Weekend At Willies Chapter Four. Half Red

.







Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney. Gold On The Ceiling. Fuck Yes.










Joey grabbed his leather jacket off the end of the gurney and shook it out. Desert mud fell onto the floor tiles, and he saw that it was half red. It had been spray-painted with red paint from a fire alarm trigger.



When you pull a fire alarm trigger, you get a shot of red paint for your troubles. It marks you, and it doesn’t wear off.



You become a red man, and that color is permanent.


Red is the best color.



Tahoo: Amen.



Joey pulled on his damp leather jacket. Always mind your leather. He went looking for the girl he had brought to the hostibal.



+ + + + + + +



The young man in prison awoke with a scream. But this time, he did not hear keys jangling onto the hard tiles of a kitchen floor and echoing in the cement tomb of his cell.



He had heard a whisper of a breath escaping from the lips of a close friend. It was the last breath she would ever exhale.


It creeped him the fuck out. Where were these strange, awful dreams coming from?




+ + + + + + +



Tellesco pulled up to the side entrance of the West Clovis Medical Center and said, “I can’t go in with you like this.”


Sean looked over the seat and began to cackle. I’d never heard him laugh like that before. He said, “Why are you naked, young fellow?”



Tellesco blushed. He said, “It’s a long story. You need to go inside and have them look at your head.”


I was already out the door and on my way. I needed to have my own head checked.



+ + + + + + +


Joey went back to the front desk of the emergency entrance and sat down in front of the emissions nurse. He would have laughed at such a desk sign at any other time, but he was not in the mood for laughter.


The night nurse looked over at him. “May I help you?”


Joey shrugged. “I brought in my friend who was in a car crash and I want to know where she is.”

The nurse nodded. “You were in shock and you fainted. How are you feeling now?”


Joey said, “I’m feeling worried about my friend. Where is she?”



The nurse clicked her computer keyboard and there came a look in her face for a brief instant, and then it was gone. She said, “Oh, we have been looking for you--- wait here for a moment, please.”


She got up and left.


Joey sat there and looked around. The place was spotless, white, and clean. There sat a mop bucket nearby, and a fresh mop stood up-ended in it, setting against the wall nearby. The floors were shiny and damp from being freshly scrubbed.


He understood. Sometimes, there was blood on the floor in the entrance way.


The whole area smelled like cleaning agents.


His nose stung.



He turned around and saw an open area where folks waited for their turn to be seen. Some nestled hands or arms wrapped up in bloody bath towels from home, others held cloth-wrapped bags of hostibal ice against various body parts (one held it against his right eye) and most of these folks had someone sitting next to them who probably had brought them here.




“Excuse me.” The voice made him swing back around to the nurse’s station, but there was no one there. He looked up over his shoulder and saw someone standing there dressed in blue surgeons’ scrubs.



Joey stood up. “Where is she?” He looked down to what the doctor was holding in his hands. “What’s that?”



Then he recognized it. He was wearing the same sort of thing. It was a damp leather jacket, the size that a young woman might wear, and there was red paint all over it.



The doctor said, “It looks like you know about this red paint. It’s a marker for an emergency fire alarm. Half of your face is covered with it. We thought it was blood when we brought you in. You need to come with us.”



Joey looked at the security guard behind the doctor and the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.





He listened to his instinct.



Joey fucking bailed. He could run quite fast. He didn’t bother looking for the expensive car. That would have been too easy.


Behind him, the security guard grunted and took off after him, and the doctor yelled, “You need to answer for her death!”



But Joey didn’t hear that. He was in panic mode.


Sometimes, panic is your friend.





Sometimes, that is all there is left for you.







God Help You.


God Help Us All.


---willies out.






Buddy Guy. Baby, Please Don’t Leave Me. Milky strings; dirty groove. Dig Deep.




































Radio head. Optimistic. The best you can...












.

161 REBIRTH

We are not done yet. We have a long way to go, my friend.







Manchester Orchestra. Virgin.







Whatever you have done, or not yet accomplished, wherever you have gone or not yet have visited, you are not done here.



We are not alone, here, upon a tiny blue marble floating in an ocean of cold black in the vast eternity of space.




We have each other.




It is because we have each other that we know of a greater good.




It is because of the impact we have upon each other that we know that there is something else.




It is, indeed, what you have been looking for, and which you may find, after all.




Look for it.






You will find it.






It is real.







Just sayin'







+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +





Shards of crystal goblets and bone china plates pelted me.


Us.






White and red, rain and dust.




