The Shaman

Another one of those mystical windy numbers through dark passages. I am expected to join my Army unit. I do not know how to find it, though I should, hence I'm reluctant to ask. There are two guys setting something up; I don't know what, and I expect neither do they. Anyway, it's for certain nobody's in any hurry for it.

I say, maybe in the orderly room, I may find my assignment? One of them says, with an effort - though he speaks slow and low, it's almost too much for him - "Don't think so. They're just electricians."

I walk down the aisle, which is but a pathway between big tents with indistinguishable overhang and dubious surroundings, and halt by a raging stream. I stand because that makes as much sense as anything else. The current rises, walks up the backside like an animal. I must lay supine to prevent it's dragging me away.

Nobody seems to find my predicament of any note. At least, it doesn't seem to bother them. I suddenly realize why.

I have become their shaman. I take away all the evil spirits in the camp, like a lightning rod. All manner of clumsy lost sad happenstance is mine for as long as I stumble about in their region. I don't like this job.

I stand up straight. Stride up the bank. The river recedes like a tamed beast. I consult my iPhone; that's the ticket.

It sets a screen of me in the camp. There is me on my screen. I shake it good. The image forms a map, on it is drawn a thick red line, at the beginning of which is a throbbing blue dot, meaning me.

That's better. I step off, towards my assignment, and the blue dot moves with me. That's more like it.

Behind me is a crash. One of those who were doing something had the hood of the project fall on his head. He curses with more alacrity than he's shown during my visit.

Old Man Mose is Dead

Old man Mose came out of them piney woods and never again was the same. Nobody knows what happened there, except'n it was bad and he was behind it.

From that time forth, he was plagued by owls. Often went into the woods, which is what you do if you live there, only he was a gentle critter holding neither rifle nor ax. But he done something, no doubt about that.

Came back very often after that with rips in the flesh. The owls caught him from behind, and, you know, the problem is, everybody always has a behind, and there are many owls.

Why didn't he just leave this mountain, go down to the flats? Lots of folks live down there and everywhere with more serious plagues than owls, and they just adjust to it. Heat, winds, no rains, they say, where you gonna go? For them, for most anyone, their world is all there is. Nobody makes good sense in their living arrangements.

There was no real askin', neither, as you don't want to partake of another's evil and banished forlorn pride and anguished isolation. You behave to him as if you didn't know what was perfectly obvious, like a lost limb.

Once he met a mountain maid way back in the piney woods, up before the wind begins. He meant to leave her but was distracted by owls, she said. Didn't leave soon enough. And so he brought her back to his cabin.

The little girl was born the requisite time after. Eyes open and following him as he came into the bedroom, until he left. Not smiling, neither.

Whatever happened way back long ago, she was there to account for it. Nobody doubted it, as nobody could explain it neither. But you see lightning, then thunder, and eventually you link 'em in your head, before it's explained rightly.

The little girl made sure as soon as she was able there was no need of owls. He was safe from them in the woods now, at least, though no longer could he hide from trouble in his cabin.

A Small Bird

The motion was made and duly measured and presented in proper order and, as no member of the illustrious panel charged with remedies, solutions, proposals, or alternatives sputtered in utter incredulous stupor, in fact to a member seemed in rapt contemplation, I determined my own best posture and proper countenance was to lean attentively forward with my contemplative chin supported on one studious fist as were the rest of the assembled.

Maybe I had simply misunderstood. Was it in fact suggested that financing must be secured and expended upon the contemplated engineering project described as follows?

That clouds be seeded with dry ice in order that the nitrogen be boosted in atomic weight over the span of Israel within the 1949 Armistice borders at the narrow strait of eight (8) miles in order that the waist of land be expanded so that the north be not cut off from the south, or the reverse, in any emergency, and further that the braced air be sufficient in its entirety to bear the weight of a small bird.

And the President of the Council said, "Question?"

A hand went up. Now it will be clarified. Good for Representative Ruth.

"Just how small a bird?"

From Evernote:

The Oaxacan Rig

I had brought home the goods, all the way from southern Mexico. Everything was fine and swell, but now I needed to return the big rig with which I had hauled the freight.

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. We live in a bordering state, probably Texas, and it's a two-day journey back down to Oaxaca.

Maybe I'll start in the morning. A few hours won't make any difference.

In the morning I am still sluggish and procrastinating. It has to be done. You can't just leave an 18-wheeler parked in front of your house. Besides, some Oaxacan must have need of it.

