Here is the much anticipated 3rd installment of Da's serial novella, "The Porch."
The Porch: Chapter III
“Hello, friends. I noticed there was a lack of seating on our last visit. My name is Leonard Cohen. I recognize Messrs Dylan and Springsteen, but you sir, may I assume this is your porch?”
“I’m Ellis Millsaps and this is my porch. Of course I know who you are Mr. Cohen and I apologize for my rude dismissal of you on your earlier visit. We were kind of weirded out by your appearance.”
“No offense taken. I understand entirely.”
Leonard and his friends unfold their chairs and settle. Bruce, it seems, has a pocketful of Cubans. I, thanks to the Social Security System, have alcohol.
It looks like a party, and the Cubans, well it’s like Huck Finn said of the dead captain’s stash, “Them cigars was prime.”
“My friends and I were wondering,” I say to the dead at large, “how and why you dead musicians appear on my porch.”
“S’up Petty?” I add.
Leonard, apparently the spokesman for the group, he having been the only one to have spoken thus far, says “It’s the magic triangle.”
Dylan, encapsulating the sentiment of the porch’s living, says “What the fuck’s a magic triangle?”
“It has to do,” says Cohen, “with the juxtaposition of you, Bob, Mr. Springsteen and our host here on the same porch.”
“And how is that possible?”
“I spent two years in a Buddhist monastery, but I’m not the Buddha. Something you just have to accept. It is what it is.”
“Yeah, Buddha say,” Bob injects, “spend two years in a monastery and you manager steal all your money.”
“What y’all talking about?” the King wants to know.
“It’s a Jewish thing,” Bob says.
“Y’all keep this up and me and Millsaps gonna start talking foot washing Baptist voodoo on you. Make you wish Moses had left you in the bulrushes.”
He says this with such a charming snarl of his upper lip I haven’t the heart to point out he’s out of his depth. I’m also surprised he spots me so easily as a fellow redneck.
“Maybe it’s like one of those things where a Baptist, a Jew, and a Catholic walk into a bar,” opines Petty.
“No, this actually happened,” Bruce says, “not the part about the Baptists and the bulrushes, but the part about Leonard’s manager stealing his money.”
“You needed me to watch your money,” Bowie says. “I died really, really rich.”
“Be that as it may,” I, who hasn’t a pot to piss in, assert, “I think we should figure out what we can do with all this talent assembled on one little porch.”
Ellis was an attorney by trade (now recovering) but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved. You can read his past works at TPC by visiting his Contributing Writer page.
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