Forever never ends

CHAPTER ONE

Tamara Leon ran across the parking lot with rain pounding her head and shoulders. She hadn't brought her umbrella today, and she cursed herself for the oversight. The fierce winds of a Southern Appalachian spring often reduced umbrellas to rags and twisted metal anyway. Still, it would have given her a meager talisman against the rain gods if nothing else.

She rammed the key into the door lock of her Toyota sedan and worked the handle, then slid into the driver's seat as rain drummed the roof. Tamara slammed the door and caught her breath, her leather satchel spotted with water. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror to see if the Gloomies were hiding in her eyes.

Nope, only eyes.

She wiped a clear circle on the fogged window with the sleeve of her coat. The brick buildings of Westridge University stood clean, square, and solid around the perimeters of the parking lot. The college had all the personality of a tweedy, pipe-smoking administrator. Not a hint of controversy roamed those halls, except when Tamara cut loose with one of her more spectacular psychology theories. Like the existence of extra sensory perception.

She started the car to let the heat circulate before she started the long drive up the mountain. The rain continued to pelt down like liquid ball bearings. At least it wasn’t snowing. Then the half-hour drive could easily stretch into two or three hours. She pulled out of the parking lot, the windshield wipers beating sheets of water off the glass.

Tamara slid a tape into the cassette deck, Wild Planet by the B-52’s, and killed the miles by singing along with Cindy and Kate, making up harmony parts as the duo wailed away in the high registers. Drivers passing her, seeing her bobbing up and down in her seat and shaking her head from side to side, probably took her for a drunk. But she was doing a great job of closing down, putting the workday behind her.

This was her time. She wasn't Dr. Leon and she wasn't "Mommy" or "honey," as she would be in a half hour. And time away from home meant a delay in defending herself from Robert’s increasingly cruel taunts. She could pretend, at least for another evening, that home was a happy place.

She often wondered if her whole life had been role-playing. Little tomboy, teenage jock, valedictorian of her college class, wife, professor, mother, unheralded backup singer for the B-52's. Everything but Daddy's little girl. The one thing she would have liked to have been, but had never gotten the chance.

The miles whirred by under her wet tires, and soon she hit the outskirts of Windshake. She drove past a stucco-sided motel that hugged the edge of a cliff. A plastic black bear stood by the motel office, its paws raised against the rain. It wore a black T-shirt that said John 3:16 in white letters. Most days, she could look out over the valleys below and see a 180-degree panorama. But today she saw only a mist that covered the mountains like a gray wool blanket. She had just crossed the county line when the first whispering of Gloomies echoed in the caves of her skull.

Shhhh, they seemed to say, as if calming her, hushing her, lulling her into dropping her defenses. But her defenses were rock solid, the Great Wall of China against Mongol hordes. Gloomies didn’t exist. Hadn’t Robert told her that a dozen times, each reminder more terse and insistent than the one before? Didn’t the world say people with ESP were crazy?

She passed a boarded fruit stand that huddled under a red gap of hill. Through the chicken wire that had been strung across the front of the store, shelves of honey jars caught the last feeble daylight and reflected back like golden eyes. Rubber tomahawks and long burgundy ears of Indian corn hung from the rafters. A life-sized hillbilly doll, corncob pipe tucked into the black bush of its beard, sat in a rocker under an awning, its stitched face fixed on the highway.

Corn farmers and barn dances, church socials and knitting bees. Cow pastures and cornfields. Burley tobacco warehouses and craft shops. Windshake wasn't a melting pot, it was a big black kettle where you dipped your slaughtered hogs.

The quaint attraction of small-town mountain life had worn off in a couple of months. Quite a change from Chapel Hill. That community had a real international flavor and was an energetic wellspring of ideas. There, people gathered in coffeehouses and bars and discussed Sartre and Pollock, Camus and Marxism. Here, they drank liquor from Dixie cups in the Moose Lodge parking lot and talked about hubcaps. She wasn’t sure which of the two lifestyles was the most compelling.

The sibilant noise wended through the alleys of her head again: Shhhhh.

No. She wasn’t hearing telepathic signals. The Gloomies could keep to themselves. Because they aren’t real, are they?

