The ringing in the head sounded siren strident again, despite his immersion. The Watcher was near.
Celina stood at the bar, the other younger barmaids, the Thirst Responders, busying themselves with the clean up. Jon stood from where the two fags nodded in their seats and whispered to Eve, “To the lady’s room and freshen up while I settle up, “Yes, Master,” she cooed as she wrapped her soft arms about his neck and puckered for a kiss.
He kissed her forehead and corrected her gently, “Captain, Baby—just Captain.”
She danced her little sandaled feet beneath him in a childish jig, and spun towards the woman’s room.
Returning to Doll he peeled off ten bills, now about a third through the 100s fold, and extended his hand, “Some for your girls too, Doll.”
“You are still not drunk?”
“Only when I’m sober, Doll.”
“But she, that child bride of yours, is drunk, and those two are out—you can’t drive on a Social Security Card.”
“Doll, I’ll walk and those faɡɡots will sleep in their truck.”
“And her?”
“Doll,” he soothed, “you would not have me abandon a damsel in distress?”
“Really,” she grinned, “what absolute horse shit! You do not deserve—”
“No, I do not deserve you, Doll. That is why I am settling for Eve.”
“You, you…”
He heard her emerge, beautiful he knew, wanting a guide in this terrible, accursed world, and he winked down to Doll, “Celina, I thank you—yet duty calls.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes.
Turning he strode towards the table, winking at the lass emerging from the head, hoisted one faɡɡot over his left shoulder, grabbed the other by the neck scruff, and swaggered towards the doors past the sculler, Reggie, a nice fellow, calling across the deck over his right shoulder, “Come on, My Girl, the Moon awaits to illuminate your pretty face.”
How the sirens sang within.
She followed, like a princess of some slain race, rescued from a tomb of hate…
Her hand he held as the moon shone down and illuminated their shadowy pace. Her breath smelled fresh as she softly whispered, “My Captain, it has been such a long wait. I feel dead inside except for you. The lady’s room was like an echoing hell without your voice, your touch.”
“Eve, you were going to Apache Land?”
“Yes, was a tourist, a dumdum, dumbilina—got on meth at a park party with my boyfriend. He, he got in debt with the bike riders—then Master Watchfiord, bought me. I was lost, Jon, and you found me!”
“To Apache Land, then.”
They walked down the nighted highway and were soon at a curious amusement museum? The place was lighted under the Moon, she attended by a few wisps of handmaiden cloud, many a star twinkling in the night sky.
‘I never did know the stars—no navigator am I.’
The sharpening sirens agreed, ‘You wreck, you trek, and wreck again, doomed, lost soul!’
A wood rail fence enclosed an acre of dirt, framed in the distance by the ominous striped fortress of the Superstition Mountains. The white church—chapel, actually, with Christ’s white cross upon the steeple, was enclosed by a white picket fence. To the right was a stage coach and livery stable, with statue horses. Great cactus forms attended the place like sentinels against thirst.
He shouldered her and leaped over the fence, striding towards the chapel with his prize, young again. She giggled with glee.
“What are you going to do to me,” she asked in languid expectation.
“My girl, I may not break God’s house, sinner though I be. You seem a girl who hoped in her secret home to wed a man behind a white picket fence. My apologies for the yellow dress.”
“Really, Jon, in the full light of the Moon?”
They soon stood in Her light, before the stairs bright, behind the painted toy fence. He turned her head towards the moon, and she gasped, “She is so bright.”
The sirens screamed, ‘Thief, wretch!’
He turned her head toward his lips and they kissed as he watched that grim shadow afright the moon.
[At the request of Celina, out of respects to Mrs. Mary Imbolden, the graphic love that follows is left to the reader’s imagination.]
Putting on her dusty dress as she yet sat on his suit jacket, she smiled up to him, “My Jon, no man has ever made love to me—ever in any respect, let alone face-to-face…”
The sirens rang like needles of sound, ‘Die!’
Her voice trailed off and worry shrank her moon of a face. Dawn streaked the distant sky as the wings formed of a thousand swallowed souls flapped like as many funeral shrouds behind him.
‘Yes, to dine on a soul at the cusp of hope, is sweatest, my foe.’
‘Thief,’ screamed a thought in his mind that scattered the sirens crowding his inner space.
Looking at his swollen gut and sunken chest, feeling the addle of returning sobriety and of the trap-maker Time, he dropped his shirt to her so to cover her face.
