Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Sudetenland Tales

Page 68

gusto. For a moment, the years peeled away. That lasted five seconds.

Until he tripped on Doris Whitley’s oxygen tube and clutched its tank like the Holy Grail, singing “Out of the bank and into the tank, ....... .”

Cactus Jack stood, proud and wobbly. “It’s ‘Out of the blue and into the black,’ Neil!” he shouted, pumping his walker like a triumphant fist.

Neil nodded, slowly, deliberately. “Jack, that’s either a lyric… or a prophecy.”

Then his foot caught on Doris’s rogue slipper. He tumbled like a majestic Canadian pine; slow, tragic, poetic. The fall was accompanied by the kind of guitar squeal that made Harold “Cactus Jack” Malone weep openly.

And then his old hat flew off. Time stopped.

Neil Young was bald. The crowd hushed. ..... Well not completely like Jeff Bezos; more like a Friar Tuck with some struggling fringe remaining around and in the ears.

The gasps echoed. A nurse dropped her apple sauce. Mildred, channeling her inner linebacker, dove for the hat and stuck it on her head like Excalibur’s chosen one.