Smoking Grapevine: Outline and Concordance for Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You

© 2021 Ata Moharreri
Please credit this text when you use information from it

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Smoking Grapevine: Outline and Concordance
for Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You

Compiled and organized by Ata S. Moharreri

(note: painting of Frank Stanford by Ginny Stanford found in Beinecke Library)


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Contents

Introduction p. 3

Outline p. 4

Expanded Outline p. 9

People, places, and things p. 76
A… p. 76
B… p. 78
C… p. 84
D… p. 90
E… p. 93
F… p. 95
G… p. 97
H… p. 100
I… p. 102
J… p. 103
K… p. 107
L… p. 108
M… p. 112
N… p. 118
O… p. 119
P… p. 120
Q… p. 125
R… p. 125
S… p. 128
T… p. 135
U… p. 139
V… P. 139
W… p. 141
X… P. 142
Y… p. 142
Z… p. 143
Translations p. 144


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Introduction
For anyone attempting to read Frank Stanford’s epic poem, The Battlefield Where the
Moon Says I Love You, the experience can seem bewildering. The poem consists of over
15,000 unpunctuated lines, short and long, embedded with similes, images, and allusions
galore, making it a daunting task for even the most seasoned reader.
These notes will help readers navigate the Lost Roads 2000 edition of Stanford’s poem
(first published in 1977), by clarifying story lines and illuminating the readers’
understanding of the poem.
The Battlefield was born from an earlier work called Saint Francis And The Wolf. A
document at Yale’s Beinecke Library shows that Saint Francis and the Wolf & Some
Poems was written between 1957 and 1964, which might mean Stanford started his vision
for The Battlefield as early as nine years old.
That may be legend, but it’s mind blowing to think that Stanford wrote a poem that
included over 1,000 allusions and four other languages, Latin, German, French, and
Italian, all before the Internet existed. His epic includes numerous references, many of
which capture a slice of time to preserve an era, particularly the American South, though
his epic includes an international range of content. Actors and film titles, radio stations
and recordings, clubs and restaurants, paintings and artists, come to life in The
Battlefield’s world.
This text has three parts: an outline, an expanded outline, and an alphabetical list of The
Battlefield’s allusions, including translations of lines in languages other than English
(names and spellings in this section are as they appear in the text).


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Outline
This section uses page numbers to show different parts of The Battlefield.
Opening Sequence/Introduction of Themes pp. 1–12
World’s Smallest Man, The Freak Count Hugo pp. 12–17
Pantagruel/Midsouth Fair
“Freak’s Letter”: Floating Utopia pp. 18–25
(foreshadows Abraham’s Knife)
Charlie B. Takes Francis to the Black Section pp. 25–36
of Memphis
Lyric Dream Sequence pp. 36–40
Story of Mr. Rufus Abraham/Owner of pp. 40–44
Abraham’s Knife (a bend in the river)
Lyric Dream Sequence: Orphanage/ pp.44–47
Francis in Boat
Bobo and the Battle Royal with the Catfish/ pp. 47–63
White Dominance/Old Man and the Cat


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Lyric Dream Sequence Beginning “ooooo… pp. 63–66
went the barge horn”/ Cybele Mistress
Francis Leaves School and Goes to pp. 66–71
Astronomer’s House for Dinner
Francis and the Neglected Wife pp. 71–76
Last Supper in Vernacular/ Populist Jesus pp. 76–78
Francis’s Sermon Drawing The Social pp. 78- 80
Battle Lines/ Classical Martial
Imagery (armor)/ Teacher Séance
Race and Class in Memphis pp. 80- 82
Dream Shift pp. 82- 83
Sylvester the Black Angel pp. 83- 109
Dream Shift/Dodging Dream Bullets pp. 109–116
/Wrestling with God
Duel of Girl and Boy and Francis Escapes pp. 116–126
With Her Body


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Francis and Jimmy in Snow Lake pp. 126–163
Roundtree’s Story/Bartender at Country Club pp. 163–166
Orphanage and the Grandfather Clock/ pp. 166–168
Francis escapes
The Hindoo Boy’s Letter/Tale of How a Noble pp. 168–174
Race of Men was Born
Lyrical Transition pp. 174–176
Dark and the Sunday Baseball Game pp. 176–177
Francis Tells How Jimmy Got “six months”/ pp. 177–183
Poisoning the Rednecks and Their Dogs
Dark (sitting in the saddle with him) pp. 183–184
Clyde Miller’s Sunset Drive Inn/ Segregation/ pp. 184–214
Exploitation/ Revenge and Rebellion
Lyric Transition/ How Can I Tell You pp. 214–218
Shift to Drive Inn/Mexican Boarder War/ pp. 218–220
Sylvester/Gorilla vs. Guerilla


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Bus to Mound Bayou to See the pp. 220–224
Hypnotist (Abednego)
Begin Story of Policeman and the Music Box pp. 224–225
Dream Shift pp. 225–229
Riding with Dark on Mule pp. 229–233
Concludes Story of Policeman and the pp. 233–235
Music Box/Shifting Dreams (time travel)
Freedom Ride and Vico pp. 235–298
Drive Inn pp. 298–299
Lyric Sequence pp. 299–333
Prelude to the Utopian Community on p.336–340
Abraham’s Knife/Last Time/Big Mamma
Jimmy and Francis Stay in Hotel/Eyeballing pp. 340–345
Keyholes
Snatch’s Truck Stop-Saloon for Coffee/ pp. 345–355
Sonny Liston 1930–1970 (aka “The Big Bear”
was born in Arkansas and became world


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heavyweight champion boxer in 1962)
Anti-Vietnam War/ Old Man’s Story/ p. 355–369
Elvis in Memphis/Bill Willett Scene/
Lyrical Sequences
Utopian (Island) Abraham’s Knife pp. 369–377
Conclusion/Francis and Baby Gauge pp. 377–383
Aboard Luxury Liner Giotto, Touring for
Successful Film of Francis’s Stories


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Expanded Outline
This section uses the page numbers from the outline in combination with line numbers,
which include notes.
Page number Line(s)
Opening Sequence/Introduction of Themes pp. 1-12
F’s “first mammy’s” funeral (Mama Covoe) 3-30
“Investiture by the magical father” 28
Mother, father, and drunk peckerwood 30-31
daddy kicked his teeth in
Describes Snow Lake 38-49
“I dream”/”I can dream” anaphora 55-62
Outlaw Johnny Lee Dowd 78
(Mr. Frank) “daddy on a horse” 163
“I know” anaphora from “what do you know 215-289
about current events”
“I know” anaphora continuation 327-338
World’s Smallest Man, The Freak Count Hugo pp. 12-17
Pantagruel/Midsouth Fair
“the midsouth fair” 460
“every hillbilly in Arkansas will be there” 462
“world’s smallest man’s tent” 485
smallest man begins telling story of “some football 524
players and some wrestlers” who taunted him
in a matador suit
Francis says he has the opera Carmen 527
Count Hugo sits on F’s shoulder 547
Count says he “was the saddest of the side shows” 548
“I said” anaphora begins—“the horses drowned 560
in whirlpools”
describes fair crow “driven by gimmicks” 580
smallest man continues story of boys who taunted him 585
“I said” anaphora ends—“… that wrestler wasn’t 597


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Sputnik Monroe was it…”
World’s smallest man, Count Hugo castrates wrestler 614
Smallest man leaves with fair until next season 643
Smallest man doesn’t come back with the fair next year 648-654
Francis has compassion for calling “the world’s 676
smallest man a freak in front of him”
“Freak’s Letter”: floating utopia pp. 18-25
(foreshadows Abraham’s Knife)
Letter is first mentioned 684
F recalls flirting with a female teacher 775-830
at a lake retreat
teacher drowned in Mississippi 830
“the letter from the freak” 831
“dear Francis it said” 839
Count’s eight month murder sentence 854
For killing Crawling Vine (a hermaphrodite)
Kudzu/Vine ambush/burning cat/cannibalism of Vine 870-896
The Floating Troupe of the Unnaturals 902
“signed with an X Count Hugo Pantagruel 959
the world’s smallest man and friend of the devil
Francis as benefactor of the Count’s ashes 966
Charlie B. takes Francis to the black section pp. 25-36
of Memphis
“we drove down to the section they was frying catfish” 981
“barge horn on Wolf River” 987
(Lyric transition) “verily I dream about drawn swords” 994
Francis in school 1081-1101
teacher on intercom says “Francis is having another fit” 1101-1102
Francis tells principal to “get fucked” 1120
“girlfriend whispering through the keyhole” 1122
boys shooting marbles tell him to “do the Wolf man” 1123
F does a Russian dance and signs out as “Wolf Man” 1125-1127
teacher catches F writing a poem and makes him read it 1131-1133
“the poem was about a girl with black hair” 1141
“I got my idea for my entry in the Science Fair 1160
from the astronomer
“I entered the Science Fair with my planetarium 1177
made out of kotex boxes
second favorite hobby is “riding around 1185
with Jimmy in his beat-up Ford


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“Charlie B. wrote me a note to get out I played a good hooky” 1193
“we went downtown and got a fresh car 1195
we had it fried I swigged a little beer”
Charlie B. Lemmon “the chauffeur in the red beret/ 1202-1203
they call him vitamin C for the women”
“some of the cats call him Midnight Blue” 1207
F takes the wheel of the Cadillac 1216
“I turn the air-conditioning on but we ride 1223
with the automatic windows down”
“after we get out a ways he lights up a weed” 1224
stop to see the barber Trueblood (so Charlie 1247
can as “if his friend [Mud] was dead or not”)
story of Mud bitten by an albino bat 1251-1268
barber slitting prison rat’s throat recollection 1273-1278
black man who “collects [money] for white mens” 1289
Charlie and Tickle Willey and Soap owe on a “sky 1292
Blue dyna-flow Buick”
Charlie and F leave White Spot for Beale Street 1309
beanflip (slingshot) and horse throws policemen 1312-1314
F asks Charlie B if they “got time to go by the 1320
orphanage and spring somebody today”
Charlie B replies, “…let’s wait till next week…” 1321
on the car ride F says, “I think the best thing in life 1323-1324
is to help an orphan escape from Saint/
Blaise Home of Destitute Children”
“just one mo week” and F’ll be out of town, school, 1326
and done with psychic tests
F asks Charlie B. is he can say n-word 1336
F says n-word four times then Charlie B. 1341-1347
says, “…nuff fah one day don’t get out of hand”
Lemmon in back seat by County Health Office scene 1354-1362
Visit Tickle Willue who tells that Soap died and repo 1363-1369
man “is coming to take [the] Buick away”
Lemmon and Willie strip Buick and set it afire 1375-1397
Repo man and “two white men” with notepads 1398-1414
and “ball point pens” arrive
Lyric Dream Sequence pp. 36-40
“I lay in a boat I dream” 1418
“no” litany 1458-1470
an ode to Beethoven’s hands 1496-1510
“and the scarf of the somnambulist floats behind me” 1536
“come back cat” or your kittens will die “behind 1570-1572
the outhouse”


