"IRIDESCENT POPPIES and LOLLIPOP MOMMIES"
("THIS IS A PACT WITH THE DEVIL, BOY!")
autobiography - george mcclure
Bulgamerica and the Sunningbird Oven
Well I fell between the Mississippi mud, and the carpet catched my eye, so I twisted around again, and that nigga's big sparkly ring flashed at me. You know those nights with the honeysuckle on the air so heavy and thick that you feel like you're breathing water, warm water 97 or 98 degrees with big bugs and may flies and stuff in it that catch in your throat but the honeysuckle is viscous and slippricates everything in all your openings, you know what I'm talking about.
Yes, am slippery slithery stingy things in the night, and they'll creep right up out of the bayous and sewers and sludge along the pavements leaving sticky sloverly trails and you know if you step in that, man, it's a real bad mess 'cause that slug slime won't come off no matter what you do. You're just stuck with it till it wears off, maybe a day or a couple two.
The big girl now she wants to drink her vodka 'n juice down on the beach where to be seen and to see and the boy, now he wants to pick that nasty black banjo over by the dock o' the bay and watch the building - no, island - sized ships come by, I mean so close, you could almost throw a rock and hit em, but how do they flow so close and draw so deep and not run aground? Now tell me that, how do they flow so close that you could almost touch it, your vision is so close to it, and man they are quiet, too, just almost ghostly creeping up there and if you weren't paying attention and watching out, you could just look up and see this house - hell, a starscraper on its side - floating by you almost to crush you, just your little insignificant body, and you weren't even aware of these huge immensities in existence right next to your door. Jeez, just fall off and wham! you're splattered to bits by this mountain coming over you.
Sex was in the worst way, yeah, all day long with my fly buttoned up and not a sticker-bush to leap over, nary a sticker-bush in sight! Those are those awful long starry Texas nights when the time moves slow and life moves fast and you can see your world stretching out like a hot blacktop highway effervescing heat at night bubbly just when you want it to be cool, 'cause if you wait, now, into the night, finally an incredibly cool breathlet washes over you, it crept down from the hills so cool, and you just sit there and go "aaahhhhhhh", just to feel that cool air again, like maybe your mind and body forgots it existed.
'Course you deepen into the hotness, and you might can wait three, four, somemaybe fifteen or twenty days and nights with no breath nor hint 'nof coolness nor notwhere, and if you're not careful you're ready to punch strangers or those strangers you call family kin around you. Those critters of habit surround you. You might just grumble at somebody, boy, so make sure you rest from that heat cause it'll kill you, man, it'll burndry you out like an old piece of leather in a half a day flat if you're in the wrong place. That's the sun, baby, it's all life and it's all death, in the desert. It's all life and it's all death in one time and place and it's spiritual, man. Just spiritual.
The lady next spoke to me. I had spoken with the spirit deer and hushed the spirit and captured the soul of the feathered grouse with my power, and I spoke to this woman through the spirit talk cause she'd brought been in the psychodelics ward and she just talked in gibberish. The doctors nary a one could make sense of it so they left for me to charge and I just tried the spirit talk.
I never told her my name. I stood and looked over the desert, thinking how a man could lose himself, just wander free, leaving behind the world of clothes, cars, shopping malls, cigarettes and girls and bars and sycophants and blues into searing whites and blood red just wandering free be the desert just renounce the world, i mean fuckin renounce it and let it go, man. Then she gets very quiet, just calm, then says clear as a bell "Steve, if you take off your clothes and just walk into the desert, you'll have everything. You'll find everything." My head whips around and i look at her, fleeting grin, then she's immersed in gibberish again.
Just pure stream nonsense gibberish and with jumbo fries, i mean that's what i want just now, right now, hombre, blue ridge samplers and crash lot campers chili and beans and ain't them frijoles good? Mmm, mmm... You give me a good ol pinto bean, now, butter beans are fine, but a eatin' bean is a pinto beans, you just gotta get the rocks out of em cause man ain't nothing worse than some rocks hitting you in the face when you dig in them refries hungry as a junkyard dog and they just splinter there, just tear those teeth right out, and you don't want no one to go grinding them teeth out before they're worn down by the ravages of time, do you?
So then the doctors come back, take the lady away and we're hangin smoking a cigarette and i say hey now, what happened with that woman anyway? and the guy says she lives away out on this ranch half way down to Senoita and her husband says she just periodically goes plumb raving mad crazy out there and freaks and dismemberates and they bring her in here and pump her full of goodies and strap her down for awhile and then she goes back out there. Well i just let that kind of in onest ear and most of the way out the other, for waiting further analysis, see. "Requesting data input."
Just happenchance i was in ER when her husband came two weeks later. i told him i watched over her a bit, she talked to me. I said, hey, what's up, like what does she do?, just try to kill you or what? you know what he says? he says she just ever so often goes crazy way out there on that ranch, with no one to talk to but the bugs and stuff. she takes off all her clothes and just walks into the desert and i have to go out and find her and she screams and wants to go free and i have to bring her in here. happens about once or twice a year, she just flips out, he says. Jesus i say. He says, once she went about four years, that was a good stretch. She wants to go out in the desert, says there's everything out there and she don't want her clothes or anything. i never tell him a word over my spirit stuff. Jesus.
Yeah, this is real, man. it all happened to me, every bit of it. you know, truth is bigger than friction thing... Jesus, i'm living proof of this incredible stuff. wait till we get to the orbit guy in Massachusetts, or the mad cow chick out of Phoenix up in Provo Utah with the Mormons and the spring water running through the streets, cities so clean you can eat off the sidewalk or drink that snowmelt water from the gutter, and that's the truth.
well, more later....
Okay, it's never-not-time again and the kids are playing with the chickens so I guess it's time enough to write for a little while. Tonight the goosebird sucked the chickdaddy and while the baby squalled, i just split for a walk 'cause you know it just ain't right to be around those goshawk younguns with their spirits so low and the uzis so tall, it must be springtime agin!
Sanity walks wild and that's the truth. And Jesus come out of the train. The bare bones truth of the matter is i liked the guy even though he was a puke and couldn't tie his shoelaces right if they got untied when he was caught in an infinite loop, you know, one of those forever deals where the ladies panic and squeal and it takes some kind of Man to bring it to a stop. Yeah, that's John Henry and he's up against a computer this time, the computer gonna run him down, down.
So he's a real puke, really doesn't understand technology at all, in fact he's a little ascared of it, and shit, ain't no bear or some spruce bog at 65 degrees below Frickinheit when you make one false step, boy, you can be gone for good! Like they'll find your body, maybe in a day or two or maybe after the thaw when it starts to stinking and the crows and ravens and vultures are hovering near, but either way, you're done passed on, boy, it's over and over for good this time. Jeesh, you step wrong in the summer and go through the cover and the conifer brine'll cure you up in a hurry! Much less you'd never find the surface again 'cause there's a couple feet of bog cover over it, drown 'n down.
i just told him, i said yeah, you are a tired old stupid old lazy dog, and be lyin too, and that just shut him up and put him in his puke place. his puke face. those people are just sad, hombre, i mean how Do they get by? just in purse string hell and with an iq of 90, Jesus.
The slathering sluthmuck done run dry.
i first knew i was chosen when the spirit deer walked out of the forest and came to me. i was calling, sending, over the mountains and hills surrounding, and walking out i knew this would be the sign from spirit world if i was a chosen one. and then i saw her, she was by the edge of the forest bordering the field, and she just looked at me, unafraid.
i feigned to approach her and she didn't flinch or move, but i passed on by. i continued to send and think about the deer. i think and feel-think in the quiet still evenings and i feel-think in the early night, too, and in the peaceful early mornings when i wake. i feel-think, she's asleep now, and i feel for her, i feel for her when she chooses a spot to bed down, and i feel her when she goes to sleep. the next day i find her bedding spot by the forest, and i know she is near, just off eating and doing the things deer do, and i speak with her spirit feel.
i know the indian legends i know about the spirit deer comes to the chosen ones, and i says i wonder can this happen still, can this happen today? the next day she was closer, half way across the field to my path of travel, and the same thing, she was unafraid.
i began to think perhaps she was there to see me, or was sent there for me, and on the third day she was right on my path and i stood and watched her. she was five feet from me. i stood and marvelled; i had never been so close to a live wild deer. she was unafraid, and i stood. then she walked to me and stood next to me. she didn't smell me or anything, she just came to me and stood by me. she knew me.
of course i wondered was she sick and there were no signs of any illness whatsoever, she was perfectly healthy in every way, eyes clear, color and fur healthy. i put my hand on her back and stroked her coarse hair down her sides. no fleas or ticks no parasites no sickness at all.
she turned back toward the forest and i followed her back in, my hand on her back and walking side by side. she was a splendid awesome animal and my gift was complete. she had come to me and i know i am chosen. she was my spirit deer and she came for me to a sign, for the world to know i am the gifted boy.
it happens when i was a boy, i'm reading by the light, windows open wide and moths come in, sometimes they come in by the hundreds, just cover the walls and light on everything. first i goes berserkes and smash them around, but too many and it's senseless, the windows were open after all.
so i settles back into reading my book, and i'm engrossed in it, when i become aware of a strange buzzing around my ears and head, and my perception comes out of the book and around me, and there're moths buzzing by my ears so close i feel their wings and hear them buzzing. I snaps, and look, and god damn the moths are in a circle, flying head to tail, in a hoop around my head. It's the god damnedest thing. I watch them for a minute then i yells and flash my arms and they fall out of formation.
i go back to reading and jeez, it's just another wonder of the world that i've experienced.
about this same time i hunt with gun, and i trudge and forage over the mountains i travels far. one time i get turned around up on top of the mountain and says i'll pick a direction and stay on her, straight, and come to look out over an immense broad valley, and slowly i realize i have come over miles and miles of mountaintop and come to the broad cherry creek waterway, it's ten to fifteen miles by road but i come over the tops of the mountain just exploring it free.
there is an easement up there, someone has built a lush swampy reservoir, and i am slightly perturbacious that i hasn't even seen a grouse or rabbit much less had a shot at one, in many a trip. i comes up along the easement pond and i sees a grousebird in a small conifer tree. all i has is a .22 and you know you got to have incredible shot to kill a flying bird with a .22, and i says the only way i'll get this bird is to walk up right close and him sitting still, then i can shoot him.
i know if i move she'll explode in a bomb of feathers, they has this way to make a huge exploding sound when they fly, that'll unsettle you if you ain't accustomed to them, and they are magnificent experts at flying through branches and underbrush, it's a miracle to see. they are fast, very very fast and like a sports car delicate fine maneuverability, they don't hit nary a twig and are fast fast fast.
so i says i must spirit think her, is my only chance, to keep him still, and i quiets - still - spread out - send it - and then she's entranced and me too we're in it together. i knows if i kill her it's misuse of my power and i vows my solemn vow i mind spirit think i'll not harm you, little grouse, i'll not harm you my rifle is silent it is as nothing next to me, i am the power and you are safe with me.
i approaches, first i am stalking very softly, incredibly slow careful steps, just i stalk her, the way you do a natural critter, you must go just a little foot, and stand stock still and wait, and feel, then move another few inches, and stop and wait, still and wait, and then another few inches.
you stalks a critter like that, in the outdoors, and i does this to the she-grouse. as i get to ten feet, then eight feet, i realize she is under my spell, and i moves up to five feet, and then i just walks up to her normal, and i reaches out my hand to her.
her eyes are flashing around, they are like dark almost black beads, and i calms her with my heart, i calms her with my feeling sending, i know if i get foolish or excited, it will break and she'll flush, and i keeps my spirit feel coming.
i put my hand on her feathers, and on her breast, and i feel her furiously beating little heart, it's going incredibly fast, and i marvels. i just marvel at this magic beautiful creature that i just stalked with nothing more than my spirit power.
finally i break the flow, and i mind-say goodbye little bird, goodbye spirit bird, thank you, and i walk slowly away. when i'm about thirty feet off i turn and look at her, she's still sitting transfixed, and she turns to me and faces me. i know i can kill her with the .22 easy now, she is waiting for me, but i doesn't need her, so i turn away, back to my everyday world, and a moment later i hear her explode and flush behind me and she's gone, it's over.
that's the spirit world. and that's my gift.
break.
