PHOENIX, SAN JOAQUIN: A NOVEL BY AXLE RYN

2006-07-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

A proposition must use old expressions to communicate a new sense.
Wittgenstein

BOOK I.
AFTER THE FLOOD

After the first night’s after-shock, we gathered, without new information, discussed, without knowing, what next? Johnny’s Bud beyond contact with satellite communication down. Not more, or less, we thought some occurrence of climate change event. Uninformed about the receding water. Copley, itself, situation unknown. Coastal devastation, yes, but Copley was some fifty miles inland.
“Fucking bastards,” Bobby said. “We’ve only been hearing warnings for at least a generation.”
“Yeah, really?” Tommy chimed in.
“Fucking Christ,” said Johnny.
“What now?” I asked.
“I suggest we get back to the trucks,” suggested Johnny.
We huddled up on the hill at Rochetito. Our make-shift campsite was a mix of cold leaves, dirt and tears.
“Let’s get our shit together if we’re agreed,” said Bobby.
And Tommy had turned from our adjacent talking circle to pee against a white barked tree. Tommy returned with a bent trumpet and he began tapping its keys and with his left hand muffling the trumpet’s mouth.
“Oh! Fuck! What’s this, now,” said Bobby. Tommy continues toot tooting his enthused way around our circle of ground.
“Dizzy had this method of muffling....” Said Tommy easing into one of his impromptu jazz lectures. “I found it in the bush. Almost peed on it,” finished Tommy and began tooting, again. He began walking further from our circle into the distance. “Yeah, that’s right,” said Bobby. “don’t get on my nerves.” Johnny was intent on pulling us together. “Let’s get back to the pianos and the trucks.” We began our walk down the cascading hill some two miles. Before reaching the perilous curve, we spied an abandoned farm house and Johnny said, “let’s camp here, get our bearings and we’ll head out in the morning.”
“Why?” Asked Tommy. “What are we waiting for?”
“Let’s try to get some information, if we can.” Tommy began tapping his trumpet. Again, the trumpet sounded off-key like a wave-sound heard thru a water droplet. We walked as a group, Tommy trailing, and tooting about ten yards behind us. We reached just outside the old Rochetito farm house. Three of us enter the hay-filled barn. Tommy outside tapping, continuing to improvise. His fingers and mind tapped around his joy. “Three fingers,” Tommy says, as I poke my head outside the barn door. I picked up my backpack. Clothes and all tied off, making a mental note to self saying, ‘get ready for the morning, lounge now, later, take the mind of the matter.’ Tommy’s tuneless trumpet said as much, almost too large to put your mind around. Not to offend Tommy and say, or bring any negativity to the matter. Absurd night and ourself empty. I turn and return inside barn. Bobby and Johnny huddled around a hay bale. They use the flat top to plan a route. Unsung backtrack method; backtrack to trucks to minimize variables. Johnny tries Bud again, again cell circuits busy. He was trying every fifteen, twenty minutes.
“From what I can tell, 5 may be washed out, if that’s the case, we can skip out to the 99, over the ridge and to higher ground.” Bobby grunted. “Especially, as we get nearer the Valley.”
“Good point,” says Johnny. “But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, first, do we know the condition of the trucks and, even, their location?” No. I said to myself. I hadn’t considered it. Almost, as if, blocking out the image of twisted trailer metal at the bottom of Short Hill, off the eastern flank of Rochetito Ranch Road.
“What do we do? I volunteered, “I know where the trucks are, alright.”
“We go,” offered Bobby. “Let’s go figure it out.” Johnny smiled slightly, with lips pursed, clenched cell phone and dialed Bud, again, busy. No information. Busy again. Cell towers down, still the sad news event called chance, a situation, not so much eerie, but so much the stuff of dream-life, waking life. “God, damn.” Johnny slamming the cell phone upon a hay bail. Puff. “Let’s pack our shit guys.” Johnny to us all. And me with my shit outside deciding to keep Tommy company. And we walked out with Bobby and his arm around my shoulder whispering loudly, “let’s see if we can teach the old man how to hold a tune, eh?” And we smiled. “I’ll teach him to play,” I played along, “when I wrap that trumpet round his neck.” Smiles through tears. So, we end up accompanying Tommy through a walk of seemingly abandoned Rochetito. We played this is the way you play the trumpet as you walk walk. Tommy leading the way down a craggy path. Bobby and I trailing, behind, I looked back toward the barn and saw Johnny dialing Bud again. Withe the cell to his ear, he begins sliding the barn door open and close open and close. And the sun cutting light across the beaten face and door. “What the hell is going to happen to us?” Was all I could manage, a sadness tinged with hope that perhaps Bobby could bolster? “Look, Kid, buck up, we need everyone ready. We don’t know what’s up ahead. You can bet your ass Johnny’s doing all he can.”
“You’re right, of course.” I bleated.
“Of course, I’m right. Think positive. There is no wrong answers, not now there isn’t.” We left more space between us and Tommy out front. And Tommy’s playing improved as his finger, and vocal, dynamic improved. Long breaths and the interplay between also increasing in volume. The slight bend of a note. When not close enough, a heightened noise delivered just as backdrop. We needed to discuss. To think. Alert. This rat hole existence we had fallen in to; thought wandering inexplicable. What other than to blame the crisis scenario on the human all too human tendency to stay in the pot until boiling become one with scorched remains of a cooked species.