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Story of Mr. Rufus Abraham/owner of pp. 40-44
Abraham’s Knife*
Rufus count his money and F helps bury the “coffins 1585-1608
of copper and silver “
Rufus’s sign full “of buckshot holes” and “the stains 1612-1625
of bacca spit”
F helps Rufus with work in outhouse 1626
F helps Rufus with his constipation 1647
Rufus says his children aren’t alive and he needs 1657-1672
F to guard his money and his property
from “white men” after he’s dead (and R
says∗
, “…by the time you is growed the Knife
will be worth plenty,” giving F idea to start
a “baitshop or a fishing camp” and giving F
“a quartah” of the estate)
Rufus farting and telling story of welder behind Bohannah’s 1673-1687
who has worked on a “rocket that gone/ blow up
Wushenton D. C.”
F tells of movie (Shanghai, 1935) with Charles Boyer 1687-1704
whose mother “kilt herself”
F tells Rufus about (culturally-intellectually seductive) 1706-1711
astronomer back in Memphis
Rufus thinks he’s constipated because of the “white 1727
shithooks” who want to take his land when he dies
buried stolen cash 1731-1733
Rufus tells F his funeral plans 1744-1753
Rufus dies in outhouse 1753-1755
Half-mast flag on river 1756-1759
Lyric Dream Sequence: orphanage/ pp.44-47
Francis in Boat
Orphanage worker plays Kindertotenlieder on 1760-1765
gramophone as a memorial for a boy’s suicide
Litany of beating and battle metaphors 1767-1811
that carry adverse connotations
“like somebody’s older sister in Memphis…” 1813-1823
Francis “fall[s] into water on purpose” 1824

* a bend in the river
∗
foreshadows the end
† from “Compendium of Characters in Frank Stanford’s Poetry” by A.P. Walton
∗
foreshadows the end


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Francis in boat 1838
“I glide past it all” (astral traveling) 1842
“the gars are my companions [arced image from first line] 1843
I greet them with a pain in between my eyes”
“my dreams like” litany 1777-1870
Bobo and the Battle Royal with the Catfish/ pp. 47-63
White dominance/Old man and the cat
F in store with men, cold outside, in walks Bobo 1876-1880
Bobo being tall tale of dog and cat 1881-1890
Bobo tricks white boss from fishing spot 1902-1919
Bobo tells boss where to find “dirt dobber” bait 1920-1922
Bobo fishing for catfish, using “some side meat” 1930-1934
Bobo using “big green loogies” to fish 1935-1938
catfish strikes 1939
Bobo says if catfish “don’t take it today” then he 1943-1949
will go to the “old man’s horse barn,” kill
the old man and use his liver for bait
Bobo talks to the catfish, coaxing and conjuring 1953-1973
white boss bitten by moccasin while trying 1981
to find dirt dobbers
Bobo continues to conjure the catfish 1994-2009
POV shifts from Bobo telling the story 2009
See Bobo battle catfish 2010
the dog shows up 2029
Bobo, dog, and catfish fight from shore 2029-2071
Within Bobo, dog, catfish battle:
Bobo’s ear has been chewed off by a rat 2039
Bobo was in Hawaii during Pearl Harbor 2054
Bobo’s “children are dead and his wife is gone” 2056
moment of paramnesia 2060-2061
Francis sees empty boat that looks “like a coffin” 2079-2080
bulldozer engine falls onto mechanic because 2081-2084
a grasshopper landed on the engine
mechanic “cut[s] a joke” about having head crushed 2089-2090
shade tree mechanic’s last will and testament and death 2093-2122
F hit in head by “two white men” and tied in boat 2125-2128
adrift on river
horse thieves try cutting F’s tongue out 2129-2130
F, tied up in boat, says, “I can hardly breath/
I’m telling you I ache but I know there’s people
on this earth bound to be/ hurting worse than


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me so I’m going to quit feeling sorry for myself
and look at/ Bobo now…”
F sees Bobo battling catfish (and dog) on the bank 2146-2180
Bobo sees F 2180
aviator cap that belonged to Bobo’s son, who was 2180-2197
F’s blood brother
memories with Bobo’s son 2198-2236
Bobo sees F, let’s catfish go, and swims to the boat 2238-2240
Bobo saves F 2241
dog follows catfish 2242
Shift in story (“like a dream”) 2244
F addresses reader 2245
Abednego the Gypsy (“most wanted man in the county 2259
the quickest knife fighter on the river)
Omniscient POV narrates picture show scene 2260-2270
Ray Baby and third cousin 2277-2278
scar on Abednego’s “thick bottom lip” 2282
projectionist falls asleep while film ends 2285
the Gypsy throws knife “at the empty light” 2294
man on stilts walking through crowd to the tent 2296-2298
that shows movies for a dime
projectionist speaks on the mix-up of films 2300-2302
audience gets upset 2303-2306
projectionist starts a move “made by a camera/ 2307-2308
not invented as yet…”
“silence comes once again to the tent in Snow Lake” 2309
Abednego “says the comedy [movie] is beinning” and he 2310-2335
dances and his cape flows in front of audience
F says the Gypsy and him are en route to New Orleans 2344
“baldheaded man of God” shoots the Gypsy 2350-2362
the Gypsy is wounded not dead 2363
“blood seeping through the clown pants” (reminder 2370
that Abednego was dressed as a clown)
F speaks to reader and goes back to tear in tent 2375
with Ray Baby on Snow Lake
audience watching movie 2380-2388
audience sees black and white film of Bobo 2388-2389
on the shore looking at F (where we left him)
alternate take on Bobo’s ending as a film “inside the tent 2390-2397
in Snow Lake” starts
making a new film about Bobo and the catfish and 2397
“suppose the camera was in my boat” 2398
camera comparison to a doe 2400-2401
metaphor for what it is like seeing Bobo through 2405-2427
the eyes of a deer (camera in boat)


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Franz Schubert crackling film score 2428-2432
scene of catfish, Bobo, and dog introduced 2433-2437
Bobo kicks foot through the gills and “out the 2440
fish’s mouth”
Bobo speaks to the dog 2447-2452
catfish digs a hole and swims off 2457-2470
catfish swims toward F in boat 2471
Bobo handling clear fishing line, “the 2473-2484
slippenist shit I ever did see”
F is the “only friend/ Bobo is got” 2484-2485
“that fish line with the sunlight on it like a tight 2494
rope nobody’s going to walk”
“crack like a rifle the line breaks” 2497
Bobo breaks dog’s jaws in half 2505
F in boat turning around 2509
catfish towing F in boat 2511-2512
going away from land with catfish that has knife 2514-2516
stuck in its back
Lyric Dream Sequence Beginning “ooooo… pp. 63-66
went the barge horn/ Cybele mistress
F sleeping in a high back chair 2518
F smoking a cigarette 2520
hunchback servant wearing a fez appears 2521
F’s telekinesis 2530
Word choice: buzz saw vs. chainsaw 2533
“[Cybele] woman with eyes like crushed blueberries” 2540
F as satyr 2543
“in the seventh grade next year” (F’s age) 2545
blueberry-eyed woman sliding down 2548
“circular banister”
“…out there I can hear the black ice as tall as masts/ 2549-2550
groaning like bears with no legs”
F and woman (erotic) scene (nautical like a wet dream?) 2551-2574
hawk eye story 2575-2595
“he is in his second mind” 2598
“wait it’s coming I know it is like a blue curtain/ 2599-2600
when my ships comes in…”
“when I see the insignia of the foe the white bulls of ice” 2607
“that Cybele who did bear me…” 2611
erotic scene with F and Cybele 2612-2620


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Francis leaves school and goes to pp. 66-71
Astronomer’s house for dinner
“sit down Francis I am tired of your impulsive 2624
outbursts in class”
“I walk of the room I say Miss Fulgum 2625
this chevalier needs to piss”
F steals a couple library books 2629-2630
F walks to astronomer’s house 2630
astronomer’s butler welcomes “master Francis” 2631
with “cookies and milk”
astronomer’s adopted daughter is not there 2632-2633
F sees Henri Rousseau’s painting “The Sleeping Gypsy” 2635-2636
F likes the astronomer who let’s F be himself 2638-2639
butler and F talk about the stolen books 2640-2643
supper with astronomer who wears a “beautiful robe” 2644-2646
and asks about F’s parents
astronomer asks F what they should talk about and then 2647-2665
talks about various things, including Villon
(Montcorbier), Rablais (Alcofribas Nasier),
the American Western series Have gun—Will Travel,
Shakespeare, Beatrice, Dante Alighieri,
and (Candido) Portinari
astronomer says, “Francis tell me what you see” 2666
F says what he saw 2667-2668
astronomer asks F to “see it again” 2669
F brings up cousin who died in Civil War fire 2670-2671
F says Civil War story was a lie and cousin died drunk 2672-2674
at “a Sunday picnic in Virginia)
snakes in the levee story 2679-2700
astronomer says “don’t stop [telling stories] Francis” 2720
F starts story about Sylvester 2721
anaphora “I saw” to talk about “the people of the town” 2722-2725
locations in Mississippi (Quiver River, Black Bayou, 2731-2733
Bogue Phalia)
flora listed 2734-2735
Sylvester, a peanut farmer running trotline, described 2735- 2744
Sylvester’s self sacrificing mother 2745-2748
Sylvester dumped in coffin 2750
F recalls cane fife playing Sylvester like pied piper in woods 2752-2756
origin of the Sylvester’s name “black angel” 2757-2758
metaphors and similes of Sylvester 2759-2775
Sylvester’s outhouse had a speaker hooked up to it 2778-2780
Sylvester said he was a “dicty cat from way on back” 2783
Sylvester’s mother sold spells 2785-2787


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F knows who killed Sylvester by “signs” and “whispers” 2789
narrative about tadpole poured out of a Nehi bottle 2790-2796
backwoods politics and policing 2796-2808
Sylvester (or Rufus?) ambushed in outhouse 2808-2811
man who runs newspaper privy to the killing 2812-2820
F (Beowulf) rails against newspaper editor (Unferth) 2820-2828
Francis and the neglected wife pp. 71-76
F given invitations by wives to “eat their good cooking” 2836
Jewish woman from NY (husband rom TX) invites F for dinner 2829-2841
F says what he does for fun and “considers [himself] a poet” 2843-2844
husband eats then leaves to polish shotgun and play cards 2845-2847
F unwell from drinking 2849-2850
F goes to bathroom, throws up, and finds vibrator 2852-2878
wife says F’s face looks red and ask him to sit in her lap 2878-2882
wife tells him her son, who would have been about 2883
the same age, was run over by a garbage truck
F stops listening to wife and starts dreaming about sun discs 2885
Frenchman and gypsy and monk hanging from bell tower 2888- 2902
shift in “I have” before more dreaming 2903-2907
“my dreams” metaphors and similes 2908-2914
strange moment with in “slim woman’s lap 2918-2823
then older gentlemen pedophilia-like reflection
wife moves F while he sleeps and he comes to 2924-2925
wearing her dead son’s sailor suit and nothing else
wife and F bathtub tickle scene 2925- 2935
(neglected) wife has one breast 2936
wife bathing F and having him suckle her 2937- 2944
wife put her tongue in F’s asshole 2947
F jumps in reaction to wife’s tonguing and busts 2948-2949
his head open and is knocked out
naked F wakes up next to bloody pillow on a large bed 2949- 2953
while wife masturbates with vibrator
F cries, wife wants him to suckle her again, and he 2955-2959
mentions a girl (Veronica Novareese) his age
to ask out next Saturday night
addresses reader-audience with personification 2960-2961
of Death/Sleep
one eyed dreamer lyrical transition 2962
F called “sleepy-eyed fish boy” 2977
Dionysus allusion 2983-2986
F tells the woman (the wife, maybe named Lucy?) about 2987-2993
his hawk
Sir Richard Burton, William Blake and President 2994-2998


