TFW CH 15 DIG DEEP

It was a sun-beaten walk to the top of the nearest foothill, and the saguaro cacti offered no shade.  The Glinty ghost-dude pointed to a small well that had been dug out of the desert hard-pan a long time ago.

He said, “We got some digging to do.  It don’t involve a shovel.”

Then he stalked down the ridge into the glen that held the well.

I looked over at the others and shrugged.

Joey the Lion Man shrugged back at me. 

Patrick Till-Bury looked around the hillside and said, “It’s best if we follow this man.  I don’t want to miss out on the rest of this odd dream.  I sure hope I awake soon, however.  I have to report back to work in the morning.”

Tellesco watched that old ghost cowboy walking off down the other side of the foot hill and said, “Maybe we should listen to this guy.  It could help Sean out…  Somehow.”

Big Bryan looked around at us and he said, “I’ve come this far. Might as well head to the end.”   Then he followed the Glinty.

Well, mister, that was enough for me.  I headed off after them two men.

Go It Alone   by Beck 

Excellent hand drawn animation by Ryan Guimond

The artesian well looked to have been dug and walled with great care, but it held no water.   I grabbed up a rock and tossed it in, and it only clinked around in the bottom, echoing up back at us.  Glinty shook his head.

He said, “We ain’t here for water, boy.  We here for some spark. Now listen here.  We gonna do some bad juju.  You boys gotta make yourself right with the Lawd before we do this.”

Bryan said, “I don’t go to church no more.”

Glinty said, “Ain’t no church that can help you here, my friend.  It’s more than that.  Ain’t nothing that’s been written in books here to show what it is.  This here be the Ugly.  It’s the real Ugly.”

Tellesco said, “Excuse me sir Mr. Glinty, but I don’t think that I’m up for this.”

Glinty smiled.  He said, “Young fella, you don’t yet know anything about what you can do.  Heights and depths, well, Mr. Man, they can only be gauged by a measure.  And you gotta measure by hand, in these parts.”

Tellesco only nodded, but it was obvious that he didn’t know what the hell that stuff meant.

Well, neither did I.  So I asked that ghost preacher, I said, “We hafta dig with our hands?  Why?  This old well here already been dug out.”

Bryan looked down into the well.  He said, “Yeah, this well goes down pretty far.  I can’t even make out the bottom of it.”

The Glinty chuckled.  He said, “Now don’t you worry about finding the rock bottom.  That lies ahead for us, and it will be pretty bad, and it will be quite soon.  Now all you boys get on your knees.”

Tellesco said, “We gonna pray now?”

Glinty roared with laughter.  He would have wiped the tears from his eye if he had any water left inside him.  He settled down a bit and said, “We gonna dig.”

He knelt down on the ground by the further side of the well, the eastern side of it, and shouted at us, “ Now get to it!”  Then he began to pull sand away.

Of course, when you dig in desert sand, it is not a productive thing to do.  More sand will slide in from the sides and fill the hole that you are trying to create.

Bryan went over and knelt beside the old preacher and dug at the same hole.

The Glinty sat back on his haunches and said to Bryan,  “No. Don’t dig here beside me.”

Hah?

What the fuck was this old crazy fucker doing? 

Bryan shook his head.  He said, “I ain’t fucking around here anymore.  This is bullshit.”

Patrick nodded.  He said,” We can’t be digging in different places to look for a single thing.  What, is this certain thing buried in pieces? What in thee hell are we trying to find?

The Glinty said, “We are not trying to dig up something.  We are trying to bury something.”

Hah?

I turned around.  Fuck this shit.  This made no sense.  A glimpse of my little sisters and my momma flashed in my head.

They’d been all alone in the valley-wide black-out the night before to fend for themselves, and they were in danger.  I fucking stepped away, turned on my heel and headed up the hill, back down to the old cabin on the other side.  I would figure out how to drive a large truck with a split-shift tranny.  I was going to go and protect my own.

Done.

The Glinty stood up and said, “Now you listen to me, you boys.  We ain’t digging up a thing.  We digging up nothing at all.”

Hah?

What the hell did that mean?

He said, “It takes faith here and now, but we can do it.  You see, this ain’t just a dried out desert.  There are things out here that make the truth.  But do ya know, the truth maybe ain’t what you been looking for.”

Tellesco set down on another side of the well and he began to dig.

The Glinty nodded.  He said, “Cup your hands, and toss the sand into that there well.”

Tellesco did as he was told, and the most of the sand fell down into the well, but some of it got blown away in the hint of a breeze that arose in the tiny valley.

Patrick said, “Aw, hell with it.  Let’s see about filling this cistern up. Odd dream as it is.  I’m in.”  

He knelt down across the well from the other two and cupped his hands in the desert sand, and he chucked the sand at the well.  Most of it fell against the side, and the rest of it got scattered by the breeze.  He dug in again and threw it better this time, and some of it made it down inside.

Bryan raised his eyebrows at me and I just shook my head.  He shook his head back at me, frowned, and knelt down across from the long-dead cowboy preacher.  He dug in and then threw his sand into the well.

In the rising wind,  Joey came over to me and said, “You thinking we done here?”

I said, “Yup.  Tossing sand in the wind.  Filling a mile-deep cavern.  I got better things to do with the daylight.”

He nodded.  He said, “Let’s go then.”

As we set off back to home, I heard Glinty say to them other poor souls, “We ain’t digging up a thing.  We raising up something.  We do it by filling this here empty well all the way back up to the brim so it overflows.”

Fuck that shit.  I had things that needed attending.

His was an effort of empty declarations and false promises.

Fill a well?

His church done let out for the likes of me.

 

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

Happy Valentine’s Day   by Billy Boy On Poison