Tamara cranked the stereo another notch, and Fred Schneider talk-chanted his way through an amphetamine-fueled tune about a girl from Planet Claire. She took the narrow fork into their neighborhood, a cluster of small houses at the foot of the slopes. The closer she got to the driveway, the tighter her stomach clenched, her body anticipating another showdown. What would it be tonight, cold indifference or hot rage?

Think happy thoughts.

At least Robert had a job here and the family was relatively secure. She was lucky to have a position at Westridge. Even if she had given up her assistantship at the University of North Carolina, where she'd been a rising star in the psychology department.

Don't think about it. Robert wanted to stay, wanted you to develop your career. At least, that’s what he said. Maybe that’s where the gap had started, the trickle that eroded into a canyon.

She’d watched his face grow longer and older as he came home jobless every day, tired from delivering air check tapes to Piedmont radio stations, worn out from filling up program directors’ voicemail boxes, pissed off at the media whiz kids who wouldn't recognize talent even if it came from Walter Cronkite's golden pipes.

She’d decided that, for his self-esteem and their mutual happiness, they'd be better off moving here, where Robert had been offered a shift. It meant a cut in pay for Tamara and not much of a boost in overall household income. But her sacrifice had been repaid with sullen resentment, and her disturbed sleep and headaches didn’t help matters.

Because she had been stupid enough to share her suspicions, that the strange set of sensations she’d nicknamed the Gloomies were back.

The invisible voice came again, louder, more drawn out this time: Shhhhuuu.

As if the Gloomies were trying out a new tongue, breaking it in, forming a forgotten language or else a word not yet learned.

She turned into their driveway and pushed the nagging thought-sound from her mind. Happy, happy thoughts. The house was neat, cedar-planked and stained clear, with redwood trim. No garage, but they had three bedrooms and two baths. An ordinary home where nothing bad could happen and wives didn’t go crazy.

And we can have it paid off in, oh, thirty-nine years or so.

Tamara was struck with a vision of herself as an old woman, bones bent from more than seven decades of holding themselves up. Her lying on the plaid couch and filling the air with the stench of decaying flesh. Robert gone somewhere, off to another marriage to a woman who didn’t have imagination, who didn’t “hear voices.” Cats. She would need lots of cats, the cliche of the crazy old dowager.

She shuddered and looked through the window into the lighted kitchen. Her heart leaped with joy and she broke into a smile, the thoughts of her own mortality falling from her like blossoms from a storm-struck peach tree.

Kevin and Ginger sat at the table, bent over their schoolbooks. Kevin looked so much like his father, with his thin nose, curly hair, and quick brown eyes. Ginger was a miniature replica of Tamara. Ginger had blonde hair, too, but it was slightly more reddish than her mother’s. She had the turned-out ears as well, and her straight hair was tucked behind them. But the ears were not unflattering, as much as Tamara had hated her own worst feature. In fact, Ginger's ears complemented her wide expressive face. And her lips were plump and curvy, the kind some man would be falling all over himself to kiss one day.

There you go again with that "future" nonsense. Better enjoy what you have, because it can all be taken away in the blink of an eye.

Like her father had been taken.

Because she had ignored the voice of the Gloomies.

Happy, happy thoughts, damn it.

She honked, waved, jumped from the car, and ran to the front door, the rain tapping out its tireless rhythm on her head and shoulders. The kids met her just inside the house, ducking under her wet trench coat for a hug.

"Hello, my cuties," she said. "What did we learn at school today?"

Kevin hopped up and down. "I made three homers in kickball. We had to play in the gym because of the rain, and all you had to do for a homer was, like, kick it into the bleachers. I rocked their little world, dude."

Kevin wagged his index fingers as if they were six-shooters, then blew the imaginary gun smoke from his fingertips and returned the weapons to their holsters.

"Uh-okay, dude." Tamara stroked Ginger's soft hair. "What about you, pumpkin?"

Ginger looked up and flashed her mother a bright green smile. "I ate a crayon."

"My goodness. You get in the bathroom and brush your teeth right this minute."

"Sorry, Mommy," Ginger said, but Tamara could tell she wasn't. And Tamara had to wait until Ginger was down the hall before she could allow herself to laugh into her hand.

"Has Daddy called?" she asked Kevin.

"Not since we got off the bus."

Tamara looked at the clock. Twenty past five. Robert's shift ended at two, and his production work usually took only a couple of hours at the most. Still, she shouldn't worry. He was a big boy. He would be here.

