Sure it took us a good three months to figure out he was dead, but that sure explained the

crap in Old Man Rickert’s pants. And also why he didn’t have no hair. Or forehead. Or

why his eyeballs were replaced with crawdaddies. But what kind of friends would me and

Cluck be if we walked out on Old Man Rickert now? Racist friends, that’s what. So we

continued to go fishin over on Jiminy Crick and kept the poor old man company. Cluck

got scared sometimes if I left him alone, so usually we went together. Little story about

Cluck: he got his name Cluck cause of the time he clucked like a chicken after I walked

in on him menstruating.

But back to my story. You remember how I told you bout that man who chased us away

from Rickert’s body with a gun? Well, we thought that man had killed him. But it wasn’t

him. Later we found a note stuffed in his asshole. That note said: "Goodbye cruel world. I

killed myself. Not the mafia. You may as well forget about the mafia or any men with

guns you’ve seen chasin’ me screamin’ ‘I’m gonna kill you as soon as I can.’ Cause that

was a joke. And nobody stuffed this note into Old Man Rickert’s…er…my asshole

except for me. Cause it felt like fun. So if you could kindly leave my remains to the earth

that I once loved, it would be appreciated. See you in hell, Old Man Rickert." Funny

thing is, I don’t even remember what we were doing in his asshole in the first place.

"See Cluck!" I says, "It weren’t never no mafia. It was just crazy old man Rickert who

done slit his own throat ear to ear!" So we had a good laugh and picked out some

crawdaddies to use as bait. It felt good just to sit there and fish without a care in the

world. It didn’t even make no matter that we weren’t catchin no fish, we were just happy

to be in the warm sun, the nice quiet, although Cluck occasionally started cluckin up

hellfire and throwin’ up feathers. I just ignored it? Why? Cause that’s me.

We decided to give Old Man Rickert a funeral. It wasn’t like no ordinary funeral. There

wasn’t no clergyman, or congregation, or casket, or really a body anymore. By now Old

Man Rickert was pretty much a matted crust of leaves and bugs. Then me and Cluck got

an idea. I was lookin at all them bugs nibbling away, and said "Hey, let’s send the old

man out right. So we just took Old Man Rickert right apart and put him on our fishin

poles. And what do you know? We caught so many fish that day! I was laughin, and

Cluck was cluckin up a storm.

You know who else showed up that day? The mafia showed up. They were gonna do

pretty much the same thing, give Old Man Rickert a nice little funeral in Jiminy Crick.

They got all nervous and stuff when we said we’d already gotten rid of him. But I

explained to them politely that we found his little note when we tore up his asshole and

that it was a suicide. They just kinda backed away and left. I don’t know why. I woulda

least offered em some fish.

"Fishin Again With Old Man Rickert" debuted November 1, 2002, performed by Luke Pingel.

Performed at No Shame Los Angeles on May 23, 2003.

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