Under My Beautiful Flesh: a journey out of darkness
James Randall Chumbley
Not yet released

Excerpt: Bang, Bang You Shot Me Dead

I was five and he was six.
We rode on horses made of sticks.
He wore black and I wore white.
He would always win the fight.
Bang bang; he shot me down.
Bang bang; I hit the ground.
Bang bang, that awful sound.
Bang bang; my baby shot me down.
Bang Bang
by Sonny Bono

The first week of June felt like summer had already set in for weeks, but that was no big surprise — I’d spent so many summers in the South — too many, for that matter. Spring had been cut short by twenty-one days — exactly the number until the summer solstice, and my fifty-fourth birthday. If you know anything about the South, you are aware the summertime air hangs palpably hot and dense with humidity. For that, this early June day, already felt like the middle of August, with daily temperatures hitting the nineties.

I felt thick, sweaty, humid, and physically sick. With each breath, I struggled to find oxygen in the viscous-gummy air — more like chunky mucus, I laboriously inhaled it through my nose, down into my lungs. The crying I’d done, on and off, that morning didn’t help, stopping up my nasal cavities like a feverish summer cold.

By stark contrast, walking through the doors leading into The Superior Court of Fulton County, State of Georgia — the sudden swoosh — total envelopment — of blessed electromechanical air conditioning — without which invention and proliferation, the South would be neither populated, civilized, socialized, nor commercialized — brought immediate physical relief and mental clarity to this day: June 9, 2009 — the very day that would send my life spiraling downward, out-of-control, changing every fraction of it forever.

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Ownership: James Randall Chumbley