One of the boys bit her, then. Janis cackled.

But when pleased with the response, the boy bit her breast again, fitting his teeth into the teethmarks, Janis hit him on the top of the head with the back of the Billie Holiday book. All three boys backed off, dull-eyed and timid.

Janis cackled. She had a whore's power, but she weren't no whore. Never would be. "You coulda, at least, bit the other breast," she said.

The dull-eyed boys didn't brighten any.

Janis laughed, the volume turned down from a cackle. It was almost a sympathetic sound she made. "Twice is boring," she explained, like they needed some birds-and-bees instruction. And then, sympathetically: "Get on with you now." She said this to all three boys. Then, a crazy idea struck her, half holy, half goof. "Share with your brother and sister--" she said.

When the boys looked baffled -- there was no one else in the loft -- Janis cackled. "The person on your left," she insisted, "and the person on your right." Janis waggled her hand in the air, as if indicating others in the loft. Then she cackled again.

The baffled boys got on with them, out of the loft, and away from the church. Janis watched from a loft window as they ran down the dusty Port Arthur street away. Boys! She hadn't meant to be left alone.

Maybe it was her big ears.

Janis tried to laugh. She tried to cackle. But she couldn't. The kids called her Dumbo. Instead of laughing, from the loft into the empty church Janis sang the lullaby she liked from Dumbo, the one about the rain, but it wasn't raining, so then, Dumbo to Jumbo, she sang the song she liked from Jumbo, "Little Girl Blue," because she was dressed in blue, at least, the Alice blue dress.

"I got the blue dress for it," she said to no one, as she finished the song, and she refastened the dress. Then she did a little curtsy to the invisible Queen of Hearts; it was a demure dance step in her blue dress and her black buckle shoes.

"And I got the shoes, too, Your Majesty," she said, and then clicked her heels together, mixing some Dorothy Gale into her Alice in Wonderland. Oz. Wonderland. What were they but distorted dreams of Texas? There's no place like home. Janis cackled, like the Wicked Witch of West Wonderland or East Oz, wherever, nowhere, but then she returned to Alice. She wanted out of Port Arthur, that was damned sure. She'd turn tricks to get away if she had to, but she sure as hell wouldn't turn tricks to stay.

"'Off with her head,'" Janis said.

Janis pictured her own mother's beehive-haired head falling into a guillotine basket, and rolling around in there like a black-eyed pea. A double black-eyed pea. And then Janis cackled again.

And then she stopped cackling.

She looked down from the loft into the church. Big-eared Dumbo could have flown down, and across the pews, Janis thought, and through the church window out the other side, all the way to Austin if he'd wanted, "but I can't, Mama," she said.

Port Arthur was a whore town.
Janis walked home.

 Janis on the Scale

88 pounds? Damn. She'd been starving herself for weeks, and she was still so freaking fat. Freaking acne, too. Off with her head.

Janis in Heaven
Janis in Heaven danced. No starving. Janis in Heaven danced. No acne. No singing, or maybe singing, but singing for the hell of it. For the hell of it, Janis in Heaven danced.

Janis in Austin
At the University of Texas the frat boys liked to talk of and about oil. Liquor was oil. Sex was oil. Good grades were oil. Money was oil. Oil was oil. Their daddies stunk of oil.

Whispering into the microphone: "Your daddies stink of oil," Janis said. "But you boys just stink." Janis cackled.

It was at a folk club near the University. Open mike night, but the real amateurs were long done singing. Janis held stage by the balls. The club was dense with smoke; viscous clouds of it spiraled around the microphone where Janis stood, round-shouldered and bent over.

She wasn't hunchbacked, though. And her acne had cleared. She'd just finished fellating the microphone, singing, raspy-throated as a toothless whore, Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." As to Dylan's question about when the cannonballs would stop flying, Janis offered her opinion that it wouldn't happen so long as the "good ol' oil boys are oiling the war effort."