Chill the whites, let the reds breathe.





Desert mettle and ocean salt.



Iron and water.





Rust.




Rust In Peace.








Mud and tears in your eyes.








But,









Never say die.




"Rage, rage against the dying of the light." ---Dylan Thomas





These were the thoughts I had in my head as I slogged away from Orion, the mighty hunter in the night sky, the name of Katheena’s golden bird.



I carried a star on my shoulder to the highway that headed East.



The star.




Katheena had been my star, as well you know.




Taho.







In the crash of the cold tears of the hidden moon above, I felt hot water run down my legs and then I heard a gasp.




I felt Katheena heave over my shoulder.



Her body shivered as she regurgitated water, and she coughed.



Wha?




I set her down in the desert mud and pulled her face up to my face.



She coughed over and over again, into my face.



I can not tell you what it felt like to hear her breathe again.



So I won’t.




I can't.




+ + + + + + + + + + +






Well, I had her dead and buried and I’d gone and moved back to Maine and started a new life as a lumberjack before even reaching the highway and the Maserati that awaited us.







I think it was like that time when the handle of the bale barrow came down on the top of my head when I was nine years old at my gram’s farm in South Freeport, Maine, and I staggered around gibbering nonsense for a few minutes. Cousin Richard, rest his soul, he tried to get me to stop stalking about so he could see if I was bleeding, but I wouldn’t have it.



I had been stunned, in a state of shock.






I picked her up again and carried her properly now, which was not over my shoulder, to the Maserati. She kept coughing.




I think some dust had gotten into my eyes or something as I stumbled along...







Angel Eyes, by Worldwide Groove Corporation.













Joey pulled over to the side of the road as I was placing Katheena in the passenger seat.


“Weeeee-ill!” He came running over. “Who is that?”



I got up from her and his face fell. “Katheeeee-na! Why her face all bloody?!”



I pointed way over to where Orion rested in the darkness. He was unseeable, like a black hole, but you could still feel his pull.



“She crashed her car. I think those bastards over there in that heap of cars had something to do with it. She was following after us. I think she was trying to rescue us.”


We looked down at her, and she was not awake.



Joey whispered, "You don't even want to know who I chust saw..."



Huh.




- - - - - - - - - - - - -




Tellesco pulled up beside Sean and asked why they were stopping now. His window was still up.


Sean got out and smashed the window open with both of his huge hands. He leaned in and shouted. “Tellesco! Where are the others?!”



Tellesco looked back over his shoulder.



Headlights glowed from way back down the highway, in the pelting rain.



They were coming quite fast.





Huh.




= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

I never saw Lorelei again. No one did. She had put me and Katheena back together again.




My watery angel, she with eyes the color of the deep green sea.




Lorelei had once told me, “I chust don’t want you to be so sad.”




You recall that, don’t you?




Perhaps that is what she intended, and she could not rest, wherever she lied, at the bottom of the sea, until she made some sort of closure between us.






Rest in peace, you original punk lady with the white hair was bright like a wildfire on the planet Mercury, closest rock to the Sun.



You opened a new world for me, and for that, I will forever remain grateful.



Never forget.





Never forgotten.





Taho.



You put me and Katheena back together again, and you put the Little Lion Man back into this equation, whatever it was.


But why did you also put Tellesco into this new math?


We may never know.



Or will we?






One must not forget The Glinty, he on his horse-drawn carriage that glowed blue in the night, like Lorelei’s hair had on that night in the desert, when we went off into space on a Moon Shot, baby.


Did you forget to remember Sean and Tellesco?




That there is the start of a new chapter.



Next time, my friend.



Ya know.




Let the slag fall from the pure mettle, all around.


Orion was hidden.



He was hidden in the desert, when we went back to find him, and we could not see him, simply because he was a golden car, with gold-tinted windows, and he was covered in desert mud up past his wheels.




A black hole, a former star,

The phoenix would rise again.




The phoenix would ride again.





Orion would rise again.



We would all rise again.






= = = = = = = = = = = = = =






Happy Rebirth Day to you, my friend.




We all have a long path to travel.




Thank you for following me along this path.




It will end well, if you care to continue along.




We simply have many more things to do before the end.





But you know this.










God Help You.



God Help Us All.



---willies out.








My wife of 18 years (I mean, we have been married eighteen years) gets a laugh from this tune below. Hey, she was watching The Sound of Something or other last night while we finished wrapping up stocking stuffers and then she laughed when...


... well, you'll see.


Listen.



Bob River’s Jingle Hell’s Bells







.