Easter Sunday, Mid Morning
“Are you sure, Mister Jon?” said the kind voice of Ernie as he sat next to him in the small over-worked pickup painted Mormon white.
“Yes, Ernie. I have some thinking to do. Besides, I ate plenty. Your kindness is much appreciated.”
“Jon, a lot of tweakers were camping out here—it was a bad scene. The Covid homeless, some of them were killed here. Women went missing. The cops drove them out and put up this gate—see that solar-powered repeater down there? I think its a listening post.”
Jon considered it, “Tonto National Forest, aye. I think I’ll go play the Lone Ranger—was my favorite TV show, couldn’t wait for a new episode.”
“Then you’re taking this, Jon,” and Ernie handed him a cylindrical metal jug full of ice and water, the cubes rattling within.
“Y’all youngins growin’ more bossy by da day,” he grinned. “Thank you.”
Ernie took his pale pink hand in his dark brown one and squeezed, that squeeze reflected by an unasked question in his eyes, ‘I worry for you, you crazy old man.’
“Don’t worry, Ernie, crazy makes its way.”
Ernie shook his head nervously, his eyes wide, and let go the pale hand, “God be with you, Mister Jon.”
“And with you, Ernie. May Bisbi be your good fortune.”
Jon turned and hefted the jug, opening the door as Ernie crossed himself in case Jon were on the inside the opposite shade of his pale hand. He shuffled his bulk downward, sore, battered, beaten and throbbing like a novice carpenter’s smashed thumb.
He waved without turning his head, not wanting Ernie to see him with tears streaking his face. Jug in hand, the waif masquerading as a man ambled around the gate, not sure he could straddle it. He then skirted the evil bush who dropped static-powered balls of spikes to vex the wayfinder. The sound of the Ranger revving and turning about, with a spritely beep of well wish, made him sad. The unseen driver, crossed himself, not once, not twice, but thrice, calling upon Mother Mary to put in a good word with her Son.
Like an old, fat, broken toddler, Jon, who soberly last night declared himself Captain, lacked a pilot, a mate and even a single sailor to attend his drunken drift upon this pitiless sea of fate.
The pitiless father of Dawn shone down on his sweating form, corned beef hash grease feeling like it was sliding down his cheek in an affectation of sweat. The cactus trees were amazing, some sixty feet high. He wondered, ‘Has the Deceiver constructed this parody of The Garden for my wondering fate.’
A ray of sun burned him on the neck, under his right ear, for he toddled east up the way. Touching his neck he felt that the white hair had been burned away on that side. His already terrible hair cut was the worse, higher on the right side.
‘Sorry, Lord—you brought it all into being. But why you let that reprobate thwart our mortal way, I’ll never grasp.’
‘And hence your wander sentence,’ welled some deeply dire voice.
‘Oops,’ he mused within, unable to correct his most recent past—time slipping forever past.
The siren song in his ears—no, under them, shrieking in his mind—returned.
“Dammed racket!”
‘Indeed,’ welled that infinite judge.
On instinct, or perhaps upon a command he was too daft to hear, Jon, tub of blubber he was, looked upward to those awesome fear-inspiring mountains, looming like the castle gate of Heaven. Knowing that peak called Weaver’s Needle, or God’s Finger pointing to Heaven, soared days distant to the northeast, he felt a pang of guilt for marooning a savior soul upon that compass needle.
‘Dan—it’s your day to take up the ray.’
Seeing that he who might gain these heights above, wreathed in wisps of cloud, would have a clear view of that feature and of the various scenes of sorrow that had afflicted he and others over this holy weekend, he acted without the need for decision. ‘Up there, fat-ass, you will earn a more severe judgment and hopefully be taken home, wherever that may be.’
The siren call within keened sharply over a base tone deep that now washed serene, indicating that the wicked warden of earth and its severe Creator had no argument on this point.
He laughed across the blooming desert slopes, picking up his pace as the remaining ice in the jug rattled softly, “Imagine how much water it will take to keep this fat ass from stroking out!”
…
The world swam pleasantly as he rowed the skiff ashore, certain that his mutinous crew had exercised the good sense to take the long boat as he slept off his drunk with the young beauty. He had taken her into to his selfless protection, in his cabin, so that they would not cut each other’s throat over her sweet charms. For her eyes were magnetic and ever-changing, the crazy red hair ever-varying as it swept her dress, her shoulders, his greedy hands, his sweaty chest—
‘Oh, mates, it was all her doin!’
He woke, missing her, having seduced him again, sure he heard her dive overboard as the ship rocked. When he gained the deck, half-dressed, all he saw was a British Man ‘O War on the horizon and an empty deck. Noting the slack rigging and reefed sails, bullied by a leeward wind bringing on the enemy, he was alone but for one. He looked to BoomBoom, his African slave, steward of the grenades, bombs and matches, who had stayed behind.
