Listen as you read. It has the perfect beat to this scene.
RadioHead, Lotus Flower. Fuck yeah.
Angry men holding their fists over their heads appeared out of the darkness and flew by with their arms stretched towards us. Left and right, at the same time, and then they were gone.
One ran across in front of us when we turned, and we almost hit him. Then we were traveling south instead of east, and these strange men began to appear again at regular intervals, left and right, going by faster and faster, becoming a blur.
I lied back in the rear bucket of the Jeep, looking up into the stars overhead. Stars move at their own pace, no matter what it is you are doing down on the surface of the Earth.
They move quite slowly if you watch them, and they travel from the east and head west.
I heard Tellesco yell from the front seat. “I love it!”
Tellesco always loved everything. Poor dude was so appreciative of Sean’s friendship with him that he squealed like a pig every time Sean did or said anything at all.
I looked over at Bryan, and saw that his eyes were wide open. He was scared shitless. He had one of his hands gripped with white knuckles on the rear of the Jeep’s bucket, and the other strangling the roll-cage bar. I swear, I could smell---
---the wheels dug in and we came to a stop in a surprisingly short amount of time. Then the dust cloud we’d been creating came up and around us, swaddling us like we were babies nestling in for a nice dirt nap.
I felt quite good from the evenings activities beforehand. Bryan had as well, but he was always up and alert, pleasure begone, at the drop of a Jeep.
Sean revved the engine and turned us around to head west. Evidently, we had come to the edge of the property line. My head swung back as he laid the hammer down and we jetted off.
More of those fig trees that looked like angry men holding their empty fists over their heads began to flash past the sides of the Jeep as Sean drove faster and faster. I wiped dust from my face, spit out mud from my mouth, and blew a couple of snot rockets toward the rear of Tellesco’s front seats. They came back at me in the wind.
I looked up into the night sky again, and wondered where my captain was, the one who had taken me to the moon with a rocket ticket. I wondered what Lorelei was doing at this very moment. I wished her well.
The flashes of fig trees that flew past at increasing speeds were colored red from the tail lights, back here where Bryan and I sat: me lying casually and low, looking up, and Bryan, all wound up tight and hard like a spool of metal cable, with his eyes wide open as if they were screaming out loud.
The stars were gone.
I snuggled in the warm swaddle of the orchard dust and looked over to Bryan, but I couldn’t see him.
The soft, orange ball of light grew brighter, off to my left, as the dust settled. The single headlight glowed with fresh yellow, and then clean white. It was shining directly at the ground, from up high.
This seemed odd. Dust swirls passed by the headlamp, like twirling dervishes, and the Jeep’s single headlamp shined down upon them like a stagehand with a spotlight.
The Jeep was upside down, on top of a fig tree.
We had gone figging, and we had crashed.
Thanks a lot Sean.
Bryan gurgled something from over on my right, but I heard nothing else anywhere. My ears were ringing a little bit. I checked myself. Head, arms, legs, stomach. Nothing seemed to be broken or spurting or hanging out. I felt my back from the inside out, gently, turning.
I dared to move. Mounds of desert orchard dirt fell from my body as I got to my hands and knees. I headed to where Bryan had gurgled. I found him. In the light of the single headlamp from the Jeep which now hung upside down on a fig tree, I could see that his face was fucked up.
His mouth looked weird. He had his hands up around his chin, trying to make the hurt go away. There is no position except “healed” that makes a broken jaw feel better at all.
He was trying to hold it all together and not move.
“Bryan, where is Sean?”
Bryan winced. He looked down. Guess it was up to me to find Sean. Now, I knew that you were supposed to stabilize broken bones, but what the hell was I going to do here for Big Bryan, take off my shirt and wrap up his head in it?
Well, I did. I don’t know if it helped him any, but he laid back down and took a nap.
I found Tellesco. He was sitting there by the tree, and it looked like the tree had slowed him down from the crash. He was awake, sort of aware, and he cradled his left arm in his right, like a baby that looked like a snail. It was in the shape of a snail.
He was whimpering, just staring down at his snail baby, all swaddled in dust for a nap.
I couldn’t find Sean, and my ears were ringing. Then I saw flashlights bouncing along from the behind the Jeep. I supposed, heading west, that we had almost reached the dirt road to Tellesco’s ranch, traveling at high speed, but we were still quite a way from the house.
Folks from the party must have been watching us out there in the lanes and aisles of the fig tree orchard. The night was clear and sharp.
Then they saw and heard the Jeep crash into one of those iron-wood fig trees.
Gobless ‘em. They’d grabbed flashlights and first aid shit to come save us.
---------------------------------------
“Don’t move him. He needs an ambulance. Prop his legs up. Dude’s in shock. Watch out for his arm.”
“This guy has a shirt wrapped around his head? I think I can feel a heartbeat.”
“EEEEEWWWWW! OMIGODOMIGOD THEY LOOK GROSS!”
“Who let Cara come with us?!”
------------------------------------------
I couldn’t find Sean. But I saw cars come zooming down the dirt road, heading to the bonfire that glowed like a supernova out in the black desert, in Tellesco’s back yard..
They went past, booming with the bass of old school rap music. They were not nice people, as it turned out.
Another cloud of dust swept over us all, and then in the silence, I heard someone groan. I went to him. He did not look good. He was still in the Jeep. He was hanging in his seatbelt. He was the only one who had worn it.
That said quite a lot about Sean, and about what he had intended to do.
What, exactly did that mean?
LINKS
This for Hoot, resident TDC snowboarder badass.
Hacker news.
The world’s largest scale model of the solar system. How cool is this?
Here’s a link Jambo might enjoy. Enjoy reciprocal perpetual energy charging capability for your laptop?
For Tucky and Florida Bobcat. Create your own blues music?
Science. Yum. Phase, group and signal velocity.
What is YOUR name in the TDC forum?
Remember Tom Green and that Xzibit? Guess who owns… R&R helps, ya think?
God Help You.
God Help Us All.
---willies out.
OK, one for my bro chico.
One more for my sis smcasey, who likes new music.
These songs are not directed at you two, just for you.
There are some songs I have in mind for others of our TDC family.
When I get a round tuit.
.
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