One of the drunken frat boys heckled half-cocked. "Stick to singing, you ugly acneed bitch, and leave the politics to your daddy."

"You mean," Janis shot back, half-drunk herself, "you mean, don't you, leave the politics to your daddies, don't you?"

"What?" the drunken frat boy said.

"I mean," Janis said, "and I mean it in the meanest way possible--" she cackled -- "your daddies stink of oil. But you boys just stink."

"Fuck you," the frat boy said, articulate. He got up. Then he and two of his pardners walked half-assed out of the smokey fellated folk club, and into the blistering haze of an Austin May night.

The owner of the club turned the open mike over to somebody less drunk than the half-drunk Janis, to a San Antonio girl wearing Patsy Cline boots and big lipstick. Janis cackled, finished off her fifth of Southern Comfort, and stumbled out of the club.

The frat boys hadn't gotten very far. She caught up to them. "Wanna dance?" Janis asked. Janis fucked them, then, each in turn, behind a grocery store dumpster. They left her there with bananas in her hair. Later, the well-oiled frat boys nominated Janis for the Ugliest Man on Campus Award.

Janis in New Orleans
Fat Tuesday. The Mardi Gras. Janis's first. She wasn't fat. Drunken, she clawed at some joker's zipper in a blues bar, as they danced. Post-clawing and both of them covered in sperm, they'd gotten into a fight about Bessie Smith, and then they'd decided to go home together and ball.

But they'd had a bigger fight in the car, and the joker had thrown her out into the street without her purse even, just her unpuckered lips. Janis decided to hitch back to Austin. She'd had enough of freaking Mardi Gras. Then she decided to take the bus.

On the way to the bus station she went down on a fat guy in a Lincoln, and then, when she'd gotten to the bus station, she'd taken on a fat dispatcher. "Hell, why not," she'd said, "it's Fat Tuesday." Janis wasn't fat. She cackled, then sucked, then went to the Ladies' Room to throw up.

But she'd earned her bus fare back to Austin.

Janis in Heaven
Janis in Heaven danced. No starving. Janis in Heaven danced. No acne. No singing, or maybe singing, but singing for the hell of it. For the hell of it, Janis in Heaven danced.

Janis in San Francisco
Found her voice. Found amphetamines. Found a girlfriend. Found the bottom of a bottomless supply of bottles. Found herself, fucked, in Memphis.

Janis in Memphis
How did she get there? Who was the sonofabitch beside her in bed?

Janis in Manhattan
How did she get there? Who was the sonofabitch beside her in bed?

Janis in Heaven
Janis in Heaven danced. No starving. Janis in Heaven danced. No acne. No singing, or maybe singing, but singing for the hell of it. For the hell of it, Janis in Heaven danced.

Janis at the Abbey Road Address
John had found Yoko. Paul had found Linda. George had found God. Ringo wasn't looking for anything. So the Beatles weren't really home when Janis came knocking. Well, hell, wasn't that a well-hell of a thing? She'd once had sex with thirty-five different people on a train, but it was the two hundred twelve she'd missed that she remembered.

Janis cackled, remembering the missed sex, and sat down on the curb. She cussed. She kicked her pearly boots against the blacktop. She wished she had some dope or some booze. She kicked a piece of pink chalk.

Pink chalk? There was a piece of pink chalk some kid had left in the gutter, a drawing of Paul there, with a pink rose clenched between his teeth, but the cartoon-x'd eyes of a dead man, drawn onto the blacktop. The picture was signed, "John."

Janis cackled.

Then cussed again. It sure as hell wasn't the summer of '67 anymore, the freaking Summer of Love. She decided to sit there, drugless, waiting for the boys to show up, and she sang a cappella the whole of "Here, There, and Everywhere." She'd heard Claudine Longet sing it once, in the tiniest little girl voice you could imagine. Janis wanted to sing it in that tiny voice if she could. She tried, but she couldn't.