Here I go, I think. A fool and his empty truck. I could maybe find cargo to sell down there, hammocks or straw boaters; make the trip worthwhile, but I'd have to pay plenty of mordida and the chance of losing the entire shipment during the long journey was right at 100%. Not good odds for investment.

Rolling south, I think of just stopping at a roadside park and hiking to a bus stop. Somewhere south of Waco, this scheme takes shape. Might even leave a suicide note, but I'm not sure there is anything north of Oaxaca to connect me with the rig.

"GOODBYE, CRUEL WORLD, I'M OFF TO JOIN THE SERVICE."

I rode near to Austin, and transferred to a route heading back north, to home. When the Greyhound passed the roadside rest stop, I said, mostly to myself, "I wonder if the drivers live in those rigs."

A gent across the aisle in a Peterbilt gimme glanced at where I was gazing, said, "Looks like an abandoned Oaxacan rig to me."

Sent from my iPhone

Time Did What We Couldn't

We fell out before noon on the appointed day with our mauls and saws, ten of us. Plague had sent over a 'dozer and operator, but he just sat on the machine and waited for us to start. After all, he wasn't a native. It was our play, to begin.

It was a right good scheme, too, well thought out and practical. The American Theatre was very famous in our county. It had been the host of D W Griffin silents, such as Intolerance, which some elders in our town remember seeing there. It was a potential Historic Society relic if ever there was one in Bowdoin.

Our job was to partially destroy it.

The town of Bowdoin was dying. You could see it, feel it dying. Buildings up around the square were vacant, and some abandoned for a while were falling. We needed help to save the little village of our ancestors.

And so, during one or another city council meeting at Keene's (there were regular meetings but they were too formal, what with Ma there from the Favorite to rwrite down what was said) the plan was hatched to qualify for state development funds.

This was the program to raise property values in blighted regions with reconstruction and bank the additional taxes assessed for more civic remodeling. Redevelopment. Easy as pie, but the state would not buy into just your standard issue ghost town. There were just too many of those out in the dusty Texas plains, so we had to offer up something worth saving.

We figured we could render the American. It was so pretty; ornate and noir-gothic, with fillagreed columns and painted high frescoes and heavy purple velvet curtains. It was designed to allow for one day a week the commons to feel special, if that ain't a contradiction.

Calahan set his sledge on the floor, the handle resting against his thigh as he pulled on his gloves. Woesong circled beneath the screen, seeking where the most damage might be inflicted quickest.

Reloj just stood and looked. Up there in the balcony was where the Blacks were confined, but he had been up there one splendid night with Anna Lou. Right at the low railing towards the east, where the projectionist would be unable to see them.

Woesong thought, in the lower front section, just above the lateral aisle, that's where everything I knew about natural-motion activity beyond Bowdoin was absorbed. We had no TV in his early days, so we were pretty much left to entertain ourselves, to work out our own version of enterprise and folly and old glad social networking.

Nobody saw Abbot and Costello, or Francis the Talking Mule, as cultural forces worthy of emulation, fear or rejection. The movies were westerns or big city gangster or drawing room comedy flicks, and we walked out the same door we came in. It was foreign, like the carnies that came to town with their strange alien critters, and then they packed up and went on out 82 come some sunup.

It was TV followed us home, but that came later.

"Remember the tunes they played so low you could hardly hear in the time just before they drew the purple velvet aside and the previews began?"

Reloj wasn't moving, not even preparing to move. He sang very softly.

Atomic power,
Atomic power,
'Twas given by the mighty hand of God


"Yes. Oh, yes. You can date that one. 1949, before the Russkies had their own bomb."

"And there was the very thin transparent mesh curtain behind the purple one, which remained to cover the screen for a little while to mute the picture, almost like it was through a glass darkly, or waking up from a dream, instead of drifting off into one."

Reloj turned with his big hammer on his shoulder and walked clean out of the American Theatre. Not saying anything, not even looking back. I followed him. We weren't the first, and the stragglers came soon after.

The guy on the 'dozer watched us head on up and down South Main to our vehicles, then cranked up his own.

Time did for us eventually what we couldn't, which is ever the way. There were other schemes, but none of them worked. But such measure and manner as our civic pride took was expressed most elegantly and honorably the day we came to do damage to our heritage, like insulting our ancestors to please fickle strangers, and didn't.