“Ain’t heard nothing,” the nervous cowboy says. “You just need to get laid is all.”
I guess when civilization ended, the women all went into hiding. Good thing I found out about this before it was too late—if it’s not already too late.
The horny cowboy turns his horse like it has power steering and rides in my direction. The nervous cowboy follows close behind. They both hold their weapons like they’ve done all this before. They trade racial slurs back and forth in case the girl with the whispery voice is African, or Asian, or Native American.
I can’t help feeling glad about being a plain old white girl, and that makes me feel almost more ashamed than I am afraid.
Maybe they won’t kill me. Maybe the nasty vocabulary is just a lot of cowboy words, something interesting to say around the campfire now that football is extinct. But the cowboys are pretty specific about what they plan to do and who gets to go first and how deep they’ll bury me after I fall apart like a baseball with broken stitching.
“Never hung nobody before,” the nervous cowboy says. “Think I can hang her when we’re done?”
“We’ll see,” the horny boss cowboy says, like he’s talking to a three-year-old who can be put off by promises that don’t guarantee anything.
There are lots of things these men want to do to me, but they haven’t found me yet, and maybe they won’t if I don’t panic and run into the open like a distracted raccoon.
They are trying to flush me out, and my best chance is to stay right where I am, but my legs really want to run, and my eyes really want to cry, and my mouth really wants to scream.
The cowboys separate and ride around me, one on either side. I slump in the underbrush as much as I can without moving, but I must have moved a little, because the horny boss cowboy’s horse looks right at me.
He’s been brushed and curried and fed and shod because these cowboys love their horses even though they hate women. He’s on the cowboy’s side of things, but he doesn’t give me away—yet.
Please! I beam out telepathic promises to bring him sugar and apples if he will pass me by, if he will quit looking at me and move on. But he blows hot horse breath into my face and bumps me with his soft as silk horse nose.
“Get up bitch,” the horny cowboy says.
There’s no fever in his eyes so his mean streak isn’t something that hatched out of the New Flu virus. He’s hated women ever since he came out of one.
“A white bitch,” his partner smiles. “It’s our lucky day.”
I’m up and running, like a fox in front of a pack of bloodthirsty English gentlemen. Not worried about poison ivy and thorns, or even the whooping cowboys holding ugly rifles.
The easiest place to run is on the interstate, but I head deeper into the trees, wondering which one these men will hang me from when they’ve finished taking revenge on their mothers. Wondering if they’ll shoot me just in case I might get away, short circuiting their fun, proceeding directly to the orgasm without passing go.
The killing is the main thing after all. I feel the spot where the bullet will pass through my body, right between my shoulder blades. Hot as burning gunpowder, faster than the speed of nasty words.
I’ll never hear the explosion that sends the bullet my way or the last curses the cowboys mutter before they kill me. But I hear a three-shot rifle burst, and I look over my shoulder in time to see my coyote sisters chasing horses down the interstate.
The horny boss cowboy drags himself toward his partner who has three bloody holes in his chest.
“Goddamned coyotes. Goddamned white bitch.” He sits beside his friend who might not be dead yet, but probably will be pretty soon, because assault rifles set to fire automatic bursts aren’t particular who they kill.
I step back farther into the trees but I don’t run away; I can’t help watching the horny boss cowboy cry over his friend, who he killed by accident when my coyote sisters spooked their horses.
My face turns into an ice-cold revenge Popsicle when the horny boss cowboy tries to lift his friend and I take stock of the destruction. One dead, one badly injured.
The cowboy can’t chase me with a broken leg, and it must be broken because it’s twisted at a painful looking angle. These days a broken leg can kill you, if your horses run away and you just shot your partner because of some crazy white bitch with coyote magic.
“Help me,” the cowboy calls to me. “I promise I won’t kill you.” He’s found me in the trees. He tosses his rifle out of reach. It fires another burst because he hasn’t changed the setting.
