this day, to treat this man unhealed.”
A comely nurse with straw-colored hair intervenes…
“Doctor, doctor, Handwriting International is on the line. They demand to be apprised of the patient’s outlook.”
“Well, he’s not looking good and we can’t look in, cuz something’s been shoved up his rear. We’ve pushed and pulled and poked in his ear but can offer no further conclusions.”
Exit the nurse.
Losser’s laid out flat, but for the hump of a gut protruding beneath the sheets. He’s heavy in a state of unconsciousness, lost to this world but newly found in one of his mind’s making.
…
“Now you keep a-shoveling that shit.”
It’s hot and cloudy, and the mud comes up to his knees. The mountain men snicker and chortle atop the fence. The hogs, some big as bulls, stand sullen even hostile on the far side of the pen. Losser alone plays the carefree pig, all pink and round to the eye. His buttocks partly exposed above the stretchy band suit pants for older men: “Voronin: elegant attire.”
“Now don’t you mind the heat, Welsh, it makes you all wet and soft.”
Losser digs in deep, his yellow plastic shovel strained to the hilt. His back aches but not yet his butt.
Life’s not bad on the farm. Animal smells are good for a man, he muses. A writer should be raised among cow pies. PR can promote one to the heights of civilized living. A grand vizier among the cupolas of Kyiv I’ve felt myself at times. But for whom does the crow caw? Heed not the gaggles of geese, young man. Self-publish, go South. Miss Mississippi has a hot apple pie waiting for you on the window sill there yonder.
One of the mountain men slides off the fence, releasing the shoulder straps of his denim overalls as he descends. The other starts rocking back and forth with smiling eyes, his legs swinging beneath the fence rail, like a spectator at a rodeo.
Losser looks up and back. A storm cloud’s moved in. The wind is holding its breath. Not a blade of grass dare peek above the weeds, hens huddle their chicks behind the barn.
…
The large loveable Negro has pressed the stringy daisies to his chest, his hat long-doffed and now set on the chair.
Losser opens his eyes in a squint. The hospital lights are discomforting, but he’s glad to have a pillow behind his head. Safe and sound among the comforts of organized living, it would appear. Thank heavens for that!
The large, loveable Negro lowers his eyelids in deference to the ill. The nurse flits in, fluffs up the bedding and imposes pills and water on the patient. Allowing herself a brief if professional smile, she updates Losser on his immediate condition, including how she’d heard he’d ended up where he is.
“I ain’t got no call to come here,” begins the Negro. “But I heard that you ain’t well, so I thought I’d speak my piece, leavin’ nothin’ more to tell.”
Losser looks on, exercising due cautions at first.
“I’z a simple man, most all would say. Born and raised in the dirt. While you’z all fancy in duds so fine, stretchy pants and starched white shirt.”
Losser lowers his gaze in affected respect to the rustic sincerity on display.
“I reckon you got you a family, a woman and maybe a kid. My kin all lives in other parts, what’s done can’t be undid.”
Losser wiggles his shoulders to gain ground on the pillow, his face assuming an expression of benign dignity.
“I seen the way they took you, those mountain boys here from.”
Losser winces.
“You need know I’d treat you right, not harsh and cruel like some. I’d be your man alone at night, with days all to yourself.”
The doctors re-enter.
“Welsh, meet Rob Bobin – quite possibly the finest proctologist on offer.”
“If you’ve got something up you, he’s the guy to get it out.”
Both laugh. The nurse begins fussing about the room anew.
…
“Damn the missiles and hail of hellfire that rain down in the East.”
Bret Boner, again at the helm of English-language journalism in Kyiv, is a fireball of defiance, inconsolable in the face of the most sympathetic gestures, to include that cup of steaming hot cocoa laced with soothing laxatives placed sheepishly on his desk by the always unassuming Hound Dog Face.
He’s ready to call out Putin, to buy a one-way ticket to Donetsk, but who would rally the Internet readers, enlighten “the outside world”?
“Who is Rob Bobin?” giggles one of the girlish staff.
“He’s no Havana Hat Boy – just look at this picture of him in the trench.”
“Award… what award?”
“Where is Mississippi?”
Filed February 25, 2015