For Mark Richards

Each day he wore the usual—
Levi jeans and jacket faded
By the sun, not acid,
Over a worn Western shirt,
Cowboy boots, a smartass smirk,
As he held forth in the back
Of the rattling, rancid bus
Jarring and jolting down
The rutted pigtrail that
Really was Arkansas Highway 80.
He’d smack the back of my head,
Or the back of any male’s head,
Or pummel our shoulders
Into the submission of the pack.
“Lissen up, you little assholes,”
He’d say, firing a stream
Of sweet tobacco juice
Into a torn RC Cola can,
“this here’s the greatest damned song
In the whole damned world,”
And he’d launch into a wobbly warble
Of “American Pie,” and I’d almost cry
Because he was such a bully bastard
And I wanted so much to be him.
Every morning I’d wait to see him
Hunched in the autumn cool
Before his family’s fading trailer.
And then one morning he wasn’t there,
And he was never there again.
He’d driven his Chevy not to the levee
But toward the low-water bridge,
But the whisky was driving by then, not him,
And he didn’t make that blind curve
Hard by the old Thompson place.
They said a pine branch
Came right through the windshield
And right through his eye.
I can’t say.
I can only say the bus was quieter,
Less dangerous,
And I never loved that ride again,
All those lonely high school days.