She cackled. It was a hell of a thing, weren't it, like she'd been born a whore?

Janis at John Davidson's House
At John Davidson's house, in sunny Southern California, mid afternoon, Jim Morrison grabbed a daisied vase off a glass table, and wielded it like a microphone. When Janis tried to grab the microphone away, Morrison grabbed Janis by the hair and banged her head against the table. Then he let her have the stupid microphone. Janis chased Morrison out of the house, and cracked a Wild Turkey bottle over Morrison's head. Let him have the stupid microphone, she cackled. He lay on the patio, knocked out.

Inside again, Janis danced, hippie-skirted and underwearless, on the glass table where her head had been smashed. She wielded the daisied vase. She sang a bluesy Billie Holiday song, then a Bessie Smith. Several relatives of someone at the party gazed up from beneath the glass table. Janis squatted down for them.

"I'm drunk," she said.

Janis at the Abortion Doctor's

Janis at the Chelsea Hotel
She "preferred handsome men," she said, but for him, she "would make an exception." Then she laughed, smiled, and gave him head on the unmade bed. The handsome men were victory, but the homely men were home.

Janis at the Super Bowl
Joe was weak-kneed and late for the Super Bowl. Janis waited back in Joe's hotel room. A black light flickered. Spent sperm flickered across the bed, like silver paisley sewn into a black dress. Janis "only fucked winners," she'd joked, "so you'd better come home a winner." Joe had promised. But what the hell: it wasn't true. She fucked everybody.

Janis laughed, and stuck a needle into her arm. She wasn't hunchbacked.

Janis in Heaven
Janis in Heaven danced. No starving. Janis in Heaven danced. No acne. No singing, or maybe singing, but singing for the hell of it. For the hell of it, Janis in Heaven danced.

Janis in Mary's Bedroom
Fourteen-year-old Mary's walls were covered with rock posters. Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. But her bed was still covered with the baby goose and monkey quilt comforter her aunt had made her before she was even born. She'd dangled, then, a tiny appendage in her mother's womb, as she seemed to dangle now, a tiny appendage in her own bedroom.

She was starving herself into thinness, but never arriving there, so a rope, she thought, would help. Hanging from the light fixture in her ceiling, she felt the rope choking her, constricting the pipes the food passed through. She smiled. It had been a good plan.

Overdose would've been less painful, but it didn't seem to work. The vomit reflex she'd cultivated to lose weight was too strong. Whatever pills she swallowed, whatever poison, she threw up. Besides, she was accustomed to pain, constant pain; being seen was pain, she was so fat.

Dangling there, no fatter than an exclamation point from her ceiling, the music of Big Brother and the Holding Company from her stereo surrounding her, Mary heard a sudden cackle. No, not from the stereo. From the wall opposite, from her poster, Janis Joplin was emerging, bowlegged and skinny.

"Man, Mary," Janis said, "you don't want to do this. Do this; the bastards win." And Janis pushed a broiled and breaded piece of her heart toward Mary.

Mary took it, and ate it.
Janis smiled, and cackled.

The piece of Janis's heart passing through Mary's throat burst the rope, so that Mary fell to the floor, disdangled -- unconscious, but breathing. The record on the turntable played itself out as she lay there, then turned itself off.

When Mary's mother looked in later, she saw Mary tucked into bed beneath the baby goose and monkey quilt comforter -- no rope, nor even ropeburn around her neck -- not that her mother would've been looking. For the splittest of split seconds, though, Mary's mother thought she saw the shadow of a skinny seductress sitting on the edge of Mary's bed, singing some sort of lullaby to Mary. The lullaby from Dumbo? Mary's mother looked, but there was nothing playing on the turntable, and in the space of a look back, the apparition was gone.