I draw my authentic Cheyenne War Ceremony Knife and point it at him, like it’s a magic wand that will make him do exactly what I want. “There is one more rifle.”
He crawls over to his partner’s rifle and throws it near the first. No explosive discharge with that toss. “Now will you help me?”
I smile and back into the trees without answering. Giving him a reason to hate women, at least until he starves to death.
“Please,” he calls to me, full of manners now that his weapons are out of reach. “I’ll give you anything,” followed by a string of promises and threats that cancel each other out.
After a hundred yards I can’t hear him but his hatred follows me until I step behind a live oak tree with limbs that sprawl across the forest floor like the tentacles of a giant octopus. My coyote sisters form a circle around me in their usual positions. I want to pet them for saving my life, but things don’t work that way.
“Thank you,” I say, mostly to them, but also to God, in case he’s listening.
Then I get a good look at the tree that’s hiding me from the full force of the cowboy’s hate. There’s a perfect Valentine heart carved into the trunk with two names inside separated by a single word. I trace them with the tip of the Indian knife Joseph made for me—Joseph loves Karma.
“Thank you.” This time it’s all to God, because I know this is one of those signs religious people talk about. A message, like a priest’s final words or a note from your father who you’ll never see again.
“We’re on the right track,” I tell my coyote sisters. “We’ll find Joseph before you know it.”
I check the watch my father left me to see if God has fixed it. Five o’clock, like always. Maybe it will be five o’clock forever.
I move deeper into the woods, protected by my magic coyote circle. North is in the lead.
The clock on our kitchen wall stopped months ago along with everything else that works on electricity, but my mother checks it anyway.
“Still five o’clock,” she says. “In India, mothers don’t measure time with machines.”
She tells me, “All the really important things happen in an instant.” She kisses me on the cheek, brushes the spot with her fingertips and says, “You’re a man now, Raj.”
Just like that.
“Things change when the world falls apart.” Her Bengali inflections turn everything she says into Eastern wisdom. “Now looting and shopping are exactly the same thing. You see, Raj? Whether you’re in India or Oklahoma City.”
“Well. . .” I’d have more to say if my accent came from the other side of the world.
She puts her hands on my shoulders so I’ll have to pay attention, so I’ll know Bengali-Okie-men have to listen to their mothers. “Hunger makes all the difference, especially if someone’s already broken into the grocery store.” She hands me a shopping bag made of recycled plastic. “Think of it as an adventure.”
My first assignment as a man is stealing dinner from the Buy For Less.
• • •
The rioters made a mess of things. Broken glass, pools of dried blood, piles of crumpled clothing that might have bones inside. I keep my eyes on the back of the store and my mind on canned goods.
Chef Boyardee, Vienna Sausages, Starkist Tuna.
I take careful baby steps through the deepest darkest part of Buy For Less, back where the seafood and meat have turned into a maggot factory. No wind in
side the store to move the odors around. They settle in layers that burn my eyes and turn my stomach but I’m still hungry enough to eat canned tomatoes and beets and wash them down with grapefruit juice. The looters left plenty of those things when they ran through the store days ago and cleaned out all good stuff—Wolf Brand chili, beer, Diet Coke.
I’m opening a can of sauerkraut with a one of the twenty blades on my Swiss Army knife when bright lights shine on me from two directions.
A voice behind one of the lights says, “Show us your hands, José.”
So I drop the knife and the sauerkraut and push my fingers toward the ceiling. Pigeons roosting in the girders shift positions, not sure if I’m reaching for them. They coo to each other—making plans.
The voice calls me a “Goddamned Mexican.” I hear a dollop of saliva splatter on the floor. I hear the hammer of a pistol click into the danger zone.
“I’m not Mexican,” I say before I can stop myself.
I point to the American Flag pin my mother made me wear to prove I’m patriotic. I draw a finger under the Kiss me! I’m an Okie! legend on my T-shirt.