He wouldn't die on her. Not like Dancing with the Gloomies again. Well, it’s a morbid kind of day, what with this dreary weather. And thinking about the past doesn't do a thing to cheer you up.

"Hon, would you bring some kindling from the laundry room?” she said to Kevin. “I'll build a nice fire and make us a round of hot chocolate."

Kevin whooped in anticipation of a good sugar buzz and skated across the oak floor in his stockinged feet.

Tamara put the kettle on to boil and was rummaging in the cabinets when the whispers returned.

Shu-shaaa.

Soft as a snake burrowing in the crevices of her mind.

“No,” she said, slamming the cabinet closed. She had heard nothing. Because Gloomies weren’t real.

Especially not this one, the strange sibilant phrase that chilled her bones and carried doom as if it were a typhoid wind.

Even when Robert pulled into the driveway ten minutes later, Tamara still hadn't shaken the sense of foreboding.

Happy, happy thoughts. For the kids. For him. For herself.

“You look like you had a rough day,” she said as Robert elbowed through the door, arms loaded with radio copy, cassette tapes, and damp manila envelopes.

“Hundred percent chance,” Robert said. He leaned forward to kiss her. “But the sun’s breaking through the clouds.”

Happy thoughts indeed. “Hmmm. Another kiss like that, and I could get a sunburn.”

He winked. “Later, when it’s dark.”

“Is that your forecast?”

“No, honey, that is a guarantee.” He dumped his work onto the sofa and sat down. He was already lost in Robertville, studying some advertising circulars.

Tamara knocked on the table. “Hello? Aren’t you going to ask about my day?”

“Yeah. Can you believe it? Hardware store wants to do a special campaign for Blossomfest.” He hummed an uneven jingle then said in his radio voice, “‘Spring has sprung and Windshake is blooming, time for scrubbing, mopping, and brooming.’ Catchy, huh?”

“My day was fine. I proved that ESP doesn’t exist.”

“Huh?”

“My husband can’t read my mind because he can’t even read my lips.”

“Sorry.” Robert put his papers away, went to her, and massaged her neck. “I’d be afraid to read your mind. But I can read your body like a book. Every single page.” He rubbed lower then stopped when Kevin came into the room with a load of firewood.

“More Gloomies?” Robert whispered to her.

She looked away and nodded. This was one of those times she wished her constitution enabled her to lie. His hands dropped from her shoulders, the room grew ten degrees cooler, and household chores suddenly seemed intensely interesting.

Tamara and Kevin sipped hot chocolate and built the fire while Robert started supper. After the meal, Tamara sat at the kitchen table with a stack of student papers she had to grade. But her attention wandered and her gaze kept returning to the window. The world outside was harsh, gray, and ugly. The rain ran down the glass in silver streaks, not merrily but angrily, as if it would like to come inside and make itself at home.

As if it were thin fingers scratching, scratching, scratching, searching for a fissure.

And the sound the water made: shu-shaaa, shu-shaaa.

She turned her chair around so that she faced the wall and put the weather out of her mind. A storm in Windshake was more the rule than the exception, especially at this time of year. She told herself that all was well, her family was safe and snug and soon to be tucked in.

Happy, happy, happy.

But still the Gloomies swirled in her head and heart. The soft whispers played all evening and followed her into a restless sleep, crowding the three-foot gap of ice between her husband’s flesh and her own.

Ralph Bumgarner shook the Mason jar and held it up where the sunshine broke through the bare limbs of the oak trees. Ralph hardly had much face. He was mostly ears and teeth and nose, his head just an excuse to hold up a Red Man cap. He squinted like a scientist studying a test tube as he shook the jar again. Bubbles rose in the jar and clung to the glass at the surface of the liquid.

"Frog eyes, same as always," Don Oscar Moody said. "And it'll burn a blue flame if you light it. That's when you can tell a good batch."

"A man's got to be careful these days. Now, it's nothing personal, because I've been buying off you for six years. But everybody makes mistakes."

"Hey, I got pride." Don Oscar pounded himself in the chest twice with his thumb. His friends told him he looked like Mister Magoo, because he was round-headed and bald with a bulbous nose. So what if the veins in his face had blossomed and broken from a lifetime of taste-testing his product? He'd never put much stock in looks anyway, and at least he had Ralph beat all to hell in that department. "Family's been doing this for generations."

