by Jane Brooke
Time, insignificant to her, passes. The work strangles her and will not let her go. After some of that time, she reverently lowers a manuscript, to a table, lifts her face, it is filled with tears.
“I don’t understand.”
She whispers, eyes roaming, filling with tears and, then cracking open at the immensity of the work.
She moves to the green glowing computer screen. Black words throw up images at her, trembling fingers, she beings to whisper the words, knowing who ever wrote them had just done so.
“Within entwined blood vines, wind, wild, swept, frail to touch, brittle as porcelain fingertips lost within the moment of a sea shells imprint on sand. I breathe, and then I pretend to be human, succumbing to images, clear, brutal and true.
As if Perfumed kisses from the queen, arching white neck, white hair, she is lost, this Queen, filled with agony.
I know her, she is me, lost in white silken pain, she has come, bestowing upon me, her gifts, as dew drops of life, smoldering within smoke, layering my tresses, my visions, my suffering, second to moment, within the bone sun drenched love her magnificent fingertips, thus allowing me to feel whole, human, once again. Who is this white woman and why has she come?”
“Noooo.” She shudder’s the words.
She swallows her emotions, somehow knowing the poem is about her.
But how does this writer know her, feel her grief, she thinks and, then whispers. “Who are you? Who are you?”
A shadow moves down the corridor, towards the door, it grows closer, closer as the door cracks open. She feels it, she jolts, pulls her 44, aims it at the door, thumb reflexes to the hammer, trying to focus blue eyes through her tears.
It is her horse friend, whinnying, missing her, she breaths, holsters the 44, whispers. “You rascal. You scared me to death.”
Moving to the horse, she cups his snout, bites it, which she has done with her horses, knowing that they at time tend to love such gestures. Whacks on the side of his neck, she notices something, on the wall, at the end of the room, she says. “You, behave...Be right back.”
She moves to the wall. Tacked to it is a professional carbon bow, quiver of carbon, steel tipped arrows hanging on hemp next to it. A ten inch hunting knife, in a leather sheaf, hangs next to them.
Withdrawing the blade, she reads the words etched into the blade.
“Happy birthday Captain Cox. Your men of the 5th.”
“You are a soldier, huh?”
She puts the knife back into the sheath.
Turning, her horse mutters and, then she sees it, a small framed photograph near the glowing computer screen. Off to it, she relives it from its nail, gasps, a reflection throws images back to her.
Soldiers, camouflaged Green Berets, black, Mexican, the rest are white, nine of them, behind them Huey’s, rotor blades dormant. They are kneeling in a tropical jungle, bandana’s, knives and bows are bandoleered to their filthy fatigues. Camouflage paint on faces, 45’s on leg mounts, each man holds an M-16 and some shot guns. To a one they are smiling. Around one handsome blond young man’s body is a red ink circle, a line leading to the edge, where within the photo, the words are scribbled:
CAPTAIN COX.
Lost, confused, curiosity, wonder attacks her as her aquiline fingers touch his face, and she whispers. “So this is you. Captain Cox, Huh?” Her eyes close, open and, then drift around the room, “Why are you hiding here?”
She breaks her gaze, moves slightly, something, gold, round, hanging from a colored ribbon from a simple nail, glinting in the light, has caught her attention. Stepping to it, she for a moment allows her eyes to lose focus. Slow, her eyes open, focus and, then she gasps as her lips tremble and she whispers.
“My God, The Medal of Honor.”
She is stunned. Several moments pass, her horse pounds his hoofs bringing her back to reality. Mind sharpens, she returns from another journey of the absurd, now back in the moment. She swallows her tears, understands none of it, moves to her horse and takes his mane. The horse, so knowing, moves her out the door.
AT the door she lingers, gazes around the door one last time. She then allows the horse to tow her from what she now thinks was a trick of her always blazing brain and imagination.
She has moved the White Knight to the red square. Her chess game of life and death has now been cemented within the life and death game of fate.
Apache Desert
RESULTING from a litany of uncontrollable mental illnesses, and because of them, an old friend lays butchered in a dumpster in New Jersey and another new friend lope’s alongside off her as she exits the corrals.