“My name’s Rajneesh Patel,” I tell the pair of sealed beam lights. “I’m Bengali, not Hispanic.” The word Hispanic comes out like an obscenity—with accents on hiss and panic. “My friends call me Raj.”
The pigeons flutter toward the broken windows at the front of the Buy For Less. They want to get away from the muzzle flashes and the noise that’s bound to come when men with guns and flashlights find a brown-skinned boy eating sauerkraut in the back of a grocery store.
I hear a wad of chewing tobacco move from one cheek to the other. A second spittle dollop hits the floor.
“Goddamned illegal aliens.” The nicotine-saturated voice is stuck on Mexico, even though there is no such thing as Mexico anymore. No USA either. No borders or armies. Not since New Flu swept the continents clean of government.
“Take our jobs,” one voice says.
“Take our women,” the other voice adds.
The lights bob in unison, perfectly synchronized like the cheerleaders at college football games—with their long tan legs and pleated skirts and breasts as firm and sweet as frozen Jell-O.
When you’re a fifteen-year-old virgin Bengali-Okie-boy who just became a man, everything keeps coming back to sex. I think about all the girls who never slept with me. Physiology turns fear into an erection, just in case I have a chance to reproduce at the last possible minute. I wonder if the flashlight men will open fire if I adjust my penis into a more comfortable position. It’s a very American thing to do—like the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. After a microsecond of deliberation I do it, because there isn’t anything else for me to do. My bucket list has turned into a thimble.
Light beams move over my body like I’m the main act in the center ring of a Shriner’s circus. The conversation behind the sealed beams takes on a different tone, one filled with dirty words that don’t have anything to do with illegal aliens.
According to the Flashlight Men I don’t look Mexican anymore. Now I sort of look like a girl—especially my mouth, and my, “Cute little butt.”
I guess the Flashlight Men think about girls too, now that everything has fallen apart. The longer they go without one, the less choosy they are.
“It’s been a long time,” one of them says through a mouthful of tobacco juice.
“A long, long time,” the other man agrees. He speculates about the nature of homosexuality. How it’s the partner who plays the female role who’s the real queer.
“Even if he ain’t exactly willing. Especially if you kill him when you’re done.”
“Amen brother.”
There’s talk of K-Y jelly on aisle 20-A and condoms in the pharmacy. Footsteps move toward me.
I’m wondering if I can find my Swiss Army knife in the dark, and how much of a fight I can put up before the Flashlight Men do whatever they are going to do, but I’m no longer wondering why girls are so tepid about sex.
I fold my hands into fists and try to look fierce and dangerous, but I know I’m not pulling it off because I hear the men sliding their pistols into holsters and talking about who’ll go first.
A third voice says, “Not yet, Bubba.”
The Flashlight Men turn their beams onto a tall white man in a black suit like the ones bankers and ministers used to wear. He has a red tie with a gold clasp that sparkles in the flashlight beams like a battery-powered miracle. His hair is coal black with gray at the temples. His eyes are just coal black.
He points a Photoshopped smile at me and holds out a hand with a glittering ruby ring on the little finger. Gangsters wear rings like that. Powerful men who don’t wear capes and can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, but do have secret identities. I thought all the gangsters would be gone, now that nothing is left to rob.
The Flashlight Men step back as I approach the shining man, but they keep the lights turned on him. His image burns into my retinas so deeply it will never go away.
My savior’s hand is soft and firm, the way the president’s probably was before New Flu put an end to government. His eyes are kind, like pictures of Jesus hanging on the walls of Bible stores.
Amen, brother.
“My name is Colonel.” He turns and walks toward the front of the grocery store, and I follow him.
“My name’s Raj.” I walk a little faster toward the broken glass and sunlight, wondering if I’ll run away as soon as I’m outside or just try to stand in Colonel’s shadow.