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Eisenhower referenced
“I would like to quit school and go back and live in a tent” 2999
afraid life will end 3000
afraid of the Unferths 3001-3005
Last Supper in Vernacular/ Populist Jesus pp. 76-78
Jesus starting supper with his buddies 3006- 3008
Matthew/Simon talking and Simon talks about 3009- 3014
walking up on Jesus when he was alone
Jude talking and mentioning how Jesus wanted wine 3015- 3020
from Mesopotamia
Jesus (“the boss”) talking about towns people after him 3021-3029
Jesus addresses Peter 3029
Jesus asks Judas to go out side 3030-3031
John/Peter talking 3032-3034
Matthew says he thinks Jesus has been drinking a bit much 3035-3036
Jesus asks apostles not to get “involved with women” 3037-3038
James the Lesser says Jesus has been “shaking up 3039-3043
with all those town girls”
Thomas speaks up (Jesus cussing out a priest) 3044-3047
Matthew want Jesus to write down what he wants 3048-3050
since Peter “won’t get anything right”
Bartholomew says it won’t matter because Paul 3051-3052
will tell his story his way
Jesus, with “wine spilt all over his robe,” 3053-3054
“mumbling to himself”
Jesus can count on John the Baptist 3055-3057
John says Jesus says they’re “chickenshits” 3059-3061
Jesus talking to himself, wanting to pull down temples 3062-3063
Philip says to wake up Jesus 3064
Paul, who did not drink a sip, talks to Jesus 3065-3070
“redneck’s wife” says the healed was drunk not lame 3070-3071
Paul saying they need to organize 3072-3076
Jesus says not to talk to the temple people 3077
John speaks 3077-3085
Jesus says he will change his tactics 3086-3089
Paul says they could go back to biting off fish heads 3090-3091
Peter adds that they could also bite off chicken heads 3091
Paul says he wants in rather than always following Jesus 3092-3095
Jesus chimes in then sees Judas walking up the steps 3096-3097
Jesus and Judas greet each other 3098
John the Baptist asks if Judas was talking to some white folks 3100
Scene with Jesus and apostles ends with a chord on guitar 3101


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Francis’s Sermon Drawing The Social pp. 78- 80
Battle Lines/ Classical martial
imagery (armor)/ Teacher séance
Social-economic exploitation of black folk musicians 3102- 3108
Prayer: “Jesus deliver me from the lawyers and the teachers3110-3111
and the preachers/ and the politicking flies”
“I am death and you are sleep I am white and you are/ 3112-3116
black brother” discourse
Possible Ray Charles reference (“blind man” musician) 3117
Took over land (by “signs,” “whispers,” “a kiss,” “a gun,” 3117-3119
a “fountain pen”)
Reference to “The Way Faring Stranger” (song) 3120
Harkens back to Snow lake 3121-3126
F says he’d put more faith in a fishing pole than a word 3127
Thinking about school 3128-3130
F wants to feed the world his dreams 3130-3131
F’s ship spinning 3131-3132
Washington D.C. folks took all the lifeboats 3132-3133
F predicts, using “I tell you” anaphora, that “one day
a train will arrive and it will arrive like a general” 3134-3135
F daydreams during class (his dreams ride ponies) 3136-3137
Story of unnamed man who finds his family “stabbed 3137-3147
and tied up like hogs”
Rebellion against authority 3148- 3154
Ecphonesis (“oh dreams” anaphora) 3155
F breathes onto his image on a jambeau (a piece of leg armor) 3156
F setting sail with brother night 3157-3163
F says he is dead like his mother 3164
F intends to put of a good fight with the jaegers 3167-3168
Surreal imagery (including associative classical 3169- 3179
martial imagery, i.e. jack tar, gorget, rapiers)
(Personification of) dream “run over in the middle of the road” 3180-3181
F with “chaplet of ashes and ice” travels through valleys 3182
F sees maidens crying 3183-3184
F sees teachers in the halls in day then he sees them 3185-3187
at night drowning “unweened” puppies
Teacher séance at the water’s edge (water level rising) 3188-3193
Race and class in Memphis pp. 80- 82
Entering the city limits 3195
Teachers accusing black people of wrong doing 3198
Diseased teachers grading 3199


20
Teachers looking out the windows 3202-3203
F points out that the teacher have excellent credit 3204
F says don’t be late or a wife will ask you to suckle her 3206-3207
F wants to leave “neighborless hood” (maybe W. Memphis) 3208
What F sees out the lunchroom window 3211-3220
Someone slips F a note in class 3224
Cow tongued teacher saying watch the President on TV 3225-3228
F dreams of submarines and roosters floating down canal 3229-3230
F drinks 5-cent milk in lunchroom and shoots duet fingers 3231-3234
F escapes Sherwood Junior High 3235-3237
F comes to edge of woods and see Emmett (Don Moon) 3238
Emmett lights firecracker (in outhouse?) in “redneck’s sole” 3240-3242
and he and F leave
White man (in outhouse?) says, “Blast those fucking children” 3243
F says he knows where they can pick change off sidewalk 3246-3247
Emmett says they should get Eskimo pies so they buy two 3249-3250
Emmett may be Black Native American 3253
Emmett (Don Moon) says he is from LA 3255
Don Moon and F come up on Mack Son, a blind kid 323257-3259
helping his mom clean fish
Don Moon and F ask Miss Adeline (Mack Son’s mom?) 3263-3264
for ice tea
They go inside fish shack and see a man high, playing records, 3265-3267
and Mack Son’s sister making beans
Don Moon says to watch Mack Son throw a fish head to 3268-3269
the chickens
Dream shift pp. 82- 83
Someone calls F from the levee and the dream’s 3270-3271
throat is cut
F is far off in his dream world and never doesn’t see 3272- 3274
the three or four people who called again
Astral tripping taught by “men at the college” (professors?) 3275-3278
Clairvoyant moment with granddaddy 3280-3284
Grandaddy’s ghost (dies like Cesar Vallejo) 3285
Another astral trip in mid winter granddaddy and F 3286-3287
go to camp to check on equipment
In a daydream the day before Baby Gauge came to camp 3287- 3292
and tells F he saw him lighting a fire in the water
Another astral trip—this time to a seamstress’s old home 3293- 3300
in which a haunted sawing machine exists
Another dream, a scary one 3301-3303
F’s dream “simmer down” and flare up “like boarder wars” 3304-3309
F dreams “all lawyers and teachers and government” 3310-3311


21
gagged and bound”
F associatively thinks of a hatchet that reminds him 3312- 3314
of talking with Sylvester the Black Angel
a year or so ago
Sylvester the Black Angel pp. 83- 109
Sylvester says many killings could facilitate 3315-3317
cannibalism market
F doesn’t think people would eat each other 3318-3319
Sylvester’s old work days 3320- 3330
Racist deputy taking Sylvester to Arkansas 3330-3333
Racists in power feeding dead prisoners to hogs 3333-3334
Betrayal/lynching that Sylvester’s mom and F see 3339- 3343
F and Sylvester’s mom cut hanging man 3344-3345
Body falls in river and floats down it 3346- 3349
F put cotton moccasin in Fat Man’s (truck) cab 3351-3354
F blows up Fat Man’s truck 3354- 3356
Hanging tree pushed over 3358-3360
F imagines being a “big black bass” 3361-3362
Gets back to singing song [telling epic tale] about Sylvester 3363
Radioactive vs. retroactive wordplay 3365-3369
F at court house to check if Sylvester has jail time 3370-3383
Radioactive vs. retroactive word play 3383- 3390
Sylvester and fishermen getting crabs to sell 3391-3393
Sylvester catches big eel 3393-3394
Sylvester doesn’t accept retroactive pay 3395-3399
Bible reference to Deuteronomy 3400-3403
Warrior swordsman imagery 3404-3406
Sylvester the Black Angel walking into trees 3407-3409
Sylvester wearing a noose 3410
Sylvester as “radioactive” 3411-3417
Sylvester as Moses 3418-3419
Geiger counter from comic book 3419-3420
Sylvester’s found rusty guns as evidence in court 3421-3423
F comments on the fairness of the trial 3423
F goes to newspaper office 3424-3425
F walks in on a man “beating his meat” 3425-3429
F asks what happened to Sylvester 3430-3432
Six year old boy “confesses to witnessing Sylvester 3433-3434
Martingale” committing rape
Transition to time travel/quandary or two acts 3435-3438
“two acts were carried out in my dreams” 3439-3441
Dreams in mauve covered bed about walking into 3442
newspaper office


22
Sees man zipping up his pants and “hoisting his meat” 3443-3445
with twine from Sylvester’s noose
Comments on Ishmael (Moby Dick) having secret brother 3448- 3458
Man in newspaper office says he knows how and why 3459-3462
Sylvester died but says he has a meeting in
City Hall
“dual dream” 3464
F astral travels 3466-3468
I saw anaphora section in dual dream 3469-3485
F “to slay Unferth who was in the guise of the 3486-3488
newspaperman”
Avenging Sylvester’s death dream splits to second dream 3489
In second dream F sews a man’s mouth shut with the twine 3490-3495
from Sylvester’s noose and knocks out a kid with
a slingshot and shines the newspaper man’s boots
F dreams about killing Unferth by cutting him up 3498-3520
to avenge Sylvester’s death
F wishes he could record the killing 3521-3522
Knife falls from F’s hand 3523
F let’s the evil one called Unferth off 3524
Evil will return and F will be ready 3525-3526
F comes to and thinks of Sylvester 3526
Sylvester and F used to sit on a bench and talk and finish 3526- 3553
each other’s song
F asks what Sylvester’s reading 3554
Sylvester says he’s reading about boarder wars 3555- 3567
Bombs vs. bumbs wordplay begins 3568-3569
Crazy talk with Sylvester (including bombs/bumbs) 3570-3601
Customer drives up to the liquor store and interrupts convo 3602
Sylvester opens “Wonder Bread screen door” for white man 3603
Sylvester cusses about the white man and F says 3607-3611
someone will hear the cusses one day
War talk in newspaper/bomb vs. bumb/gorilla wordplay 3612- 3636
Atom bomb, Korean War, WWII
F mentions that Sylvester and he are blood brothers 3637
Sylvester says the bible and the Memphis paper are his 3640
where his views come from
F talks about bombs not killing gorillas 3641- 3643
Wagon wheel from Italian fruit vendor comes off 3646-3648
One legged vendor 3652
Sylvester got beaten by the one legged wrestler 3653-3656
Gorilla vs. guerilla wordplay 3657-3658
F ask if Sylvester has seen the wooden legged man 3659-3660
churn butter to which Sylvester replies
he saw the man drink from his wooden leg
Sylvester asks F to get cantaloupe from the Italian 3662-3705


23
Gypsy vendor
At the license plate covered wagon F meets a “girl 3705- 3724
dirty as sin” (he falls for her)
F gives the “one quarter bambino” a black patch 3725
She says the man is her “poppa” (not her husband) 3728
Love scene between F and the girl 3730-3747
F brings the melon to a bench 3748
F sees the fruit seller in the field 3750
F doesn’t feel bad about the encounter with the daughter 3751
“it was like the moon said I love you” 3752
Sylvester asks why F left without getting change and 3753-3755
cuts the melon
F sings blues lyrics 3756-3760
Sylvester adds lyrics 3761-3764
Sylvester gets out of hammock to slice/eat cantaloupe 3766-3779
F thinks of the black angel 3781
F shares what he learned about guardian angels 3782-3787
“Two rednecks” exit liquor shop and get onto Sylvester 3788- 3791
about not putting melon seeds in newspaper
and F talks back to two
F mentions his “big shot daddy” 3792- 3799
Sylvester tells F to stop talking to himself 3800
The two men leave and F flips them off and throws 3801-3807
a rock at their vehicle
F and Sylvester recall when F terrorized a group 3808-3834
of boy scouts as Tarzan
Sylvester uses guerilla (correctly) world play 3835
F wishes he’d not said mean things to Sylvester 3836-3837
F wishes to take back when he put a snake in a slop jar 3838-3839
F recalls destroying bubble gum machine at barbershop 3840- 3843
F takes back being mean to the cripple barber 3843
(“bless the cripples”)
F wants to take back shattering mirrors at movie theater 3844- 3848
Sylvester says the devil will take F’s sins and F says 3849-3853
he’s ready for his ticket to be called
Sylvester and F talk about proving who knows more 3854-3897
Discussion about wordplay (gorilla vs. guerilla) as it 3898-3988
Relates to written vs. oral traditions
“The world is” anaphora/talk between F and Sylvester 3989-3994
F and Sylvester talk about “old time religion” working 3996-4007
Sylvester and his cousin Mulciber McGillicutty put F 4009-4139
in a coffin and descends into underworld
dreamscape (“their epitaphs in my soil)
As if gets dark F wants out/gets out of coffin angry 4140-4147
(exchanges cutting weeds in the morning