“Massa, Jon, da Beauty Witch be gone—da crew a rowed to Isreal Hand’s ketch when dey perceive ye bewitched; off be he upon da night wind.”
He looked at BoomBoom, “Boy, would ye stay ‘ere en blow da ship, ye en da ‘orrible Brits ta bits, or row wit me to yon lee shore?”
BoomBoom grinned, “Massa Jon, ye Beauty Witch done swum yon—BoomBoom a radder be boomed up ta ‘eaven den drunk down ta Big Lie’s boo cellar.”
So Captain Jon Imbolden betrayed his men for a kiss, and abandoned his ship to the dubious stewardship of his most loyal man, who only suffered his command for fear that Jon would, when he died, turn ghost and forever haunt his ebony hide.
“Fawkin’ balkin’!” he groaned, hauling on the oars, skudding over the reef, his legs shot fro last night’s comforting of that poor helpless, innocent lass! And following with greedy eyes, the blood-haired nymph bouncing on her heels on the distant beech, waving him inward to her garlanded hips so fair, the lazy Captain, whose only quality was knowing who to hate—Brits, Merchants, Dutch, Slavers, Bankers, lowly bloody boot-lickers and BLOOD DRINKING BABY EATING MAN-CRONES!—rowed like he had as a loyal lad. Once he had been first to the gun and last to run. Now, he was reduced to the lover of the siren dancing on that doomed strand.
‘Let the boot-lickers off the hook, ye old crook. They got no will to be of guilt hung.’
‘Look at that beauty, how she dances so fair, arms wide to my soul repair!’
Soon, making love to the roar of the surf, rolling in that heady red heather as she kissed away his worth, he had not the present decency of honor to look to, when the two ships blew. She looked down at him, with a lusty lick of her lips as she sat her stupid Man-Throne and soothed, “Dear Jon, gather a crew from the few who can swim, and take me to a fresher sea.”
…
He came out of his delirium, not on that traitor strand where he recalled being reborn as a red rose’s pawn of a thorn, but on a rock he could not identify, over-looking a distant scratch of highway, a near town, a flat suburb bigger than many great cities gone to dust, and a city of sterile immensity further on under the westering sun. He shivered within the sweat-soaked shirt being blown by the cool wind from the inner east against his back, his front barely warm from the last rays of the punishing sun.
The sound of a well-recalled engine, the little engine that couldn’t, brought him about. How slowly Time can turn.
By the time he ponderously turned about, the car was quiet, upon a rural dust of road. There was a powder blue Ford Pinto Fastback, covered in dust. On the hood sat Mary, beautiful as ever, her eyes flashing deep Ocean blue, her red hair more near to crimson than the norm, recalled from her gallery in the haunted precincts of his guilty drawing room. Her feet played beneath a wicked red dress, below a necklace of white pearl.
He groaned as he hauled himself up and limped along with his empty water Jug. She shook her head, “Serves you right; rutting on some poor silver-bound child!”
“Mary, please—I was breaking her away—”
“Ugh,” he heard the old man moan as her shin, topping those pearly high heels sank into his groin and smashed his cods against that plank they had rather of walked…
“Really!” she scolded, as he stood, afraid he would kneel before his estranged wife.
He protested, “You left, me, Mary—I,”
He heard that single letter escape his mouth as the wind was driven forth behind it by a perfectly executed side kick, delivered with the point of a high heel.
He lay like a beached land whale, looking up at the most beautiful woman in creation as she straddled him with a snarl, sitting on his belly that could not accept new air to replace what she had kicked out. She snarled, licked her lips, flashed her eyes like two opal voids, then hissed, “You stupid, Mick prick—you never learn.”
Then, as those beyond Time’s weathered grip do, she changed in an instant, her eyes sky blue, her lips ruby red, her hair nearly yellow, streaked with red to orange, and lusty soothed, “Here, Baby, enjoy!”
She then kissed him like a song from long ago, the siren squeals fading from his addled mind.
…
The sound of the Fastback, that crappy car he could never drive, but somehow “owned,” whining off down the road, woke him like the splash of a diver over some long ago shattered ship. It was dusk, near to night fall, the lights of the departing car smiling to him of paths untaken and souls forsaken. He sat his fat ass up and saw on his gut, between his tattered jacket buttons, a ticket, a train ticket, which he could not read, not until he found a street light.
Ticket in hand, down the dirty, breeze-bitten road he strode, feeling revived from that mesmeristic kiss, a sense of aimless purpose driven by a deep weltering hate, returned. Knowing—tasting—that he had a hide to hunt, guided by the screaming sirens in his inner barrens, his pace quickened, feeling the fat man no longer, recalling a spry pauper lad who had once run into a wide world already undone.
…
This ends the open posting of Blood Hate.
To be concluded in:
Orb of an Opal Moon, Blood Hate #10
An Iron Snake, Blood Hate Out Take