After several twists and turns we shot off on a tributary path that led up a short cliff, with steps cut in to a short rise of rock up some twenty meters to what was plainly a house. The house hidden partially by a group of poplars, which totally obscured the house from the road below. We cut through the patch of trees and approaching the house, Tommy still ahead of us and nearing the front porch. Tommy continuing his trumpet play turned his horn in our direction. He keeps the soft notes pumping and as we approach we shush him aside and Tommy obliged by backtracking to the edge of the cliff, and at the start of the stone steps we had just traversed. He elicited notes at peace with the poplars at his side. I was preparing to knock on the door when Bobby held my arm and said, “Wait, I hear something around back.” And he led us around the side of the house revealing another building, a smallish barn, positioned at a forty-five degree angle to the house and sitting some one hundred meters away. Indeed, a woman of middle-age was washing laundry by hand in a twenty-five gallon basin with washboard. She hadn’t noticed us as her back was partially turned. Instead of walking any nearer and risk startling her, I spoke up, “Buenos Tardes.” And she turned and said, “O! Hello. I speak English. Buenos Tardes, my name is Elise.” Bobby stepped up and introduced us, “This is Nick, and I’m Bobby, we’re happy to see you, we thought everyone fled South or East?”
“My husband, Jacinto, went off for supplies, Fifteen South-East, yes, off to Centrale Sernita, as a matter of fact, some ten miles down Highway Fifteen.”
“We were on the edge of the storm,” I volunteered, “and our trucks got stuck in the flood, just before the hills here at Rochetito.”
“What now?” Elise asked simply. And with a relaxed air said. “You know how we heard? Through Jacinto’s short wave radio?” And after a couple seconds silence head tipped down looking briefly in to the basin, “We were out of range of the flood, but, you see,” She pointed, now, North and the butt of Cliff Rochetito and the occluded view of the passage that way, “we’re cut-off from most of our customers.” She expressed through her eyes a sadness still in flight from fear. “We had a decent organic fruit and vegetable farm growing, don’t know now though?” She was looking for some props, at least, a ray of silvery hope. From the grizzled self of Bobby asking only questions, holding a bet. “What else did Jacinto glean from report on points North?” Bobby questioning as if from the edge of a precipice. “None so far,” said Signorita’ Elise, “Seems you have more information that we do, I’m afraid.” Elise trailed off for a moment and finished by saying, “I should think Jacinto will be back soon, Centrale is half a days journey to and back.” She walked back a couple steps to the basin, looking down at soaked clothing and looked up and added, “Hopefully, no roads south have been affected?” She went back to spinning the shirt and pantaloon, wringing them expertly with defined forearms and hands quite agile. She hung the spun threads on a line extending from the corner of the barn some twenty feet to a metal pole adjacent a garden plot of tomatoes and zucchini. She hooked the clothing with your standard wood clips. The vogue of the times in Mexico Elise turned with brunette bearing and said, “what are you plans?” She turned to face us as her work being done, excused herself, a moment to undue her smock and dry hands with warm white terri cloth. “Back to the trucks,” I added quickly, “see what we can salvage.” She responded quick warmth showing her breastplate rosy colored, “rest here, before hurrying back?” She left it as the most natural question in the world. “Rochetito will be there in the morning, Nick.” She left it at that. And Bobby hit the response with saying bluntly, “we left our partner back a ways and we’re do back, presently.”
“A friend you say?” She queried.
“Yes, back aways down the road at the make-shift barn.”
“You’re welcome to stay here...move your camp here.” She concluded with all due reason.
“We’ll check with Johnny, my brother.” Bobby added strategy.
“Jacinto will be back with supplies, you can find out and return at your leisure.”
“Elise, we thank you, so much.” I added shaking here hands cupping with both a warm glow of skin. And the faint bleat of Tommy’s horn in the wood dawn a few steps of cliff, disembodied sound coming to the fore as we stepped back, excused ourselves and resolved ourselves to the hike back to Johnny. “very kind of you, Elise.” Bobby turned and said and the brunette glare in sun ray through tree shade. Elise and fainter, “your welcome.” Given softness by a warm breeze over Rochetito. We’ll be back, I thought. Johnny would welcome the news. We were walking back passed the house and Elise no longer visible around the house line to barn view. Tommy’s tuneless trumpet could be heard clearly now, like a flagrant push of dynamic off a cliff edge. I imagined instead the brunette, with strong forearms, farm work training, no doubt, immune as she was to the sun and dry stoke of sand, dust and wind. ‘I’ll fix something,’ I could hear her talking out-loud. ‘Come back in an hour,’ her voice trailed off as she turned. Her faded jeans and black worn boots, a vision of her entering the house as the broken screen door slamming shut, disappearing through an alcove to kitchen adjacent a stone fireplace.

We picked up Tommy’s trail and motioned him to follow us this time. Tommy oblivious, still playing, but in touch with the reality of the questions? Melding, as he was, trumpet, an aged body busy expelling fear in current time; each note a healing and a forgetting. We stopped at the ridge below the barn and waited for Tommy to catch-up. “My turn,” Bobby said, then reiterated, “my turn.” And with both hands outstretched Tommy handing it over without a word. And Bobby without playing a note walked ahead and led as quickly back to Johnny.