24
to get out)
“this here lame handy man” eats rollie pollie bugs 4149-4164
Mulciber leave, chasing after a black cat 4166-4171
Sylvester says Mulciber will return for the coffin 4173
Sylvester says F has to cut the weeds and they argue 4174-4195
Gorilla vs. guerilla settled during argument 4196-4201
Argue by playing the “I saw” game 4202-4209
F talking about state marble championships and 4210-4221
Nationals
F and Sylvester argue, cussing at each other 4224-4225
Sylvester teaches F a lesson: whoops F’s ass 4226-4263
for calling him the n-word and tricks
bootlegger to get more whisky and gets
to give F a good licking in public without
repercussion (subversion of white authority)
and F has to do the weeding
F bites down on Sylvester’s hand 4264
Dream shift 4265-4272
F naps in coffin and Sylvester naps in hammock 4273-4274
F cannot recall if maybe it was the last time he saw Sylvester 4276
Mulciber reappears at dawn with bloody cat’s paw 4277-4278
Mamma Covoe said, “Jesus didn’t study no manners” 4283
Sunny morning and F does not know how Mulciber 4284-4288
took the coffin
F thinks maybe Mulciber built the black angel’s coffin 4289
F socks Sylvester in the mouth while he’s sleeping 4293-4297
Sylvester asks if F is ready to cut weeds 4298
F gets scythe but it is dull and Sylvester says to use 4299-4318
a machete
Call me anaphora 4319-4321
Sylvester ask if he can call F “a no count bastud” and F 4322-4323
says call him what he (Sylvester) pleases
F steals a $150 and get airplane service to write a message 4326-4345
to Mulciber and a message to the one-
gypsy that F loves his girl (daughter)
Dream shift and Dodging Dream Bullets pp. 109-116
Wrestling with God
Hydrographia/characterismus/ topothesia dream shift 4346-4354
“I am me some dummy and my dreams are a ventriloquist” 4355
Shadow of God’s arm in ventriloquist’s back (and 4358-4359
“I saw” game arc)
F as dummy poet that rebels and silences God 4359-4388


25
Dreams using “like” anaphora 4388-4408
Time travelling dreams 4410-4419
Front porch metaphysical dreaming 4420-4424
Arousing dream>association with frog> comments 4425-4429
that God doesn’t do work
Friends, highway travel (highway of distorted visions) 4430- 4438
Highway school bus full of ghost to Miss Bayhalia’s towards 4439- 4450
Memphis
F time travels to eight years before being born 4451-4455
“I’d rather anaphora 4456-4462
Dream that mother cub will find F and keep him 4462-4466
F’s dreams blaze trails in water that can’t be followed 4466-4469
Country of infants who will write the play 4470-4472
Description of F (the poet) 4472- 4484
White women and black women comparisons 4486- 4491
Yearning for Spring and description of late Delta winter 4492-4509
Hound on Indian mound and seasonal Delta descriptions 4510-4530
In a strange place but missing camp and feeling alone 4531-4536
Camp shut down and F is with people he does not know 4537-4539
F wondering if he’s been kidnapped by old couple 4540-4541
F confused by old couple saying he’s been dreaming, 4542-4550
though he wonders if his real parents
were killed
Old racist couple is rude to F, not offering cake, just 4551-4567
watching TV
Old man asks for slice of cake and says he will put F 4568-4569
to work
Revealed that the old man bought F for twenty-two dollars 4569-4570
and a saddle
Old couple wants to castrate F in his dream 4571-4585
A stray mule comes along and F hops onto it 4591-4596
F doesn’t recognize the area and lets mule take him onward 4597-4605
Mule becomes a pony then a horse 4606-4607
F on horse coming to a place of light but horse stops 4608-4614
F bites himself to knows he’s alive 4614-4615
F gets off horse because he sees “two white men” 4616
Duel of Girl and Boy and Francis escapes pp. 116-126
with her boy
F asks the two men about the light and where it comes from 4617-4618
F sees to children ( “I take to be the men’s sons”)—one is a girl 4619-4620
about his age
She wears a white nightgown and her hair braided and 4622-4623


26
adorned with a black bow and F likes
her at first sight
Other kid is “fat and has red hair” and “is a lot taller than 4624-4626
the girl”
F asks what they’re doing and the boy says “fighting a duel” 4627
Girls in shy voice foreshadows her death 4630-4637
The girls says, in French, children who make it across 4638-4640
the line and live are called “infants of the wood”
F asks to duel for her and to have the gun and “shoot the 4643-4648
cracker right between the eyes”
Girl’s father interrupts and says he ordered the duel, her 4649-4652
second, and that F cannot “interfere”
Three birds and then a raven fly by 4653-4656
The father reminds F to take his place 4657
The other father says he will bet on his boy, a phrase 4658-4662
F expands on to church burning fraternities
Duel begins 4663-4665
F makes a move for the girl but “the men threw a 4666-4670
Blanket over” him
F hears a black man’s voice (maybe it is God’s voice) 4671-4678
Epic poem battle imagery that ends with “coat of dreams” 4679-4703
Murderous/suicidal rumination that associatively leads 4704-4730
to talk about death, which is personified
Shift back to the duel 4731
Maybe a scene of the girls committing suicide, which F 4731-4735
relates to and which brings up Sylvester
The voice (maybe God?) comes back (the Black Angel!) 4736-4744
and tells F the girl’s fate
F takes the blanket off (a shift back to duel narrative) 4745
Picks up with girl counting seventh pace 4746
Red haired boy already shot her neck and the fathers 4747-4750
shake hands
F says he doesn’t agree with the act and the girl with 4751-4762
black hair lying and dying in a ditch, wearing
only a robe, is the first girl F’s age he’s seen “undressed”
F kisses her and gets roused 4764
Blood pooling and F kissing the girl and taking her body 4766-4822
across the state line (the “crevice”) to sister woman
F goes back across the line to get a pistol since the Black 4822-4823
Angel advises so
F tries to steal a mare and take the pistol but gets shot 4823-4845
in the back by boy from duel
Horse saves F and they jump over the line 4846-4850
Dream shift to F’s Memphis bedroom with Jimmy 4851-4857
and Elvis walking in “a little drunk” and then


27
leave out the window
Astronomer on his lawn charting the sky and his 4858-4859
naked daughter
F tells them to tell Elvis he “can keep that comb” 4860
About to climb into wrong window—F’s great grandma 4861-4864
F finds lost baseball then takes a bus and he ends up seeing 4865-4870
astronomer and daughter doing something unspeakable
F walks through Black section of Memphis and meets 4871-4875
a limbless harmonica player who scoots on
“mechanic’s board” and asks F to pick him up
F wakes up across the line and falls off the horse 4875-4876
Takes the girl with black hair’s body from sister woman 4877-4878
F recollects quickly about the baseball card shattering 4879-4880
the big mirror in Peabody Hotel’s lobby
F rides into forest with the girl who becomes alive again 4881-4896
and speaks with F and disrobes his black clothes
and she stops bleeding
F says he knows the girl wanted to hold a “black cloud” 4897-4907
in its place in the sky and then he gives a description
(topographia) of the country of his dreams
“I said I love you in the field of honor” 4909
“she was” anaphora 4910-4920
F buries the black haired girl under 300 ft. tall sycamore 4922-4937
(enter F’s Gyrfalcon and the horse to the burial)
F curses “sapsucking straw bosses” and voice again enters 4937-4938
F follows a fallen shooting star and meets Sylvester 4939-4949
F and Sylvester, shirtless in July, talk (“I’m the same dead 4952-4983
as I was alive” quote from Sylvester and also
wordplay—adnominatio— “Sardinia”/”Gardinia”)
Shift in narrative with the line “that is how my dreams change 4984-5000
their course” and “I see” anaphora
F and Jimmy in Snow Lake pp. 126-163
Dream litany bring F to a rainy Saturday morning 5001-5010
conversation with Jimmy
F ask if Jimmy wants to hear about his dream but 5011-5037
Jimmy is not in mood to talk since he’s
beaten up pretty good—F pokes fun at
Jimmy’s “bedside table” and Jimmy
ends up asking to get some juice
F asks Jimmy to tell “about what happened” 5038
Jimmy takes truck to go “to the dance hall and see 5039-5080
the bootlegger” then crosses paths with
Miss Cassie who asks him to check on


28
“her man” (HiLo) and the drunken racists
who got a flat tire
Jimmy takes HiLo and Miss Cassie over to Mama Viola’s 5081-5092
and eats supper
F again asks Jimmy how he got in a fight 5092
Jimmy waiting for bootlegger in dancehall when a racist 5093-5110
from the flat tire scene comes in and then one
racist’s wife comes, wearing no panties, to Jimmy,
and gets him aroused
Bootlegger comes and Jimmy gets alcohol for HiLo (Bacho) 5111-5118
At Mama Viola’s Place (a juke joint)
Racist’s wife likes the French harp player Vash Ty but 5119-5121
he is gay
After a couple hours the power in the juke joint goes 5122-5129
and Mama Viola asks Jimmy to take the wife,
“trash like that,” who Bacho calls a “bitch,” away
since dropping ice down her shirt and “carrying on”
and Jimmy takes her to his truck
Jimmy goes back in to apologize and Mama Viola reminds 5129-5135
him that she runs a “juke joint not no honkytonk”
and she and Jimmy and Bacho say their so longs
Mama Viola’s foreshadowing comment: “ you better watch out 5136-5137
for that big galoot husband of this one… that
cracker will cut you down”
Jimmy says he’ll be back if Viola’s joint is open later and 5137-5141
he sees a storm and black men sniffing dust
Jimmy stops telling story and watches a car go by 5141
F says to keep telling the story 5142
Jimmy blows some dust and listens to plan to “spring 5143-5151
a couple of convicts” and Charlie B. Lemon
pulls up in F’s mom’s car
Jimmy goes back to the “peckerwood’s wife and they have 5152-5156
sex during a storm
F asks why women like Jimmy and they talk about penis 5157-5185
size comparisons regarding aroused and not
aroused, race, and peeing, and F shares short
anecdote about peeing on a river rat
Shifts back to the Jimmy’s fight story 5186
Back to the truck with Jimmy and the wife during rain 5187-5189
Jimmy and the racist’s wife have sex without protection 5190-5216
Gruesome story of her mean child killing its baby sister 5217-5250
Cross from story to dream by way of the rooster 5250-5252
In F’s dream 5252-5265
Jimmy asks if F wants to hear about the fight 5266
Back the story of the baby, who was burned 5270-5272
F asks Jimmy if he thinks F is crazy since he loses himself 5272-5284