Billie Brewster said hi to me again in the hall, and i just squatted down and blinked. you know i always like that when she talks to me and i get all giggly and lift my skirt and oh!, i'm doin it again and it just feels so goooood! like a toasted marshmallow, toasted on the end of a bayonet over one of those cars going up in flames along the streets and byways, in the nervous mad dog nites of our summers with the lizards by day and the heat snakes by night and the nervous tension gets pushing the high end of its register, and you can feel it getting ready to snap, and then when it lets go it snarls like a highline breaked, you know that deadly kind of metal scream, and someone dies and lives are ruined, mothers cry and babies go to jail. Hey now, i like Billie, she's super-alright and it's a fine finned ass, it's a mobile and it's free as a bird, it's freedom, man, and that is where i stand, but it shore gets rough when she picks up that skirt and smiles at me.
So this guy friend had a nice four wheel rig and we all loved to get up in those desert mountains, so i said let's go and he says okay. we get together $40 each to fill the two tanks and get the beer and the blonde babe there in ER says i can get my friend to go too, you won't make us pay will you? much?
Then Susan she got screechy and demanding, you know that type of woman who's really insistent, and it ain't too bad if she's just in charge, but this one, she's self centered too, so it's all screeching about me - me - me - Suzy - Suzy - Suzy and so after awhile we dump her ass off and she really has something to freak about then, cause she's out in them desert montanas and it's a pretty good trek back to syphilisation if she even knew which way to go a tall. we tells her, we'll pick you up coming back through, which we does even though the bitch doesn't deserve it!
The temp it went up to 117 degrees and i was sleeping under bushes and stuff at night. it wasn't too bad cause by about 1 or 2 am it cooled off enough you could get to sleep. by five am it was bad cold, boy, you wouldn't know it not to live there in the desert, but the differential can be 40 and even 60 degrees, and that's a hell of a shock to your body, so you lay there shivering and wondering if hypothermia's done set in yet. then, before you know it, that solar furnace opens up again and man all thoughts of any cold are gone, that sun just burns to look at you, and all your thoughts are just on that day's survival, now, just how am i gonna get through this day without dying again.
I decides to head up to Golly Gulch and see if the wind blows up there, who knows there might be trees or something there that'll help keep a body cool. So i hitches out and gets up to Phoenigs but i am stranded outbound out of there. i've got plenty water so i'm not worried, but when it stretches into four and a half hours, i been there on the shoulder of this eight-lane from noon on and the light is stretching out and temp is going down, shit it feels like strandnation and i don't want to sleep in no ditch gully with the bugs and stuff and no food nor nothing, so i start dancing at the cars, waving my arms, doin the dogtrot and flaggin them and gettin out two lanes, man ain't nothing working.
Then i sees a little VW bug flyin along, yep there's a female type critter in there and i go wild. i mean i dance, i flag, and i gyrate. Glory be, she pulls that thing over and yanks to a stop, slams her in reverse, and oh shit - first intimation of trouble! - she's screaming down the road at me, in reverse, weaving over two lanes and the shoulder, coming for me, and i'm startin to think of cover when she gets it slowed down and stops nearby.
I gets in, goin to Utah i say, and she's a big girl, brown hair, but not too bad overall and hell, who cares, it's just a ride, right? Am shay mamma wanta go to the Glory Hole and since i thought it might be cooler there anyway, i says, fine like cool momma we's goin we're on our way. we tools on up to the South Rim and pulls in there, looks her over, eats, and everything. She am go Utah too so we park it in a lot and crawl in the back.
Now how we got a baby water buffalo and gazelle in the back of that thing, and under covers too, i'll not never know, but that little buggy's rockin and rollin and then tap - tap - tap on the window glass. oh shit, no permit, no sleeping here! i sticks my head out of the covers and there's those mountabillies around, with those big 36" long dong flashlights (i guess they do the cows with them things out on the plains - you know, you've read about them things) and they wants to talk.
Good evening, with a slantwise grin. well what the hell's that for, i think, and i say howdy. Watch you all doin in there? i figures to get out and straighten them out before they banishes us or something, so i disflagrilate and put pants on under covers and crawl out in my barefoots. I says, look, orificer, i'm just getting some of them southern girl fixin's in the back of that little bug car there and besides, we ain't hurting nobody. The guy says yeah, i knew what you were doing, you don't have to paint me a picture. i figured i'd better say something on it, it'd been since the mountains with betty girl and god damn it, it felt good to be getting something again, and i didn't mind if he knew all about it.
So he says you gotta pack it up and go so we does. sleep along side the road somewhere outside the park, then we head on up past the North Rim and by day two she's startin to smell a little, but i don't worry much on it cause i figure i am too. she says she's been in the university down there, some kind of Esalen Institute thing i think, cause she keeps saying the institute of higher learning and laughing this freaky laugh. then she says this car here ain't mine and i go oh no, here it comes, this ride-n-fuck all the way into Utah had to have some kind of cosmic catch and i just feels it coming right now.
She says it's her aunt's car, she broke out and stole it, and i'm broke out? she say, yeah, i got runaway lose and she wouldn't let me take it so i steals it then i saw you on the road, and you just some hunk of gorgeous man meat and had to stops and have you for a lift up the road anyways. okay, i says. but she starts babbling about some medication she gets back at that institute of higher learning, and she's getting progressively more phrenetic and aggressive.
I'm driving more now, she swerves all over that road, and she' going into day three no shower and man it stinks from across the road much less right beside it and i can't stand to get near it anymore, so i's drivin and avoiding any contact. but she's getting wound up and man, i do mean wound up, screaming and slothering and really freaking so i pulls it over. There's a bank up, about twenty feet, all heavy bushes like cranberry but they ain't, but thick like that. i light up that slope, and she's arunnin after me, laughin and bubbling up like a baby, like a 300 pound piece of estrogen-engorged female baby flesh, and i runnin half for safety and half just laughing to see what this crazed bitch's gonna do next!
I'm up over that side and down running for my life through the knee high brush, with her bellowing behind. she's bellowing now, like she's caught on she may not catch me and she bellows like a cow moose in season, like that death 'n kill and fuck me sound in there that tells you to steer way clear, man, cause this here's serious! jesus christ, maybe it's time to ditch this bitch.
Back to the car, i say no about a hundred times, promises her to Provo then hotel and stop and do it, and i figure my gettaway then, when we stop, i'll just grab my pack and banjo and bail i mean i'll scram. She's talking crazier and crazier, and wants her meds but they're in Phruxnig with her aunt and the police are after the car, or are they, i think? and then we're in Brigham City and tooling quietly through, in the slightly faster lane of the the four lane, when she blows.
She's got the door open and is out, two feet on the ground going by at 35 mph, and i go, yeah i've seen this shit before, she won't go, when she lets go and i'm oh fuck i'm in trouble now. She rolls like a big sack of potatoes and stops and I get her back in but she's gone, just mind blown, so i turn the vehicle back and tell her we'll get her back to her aunt and the hospital when the lights flash, those pretty colored lights and oh fuck, it's the Mormon Mounties and i hope these fuckers aren't bad, cause man, i don't want no jail time over this stinkin bitch anyway.
They hears her freaking, and i go aside and tell them what's up, and they run us back to the station, oh shit. They take her away to a room and leave me there two three hours without my stuff or anything. i drink about two gallons of water out of the cooler, that's all. Then they comes back, and sit around me, two of them, and they put a tape in a recorder and say talk, boy. they ask me questions and i tell em the whole damn thing, thinkin i'm getting charged with something.
I talk about twenty minutes, maybe, they ask lots of questions, then they take the tape and go in the next room with about four or five of them, they turns the tape up real loud, and they all have a god damn party in there laughing and carrying on over all my travails and travesties and the schlock and the puke. They just has a fuckin party at my expense, then comes back in and says take your stuff and get out of town, boy, we don't want your kind around here, dirtying up our fair city. I said what's with the girl, they said we sent her home to her aunt, she really did get out of a mental institution and took her aunt's car and split.
I says how do i get out of town and they say we'll arrest you if you don't go now so i takes my stuff and just walk fast as hell out of there and as soon as i hit town limits i stick out my thumb and pray to get the fuck out of there and that it not be some crazy sombitch that'll get me locked up for half my life. I got free, i got out of there.
The apaches and navajos happened in there in the summer too, plus those corrupt mother fuckers on the North Rim skimming profits like crazy, they had that accountant in a state of seige, ain't no lie neither, that man was fearing for his life. i know the signs, man. yeah, this is the freaky shit life is made of, too bad nobody ever thought to tell you about it. preparation, you know.
we'll get to this stuff next time mayhaps.
Well i had this female neighbor, she was a cute thing and sexy in a slutty sort of way, you know that shit-brown Italian eyes and little hot bodied kind of way. she'd invite me down to her sex parties and stuff, and drank a ton of those designer teas she got down to the health food store. She had this guy friend who'd come over on his Harley hog, claimed he was a med student but he was high every time i saw him so i didn't believe much of it.
One time i goes down to her boyfriend's place and see what it's all about, they ain't a drop of furniture, i mean not even a chair, except this one dude who looks like Charlie Manson is in a wheelchair and all these people clouding around him like skeeters, you know, in an orbit like electrons or something. There was shit on the floor, and this guy with tubes coming out of him in the wheelchair, and i said, jeez, this where that poor girl spends all her time, down here? I split, i didn't need that crap, man.
This other dude moves in down by and becomes a neighbor. Says he's a writer, writing a novel, but he won't ever let me see it or anything. Says he was with the state department, over some foreign country third weird place in Africa like Nairobi or some blamed thing, it was Peace Corps he says after awhile. We'd talk out there, drawing lines in the dirt with sticks (I didn't want that pukish bastard in my place. He had a way of showing up at meal time and crap like that, that i didn't particularly care for. Something skrimed about him, no doubt about it, he was slimy, scummy, in some kind of pathetic sick way. Like if you got to know him, he'd turn into a major sycophant and you'd just have to kill him to get rid of him he'd be so insinuated into the core of your life and then there'd be murder and blood on your hands, and where the hell would that go, so better not to let the puker in the house.)
So this cat, he says he lives on the next place down from the Tohono O'odham, 'cept they ain't no next place down from there, i know cause i know every place around here and they ain't one there. I tells him so and he insists he lives there and finally he trusts me enough and i don't believe him enough that we walks down there and shoo-ee there's a little closet, i mean a tarpaper roofed closet, tacked on the other side of the Tohono O'odham's house so i guess he's partially real after all. He pays sixtyfive dollars a month to live there, he says, and i pretty much believe him. I knew old Putzi was a slumlord but man, this was bad. That poor bastard had a dirt floor and no swamper, no cooler of any sort, no wonder he was always out crawling around like a sun lizard.
Meanwhile we're drawing sticks in the dry dust and i listen to his talk of the Peace Corps. I think he got kicked out. He keeps wanting to barter pot for food, but i doesn't smoke that stuff, just don't need it clogging up my mind and obfuscating my faculties, and i don't never trade him nothing at all. I suggest he take a bag of pot in a gas station or store or something and try to get goods for it that way.
I quit associating with this guy, i really thought he was nuts, i wouldn't talk to him anymore. Then i didn't see him for several months and you know what? Lisa, that chick next door, says he got busted, some pot thing. Then i get a newspaper and man, i can't believe it, it's this guy, he got busted sure enough, trying to trade a lid of pot for a tire fix in a gas station when he got a flat! When they wouldn't give him the tire fix, he went nuts and tried to attack one of the guys so they called la policia. Jesus. It's just pure sick insanity and you've gotta laugh at weirdness like that. I had him convinced society was so open and forgiving you could barter with pot on the streets of Tucson without fear 'nof hassles.
Lisa moved out of there, and some family deal moved in, a guy and woman and three or four screaming babies. At first, for a week or so, it was almost like normal, he'd go away in the day and she'd be there with the kids, but then they were both leaving, sometimes the kids would cry, but nothing extreme. They'd come home and cook and eat and stuff.
One day a strange auto pulls in and i'm immediately suspicious, i ain't giving No information away to anybody, this guy gets out, starts asking me nosy questions about my neighbors and i don't tell him anything at all. Says he's a defective, i shrug, i ain't interested, and that's final. he drives off.
Then i don't see anything over there next door (these places are like two feet apart, so you really know what's going on next door if you're home) for about two days, just zero activity, then i begin to hear howling and moaning from inside and i realize it's the kids, Jesus, they must be tied up or something cause they ain't no sounds of movement at All, and day three or four the moaning is a shrieking, i mean those kids are dying or something, no cooler on, over 100 degrees outside, i imagine they're starting to die of thirst.