"And you do it proud," Ralph said, shaking the jar again. "But a fellow hears stories. People going blind and such."

Don Oscar stomped his boot into the mud. Beggars ought not be choosers. "Now, you just come here and look," he said, grabbing Ralph by the shoulder.

He led Ralph into the springhouse. The building's stone base was covered with thick green moss, and the slat-board siding was dark with rot. The two men blinked as their eyes adjusted to the weak light that spilled through the doorway. A sweet fog of fermenting corn mash crowded the room.

The springhouse had been built into the side of the hill. A stone reservoir was set high into the back bank, and a wooden chute carried water into the room, spilling silver dribbles from gaps in the planks. The earthen floor, soggy from the leaks, was a marsh of boot prints. A row of wooden-staved barrels lined one side of the springhouse.

At the center of the room sat a large contraption that looked like a stripped-down washing machine crossed with a UFO, plugs and coils sprouting from its metal body like hot copper worms. The coils wound into the channeled stream, and clear liquid dripped from the mouth of the pipe into a glass gallon jar at the far side of the room. A fire flickered under the rig, casting low shadows against the walls. The end of the pipe belched a puff of steam.

"Thing of beauty," Don Oscar said, beaming like a father whose son had just been elected to office. "Ain't a ounce of lead in that still."

Which wasn't true. Don Oscar had used lead solder to secure the pipe joints. But compared to the poison that a lot of his competitors brewed up using car radiators as condensers, Don Oscar practically deserved a seal of approval from the FDA.

Don Oscar pointed to the black corners of the springhouse ceiling. "And here's my latest little addition to the business. I done divided up the stovepipe into four, so the smoke gets spread out a mite better. Them Feds got helio-copters nowadays. Two of the pipes go into the bank about twenty yards and come out under a laurel thicket. It's a bitch to clear the ash out of those pipes every few months, but the smoke'll never give me away."

Ralph nodded in admiration, his Andy Griffith ears cutting a faint breeze in the air. "Feds are out hunting for dope these days, now that the hippies finally wised up enough to plant the shit out in the wilderness."

Don Oscar winced at the mention of his other competitors. "I smoked that stuff once, even thought about getting into it myself. Hear the money's real good. But who the hell wants to deal with a bunch of stinking hippies?"

"Well, they say a man's got to change with the times."

Ralph flicked his tongue beneath his beaver teeth, his small eyes shining in the darkness. "But I'm a believer in tradition myself."

"Amen to that, brother." Don Oscar took a Mason jar from the shelf that ran under a boarded-up window. Ralph didn’t disguise his desperation as Don Oscar's hand tightened around the lid.

"Let me show you something," Don Oscar said. Ralph let his stringy muscles sag in disappointment. Don Oscar led him over to one of the barrels. As he did, a low rumble rolled through the mountains, shaking the springhouse walls.

"Thunderstorm sure moved in fast," Ralph said. "And me on foot."

"That ain't no thunder. Them boys are dynamiting over on Sugarfoot again. Gonna knock that whole blamed mountain down to gravel if they keep it up."

Don Oscar lifted the plywood lid off the nearest barrel then let it drop back down. A cloying stench clubbed the air of the room.

Better not let Ralph see THAT, Don Oscar thought. Damned possum crawling in there and dying like that. Hell, it'll cook out. At least it died happy.

He moved to the next barrel and pulled off the lid, then stood aside so that Ralph could see.

"Looks like either runny tar or soupy cow shit," said Ralph.

"That there's prime wort, my friend. That's what gets cooked down to make that joy juice you like so much."

"What the hell did you show me that for?" Ralph said, drawing back and crinkling his rodent face.

"So you'd appreciate the product. And not bitch about the price. Now, if you want to get messed up-and I don't mean stoned, I mean stone, like a rock, where you can't hardly move your arms and legs-then you dip your tin cup into this and take a gulp."

Ralph leaned closer, hesitant, gazing into the murk of the fermenting mash as if divining the future in its surface.

"It's all science, see,” Don Oscar said, loquacious from the sampling he’d done. “Convert sugar to ethanol, distill to stouten and purify, slow-cook to perfection or else you get it too watery. Yep, I could write a book on this stuff."

Ralph looked like he didn't give a rat's ass about the how or even the why of grain alcohol. Right now he seemed worried about the when. The first faint tremors worked through his limbs and sweat oozed from the pores of his sallow skin. Ralph needed a drink soon or he'd go into spasms right there on the muddy floor of the cookhouse.