Johnny was lying on a pile of hay and with a white towel covering his eyes and forehead. At first seemingly napping, he jerked quickly his body angled on his facing us in the overarching barn door threshold. He pulled the towel fully from his torso and said, “eh? What’s up?”
Bobby took the opportunity, “Elise, down the road a piece,” Bobby started. “She invited us to stay the night, and her man Jacinto is due back with news and supplies.”
“Nice,” Johnny’s first reaction. “Good work, boys.” And with a grey somber tone enlivened by a word, “I got through to Bud, seems,” he consciously hesitated. “Seems roadways from San Diego to the San Joaquin Highlands are flooded.” Matter of fact statement thinly disguised as a world opening up and out, and round-a-bout ways and means to reach Copley by skirting about much of California? And to add a stone’s weight of injury Johnny adds, “Fuel, it seems, may be a problem, according to Bud.” He ended without any hint of picking up the burning thread of hanging dialogue. “What do you mean?” I asked chiming in. Johnny answered methodically, “riots have broken out over gas and seems martial law is declared in several counties, including Phoenix, San Joaquin.”
“Martial fucking law?” Bobby exasperated.
“Yes, Bud recommends skirting east of Tijuana, how far? He wasn’t quite sure.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” The enormity sinking in to Tommy’s beer-soaked mind.
“First things first,” Johnny said. “Let’s get our shit together, and regroup up to Elise’s.” The noon sun partially obscured by low cloud and filtered light.
“Good then,” Johnny urging us, “go on ahead with your gear, I’ll catch up with you.” I grabbed the trumpet from Bobby without a movement no reaction, and I led Bobby and Tommy out and back to Elise’s. I began tapping out a tune and I see Johnny through the doorway and he’s shaking his head, smiling and then he puts the towel over his eyes and leans back against hay bale. Water-tinged trumpet notes, and u-turn and backtrack. Tommy and Bobby trailing behind and me with tune and moving memory forward to Elise. We walked out back where we had previously met Elise, and she was further back of the property line throwing buckets of grain over chicken wire fence to couple three piglets, and she heard me playing trumpet sounds. She twisted from the waist and said, “That was quick,” and after a moment, “and your friend.”
“He’ll be along shortly,” I said.
“What’s up? Need a hand.” Tommy volunteered.
“Just getting grub ready.” She noted. “You you ever butchered?” She queried.
“Yeah,” Tommy with a put upon comedic accent. “When I did me time, in the car pool, North Africa, singing about the Mojave Blues.”
“Well,” Elise, began, “if any of you are squeamish, you may want to go in now.”
“I think I’ll take you up on that offer,” Tommy nervously shuffling his feet, “O! Elise? Please, would you have any beer in the house? Seems I’ve run low...” And Elise in a kinder mellowness of voice, “Tommy, please, go inside, make yourself at home, sorry, we have no beer, but Jacinto has home-made wine, if you would like?” And Tommy at first flustered and then inwardly pleased at the possibility of wine, both white and red? What more could Tommy anticipate needing? And he excused himself, promptly saying, “O! Gee. Elise, you are so kind, so kind, lovely, really,” and all the while fidgeting and shuffling until he disappeared around the bush on the westerly corner of barn. It had been almost two days without a good drunk, poor old Tommy. And Bobby mumbling under his breath, ‘Tommy, get the hell out of here with your beer, beer and more beer, and more and more fucking beer.’
“It’s fine,” reassured Elise and she unsheathed a ten inch boning knife and keeping the coal black handle hidden behind her back, shielding the clean glint of knife from momma pig. Slowly, ever so slowly, Elise circled to the right. Side-stepping slowly and in ever soothing tone whispering, “Shh...shh...momma...shh little girl.” Elise made her way right up facing momma pig and with her empty left hand she smoothed swine hide and keeping a sure, “shh...shh. momma” And quite suddenly brilliant Elise coming up with a slashing, sticking knife stab to the pig’s flank and to the side of the throat a little. Blood spattered on her shoes and some hitting her smock and blue-jeans. Pig was squealing ferociously, and moving about wildly in the pen. Banging in to the wood slatted fencing. Now, Elise had jumped out of the pen and was watching intently from just outside the fence, and she drops the knife in to a wooden trough adjacent pig pen. After several minutes stomping haphazardly through the pen, pig collapses, expires and comes to rest with head between the rungs of the wooden fence. “Good job,” I started. “I wouldn’t try it, but you have a way about you.” I ended with a bit of surprise at my own delayed excitement. “Thank you,” she said. “there is a favor you could for me though, please?”
“What? Anything?”
“Help me lift momma on to the dolly, then we’ll roll her down in to the half-cellar.” Elise had rolled the dolly under the pig and she says, “O.K. One, two, three.” And heave and roll. And with a rough hewn chord we dragged momma down the ramp and in to the cellar. A little box room, eight by eight, square, and was used typically for butchering and drying. The back ledge filled with shelves already housed last years batch of ham and sausage. And from the threshold Elise says, “O.K. Now, let’s lift the whole thing, dolly and all to the table.” And the three hundred pound pig went thud upon the cutting table. Bobby and I took a seat at the corner and Bobby asks, “O.K. if I smoke?” And Elise nodded in agreement. And Elise went busily to work under the table cabinet and knife storage. She took out a foot long, large tooth saw, an a-typical meat clever of non-stainless carbon steel, and a ten inch all-purpose blade which she sharpened on the wet stone with a bit of spit and finally, brushing the tuned edge against jeans. “Good,” she repeated to herself. “Good.” Bobby and I exchanged glances and Bobby took the opportunity to blow smoke in to my eyes. “Thanks,” I said sarcastically. And Bobby responds, “don’t mention it.” We turned back to Elise. And Bobby wise-ass asks, “Elise, you need any help?” And Elise already working at the meat flank and saying, “Not yet, but in a few, I’ll ask you to hang some pieces for me.” And she ended with, “see the hooks back there?” Pointing at the meat hooks back adjacent drying shelves. “Yes,” I offered and walking back picked up off a hook from its female post point and seating back by Bobby I said, “Like one of those whale hooks, eh?” And Bobby grabbing the hook examined it closely, smoking and gazing and saying, “Yeah, a real Moby Dick killing tool, eh?” And Bobby with a hideous smoke filled laugh. Elise went to work, delicately slicing the pork rind, and then each section of bone beginning with the mid-line, then thorax, limbs, then the head for last. And as piece by piece cut, Elise handing it over saying, “go to it, hook it.” I took the flank and hooked it by the overhanging re-bar, and looking over to Elise was ready with a set of ribs. “This is for tonight’s barbecue,” she smiled. “Nice,” I said. And Bobby taking at stab at conversation added, “Nice and fresh.” And Bobby lit another cigarette and amid smoke me shaking my head in disgust. I walked out in to the sunlight. I stopped near the threshold and asked, “If you don’t need me any longer, Elise? I think I’ll excuse myself?” And without insinuation but with a fidelity of worldliness, “Yes, fine, Nick, get yourself cleaned up, please.” And Elise looked over to Bobby dazed and smoking in the carved light entering the threshold semi-blocked by my body. “You too, Bobby?” And Elise with a couple steps in Bobby’s direction said, “and please would you bring these utensils up to the house?” And Elise grabbing a smallish duffel bag from under the carving table distributed its contents half and half and bidding them make haste saying, “I’ll be right behind you, so go, go, go.” I continued out and spied Tommy out back lying in hammock, wine jug on the ground at his side. “Let’s go Tommy boy,” I started. And Tommy waking, lifting his head, and simultaneously grabbing jug and sipping. He takes a longish Tommy swig and retreating replaces jug, closes eyes and returns to hammock unfazed by any call to food. The remaining sun and aftereffects of wine now permeated completely the mind body of Tommy. Bobby too, heckling Tommy in due turn, “ Old man, eh? Take it slow, we wouldn’t want you to pull anything.” And Tommy feigning ignorance popped up again and said, “who me?” Tommy began to shuffle and began extricating himself, ever so clumsily, from the bedeviling hammock rocking endlessly. “Ribs? Me favorite,” Tommy becoming enthused now. And Bobby at the height of ball busting, “no old man, beer is your favorite, no doubt.” And Tommy with a faux sadness, “That’s not fair, Bobby?” And Elise following close behind helped Tommy along with his help Elise had all the makings of dinner, and Tommy lugging the grill and charcoal.

At the house, Elise ducked in to an outdoor pantry situated under the kitchen window entrance. The flimsy door was attached by a couple screws dangling from a rusted hinge. She returned with a can of lighter fluid. She dumped half of a ten pound charcoal bag and added a generous helping of fluid. She slapped the grill top on and closed the black, barbecue rounded, lid. I asked, “you need a hand?” And Elise responded, “No thank you, I move quicker on my own.” She retreated and returned in an instant with two racks of ribs, brushed with garlic and balsamic vinegar. Elise propped the dish of ribs on the stainless barbecue extension table, and she rushed back in, returning in due haste with brown sauce, parsley, a silver platter filled with silverware and a red and white check, tablecloth. She quickly draped a chipped green paint, picnic table, and the check tablecloth almost touching built-in bench seating. She placed the platter on the table’s bench seat, and instructed us on the proper rib barbecue method. “Cook each side two minutes, keep them turning, be careful not to let it burn,” she continued to instruct and added, “good, good.” And she left us to the ribs and she quickly returned with home-made bread adding, “Jacinto won’t go without it.” She grinned. She goes on to tell of the nightly dough making ritual. Prepping for the next door was their motto.