Janis at Woodstock
Janis lay drunk in the back of someone's van, she wasn't sure whose. It stank of sex and whisky and marijuana. Her performance that day hadn't gone well, but what the hell, it was one big family here. She shot something up. The flickery shadows of someone's strobe light winked through a side window of the van. Someone pulled a curtain shut across the window, dimming the dim light dimmer. Someone laughed. Someone cackled. It would've been a good night to die.

Janis in Heaven
Janis in Heaven danced. No starving. Janis in Heaven danced. No acne. No singing, or maybe singing, but singing for the hell of it. For the hell of it, Janis in Heaven danced.

She "preferred handsome men," she told Leonard, but for him, she "would make an exception." Then she laughed, and gave him head on the unmade bed. The handsome men were victory, she said, but the homely men were home. With him, she felt at home. He laughed.

And then she left, buying the killer heroin on purpose, some supposed, but not Leonard. "Testing fate," she liked to say. She was a bird, Leonard thought, that was all, going from wire to wire, going home. Going home. But why? Port Arthur was a whore town, not Camelot. And Kennedy was dead, anyway. What did she expect?

Leonard had his cynicism as armor; Janis had nothing.

Kris wanted the words from Leonard's song on his tombstone, the Bird on a Wire words on a tombstone, but Janis died first, trying to be free, going home. Going home, she got away, Leonard said, didn't you, baby? None of that jiving around?

No.

Leonard moved to a different hotel. But he couldn't decide whether to take his raincoat with him. He stood in the doorway, getting nowhere, trying to decide, grasping the doorknob, going nowhere. He couldn't decide whether to take his raincoat with him. So he stood in the doorway, going nowhere.

The door: open? shut? He couldn't decide.
Eenie? Meenie? Minie? Moe? He couldn't decide.

Finally, he decided, or the door shut without his decision, and he found the famous blue raincoat in his hands, or hooked over a shaking arm, the nerves of the arm trenched out, inch by inch, nerve by nerve, as if by a 19-cent ball-point pen. The tip of a fountain pen would've made a better trowel for trenching out. But it cost a dollar. So Leonard decided to take the coat with him to the new hotel, but he couldn't decide whether to wear it or not. Wear it? Don't? Wear it? Don't? He couldn't decide. Eeenie Meenie Minie Moe. He couldn't decide.

Janis was dead.

Kris was in a movie, his beard big as only a movie screen could make it, full of the distinguishable individual hairs. They looked black, not brown. One day would they be unpigmented, Leonard thought -- white? Salt and pepper?

Janis was dead.

But Kris was a movie star. Leonard watched the movie on his way home to the new hotel. The raincoat was slung over his arm. He was soaking wet from the rain. It was curious. He couldn't remember having decided not to wear it. But Janis was dead. So he put it on.

When he got to the hotel, Leonard, wet inside the wet coat, tried all the hotel keys he owned, too many to count. He owned hundreds of them, thousands of them, dozens of them, tens of them, in case the birds on the wires ate the bread crumbs, and he didn't know the way home.

Finally, a key fit.
Go in? Don't? Eeenie Meenie Minie Moe.

Leonard went in; the threshold was cold; it was the wrong doorway; Janis was dead; but he went in. And then he went in. And then he went in. He watched himself going in, and watched himself watching himself going in, and watched himself watching himself watching himself going in. And then he went in.

There was the echo of a song resonating in the room, rising from the unmade bed. It was a new hotel. A clean room. But an unmade bed. It must've been Janis unmade the bed, he didn't know.

He didn't think of Janis that often.

Leonard sat on the bed, but he couldn't decide whether or not to take off the raincoat. He wasn't sure he had anything on underneath. Eenie Meenie Minie Moe. He couldn't decide. There was a hook on the wall by the door, perfect for hanging blue raincoats, but Leonard couldn't decide. The coat was wet, and it was famous. There was the echo of a famous song in the room. The bed was unmade, perfect for lying down in, naked, and remembering Janis. Janis would like that, would laugh at that -- from beyond death -- giving him head on the unmade bed.