AT the corral door, she ruffs her friend up one last time. She then cringes as a wolf howls deep in the desert filtering his lone pleas into her ears. Reaching up, she feels that she can touch the moon, it is so bloated, so yellow. Her brain, stranded within the memory of her experience in the horseman’s barn and like the moon, it has grasped her heart, imagination.
His words will not let go.
Shouts, music, laughter, a growling stomach, bring her back to the moment. She turns, stares at the barn, sniffles, turns again and begins to move.
AS A SINGLE cloud moves past Luna, a coyote cries and, then another answers from the canyons of the Indian desert.
Something, powerful, is moving through the arroyos.
Then, the quiet is shattered as the caped rider and his stallion careen along the gullies, horse, rider, connected as one. Bursting through a stream, the rider heels his horse, hesitates, his horse rears, he then goads him on with moccasin heels into his ribs. Horse responds, digs hoofs into the dirt, they move up the mountain, find a ridge and gallop along the ridge and the valleys below them.
At the edge of cliff, he stalls, horse bellowing, he tries to breathe, coughs violently into his gloved hands, looks at them. Splashes of blood cover the leather. He smiles, for the red tint as his breathing is a reminder of what he has become. His breathing, course, hard, comes with difficulty as if his vocal cords have been cut, torn by some rusted iron rasp. Of course that would have been merciful, if in fact mercy were ever apart of the horrific equation he has become.
The BASICS, swallowing, eating, breathing, so difficult and that sickens him. In his mind, he, the horses, they are so beautiful, he so horrid, they, he both being able to kill with their power, he having done so often. Leaning in, his world spreads under the moons pallor before him, throwing shadows into the valley. He wraps his arms around his horse’s neck, whispers. “Soon my brother, soon you will be rid of me. Friends will love you though, do not worry.”
The stallion responds, nodding his head up and down, hoofs scratching the earth, ready for the next leg of their nightly race against his masters, perhaps, limited time on earth.
OFF IN the distance, his eyes roam, staring at the craters of the moon. He thinks about the girl, wondering if she was real, or only a dream. His lips, what remain of them, whisper into his stallions ears. “Tonight Ranger, we fly to the pools. What do you think?”
Stallion growls of approval, steam spewing from his nostrils as well as tail spasms and hoofs beating the ground. His master’s odd voice sends him crazy with excitement, for if no other reason, a horse is born to run and nothing pleases them more.
Gripping the reigns, he clicks his moccasins into Rangers ribs and whispers. “With the wind, Ranger. With the wind.”
His choice of words, dramatic, selected from his poets mind born a hundred years too late in a world that has little use for poets.
Like the girl who loves his horses, who he has yet to know, he has been given a gift. Also like her he has been jettisoned into an iced universe and exactly like her, never given any of the tools to deal with it.
Mental illness, whether in poets, painters, or serial killers can manifest in so many different ways. If one survives such a
gift, it perhaps might be productive, avoiding self destruction along the way, avoiding the tip of a gun barrel, and, then one surely was lucky when drawing the long straw in life’s gene pool of primordial ooze.
It is cold; the wind shrills, weeping off of the desert. He furrows his cape, closer to his neck, lifts his hood over his head and, then gazes at the desert set down below him.
He thinks, not for the last time, why?
Why was he plunged into a world so long ago that he never wanted to be in, and how did he evolve into what he now was? Decades of questions, no answers, yet, so little time left. How much longer must he endure being a single entity before God, perhaps the devil he often thinks and perhaps he might end it soon, the mistake he knew himself to be. He possesses a magnificent state of creativity, yet, not even he, with endless amounts of it, has been able to future gaze into a world that fell to nothing, of little substance, yet touted as so special by the ordinary.
Born in Paris, in the 1880’s, perhaps he would have been a Poe, a Sand, a Hugo. But no, destiny had tricked him. He had born far too late to become what he was destined to be.
