Mugtoe's Aria

 

There are so many episodes to the Life and Times of the Inimitable Joe Bowles and Mugtoe Jones, The Ace of Spades, that to pick just one to tell sends me spiraling out in a dozen different directions. "Just the merest samplin, Mugtoe", he used to say. "Just a taste, that’s all we need." I heed that admonition.

Joe had true ambition. He had vision – a rare quality in a veteran dope fiend. Not the type of apocalyptic vision that is all too common among garden variety addicts in the Bible Belt, but a true big-picture awareness that transcended whatever the present circumstances happened to be. Joe wanted to be there when the toilet was flushed on our Great Society. He wanted me by his side, and together we would lead our peoples out into the broad sunlit uplands of his own New Frontier. We never got down to details in this regard. I would never have thought to sully his dreams with the profane daily-ness of logistical considerations; not to mention who exactly our "peoples" was supposed to consist of. I was too jaded for Joe in some regards. In others, my innocence was a spark to light the fires of his imagination.

As a result of Joe’s misanthropic nature, or merely to excite our glands, we spent a lot of our spare time in various gun-related activities. Many was the hour that we sat in his apartment cleaning our guns and watching old Nazi newsreels on videotape. I should point out at this juncture that neither Joe nor myself was at that time or ever a neo-Nazi. We just felt that it set the appropriate tone for our dialogues. Joe and I had our own language. It was loosely based in English, as that was our mother tongue, but it had a syntax all it’s own and was always muttered in hushed tones. Joe had a Ruger Mini-14 and assorted handguns. I carried only a Smith&Wesson 686 model .357 stainless revolver with a 6" barrel. We were not criminals in the true sense, although not a day went by that some sort of illegal activity wasn’t perpetrated or planned within the confines of that one-room apartment on Wheeler St in Dallas. We just liked the comfort that the guns gave us when we were engaged in our discourse on the Nature of things. Joe would confer with me on various subjects from the sublime to the ridiculous whilst I passed the time dry-firing my pistol against my skull with scenes of another world flickering across the room on the television. If I had taped our talks, I don’t know that even I could decipher them today. To do that I would have to be prepped for a couple of weeks with Joe’s company and more speed than I could afford these days.

Joe had just one sexual fantasy that he shared with me. It was so beautiful that I am almost moved to tears at the recounting of it. It was his contention that he could only be truly satisfied by a 400 lb black woman named Sapphire. She didn’t have to come with the name, but she had to be willing to legally change her name if she wasn’t born with it. He conceded that Ruby would do in a pinch, but only Sapphire would absolutely fill the need. He wanted her to wear a head rag and carry a Louisville Slugger with 16 penny nails in it. He wanted her to beat him for 90 minutes and cuss him the entire time calling him everything but a white man, and then cut him with a rusty butcher knife. He knew that it was an impossible dream, but he kept his eyes open. In the meantime we scanned the ads in the fuck books for mail-order brides from the Philippines.

One early Saturday morning the two of us went to Fort Worth to attend a gun show at the Amon Carter exhibit hall. We got to the Arts District a bit early – that’ll happen when you haven’t slept in seven days, so we decided to stop at a coffee shop for a bite to eat and some java. Joe was always keen to answering the needs of the natural man within us in order to maintain our composure in the face of mounting chemical assaults made on our systems. It was also a good way to kill a little time as we were both avid people watchers. We got to the place and it was pretty crowded. We’d both been drinking Kentucky Deluxe from the plastic jug mixed with Diet Dr Pepper or whatever was handy, but the speed in our systems rendered it useless to have any affect other than on our breath. Still, we must have posed quite a picture as we walked to our table. It was June and we were wearing long sleeve flannel shirts to cover the tracks on our arms. We hadn’t caught everybody’s attention, but Joe soon remedied that.

Joe loved to hear me impersonate Winston Churchill when we were in public, and this was a golden opportunity for him. He fairly begged me, "Mugtoe, do Winnie for me." I refused. I had a good many lines of Churchill half-memorized and could make up the rest extemporaneously, but I didn’t feel as though I could give it my all under present circumstances. I just wasn’t in the mood. There was one other way to please Joe on this occasion, and he went right for it. "Please, Mugtoe, sing me an old Negro spiritual." I hesitated. He looked pleadingly at me for another moment. "Oh, alright." He beamed. I stood and took off my cap and began singing "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child…" Just one verse, but with feeling and style that would have made Mahalia Jackson proud.

I only sang one quick verse as I still had food in front of me and I was a little shaky that morning. When I stopped and looked around every face in the café was turned in my direction. Nobody said anything. I looked at Joe and saw a big tear stream down his cheek. The gift I had given him was truly precious. I knew that. He was forever in my debt.

4 July 1999