The long-dead cowboy-preacher lowered his shotgun and looked over
to his burning cabin.
He said, “What did you boys do to my home?! It’s all busted to hell and burning to
shit!”
Tellesco said, “We didn’t do that! The storm did! It was a lightning bolt!”
The Glinty hopped down from his hearse carriage and stalked over
to us. He looked up at the
sky and as he did, so did we all. Them
clouds roiled like a pot of boiling sea water.
The steam had a purple tinge.
He said, “Looks like we been found out! Gawd Dayam it. Time to get a move on. War done begun. You boys tend to that there big
vehicle. NOW!”
War done begun, how about that.
W A R
D O N E
B E G U N
As them other damned punks attended to the huge crying baby in the
white utility truck, I went right up to Glinty and looked him tight in the
eye.
Hell, he only had one eye, you know.
I said, “This all we got? You
and this horse and your hearse and that big truck and those guys running to
it?!”
Glinty looked down at me. Why
did he always seem taller every time we spoke?
He turned his head and nodded back at the seat atop the wagon
hearse, and then he looked back down at me.
He said, “We got her,
and we got them.”
I looked behind him and saw the blue blade.
Ya know, it gave me the willies. I now saw what others did not
see. The only one other
than me who could see them ghosts was Tellesco, and that was only when he was
weeping like a baby.
He could see them blue folks only when he had tears in his eyes.
When I’d taken a bump to the noggin in the baptized mansion, I
must have got permanently fucked up in the head.
I could see them blue ghosts all day long whenever they appeared.
Even in the bright light of day.
But this was the darkest day.
A long blue line of ghosts stretched far from each side of the
hearse wagon toward the ends of the desert valley.
I knew whom they must be. They
were them lost souls of the Sans Joking River Valley, and most of them had been
dead for much over a hundred years and beyond.
Some were newer dead.
Odd enough, many still sat atop their huge dead horses.
What really put the frighteners on me was that each and every one
of them had their head turned.
They were all and each looked right at me.
Some were without limbs; horse and man alike.
But there were their guns.
These they held pointed up toward the purple clouds, and they
stood there, frozen like monuments to a distant time: a lost and forgotten era.
They were all silent.
They sat still.
I gulped.
They were waiting for me to take action.
I looked up to seat of the wagon hearse at that sole figure
sitting there, and I wanted to run away.
It was the moment of Trvth.
I knew that I had to go and talk to her. I didn’t need that Glinty bastard to
tell me to do it.
And that, my friend, scared me the worst.
Rrrrrrgh.
I hated that shit.
Rrrrrgh.
I hated it because, well
Rrrrrgh.
OK.
I pushed that Glinty fucker aside and went to her.
Glinty did not make a sound.
Rain began to fall. All
of them ghosts cowboys, aligned across hundreds of miles of the desert dust-
Dust?
Trust?
Justice?
Busted?
…Chust?
All of them watched what I was doing.
Rrrrrrrrrrrghhhhh.
I placed my boot onto the step and grabbed them old iron-wrought
rails and pulled myself up.
I looked over at Her.
My Star.
It was my fault she died.
See you next time, for the
Rrrrrgh.
OK. Here we
go.
I said, “Permission to come aboard.”
The dark figure looked over at me.
The air grew cold, and the falling rain turned to pellets of ice.
I made that growling sound I always did when I was about to do
something that I really did not want to do.
“Rrrrrgh.”
I pulled myself up onto the top of the hearse wagon.
She said, “You growling at me?”
I shook my head.
I said, “Katheena.”
She nodded.
I did not feel any better.
She said, “What you got to say to me?”
Time froze like them ice pellets falling from the sky.
I had to dig deep.
I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for what happened to
her. I had shown her the
evil desert dust, and then I’d left her alone to go fight demons, and when she
tried to chase us damned bastard punks, she ended up crashing her car trying to
defend us.
I had found her, and carried her back to my stolen car, and when
the Lion Man came back in his own stolen car and found us, I had left her with
him.
If only I had taken her to that fucking hostible, not him, then it
should have ended better.
A lonely traffic light, blinking in the eternity of space and
desert dust: the last
remnant of humanity when all the world ends.
A testament to our path here on this tiny blue marble alone in the
far reaches of our galaxy, one of many trillions…
Lost and alone
I gulped again.
I said, “I was the reason that you died.”
Katheena pulled her cowl back and stood up.
She glared at me.
She said, “Will. You
really need to lighten the fuck up. This
isn’t about you.”
Hah?
Wha?
God Help You.
God Help Us All.
---willies out.
.
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