I walked outside and approached Tommy still dozing on the hammock, and gave him a rough push. “Eh? You’re ruining my nap,” he screeched.
“You mean I’m ruining your drunk nap?” I asked.
“Whatever,” he was belligerent and drunk and half-sleepy.
“Get up,” I said.
“Why should I?” he moaned.
“Dinner’s up.”
Tommy relented and joined us, even helping set the table, laying out utensils, chairs, cloth napkins, glasses, dishes, iced tea, wine, veggies, fresh and uncooked and organic. Elise comes out of the house a final time with a load of fresh baked bread. The ribs attended to by Johnny, (in his element) and turning the ribs, religiously, every two minutes. And as he turned the ribs he would scrunch his fingers together, bring them to his lips in mock kiss and say, “ah! perfection.” We settled in to feast as the sun neared the dusk horizon. Tommy teetering on the edge of a brazen drunkenness says, “A toast to Elise our best newest friend.” He rises from the bench and reaches everyone at table for a clink of glasses toast, and Tommy proceeds to guzzle the glass of wine, before retrieving his personal jug and returns to bench. he staggered visibly, but managed to retrieve and return without accident. He even refilled our glasses without mishap. The fine wine was a Pinot Noir, slight acrid flavor from the loamy soil south of Rochetito. The dregs at bitter ending sip added to a cloudy appearance. Elise assured us each year the wine is much improved due to careful record keeping by Jacinto and Elise. Jacinto, Elise elaborated, would make adjustments seasonally. And now Elise taking a turn at toasting starting, “To our new friends from North of the border.” We toasted and clinked and sipped and Johnny asked, “How did you and jacinto end up here, at Rochetito, may I ask?” Elise seemed genuinely happy to answer, “We’re both originally from San Diego, born and bred and we were high school sweethearts. We drove down here immediately after our wedding banquet and we have never regretted leaving the States, really.” She expressed herself openly without deceit. She added, “what with an unfairly regressive tax, Jacinto and I considered carefully, Jacinto thought, and I concurred, basically amounted to an absurdly unwise, deferred tax strategy.” Then a couple three seconds of silence Elise asked, “What about you guys?” she nodded in the direction of Johnny.
“Well, Elise, let me say,” he began clearing his throat and continuing, “I left San Francisco forty years ago, ended up in Copley, been there ever since.” And Elise nodded again toward Tommy, Bobby and I. “What about you guys?”
“I’m from a small town south of Death Valley, Horatio Town.” I began.
“I’m with Johnny, Elise, being brothers and all, San Francisco was too small for the both of us.” And Bobby laughing. And the wine smacked crew of new friends joined in. “I’m from Phoenix, before Phoenix, San Joaquin anywhere near reality. Tommy began, “but an old fogey like me, is really from no place. I’ve been wandering since I was a kid. I spent time on the Great Plains, rode the rail lines West when things slowed down.”
“Don’t listen to this old coot, Elise.” Bobby insinuated without malice.
“And what do you know Mr. Vagabond?” Tommy defended himself where no defense was needed. And Bobby reiterating his point clearly, “Don’t matter where you’re from, old man.” And Johnny threw the punch line,
“Tommy, you came out of the womb rolling and drinking.” Damn near explosive laughter as Tommy knowingly laughing, together with wine-tinged laughter at table. “You said it, boss.” Tommy’s conclusive right. And we continued with ribs, and corn, and Cobb Salad, fresh dipped bread in the remains of olive oil dressing. Johnny was pulling rib meat and concocting his own sandwiches like an Earl at Castle. Elise taking a hint from Johnny began pulling meat and piling slices high upon the platter and encouraging us, “go on put together sandwiches, there you go.” And the fresh bread kept coming with each trip indoors Elise would arrive with a basketful. And the stars turning with each constellation turned in their due courses. The night emptied and the wine played upon our one seething mind. And in the ensuing depth stories were trotted out, no longer an isolated band of wanderers, we strangers a long way separated from home. Each time I remembered, I looked up at the ever changing position of stars keeping pace with evolving dawn.

Tommy, at some point, wandered up the hillside some two hundred meters. The fair to middling hill faced Elise’s front yard and directly in line with the cohorts at table. Near the hilltop, Tommy stood on the upper grassy knoll and said, “Eh? Watch this.” Tommy laid himself out and rolled downhill, he was attempting a two hundred meter roll, and shouting, “wee! Now look at the stars. Woo! Look! Look!” And we roared and Bobby rolling a fifty gallon drum from the front yard and rolled to adjacent our ring of seats. Bobby fetched wood and lighter fluid and half-barrel full chipped oak, and dressed logs with fluid drenched newspaper light, ignite and pulled back to sit down. The fuse of a rumbling bon fire teased and tossed its licking flames near to us. The word night and Elise starting the storytelling, beginning with a zombie horror tale and moving quickly through what seemed a classic training exercise and Elise filled us in. Seems, La Jolla Dramatic Arts Center held Elise for a spell, before Jacinto and Rochetito lured her with its spell. In any case, the zombies appear to said heroine in a dream, only then she awakens to find dream has become reality. Only, the discovery of heroine’s roommate dreamed a zombie dream, as well. The zombie groups attack each other from within a dream like a film about making a film. Elise excused her obvious omissions by dint of zombies and wine. And the effect of giddiness was just the entrance call for Tommy, who, still sitting at the bottom of the hill cross-legged and said, “I used to know many horror stories, then I went to prison and I switched to my specialty, limericks.” And just as peevishly Tommy climbed half way and rolled again, “Wee! Whoopee!” And Bobby began his own tale of horror, “Do you remember Edgar Allan Poe’s, Tell Tale Heart? Well, this one is called the Sirloin Heart. It’s a variation on the theme.” He went on about a Milwaukee native, with a gig as bartender, develops his butchering skills before entertaining a serial killers lifestyle choice. And the story weaved digressing in to a vigilante tale, ending with a gore filled epiphany finale.