‘Yes, My Jon,’ she agreed, and covered her pretty face, sitting like a waif on his tattered jacket, all the bed he could grant her. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to see him there, in fine creased suit of gray, hair mocking the sun, eyes like storm clouds, narrow mustache and perfect face.
Jon walked stiffly, his legs left in her heart, through the gate, as the silver headed cane twirled in that eagle like hand, above those snakeskin shoes. The man sneered, stabbed the cane into the brown sand, and unhitched his black snakeskin belt, the silver buckle of which was formed of the face of Leviathan, beneath the downward hung tie of green snake skin, clasped with the face of The Worldgird Worm.
“Jon!” he huckled [1] as he cracked the belt as a whip, “You have gone so to seed, I would not demean me cane!”
Jon felt great to have the ringing sirens song gone, “Ye turd Dane, wit all yer polish ye wear no better name.”
The Watcher leaped as Jon put up his dukes and lunged. Too fat to clear the space, he ate a sharp sunken kick of snake skin shoes and polished wood sole in his ample whiskey barrel.
Back on his heels he milled three punches, left, right, left, from the shoulder—too slow, not like old, missing all the same grinning mark, and lost an eye brow to that snakeskin belt.
He lunged southpaw and sank a good left to the wind, only to sprain his old wrist on that blood-fed washboard board of a stomach.
The Watcher pranced off left and whipped the buckle about, knocking a dent in Jon’s head above the eye.
‘Where is my beret—that might have helped,’ groped he, shifting forward and milling to a miss, only to have the blood gushing into his left eye while that tall, pretty pervert wrapped the belt about his neck, jammed a hard knee into his back, and stepped on his ankle, breaking him down, half kneeling to the ground.
“Jon,” you disappoint me—and she has been soiled. I will have to eat my own dear wife like some common bitch.”
Jon gasped and struggled to his feet, the belt tightening and choking his brain blood. He elbowed the fiend, who laughed at the thumping of his own ribs, then loosened the belt, letting him drop.
Jon crawled to his feet as the man put on his belt and hefted his cane. Now, Jon, you shall watch her end. Then, your old darling Dawn can view yours from beyond her rosy reach.
“Should ‘ave gut you on Hereot’s shore, ye shit-strand traitor.”
He lunged as Jon had baited, permitting a strike of his fist, which in turn was read by the fiend, and smashed to a swollen spud with the silver head of that cane. Jon kicked up into that proud groin and scored a cod smash with a grin, knowing himself to then earning a death free of seeing Eve used like a cook-pot she-dog.
The cane head rose in that perfected hand, its wielder standing on his victim’s knee, as he snarled into the inner dark that grasps for all, through ash slit eyes, ‘To My Master Deceiver, ye Watchfield sends a soul!’
Jon heard this doom prayer in resignation, oh so tired of the hunt to rather be for eternity burnt.
A crack of thunder clapped, making his ears and nose bleed, his liver to jiggle like a drummer’s symbol, casting the hateful ashen eyes into atoms, his flesh into bats, his head into black shadows streaking on the wings of white light out into the dissipating night.
Jon passed into dark light, feeling his head distantly sinking into the soft brown sand.
A dove fluttered under the soft streaked azure sky.
He heard a car stop.
He heard footsteps coming near.
He opened his eyes to look into the eyes of a dove, as large as a raven, with blue eyes and white wings. Those swirling blue-gray eyes met his, and the dove cooed and flew off.
“I’ll be! A white raven? Sir, are you okay?”
Jon looked up and saw a tall Latino man with trimmed mustache and short cut hair, something of the military about him. Jon rolled off his back to rise and was hoisted up by strong hands. “Thank you, Sir.”
He looked slightly up into the man’s eyes and admitted, “Drank to much too Christ and came here for redemption.”
He gathered his suit jacket, shirt and beret, walked back to the amazed young man and asked, “Your name?”
“Ernie, Ernie Rodriguez, bound for Bisbi. I was headed from the camp ground to the diner at the Junction.”
“I’m buying, Ernie,” and they walked over to the road, where a small Ranger configured as a work truck with a camper back and ladders, was parked.
“Thank You, God, to Bless this old drunk with Ernie.”
Ernie smiled, “I dreamed I was redeemed today, woke up early, hungry—usually don’t eat breakfast.”
‘I deserve worse,’ mused Jon.
‘Yes, you do,’ roared a voice in his head, the ringing in his ears all but silent, reduced to only a distant song.
…
Notes
-1. The Angels Dark do not chuckle, but rather harangue with a demeaning huckle.