But when you're buying on credit, especially unreliable credit, you better rein in your horses and bite your tongue and nod at all the right times. I'm calling all the shots here. Hey, that's pretty damn funny, all the SHOTS here, ha-ha.

Ralph pointed to something, a pale powdery thread that branched out like a tree root down the side of the barrel into the wort. "What the hell’s that?"

Don Oscar bent down and looked, pressing his soft belly against the rim of the barrel. "Some kind of fungus or dry rot, I reckon. Won't hurt nothing. It all comes out in the wash."

"Dry rot when it's so wet in here?"

Don Oscar reached into the barrel and touched the tendril. It squirmed spongily and crumbled. Don Oscar rubbed his fingers together, spilling motes of green and white dust onto the surface of the wort.

"Smells funny," Don Oscar said, whiffing like a maitre d' checking a vintage.

"Whatever you say, buddy. Can I have my jar now? You know how I get the shakes."

Don Oscar knew perfectly well how Ralph got the shakes. That was why he was making Ralph wait. There wasn't a lot of entertainment out in the sticks, especially here on the back side of Bear Claw twenty miles from nowhere in either direction. "When can you pay?"

Ralph’s eyes were dark as salamanders. "Got my disability coming at the first of the month, same as usual."

"And what's my guarantee you won't blow it all on that factory beer at the Moose Lodge before I get mine?" Don Oscar rubbed his fingers against his flannel shirt. That mold or whatever it was had made his hand itch.

"I promise, Don Oscar."

Don Oscar smiled in secret pleasure. He didn't care much if Ralph paid or not. He ran a healthy small business, with low overhead and tax-free profit. He allowed himself a helping of mountain generosity. “Here you go, Ralphie.”

Ralph grabbed at Don Oscar's hand, pried the bootlegger's fingers away, and held the jar to his chest as he ran for the door, slipping on the dark, damp floor.

Took it like a chipmunk grabbing an acorn. Don Oscar watched from the springhouse as Ralph struggled with the lid and tipped the jar bottom to the sky. Ralph's Red Man cap nearly slid off, but the adjustable strip stuck to his collar. The bill of the ball cap jutted cockeyed toward the treetops. Some of the liquor streaked down Ralph’s stubbled chin and wet his shirt as he gulped.

Ralph wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve and headed into the woods. Ralph disappeared among the pale saplings and gray-mottled trunks of the oaks. Don Oscar listened to Ralph's feet kicking up dead leaves for another minute, until the sound grew fainter and blended with the warbling of Carolina wrens and the chattering of squirrels.

Don Oscar checked the pressure gauge on the still and added some hickory kindling to the fire. The batch would hold for the evening. His hand itched like crazy now, and a headache was coming on like a thunderstorm riding fast clouds. Maybe he'd better get to the house and lay down, let Genevieve make him a hot bowl of soup and maybe take a Goody’s powder.

He closed and locked the springhouse door and headed down the trail to the house. By the time he was halfway home, his head felt as if it had been crushed between two boulders and his mind was playing tricks on him. The trees seemed way too green, and the new March growth shivered without a wind. Maybe that last batch had been a bit too powerful.

Genevieve Moody looked up from her quilting and out the window to see if her husband had finished his business deal. She didn’t trust Ralph Bumgarner a bit. But Donnie could take care of things. He always had, and he’d sold to rougher folks than Ralph.

It was the tail end of winter, the trees deader than four o'clock and hardly any blooms to speak of, but still the fresh smell of jack pine rosin came through the screen door. The woods were going to bust with green any day now, with scrappy black clouds pushing another storm. It was God dipping His waterspout to tend His garden, priming it for another spring.

That last stitch is a mite loose, but after all it's a quilt. It’s the wrinkles and loose threads and whatnot that gives them character. And the handmade look sells so good down at the antique shop.

Maybe she’d give this quilt away instead of selling it. To Eula Mae or one of the Mull kids, Lord only knew they needed all the help they could get. And it's not like she needed the money, what with Donnie doing so good.

Okay, now, Mister Needle, don't jump at my old fingers like that. A body'd think you lived off my blood the way you act.