And on in to the night with Johnny taking us aboard a circuitous tale and prefacing his account with, “this is a true story, ladies and gentlemen.” And he leads us through haunted house, and mysterious murders, and levitating cars, all in an elaborate extortion plot. And this tale also, ended violently with a shootout between good and evil, exemplified by two rival factions of vampire gangs. I enjoined the crew with a tale of one Robot that is programmed to kill, and to the astonishment of the programming scientist, the Robot evolves quite naturally to a fucking machine, instead. And the story, an illicit attempt at comedy, garnered a chuckle from Elise. While clapping, Elise went in to a new story about Mischief Night. A story filled with eggs, and pranks and murder. And by story’s ending we had turned the corner again, and Tommy joining in with a Dirty Limerick. And Tommy treating us, at my request, to the Monkey and the Lion. And like this we succumbed to the night; over and out, and by stories circling end we came to sweet Aurora with her streaming fingers over the low-lying land. Finally, Elise insisted we get comfortable on the living room floor, adjacent fireplace, and a lounge of pillows and carpets and blankets. And we sleep through dawn and as day rises we wake to find Jacinto at our feet. “Who’s sleeping on my front yard?” And Jacinto’s voice slowly rouses Elise and she enters wearing white robe and matching slippers, brunette locks spiraling down the front lapels and ample bosom. Elise answers with a semi-rhetorical question, “one of our guests?” I lift my head of the leather pillow and from floor level said, “hello.” As if I were talking to Jacinto’s brown leather shoe. And waking in similar fashion, Bobby and Johnny nod in assent and introduce themselves. Bobby sounding like his inimitable semi-audible grunt. And Johnny more coherent saying, “must be Tommy outside.”
And Jacinto, “he looks pretty hammered?” And changing the subject said, “pleasure to make your acquaintance, but may I ask where you hail from?” I took the opportunity to answer, “Northern San Joaquin, a little place called Copley.” And Johnny filled in, “and our trucks are stuck in the foothills south of Rochetito.” And without delay Jacinto says, “I have some news I picked up in that regard.”
And not knowing what to expect we settled for the news we had from Bud, “I’m afraid the coast, from San Diego north through San Joaquin, is under water.” And he added as an afterthought, “as much as fifty miles inland of coast may be affected.” And Johnny, “we knew as much from my son, Bud, he’s stationed at Pendleton.” And Jacinto filled in a grey area, “San Diego, downtown was spared, but the Navy Yards, however, seems the warships needed to be moved forward, and the nuclear subs were all moved north of San Joaquin.”
“Christ,” said a tense Bobby.
“Well what the hell,” said Johnny raising himself off the floor, “you need help with any supplies? Unloading?”
“Yes, I do thank you,” and pointing out at the dirt driveway, “I picked-up spare parts for my back-hoe.” Outside was parked an old CAT 9, in need of repair. “Yeah, she needs points and filters and gaskets and hoses,” added Jacinto.
“Back-hoe, eh?” Johnny asked with widening eyes and walked a few paces toward Jacinto. Jacinto a good six feet tall, with well trimmed beard and wide shoulders. And Bobby at attention, “well, what are we waiting for, we’ll give you a hand?” Bobby spoke standing front and center, toe to toe with Johnny.
“Yes, indeed,” answered Johnny. And thinking to himself, ‘back-hoe, eh?’ And us three and Jacinto step out in to the early afternoon light. Blue sky high and Elise retreats to bedroom as we crossing the threshold Jacinto looking back, “see you, darling.” And Elise at the bedroom door, “see you, darling.” And Jacinto winked and smiled and led us out to the front road, as the yellow CAT yawned in disapproval. Tommy laying in the CAT’S bucket decided to faux nap, on his back, eyes closed, unmoving. I turned my back for one second and I say, “old man, let’s get a move on, rise and shine.” Tommy blinks his eyes and murmurs something suitably apocalyptic under his breath, like a cartoon character mumbling as a cover for cursing. he rose slowly reminiscent of a monster out of some Hollywood silent classic, minus the tinkling of piano keys. And in proper Frankenstein fashion, with both arms jutting forward, and with perky jerky body movements mocks jokingly, “yes, boss. Me no drunk boss. What now, boss?”
“Tommy cut the shit,” Johnny scolded. And Bobby added for good measure,
“O! Old man, Jacinto, don’t you see, Jacinto needs our help, Jesus!” Johnny and Bobby attack the engine and begin removing points, filters, rotor, tires, propulsion hoses, muffler mid-section and thus the afternoon flies with men working at CAT motor tuning-mission. “Pass me the carbine wrench,” Johnny asks Bobby and Bobby passing the order to Tommy, “Carbine wrench?” And Tommy now awake and in full on mocking mode, “Yes-sum, boss.” And after passing the wrench to Bobby, Tommy again reprises the Frankenstein walk and transforms to a double handshake for Jacinto, “Pleasure to meet you Jacinto, my name is Tommy, Tommy Brynes.” Tommy returning adjacent Johnny and Bobby, brothers still busy at the CAT engine block work. “I have point exchange twisters, underneath...” Jacinto motioned under, and adjacent the CAT’s wheel well a black tool kit. And unhinging the box from the truck’s underlining carriage. And Bobby and Johnny turned out plugs and replaced points and tightened main screw idling, as well. An Jacinto reciprocated and shook Tommy’s hand and said, half-mockingly, “Thank you, old man.” And Bobby turned from the engine, “bwhahahah! Well said, Jacinto, well said.”
“Shut it,” said Tommy to brother Bobby. And finishing tightening points, Johnny moved on to fan rotor, and changed out the last remaining piece. Finally, Jacinto said, “I’ll leave you to it,” and he walked to the house. We could see him and Elise hugging in the doorway, french kissing, even, and moved in to kitchen to help Elise with lunch. And intimate hugging by sink-side, washing vegetables in a dog style embrace, washing with four hands, hot water, steam. And the three of us like stooges with our backs turned and gaping rubber necking around to see. Tommy, with a white, ripped t-shirt was wiping down the excess grease from the engine chassis and underbelly. We worked busily for another couple three hours and Jacinto returned helping us change the fluids and finish up the tune-up. At afternoon’s ending we retreated to the cool of the front porch, drinking a few cold ones, and perusing the CAT decked out in new parts and feeling happy, happy. And Jacinto, very delibarately, toasting us, “Good job, guys. Here’s to you, and look how happy she looks,” He stepped aside ninety degrees and said, “Julep, seems so happy and well adjusted.” He grinned and tipped his glass. We laughed along with Jacinto.
“What now?” Asked Tommy cryptically, perhaps, by dint of third beer guzzled?
“Good question, old man.” Said Jacinto. And finishing with a stronger sense, “What now? What are your plans? Now, that your mission south has been scuttled?
“Back to the wreck, my friend,” said Johnny while staring out in to the horizon from his perch on the bottom third step of porch. And Bobby filled in Jacinto on our piano delivery mission to Bajia and Segnor Alimenta’s. We moved inside, slowly and with a tinge of sadness at the passing of day. Elise yelling from the kitchen’s swing doors, “Boys? Dinner.” And we dutifully obliged and seating at the oval table at random, and Jacinto with grace for the bounty of table, and future health and happiness; ablutions to the gods with raised glasses. Tommy toasting to, our newest friends Elise and Jacinto.” And Tommy empties his wine glass. Elise had assembled at table, fresh bread, garden vegetables sauteed, and rib-eyes steaks, bone-in, grilled to perfection with juicy cross-hatching for proof. Abundant wine giving fuel to planning and musing, continuing through sunset. And we moved back outside, the previous night’s respite calling us, again. With bon fire taming the demons unleashed; and the journey home masquerading as death. And the wine jugs moving around the horn, counter-clockwise. Bobby tending the barrel fire. And Johnny regaled us of the early days traveling south of the border and into the no man’s land, of desert camps, mapping out what would be the first traces of the better known Camp Pendleton. The joy of riding the back-dunes before Army, Navy, Air-Force, Marines put their own cruel stamp to the territory. Using the land, Johnny said, for the next brick in the wall of Fortress America. And Jacinto joined the dialectic by adding, “that’s just about the time Elise and I left for Rochetito. We saw what was coming down the pike. High-tailing down to Rochetito, by sea and sand, has been a wise choice, no?” And Johnny, “considering, your decision couldn’t have been wiser.” And we lapsed into silence. The wine and stars producing a curious after-effect, a correlation between light and falling bodies. and one by one we take turns regaling the crew with story and early on, Elise, excusing herself, slipped away with a kiss to Jacinto and a wink for us and, “good night,” whisper with a smile.

Wind picking up out of the south, warm breeze over buzz of eye, sand and all else from the north, and a distant pain for what is to come, second coming of human nature, squalid distant second. The bronze pick-up of sun to brown skin, warm health to the touch: this night as opposed to last, the past stories leading us back, but the main questions remain untouched. The future present, how would we get home again? North, again. The welter skelter progression of the stars, had and continued to have their taming influence.

