The Tale of Bobby Tumulus
by @peter-christian-ness
I remember a story, it starts at fourteen.
I had a crooked back and low self esteem.
I was afraid I was gonna end up in a ditch somewhere.
I had to devise myself a plan
of which direction to go if shit hit the fan
and I knew my mother wanted a prodigy child
So I figured I could sing or get really smart,
but my voice would crack and my mind was dark,
so I decided, in this crazy world,
that I could rob graves.
So I left home when I was sixteen
my boredom peaked and my senses keened
I grew with a morbid fascination with the dead
It started out
me figuring that
they wouldn’t miss their dimes, their shoes or their hats
I tramped on the dusty trail with an evil eye
As I ended up along the borderline
I met another young man who had gone insane.
He just got back from the war.
Like he said: “I’ve seen some things.”
So we rode together for quite a while
in the dust on the trail for a thousand miles
until one night, we came upon an unmarked grave.
My partner fumbled around in his pockets
evading worms and maggots from his sockets.
He turned around and looked at me with his crazy smile
It turned out what he found was a letter
and with this smile he said: “The dead have it better.”
So i reached out to grab it while the stench arose.
He handed it to me and on front and back
I read about this lonely, old, sad sack
who, being sick of life, ended up hanging himself.
This really put things into perspective for me
for the attention me and my partner was giving, you see,
was often more than these people received in life.
But one windy day the law caught on our path
and with a holstered gun me and my partner had
we stopped by a local tavern to wet our throats.
The law had converged in the front door
my partner flinched before I could do more.
And before I knew it he had bolted down for the gun.
Before I could say another word
he dropped to the floor and his fingers curled.
He rattled and faded away while I was restrained.
As I was lying on my stomach on the ground
I looked over and I heard a sound
It was my partner whispering his final words.
“The dead have it better.”