Michael Sowl was sitting in Beer Springs. He was talking with Ernest Hemingway. Ernest was wearing his box because he was a famous author of many books that eventually were sold in boxed sets. The cardboard box was patched with electrician’s tape on one corner. Even with his box on, Ernest could sit at a bar and easily drink a beer in Monterey.
Mike wasn’t famous and he was wearing his oatmeal-colored sweater. Mike felt very happy and warm in his oatmeal-colored sweater.
“So, Rhino Ritz is taking Keith’s case,” Michael said, his eyes gleaming behind his glasses.
“That’s right,” Ernest Hemingway said. His left hand grasped the fishing spear that was resting on the floor. He thumped it up and down three times.
“You gonna hunt Keith’s manuscripts down and spear them?” Mike inquired.
“Just point me in the right direction,” Ernest said. “But you’ll have to help me get on the back of the truck. Smitty’s driving.”
“Sure,” Mike said enthusiastically. “Just you and Smitty then?”
“Reconnaissance trip.”
“Right,” Mike said, thinking he’d like to come along too. “Anyone riding shotgun?”
“Do you know Colorado?”
“Like the back of my hand,” Mike said. This wasn’t necessarily true, but Mike knew the way to the portal that led to McCarthy’s Pub on Main Street. And he figured that was a good start.
“I told you,” Teary Filisteinsdatter Mast said to her husband, “not to put them in the boxes until I said so.” El-Don stood in the garage next to the empty cages. There was no denying it, they’d lost four of the prairie dogs and that evening their kids were coming to their family Christmas dinner. The prairie dogs had chewed through the cardboard gift boxes.
“Well, they’ve got to be here in the garage,” El-Don said. He pulled his leather work gloves on and looked around.
“Never mind for now,” Teary cried, “we still have six and that’s enough. Everyone will still get a prairie dog.” One for Zelda and one for Zelda’s husband. One for Flora and one for Flora’s husband. “Just put ribbons around the necks of four of them," she said. "BUT don’t put them in the gift boxes yet.”
There was certainly nothing that said Central Colorado more than receiving a live prairie dog for Christmas.
Upset about the idea of not being in total control of the rodents, Teary felt like breaking down. But she had to finish preparing dinner. Why was everything always on her shoulders? Why couldn't El-Don do exactly as she told him?
El-Don did not want to snap another elastic red ribbon around the neck of a prairie dog. El-Don felt like heading to McCarthy’s Pub. Maybe if he said that his wife was giving their grown children prairie dogs for Christmas, they’d let him drink one beer in the bar. Maybe he should make a sign and hang it around his neck, that way he wouldn’t have to explain.
Come to think of it, the people in the bar really hadn’t liked it when he opened his mouth to speak. He had been called a mealy mouthed tight-wad and a bastard when he’d left ten percent on top of the price of a Budweiser. The bartender had said that percentages wasn’t what he was looking for when he served a man a Budweiser.
El-Don looked towards the door that led to the kitchen, listening for his wife.
Teary turned on her E-zey listening Xtramas music and placed a tray of dinner rolls in the oven. She was thinking about not having her kids around for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Her daughters were going to spend those two days at their in-laws' places. Maybe that was okay because Hanukkah was starting on the twenty-fifth of December and Teary was secretly becoming a Jew. Well pretending to be a Jew. Even El-Don didn’t know. When El-Don was at his fellowship meetings at the Mennonite Church, Teary drove to the synagogue on the other side of Boulder, attending conversations about what it meant to be Jewish and flirting with conversion classes. Didn’t her adopted last name Filisteinsdatter say it all? It had that Nordic-Jewish sound. Teary smiled and turned up the volume. There, she felt better.
El-Don flipped the switch to the garage door and watched it slowly rise. He wasn't the only creature with two eyes who could see outside.
Keith decided to leave his garage on 1046 Grant Street. Julie and Roy were continuing their heated argument. Their something's gotta happen by Monday night agreement hadn’t quite worked out. Roy thought that celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary in advance would send them into an unified vision of the future. The “Babe, Where Do You See Us in Thirteen Year’s Time” theme had bombed. He hadn't quite mastered the art of subtle persuation. The banner above the bed had sent Julie into a tizzy and provoked a shouting match. It was now Saturday and the pair of them was still grouchy.
The Zen monk walked to the hospital. He’d been there quite a few times during his last years, living and dying in Longmont. There was just something about a hospital that intrigued him, and even more so if he wasn’t a patient. Keith watched people entering and leaving through the lobby doors. Despite the cold lobby reminding him of a deceptively low budget hotel, the humanity he witnessed touched him.
He took in the vision of a thin man with droopy eyes in a wheelchair. He was being pushed by a striking candy striper towards the doors for curbside pick up. Curious, Keith stood up and followed the wheelchair. And the candy striper. He just felt that there was something there, a feeling of something good was going to happen if he followed the man in the wheelchair pushed by a blond candy striper.