Stealing forms quiet in the night, the parents are home, shushing the children, food, it's way in the late late hours, maybe three or four a.m. and i'm barely awake, they load up and go. Next morning that detective bastard is a-knockin on my door and i steps out when he asks about the people next door, and i tell him about the screaming of the kids when he asks about unusual activity, and i says they're gone, they left in the night, and he goes Damn! and stamps and clobbers around, he is pissed, man, really fried, and i back up, surprised, and he says, almost snappin at me, why didn't you call me? and i say call you? i didn't know they was damn criminal junkies starvin and strappin their innocent babies, Jesus, you never told me that's what they were doing, and he says, yeah, you're right, god damn it i screwed it up, i can't believe i lost them again, i been after them a long time and they always get away just an hour before i get there, god damn it. he's in armed robberies and grand theft and everything, the guy says. I say sorry, man.
Ah, shit, it's just too depressing thinking about things like that. Those crazy things in life. So I get me some meditation Chinese calligraphy paints and inks and stones and brushes and rice paper and all the fixins, and listens to the son of a great Chinese master, a real revered master of the ancient Chinese calligraphic art form, and i smooth through it, i move and blend with it, i do this daily ritual spiritual meditational thing with it, it feels right, just feels good with all the green corn tamales and frijoles and jalapenos and chiles and corn tortillas and the brilliant-brights painted tile floors and walls and split tile roofs and 190 degree days and the grit and grime and it ain't never ever gettin cool, it's just brutal all the time, 'cept that cool floor meditational medicinal ancient calligraphic art form, a way of expressing myself it's like painting almost, but very minimal playing field and no colors but the black and white rice, and the ink you grind yourself and it's this fantastic little bit gritty texture but you mixes it with water then get it just right, and it becomes this shocking black strokes on the beautiful textured rice paper, you know it's kind of like looking through a real rice grain, not one of those pre-processed ones that cooks in five minutes, but a real 35 minute grain, you know it's a little translucent. But i grooves on it, i really do like that thing, it's right, man, just feels right and good so i does it. And it makes me feel better.
okay, i'm gonna sit a spell.
You know something? when that ol' temperature gets up a little over 105 108 degrees, your body turns over its thermostat, just like a seasonal roll over. you just walks outside and stay out there, i shivershake like a cat, goosebumps come and go, then i'm turned over for the season and i Loves that 110 degree heat, man, it just feels so good, just stay in that warm seeks to the center of your bones, man, through the marrow, it soaks and seeps in there to the core of your bones and your body is Right, i mean it is truly warm and that ol termostat has to go from warming to cooling setting, ain't no need for warming up anything, hell it's hotter outside than in, so's it gotta cool now, it works strategies for cooling, cause that's all that matters now. Just keep it cool, baby, and don't freeze into hypomalnothermia at night.
That queer acting dude across the gravel path, that place that it turned out the roof is full of holes so bad (I found out after Marcie moved in there and i went over once and she had about a million cups, bowls, saucers, and pans all over her furniture and floor in strategic spots, just so thick you could not walk, and i said what the hell is this and she goes the roof leaks, it's pretty bad. damn, i guesses it is) but anyway one day he pulls in in that little convertible deal he has with two babes, not bad a tall either, and they goes in his cottagehouse there. i sees everything from just sitting, hell it's hard not to notice everything cause i just sit there and play that banjer about a million hours a day, so's i know what's going on around there.
after awhile i sees the guy spreading out a blanket or sleeping bag or something on the living room floor. i kinda wish he'd close the curtains, it was growing duskish but you know how it is, i didn't mind a little peek into this prick's life either, if there were a couple babes mixed into it. So they get down there, all three of 'em, yeah i saw them all get down, i didn't go look in at the window or nothin but i could see them get down on the floor. then nothing i see for twenty thirty minutes or so, maybe even forty, then he's up, gesticulating and waving his arms and hands around, like he's upset or something, and then i see the two girls just laughing, then all a sudden he jerks the blinds shut and that's the end of that. they all leaves after about ten or fifteen minutes. guess he couldn't perform with them purty girls, that's why they was laughin at him, at least that's what i figure.
That susan babe down to the ER, well maybe it was really that incredibly hot Latina married and ready to ride the staff, i mean the staff of Life, and she did, too, but one of them had this bra with big nipples onto the ends of it, you know, so they'd put it on under their shirts or sweaters and act like nothing was up and of course i was getting a yankon and man i was buzzin around like a big bee after honey, and that's just what it was, too. at first i thought that babe's high beams were on, man i was swelling up like a zucchini squash too, and thems all gigglin and me hot hot hot.
next day the brown skinned pretty one has huge nips under her sweater and i know something's up then cause she's kinda shy and i think she loves her husband or something, or is true or scared or whatever, but she ain't the type to come on to anybody, so's i get suspicious, but that doesn't stop my body from reacting to the visuals. Then i walk around and come back through, i thinks i overhear sue saying it won't fit, and when i come back through her tits are out like a set of melons, all swole with big hard nipples and man i freaks. i just lose it i Got to have some of that, and it's suzy girl anyway so i goes after her. they all scream and laugh and she runs in the back and then i know i've been had, they done played that joke on me, but what the hell, i mean i purely enjoyed it, i sure did, all those women had nice snockers anyways, it just sort of accentuated what they had and perked up the days!
then the suzy wench took to riding home with me but she'd harp about no blinker signals and nice turn there, butthead and nice brakes there, buddy, nice signal your turn there and finally i had to get rid of her, i knew she was some kind of control witch, so that's why we just dumped her ass out in the desert when she got to wearing on us all; i knew what she was about. sometimes it just don't matter how nice them melones are, just ain't worth it!
jeesh there was this guy there, just wander around kind of slow with this bucket in his hand, a bucket always covered, but that didn't bother me none once i established he was real and he works there, i ignores him, there's lots of pretty strange mother honkers around there, and i just goes about my business and ignores him. somedays he's there, most of the time he's not. he likes to talk to the hot Latina married one a lot, they stand outside and put one foot up on the cement curb along the rail by ER and yak and smile a lot, i think too much. but they seem innocuous so i ignores it.
after i been there a while, i guess the pail guy gets to trusting me or something, he comes up and asks can he bum a smoke and i gives him one and walk away. next time i sees him we cigarette and yak a little bit, he's normal, far as i can tell. but then he starts telling me, he's had that job for about six or eight years, i think he's gonna lay that old i hate my job i'm stuck in it thing on me, but that's not it. he say he start having real bad nightmares at night after he started his job.
i just listens, this is getting interesting, and you know how hot and dull and boring life gets with the melon sisters and everything. he says, at first i just cleans up and that's my job, run little errands and packets around for the doctors and stuff, but, he goes, i start getting these horrible nightmares at night like i'm burning someone's heart and they're screaming at me, dying, and all this weird shit. i go, this cat is tripping or crazy, one. he seems sincere, though. i ask a couple questions, and he explains.
says that pail i carry around? i says yeah, he go that's full of body parts, human body parts, i gotta go round and pick them up and throw em out. i go where you put them? he say put them on the incinerator and burn them up, jesus i say. he says i get those bad dreams at night, burning up all these body parts of living people like that. i says, what you find in there, and he says at first i just throwed that crap in the furnace, slammed the door, and didn't look, but after awhile i looks and watch those things sizzle and fry and cook and burn, then the nightmares start real bad, he says. cripes, i say, don't look at that stuff!
he say, most the time i don't look no more, but sometimes i kinda peek in that pail, since i'm gotta carry that thing around and it's my job anyway, he says, and i go yeah, what you see in there in that ol' bucket o' death? he says lots a times it's just glop, can't tell what it is, but once or twice he says there was a eye in there lookin at me, and i freaked he said. it was watching me. and he goes, there's warts and growths and oncet i found most of a hand and it's bad, he says, when you get almost a whole human arm or a leg, you know they gots to amputate somebody's leg sometimes, something heavy in there, god i just feel like i'm burning a living person then. i don't know quite what to say to this dude, but i sure as hell have a lot more respect for him now. Corpus christi.
sweet dreams. more tomorrow.
Yes, the hairy bluefish dove out of the dust pile, and i saw him slithering and slapping, jumping as a fish can do to travel across dry land, and if i hadn't a seen it with my only two eyes, i never couldn'a tof thought it was true, but that ol' catfish was sure crossing dry land! I mean i Saw it, man, with my own two eyes. He was jump-flipping through the dry leaves, during the dry part of summertime, from a stream to a pond. What was in the middle? a vertical water chute maybe eight feet straight up concrete and he couldn't make it, so he was flippin around and over that bank there to get to the pond! I just let him go, he knew i was there, i just let him go. he had enough trouble on his hands.
well you know animules gets from one body of water to another, i just spent so damn much time outdoors i see em doing things like that, is all. that's just all there is to it. i feel them, the animals, and sense them, and i can tell what they're feeling and doing too, and i can tell when something special is gonna happen, when it's coming. and they know me. we can feeltalk like that, it's kind of the spirit talk, but it's a feel-be-world. I spread out and open myself up and send it and we're there in it together, not like the musquash thing that was all chemico-emotional act react animal response stuff, but i'm talking like when i hush the spirit of the feathered bird and calm his mind and capture his heart and soul and then i touch him and feel the fast beating heart and stroke his feathers and we are locked in the universe together, pure existence. it's a gift and i've got it, it's for you to tell me how you feel and for me to see the world as it is, it's the work of God. I'm blessed and you're the child of God, we are all the children of God.
i am tired now.
the pukes done pafikulated again, the bigthorns has aglomulated, those big night crickets are scrowfling, you know those cicada bugs, "but it's a dry heat". Least we've got that - "it's a dry heat." Stupid sons a bitches, well i was wet before the day i was borned to this world, and i'm wet now, so don't you talk to me over no god damned dry heat when there ain't none. it's hot and that's all there is to it.
My buddy Danny, now he said we'll take our banjers down to the corner, down by the bars, and make a bunch of money, and i said no way, i never heard of any such bullcraps in my life, i just play this here machine for the pure joy and thrill of it, and they ain't no money abouts it. he says there is too, you come down there and then he gets that little hangdog beat look after the little bit irritated look he gets when he knows he's right and you just won't do something, you know that little bit whipped look he gets, so i says okay we'll go down there when do we go?
oh danny boy says i'll come back up here for ya and we'll go down, i gotta play the guitar though, you take the banjo. i says no, man, take your banjer and he wants to use my guitar besides the sound's better that way so i says okay. i'll be there, what's gonna happen to the guitar with me right there besides him, right?
so we get our selves and axes down there, it's good and dark, maybe ten, ten thirty, eleven, and there's people a-millin around betwixt the bars and stuff down there on Speedway and 4'th and 5'th, you know how it gets filled up with everybody switchin bars and cars and wine and womens and guys and dolls and stuff. danny says right here and whips out the guitar. some guy sees, grins, and steers our way and danny yells out play floggy mountain breakdown! and i scrambles for it and dig in. we play the hell out of it right there on the sidewalk in the street and people gathers around and then danny kicks the case and they all start throwing money down, quarters and change and bills too.
i figures we got a dollar or four plus change, when they move off we look and there's a god damned twenty in there, you know i'm like a barnacle on a tree or a lichen on a ship been here awhile and a twenty was about as much as a fiftly right today. so i'm screamin now, i mean i was a-thrilled a minute ago playin froggy mountain for these guys who digs it, but now i'm seeing dollar signs too, so i have some kind of elation thing in my heart, and i just takes off, i mean i takes Off.
then a funny thing happens, i get still inside and it's like i'm seeing myself play and i'm bearing down and lightening up and i'm playing for the folks and they giving moneys. i'm quiet inside and i know i am chosen again. and i loves the people, i loves the scene, it's a spirit connect. hmmm, it's spirit connect. and i loves the people.
we kept going around there maybe forty five minutes all told, shifting around a little bit. danny says it's drying up, i says no it ain't either but he does like to party down so we splits the bread and he's gone, totally out blink your eyes he's gone, pard! i'm there with about twenty five thirty dollars, pockets all full of pounds of coins, and a guitar and banjo, and i set out home. i get in there and i feel damn good, jesus i say, i can make money at this here musics and the people, they'll give Money to hear me play, and right then i knows what i'm in for for the rest of my life, i got the secret now, baby, i got the scent - those people will Pay. Shoo-eee! it's nothin short of a revelation, is all.
