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The Mackerel These green nights hardly startle me. The meridians above uneven last eleven and possibly divine cannot startle me but the two men floating up there do coughing and scratching beneath Elsies dead heavens. Elsie if youll allow a mackerel to continue soon married the rower of the only boat Mr. Wendell Sargent who once studied to be my killers father at the New England Conservatory of Music and who once he said though he could not dance met Gene Krupa after a wicked fast set of those blank those pink evergreen-scented bing bong polkadots they really knocked out Casco Bay and who said to him now this is Gene to Wendell hey kid though he was 22 and he was not a kid but my killers father and the drummer was not Gene Krupa but Buddy Rich who could still charm the potato right outa the hands of a Negro who might have wandered all the way up to the grand State of Maine remember a mackerel is saying all of this hey kid do you know where a guy can buy an Orange Crush around here Mr. Sargent smiled sure carrying his blushing clarinet as he guided Mr. Rich down the boards to the end of the pier they were two figures in the distance they were far from shore they were Strangers at Noon near the beginning of World War ll close to U-boats and V-necks and A-bombs and huge brunettes in that new little room with the tired lightning and those noseless dimes that jinged through the thing like magicians in Chicago and Mr. Sargent turned around to look at not Mr. Krupa and the air bounced against che cold head of a freshly caught bluejay in Kennebunkport Maine and out leaped through the brains of the machine fully armed the astonishing bottle so the scory goes of White Rock ginger ale.