As Jacinto would have it, by keeping us under his own influence, to take us through his bordering farm, and crossing over, a disallow, a sort of bondage. He called on us to start in the morning, and with morning upon us, and the pianos just over in yonder field, ‘not quite,’ thought Nick. A field damp and submerged, coming to a halt, the group moving forward with tact and grace, as sounding board enough to keep the muses happy. The timing of sunrise good for the shit-hats and the svelte. Dawn nearer, not any freer. Like a compartment of our own choosing. Glints as in firelight, moon meet dawn’s face. Eye socket akin to moon. ‘We are just one circle standing,’ not the strangeness of thought, of course, but the sameness. Jacinto thinking, and pacing as the light of a green horizon lingered. Flash-point or some canard? A fool’s petard us waiting here howling under the moon? A shifting watery nihilism, bringing all and sundry to a halt. An evening’s rain and moist dawn. The asshole of the world even gets sunshine, the whole is thus illumined. From son to son and from womb to womb and Jacinto allowed as such, the fifth wheel of Elise. Guessing as much as sharing, this point is infinity, like an endless course of stars. Mars teeming with lifelike essence, and the rungs of compassion like so many dollars. And costs escalate. An ellipsis of war, poverty, environmental degradation. A circle, ad infinitum, of course. Jacinto knew as much. Elise, woman, gaga. Spirit money flowing to and fro. Enough of us to be four squaring a circle for five. Jacinto knew. The bars and stars a prison. A frozen prism of light blinding in its illusory potential. Jacinto. Eye sight like a wheel penetrating the cycles of greed and happy wealth. Jacinto at head of souls walking over river. A positivity out of nothingness. A turning to look back among the stars. Jacinto knew as much, and as such, brought us, alas, to the foot of Rochetito. And forty feet down the ledge, where the world turned a quarter screw to the right. And bequeath unto the sea dawn’s ending. A tune of the sea rising up out of the ridge. The tinkling of keys mixed with wave sounds. Jacinto saying, “let’s go down.” And never a wearier tone was shared. Ridge of ocean no time for despair. Bridge over repaired path. Staggering senses. Queer feelings.

Johnny thinking, ‘yes, fucked in the ass, yes, but by who? And for what sinister purpose.’ And paranoia giving way to further excess along road of path. Jacinto wishing unto compassion for even lost strangers, (a quest a map is not.) Jacinto voice mingling with piano strains. Nonetheless a compassion grounded to Earth. Jacinto. Ocean’s last laugh, Jacinto. Jacinto at least as developed as Oceans. Energy was the matter at hand. No wind. A bigger and better escape. Elise up front riding and peeling hard boiled eggs. Juice and coffee and a notebook of jottings and fuel levels and cost, Earth as household. God knows. Jacinto, Elise. Come common cause, compassion. Jacinto held the equal head as lead the crew backward through time and despair. Barely trebled, it was Johnny in thought reaching out for Bud. Always stressing in the higher good inside. Companionship. Jacinto born to break the silence. Like a shot of subconscious sound in skull of piano. Reaper. The womb of wife running roughshod over a husband of shallow purpose. Jacinto, Elise calling us to return, but to what unknown water borne business? From nothing unto nothing like water upon rain.

“Shit, fuck!” Johnny a mess of contradictory impulse. A stampede of life feeding on life. Jacinto had finished a prayer for the travelers. The dual disasters of suffering and repression, just as collateral damage was to mission creep. The quest was always about moving on. Finishing. “Shit, fuck.” Johnny and his cathartic repetitions. Johnny again having trouble with cell phone hook up. I hadn’t noticed. His cell was small enough to conceal in his palm. “Shit,” again, no Bud on the other end. The town of Rochetito lay concealed, now. Turning the corner around bluff and closer to the truck remains. Call it spew without concern for means and ends. It was Tommy now in full regalia, as Jacinto passed along steak sandwiches and eggs and beer and croissants, and day fading. Morning, first day. Now, more than ever, a nearness too far. The quest goes on and the quotient is love. Be that as it may, the kris crossing trail over many moons. The blizzard of mentality when freedom divorced from itself. Was it home or shelter ahead? Free wheeling thought unhinged. Jacinto leading the way, “to the wagons, boys, to the wagons.” And amusing because Jacinto yelling from the cab of the CAT back-hoe.
And Bobby manning the wheel cable and brakes. Back-hoe and Bobby in tandem was indeed a quotient full of anger. Compiling a stockpile of lies, as a buried narrative unencumbered by rain. Be they the barred resolutions of lingual unities lagging, or, the origin itself like a frozen carcass dragged goodly distance. The firmament cracked open by the whores of language. For surely, the end of begging in the present is equal to the end of obsequious loss from the past? Bobby at the wheel did aggression to the back-hoe.

And Jacinto and Elise now walking hand in hand behind the slow moving hoe. Reunite here, ocean meeting pianos, rig meets ocean. A tuneless trumpet married to the sea. The road due south of Rochetito in a state of demolition and thus perfect for hoe. A strip of road begging the question: to dream of the void of the road of the matter? Two miles per hour behind the back-hoe and through the hills softly. A willingness to crumble under foot behind the lost lovers. The mentality of freedom an illusion? No doubt.
“Jacinto? How did you and Elise meet?” I said as I could bear no longer the bosom of debt owed to the couple.
“We met at, ‘the old folks home at the college.’ as Zimmerman used to say.” retorted Jacinto smartly. No further words, only the plaintiff wail of Tommy’s trumpet attempting a phrygian arpeggio.
“O! Hell. Tommy!” exploded Johnny already tense with nerves about the crossing and what lay overland. The qualitative difference between a twisted trumpet, a prepared piano and a piano sealed as cargo under the seaside waves?

I fumbled in my pocket for my broken framed eyeglasses. The one remaining lens would need serve its due, could still be fashioned into a useful monocle. A lack of sight in a near sighted world would not do. I took the pieces of wire frame and I manipulated the bulged-out section and fixed it more tightly around the remaining lens. And with the remaining strand of wire I fashioned a crude handle. And I tested its use and Johnny saying, “O! My.”
And Tommy, “Eech!” And then he goes back to tooting.
“We’ll call you Mo-Nickle from now on,” smiled Bobby.
“Ha, Ha! Good one, very funny,” I braved. And we continued, a slow moving party down the winding trail. Bobby in the cockpit of the CAT leaning way over the edge trying to glean any first sighting of rig wreckage. Our denial wearing away as closer we go toward the mind-tightening lost rig-site. The appointed time and place had arrived plus with the addition of Jacinto and Elise. We are wandering in the trail of our own becoming, not seeing what need be seen. Equally, we believed already in a wind swept, water drenched dreamscape.

