Louis Bourgeois

The Bermuda Triangle

Father would take me down this abandoned rural road to visit a dilapidated house  infested with rats and we’d shoot the rats, not with .22 rifles like you would shooting rats on the dump, but with fully automatic 12 gauge Remington shotguns. You of the bourgeois cannot possibly know the Joy of seeing rat’s blood, real rat’s blood, splattered on old walls.

On one of these sojourns to the old house, we found a battered crimson-colored hardcover book called, The Devil’s Triangle.  At home, father and I took turns reading the book out loud to each other; we were fascinated not so much with the descriptions of the missing planes and ships with all their crew, but by the very fact that we were sitting at home reading this book we found at the very edge of town, at that point where the town itself turned into marshland. It gave us such pleasure to think that we could find such a book in such a place and be able to read it, because we could actually read, which was saying more than most the people we knew or were related to, these people who never ever had so much as the notion of turning off the television and picking up any kind of book at all.

Real rats, real blood, and a found book. You of the middle class could never fully realize this, and I don’t want you to. I don’t want you to feel anything ever again, you, parasite and whore, die off please!  And when you finally, utterly, collapse from your own weight, your own gluttony, I’ll be there to drive the sword through; I will do this for you because I am kind and forgiving, and will go to father’s makeshift grave and tell him that all is well.

Louis Bourgeois is the Executive Director of VOX PRESS (www.voxpressinc.com). His memoir, The Gar Diaries, was nominated for the National Book Award in 2008. He lives, writes and edits in Oxford, Mississippi.