TFW CH 12 Territory

Heart Broken, In Despair   by Dan Auerbach 

We three young men, one stranger, and an old cowboy dozed before the fireplace in his darkened cabin.  A war awaited us, and one must rest in peace before death.  The chairs nestled us deep with cushions that held the scent of sagebrush and leather.

The tobacco from his pipe helped ease my mind, and because of this, I slipped into a deep sleep.  I dreamed of my homeland, back east.

An Island in a large River beckoned me.  The sun crept up behind the trees reaching for the sky over the eastern branch and its reflection glistened in the morning waves of my River, my home.  I could smell the cedar trees in the crisp, clean breeze.  My River is my home.  I could see the sun and the glinting waves through the trees. 

Birds chirped and sang their daily declarations of their territory, and dogs barked from being left outside.

I walked down the Oak Hill to the riverbank and greeted the sun.  Its light warmed my face.  Oak Hill always has the fattest squirrels on the Island, you know, and they work to protect their own territory against invaders.

I was finally home and my world, though small, was much larger than any dust hole of the western deserts.  My home is one third of what is now known as the state of Maine.

I turned the canoe over and slipped it into my River.  In the brisk morning air, I would slip up this silky River without a sound, using the hunter’s stroke from my paddle.  Push, turn the paddle straight and glide it forward, and then twist and push again.

Birth and Death may be violent, but hopefully not for you, my friend

Such entrances occur to us each in a quiet moment while the world rumbles, screeches, explodes and makes much ado about nothing at all.

We may enter and exit screaming, but we never remember those parts, baby.

Ours is a silent glide along the silky water of our River. 

Glinty kicked my foot and awoke the others in this way.

Dayam.

A New Day   by Volbeat 

I jumped up out of the chair with my fists out.  Glinty laughed.  He said, “Well there’s a cock crowing!”

He set to laughing, and I rubbed my eyes.  Awful way to wake up.  I had been somewhere peaceful, but the images faded in my head while I grasped for them with clenched fingers, digging in the dust of the ugly desert.  Dry.

Big Bryan awoke in the same way as me, but Tellesco only pushed Glinty’s boot away with his bare foot.  He was sucking his thumb.   Hah?

Joey had his knife out.  Well, he was the little Lion Man, you know.

Patrick Till-Bury snorted and sat up slowly, like he was rising from the grave.

 Glinty clapped Bryan on the back and nodded at the table.  There was bacon, biscuits and gravy, and eggs all set there with orange juice in tall flasks.

He said, “Now after we have some coffee, you might need to use the shit shack out back.  Don’t mind the noise you make from last night’s supper. The vultures will crow and the coyotes will howl, but they’ll just be laughing at you.”

He made no sense at all, and the food tasted like nothing.  Again.

But we needed to get ready for the day. 

Joey said, “Weeeee-ill.  I don’t know about you, but I sure could use a toothbrush.”

Glinty nodded.  He said, “Ya don’t think I’m uncivilized, do ya?  There’s a basin and such yonder.”

Hell, I’d never used powdered toothpaste before. But it worked.  It was odd to see how folks lived back a hundred years ago, but not as odd as being served food that tasted like desert dust by a long-dead cowboy preacher.

He had come to help us in our travails.

He had come to help us engage in war.

It was a war that had been brewing for quite a long time, between the Purple Robes and the Blue King.

Somehow, it had come to involve the rest of us. 

We just didn’t know what the hell this meant.

Yet.

God Help You.

God Help Us all.

---willies out

Dead Man’s Shoes   by The Virginmarys