then danny he's got this girlbabefriend, she ain't too bad, either, i seen her hangin around the men's dorms some, she's hot looking, a little bit low classed but what the hell am i, i say, jesus it might just be superficial anyway, little too much makeup once in awhile, but she ain't bad, for someonebody else. she comes in there parked out there in her little pickup truck, and i don't pay her no mind. i figures her like a natural critter in the woods, i spirit think her, when she gets tired of him she'll come to me, and i just don't pay her no mind.
then one day i come in, i'm got my groc's on my back, and there she sits in that truck but ain't no sign of danny nor notwhere. he had said to me, with that hangdog look of his, he said she don't want me no more, she wants you and he smiles at me. jesus. i hadn't said anything, and now this - there she sits, awaitin on me, sure as can be.
okay i says let's get this motherfucker over with, i'm gonna nail this little bitch and make her sore enough to remember me about two weeks so we globdamulate right there in the front room, well that's really danny's room, but who cares, he ain't there, and he gave her over to me anyway when he saw she was going, hell he was a gentleman about it too, then the kitchen table and the floor and halfway out the back door. i got rid of that though - i never did like any kind of used or store bought or dirty, you know. kind of picky and clean is more like it.
so danny he gets down on the bread and he's hungry, i can tell he ain't a doing too good, he wants some food and i share it with him. i only got enough just barely to feed me but i split it down the middle with him and we talk about it. he says he knows the hobo code and i says that's cool, i try to get him to tell me about it but he don't say much. he just says i'm good, and that. i say they ain't no way someone come round here is gonna starve, if they're really hungry, while i'm eatin they're eating too. he goes out there and spends about half a day climbing around on the next house over up and down the walls and stuff and i never could figure what he was doing cept maybe trying for a piece of that old scallybag back there, the one with five kids all different colors shapes sizes looks and hair, from cream white through a rich dark brown with a curly black hair, cept i hadn't seen her around in a long time and besides i didn't think even danny could do that!
but danny up and splits, he's a good boy, we all have our problems but he shared my path with me awhile and everybody's just made of colors if you just look at them and experience them instead of jumping their shit or something, if you just keep your nasty old inner voice from nagging at you, you can really see people for what they are, and danny was just a good soul, kind of lonely and prone to boozing to extremes, but he was my friend for awhile and i liked him. he could tear that banjo down too. his fingers were good and short, they just sat there over the strings and he could play like hell, just fast and smooth too. he was the first guy i saw could talk you a conversation while he played "Jed Clampett" or anything. he just plain split and i never saw him again.
one day, fall time, i think it was, but seasons changing so the light was warm, not that bright white like an explosion, it had some color to it and was on the verge of being warm instead of some nuclear holocausted reaction somewhere, and i had just warmed me some can of chile and had a piece of brown bread to go with it. you know i was pretty pressed at that, and i thought i'd heard-seen someone out there the day before, looked, didn't see anyone, but then there's this knock on the back door, and i wonder now who's acoming to my back door now, and me just sitting down to eat my meager meal?
well i let this guy in, he's thin, alright, but his eyes and minds is clear and i feel for his soul, not getting a reading, but his minds is clear, so i lets him in. he's hungry and god damn it i don't share my meal with him. it bothers me still, i'm really sorry sorry i don't know why that greed thing came over me, lord knows it was the right thing to do to share my feed with him too. i could get more tomorrow or day after, oh i had a week to go on three or four cans or something, at least i knew it was coming though, but not necessarily so for him. he might not have another meal. see, i was afraid he'd freeload, afraid he'd stay, afraid he'd stay and i wouldn't be rid of him. cause i wouldn't be able to tell him to go, if i fed him once i would always let him stay, period. i knew that's what i'd do, so i didn't share my vittles with him. coulda got a reading on his soul, would of answered that.
you know what he says? he says, come on, i don't want to have scrub all that hobo sign off that building back there, it'll take me half a day he says, and he says i know you're good because somebody put that sign there, they spent a lot of energy puttin that sign there cause of you're good, i don't want to have to take it down. i says what sign? he says right there plain as day, it says food here there's somebody with a kind heart here. i says where and he says right there, see it on the side of that wall right there? i says no, he goes right there, it's in big big letters it says it, it might look grey to you, but it's just bright and plain to me i know how to read them signs. i looks and there's real real big, real real faint, it's scraped or colored on there, in hobo code. must've been danny boy. bless him. that's the kind of guy danny was. some cop got shot in nashville, named danny driscoll, from california too. i called them, they said it wasn't him though.
break.
This nice looking auburn hair girl moves in, she drives a Fiat, pretty pale yellow, a nice sedan. she's the one with the million containers through her house when it rains. i drinks a beer very very now 'n then with jim, and there's this other pukester with a bike hangs over there all the time, i mean he's mind-fucked on something's, from back east some damn where, he just runs his mouth nonstop and with the purest bullshititis you ever heard, some kind of psychobabble comin outa him, make your insides wanta create bile. something downright de-evolutionarily sick about this boy, there's a disease growed in his brain, not like the weed-for-tire guy, who's just eccentric and a little skrimed, this guy is puke rotted, kinda like a smelly old fungus growth you find in the woods, with a little slimey slippery surface and stinks down in, if you split it open it's different colors and smells like some kinda rotten feet or cheese - you know the smell, well that's what this pukester with the bike is like. i just can't stand to get around him.
jim he's a great old cat got a old '60 Chevy wagon. it's all primered out and he builds that motor up from the pan, takes her out on Speedway and shuts em down. yeah, i like jim, he's a okay dude, he hits that wacky weed and beer and stuff pretty heavy but i can stay away from that no problem and he never tries to shove anything on anybody, he's a total layed backer and that's cool. just a dude.
after awhile i go over oncet when he's crocked and he shows me this whole big collection book of pictures of Nam, mountains and rice paddies and trees and stuff. he's blitzed, he's really totalled out tonight crankin that canned music out, he has some serious badass kind of stereo and he's playin the hit stuff, and i digs it. Jesus he came thru Nam and he says when he got back just everything totally different, they was cheering him and others was protesting him a yelling and spitting at him and you could tell it messed him up, just a plain simple homeboy from down country city way got ramblasted into that thing and all i've got left from it is a terminal case of very serious confusion and alcoholistic dependency, it's a real shame, it is, that man helped protect me and my country. i wished there was someway to tell somebody that but just couldn't figure one out so let it go. let it go, that ol highway, goes on forever.
anyway i eventually meets up with this pretty nice girlbabechick and she's got a nice freckles painted down her from the top of her head over her neck and arms, i like her, she talks nice and she's basically sweet and i go jeez, where's a nice girl like this gonna fit with some been-through-hell-and-back ass-cracker son of a bitch like me? her hair is natural wavy that red-brown just about brick color and freckles just everywhere and you know i do like a freckled woman, and it happens, that magic comes creepin in and afore you know it we's out or in but either way she's sweet and i's nice to her. her name's marcie girl and i likes her.
she said she had this dead brother martin but no pix of her, pix of him and all the others but not her, and it seems he died about the time all her pix and stories started, and i wondered if martin done become marcie, i only hinted at it once or maybe twice, i really didn't want to spoil anything, we had better things to talk about. she shows me this amaretto n coffee stuff, about all i ever had was either orange-black pekoe or some kinda coffee, and to show you how she changed my world, she brung this amaretto in there and put some in our coffee. now that was Good, i say make me some more and she laugh, say you only do one, i say like hell i want about five six a them things so we have another cup. good. and warm on those chill fall drippy days when that ol desert gets c-o-l-d.
you know what it was? she was cultured, she brought a little bit of upbringing and culture in there, and that was different. sophistication, was it.
somehow one night we were drinking, which i did back then, she was driving, Marcie was, and anyway she's got loosened up and we're toolin downtown, those underpasses and stuff and she's letting her rock across the two-three lanes and back, well it's after midnight and they ain't no cars to speak of, and she's driving so i ain't worried over the cop stop, but when she goes up over that curb, we're doing more'n sixty, and on an underpass too, nowhere to go, i gets edgy. she just goes "Wooooooohhhhhhh!" and then does it again and laughs, jeez she's just having fun and a flat slammin the rim into the curbs and i've gotta fix it, but i don't mind, i'm getting time with the marcie girl and she's havin fun and she's kind of like sugar, ain't been all messed up by the fucked up shit life is made of.
But i lets her go, it's just one of those things, life is funny like that. people are just so very differents, they all have an effect on you, some in this way, some in that way, some passes on and others stay, and it's kind of like sharing a path for awhile. marcie's the only person where my every feeling membory of her is pleasant, sort of overiding sweet and pleasant, like the desert after a early summer rain and the flowers are blooming and the sweet smell is everywhere, on the air and in the mist and up high down low, can't escape it it's just everywhere nice beautiful clean ain't no bad about it smell.
life is like a railroad, life is a road, it just stretches out before and that ol highway goes forever, that ol highway goes on forever, even after you die, it just moves over a little, it changes course some, but she still flows. and i hope marcie's on it, around there somewhere.
break.
I got caught down to pukeville again but this time i leapt the bridge so it didn't matter. i jumped the bridge and that was a rite of passage was what, way too scary for a kid, only could handle it when you're turnin manhood, or sisterhood i suppose. it's up high enough to where you fall on the pavement, you'd be hurt hospital bad maybe even dead, and the other way's the water and it's a good four five meters beyond the level of the pavement, so you know you're doing a good thirtyfive fourty feet down there. you hit the water pretty damn hard, you better be pointed right, cause you can break a back doin that shit if you dive in wrong. mostly just jump, the challenge is not hitting the old submerged dam one and trying to make it back to the surface without dying two, she's a long long haul back to the top, you go so deep you barely see light, just some kinda very dull greenish barely can see it glow, but your body know which way is up and you're crawlin for your bejeeberin life to get back up 'fore you runst out of air, and when you break surface and gasp, you're elated but mostly just god damned Relieved that you're back.
so i done it two - three times, conquering every bit of my fear, yeah i did just that. stand up there, no arms, no hands, just do it boy. passage to adulthood. and some people and kids come out to see me doin it, crossing that line. people are watching.
the most dangerous thing i ever did, outside of a couple car things, was diving head first into the chasm, down the waterfall, from off the rocks, little cliffs to the side of the falls. this was class five water, if you measure stuff like that, it just means it was unboatable and life threatening in a very real way.
so's i float through and over that falls once, the water roils you around, pulls you under a bit. i tucks my feet up into a fetal position to bounce off'n the rocks. the water it's really funny texture, there's so much air in it, it sort of bubbles all over you like some bath in big bubble champagne, makes you giggle and smile to feel it all over your body, but the water is fast and pulls you around and under for ten fifteen even twenty feet at a time, you can feel it's dangerous, and it's fast. i kick and thrash my feetlegs everywhere, a feelin for rocks, cause those are the killers when you're going headfirst off the clifflettes into that chute.
i jumps next, maybe two three times in different parts of the falls, i'm testin for submerged boulders and rocks, gotta be some in there, else why the water flying up five feet in standing waves and stuff? but i don't ever hit one, so i dives it. Jesus, she's fifteen feet down and the falls another five or ten, and in, don't even know How deep it is, can't get your feet down when coasting through on account of the current's too strong, jesus she's a risk, and if i hit it means concussion, paralysis, death, one for pretty damn sure. life ruint in a single leap and that's the biggest risk to my life outright i ever took. yet.
so i does it again a couple times to feel it out, and proves i can, then i lay off of it, it's just muy peligro to keep tempting fate like that, i'm convinced there's boulder rocks in there, you can hear them rolling down the bedrock chute, Jesus you Know those are big big rocks for you to actually hear them rolling down, you feel them hit, they go bounce - bounce - bounce with time in between, others just s-c-r-a-p-e, god if i could see them no water how big would they be to make all the chute reverberate, they must be three feet, two feet? diameter at least, bouncing down. The two footers are flying, barely touches down, must be the three footers i hearfeel bouncing and scrape sliding. i've slid big hunks of rock around before, slabs a foot thick and three meters by two growling over bedrock, and that's what this sounds like. Jesus that's what carves these rivers out, it's bouncing damn boulder rocks, just smashing the crap out of everything. Crush your bones in a instant, all there is to it.
tumbling down the bed of the water chute, holy jesus don't let me die in this i know them rocks is Big or i wouldn't be able to hear them over the rush and roar of the water and the falls smashing down, and spray foam flying twenty five thirty feet in the air, mist everywhere up and down the river, that current grabs you and you're stuck in its power, and when you dive you're sucked underneath in its fast pull, all the water's moving with you same speed, you're sort of suspended in it and can't move up nor down nor notways, you just hope it don't pull down, 'cause you're going everywhere it says. just hope you come up, released, before your air run out.