At last decided, he lay down.
Leonard was glad that men had loved Janis.
But he didn't think of her that often.

Alice at LBJ's Ranch

Today was the day.
At last.

For his appointment with Alice in Wonderland, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the long limp, nearly Lame Duck, President of these United States of America, had grown his gone-white hair long as a Yippie stalking the Pentagon, long as a hippie dancing in Golden Gate Park, long as a Conscientious Objector. And today was the longed-for appointment day. LBJ had spent the evening before this day of the long-awaited meeting watching the Hippies and the Yippies getting their long- haired heads by the pig police bloody busted in at the Chicago Convention.

So long, America, he thought, as he watched it. He was glad he wasn't there, in Chicago, for the battering. Everybody thought LBJ was there, of course. Party politics demanded it. And Hubert Humphrey needed it.

But it wasn't LBJ there. He wasn't much inter ested in politics anymore. Still, he had obligations. So he'd sent a double to Chicago, or a ghost. The double, with his hair short, looked more like LBJ than LBJ did. But the real Lyndon Baines Johnson, the long-haired Lyndon Baines Johnson, watched the Chicago convention on the TV.

So long, my fellow Americans, he thought.
So long, America.

It seemed that the country was collapsing. But maybe the Yippies were right, he thought: maybe it was time for collapse, and whatever might follow: a new America.

Watching the TV made Lyndon weep.

He wiped his eyes with his long white hair. If this had been a cartoon, he would've wrung the wet hair out with his fingers. But it wasn't a cartoon, he didn't think. Only God's idea of a joke.

Lyndon felt sorry, watching, for the bashed-up Yippies. He was as much on their side now as any side. They'd been right about Jesus having long hair. He felt sorry for Ethel Kennedy. He was on her side now, too. Seeing her widowy made him weep. Bobby Kennedy ought to be at the convention, getting nominated, but he was dead. Lyndon felt sorry even for Bobby. He felt sorry for his widow, and his kids. He was on Bobby's side now. He felt sorry for the dead boys and for the living boys in Vietnam.

He felt sorry.
So sorry.

But there was nothing he could do about it anymore. He wandered around his West Texas or East Texas or North Texas or South Texas ranch. He couldn't remember where he was, except it was Texas. Texas was so big, America in miniature, but there wasn't much snow, which might have been a relief if there had been, the snow melting into the dry riverbeds, he didn't know. Texas was so big. Big as beagle ears, he laughed, but it was a rueful laugh. He hadn't meant to offend anyone, picking the beagles up by their ears. He loved beagles. They had big ears, and beautiful eyes.

Big. Texas was big. Ladybird wasn't there, though. She was in Chicago. The kids were there, in Chicago. Wherever Lyndon was, he wept a lot.

And he'd grown his hair long, long as beagle ears, down to his shoulders. He had become the crazy old man with the long hound dog face, and the greasy long gone-white hair, the crazy old bastard who had once had this crazy old dream of a Great Society -- crazy, crazy, crazy -- Patsy Cline was dead, and now he was unkempt and crazy and homeless on his own ranch, which was situated somewhere in his own Great Society -- but at least -- "hey hey"-- the cheap, cruel, unfair taunt -- he wasn't killing any kids today.

No.

Today -- today -- let no kids be killed, please -- in Chicago or Vietnam or Texas or anywhere-- today -- today was the happy summer day that Lewis Carroll had long ago predicted -- when Alice would at long last understand him -- would at long last understand him -- and LBJ hoped, as promised, to hear on this happy summer day, to hear Alice tell her long-ago tale to him. He didn't know why he had been selected to hear it, but he was grateful. Alice would tell him which pill made you larger, and which pill made you small, and why you'd want to be larger or small. He knew there was something there he didn't understand. He wanted to understand.