He had become a soldier, a mercenary for a colossus of a nation that loved war, death; he had become its prime messenger. In the end, he had become a paid killer for a Super Power, yearning to place its banal values upon the rest of the World.
He had chosen change through fire finally, died, been reborn, something different; different than any other man on the planet.
Lingering at the Cliff edge, he whispers. “To the pools, Ranger.”
With a heavy snort, rider, horse, break into a gallop, pawing at the night before them, racing along the ridge towards the caves and the cool water pools beneath them.
Time passes, finally they are near.
He dismounts, limps to the edge of the cliffs and straightens his melted spine as he moves through the pain again as if it is a simple nuisance. There is only one of him on earth as he kneels, clutching his face in his hands. He begins to sob, tears spilling down his face. Then, his head throws back, he bellows as if a wounded animal, which he is. His voice echoes off of the red canyon walls as his life crystallizes in his mind.
Once again, spent, he presses both hands to the sand; his face lifts as from the recess of the desert a wolf howls, answering his call. His face lowers; he presses it to the cold earth as he wonders when death will take him.
“Please, take me soon.” He whispers.
His eyes close, he falls to the earth, unimaginable words, images now describing dreams in his mind he only ever sees.
Ronnie Gee
RED NEON, strobes from the Cox bar, telling the planet it is open again to nothing and everything. Willy Nelson croons from the jukebox, pleasing the various mal contents loitering around the place.
Outside, the entrance, a burly biker staggers, filth ole lady along side, obliterated, screams in mania as he breaks a beer bottle over his head. She howls, they turn, sling their asses on his low slung chopper, heavy boot, kicks start it, howling, they roar into the night.
INSIDE, the bar, the slut is filling up, some steely oil men, sitting with their woman, drink beer, throw back tequila shots, the cheap kind, dance on the sawdust, having a good time. Tables, Bikers, their women; the kind that take a slap and a kiss as the same compliment
AT the bar, Sue, working her thing, filling shot glasses, for the masses, outlaws, leather, skin, same for their bitches, boots stuck along the bars foot rail.
Shot glasses, slap the bar, laughter, Sue diligently refills them as she racks the bottle, turns, and lovingly looks at Billy. He sees none of it, for his eyes are brazed on Doc Earl, sitting off in a corner, head bobbing everywhere. Groaning, Billy hacks back a shot of Gold, looks off at the pool tables where bikers, their women, are holding court.
On the felt, a thin, wiry man, soiled jeans, covered in grease, shirtless, tattoos everywhere, straggly beard, fights smoke in his eyes, a cigarette pushed between his cold thin lips.
PAIN/HELL is stenciled on Ronnie Gee’s knuckles, as he tries to line up the cue ball.
Next to him, fondling the cue, a best years behind her bleached blond, jeans, leather chaps, flopping tits behind a halter top, tats everywhere, sagging face, showing a still usable body that was great at one time. Plump, in the last stages of desirability, she looks at the wiry Ronnie Gee with love as he swishes the cue, missing the white ball completely.
For some gals, any port in a storm will do. She is the violent Ronnie Gee’s main squeeze, semi illiterate, only ever knowing violence, a bottom of the rung existence. Few choices left, hanging with men like Ronnie Gee, sadistic, cruel, violent, the last stand remnants of women hood for her.
Screaming, Ronnie Gee seems berserk as he violently slaps his old lady away from the table. Grabbing a shot glass, he throws down his shot. Tequila stains his beard, drips down his emaciated chest, his girl smiles. Some attention is better than nothin’.
Watching Ronnie Gee does nothing for Billy’s foul mood, nor his angst. Stares, at Doc Earl, Billy mumbles. “Come on Doc. Keep it tagether, fer just a little while.”
His hand gravitates to Sue’s butt. She smiles, liking it there.
“Gimme a Pabst baby.” He drawls.
Sue smiles, takes a cold one, snaps the cap, places it on the bar, smiles again.
Two sets of tables, the feared oil men sit, ladies with them, polyester, golf clothes, two buddies dance on the dance floor, everybody holding flight patterns, especially the bikers.