The weird brownish yellow foam flicks up to the top and licks around, it don't even appear till twenty and a hundred meters downstream, that's where your body comes up when you dive, stuck in the middle of that damn current diving instead of near the top of it floating through, and lord almighty thank you god for not taking me there cause i know i tempted you. i don't know how i made it no wreck or nothing. Lord knows someonebody shoulda died there that day or been permanently relieved of consciousness or locomotion.
i've done got on all this death and thank you god stuff and i swear it's time to lighten it up a bit! ain't no sense in life being morbid like that. so i'm hitching in - or was it out of - el pueblo viejo, i'm on the interstate walkin out from a on ramp, and the highway paterol blinkin lights stops up the road, i keeps walkin and then stop, so we're about twenty five thirty feet behind the car, and he's got a buddy in there.
this little law dog walks up to me and spits on my boots and it ain't lookin real good, he says where you going boy, just like that, i say i'm going up to hitchensnitch up there. he say what you doin here, boy, this is My town, and i don't like the looks of you. i thinks i don't like the looks of you, neither, you skrimy little bastard, but i don't say nothing. then he says what you doin here boy i got lots of room in the county jail and i'm gonna put you there, you know it's against the law to hitch this year highway? and i say yeah he say get offa here now, then he calls a insult no man can back down from, he's only about five foot two or three, very small, and i want to clobber the livin shit out of him, and i catch movement out of the corner of my eye. it's the guy in the car, he's unbracing a pump shotgun, and he pumps a round into the chamber and twists around with the shotgun and i go oh fuckin no these bastards is out to kill me, make it look justifiable homicide or some shit, and that finalizes everything, this is my life here now.
so i let that little bastard say whatever he want, he sees i ain't reactin nor rufflin a feather now, and he says get offn the highway, i say i can't get a ride off the highway and he say you go to jail i come back and you're up here, so's i walks down the ramp, and they tool off. i give it ten or fifteen minutes to see if they're gonna double back, be just like them, the miserable pricks, but they don't appear, so i climb back up on the highway and get the hell out of there. i watch sharp as shit for anything looks like a cruiser or lights or anything, too.
daybreak in Dixie. now wasn't that right cheerier'n the rocks boiling down?
back now to Wyoming, i was hitchin and hikin through, and i really didn't mind it when i didn't get rides, i just hiked it on down. if it got bad enough i just watched the weather so's to not get caught in some bad storm, and i'd just hoof it on in to the next town. if someone picked me up, fine, if not, fine. i'd eat on jerky and nuts and dry stuff and i had plenty water, so i was alright.
i got a ride in back with some indians, the old gringo in the cab just liked pickin up strays i guess, and i just throwed in with them three illians in the back. they was cool, grin a little bit and i had me a smokes and we all shared some. i knew them greasy bastards though and even though we was friends, you got to understand an illian 'cause if you let him get it, it's okay for him to take what's yourn, so when we pulled into a little dirt track grocery general store, and i wanted a cool drink, and one of them indians hung back, i knowed what was up. i went to go in, and he was a-movin on my pack so i goes back and just sits. i says i just sit, he say he sit too, and fine. we grins. finally i pulls my pack and go in the store with the whole shebang and get me a can of cool drink and back out. indian be your best friend, only one thing you can't never ever do to an indian, and i'm just the same way. just the same. that gringo was kind, you know, to haul us all along like that with nice long stops and everything.
so i'm a-hitchin and a-hikin through central wyoming on a u.s. highway, and i'm stuck out. walked in, watered up, rested in the shade, walked out, and half a day later i'm still outbound and they ain't No traffic, one semirig trailer passes me outbound in three four hours, and i knows i'm basically there for the night. main thing is, i don't want some rancher or lawman to shoot me down in the middle of the night, so i walks out a half mile, you know, a kilometer or so. there's just grain and hay fields both sides but a little overgrown half acre on the left with some old battle scarred sycamores, cottonwood trees in there and this weird looking little two story house no windows no doors no paint just all windblown and empty looking.
all the fields is fresh mowed around but not this little bobwire fenced off, the grass is long long it's a good upper thigh high, most a meter high, good lush thick grass. the rancher he mowed up to the little square around this ol little twisted grey house, then just let her go. i wonders why. and i goes on feelings, you got to in places like that, you got to navigate on feelings, boy, cause they don't never lie, and they'll keep you alive when others is getting lost.
my feelin's is tellin me this place don't right add up, and i says i'll sleep right to the side of this high grass lot, in the fresh mowed, but then i go, that ol' rancher, he'll come by in the morning and find me asleep by his lot on his land and he'll be pissed and i got no right to be there, and he obviously don't use that ol abandoned little house lot, so i climbs through the wire fence and slides my pack under, stretch out the poncho and my sleeper on top of that. i don't need a tent, i checks the sky real thorough - real thorough, cause you don't want no sudden rain and high thunderstorm comin down on you in the middle of the night, with no shelter atall, and that little grey twisted house don't look like anywhere i'd like to be in a storm. no protection at all, and i had walked over to it earlier, toward the front door, and got the awfullest feeling i ever did get from a place, so i know i ain't goin in there if a storm comes up.
so i beds down she's clear and sharp as a bell, i can see all the nubulae and milky whey and everything's out there she's just as clear as can be and i figures the temp'll drop pretty good, maybe be a solid heavy dew to wet my stuff, but it'll dry up pretty fast in the morning sun. Then i dozes off. suddenly whoooosh whoooosh there's a wind whippin over me, trees are branches rattling and wind blowin the leaves hard. i just snap awake, figure that was me dreaming, you know how sometimes when you drop off you have a little dream you're falling or something, i just put it off to that, checks the sky, clear as a bell, and i rolls over to go back to sleep.
i does, i'm solid asleep, and think i start dreaming heavy big damn storm comin in, and lightning high wind, heavy rain'll come on in in a second, and i lie still. i don't move a muscle, cause this already happened oncet, and i lies still to test my senses, is it real. she's real alright, real as shit. the leaves in trees are thrashing, and i hear a shutter or something on the old skeleton house banging, and i say ain't nothing ground level. and i looks straight up, the sky is clear as a bell. uh oh. those bad chills starting at the back of my neck. then, the grass blows like hell all around me. this has done been checked against my senses, i'm in clear mind now, and that grass is yammered by the wind, the sky is clear, and i Move. i mean i grab my stuff and throw it over the bob wire, and roll myself through and i jumps about fifteen twenty feet outside that fenced off area. the wind is still blowing as i scramble out, and i'm gettin ready to light down that road 180 miles per hour with all my gear, but as soon as i'm good and clear, it all settles down and goes to normal.
i'm a bit jittery, as you might imagine, though, and moves my gear and me away a hundred meters or so. then i gets brave and go back to the edge, and nothing happens but they ain't No way i'll go back under that fence, so i sleeps about fifteen feet outside it. in the morning a farmer comes down, and he looks me over real careful kind of interested like, but never says nothing, and i don't neither. funny thing is he walks up close to me then kind of rocks back and forth on each foot, coming close enough to me to look square and deep into my eyes, our faces are about 8 inches apart, and i knows he knows. i just packs my shit and shoulder my gear and i move out. i got a ride out of there.
this rancher picks me up - this was before the illians, but it don't make much difference, as it all happened to me and it's the human interest in it that makes it matter, not the time frame, you know. so this rancher dude picks me up, i throw in the back and climb in the cab, she's just about a brand new truck by the looks of her too.
we ain't gotta say much, you know folk on the road and in the country, we don't gotta say much atall to get along just fine, he give me a little hate to do it but gotta acknowledge your presence peck of a glance and pulls his hat brim down, in the universal language we men critters got that says i ain't talkin, you mealy mouthed motherfucker, till i good and ready, so don't go to intrudin on my solitude! he say howdy after awhile i say year, howdy.
after awhile further he finishes up this drink he's been workin on, and he says i own a spread up whatchacallit county and runnin head. i says oh yeah that pretty good life or what and he says year, i just sold me off a twelve thousand head and he tells me how much after awhile and i thinks jesus, this futhermucker just made enough money to buy half the state of rhode island if he's telling the truth, and i reserves judgement.
he go i just bought me this brand new pickemup truck and he says i got a tape player. whoopee doo hot shit i think to myself, he grinnin like a kid and he slides in a waylon tape and lets her rip. shit, he's lovin that stuff and i ain't too bad with it either so we just enjoys the ride. he say stop here, we pulls into looks like a bar, just a big dirt parking lot out to front of it, low roofed saloon. he say, come on i'll buy you a drink, then he looks sharp at me and says on second thought no i won't your old man payin for that college you say you gettin, you buy your own damn beer. i say ain't nobody payin for me but me i go my owns way all the fuckin way and he say alright come on then i'll buy.
we go in there, it's cool, and not bright. this rancher cat he know everybody say hi, order two doubles and a tall beer chase, and he say what you want. i turns to the barkeep and say i want milk, jeesh it was a hot mother fucker day and i was tired, i wanted some energy drink, not a beer to fuzz my senses. the bar dude just looks at me, says what'll you have and i say milk. he just looks at me and i says look, i know you got milk in here you gotta have it for some of the drinks, so just give me a glass of it or a carton or something. now three or four other guys in the bar is looking, it gets quiet. i says, a little perturbed, give me the milk! and bar dude he reaches under smooth as silk and poors me a glass of milk!
i drinks it a little at time, enjoying it, then ready to go, but the rancher dude's run off somewheres so i hang. he comes back, downs two more fast ones, gets ones for the road, drinks it down, and orders one more for the road. no lie. jesus. we gets out to the truck and begins rollin again and i'm watchin this buzzard, you know i don't want no headons or nothin. he's looped, i mean this dude is seeing stars, but i likes him so what the hell, i just watch that wheel and the road. there's about one car every fifteen twenty miles, next to nothing, so i ain't too worried.
he says you got balls, man i say what? what's this shit, i wonders, then he says you got mighty big balls, son, walk in a bar like that. i say, what with a pack, what? and he say, no you walk right up there in a bar full of men and order milk like that, don't you drink beer? and i say, yeah, i drinks beer alright, i just didn't want one right then, i wanted milk for the energy. i likes milk too i say. he say there ain't very many men in this country'd have the balls to do that.
we hits a fork in the road, he going right i straight, so unloads and out and gone. guess he really did unload a twelve thousand head, that motherfucker was one of the drunkest human beings i've ever been around, and known it anyways.
break.
welsir, i damngobulated down to the yellowstone country, wants to walk through the backcountry afore she's all gone, and i heads in. the mountiebacks not in the office, i hangs around, and noone does show up, office open wide. i reads all the letterature and goes over the maps. about five o'clock woman walks in says them not here come back tomorrow and i do.
next mornin about nine i packs in and unloads, and a mountieback dude says come back about eleven fifteen i run then. i wonders what the hell i wanta come when you'se running, and say so. he say come back then, knock on back door if i'm not here.
they wants money and permit for the walk the backcountry and i says bullshit i ain't paying none of my hard-earned money to walk this god damned national land that belongs to me and you and all of we. i gonna walk that motherfucker anyway, and i does.
but before i hits the rear country, i stops back in at eleven fifteen. office closed, i walks around and knocks on the back door. woman comes to the door, big sick grin on her face, robe on is all, all hangin open in the front, she's a firecracker, boy, ready to pop. she opens the door and a mountie dude jogs around the corner - the other one, not the one told me to come back at eleven fifteen.
he's scared then flash to anger and i backs off, him poppin mary poppins there all the time his buddy's out joggin, ain't no mind of mine, at all. i winks the she-bitch firepopper and leaves.
welsir, i heads out into the backcountry. start on horsetrails and i'm movin up thy Yellowstone river, they ain't even a trail, you just walks the river bottom is all. i do see horse tracks so i know they work the country. they're old, been one to two weeks at least and i expect few humanitarian life forms through here. i'm just wild and free, the sun is shining down on me, and i ain't even hiking a trail, it's like i'm exploring her, and i am, exploring her, first time through that country for me, and i's happy inside.
come a pounding upriver, and it goes on by and circles back, it's a horse and rider, and i been out two three days now but i'm avoiding humbin contact. so i watches. 'course i'm technically in there with no permit, so i want to make sure ain't no mountabilly.
