This provocative novel takes the reader on a wild ride inside the mind of a Mississippi Delta good-old-boy ex-deputy sheriff who is as vicious and racist as the worst 1950s-’60s stereotypes. Junior Ray Loveblood narrates the story in his own profane, colloquial voice, telling why he hates just about everybody and why he wants to shoot Leland Shaw, a shell-shocked World War II hero and poet who is hiding in a silo from what he believes are German patrols. Through a series of sleights of hand, misdirections, and near misses, Junior Ray and his sidekick Voyd give a dark tour of the Delta country as they chase their mysterious prey. Junior Ray’s thoughts are peppered with excerpts from Shaw’s notebooks – sometimes starkly different from Junior Ray’s diatribe, sometimes eerily similar—and by the end of the story, it is up to the reader to sort out whose reality is more fantastic, Shaw’s or Loveblood’s, as the one stalks the other through the pages of this highly original and darkly comedic story.
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John Pritchard. Junior Ray
Also by John Pritchard
Praise for Junior Ray
Contents
Interviewer’s Comment
1. Me — Leland Shaw — Voyd — Temptation Jones — Sunflower’s Underpants
2. Shaw’s Notebooks — Bone Face — Shaw Runs Off — Sheep
3. The Silo — The Search for Shaw — The Hopping Man — Niggas & Planters — Miss Helena Ferry — Disappearing Footprints — Mr. X and the Light-Skinned Miss Atlanta Birmingham Jackson
4. Quicksand — More About Footprints —The Nite Al Cafe & Club — Voyd Goes Home Nekkid
5. Mr. Floppy — The Need to Shoot Somebody — Lost in the Woods Across the Levee — A Submarine — Boy Sprouts — Mr. Brainsong
6. How the Submarine Provides the Clue to Shaw’s Hideout — Jack Smiley’s Crop Duster — Me and Voyd Shoot Up the Silo
7. Niggas, Planters, & Bankers — Miss Helena’s House — Revolving Mohammedans — A Pussy Bomb — We Go Inside the Silo
8. Morse Code — I Feel Unfulfilled — Eye-Fukkin-Talians & Other Foreigners — My Sex Plan Involving a Preacher’s Wife — The End
Epi-Fukkin-Logue
About the Author
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Junior Ray
A novel by
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I didn’t figure I was no different from them old sumbiches in the Bible. They didn’t let a day go by that they didn’t run out and slay or otherwise smite somebody. In fact, the biggest smiter of ’em all was old God, hissef. Now that’s one advantage of going to church all the time, I learn a lot. Turns out I ain’t too much different from old Jehovah, personality-wise. ’Course, I’m the first to admit there’s also some major differences, too. But if you want to know about smiting, take a look at Deuteronomy and at Joshua. Those two coksukkas were experts at it.
Now, though Leland Shaw was not—as he bygod ought to have been—dangerous, he was crazy as I don’t know what. I got no sympathy with a sumbich that goes crazy in the first gotdamn place. That’s one thing I had against him. He goes to war and loses his mind. Shoot, I’d about lose my mind if I didn’t. But you probably know the story—I had a bad back . . . if it hadn’t have been for that, I’da been right over there in Korea shoot’n them little slant-eyed muthafukkas and pokin’ their women sideways and havin’ me one helluva time. And that’s just what Jehovah woulda done. I forget where he says it, but he tells the chosen people to go into a place and put all the men and boys to the sword and to take the women and the animals for themselves. If I’da knowed all that, I’da been goin’ to church a lot sooner. It just goes to show that the Lord does work in mysterious ways. I’m livin’ proof of that.
