When I opened this laptop ten minutes ago the weather portal read Wichita 24 F. This means that I must have gotten online here before. Intended to write of the travel here, neglectful of journalism I have been. But, as I look around, I know that the coolest of all writing spots surrounds me. It is 9 AM, diesel motors whining in the fast distance through the curtained window to my left. Montius picked me up from Newton, Kansas and drove me home seven hours ago.
I sit at a dark stained desk, in the back corner of the house, in a swivel chair that requires a booster seat for this little author. Behind this laptop is a desk top Mac screen. To its left a power strip, pocket knife and pencils. Above them a wall of six framed fantasy paintings. Two its right is a Remington Ten Forty manual typewriter and various pens. That explains the Webster’s dictionary further to the right. A partially typed sheet remains in the typewriter. The top line reads, “Moss sat with the heels of his boots dug into the volcanic gravel of the ridge and glassed the desert below him with a pair of twelve power German binoculars.”
Next to that a palenteer, a gargoyle a cigar box and various works by Tolkien, Wolfe, Blanch, Anderson, Junger and Robert E. Howard’s complete collection of Conan tales, hardbound in leather.
To the right of the desk, in the back corner of the exterior wall to the inner wall, are four book shelves with titles by those named above, as well as, Frank Herbert, Carter Obrock, David Eddings, Musashi, London, King, LaFond and hundreds of others. Most importantly is the stack of Frazzetta calendars. Leaning against the near shelf is a wooden recurve bow. Forming an extension of the desk is a stack of two large totes of books, next two which a stack of two cardboard boxes of books rest.
Before the desk is a file cabinet buried by gear bags, back packs, a duffle, gun cases and ammo boxes in 5.56, 7.62, 0.50 CAL and other calibers. A Gaston flag hangs next to the gun safe, suits next to it, hats above, and a three inch thick walking stick leaned besides it.
Montius is at work. Norman is keeping watch at the front window, his forepaws on the couch, his five-gallon bucket head brushing the curtain rod over the window. He had just summoned me there, so that I might endorse his next DOD commendation; for no one is coming through Monty’s Headquarters door with Norman on guard. I would have said he yelled at the passerby, but he spoke no word. I might have claimed that he barked, but that would have been a lie—it was three tones too deep for a bark, just north of a wolfing and south of a roar.
Norman is about my size, but has two additional limbs, which I hope makes up for his lack of hands. Big slobber bubbles burst from his brindle jowls as his sits, demonstrating that I had forgotten to feed him again, twice in an hour, and also, that he was being nice and polite, entirely inclined to leave my hand attached to the wrist when he took his treat, “No, Cracker. Not that dog biscuit, the fresh made beef jerky that you somehow think you are taking with you on Monty’s sayso; there you go, good little human…”
At the dining room table is everything a goon needs: white oak boken, bamboo shinai, Francisca axes, Teutonic dagger, switch blade, lock blade, belt blade, hook blade and pocket blade folders, an Irish walking stick, a home made morning star style flail, gravity beer kegs and Norman’s collar, who I could beat some cοοn to dread with.
Norman is pissed that I have decided to write in the office, rather than downstairs at the bar where he can belly up for a drink without bending his neck so much. He has a bucket on each floor—the biggest bowl a mere tongue-wetting tease. By the front door, there is a fine polypropylene rod, and a djambok for disciplining my errant chattel. One might expect even a hand grenade to be handy in this prepper den; and one might be right, for Norman has not one, but two, rubber hand grenade chew toys.
Norman looks longingly out the back sliding glass door to his cable run, whining slightly in his chest at the great felled trunk out there. It would be perfect for shackling runaways to, something reactive upon which Norman might chew. But alas, the yard is empty of disciplinary material. Norman looks at the weary pulp writer, with his sad eyes of optimistic amber “You done pecking at the desk?”
“Maybe, why?”
“You thirsty?” with a wink.
“Norman, you’re not a day drinker, are you?”
“Of course not. You know its quitting time in Normandy, right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Who exactly is checking my math?”
“Norm!”
“Don’t make me eat your lucky charms, too…”
In Norman’s defense, he has suggested, in confidence, that I lured him down to the bar for a drink so that I could take his spot on the couch, which Monty unjustly assigned to Norman’s uninvited guest. Norman and I leave the reader to judge as to which of us was the chump and which the trump.
In either case, such negotiations with storybook beasts, are among the prices one pays for composing weird words in unjuked spaces.