She didn’t see Donnie yet. Ralph might have been trying to pull a fast one, make a horse trade, though Ralph was plumb out of horses. Ralph had big ears, and mountain lore held that was a sign of a long and enduring lover, but she didn’t see how any woman could ever stand to put him to the test. This was one of those times she didn’t like Donnie’s being a moonshiner. Because of the company it drew.

But, she had to admit, she liked store-bought groceries and the new Wagoneer and not having to keep up pole beans and yellow squash like her sisters. Donnie had promised a satellite dish come summer. And he was right proud of his work.

“Family tradition,” he called it, and his cheeks got all puffy and cute when he smiled.

Well, family is family, after all, and I'll stand by my man come heck or high water.

Maybe the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and maybe one bad apple spoiled the whole bunch, and maybe the worm turned, but Donnie had never lifted a hand against her. She knew for a fact none of her sisters could say the same about their good-for-nothing husbands.

And Donnie got respect. His customers came from all walks, not just the down-and-outers like Ralph and his kind. Chief Crosley was kept greased up and shut up with a monthly case and Chester Mull was regular as prunes and oatmeal. Half the Moose Lodge were customers. Even some of them snooty Lion's Clubbers weren't above a little illegal pleasure. And that old preacher, not Blevins, but the one before him, Hardwick, paid a call every Monday come rain or shine.

She had time for her hobbies and when she wanted a weaving loom, Donnie ran right out and bought one without batting an eye, two thousand dollars just like that. It sat over there in the corner with dusty strings hanging from it like cobwebs but Donnie hadn’t ever said an unkind word about her not using it anymore. She took another glance out the window, at the sky going thick as flies on molasses.

No Donnie.

She let her attention wander from the quilt in her lap to the kitchen. It was cluttered with cookbooks, recipes, and enamelware, bought by Donnie so she could finally win the chow-chow contest at the festival. He’d even bought her a Cuisinart.

“It's science,” he’d told her. “Not luck or old mountain secrets, else Elvira Oswig wouldn't be getting the blue ribbon year after year. She got the system down, is all.”

Blossomfest was coming up this weekend and that last batch of chow-chow was going to win for her. Donnie had said wasn't no judge on Earth going to be able to pass up this year's Moody entry.

And here he came now, wobbling down the trail like he'd taken too many samples and holding his head like it was a broken bucket leaking water.

Lordy, girl, get your old bones up and help him into his chair, ‘cause you know he works hard for you and never once asks for thanks, only a little hanky-panky once in a while, but they ALL do that. And anyway, that don't take much time at all, and if it keeps Donnie home, then I'm glad to oblige.

She put aside her needle and scraps. Her husband stumbled up the steps, feet dragging as if his boots were filled with creek mud.

"Hey, honey, are you feeling okay?" she asked, standing and brushing the threads from her lap.

To tell the truth, he looked like heck warmed over and he was nodding, but that didn't mean nothing because he hated to complain. He put his arms around her, but his eyes were only partly open, the whites showing like sick moons.

"Here, maybe I better put you to bed, Donnie."

He leaned on her, heavy, like he wanted some hanky-panky, but it was the afternoon and they hadn’t done it in the daylight since she was barely off her Daddy's knee and, besides, his breath smelled like a crock of sauerkraut that had turned.

"You got the fever?” she asked. “Looks like you're having some kind of spell, took ill with something."

Why wouldn’t he look at her?

"Honey?"

She tried to back away, but his arms were strong and his face pressed closer. The rims of his eyes were swollen and tinged with green, the color of rotted watermelons.

“Say something,” she said. “And you may as well stop trying to kiss me until you get that dead skunk out of your mouth and-”

She finally figured out what was bothering her, besides the smell and his strange eyes. His mouth on hers caused no stir of wind.

Lordy, that ain't right, and you got to get away because he ain't breathing and why don't your legs work and he still wants that kiss and his tongue feels like cold slimy snakeskin and why don't your legs work and what's he putting in your mouth that's slithery and Oh my Lord now you can't breathe and this ain’t real but you can't breathe that sure is real and something's wrong in your bones and guts and God let my lungs work, girl, this must be what it's like to die only why does it hurt so much and now you'll never get that blue ribbon and we’re all sauerkraut and what is this shhhhh oh Lordy Jesus I can’t feel my heartbeat and the whole world’s gone green and white and green and white cause this must be what they call your life flashing before your eyes flashing before your flashing