Sunday, April 29, 2012

Weekend At Willies Ch Eleven Hard Pan













Them Shoes   by The Eagles 








The young man sitting in the passenger seat of the old hearse kept wiping his eyes.  There was nothing to see through the windshield.  The only thing that might be seen, if the fierce rain did not occlude our view, would be cactus and Joshua trees.

Those trees would hold up their arms in a shrug. “What?  What you want?”  Joshua trees might not have the answer for you, but maybe it isn’t time to tell you their truth.


I said, “Tellesco.  What the fuck is going on with you?”



He looked back at me with hollow eyes.  “I have no fucking clue.”


Or course.


That is the way we would end up.


With out a single clue.


Great.

Now what?



The rain coursing down from the unseen clouds overhead in the depths of the desert made it hard to see.  But Tellesco knew his way home.  He pointed at the street signs, and said, “The next one on the left is my street!”


I slowed down and turned off of the old, crumbly tar onto the dirt road.  The thing about a dirt road in the desert is that when it is an ancient river valley, well, the dirt goes down only so far.



The mud of a million years of being a river bottom will become packed into a solid, impenetrable, impermeable surface when it has become a high valley desert.  The inch or so of silt will make the tires slide if one is not careful, but the tires may not get mired in mud on a dirt road, if kept clear of the dust.


The dirt goes down only so far because the eons of mud have become cement, which is known as “Hard Pan.”   It is like iron.


Across the surface of the hard pan was the desert dust, and mixed with rain, it would be slick.

We would have to continue on at a slower pace.


We had to go home, and not end up in the fig tree orchards.




We passed the occasional driveway now and then as we traveled along the rainy lane, with the hint of a purple glow above the mountains off to the side, to the east.


Tellesco grabbed my arm and I almost spun the steering wheel.  I regained control.  “Don’t do that!” I said.


His eyes freaked me out,  They looked like crazy marbles.  Dude was scared.


He said, “Mr. Will!  I really don’t want to go any further!”



I slowed the heavy hearse to a stop and put her in park.  I said, “Do you want to get out here?”


He said, “We need to turn back.  I have a cousin who can help us out.”



I shrugged his grabby hands off of my leather and swung around to look directly into his eyes.  He was refracted from the light coming in through the windshield.  He looked like a ghost of his former self.  I said, “You ain’t got no cousin who can help us out.  You just afraid, that’s all.  Have you been back here since the fires?”


He shivered.  His white claws reached for my leather.  I let him grab hold of my arm. I said, “Ain’t you got no one else to help you?”



He closed his eyes to stop the tears.  “Sh.. Sh…Sh… Sean.”


Aw, Jeebus fucking shit. 


Looked like it was only me now.  Sean was gone. 


Fuckity fuck fuck.



Fuck.



I said, “Tellesco, Sean would want us to go forward.  You know it.”  It was a gamble, but it was all I had.


His grip on my arm eased, but then it tightened again.  He said, “Don’t talk about Sean like he’s dead!”



Damn.  I didn’t know if Sean was dead or alive, but I had a feeling that he was gone.  Yet, this would have been a bad thing for Tellesco to hear.  So I said, “Sean wants you to go back here.”



Tellesco wiped his eyes with the back of one white, clawed-up hand, and he said, “How do you know?”




I said, “Because Sean ain’t afraid of nothing.  And if you want to be his friend, then you gotta man up here.  You gotta stop being a pussy and fucking deal with this shit.  Tell me I’m wrong.”


Tellesco got mad.  “I ain’t no pussy!”  He threw my arm away and he folded his clawed-up hands across his bare chest. “I ain’t no fucking pussy.”



I pulled my leather on right, and put that old bitch back into gear.  “Then shut the fuck up and stop crying,” I said.  I felt bad saying that, but he needed to stop being a whiny bitch.


He looked out of the window at nothing, and stopped his sniveling. 

About damn time.



Of course, I had no idea why he had such a hard time with going back home, but I had a clue.


I just chose to ignore it.



I was an asshole, you see.





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