The decision is easy, because there are six men standing around the front of the Buy For Less. White men wearing designer jeans and shirts, with gold chains around their necks, rings on most of their fingers, and eyes full of hunger for things they wouldn’t find inside a grocery store. Not usually, anyway.
They laugh when Colonel tells them he found me in the ethnic section between the lentils and the curries.
He puts an arm around me. “We’re collectors, Raj. I guess you could say you’ve been collected.”
Colonel points toward the passenger seat of a four-wheeler that looks something like a golf cart. He doesn’t make threats or promises, but I do exactly what he wants because there are eight scary looking white men in the parking lot and they are also doing exactly what he wants.
“I thought gasoline was all gone.” Four-wheelers and three-wheelers are crowded around the front of the grocery store. They all start at once on Colonel’s command. Lots of exhaust fumes, lots of noise. He isn’t trying to hide from anyone.
He takes a seat beside me, so I’m crowded up against the driver. Waves of lust and hate radiate from the man behind the steering wheel, but Colonel feels as safe and solid as the Statue of Liberty. He smiles when I lean against him. He looks at me the way my mother did before she sent me off to loot a grocery store. I don’t know what he wants me to do, but I’m sure he’ll think of something.
“I really should go home,” I say.
“This is your home now.”
“I sort of have responsibilities.” I start to tell him about my mother, waiting for me all alone, but I suddenly realize keeping quiet might be the most important responsibly of all.
Then I can’t talk anymore because we are riding down Northwest Highway, weaving around abandoned cars, and Colonel’s men are shooting pistols at birds and empty houses and stray dogs prowling the streets in packs.
I wonder if my mother will hear the gunshots and figure out I’m not coming back. I hope she remembers this was her idea. I hope she understands her chance to be mother of the year just went out the window. I hope she knows I love her.
Colonel makes an almost imperceptible sign with his right hand, but somehow all the drivers see it. All the noisy vehicles stop. All the engines turn off at once. Like Colonel has a master key inside his brain. He walks to the front door of an abandoned house and opens it with a kick.
His men file inside and after a few minutes they come out carrying bottles of win
e.
“It’s the blood of Christ,” Colonel says.
They bring out a case of Scotch whisky.
“The single malt blood of Christ,” Colonel says. “Twenty-five years old.”
They bring out a case of Budweiser in twelve-ounce bottles.
“The urine of Christ,” Colonel says.
All his men laugh at once. I laugh too, which I guess sort of makes me one of them—if only for a second.
“In the Last Days, religion and crime are almost the same thing,” Colonel says. He doesn’t have a Bengali accent like my mother, but his words still sound like they come from the other side of the world.
“Raj here is an Indian,” Colonel tells his men. “They know all about religion.”
I want to tell him I was born in Oklahoma City, so actually I’m American. I almost point to the flag pin on my shirt and the Kiss Me! I’m an Okie! legend written on my T-shirt , but I don’t because I really want the Colonel to be right.
I want to say, “Amen brother,” but, “I guess,” is the best I can do.
“What tribe are you?” One of Colonel’s men has opened a bottle of single malt Blood of Christ and gives himself a transfusion.
“He’s a Guru Indian, not a Whoo Whoo Indian.” Everybody laughs when Colonel says that and the man takes a deep swallow of Scotch whisky. I can tell he hates me from the way he wipes his mouth on his wrist and spits on the ground.
“Columbus made the same mistake.” I smile at him with my perfectly aligned East Indian teeth and beam friendship and understanding through my eyes, but his invisible shield of hate deflects everything.
My new enemy takes a step toward me, but Colonel stops him with a look.
“There’s a carton of cigarettes in the kitchen,” Colonel tells him. “Go get them, Bubba.”
Colonel never went inside the house, so there’s no way he could know this. It makes the man nervous, because if the cigarettes aren’t there Colonel will be angry.
In a minute the angry man comes out smiling, waving the carton of cigarettes in the air.
Sacred Alarm Clock Page 14