Today might be the day he understood. There were so many things she could tell him. Why the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. What if they gave a war and no body came. Just why the White Rabbit was in such an all-fired hurry. What was the sound of one g-ddamned hand clapping in a g-ddamned forest that no one could g-ddamned hear fall. How the good guys could become the bad guys without doing anything different from what they'd been doing. Why God let bad things happen. Was it His idea of a joke?

So Lyndon rose up this morning, excited. He said good-bye by telephone to Ladybird, though she couldn't have known it was good-bye, and he wasn't sure it was, either - who knew what this day would bring? Ladybird was there in Chicago with his ghost -- but he called her room in the hotel at dawn, waking her, and said good-bye, good-bye, baby, so long. She seemed confused by his both being beside her asleep, and his talking to her on the telephone. He was sorry for her confusion, and any pain he might've caused, but what could he do? Then, still dressed in the tattered red long johns which had been his father's, Lyndon mounted his old gray horse, and rode off to the dry Texas riverbed near his Texas home.

With relief, he saw that Alice was there, dressed in her blue dress and white apron, like in the book. What if she had been dressed in a leather fringe jacket or a tie-dyed shirt? How would he have recognized her?

But Alice was there, expecting him.
She'd been expecting him.
Thank God.

As if at his approach, Alice opened an oversized book upon her apronned lap, there, where she was sitting, on the dry riverbank beside the dry river on the happy summer day.

LBJ dismounted, then walked to the river. He had to button up his father's ass-flap, so he did it, awkwardly, with his big old hands. His father had had big old hands, lifting Lyndon by the kid's ears to the sky. Alice seemed to know with her eyes what big hands were supposed to signify. "Sorry," Lyndon said. Then he lay his hoary, big-eared head on Alice's lap, the white and wrinkled, and long-haired head on the white apron. Snow lost in snow, like boys' hands in a pinafore.

But it was all very proper. There was the dress beneath the apron, and the pinafore beneath that, and Alice, he knew, was an hallucination. He knew he'd gone mad. Of course, he knew it. There was no use arguing about it. There was no use consulting his cabinet or the CIA about it. They'd tell him he was fine, he was sane. But about this he knew better. He knew he was crazy.

But it was a better place than he'd been in a long time. It was a happy summer day, at long last. And very proper. The Yippies and the Hippies were like children, now, like Lucy or Lynda. LBJ was sorry he'd ever cheated on Ladybird, anyway. So this morning was all very proper. He didn't even have any interest in sex anymore, though he no longer begrudged Jack Kennedy, or any dead Kennedy, the Kennedy lust.

If only Marilyn hadn't died in the fallout, of course. He felt sorry for her. Or maybe that was just FBI disinformation, the Kennedy involvement in that. Who knew anything anymore? J. Edgar Hoover dancing in his black silk dresses and demure black pumps, claiming there was no such thing as the Mafia? The ignoramus.

But weren't we all just human? Lechers, ignoramuses, Humpty Dumpties, and all? Wasn't that what the Great Society was all about? Lyndon still didn't understand how he'd gotten sidetracked by all this Vietnam business. All the King's horses and all the King's men? He didn't know. He hated war.

But we're all just human, none of us any different. Wasn't that the point? He wept for J. Edgar Hoover. And for Marilyn and for the Kennedys. He wept for the dead boys. And for the living Yippies. And for Lewis Carroll.

Lewis Carroll -- now there was a puzzlement.

For weeks, LBJ had been able to do nothing but read Lewis Carroll. Wasn't that odd? He was worn out with the newspapers hounding him, of course, but he was worn out with the TV hounding him, too, and he still watched. Why couldn't he read the newspapers? All he could read was Lewis Carroll.

"It's all right," Alice said, twirling tender fingers in the lifeless tendrils of his long white hair. "It's all right. You look like a kind of Santa Claus, really. Not what I'd expected."

"I'm so sorry," he said.