Threshold for us, then, the weightless environs around Border-Town. And doubly for Johnny, as radio contact with Bud established, albeit, for a passing moment, only. “Go east of Palm Springs, and as far as Needles in order to find the available fuel you’ll need.” And between fragments breaking in data stream and more from Bud, “I’ll try and meet you in the high desert, Pendleton’s sunk.” And Johnny unbelieving. “God damn, it.” And Tommy stopping to rest his trumpet lips asked, “what?” And Johnny thinking not speaking then releasing phone, “we must go around to Palm Springs, then north.” Was the quest at its end or its beginning? “What about Bud?” Asked Bobby. And Johnny kicked in before I could ask, “It’s a straight run for him, from El Cajon out to Twenty-Nine Palms.” Satellites down again, intermittent, incremental hell. Lost on the valley floor we cast shadows looking for our broken wheels. The wide world a stampede of insults; and the rig key sunk in a deep sea dungeon.

Jacinto and Elise had turned from their embrace. And Bobby pulled the CAT over near where the twist of metal rail showed point of entry corresponding to crash.
“Only place to refuel is Palm Springs,” repeated Johnny.
“Shite!” said Tommy in his faux Manchester accent.
“First things first,” said Jacinto and kissing Elise and then jumping over the rail and down the flat butt of hill. The trucks had landed among the high grass which imprinted by time’s passing. Jacinto yelled to us, “turn the back-hoe around, let’s get the chains down here.” And off to work hauling chain, linking to hook and knob of back-hoe. And the tractors below, fitted to grind into the slope of hill now concealed by uncleared detritus. Bobby,with straight hand, lowering with rope, enough of the jack-mechanism. Jacinto coiling from down below. Elise pouring hot coffees. Love’s restraint turning to the ire of work, the tireless tempo close enough. Silver-cupped, steaming, thermos coffee smell. Jacinto signaling time to turn the first rig right side up. “Bobby, go ahead, just a couple feet at first,” he started. And Bobby adding, “yes, yes, I see those boulders, buddy, slowly does it.” And a boulder, even, being laid upon by the rig side. And as lift occurred, the left side of rig revealing dented drivers door as the major cosmetic extent of damage. Out of the weeds and into a still usable rig cab. And to a lesser threat a dented hub cap, though none deeper than extruded wheel well. “Now, get us over, Bobby!” And the hand down signal for real by Jacinto. And Bobby pulling couple three feet. “O! Enough!,” yelled Jacinto.
“O!” Yelled Bobby.
“Enough babe, ease her back,” commanded Johnny. And Tommy continuing same slow pace, and easy back-hoe up and out of the valley.

The ravine required more help than we could afford. Rather than silence a tuneless trumpet, helped in the sense of alleviating the alienation we all felt. As if stranded at the edge of some planet cut off from civilization like a thin veneer. All but far gone now, "get the slack out of the chain," Jacinto yelling out orders. Slowly, the machine, like a mating dance on the field nature, keeping us all in place. What fuel lacking? In the mind of nature music as a toot, toot serving to forestall thought. Engines and oils; nature's power to circumvent. All the best hopes of a sweet child? Mother nature at behest of a rebel child. Not counting ourselves so much apart as isolated. So analysable, no haze. A people apart. And Jacinto saying, "keep it going, slow, ease it." And commencing uphill, "everyone topside." And we scampered, tuned to Jacinto's command. Relinquishing us from the duty of feeling. The truck reached us. This threshold not of our choosing. Vacilating here in our country or Jacinto's? Tommy standing closer to Jacinto churned out a flat note, more than enough in our plight, out over valley and open sea.

And no sooner were we topside than Elise hovering with red cups of steaming coffee. "Thank you," and the thank you's all around. "No celebration, yet," said Jacinto. Jacinto from hill's edge with a voice below disembodied. Tommy carrying with full force, to soaked ears, a strain of tune not quite blues. More reminiscent of Mojave nights. Stranded yet not stranded; a daze of desert would now be welcomed. And Bobby's face straining through grimace, like an unknown home defeated by travel half-way between choke points. Mental pain, as if the human had no name for strain, work and further debt. Learning through learning itself a depth underfoot. Hurt heart straightened under a godless realm, Godhead yet unnamed.

Elise in a spontaneous mood of womanhood, unchained from envy, began in a controlled falsetto to match word and deed. Standing with arm around Tommy, putting word to tune in an anything scat. Pain overcome like a truth stretched out over an empty plain. Mind succumbs to man-made travel over the lonely Earth.

The fourfold wind, wave, Earth, time. Ignorance? Fact? Fiction? Like a carrot dangling from a stick of one's own making, a positive negativity was all. Future doings, comings, goings and the hopes of impermanance. A unity inherited, a mandate to pass on the work. Men and woman bound by voices standing as one. A hand on the grip of work to no end? A finality of non-finality; with time enough to chant an eerie call to arms. And Time's trumpet a further scat blues recalling ancient days. Days of plight giving forth new life, though, death itself was in the offing. A dismantling of our own reckoning; wave drenched emptiness. Strained, twisted notes. Love's embrace of labors sweet. An ode to furtherance as Jacinto, " O.K. O.K." And he struggled to join us, now on the upper bank. "Everyone on this side of the rig." And he motioned us to the dented side of the rig and he pointed to some timbers by the roadside. "Let's use these to leverage over the side." And he picked up one timber and said, "Bobby hold her steady." And we fully joined Jacinto with two more timbers. Johnny had one timber and I held the third. "On the count of three, Bobby," said Jacinto. "Hit it and bring her to 30,000 R.P.M.'s" And Johnny looking around saying, "On the count of three, heave."
Jacinto saying, "Keep this dented side up."
"Got it?" asked Johnny.
"Yes," I said.
"One, two..." Jacinto in due course counting. "Three." And like an inexplicable fusion of tooting trumpet, a second of silence and the hulk of rig, the full shape of tractor coming up over the ridge and onto the roadside. Timed nicely and with the full heave the truck back on terra firma. And Jacinto in a moment, "yes, good work." And more so the physics of leverage and Bobby looking over to Tommy and happy to say, "and better yet the ceasing of that blasphemous trumpet." And with a chorus of laughs all around. Elise chimes in with, "and where's my accompanist?" And Tommy brought back from a faux death saying, "thank you, my dear." And Tommy toots the dirge yet again. And Bobby jumping up with all the excitement of a holy, jack-rabbit. "Whoa!" And back to work straightening out the dented wheel-well. Johnny examined the blown out front tires. "Let's get those replacements. And Bobby heeding like his own self-imposed command, scampered to the rescue of new tires. And from below the hillside Bobby yelling up to Tommy, "O! Trumpet man, get down here." And Tommy reacting to commands with, "O! Hell."
He reluctantly hands the trumpet to Elise. "Seems I'm wanted, my dear." And with a wink and a smile, he walks his thin ass side-ways down the hill, his work boots digging in to the incline. Through a fear unwarranted, Tommy makes his way over to Bobby and the second crashed rig.

