The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All by Josh Ritter

Author:Josh Ritter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2021-07-13T17:58:55+00:00

YOU’D NEED A DOUBLE ISSUE

“You wouldn’t know ’cause you weren’t there,” is how fucking Joe always starts up, cranking away at one of his yarns like he’s trying to start his snowblower. A lot of people thought Joe Mouffreau was a hero, just the cat’s ass, but I was never fooled by him, not even in the beginning, when he was fresh back to town from the War, got a fancy car and drove around spending his daddy’s timber mill money. Still, I let him talk. It didn’t take but a few months of him telling his war stories before the numbers of killed and wounded had grown to a considerable enough size that most folks stopped giving his estimates quite the fucking credence he thought they deserved. If you think Joe Mouffreau was sharp enough to realize it, though, you don’t know Joe Mouffreau. Most people who found themselves telling a worn-out story like the ones Joe told would notice that folks’ eyes were glazing over and they’d decide that maybe they’d hold off on recounting the same goddamn story for the thirty-seventh time.

Joe took the opposite way of thinking, and whenever he saw anyone’s attention start to wander off toward something more exciting—a saltshaker, maybe, or a busted neon sign—he’d add a few more bodies, a few more tanks and some of those kamikaze pilots the Japanese had so many of.

Only last year they did a story on Joe for the Spokane Daily News and he got to tell his story in full, don’t you know? He came into the Brothers Swede with about ten copies under his arm and put them out on the bar for Paulette and everyone to gawk at. I didn’t even need to read it to know what it said. Joe had fought off the entire Japanese armed forces and saved the American Way, more or less. Yeah, Carnage and Desolation and Joe Mouffreau walked hand in hand everywhere he went through that conflagration. It was a merciful goddamn miracle to all that we had him on our side. “You weren’t there so you won’t know this, Weldon, but...”

My God, it’s not like I ain’t seen enough death just living in one place my whole life. Jesus. You live long enough you see ’em die all kinds of ways you can imagine. I saw three, three men killed by getting electrocuted, and only one of those was by lightning. Colum Sullivan, who was from Canada, got crushed between two heavy-loaded railroad cars. They weren’t moving hardly at all; they just kind of drifted together while he was walking between them, smooshed him like a screaming grape. The Keltners, they were a real nice family that moved into town about ten years ago, burned to death, all of them in a fire. A man I worked with one season by first or last name Moses got swallowed up and run down by a river full of logs after he busted up a jam with dynamite.

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