"Hell, enjoy Texas," she said, and let his white head slip into the stretched cotton tension of her dress, like falling into a sling. "It's God's own Heaven, ain't it?"

"What?"

He looked up as best he could, lost in the fabric. Could this possibly be Alice? The white apron covering her blue blue jeans? Blue jeans?

"Here, have some Southern Comfort," Alice said, and handed Lyndon the bottle. "Powerful and sweet, I'll tell you."

Southern Comfort? The girl's hair was gone dark and scraggly, and her face rugged and acne- pocked. She looked more like Janis Joplin than like Alice in Wonderland.

"No, thanks," Lyndon said. "Hell, I'd expected pills or grass or something, but not whiskey in Wonderland."

Alice cackled. "You looked like you could use a drink."

"Well," said LBJ, "maybe just one." And he took a long one, then handed the bottle back.

Acne Alice took another long swig herself, then dumped what was left into the empty riverbed. Alice and Lyndon watched the river swell with whisky until it overran the riverbank. They sat wide-eyed and cross-legged in the wet flood plain. One match would've sent them flaming into a longed-for eternity, but neither one of them had a match.

"Damn," Alice said, and smiled.

"Damn," Lyndon said, and smiled.

"So," Alice said, "you want me to go down on you?"

"No, thanks," Lyndon said. "Just read if you would."

"It's okay," Alice said, and cackled. "I prefer handsome men, anyway." But Alice gave Lyndon the book. "Here," she said, "you read it."

"But it's your book," he said, protesting.

Alice cackled again.
So LBJ opened the book.
There were the names.

LBJ read the names, every one of them, the names of the dead boys, the names which would one day get carved into a wall, Alice told him. Some of them he couldn't pronounce.

But he did his best.

When he was done, Janis rose up, and kissed the dead President on the creased forehead. "Thank you, Mister President," she said.

She tossed off her white apron, then, and her black-buckled shoes, discarded her lacy-necked white tee-shirt, and she was naked then except for her blue jeans, her body not a beautiful body, but she was dancing, and she was crying. Janis didn't understand how, but she was weeping Lyndon's tears for him now, and she was dancing slow ritual circles around his dead body.

He looked like Dodgson would've looked with beagle ears and a hound dog face, she thought; he looked like all the boys and all the girls she'd done what she'd done with looked, the kiss and the touch things, feeling so worthless, so unloved. He looked like Jimi and Jim looked, like Grace and Mary looked, like Kris and Lenny, Joe and Jack, Judy and Jill, Tom and Jerry, Joe and Joe and Joe and Joe, Dick and Jane ... Alice. She had needed the kiss and the touch things, and their names carved into the wall behind the mattress to know, so that she could know she was lovable.

But she never had come to know it -- that she was lovable -- no matter how many names she carved or scribbled there. Carved into her breasts, or carved into her thighs: it didn't matter. No matter how many names she carved or scribbled there, she was just a scared and lonely little Texas girl, born in a whore port town, but never wanting to be a whore, wanting to be anything but a whore.

Kris had tried to tell her. Lyndon had, finally, shown her what she needed to see, that everybody in Texas was scared, even the President of these United States, even her mother in the beehive hairdo. It was to keep the bees out of her face, to give them a place to go, to swirl around in, out of her face.

And the kids at school, taunting her -- everybody was scared. Lyndon was scared. Kris was scared. "Me and Bobby McGee," she laughed. She remembered his lips beneath his beard. Her body lightened then, and she did a quick dance away from Lyndon, away from the ritual circle, singing a voiceless song. She wasn't alone, needing Dumbo's ears, her whisky-voice, to fly.

Lyndon Baines Johnson had shown her that.

Janis kissed the dead President on the forehead. "Thank you, Mister President," she said, "for showing me that. You know, I had a hard growing up. You, too, probably, huh? You done your best, I guess."

Janis, rising from her kiss then, cackled, and watched as the Texas sky cracked like dry earth above her.