Outside Gator Matcha gingerly seated himself in the Outback Oracle. Tirzah sat behind the wheel in her blond wig. Keith slid into the back seat.
“I’d like to see the Christmas lights,” Gator said, “if you don’t mind, Tirzah.” He handed the candy striper a twenty through the open door. Emery closed the car door gently and waved.
Tirzah jerked the car’s gearbox into drive and pulled out of the driveway. A mountain lion flashed before the car’s lights. It was heading north and moving quickly. The mountain lion had a prairie dog clamped in its jaws. Keith could have sworn that the prairie dog was wearing a red ribbon around its neck.
Tirzah and Gator were staring at the space where the mountain lion had appeared. The car behind them honked its horn.
“I didn’t know that you were fond of Christmas lights, Gator,” Tirzah finally said.
“It’s not too much out of the way,” Gator said hoarsely.
“Are you sure you want to stay at the hotel?” Tirzah asked.
“I got them to keep my room for me.” Gator said. He’d sent Emery to pay his bill on time, extending his stay on the second floor.
Keith picked up the book that was lying on the back seat. Under the Earth, the Grip of the Thriving Potato. He admired the title. He suspected the book might be the memoir of an elementary school teacher. However, he did not find it a suitable mantra for feminist literature that touched on surviving the Holocaust. It was so wrong Keith couldn’t resist. Using the light beaming down from the UFO that was tailing the Outback Oracle, Keith read a paragraph.
We shall not be recognized while this our mother earth is dying. The howling of each tortured and tagged species is entombed in the nutritive dirt below our feet. The wailing grows more intense with the woofing of the feminine moon power.
We the people of Halumi, pure milk substance of the universe that we know as the Milky Way. Its real name is Iwanital. Say it, Iwanital. We, as clumps of transient beings from the walls and woods of eternity, will never stand as not untraumatized. We have the blessing and cleansing of trauma. Embrace it. Let us bleed clean the normalized metaphors. Let us stick those heartwarming leeches to the buttocks of our unified tribal identities.
Prepare us, pan global êtres, through my words of loving guidance, to emerge towards the sun, under the protective umbrella of unguarded ethically challenged behaviour that shapes our children into survivors. Cosmos! Cosmos! Cosmos! Chant it aloud: Cosmos! Cosmos! Cosmos!
At that very moment Keith thought the aliens overhead should immediately abduct Tirzah Pyrestone for crimes against prose. It was a very conscious thought. Keith’s thought possessed no watery edges of subconscious thought. It was clear as day. Tirzah Pyrestone was a raving lunatic. This made Keith uncomfortable. He wanted to sit in the driver’s seat.
Gator startled. He had been admiring the giant sled and prancing reindeer on Spencer Street until he noticed the old man sitting in the back seat. Was it the same spectre that had appeared in the Texas Roadhouse? The apparition did not seem to be the one and the same. No, this illusion was definitely not F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gator decided to take charge.
“Speak, Moses!” Gator said loudly.
“Gator!” Tirzah exclaimed, braking hard. “Are you alright? You’re shaking.”
“I charge you to answer me!” Gator said forcefully to the back seat. He wanted answers. He wanted answers now. Moses was in the car.
Keith decided to diffuse the situation. He had that easy charm of distraction. “Hey man, I’m just looking for my notebooks. Have you seen them?”
“I think you should lie down,” Tirzah said.
Gator had been taught that Yahweh was all providing and ever providing. Moses was surely being instructed by Yahweh to chip away at some more rocks and produce hardy copy. That must be why Moses was sitting in the backseat of the Outback Oracle. Maybe Gator could help Moses locate his notebooks.
“Where should I look?” Gator finally said, as the blinking of the red and white Christmas lights illuminated and shaded his face.
“I think that the Mennonites might know something.” Keith said, reflecting in that absent minded way of his.
“Those damn mishegas at it again!” Gator exclaimed testily.
“You wanted to see the Christmas lights! So we are looking at the Christmas lights!” Tirzah snapped. “That’s it. I am taking you to the hotel.”
She turned the car around. The UFO stayed put, hovering over the giant sled. As Tirzah drove away, Keith glanced back at the scene on Spencer Street. Then he looked at the two people in the front seat of the Outback Oracle.
“It appears,” Keith thought with dissatisfaction, “that the aliens don’t want anything to do with these people.”
Tags: #longmont #1046grantstreet #mccarthy'spub #colorado #keithabbott #mast #bouldermennonitechurch #mensfellowship #canneryrow #mordecaiofmonterey #keithkumasenabbott #gertrudestein #boulder #rhinoritz #ufo #tirzah #gator #matcha #zen #ernesthemingway #UFO #santasled #gator #matcha #spencerstreet #tirzah #pyrestone #beersprings
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