29
in dreams a lot
F says Jimmy and Charlie B have done more “shit,” including 5285-5290
meeting Harpo Marx
Story of Jimmy and Charlie B. stealing “the organ out 5291-5309
of those white folks’/church them holy rollers”
F interrupts the story and start talking about his dreams 5310-5346
back in Memphis
F stops to ask if Jimmy is listening to which Jimmy replies, 5347
“go ahead”
Continues back to black woman washing a child in a tub and 5348-5374
the wolf’s milk story
Jimmy interrupts story 5375
Back to F’s dream that includes Italian painters 5376-5391
(Piero Della Francesco, Lodovico Carraci,
Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzetti, Giotto)
Jimmy interrupts to say he dated an Italian girl 5392-5398
“whops” vs. “whips” wordplay and back to F’s dream 5399-5430
talk (including mention of Geronimo and
Savonarola and Hitler and Anne Frank),
which Jimmy comments on here and there
Jimmy asks if F saw “that picture show Diary of Anne Frank” 5430
Jimmy shares his anecdote of seeing the movie and crying 5432-5439
and feeling love for Anne Frank
F asks if Jimmy will return after going to college in the Fall 5440-5444
and getting a girl pregnant
F says Jimmy should become a sailor 5445-5448
Jimmy ask if F knows a line or two about a sailor 5449
“talking about his woman”
F says “yea I know lots of them” and Jimmy in turn asks 5450-5565
about F’s dream song
list of trees 5459-5461
dream of boxing (Lord) Byron 5482-5485
dream song about the black 5486-5565
haired girl
Jimmy interrupts 5566-5568
When F finishes his dream song it’s sunny and rainy, 5569
i.e. “the devil was whipping his wife”
Jimmy tells F to shine his boots if he wants to hear 5571-5574
about the fight
Back to Jimmy’s story (he and the racist’s wife having sex) 5575-5582
The racist’s come back and stomp Jimmy and he escapes 5583-5651
by rolling down the levee and hiding in a barrel
Story of the lady’s husband drinking Jimmy’s piss 5652-5666


30
“I believe the Lord is on your side Jimmy/ if he ain’t 5666-5667
then the Devil is winning by a long shot”
F puts on pants and follows Jimmy “to the porch” and 5668-5676
they talk about what they might do
F and Jimmy talk about maybe using dynamite to 5677-5690
get fish to sell
Jimmy tells F to quit dreaming and F says he isn’t dreaming 5693-5694
F says a Chinese man found a confederate pistol when he 5694-5697
went clam diving
F and the nemesis “midget” talk 5699-5706
Jimmy gets an idea about using the curse chainsaw 5707-5712
F asks if he can finish telling Jimmy “about that dream” 5713
Jimmy says, “make it short” 5714
F talks about Jimmy hogging the bed covers and a hand 5715-5754
over his mouth and Jimmy being dead and then
F shares his surreal dream, which doesn’t take
place in Memphis
Rood the snake swallower enters the dream 5755-5756
Rood, with his black teeth, has a grand entrance 5757-5764
F says Rood now serves in “the Shelby County Penal Farm” 5764-5766
Jimmy says F could charge folks to hear his long sagas 5767-5769
F says he will be done with his story soon and Jimmy 5770-5773
asks F to cut his story short then decides to go
to the bathroom
Jimmy asks F to put on a record while they at the outhouse 5774-5790
(B.B. King>Dixie Hummingbirds>Mahalia Jackson
>the Pilgrim Jubilee Singers>Richard Wagner)
F continues dream with Rood in the carnival, introducing 5791-5808
the world’s smallest man (22”) and the Count
Strong man tearing phone book anecdotes and the twist 5808-5813
that the snake swallower (Rood) and the strong
man are the same person
Jimmy questions the truth but F says it is true (dream vs. 5814-5816
reality)
F recalls newspaper snake bite story in Memphis 5816-5821
Rood gets idea to let snakes out in libraries and during 5822-5843
Winter he went to ripping phone books story
Jimmy’s story of elevator opening with man going down 5844-5852
on a “Mexican woman”
Jimmy asking about F’s dream story 5853-5856
Enter Five Spokes, who steals an undertaker’s lawn 5857-5859
-mower and pushed it from Lula, MS to
Memphis, TN
Five cuts grass for money and it takes him three weeks 5859-5863
to get to Memphis
Five uses cardboard to make new shoe soles to arrive 5864-5866


31
in Memphis “in high style”
Cotton Carnival where Five sees “al black drill and precision 5867-5878
team” (wears his soles out stepping with the team)
and where F meets Five, who needs F as an
escort to the “white carnival” where is run off while
F pees
Five’s picture is in the paper and he hides under carnival tents 5878-5885
Five makes breakfast money by selling newspapers he takes 5885-5972
and he sees a headline about the strong man (who
has tattoos of a zarf and a xebec) and Five runs over
a policeman’s foot and he gets work with his
lawnmower, which he calls Miss Roosevelt, and
when a policeman asks Five about a knife Five
knows how long the blade can legally be, and
Five asks for a drink of water at the police station
Five founds the “colored fountain” and looks at wanted 5972-6019
posters and sees the snake swallower wanted
poster and Five ends up seeing Rood
(because of his zarf and xebec tattoos)
Five studying and thinking about the $1,000 wanted 6020-6044
posters and wanting to know what “zarf” and
“xebec” mean
Narrative switches with F’s spy glasses 6045-6048
Five remembers how to crawl from under the tent 6049-6057
he sees with his spy glasses
Through what Five thinks F defines zarf/xebec 6057-6058
Five, the black boy with a sombrero, wants the reward 6059-6063
and cuts grass and cracks the case
Jimmy interrupts the story and he and F talk about how 6064-6072
much money Five was rewarded and Jimmy
says he wants to kill a guy from Twist, AR
F says Five and Rood already killed the guy and gets back 6073
to telling his dream story
Rood’s story to Five about killing Smart Pants Sammy 6074-6094
the Rat Fink from Twist
Jimmy interrupts out of excited to know how Rood did it 6095-6107
How Smart Pants Sammy (a gay character) got bitten by
a cotton moccasin while coming back form
opening another man’s trunk
Five has travelled to India and learned how to charm snakes 6107-6109
Jimmy asks if the story was real, not a dream 6110
Anecdote of librarian who knew definition of zarf and xebec 6111-6118
“trombones of Wagner” make F forget his explanation of 6119-6127
how he or the librarian knew what the words
mean and he dives back into a dream that
ends with him on his tomb (“dolmen”)


32
F gets back into explaining how language works by 6128-6136
asking Jimmy to recall what a “rebus is,”
something he learned from the astronomer
and “eleven girl friends and twenty-two pen
pals all over this world”—F “will not
violate/the secrets of the rebus”
F tells a story about the rebus, which is his imaginary take 6138-6289
on the acquisition of language in human
history
F mentions he has not read letters from “a boy in Japan” 6290-6293
and “a boy in India” (and he expects a letter
“from Arabia”)
17th
/18th
century French composers (Couperin and 6294-6300
` D’Anglebert) F heard while visiting with
and learning from the astronomer
“last image of the last rebus” (that connect with xebec) 6301-6313
Jimmy asks F to get some “ johnny paper” and F walks 6314-6353
“up the road to the store” and also tells
what else he saw in his dreams
(the “I see” game) (F’s age: line 6326)
Jimmy slaps F out of his dream fit and Jimmy says 6354-6357
“ain’t life sweet”
F sees a man who has the Holy Spirit, singing the blues, 6358-6360
“before sunrise and tears standing up
in [F’s] eyes”
F talks about seeing baptisms, including one when 6361-6367
the baptized was bitten by a snake
F says he’s been in the water “a half dozen times” 6368-6369
F has seen a man in a bulldozer feel the Holy Spirit 6370-6373
and drive it into the bayou
O.Z., Jimmy, and F at camp—Jimmy and F are white and 6374-6382
O.Z. is black, but he is boss there (F’s daddy
wanted to send O.Z. to college, since he read
all the books F’s mother gave him, and O.Z.
was a photographer)
Litany of gifts in Snow Lake levee camp 6383-6410
First day back from camp F goes to Peabody Hotel 6411-6419
in Memphis and F talks about young
girls and older ones
Jimmy talks about being in Greenville 6419-6422
F Jimmy riding around with black (golf) caddies 6423-6436
Reference to Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead” 6436
Back to the story of riding around the country club 6437-6442
Country club fire 6443-6465


33
F’s schedule 6466-6468
Sometimes F feels a lonesome feeling (sad) 6469-6470
F prefers to hang with the caddies 6471
“the help is always better than the ones in the bow ties” 6472
F gives out pieces of his heart 6473-6474
Denton, F’s first cousin, same age 6475-6480
Denton and F showed up drunk at a Cotillion 6484-6487
They lose gambling against a black man F says 6487-6495
should be called THE (Roundtree)
Roundtree’s Story/Bartender at Country Club pp. 163-166
Roundtree with the “Jew” when a tornado may hit 6499-6539
(some attempts to use Yiddish words)
Roundtree and “the Jew” biking away from the house 6539-6546
Roundtree dismounts bike and goes back to the house 6546-6550
Rountree drying glasses thinking of his boy, his memories, 6550-6612
and his wish to make music, maybe “cut a record
in Nashville”—he also imagines being replaced
at the country club where he sells fake “Spanish
fly, and he imagines playing music in Harlem
before wondering where “that Jew” went, and
Roundtree thinks it wouldn’t be so bad working
at the country club on New Year, if his boy
was alive
F strongly senses that Roundtree will help him when needed 6613-6616
Remembering the astronomer taught F to use the word 6617-6621
“irredeemable”
Orphanage and the Grandfather Clock/ pp. 166-168
Francis escapes
“At the orphanage” in the “attic room” of the fourth floor 6622-6638
baby F chewing his nails off
Grandfather clock standing in a dark hall 6639-6640
F tells about winding the clock 6641-6647
F leaves blood in the clock 6647-6651
F leaves the orphanage but first takes the key and 6651-6662
a St. Francis medal and ruins the clock
F sticks an “EYE” on the clock 6662-6666
F packs that night and tells the boys in punishment 6666-6668
he’s leaving
Simile of trading licks, the kind of behavior in which 6668-6672
the astronomer says F should stop taking part


34
F is far down the river, floating in the water, wanting 6672- 6679
to be just a kid again, he does not want
Power, and, when thinking if a cotton mouth
Would bite him, he talks like an Englishman
F sees a bird and says he’s on the water, not under it 6681-6682
(like his brother)
F says he learned to ride a horse when he was twelve 6684-6687
days old (his brother’s horse was black)
“mammy woman” (maybe at orphanage) and maybe 6688-6693
doctors to see when baby F has a dream fit
F circles back to his pen pal letters (F maybe implies 6694-6699
“the Hindoo and that Jap” have the same
dream fits and imaginations)
The Hindoo Boy’s Letter/Tale of how a noble pp. 168-174
race of men was born
F has the letter as a pillow and he recalls the letter 6700-6713
from the third page, which F says’ll make
“talk different,” and F confirms the Hindoo
also has a powerful imagination
F, in boat still, recites the letter (Hindoo boy’s voice 6714-6720
of primogenitor)
Primogenitor chased from village of abused wives 6721-6754
and children
Primogenitor’s birth 6755-6760
From the beginning the primogenitor was taught 6761-6781
to be like a monk and, at age six, he leaves
“in a small ship of reeds” (like Jesus)
One day he is found by a mother and a daughter who 6782-6789
take him and hide him until he is found by
the men in the village—he’s imprisoned
He notices the men in the new village are lazy 6790-6801
He notices there are no young men 6802
He learns the men have lost interest in “themselves 6804-6812
and wine” and they are not smart
He learns about sex from the women, old and young 6813-6822
He was pleasured whenever he was around 6823-6824
One noon a girl and he bathe in wine and enjoy such 6825-6828
hedonism they wake up the men
The men beat and torture the girl 6829-6831
He is marched to the village and chained and he is forced 6832-6840
to have sex with every woman in the village


