Page 159
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Michael insists that the fight was too confused to name a culprit, kicks the laughing officer, and is moved with Murphy into the patty wagon, where they pound the back door and Murphy begins singing through the ride.
The page keeps the bravado unstable: Michael's defiance is immediate and theatrical, but it is also tangled with fear, custody, and the lyric drift of the wagon song. The police ride becomes another performance space, though the stakes are no longer comic.
In the patty wagon the two refuse the cop's demand to name a culprit - 'The night is so black, when there is so much / confusion... there were so many of them' - and then convert custody into performance, 'pounding our feet on the back door' while Murphy sings 'good / old Natze tunes': a mock anthem about being taken 'free of charge, / to a place, / where we can enlarge, / our melencolty.' A flicker of self-knowledge cuts the bravado - 'I thought I / was going to go beyond this' - before the page drifts into the lullaby refrain 'Where are you going, / my little one,' the wagon winding through the park.