dude reigns in a big chestnut horse, he's bouncy too, he pulls up and reigns around. he can't hold that horse still, he's dancin up on his toes and giving little kicks and every few seconds he sort of gathers up his four legs and jumps straight up, he's like acrost between a scared cat on a hot skillet and horse at the start of a race. he gathers in, jumps, and dodges for a run, and his rider pulls him down and says "whoooooaaaaaa, boy" and i know that big chestnut bay loves to run.
he circles around me, first in front, around back and sides. he backs up where the rider can't see, he's back steppin for me and rider can't keep him still. he's a mighty fine animal and i admires him, but i keep my four five meters back off'n him.
the chestnut's hooves are striking the rocks, ringing out, and he's makin' quite a fuss, the dude yells you seen blah-de-de-blah? over the clatter. he give a description, she run off he says, and he's angry. now why should he be angry? i ain't seen a human life form in two days and fifteen miles of this river, i tells him, which i hasn't, thank god.
he spins around and that horse backwalks and cakewalks and the dude looks at me with respect and says you know horses, don't you and i says what he says he's trying to take a pot at ya but you're staying clear. you know animals. i smiles and he says he's got spirit, i gotta ride this stallion he loves to run but i can't keep him still and he gallops back off, upriver, the bay's hoofs clatter like slate sheets thrown down on rock. he a okay plus caballero but just barely controlling that horse.
welsir, i heads into the high country and she turns to stormin, and i up in the pines, up 7000, 8500 feet, it went from summer to high country summer pretty quick. 'cause up so high, you know.
i'm hikin, been all day, and it's midafternoon, storm comin in, and i've got a choice walk on about six eight miles to lower elevation, or stop in the little glade. i decides, as i'm chilled to the bone, wet, and gotta pump carbo's, and storm incoming, that i'm better off camping at the higher spot, wait the squall, and hike it down and out.
i'm comin into the glade with big pines, along a stream, and i see girl clothes and pack i sneak around why there's a girl critter stuck in a pool right six feet off the trail. she's a canny bitch, though, knows i'm there and stays in. i gives it up and look, all up and down this little hillside with the stream running along the trail, there's pools and a few has packs out and people's heads sticking out! it's all little hot springs, burbling outa the hillside banks.
i pitches camp, leaves my stuff in the tent, and figures i gotta get warm or could danger of hypomalnothermiate, so i strips and jump in that hot pool the girl was in. it's just perfect right temperature, and i warms up to the bone. starts snowin while i'm in the hot water. later i gets out, dress and back to tent. least i know i won't hyponal out here, i can set the storm in the hot water if i got to.
the temp is falling and i ain't got the necessary wool, my clothes and gear is wet. didn't figure on a blizzard, and gets very cold. when the body shakes start - you know that's a early warning sign for hypomalnothermiate - finally i asks some campers for a cup of hot and they gives me hot chocolate and i shiver and shake through the night.
get out in the a.m. and there's four inches of wet, heavy snow everywhere! ain't no way to pack dry, just pack all my gear wet as sop, and tail ass out of there. i just want down country where it'll be warmer, maybe not no drier, but warmer at least.
another day and the wind is up, i'm following downcountry, and a ranger puke comes up. he wants to see my permit, ain't got one, i says, i'm just hiking this here outback and it's national land, i got the right to use it and travel where i please on it, i ain't disturbing a single thing, and he goes to writing me out a ticket. a god damned ticket in the yellowstone outback, now ain't that damn ironic. well, it was then, but not no more.
he go what's in that case, banjo? and i says yeah. he say, excited, my sister plays one, you play froggy mountain breakdown? and i says, yeah, man, i can play it but i got caught in that storm up yonder and i haven't had it out. i've got it all shock corded (you know, that bungy cord stuff) to the back of my pack so's my hands are free, and it's a bitch to get her on and off, so i don't wanta play this assfuck anything on it.
he go, you got a high powered rifle in there? he say people been shooting elk back in here and i say godamnit, does it look like i have a elk on my back, you stupid son of a bitch, and he's taking my integrity into question, and i'm pissed but wary.
he keeps insisting and finally i figure this pisshead's gonna write me two tickets, so i unstrap the whole shebang and opens the case. those strings have gone to pure rust, in two days flat. only time in my entire lifes that i've had a whole instrument's strings rust, even in the viscous Mississippi sweatin' weather when you're breathin fish the air's so close to bein' water, and the 120 degree Arizona heat blast, nor not the 100 degree Carolina honeysuckle humidity where the wet runs down you in sheets.
i have the outside of the case all painted with polyurethane, she's water proof as can be, but the joints ain't! i built that banjo, and i know it can take that wet and hardship if she has to, but the strings is gone. so i plays a little froggy mountain for the bastard and he smiles and taps his feet, and then i sits down to change the strings.
he writes me a warning ticket, say you gotta get out soon's you can, and i change the strings, put the olds in my pack, and shove on. i come on dude and babe look like college and they insist on chatting but i'm code of the backcountry i don't wanta have to talk to nobody unless i damn well feel like it, and i sure doesn't feel like it right now.
finally i asks them you in school, where, and they says something. they're mountabillies in disguise, working for the man, is what it is. the ranger dude called for them on his radio, to check on me, and i knows it and it rankles me. bastards, it's public land.
i hikes down and out, goes by the ranger office again, and same thing, everybody's bopping the ranger's wife while he jogs and does his thing. and he knows about, hell, it's hot fun in the summertime, and all there is to it!
i got my ass back down to el pueblo viejo, groovin on the heat and pretty girls and stuff, and got back down in that crounty jail - no, the brounty hospital. my job was to set in the mental building, it had a high toxicity side, a wide hall through the center, and a low desperation side. it was kind of a square building with that long corridor splitting it down the middle.
they give me a red phone and a little desk and couple chairs, i just set there. lady say now you be nice to him, okay? he the brother of doctor so and so, he's a little deranged, but just laugh, okay? make him feel good. i wonder what the fuck, and watch everybody sharp as shit.
there's this little short fat guy in white coat, you know that long kind doctores wear, he's got rimless glasses and mustache, little beard, just like a little freud fuckin nietzsche, just look the bill all the way. he the brother one. then a few days later this little fat guy, no glasses no facial hair, he come through and say my brother work in there, i'm going in to see him. i says alright and sign the pukester in, that's him, i guess that's the brother one she lady told me about. he carries a big black lunch box, the round-roof barn type, and he wears those brown washing machine repair outfit too.
the little washing machine guy comes and goes, he roams around free, good thing he ain't doing drugs or something, they'd be coming in through him, but he's okay. after awhile i see a patient or two, they brings em out to see daylight, i guess. they got this pretty babe, they let her talk to me a little, she's nineteen and hot looking, has some vicious old aunt put her there, and i don't know no more. one night they bring her out and she's smashed, just totally wrecked on her meds, her mouth is twisted not straight and the fat nurse has to hold her up she's so totalled she can't stand up. the fat nurse runs her hand down the front of the girl's jogging pants and tweaks her and the girl lights up. they takes her back in the low security side. i never goes in there, and after that, didn't want to either. well, i'd like to play with her but i know better'n get into that wasted on meds psychiatro nurse and patient thing. no way.
the sarge man he come and visit say they got ol' fat freddie they caught him and we gotta watch him, he's down here now. i cool, okay, and he takes off. the floor doc on the high intensity side comes out, he's looking scared too, and says i thought you're inside and i says okay, i'm inside now. i goes in, through one locked door into a holding bay, you lock up the one behind you, then they buzz you through the inside one. nurse's station buzzes you through.
we go in, i goes over the place so i know what's where, and i say to the doc i heard he got frisky last night. the doc he looks scared and says he pinned me in the shower and the doc had these big bruises around his face and head and i says jesus. they say that's him and i go meet him, he's six three and at least three hundred pounds, black stick hair on his head and his eyes is gone, just gone. ain't nothin in there but anger, just pure damned animal anger. black eyes.
he shuffles around with about eight ten inches ankle chain and cuffs in front i say cuffed in front could be peligro, they say that's why you here, we gotta cuff em in back can't do alone he almost killed a nurse a little while ago we tried. i thinks okay this is what they pay me for, so i tells six three what we're gonna do and i'm braced for a life and death fight if i need to subdue this bastard, but he's mellow, just like a cow. we chain him back behind his back and it's done.
guess those nurses and docotores they feel safer with me in there or something, they just leaves me in there every day. can smoke in there and sit on the couch i say hey what'd the chain man do anyway and that scared in their eyes look again, he killed two girls and he's county in for observation. he was a mind blower.
i gets out of there, the ol' pot smokin night nurse has her shit together about all this madness stuff, you see those people inside lots of em act no more abnormal than you or me, just shufflin around, sometimes they come over to reach out and ever so gently touch you, just watching you, but most of em just normal like, play cards and tv and stuff. it gets pretty heavy and the night nurse she's in tune with the feelings, she's a feeling night robber, and she knows i's in trouble, and she says to me finally, she says look it's just a definition and you're on one side and they're on the other. that's all it is, it's a definition. and i works it through many days and i think she's right, ain't nothing but. it's scary, but the truth is it's a continuum.
they put me to roam er'ing again and one night i gets the call on la radio, come to er nurses in trouble and those nurses, especially er nurses, they don't call unless they really need help, so goes on the trot. i say what's up they say we got a drunk inlian in there, berserk. i say is that all, you got one doctor, two male internpostmed junior fucks, and there were five nurses, no lie. i say all this shit for one drunk? no way. she say Need you, gotta pump him out and he's fighting.
i go in i'm all business those nurses ain't afraid but they're gratified i'm there, i can tell, and they say when we start the tube down is trouble. we gives it a go, and that god damned indian was as strong as a heifer, heifer with four arms and biting teeth too. we let up i says jesus let's not do it. the junior doc things say no he die if we not pump him out so i go this here's this futhermucker's life we're saving so i gives it everything i mean all i've got and we hold the sombitch and they gets the tube down then the guy settles down and they say alright, be fine now, sayanara.
them indians when they gets near death drunk, man watch out. well anyway there was some pretty edgy muck fuckers come through that place. there was this guy thought it was the wild west and i was sheriff or something, he sneak around all over trying to get the drop on me, draw his finger like a pistol, it got to be a kind of a game to me but this guy was edgy i just had to watch him cause if he goes off and tries to hurt somebody i gotta take care of him. he never did get the drop on me, i just catch him with my eyes you know.
this carpenter babe drifts in, cutoff jean shorts, and a bikini top with c+ boobs barely strapped in, and this big ol heavy carpenters tool belt on, full of tools! she goes through, i thinks nothin of it, and later i sees her on the other side of the compound, figure she's waiting on somebody, till the next day she's there all day, everywhere. i asks the nurses, she incoming? family wait? what's up and nobody knows so i watches her. asks her what's up she normal for a minute. i asks you waiting on someone and three four sentences in she starts getting ramifacious, i'm just as good as any man on the crew and goddamnit leave your hands off me don't come near me, you mother fucker and she pulls a 2 pound claw hammer and oh shit gonna need some help here i backs up and talks calm then like a flash she's back, lucid, tools in her belt, and i watches her.
i see she don't get crazy except when a man tries to talk to her more'n howdy, so leave her pretty much to herself. i just don't want her attacking somebody cause that hammer can kill if it's used right. after a couple weeks she drifts out again, and in and out for short periods. i checks at the menternal ward, she's not anything to do with them, just a citizen. she's getting browner and browner so i knows she's living on the streets, in the hospital.
i get tired o seeing all that action and no death first hand so when we get the radio call gunshot coming in, i clear all the people and cars, then they rushes him in, on this one i stays. people running and shouting directions, i keeps way back. eight or ten minutes, maybe a few more, it's over. somebody says that's it, and they all leave. the nurse pulls the sheet down for me to see, i wants to see his face, and there's a little tiny blue spot in his right temple, nothing else. just a little blue hole, but it just looks like a spot. i says 22? and she says it was a 38, he was dead when he got here we just had to go through the motions. i walks back through the waiting room every face turns my way i smiles and step outside.
there was this sheriff motherfucker, he'd drive in sometimes and i'd watch him he was out of nogales and was out of his district. he knows i'm watchin him and after a couple runs in he comes over and talks to me. he comes up for a cup of coffee, he says, then i sees he's border patrole, it's cool with me. he say i bring a ride up here now and then, i say uh. we coffee and cigarette.