35
while the men, cuckolds, kick F’s ribs
Primogenitor returns to his village (of “real men”) 6841-6843
Primogenitor tells his (monk) men his story and they want 6844-6855
to defeat the other village
Primogenitor asks if the men remember how to have sex 6856-6864
then they realize they are not so potent
Primogenitor hatches a new plan for attack on the village 6865-6894
of lazy men and the primogenitor falls asleep
dreaming of women, especially the one tortured
in front of him
In the morning the men set out “in [their] boats, one man 6895-6898
to each boat (a fleet)
They arrive as the lazy men send their women to work 6899-6901
and the lazy men retreat, abandoning their wives
The primogenitor’s men are excited to see the women 6902-6905
The mother and the daughter who first found the 6906-6910
baby primogenitor are fist to greet him
The mother says the lazy men are gearing up for battle 6911-6915
Primogenitor asks his beloved where are his children 6916-6921
and the mother says they all, but one boy, are dead
Primogenitor and his men raise goblets to toast the enemy 6922-6940
as they leave the shore and the enemy thinks
flashes of light off the goblets are swords, which
scares the lazy men away, and the primogenitor
his men “put into shore once more”
Each man takes “the woman of his choice” 6941-6942
“thus ends the tale of how a noble race of men was born” 6943
“in one sense a race of bastards” are born from the story 6944-6947
and that is where the “race of singers and makers
of song we now call poets” came from
F comments on the Hindoo boy’s letter 6948-6949
F transitioning the narrative—“I’ll never/make it”… 6950-6953
“put me out of my misery Lawd”
Lyrical Transition pp. 174-176
Ode to F’s mother’s purse 6954-6994
Great grandma is ninety-four and Elvis lives up the St. 6995-6998
in Mississippi
I can’t anaphora (Hattie/body in attic) 6999-7001
I vow anaphora to free animals in MS 7002-7003
The astronomer guiding an imaginative trip 7003-7005
Imagery with chilling connotation, including more 7005-7009
coffin imagery
“my dreams say you will not hear them again” as if 7010-7012


36
they won’t leave a mark
F shall live alone by himself in a shack in Bear Creek Woods 7013-7017
And sing
Litany of “my song” and my dreams are (anaphora) 7017-7026
F suffers from night terrors 7026-7027
“I francis gildart knight of the levees and/ rivers 7028-7030
and ships…” – making his vow
F won’t go into “what happened to Jimmy and me while 7031
he was in prison
Dark and the Sunday Baseball Game pp. 176-177
Dark coming (on his mule) to get F for a Sunday baseball game 7032-7033
Playing baseball without a ball (his hand hurts 7034-7041
after playing catcher and going to bat)
A ball hits F 7042-7044
Jimmy and F are the only whites on the team 7044-7045
Story of a representative from Dr. Tichenor’s 7046-7064
Antiseptic coming to see the King Snakes
(F’s team’s name) for baseball sponsorship
F tells how Jimmy got “six months”/ pp. 177-183
Poisoning the rednecks and their dogs
F says why Jimmy got “a even six months” 7065-7066
Shade Tree Mechanic fixes the chainsaw for Jimmy 7066-7072
Jimmy goes to “chinaman’s/store to buy some 7072-7073
Varmint poison”
Jimmy goes to the honky tonk where the men 7073-7100
are barbecuing and F recalls that he
Melvin saw how they make the bbq pits
Jimmy sees skinned goats and slips into the dog pen 7101-7105
where he breaks a coon hound’s back
The men go to get beer from a cooler and Jimmy puts 7106-7144
the skinned dog on the spit and poisons
the dog and food
“A fat man” comes out and F talks about “fat people” 7145-7152
eating
F says he doesn’t have anything against “fat people” 7152-7156
and uses a James-Tate-like “I like everybody”
F mentions his age (narrator’s age is twelve) 7157
Bum vs. bomb wordlplay 7159-7161
“fat folks” diatribe 7162-7181
Jimmy’s anecdote of Stoole the Fat man and the others 7182-7229


37
eating the meat and getting poisoned
F starts a dream fit but Jimmy punches him awake 7230-7231
F shares a little of his dream then the hit wakes him 7232-7240
Back to Jimmy poisoning the men and they yell racist 7241-7294
Slurs when Jimmy puts on a black version of
a song—one guy says “he saw the mau mau”—
and Jimmy kicks their asses, he pees on them,
Jimy calls Henry Tilt by name and tells him he
skinned his dog, and Jimmy takes the chainsaw
to “saw up the honky tonk,” and Jimmy gets
shocked while “sawing the juke box”
F says he does not want to talk about what happened when 7295-7299
Jimmy went to the penitentiary
Dark (sitting in the saddle with Francis) pp. 183-184
Cut to F riding the mule with Dark, who is described 7300-7317
(F won’t remember the song Dark sang for years)
Cut to F dreaming in the boat 7318-7344
Cut to F in the saddle with Dark, who can get into 7345-7349
F’s dreams
F tells what he was dreaming, which circles him back 7350-7353
to Jimmy
Clyde Miller’s Sunset Drive Inn, Segregation, pp. 184-214
Exploitation, Revenge and Rebellion
Cut to Jimmy and Charlie B. at camp 7354-7371
F goes with Jimmy to get haircut 7372-7374
Jimmy see the “Easter Sunrise Service” poster 7374-7380
at the Drive Inn, where the night
before there will be a “picture show
marathon”
F says he knows the plan brewing 7381-7385
F again reminds his age 7386-7387
Jimmy and Charlie want to get Tang 7388-7402
and they talk about what to wear to the
Drive Inn and at first Jimmy does not
want F to go, but Charlie says let him go too
F explaining “these damned country drive inns” 7403-7466
that trick people to come—F calls them
“dumb rednecks the fucking idiots”—and that
play movies in which some extras are local
people, for example old black movies like “Hallelujah”


38
have Tangle Eye (Tang) and Charlie B. as extras
Tang hops in backseat with F and they drink and drive and F 7467-7476
knows he will be designated driver later on
Charlie B. says he could have been a “STAR” while they 7477-7481
cruise till sundown
Tang in his head and in a mood 7482-7484
They get near the Drive Inn and they see other 7485-7572
black people leaving because the movies
they want to see are not playing—Charlie B.
and Jimmy and F talk about the movies which
becomes it’s own conversation
Jimmy interrupts to ask if Tang wants a brew, and Charlie 7573-7579
takes the wheel over from Jimmy, who gets the beer(s)
F asks to have the swig of the spewed beer and 7580-7584
a little to smoke
In line to get into the Drive Inn they realize it is all 7585-7604
“science fiction and hillbilly music” (not the movies
advertised) and there are not other black people
there and Charlie B., Jimmy, Tang, and F get back and
leave, including F trying to get Jimmy to shoot
at the “redneck cars”
Tang asks them to stop at a store so F can get him some 7605-7607
lunchmeat
F describes Jimmy’s car and F mentions how cool B. and 7608-7621
Tang and Jimmy are while they cruise and get
“pretty high”
F sees a woman emptying a bucket and he remembers 7622-7633
other thoughts, like “you want to kill yourself
on Sundays”
Cut to F on the mule with Dark riding to the baseball game 7634-7636
Cut back to the night before Easter 7638-7639
F guestimates the ages of Charlie B. and Tang 7640-7641
Cut back to F ruminating and riding with Dark 7642-7652
Cuts back to F riding in the car next to Tang 7653-7655
Returns back to F riding “a goddamn shacking 7656-7674
cotton mule with Dark
Cuts back to the car, heading to the Drive Inn 7675-7683
F looks at the screen and sees “the rebus” 7683-7685
Play on veni vidi vici 7686
Cut to F on mule 7677
Cut back to what F saw, James Dean’s face, as they drive 7678-7699
closer to the Drive Inn, which they decide
to go back to
The boys pull into the Drive Inn and they are told 7700-7840
no black people allowed since “colored night
was last night” and the boys (the heroes)


39
exit the Drive Inn, peeling out and hitting a car
cursing the racist Drive Inn owner, Clyde Miller
and Mrs. Miller (Ronnie)
They drive to a store, F gets Tang supper and firecrackers 7841-7867
and shells (ammo) for Jimmy and fishing worms
and hooks on sale, and they drive to the levee, where
F shoots the pistol
F dreams and the narrative cuts to F on the mule still, 7868-7870
talking about the Sunday Baseball game
F on the levee shooting the pistol and F going to a clearing 7871-7899
he has not been to before and F almost shooting
a possum
When F cocks the hammer to shoot the possum 7899-7902
he sees the Drive Inn
F talks about what he sees and hears on the screen 7903-7933
and he shoots the straw boss-dog sergeant
-Sadducee on screen and he yells
The boys drive with coons’ tails off the antenna 7934-79443
to where F is down on the levee because
they think he killed someone and they see
the movie screen and Tang drinks another
F dreams for a second 7944
Jimmy wants to see the movies 7945
Cut to F on mule while Dark sings 7946-7947
F has idea to rent binoculars to watch the movie and to 7948-7966
get a deaf man to read the actors lips and sign
Jimmy disapproves so another ideas to steal “four transits 7967-8000
from U.S. Corps of Army Engineers” and some bottle
cases to sit on—“like four noblemen in the loges
at the opera”
Digresses to Italian opera house 8001-8006
Cuts to F’s rumination on the mule 8007-8015
Cuts back Charlie B. Jimmy, Tang, and F watching movies 8016-8017
Dark interjects about the mule’s one eye 8018-8019
The guys on the dock 8020-8022
Tang sights a fight over a “gypsy girl” 8023-8053
Tang tells story of gypsy girl’s daddy and her 8054-8072
(dad beats her, she ties his wooden leg to
a wagon, there’s a diamond in the leg)
Jimmy interjects and says he would have sex with the 8072-8073
girl, but F says, “no you won’t either,” and F
says he gave her the black patch
The guys give F a hard time for not hooking up with 8074-8084
the girl and a heat lightning and thunder occur
F realizes she kept the black patch 8085-8087
Jimmy, Charlie B., and Tang looking through the telescope 8088-8095


40
at the girl and commenting on her looks
F tells them to shut up 8096
Cuts to F with the mule—he wonders if the girl is “kin 8097-8098
to Abednego”
Cut back to the guys watching through a telescope— 8099-8138
they see her hook up with a guy who goes down
on her while other guys have a circle jerk
as they look in the car windows, which does not
turn Tang and F on
They look back into the telescope and see fighting again 8139-8147
and the girl is in her car masturbating
Jimmy wants to go to her but F says no 8148-8151
F describes the emotion of watching her masturbate 8152-8156
Jimmy, Charlie B., and Tang want to go to her 8157-8160
The four of them watching her get aroused 8161-8175
Dracula appears on screen as the girl “drowns” 8176-8179
The orgasm (“mute scream”) they witness is a kind 8180-8200
of rebus (unusual timing) and they comment
on the girl
F calls them “drunks” in regard to their comments 8201
They three tell F to “shut up boy” 8202
F watches movies and the guys drink till morning 8203-8223
and they pass out so F pours cold water
on them
Charlie wakes and asks if he’s on screen yet 8224
Jimmy asks if anyone plans to go to church 8226-8228
Tangle’s wife passed and he ain’t gone to church 8229-8232
and he says he doesn’t want a church funeral
F tells the to be quiet because Baby Dolls is coming 8234-8244
on – the movie in which Charlie B. was an extra
Tang wants to see Hallelujah because he was an extra 8245-8273
and so was his wife, who died at eighteen
and who was young in the movie—she sings
and there is a close up of her face and there is
a shot of her and Tang walking down Beale St.
Tang says he met F’s dad in 1910 in Pee Wee’s Saloon 8274-8282
and Tang gets arrested with F’s dad, who
bails them out and the two of them steal
two police horses and “passout on the river”
Tang remembers another scene with he and his wife 8283-8284
as extras in Hallelujah
Jimmy waking up and conjuring a “low down 8285-8314
and mean” plan to get “a little religion”
F asks why they don’t ask him to drive 8315-8316
Jimmy reveals he wants to use a bulldozer 8317-8325
Tang says they can get to the Drive Inn by sunrise 8326


