They said he'd been a tooth-puller,
Itinerant, in the days
of clove-oil anaesthesia,
blood and extraction keys,
forearms like Popeye,
his foot-pedalled drill
keeping time,
a carpetbag of tools,
mother of pearl handles
pretty as his snakeskin boots.
Some said he was the pressman
who set Most Wanted and Missing
slab-serif and sepia mugs
inking the chase by lamplight
at presses up and down the hollers.
His kid, a daughter, said
he was a joiner, part-time
floor-boarder
behind the neon Pegasus
Shell station, and helping out
at the glass-topped
gas pumps, check ya' oil sir?
Brass spittooner,
he stayed a few years
but the twelve-bar blues
that oozed from the screen-porch
made him hollow-eyed;
some said, years before, he sang
on the radio,
a half-tuned crooner,
there was a photograph,
flat-cap and spread collar,
one foot on a running board,
and a wax cylinder grooved
with a voice like distance.
No one ever said he died,
that bank-shottin' rail bird,
one ear harked to the whistle
of any last train,
fire in his engine,
bones too loose to bide.
— by Gail Anderson