Wisely, the bikers shy away from them, not wanting anything to do with them. Enough of them have been crushed by the Oil Men. Even drugged and alcohol addled bikers know at times it’s best to keep their yaps shut.
Other tables, Motor Cycle gang members, Billy’s crew. Arvan is sitting there, pure case of lunacy in his stoned out eye balls. Sitting next to him, another bleached female outlaw, sleeveless leather vest that has: DEATH ANGELS decayed on the back.
Arvan, drunk, twists his head, reads the tattoo on the back of her neck: ARAYAN NATION.
Leaning in, he whispers something in her ear. She violently slaps him in the face drawing hoots from some of the other One Per-Centers, their gals too.
Arvan scowls and stands and, then crushes his beer can against his head. More yelps of approval. Things are moving right along.
Arvan, weaving, drifts to the bar, leans against the rail and, then looks at Sue’s nice tits, hiding behind her red tank top. Staring at him, like he’s a leech, she tolerates him because he’s Billy’s brother. Sue puckers her lips, blows a bubble, “POP.” Her gum sucks back in, leers at little brother and, then seethes.”What the fuck are you looking at?”
Getting grief from Sue, not nice, but she’s Billy’s girl. He wants to drag her across the bar, rape her, beat her, instead he murmurs. “Nothin’, give me a shot a jack.”
Sue, eyes of disgust, peeks at Billy, nothing, slaps a short rimmed glass on the bar, pours some Jack Daniels in it.
Arvan whispers. “Fucking Bitch.”
“Whatever.” Sue seethes through an angry breath.
It won’t take but a moment for Sue to hop the bar, clean up the floor with him, if it were not for Billy. She’s a street fighter, yet she forces herself to calm as she moves next to Billy who is still staring at Doc Earl.
“Billy, need ta talk ta ya, bro. Bout Speedo Gonzalez and bidness.”
Instantly everything changes, as Mandal, slim hip hugger jeans, boots, bomber jacket, looking as God intended a woman to look, walks through the back door.
Billy lights up. Sue glares at her, Billy says. “Later.”
He whips out his comb and sweeps the teeth through it, barely.
Finishing, already strutting, Billy’s off. Sue, pure menace in her eyes, she jealously watches as the Alpha female she is as Billy strolls towards her competition; she is
sure of. It is a dicey situation for her. One she is trying to deal with.
“HEY BETTY...”Billy says, standing all six-foot three of him before her, muscles rippling, ready.
Crinkling her white eyebrows, she remembers that she is Betty, turns, smiles. “Hi Billy, busy Huh?”
“Never to busy fer you, Betty. Ya want a drink, somethin’ ta eat or somethin’?”
Quickly, eye scans, settle on Sue, micro-moment of clarity. Sue none too happy in seeing her, doesn’t like her talking to her hunk, maybe a problem. Mandal gets it.
Time for a new Betty. Play both ends against the middle, leave options available, she thinks.
She becomes approachable and above all available.
Mix it up, stir the pot, sees what comes out the other end, chaos is good.
“Your so sweet, Billy. Can I get something to eat, I’m starving?”
“Hell yes, come on, sit right here, Betty.” Guides her to a table, chair pulled out. Billy’s a gent as the grifter sits.
Billy reveres a chair, straddles it, big ole smile, wants her in the saddle.
“Art makes the best chicken Fried Steak in West Texas, got plenty in the fridge. Ya want one?”
“Sure, sounds great. How about a cold beer too?”
Easy, breezy, sexy attitude her eye balls wired to his.
Billy, his dick ready to burst, nods, smiles, says through a chew of bubble gum, using his complete repertoire of Spanish. “No problema. Ya want biscuits and gravy, or grits?”
Hardly able to believe she is where she is, she looks into Billy eyes and, then lets the words trail out of her lips as if she is saying. Please fuck me later.
“Grits.”
Living the wonders of delusion, Billy grins, stands and says. “You got it Betty girl. Be back pronto.”
Towering over her, Mandals eyes drift way up to his blue eyes, they lock. Billy a little wink, coded messages flying back and forth, more grins; Billy turns and slinks away.