41
Charlie B. and Jimmy and Tang like the idea 8327-8328
F reveals he “was stout” for his age while helping 8334-8347
to roll the car to start for the trip back
to the Drive Inn (F hopes Charlie B. will
talk them out of the bulldozer plan to
doze the screen, but Charlie is also “mean
assed drunk”)
F says he will see his “honey” in the “mawning” 8348-8349
F yells that Tang peed himself and Charlie B. 8350-8351
says old men do it all the time
They get to the D Seven Caterpillar and get it started 8353-8381
and F knows the plan could get Jimmy back
to the penitentiary
Jimmy points the way for his “calvary” to charge 8382-8399
and the misspelling causes F to recall
the city spelling B
Charlie B. turns up “the bottle of Early Times” as 8400-8404
he sits beside Jimmy on the dozer
They want twelve year old F to lead the way 8405-8421
by driving the car that has one head light—
F can barely drive, hardly see over the dash,
nearly can’t shift gears—F seems a little out of it
Tang gets the pistol out and shoots at cars 8421-8426
Charlie B. and Jimmy hitting the back of the car 8426
The bulldozer tearing up the road, a man’s field, 8427-8434
and mailboxes
Tang sees a man “slapping his daughter or wife” 8435-8437
and Tang shoots at him
Thunder, lightning, rainy roads, the sun and the moon 8438-8442
F sharing his thoughts 8443-8473
F feels the dozer hit the car and then he hears 8474-8483
“footsteps on the roof” and then “Charlie B.
stuck his head through the window” for
some cigarettes
Charlie B. asks F to wake Tang and ask for weed 8484
They can see the screen lights as it is getting light out 8488-8490
Charlie B. gets the smoke then jumps back to the 8491
dozer
F asks Tang not to shoot anyone 8493-8496
They drive by the preacher’s car with a flat and 8497-8508
Tang shoots the other tire and Jimmy
and Charlie B. cut across to the bulldoze
the fence
Tang gets Jimmy’s Old Spice to spruce up for seeing 8509-8513
his wife
Charlie B. and Jimmy honking and yelling and 8514-8520


42
approaching Clyde Miller’s Drive Inn
Hallelujah title appears on screen and Tang 8521-8538
tells Clyde he will blow his “fucking head off”
if he stops the film from rolling and Tang
gives F the pistol to keep an eye on Clyde
(Ronnie, Clyde’s wife, freaks out)
Tang gets “to see his young wife several times” 8540-8549
F mentions the mule he rides on 8549
Lyric transition/ How Can I tell you pp. 214-218
Shift in the narrative (a lyrical transition) as their 8550-8582
little war on the Drive Inn goes on—
F is in a contemplative
daze as the bulldozer dozes (F talks to reader)
“I can” (tell you) anaphora that ends with the 8583-8588
recording contraption F wishes existed
F’s story of living in a shack with sister who loses 8589-8599
her new shoes a couple years ago
F entering “the old mansions invited or not” 8600-8605
F dreaming of “the odor of a gypsy girl” 8606
Astral dreaming to being born 8607-8614
Sylvester interrupts 8615-8617
F daydreaming “doom” and “destiny” (dichotomy) 8617-8628
F thinking about things the astronomer and a biologist 8628-8648
who F met in “the nut house” told him,
including where to catch fish in water
and surreal UFO/river remarks
Carmine who will have twins, “one dark one light” 8648-8653
Jimmy reenters narrative—he has sex with a rodeo
man’s wife, and the man knows it—he’s 8653-8665
wearing a suit but sagging the pants, he’s
driving a truck and saying he usually is
with “someone not of the white/race,”
and Jimmy’s comment: “I got a soft spot
in my heart for trouble”
Carmine comments: “didn’t get him first” 8665
F talks about seeing “a man left for dead” 8666-8671
Dream shift 8672-8693
Jimmy back into the narrative 8693
Eating and talking with Jimmy 8694-8699
Jimmy mentions getting old and shares his 8700-8705
ideas of married life
Jimmy says he’d be happy with the gypsy girl 8705-8706
after F says Jimmy might have a pot
belly by then


43
F shifts into his inner thoughts 8706-8713
Shift to Drive Inn/Mexican Boarder War/ pp. 218-220
Sylvester/Gorilla vs. Guerilla
Cuts back to the drive in with Charlie B. holding 8713-8717
the dynamite on the dozer
F seeing himself on the ground then and feeling 8718-8725
if he’s been shot by “federalies”
F finds out Jimmy was captured and Charlie B. died 8725-8732
and F wants his girl there while he’s dying
F asks the “Señor” about the gypsy girl—she’s 8732-8733
been captured
F asks if statues will be made of them if they die 8733
F says Jimmy and their black friends and him came 8734-8746
to fight for the Mexicans, but now that he may
be dying F regrets coming (says he has one son
alive still)
“it ain’t no good unless the good guys get killed 8746
in the end”
F asks to get Tang to get him “something to eat 8747-8752
some fish or something” because F does
not want to die with an empty stomach
the “Señor” does not think F will die tonight
F thinks Jimmy may get the gypsy girl after all 8752-8753
Enter Sylvester (who was hung) 8753
Sylvester uses “guerilla” 8756
Sylvester want to be buried in AR (if he dies in Mexico) 8760
F recalls seeing Sylvester’s body taken “down from 8762-8765
a tree”
Tang shoots a man and F says he has on a “blue suit” 8766-8768
and the others are dressed in “white or off white”
F is asked about school tests and he talks about using 8768-8772
the f-word
F “slips” into a digression 8772-8775
Bus to Mound Bayou to See the pp. 220-224
Hypnotist (Abednego)
F buys a bus ticket to Mound Bayou Mississippi to 8775-8801
see the hypnotist and F has to deal with the deaf
ticket man who gives the wrong bus ticket
and F mentions he is going “without one
white person in it/ in this whole country”


44
and he does not want to draw attention to
himself (he goes between black and white
places during a segregated time in US history)
F says he should go up to “some lady,” say he goes 8801-8804
by the name “Bellerophon” (slayer of dragons
and monsters), and asks if folks are going
to Mound Bayou, but he doesn’t do that
Instead he got the old man, the deaf ticket seller, 8805-8818
to go to the bathroom so he could yell, but
they go to the white bathroom, though F says
he usually goes to the “one marked colored”
because he knows “peculiar stuff” happens
in white bathrooms, and sure enough he
sees a guy pee on his leg and then ask to smell
F’s shoe—“scum scum trash goddman there
some/crazy people”
F finally gets ticket but, following the ticket seller’s 8818-8823
direction, he, with his “cigar box” suitcase,
gets onto the wrong bus, and the reason F
wasn’t mindful about the sign on the bus’s
destination is because he was looking at a
“man’s named woman magazine” and “has a rise
in [his] Levi’s”
F goes to the back of the bus and sleeps 8824-8825
F dreams from TN to “the Divine World” where he 8825-8840
talks about the devil
F mentions usage of the f-word again 8840-8842
Dream talk of Merlin and of divinity 8843-8852
Dream talk in MS and AR, which leads F to talking 8852-8857
about the diamond in the leg from before
F misses the black haired girl and wishes he’d 8857-8859
asked her to eat melon with Sylvester
(“the black angel”)
Pigeon shit gets F to tell story about city slicker, 8859-8921
a guy who visited AR from NY, who ate
pigeon poo when it landed in his pie,
and who paid F $5 to get bitten by a snake,
` Jimmy $25 for the ride to the Palm Reader’s
place, where she made $100 for putting
antidote on the snake bite, and the guy
from NY pays Charlie B. for a “dirty song,”
and, at camp where the man rests, Ray Baby
dances for some money, and then Tang comes
get some money
Cut to racist Clyde Miller’s Drive Inn ticket booth, 8922-8924
which the dozer flattens—Tang” come out


45
with his hat full of bills and a smile on his face”
Cut back to being with the NY man, who “was kind 8925-8926
of alright”
F share what he does in town 8927-8933
F wakes up in Helena (AR) a few miles from 8933-8938
Moon Lake and on after Lula (MS) he
falls back asleep
F thought he was dreaming about his friend with no 8938-8949
fingers, but F wasn’t dreaming and he was
on the wrong bus, and F want out of AR, so
he pays a man to pull the stop cord, and F
punches the driver’s eye and hops off
and the passengers wave to him and
one lady wishes him good luck
He hitchhikes then gets “picked up by another bus 8949-8950
going the other way”
Begin Story of Policeman and the music box pp. 224-225
F gets off and sees a “green red and white” barber pole 8950-8953
and he walks to it and sees a music box
in the window
F wants to offer $5 for the music box in the window 8953-8955
F writes “Mr. you can go get f--ked” on the shop window 8955-8956
A “policeman put[s] his hand on [F’s] shoulder” and 8957-8998
F pretends to be deaf and writes on a pad
that he’s son of a foreign scholar and the
“proprietor of [the] shop” had mistaken F,
who sought “a small out of print/book
edited by frank kafka” and the policeman
has “some redeeming trait he wasn’t near
no quality though” (the gullible policeman
helps F get the book)
Dream shift pp. 225-229
F sleepwalks in girls’ orphanage and tells them a tale 9019
of himself and his pony going under ice water
and then having his book bound (“the cover was
confederate grey and my name maroon”)
Cut to F in the boat striking something 9030-9031
Cut back to the orphans, who “are happy and clap,” 9032-9035
and F kissing them each for bed
Cut to the boat again hitting something underwater 9035


46
At home F falls out of bed (a reaction to dreaming?) 9036
More dream shifting 9037-9050
F has “there are” (anaphora) dream frenzy 9051-9092
“don’t” anaphora 9093-9096
F asks for silence after the “there are”/”don’t” rhapsody 9097-9099
F prays for forgiveness 9100-9101
Jesus speaks through F—refers to “what him 9102-9133
and his kind did to Sylvester… THEY SAY,”
and he (F/Jesus) talks, with a double-mind,
to the “white folks” about racism
Riding With Dark on mule pp. 229-233
Cut to Dark speaking (Dark has killed [white] men) 9134-9136
Dark’s judgment (about Sylvester and his killings) 9136-9168
and his sentiment that he’d live his life again
and his pride of his race and his understanding
for the baseball game without a ball and Dark
says the “gospel ship is coming” and he mentions
he has many kids and so might F one day and
Dark envisions maybe by the time F has kids
“everybody gone be in the same boat then”
(racial equality)
F might have to stay “behind and get it too” 9169-9170
Dark starts story of racist Selbey and the day 9170-9210
his daughter was trampled by pigs
(Dark’s simile of racism as a sickness
lines 9196-9198)
Dark’s compassionate mind and hands and the 9210-9228
intense scene between racist Selbey
and two other white men
Selbey changes and learns some respect, he “got 9228-9233
that soft spot in his heart”
Dark philosophizes about how to handle 9233-9236
“that [soft] spot”
When the “[ghost] ship” comes somebody may die 9236-9241
and black children know about that
kind of violence, but Dark is not sure
if white kids know about that violence or
“what they daddies do,”
and Dark may stay behind to push it off
Dark and F cross paths with an Indian who signs 9242-9248
With F to converse with Dark
Dark says “Selbey and the law are alike like that” 9249-9250
and F wishes to “castaway” but has to stay