next time, he pulls in just at dusk going dark and the passenger door opens before the car is stopped and a mexican kid hops out runs like a scared rabbit i mean scurry and gone, just gone. i knows what's up but don't say anything i just go away. i'd rather not know too much on this one. the sheriff dude he comes in regular for a while, then don't see him for a long while. sometimes alone, sometimes a passenger, and once had three. they all runs.
i guess they got bored over mental so i'm back over there for awhile. that's a crazy kit and caboose over there, always some weird shit goin on seems like. i'm in there reading my book by the red phone one afternoon and the washing machine repair brother guy comes in grinnin like he's high on something mighty good, and he's about four meters in and he spills open that black lunchbox of his and dildos start bouncing everywhere, must be twelve of them, some double doers, all shapes and sizes. i breaks his heart, don't even crack a smile, but a nurse from the low insecurity side comes out and laughs like crazy and saves the day. it was the fat short one that molests the pretty girlbabe over there at night.
so i's a-settin', i's a-readin', and i ain't used that silly ass red phone yet, except it rings my nurse friend from the other side acallin for me. i'm a settin' reading and all of a sudden the low security pops open and the pretty twisted girl bursts out, she runs over to my desk and i see her slash and blood explodes it's bursting on the walls, the floor, the big glass windows and i call Stat it's the red line to er move it. the blood splashes with every beat of her heart and i knows that's a fatality a-coming in.
i just gets to her side and everyone boils out of low security and they're on her, have the blood stopped, the er crew arrives and it's all out of my hands. i don't see the pretty twisted girl for awhile then when i do she's quiet, probably blasted on psychotropics, and she has big big stitches across her wrist, about three four inches up her arm. unfortunately that's not the last i see of her neither.
i'm wandering around get a broken call there's a battle goin' on somewheres but it's too broken i ignores it. about ten minutes later i get another help over the radio and that's unnatural cause we got the codes ain't nobody ever say help, so there's either serious trouble afoot or someone's playing. wait, then i get a beam in on it it's second floor stat and i shove everyone off the elevator and hit the emergency i hits the floor, quiet normal i says loud where's the officer they say out there and i runs. there's a 400-pounder aready to throw the sarge over the side it's an open patio walk with three foot thick walls chest high and she's got him ready to throw over he says she's gonna kill me get her.
it takes every bit of my strength and his too but we unstick her from him finally, ropes her up with a leather belt, and i say jesus she just attack you or what and he say she broke out of mental, she in the highly mentally secure side, i say oh you want help get her back, no i got her now thanks. something maniacal about that big fat bitch, and something like i seen her before. i keep running it through my mind streets of Tucson but coming up blank, nothing.
i go back over in mental to say hi to someone and the 400 pound guinea bunny is in arm chain walking down the hall. she sees me pins her red eyes on me stops and yells he raped me! and she's blabberin and yammerin, coming up in decibels he raped me he raped me and it hits me, it's the buffalo girl from the vw and utal mounties and oh wholly fuckin shit how'd this crap happen to me i'm clean but she's gonna spill it but i remains calm exterior.
they drags her away and later a nurse i asks her she say the bloat bitch she say that about every man, he raped her, she crazy she says, and i go oh. brought her down from phruxnig she say and then i knows for sure, and i keeps quiet i mean very very quiet. it's sickness, but at the time it was way more. jesus christ.
i got out of there only so much i could take there was some crazy mother pluckers down there. one day a guy comes in wants to sign himself into the mental ward, i says just a minute. talks with the doctore, no can do. tell the guy, no can do. he freak, i say sorry, gotta go. he hangs outside come back next day he's still there gotta come in i say why. he says i'm going crazy, i know i'm gonna blow, i start watchin him now. say, sorry. he says god damn it and i go here it comes but he runs out the door.
starts up his car, he's a rammin for the front door scatter i yells there's speculators now they felt the building shake i says Go and the ladies scream and they runs and the guy rams a pillar and the building shakes. i say oh shit we need pd here now this fucker's gone and he's gonna kill us battering ram that car he could take the building down, walls ain't that thick. he backs her up and guns her and i'm oh fuckin no better be pd on the fuckin way cause we ain't armored or nothin', just rentals.
they's three orificers there now, the head honcho dude never does show think he's scared. these two city brother fuckers ain't scared though, one yells i'll get him donnie and runs for the car. the madman now he's got her in reverse and the wheel pulled tight, pedal to the floor all four tires screamin and smoking so he's making big widening circles backwards, in the parking lot, and he's gonna take out some cars and at least he ain't ramming the building now but i'm worried.
the other brother says don't do it zebbie he'll kill you and he says donnie i got my piece i'll crack his head. he's chasing the car, trying to grab the door handle to get at the crazy guy. chasing, jesus, he gonna hit the parked cars and a lady behind me go that's my car! that's my car! and i say steady, lady, just stay right here till we get him contained, you'll get hurt out there.
it goes on and on then finally zebbie he throws his body through the driver's window and rips him out, the car spinning out and we're diving on it now, and zebbie beats the crazy down and everything slowly spins to a stop like a merry-go-round when you stop pushing. they takes him to er and then later they brings him over and in the door to psychiatricks ward and he's smilin and says see? i needed in. i shakes my head.
about the only other thing that happened over there was the pretty twisted one got loose one day i say oh shit she'll cut herself again but they say no, no knife, but gotta catch her so we goes. we got her and she was fighting like a bobcat. if you ain't ever fought a bobcat, or seen one be fought, you're missing a major spectacle of life. ain't nothing like it, you wouldn't think a little fifteen twentytwo pound varmint beast could explode like a bomb but brother it's pure adrenalin excitement, i'll tell you.
that's how she was, and i felt sorry for her cause of that mean aunt bitch that tortured her into there and the fat nurse molesting her and everything. it was my duty to subdue her, but i wasn't sure where my allegiance lay, not sure it was better or worse for her in that place, and finally decided i didn't know but wasn't a cyliac trained like them so let it go.
they said in the padded room and in there we went, there was a flat bed white sheets with these big strap belts strapped around the bed you know chest stomach legs and they had to literally throw her on the bed. padded walls everywhere. i wasn't doing a thing, just observing. they flipped her over and took her clothes off and strapped her down then the wrist and ankle straps too, and they gave her a shot while she twisted and fought and spit and cried and freaked out. it was one of the most emotionally wrenching things i've ever witnessed.
they takes off her bra and panties and the little fat short brother doc with the thick glasses and mustache said no sheet and the nurses and aides sighed and i said what's that and they said we don't have to do the wet sheets we hate that. i said do you really have to strap her down like that and they looked at me said yeah she'll kill herself beating herself if you don't. that wet sheet really works to quiet them down you tie it over them but we hate doing that.
jesus i think i was sure i read that all this shit was outlawed thirty fourty years ago and what was that one flew over the cuckoo's nest thing didn't all this go away with the dark ages? i didn't say another word though, we all left with the little crazy doc in the lockdown room with her naked and in straps and cuffs. the pretty twisted girl.
actually there was more i saved the junkie's life. he hung around, i'd see him once or twice a week and then not for a while, then back. always over at the free clinic part, it was a separate building like the psychotricks place. so this one time he comes up to me, speech all slurred, bad slurred, he wanted help. all i could figure was he wanted me to ask the nurse something for him, so i asked at the desk, he got appointment. she ignored me, and they were run frazzled, them receptionist nurses, so i set near the guy cause i know by now he's not in very good shape.
i'm next to him, five minutes, then stretching into eight, and thinking it's okay, when i hear rough breathing turn to him he's puffed up like a fish, hot and falling out of his chair. i catch him, pick him up and he's hot, hot like death and i know he's going and fast too. prop him up, run to the desk, nurse! she ignores me i shout NURSE! This Man Is Dying! and she hits stat and everyone runs, like a blur.
i carried-drug him in the back and on the table and the doc and a nurse and me did it to him i wasn't leaving his side those bitches out front was letting the mother fucker die knowfully, and i was sticking with this one till he was totally back. i just did what the doctor told me to do, hold this here, give me that there.
i did, i stayed, the druggie got up after a half hour then back out to the lobby later in the afternoon and i saved that man's life that day. the doctor said he had about one more minute or less was it. i felt okay that day, at least i accomplished something saving that poor bum junkie's life. and he had come to me knowing he was od'ing someone said later, i guess that was it. he knew he was in trouble and those brass bitches at the desk wouldn't hear him.
oh, it's been a trying day.
i was going thru one a them midwestern towns, just had to stop and get water and use the faxilities, so i packed into this gas station on the road. the bathroom was locked i says to the guy is there a key to the bathroom i just want some water. he looks me down then up then down again and i's wonderin what the hell's this asshole's problem, he was kind of bald, didn't have on soiled clothes or a jump suit like a mechanic, he was some kind of middle class schmoe trying to look better'n the rest of the people around there. anyway after he looks me over real demeaning like he says okay, you aren't gonna do anything Weird in there are you? 'cause those hippies'll come in here... i gives him a nasty look and says i just want some water, what'ya think i'm gonna do?
he unlocks the door and i goes in and that was that. i did need water, i filled up all my bottles and containers, took a teamster dump, and then lit out again. i've laughed about that narrow minded scared somebitch ever since - he was so scared i'd commit some evil in there, this rank stranger and foreigner! poor guy probably never even sucked his wife's tit in twenty five years, he was so hung up and repressed.
i got me a job up to the North Rim, you know, Golly Gulch, or Glory Gulch as i call it. i didn't figure it'd hurt to pack away a little earnings part way through, and it would be fun to hang on the north rim where it's cool and just soak it in.
so i signed up this big italian idiot hires me, i help in the kitchen, mostly food prep. i gravitate off the day, you know with my antisocietal maniacal tendencies i do better away from too much normality. so the crew clears out, i work, and these illians come in. we get friends i like these guys they got total open unambiguity like i like, and they doesn't give two shits what any gringo pukes think either, 'cept they don't call us gringos, they don't pay me anyone much mind i don't think they figures we real people or don't have souls or something, and they mayn't be far wrong at that.
they wants to know what i doing there, not say much cause just laying in a little supplies for later in the year. i wants to know what they're doing there and they stop, look at each other, then say we saving for the powwow! i say where and they talk indian and i don't know where it is. they say we work till go just go and i like them boys, i'm doing the same thing work till time to go then it's over and out.
well i just had to whiz over the edge of that mothernonstrosity even if just once, you know biggest pee drop in history thing, so i wangs it out way over on the edge i mean i even crawled out on some rocks and looks down, she's a good thousand feet right down and that's a pretty fair pee drop so i drags it out and let her roll. let her roll, baby, roll, let her roll. i'm enjoyin it groovin on the nature al way and everything and i hears a pebble, twig, something stopped. jerk my head around but nothing see, my senses never lie so i know someone sawed me. oh well. i just has to have that experience and i did!
