Hello folks, this is a Personal Communication from your favorite wise-cracking two-fisted shamus.Notice the Mailbag feature, running in the margin on the left (or, if you are logging in from a universe made of antimatter, on the right).Real people write in with their hopes… their dreams… occasionally enclosing cash (this is encouraged);and every single letter receives a prompt and courteous reply.Anyhow a reply.
You are encouraged to participate!If you can’t think of anything (positive) to say, just send the cash!And best of all -- there’s a Swell Contest going on, for the best Letter of the Month.If you win -- you’ll be the winner!The prize is the warm, gooey satisfaction you get when you can pat yourself on the back (an awkward gesture, but it can be done) for having given the mostest of your bestest.And in this economy, that’s about as good as it gets.
“Thermo-dynamics?!?!!What -- you kidding me?‘Thermo’, I get that; like thermometer, or thermal underwear. Like, Hot enough 4 U?, ha ha.But thermo….dynamics… that would be like the dynamics of heat.Which is like saying, the dynamics of space, or the dynamics of time.What would that mean?”
Murphy fell silent, and grew thoughtful.
“But it’s real, you’re saying.There really is a dynamics of all that.”
A kind of longing; a kind of sadness.
“There really is a lot out there that I don’t know.”
Man, I really tied one on last night. Might’ve done some things I’ll be sorry for later. Only, how can I be sorry if I don’t remember what I did? Jeez, I better write this stuff down.
Lingua Sacra is pleased to announce the following series of volumes, written by Mr. Michael Murphy, and edited by a prestigious ivy-league type with a Ph.D. after his name:
One thing, you gotta hand it to the Universe: It — Is— Big. Seriously big.
Bigger’n all get-out —
like, yea-ea-ea big …
You know the old song, “So high, you can’t get over it — So low, you can’t get under it — So wide, you can’t get around it.” Well that’s the universe, right down to the ground.
I read somewhere, where the universe, it’s already this big, but now it’s blowing up even bigger, like a balloon. I mean, what’s that about?
Anyhow, my theory is — we’re guests here — it’s like a campsite, sposta leave it nicer than you found it. So, bottom line: Don’t cuss; try not to do too much bad stuff; and for you married guys? — always leave the toilet seat down.
-- Actually, not meaning to diss the Stanley Brothers. Here they have a fine version of "Roving Gambler", which is probably one of the inspirations of the wonderful rendition of "Man of Constant Sorrow" by the "Foggy Bottom Boys", in the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuEOGMzSLoQ&NR=1&feature=endscreen
He is featured in what is almost certainly the only complete detective story ever written entirely in pentameter.
In the poem "Thanks for Everything," Dr. Justice sings of dames and a man.
THANKS FOR EVERYTHING
High upon noon, the sun unblinking stands, and sheds his rays down on the quiet street, where, frozen in siesta, nothing stirs. Unmoving Murphy waits behinds the blinds, his narrowed eyes still scan the street through slits. The whiskey in the bottle now is low, and with the liquor ebbs his hope's last drop that any client to him ever come, and bow, and beg, and say: I crave a boon.
Yet hark, upon the hushed midsummer air a click of heel on pavement hither comes, now hurried, now hesitating if to go, now gaining strength, and resolutely on.
Thus Murphy lifts the lit butt to his lips and sucks a drag that fills his hungering lungs. A hundred questions wrestle in his mind. A dame in trouble, come to seek his aid, or trouble itself, in lipstick and high heels? Yet beggars no choosers be, cannot refuse what Fate flings laughing on their empty plate. With firm resolve he stubs the ember out, shuts the booze drawer, in calm awaits the knock.
It comes, though softly, tentative at first, as if not meaning it, or practicing, then hearing no response, begins to beat more loudly now, and with a quicker pace, till flailing with both fists upon the oak she sends reverberation through the room.
Murphy looks too, her new gaze points afresh to scenes grown dim to him, since over-known. The faded paint, one square of darker hue where once a painting hung in place, now pawned; a calendar depicting power tools while babes in swimsuits wield them with a grin – he starts, to note it shows the last month's date.
To her his gaze returns: say five-foot-six, compact of build, and nearing middle age, the which with rouge she labors to disguise. Her lipstick clashes with her carrot-top; her nails are yet another shade of red.
"Yawanna stare s'more," she ups and snaps, "or are ya gonna aks a lady in?" He blinks and winces, wordless waves her on, and fumbles for a smoke: he needs a friend. She looks around as though she spots no chair; he pulls it towards her, gestures, mumbles "Please." She shakes her curls and sits down, ladylike. He sits down on the keg, and smokes, and waits.
"So you're a private eye," she says again, but this time looks him fully in the face. He nods; what can he add; and still he waits. "Just happens I got a little job for you. My man run out on me – the dirty rat. I figure you can hunt him up for me. I'll lay a C-spot on you for your time."
To her the gumshoe: "Finding guys' my game."
He obviously takes the case--wouldn't be a detective poem if he didn't. To read the rest, as well as more traditional detective stories (meaning, written in prose), you can buy I Don't Do Divorce Cases, available in hardcopy or Kindle through Amazon.
Murphy on the Mount is the first full novel featuring the
Murphy brothers. They face their toughest case ever. No
clues, no leads, and now not even a client. They will sink
into the deepest dregs of the underworld and hope to
emerge with answers to the mysteries of this case and life
itself.