47
“behind and look after the others like Dark”
Entering a trance 9252
“I had” anaphora starts into a dream shift 9252-9258
F dreams back to the Delta (his country) 9259-9262
where time and spaced have shifted
F old enough to be with girl “in the country club” 9263-9267
F has a notion that many will “hear about” where 9268-9273
he came from but “only a few would tell it”
F gets back to dreaming frenzy of “I had” anaphora 9273-9312
that shifts time
Cut to Tang’s last time seeing his wife (on the 9313
movie screen being bulldozed)
Concludes Story of Policeman and the pp. 233-235
Music Box/shifting dreams (time travel)
Cut to policeman who offers to buy the Kafka book 9314-9318
F steals the music box 9319
Policeman comes out with the book and offers to 9320-9331
buy F’s bus ticket to MS
F acknowledges the police officer’s “soft spot” but 9331-9337
still wants to come back and give it to the
police and the racists one day
F says he needs to turn thirteen before he can do 9338-9339
what he says he wants to do
F on the boat again 9339-9341
Astronomer said to F, “you will do battle/ 9341-9344
with the notion of time”
F looks out (bus) window and tells about Old 9345-9349
Testament scene with Jewish people
wandering/wondering
F needs to get “objective” (i.e. he needs to think, not 9350-9355
dream) as he switches busses and gets a
candy bar
F gets on new bus that takes off wildly and F falls 9356-9367
and sees the bus is filled with black riders
and a kind black preacher man picks
F up and a kid around F’s age offers
him soda water and F asks if the bus is
going to MS and the kind preacher
says “we is going through Mississippi”
Freedom Ride and Vico pp. 235-298


48
Everyone “goes Amen” and F realizes he is on 9368-9379
“a freedom rider bus” (Freedom Riders
1961) and F think about how “eleven
of these busses were blown up (F is
a bit apprehensive about being on the
bus at first)
F takes a drink of “that boy’s soda and walks to the 9379-9386
bathroom on the bus, but first he meet the
body guard checking for bombs—F’s comment
about being lost then riding the freedom bus,
and he finds a dollar
F says he’s seen “the body of a colored man/ from up 9387-9389
north who got murdered” and he remarks
about tragedy making some people laugh
Astronomer telling F “about indirect understatement 9390-9403
of the facts” and F’s vision of that idea
F finishes in bathroom and enters bus station 9404-9413
Enter Vico (“this other man”) who buys F 9413-9428
a burger
Flip books of woman “fucking a donkey” on one 9429-9441
half and of Vico crucifying himself
F finds out Vico is deaf 9442-9449
F think Vico could be Greek and F says he learned 9450-9457
to sign from “Eight Moons” (Native American)
Vico, a poet, speaks with his hands and connects with F 9457-9467
In parenthesis F says he hasn’t “heard no real life 9468-9475
poet speak,” but he has dead poets speak
in his dreams
Vico signs that F’s face has sadness and “something 9476-9478
holy,” which makes F blush (and F says
folk say his face is ugly or conniving”
In parenthesis F thinks about whether he can trust 9478-9480
the poet Vico, who could be mirroring F
F finds out Vico is from Italy but is of Greek descent 9481-9482
F still wondering about Vico’s credibility and Vico 9483-9486
orders them another Grapette soft drink
with a snap of his fingers
Kid gives F the “evil eye” and F tells Vico that he was 9486-9490
traveling with the “freedom riders”
and he and Vico serendipitously becomes pals,
as if meant to be
Vico (signs) comments on F’s ability with language, signing 9490-9498
and speaking—F can switch dialect and sign
effortlessly—and F says he thought he was
“double exposed”
Scene with boy stabbing F’s “double” 9498-9508


49
F talks about his fluid speech/character, not wanting 9509-9515
to hurt people
Vico and F get going to their bus and the boy who 9515-9524
gave F the evil eye before smarts off about Vico
and calls F an “n-word lover” and F punches the
kid then stabs him with a fork before they get to
the bus
Vico signs that F is “good at riddles” and F signs 9524-9543
about a “chinaman” who asks the toughest
riddles and Vico “douse[s] premature
misconceptions” of his “christ-like attributes”
by revealing what he does, rob banks
F still skeptical about Vico, even comparing him 9543-9553
with “the world’s smallest man,” and F saying
he knows the “history of Rome”
Interesting philosophical viewpoint by F as he sizes 9553-9558
Vico up (as they play chess about their beliefs):
“if I’d let all my past experiences sway
me to taking a prejudice point/of view
Vico’s stigmata 9559-9569
Vico’s life: “one absurd misfortune after another,” 9570-9591
learned twenty-seven languages in a monastery,
his “treatises on linguistics” was stolen, he worked
“in the Diamond Mines of Africa,” he is
Moore/Greek with dark complexion
Vico starts nodding off and F looks into Vico’s bag 9592-9596
and sees money and takes twenty dollars
looks, “seven or eight times,” through the
flipbook
F punches “the colored boy on the shoulder “ and he 9597-9600
tells F the deaf robbers names, Vico
F bored, punches the boy, who was trying to sleep, 9601-9618
and F thumbs through another flip book,
which is not animated like “that Walt Disney
shit neither” (flipbook of Russian dancers
and monks with candles) and Vico wearing
“wore out white gloves/with no fingers”
while he sleeps
The boy punches F “this time” and asks to play 9618-9628
the music box
Vico talking in his sleep (in hoc signo vinces—in this 9629-9633
sign thou shall conquer) with his hands
F signs back to “the sleeping paladin” (knight, i.e. Vico) 9634-9637
that he stole the music from a “pawn shop
in Arkansas,” and he plays the music box
F looks around and the boy calls F out on his Harpo 9637-9643


50
Marx impression
“It is” anaphora 9643-9646
Appeals to the sense of sound 9649-9654
Solitude 9655-9658
Vico talk in his sleep with his hands 9659-9666
F signs back to Vico, talking about Rome 9666-9675
and the ancient Greek world
F cranks the music box “like a monkey”, the other 9676-9681
boy is “blowing on empty bottles,” and
Vico’s hands are bleeding from using them
so much
Vico speaking with his hands about angels 9682-9694
Vico and F talking about poetics 9694-9698
Leaf imagery/ symbolic significance and Vico’s 9698-9709
heritage and language that F wants
to record
F wants to wake Vico and Vico’s protean language 9710-9713
(like F, who also changes his speech)
“truth is not something external to the mind” 9713-9717
F unsure how much of what Vico says is worth 9717-9724
remembering
Vico’s view on studying past periods (.) and him 9724-9737
sharing “a kind of poetic wisdom”
F’s lyrical transition 9737-9747
F names “it” death/death is this and that sequence 9747-9836
F: “I have wild dreams I live a wild life… just another 9837-9841
bastard”
DEMOCRATIC MOOM PITCHU REBUS BLUES 9842-9846
(F’s extraterrestrial origins?)
Vico continues to sign 9846
First omniscient aside in the text as parentheses 9847
F lyrically talking (including a mention of Dark) 9848-9857
F has learned a lot that he knows nothing—like 9858-9865
Socrates—and here is a bit about poets/poetry
Second omniscient aside about F in parentheses 9866-9867
When F learns, he struggles, he falls—very 9867-9871
Nietzsche-like approach—and when F wants
to say something “smart-alec” he sounds cliché
Third omniscient aside in double-parentheses here 9872
F wants to understand true knowledge 9873-9877
Fourth omniscient aside about F in parentheses, 9877
this time alluding to Christ (similar to line
9875: “my brother is a spirit)
For truth in life, traveling “mental journeys and 9878-9887


51
physical voyages” on death’s ship and death
is “the opponent”
Fifth omniscient aside in triple parentheses here 9888
“Natural order of the Delta” 9899-9893
Sixth omniscient aside in parentheses 9894
What is “well tempered will stand” 9895-9896
Seventh omniscient aside about F this time 9897
in double parentheses
The boy and F’s catcher’s mitt story, including the soda 9898-9987
jerk who drives by (and we learn he, a racist,
broke an egg over the black boy’s head),
and F defends Memphis, and F mentions
he and Jimmy being the only whites
on their baseball team—in the end the boy
gives F’s catcher’s mitt back on a deal and
the boy kindly offers F a Nugrape soft drink
The boy and F talk—F tells him where he learned 9988-10007
sign language and the boy says he has an
“Indian” (Native American) “fouth” cousin,
and the boy knows who Charlie B. Lemon
is, and the two boys shut their eyes to rest
Vico still signing/talking then the boy asks F if he 10008- 10014
wants to play with the mitt while the boy
sleeps
F thinks about his family 10015
F ruminates and punches the catcher’s mitt 10016-10042
“Or” anaphora segment and who to blame (the 10043-10049
truth versus dreams motif comes back up)
F dreams and, by way of association, maybe from 10050-10109
the word “equinoctial,” F talks about the
astronomer, who takes interest in F’s
dreams, which makes F a little suspect,
thinking the astronomer could be
a disguised “headshrinker,” and F’s
guilty feeling about his parents (“comes
back ever year like the geese”)
F thinks about Charlie B. and Jimmy and Dark 10110-10118
the way they play baseball (“enough”
anaphora)
The bus rolling to new town and the “man with 10119-10140
the white collar on” talking with the
passengers and the bus driver talking about
stopping elsewhere and then F seeing “four
or five white boys” (Vico sleeping)
Everyone is sleeping when F sees the four or five 10140-10152
boys, one of whom he recognizes, the “soda


52
jerk the one with/ freckles,” who yells a racist
insult as he hurls a grenade into the bus and F
catches the grenade
F catches the grenade and, using some baseball 10152-10159
philosophy/advice, he throws the grenade back
and F squats down and punches his mitt
F dreams of Rufus/cards 10160-10185
F names different varieties of chickens 10186-10190
Rufus saying he will go to South America (and 10191-10204
F again mentions “the jew,” Bill Willett,
F’s friend in real life)
F dream of missing “white gloves” for Easter Sunday 10205-10217
(or mother’s funeral) and F looks for his gloves,
asking a rooster about them and asking a black
boy with a milk moustache, then it thunders
and F say to himself, “if I’m quiet/ maybe I can
hear them [the gloves]”
F looks for his gloves under Rufus’s shack, that the 10218-10227
“white people got,” so F has to be quiet and F
hears “whining” and remembers that his gloves
are in Rufus’s outhouse (the white people
built new outhouse on the property they took)
(Kitten story) F crawls to the outhouse and the crying 10228-10280
gets louder and F comes face to face with white
wild catvthat scratches him and runs off and F get his
white gloves and then finds grey kittens and
F bites off their umbilical cord and the white man
curse the wild white cat and comments about
the litter noise in Rufus’s outhouse (“shithouse”)
and F says only two kittens live and they are taken
by Inigo, who says in Spanish, “It’s not good
to think about the past” (Inigo=Abednego?)
Cut to F on Freedom Rider bus being humble about 10281-10288
catching and throwing the grenade back
and F isn’t sure what name he has been using
so he tells the boy and everyone his name is
Inigo and the kid says, “I thought you was
Mexican you look like a wetback”
Vico gives F “the eye” for not using his real name 10288-10291
F walks to the driver and ask how long till Mound 10292-10316
Bayou and F talks with the preacher’s
bodyguard who is not really blind and the
bodyguard says it was a divine intervention
that F saved the bus from getting blown up
and the body guard tells F he does not
believe in Jesus because he is a Muslim

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