'bout a week later i'm walking through and this security schmuck is talkin real loud "i seen it with my only two eyes, right in broad daylight too" and he gives me a disgusted look. i sort of pauses, then continues, listening. he says and there he goes as if nothing ever happened, i am pure disgusted he says. it's all superficial show, he just wishes he had the balls to walk up the edge of the Glory PeeTrain and whang her out and gush. he secretly admires me, but can't let on. well don't appear like this ahole's gonna do anything so i forgets it.
i hear bad rumours, provoke fight, fire some guy, guy afraid the bastards gonna shoot him, some pretty wild shit but i keeps my eyes open and i doesn't get too far from my gear cause i don't want anything gone and i might need to split pretty fast. the italian muck trucker is giving me real hate filled looks ever since i caught him bopping the head chef's wife. they're all a pack of lying thieves it turns out.
see they put me in this cabin right on the edge i kinda like it, and there's a super legs natural blonde out there next cabin, about ten feet away, always a-sunnin and a-shinin and a-grinnin at me. she's playing for me and italiano sees it and he's wild in jealousy even though it ain't even his female, it's the head chef's. italiano he say keep your mouth Shut. jerk off.
my cabin mate is this decent kind of guy, he's a cook, and he's okay. got a bad cough, though, and i notices when he gets up in the morning he coughs and the water runs way long i mean way long then the hand towels is all solid wet like been washed and i puts it all together and this poor bastard actually has TB, or something damn like it! i read about it, there's cures now though, and i asks him careful where he's before here (ranch) what's that kinda cough (ain't nothing atall) and sure nuff he got tuberniferous on that ranch freezing through the winter. i tells him over and over there's cures for it now, he gotta go see the nurse, she knows, there's cure for it now.
after about a week or so i misses him a day two and ask italiano what happened my roomie and after i prods him a little he says went to see nurse and we took him out, out to a doctor. he had TB, he says, real quiet like he don't want anyone to know. well how do you like that. maybe the dude got better, i don't know.
so pukeman he moves me to another cabin so he can continue fucking the chef's wife, works his shifts and everything, and i goes over some cabins. the manager of the place is mormon and there was a gazillion mormon schoolers in there, from little kids on up to about nineteen twenty. all the ones about thirteen up was working. this old groundhog had a bunch of pretty girl daughters, too, and we all was hangin togethers. those girls would squeeze me tight just riding around in the pick up trucks, sit all over in your lap and pinch you everywhere, they was a hot bunch of people i'll say and those little girls bangers would go at night too when we'd sneak into their cabins after lights out.
italiano has some hate problem, i get my check and instead of cashing and carrying around hundreds of dollars - ain't no way i trust those bastards, and italiano he's getting worse by almost the day - i take that check walk twenty feet to the PO branch, put it to cash, and i buys a money order with the cash, fills it out to me, and puts it in a envelope and mails her off to the southern torrid regions. it'll be there waitin on me when i returns. i do this with all my checks, italiano is following me around now, kind of psychopathic almost.
i likes my fresh air and cigarette at night and i walks out to see the stars, sit on the edge and hear the wind blow and howl in the canyons down below. that is wild forbidding country, ain't no bout adout it, she just howls with the wind and you move a half foot wrong, you're over the edge and gone. ain't like somebody built a railing around a thousand miles of canyon rim or anything. she's one of the wildest places i been. see, ain't no way for man to get down those cliffs and in all them box canyons, it's just pure perfect wild in there. it's home to lions and mulies and eagles and hawks, it's nice and she's beautiful and free.
it's up there on the Kaibab and that's purty country. i hikes out and in behind and finds it's clear cut for miles and miles, as far's the eye can see, just devastation, and a strip of forest just a half mile or so in off the roads left, as disguise cover for what they're doin on the inside. it's a mind blower for sure. but i'm gettin off the pukester taggin me around.
so gets weary of this idiot's game and i know he's packing his .45 'cause he's getting it out loading the chamber i sees it in the street lamp light. the other dude said what happened with little guy was italiano threatened to shoot him for allegedly stealing a vehicle at night out in that lot, so i know what's up. this bastard's gonna allege i'm doing some evil crime out there and he probly could get away with it too, so i gets weary of his little games.
i saunters along, in full light, and he gets cocksure, then i move easy into full shadow - dark - and sprint walks super silent - you know, the five or six mile an hour walk that's almost a trot - staying in the black no light, and i plumb vanishes to him, and he's caught out in the middle of the bright lit lot and of course if i wanted to i could've killed him then, but i'm just playing with him. i circles around behind him, re-enter the lot where we originally did, while he's running fast among the shadows and lot, cursing and stamping, all furious.
the bastard's so stupid he ain't even paying attention and i has to whistle and scuff rocks with my boots to let him know i'm there. he whips around and sees me, knows i tricked him, and now he hates my blood and my guts, he wants to kill me i can feel it, but he can't do it in the middle of the lot, no cars immediately to, and him not paying attention could be witnesses now, it's just like a poker game, is all.
it isn't but one or two days the asshole provokes me on the loading dock, only thing is, i use the can out there, and there's cig smoke coming from it, and i investigates, it's the head manager dude, the one with all the mormon daughter girls. only thing is, he doesn't ever come out of that bathroom - he's been in there thirty five minutes and i'm wondering something mighty strange up, oh he's waiting on a lover rendezvous, when italiano comes on the dock and tries to provoke me into a fight.
then i've got it, he wants me to swing at him, the goober pops out of the can and witnesses it, i'm fired and they're done with me. 'cept i see it all and don't get pissed, i'm laughin at these colossal cretins who thought this stupid ploy up, and i doesn't show a sign. i just reason with the guy and he can't figure out why i ain't pissed or fighting.
after about ten minutes he gives up and leaves, and i just sit. i sits right down on the dock, smokes a cigarette, and waits some more. finally pukeman number one comes out of the can with the sheepishest lookin face i ever saw, i mean ever. see this number one guy wasn't so stupid, he knows italiano's a idiot, and he knows he been had real bad by me, and i forces him out and i say what you been doing in there you been in there over a hour more and he can't even look me in the eye.
i figures now's the time and i won't go at night less the low iq one throw a rod or a bearing or something and actually shoot me, it could be done along those eighty miles of unhabitated roads, and i figures he wouldn't have the balls to do it in daylight with cars and tourists and stuff around, so i goes over to the po to unload the last bit of everything of my cash 'cause i know po man, he'll have to tell italiano and then italiano'll know i ain't got no money on me, that much less motive for him, and we don't need adding any motives this fucker pure hates my guts now.
the po guy, he's also the accountant, he's scared. he's very scared, so scared his face is white, and he knows i's straight shooter he's part afraid o me but mostly of the italiano bossman situation, and he says the books aren't right. i says to myself now this is mighty peculiar, looks like this skinny little guy gonna spill his guts to me and his hands start shaking. he says they'll do anything and i looks him in the eye and i says give me a money order for eighty five dollars and a stamped envelope too, and his hands shake out uncontrollable. i says you've Gotta do it, it's your job and then he makes it out and takes my cash and i addresses and seals the envelope, drops it in the mailbox slot, and i go.
i guess italiano told him not to give me any more money orders, but that post office stuff turns into federal crime and i guess the guy thought he better not cross that line, and you know he made a good choice cause i woulda raised holy hell from Birmingham to Fresno over that shit.
before this all degenerated into a big pile of poop, those illians got rowdier and rowdier, they took to turning the big cooking kettles over (they washed the pots) and beating on them with those big twenty inch stir spoons and stuff. they'd beat, and dance, and do their chants and songs. one'd beat, two dance and chant and sing, they'd call out do the watchacallit, do the whatsitsname and they laugh and scream these long blood curdling kind, i digs it. i tries to get them to tell me the names of the dances but they either doesn't, or it's in Hualapai or Chemehuevis or something. Next day they're gone, just like the coughing blood guy, just vanishes, no trace, nobody say nothing.
so i packs the night of the black eyed bastard wanting to kill me in the lots, and i'm gone the next day. i did the post office thing, shouldered my pack and banjo, and was gone. never looked back on those motherfuckers either. ate jerky and water till i hit syphilisation again, which is a long ways up there, got only one direction to go really.
it's a break.
lady says you be our guide and i says year have some jerk, you black hearted bitch, well i didn't say the black hearted bitch part i thought it but i did say here yave some jerky and begunst to gnawin on it. she looks interested then either gets a whif of me or the jerk and she wrinkles up her nose like a little bunny rabbit and then looks sidelong at her partner and gives him a funny look.
so i says those mountains over there real far they sam francisco peaks and this year's the kaibab, the mighty kaibab plateau, land of wilderness lions and snakes and she turns petrified, not scared in the least, her body just turns to stone for a minute and i wonders did i say something wrong when she partly turns to partner there and looks at him a slight bit worried.
i decides they really have absolutely no idee what's out there so i commences with the kissing bug story, this a true one and you know by now you been readin these here tales long enought now you know truth is stranger than friction and so i lays the kissin bugs on her. i forgets whatwhere their plates was but they was kinda faint blue, outa staters for sure. Maybe freneticutt.
now back down home in el gran desierto i takes to sleepin on the floor on a mattress, really feels better there and cooler summer times only thing is closer to the bugs and rattlers and if you think i'm joking you never been there is all. i has a big crack under front door, it's really part of the door sawed off it looks, but i gets the place cheap and i ain't too worried. i has about thirty five feet of one inch chain and a combo lock and a key padlock and i chains my banjo to the water pipes in the bathroom, you know the big hefty ones that'd take a while to get through. so i ain't too worried about that big crack.
i finds once i winter through, though, that that old arctic winter wind likes to blow right through there and i can'ts keep it warm even with the gas stove bull bore, but it was still summer when i discovers the kissers.
i ain't worried on critter bugs got a black widow web all crazy web you know, they the only spider to not draw a regular web, theirs is all crazy zero pattern and they's a marvel to look at. so i got me a wider growin outside one of my windows, and i've had em actually build their crazy web from my settin chair to the door frame, man that's close. i don't go with them three inches from my hand but if they're ten feet or more i'm cool.
the crack under the door is about one inch on one end and widens to a good three centimeters other side of the door so pretty much whatever wants to gets under there. one night summer hot hot just sweat alayin still even with the swamper on, and course you're insane to sleep with a sheet much less blanket and i'm a layin and a trying to go to sleep through my sweat.
just drops off and i feel like a hot needle went into me on my thigh and i wakes with a start. i hears a scurrying sound and i'm suspicious, and then my leg starts to swelling a little but nothing unusual but then everything go to buzzing in my ears, little light buzzing can't shake it, and my body buzz too but i ain't worried on that, buzz when i drink six cups of coffee fast too.
i gets all relaxed and dropping off and i feels the red hot needle again, just as i goes to sleep, and i jumps up thrashing around. i hear buzzing of a large insect flying it sounds like a june beetle and on go the lights i'm tracking this mothertrunker down i'm killin this bug, it's a death warrant, and pay up time.
i can't see him anywhere but i heard him fly so know he's here somewheres, and i rip furniture around, bedclothes then entire mattress up, i tears the whole goddamn cottage upsides down and no hide nor hair of the critter. takes me about two hours to calm down and cool down outside a little and finally i sleeps.
next day big black lumps, circular about six centimeters across, big black ugly, like big bruises and swollen too, are on my leg. i concludes it's a cone nosed kissing bug been to see me and vampire on my blood last night. nasty bastard.
i'm ready next night, i'm primed to awake to the scurry of a insect on the floor or the whir of its wings in the air, and i sleeps the night like that, all on edge. cool that night, then next, i's droppin off, and my autopilot is keeping track, now, of all sounds, and i wakes and lay stone still. nothing, nothing atall. back to unwinding and dropping off the sleep and Up! with a start, i'm convinced this diabolical little vampire beetle can sense when its prey goes to sleep and attacks then.
they stick this big long proboscis into you and inject this pukus that keeps your blood from congealing on them, and they suck away till they're all bloated to pop, and drop off. they're big, too, up to and inch and more in size, and they pump a lot of blood out and a lot of that magic jelly into you to keep you fluid. that's the stuff makes your body and head buzz and the huge black and blue lumps on your flesh. those lumps stay just like a bruise, well that's what they is, and they slowly turn to browns and yellows and all them sick colors black through yellow till finally they all clear up, takes a time too. and itch, hurt in between.
so i tells the thin lady in the blue plates truck and she comes to the conclusion i'm plumb crazy, i can tell she just don't believe a word of it. i sighs and crawls back in my mind and munches jerky and drinks water and tries not to fart cause i know that'll really blow their tender tragic little minds, and i takes the ride down and thankful for it too. i thanks them goodbye and i'm glad to be on my own again i'm lookin for a spot to tent and sleep bivy up for the night.
more later.
i slithers back through the torrid regions. we all decides to have a meeting of the minds, the old timey and BG'ers from Tucson way with the Phruxnig contingent, and we meets up in Picacho Peak. we doesn't want to start when it's too hot so we all pulls in around five six and they dribbles in till dark.
well i meets those rank strangers from up Salt River Valley way, they rank alright, but we can tromp their asses in picking (you know that bluegrass, it's so damn competitive it's almost not no soul in there but there is, there's tons of it), so we mixes around and finally she goes to cooling off a little, which means it drops from 110 down to about 95. it's open desierto, just rock shelters but they doen't dos much. (no, that ain't a mistake, you silly son of a bitch, i says it that way. now don't interrupt me again, by god.)
then - sigh - it goes to a little bit dusk and more peoples is a-pullin in and tuning up and then it gets a shade more duskier, that point where you begin to lose shapes in the distance, when i sees the desert floor moving like waves on water in my peripheral vision. i's just pickin with a few others at this time. i swings my head around and stop playing and watch the desert and it's rock still.
we goes back to pickin and the same thing happens again, all the way through me stoppin and the desert floor stoppin and i really thinks i'm seeing things when i goes i'll play but watch sharp out of my peripherenals, which i doeses. then i sees it - the whole desert |