Here are some excerpts from Murphy on the Mount:
Chapter One
So one June, one afternoon, we’re sitting around and I say: “You know what I think, Joey?”
“What do you think, Murphy.”
“I think we need a secretary.”
He looks at me like my strait-jacket’s slipped, he’s thinking I bust outa my bin. “A secretary? Murphy we got no customers, whadawe need a secretary for?”
“You know, some slick broad, class up the front office, handle our calls.”
“Murphy Murphy, nobody calls us. The front office, that’s just the front a this office, the place where the beds fold up durina day. We don’t got but one room!”
“Not counting the pool room,” I astutely note.
“Dang right I’m not countina pool room, whacha gonna do, yagonna put ’er in there? In back? Plus first you know you’d hafta move out that moose head, Murphy —”
“Oh don’t get on to me about that moose head again.”
“An ’en all them pizza boxes, all piled up, like it’s a tower to heaven —”
“It is, it is! ‘Smatta wichoo, you never played with blocks?”
“An ’en-a tires, Murphy, o-o-o-o-o-oh, the tires…”
“Yeh well you know how it is.”
“That I do, Murphy, that I do. Other guys pick up stray cats or stray diseases; you, you pick up stray tires.”
“You know it, Joey. Tires what had no home.”
“I know it, Murphy. I’m not knocking your tires.”
“They’re nice tires.”
“The best — in their day. But just — Mu-u-ur-r-phy….”
And right then — bingo — a knock at the door.
“Now see what I mean, Joey? A customer! Don’t you wish we had a secretary right now? She could deal with ’em while we hide in back, say we’re too busy, say that we died.”
“C’mon, Murphy, party’s gonna get tired knocking. Opena door.”
“You open it. Makes me nervous, customers.”
Joey opens it and — Ooh, Wah, Doo: a customer — and what a customer! It’s a dame, — but that don’t describe it. I mean, your mother’s a dame, if it comes to that. No I mean like, a da-a-ame dame: with everything on it. She got shiny hair, so clear you could shave your face in it. She got lips like a paint sale. She got teeth, make a dentist say: I’m ready, Lord, I seen it all, you can take me now. She got eyes like ice, and it ain’t melting. A neck, would make the Boston Strangler just throw up his hands, he wouldn’t hardly know where to begin. Then a blouse, a white blouse, the front part of it all scooped out, like a dish of ice cream. And below, oh, the double dip, I’m peeking through my fingers; and her waist is like a sugar cone. Then all that flesh that was left over from the middle, they just slabbed it onto the hips with a trowel. And then she goes and tapers down again, she’s like a spinning top, you’d a think she’d fall over, just these slim little feet and tall high heels and the shoes come to a point like a kick-knife.
“You a shamus?” she says, looking at Joey.
He blushes and mumbles, “Me an’ him.”
She looks me over, half her mouth does this little stab at a smile. “You’ll do.” And I think: You too.
*****
So I’m fishing around in the papers I already read, done all the crosswords as far as I could do ’em, reading about recent guys that died, only none with a bearing on this case. And now I’m out of stuff to read.
Well okay here’s the puzzle page. It’s called “The Sixty-Four Dollar Question”, and it tries to stump the readers, then gives the answers. Any number can play. And today’s stumper goes like this:
WHAT… is the ‘Unpardonable Sin’?
Never heard of it but it makes my skin crawl, just the same — just the name. Kind of thing I would’ve learned in catechism if I’d gone parochial instead of first public and then hooky and then reform. Even as it is, I know enough from just what I picked up in the gutter, to know that it’s not one of the first things that might come to mind, like rooting for the Yankees, or having it off with your own mom or anything like that. I chew a pencil-end for a minute, see if I can suck it somehow out of the wood, then I give up and turn to page 54.
If you answered, “Despair”, give yourself half credit. The correct answer is:
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
Uh-oh.
My blood runs cold. Could I of done that? Not real likely — I can sin up a storm but I do watch my tongue. But even worse, what about Joey? He’s a sweet guy but he does have a temper sometimes, specially if he misses breakfast. Hits his thumb with a hammer or loses a Pop-tart behind the sink, and he blasphemes like nobody’s business, cussing something awful, mostly yapping on about the First and Second Persons, but who knows, maybe one time he got extra hot under the collar and was running out of G-words and J-words, he might’ve just gone and clipped one to the Ghost. Mighta done it, mighta not. — Never did hear him messing over the Virgin, though.
Jeez — I mean Jeepers, this looks bad. My own brother, maybe even me! Cause it doesn’t say: Badmouthing the Spirit over sixty times, like a speed-limit, or even ten. It says: Just once, Jack, near as I can tell. And —”unpardonable” — do they really mean that? can they? Is that even possible? A buddy can pardon you anything if he feels like it, or you fork him a fiver or whatnot, so they must mean it’s God who’s doing the pardoning or not pardoning. And it sounds like in this case even He can’t do it, infinite mercy be blowed.
Joey’s out, and I’m alone, and I start to panic. He could get run over by a pie truck or something, in a state of… This is awful. I think of calling up a priest, then I remember my name is mud with those guys. But I just got to find out the facts.
[For a dramatic reading of a key passage, by Murphy himself, click here.]
