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From a Nationally Televised Press Conference Starring the Poetic Sheriff, Joseph Kilpatrick Conway, After a Van Gogh Painting Is Stolen from a Little Rock Exhibit and Recovered in Monroe County Sheriff, Sheriff Conway, Sheriff! Sheriff, we understand there was a physical struggle to apprehend Mr. Dobbs. Yessir. It was like passionate coitus as we rolled and moaned in the dewy green of the grass, biting, scratching, tangling, while the moon sat silent on the table of the sky like a cold, stale biscuit. Sheriff Conway, how did you locate Dobbs? I stopped Dobbs on Highway 49, my car glittering blue in the sultry Southern night. I approached his vermilion Pontiac and he stepped out handsomely, starlight dancing on his roach of hair, a mosquito flirting with the pink swirl of his ear. All at once, he ran. I gave pursuit and wrangled him gamely to the grass near the edge of the woods. Are there are any other suspects? I’m not at liberty to sing of such a matter. I will say that the suspect’s ears were possessed of a strange mollusklike quality like open clamshells with clams still in them. I might even say that all human ears are unspeakably strange to me in this way. Sheriff, Sheriff! Was the painting in Dobbs’s car? Yes, ma’am, the masterpiece lay secure in the passenger seat. In the backseat a white blanket was gathered in a cumulous bundle, suggesting the cloud of hopelessness that hangs over many Third World countries today. Where is the painting now? 31 The authorities here are holding the painting for now. Even as we speak, it is at a safe, undisclosed location, being watched over by my deputy Tommy Wompler, his mustache like a soft brown fuzzy worm sleeping on his lip. 32 ...

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