Uplifted by a sweet, fragrant wind and the joy of seeing the Peterbilt breathing with new life. An inner smile on our faces making lighter our plight, the sword of fate not cutting to the depth. And in no time Bobby and Tommy rolling two wheels uphill. And as the two crossing the hump of hill, Bobby retreating back down muffled voice saying, "the tire iron." Trailing wind in both directions, "I'll be right back." Haunted by water and wave and the movement of minutes, to the further call of piano note wafting up through valley. Tommy now with trumpet back in his hands. Elise with a human pain of voice, embodying the enormous weight cursed generations. The receiving hands of Elise and the lighter weight of scat. Terminal, but, with the added tonality of word mixed with deed. Like some ancient Siren telling tale of love mixed with war. Lost to time, the brute nature of fact, the further work of civilization, an artifact covered over by soil's weight. And the pull of the group by sound and the crew expelled forward. Pushed from behind to follow as a break-time waltz. Down to Bobby shielded in the coverage of trailer, hidden from view, but notes penetrating the stillness and all of us now making it down to the open ended trailer. And Bobby in tune with himself, in some song of endlessl capturing what left hand slithering on through to right hand. Still. Unknown. Overlapping and the addition of Tommy and Elise, joining together on the bongos and Jacinto pulling a surprise harmonica from back pocket. And the jam culminating as sun's exit beckoned from behind the trailer; in some limbo separate, past, future, unencumbered by its spoils. Nature at the expense of no one at all. Further down the road a time without hurt or ominous calamity. And Johnny only absent, listening, and adding his own dialogue, overlapping as father and son long-distance shattered by static and the faltering lines of communication, yet, again. Absent the screams and curses, anew, now Johnny comforted by the lines of intersecting notes. A blues comfort. Healing along the lines of Mojave gladness. Surrounded by nothingness? Abiding in time Johnny adding his voice. And a smile and adjacent hug to Elise. Even Johnny the healing touch more missed then the tall lie of further separation. And Bud present as a promise to find again, whether the threshold be North or South, a further meeting somewhere up the road. The receding lines meeting again, ahead in the dark, no light. By a sense of intuition know hope and love. Quarrel silenced by music. And faith in the knowledge of roads extending excess. The extenuating lines converge. Up ahead. Singing further. Humming along with a line of tune. Recede as sun setting. Time's lisp. And further culling under untamed stars. "Boys," calling Jacinto, "these pianos need to be salvaged." Salvaged before we depart the unstated premise. "Tomorrow morning, then," Johnny agreed.
"Yes, tomorrow, for tonight we rest," concluded Jacinto.
"Back to the house for a meal," added Elise. And with that Bobby quit tinkling and silence reigned. The valley grown dim, and talk, too, dwindling with the light. And further hill set to receive the sun. All but lit. Fire-red reeds, blonde, against red clouds gathering. And a mist of green blades, higher, set against pine cone browns. Brown eaves, branch and the somber crew abandoning the cozy cabin of bent trailers. One-by-one, with Elise leading uphill, a river-valley wet with toil. Hubris lost? Generational strength gathering on legs with heart thumping. To gain a foothold against time's passing? Space. Ahead the Peterbilt now healing in the open air. And us filing passed, even turning over the engine once more. Leaving all future work to future days. Ahead, whether tomorrow be tomorrow, or not. For the sake of sanity a momentary suppression of terror. Then, as now, a gaping hole at the bottom of time. Translucent under fog, vacuous. Like presence absent from mind, body vacant like homelessness itself. Cause deterred by effect. Heathen mind broadcast by unseen god, yet effective.

Gathering ourselves over the boomeranging back road. Retracing steps long forgotten. Silence all too well known. Talking likened to blank bullet without cause. The effort of deeds now a full fledged rehabilitation. Established vehicles. Engine roar seemingly more distant than ever before. Again, roadway would feel like what present wonder? Unknown. A wandering group of gurus, questing without a quest. Trampling underfoot thistle and reed, the curve of arc of road, thus wander. Home, until the cusp of hill. Home. And Elise into the house a home. The men to the rear, yard-talk over barbeque bonfire. And liquor and the round table-set. And cleared debris of past meal. And succumb to the sunset and bearing of wheels. Longer undertaking given over to night. A night, without, music. A meditation on silence, Tommy and with wine-bottle, corkscrew happier still.

Tommy with his trumpet tucked away in house prior to dinner preparations, as if a cue of pain away out of sight, a deepening sickness of night music; a hope of tomorrow as opposed force to work, forever needed. More and more a numbing force, spirit, ghost unseen. Overcoming the not perfect. Smell enough, talk plenty. Repeat. The tale about the swim of wave. The thorough flood enough to wash over like music. Memory enough in flood. Watch thought, human thought. Fragile. Gone like a nothingness in the face of depth of soundless depths. Sky darker, green disolved in nothing. No wish, mind determinant of no thing. Itself, a thing captured like a dove flying by horizon's edge.

Elise returning with a tray of mixed meats, bloodstained like human guilt uncovered. Does the feeling of fire unto fire burn the cruelty of forgiveness? The crueler fate and agent of nothing. The meat of a meatier flesh. And talk giving way to eating. And bread and juice of meat. And moon rising. And greed washing away by blood and wine, christening human fatuousness. And lies. Wealth degraded through hardened hands. Ominous. The plight of neediness. Human-beingness. Woman. Elise, standing, toasting, bringing all together as nourishment. Souls wearier by far, in addition, standing, clearing throat, "To you all...in friendship and love," hailed Elise.
"Hear, hear!" Said Jacinto.
"To you, dear lady," chimed Tommy, now giddy with and by wine's redness. Cheeks blush with the blossoming power of the rose. Redressed with a Gaelic bloom of language. Language blown free with wind, a breeze of tune's language.
"To Elise and Jacinto, friends forever," Tommy with a romantic whimsy unleashed. A lovers testament to our better natures.
"Alright, old man, hear, hear!" Said Johnny. And Bobby with a culminating sense of the poetic, standing, looking over to Tommy, "Tommy, to you, your old ass, may you never work it off." And into invisibility, laughter and drunkeness as antidote. Receding day and pain of night, washing away through jokes, wine-filled laughter, protein nourishment. Filled bellies and reeling stars. Tolerable instance of covert concession to community. The focal point of our gathering, a fruitful beginning to an end of friendship. A closure of night opening out into morning. Sleep in an airy night. One place, one night. One piece not gathered in word, nor deed. Recall imagination. Flight of fancy corresponding to fleeting muse. All grinding movement, objects turning to stillness. In further stillness, stars crossed, fates sealed, a movement nearer than nearness itself. Deep History itself over and out. And this unmoving itself extending to Jacinto and Elise, separated by a circle of unmoving friends. In a chair, unmoving, spinning. Earth, stillness of movement in place. Wheel as anchor. Pole unmoving. Friendship of equals, in tune with note itself. A music of stellar arrangements, proportion and sleep slowly overcoming. Each one in own time moving. First, Tommy, with an unaccustomed inversion of drinking volume. Then Bobby, with bent smile, sloping in chair, seemoingly opposed to Tommy, Bobby, albeit, quite the disciple. Then, some minutes later, Elise, in due proportion with drink in hand, love's quotient gathering closer to dawn. Jacinto succumming, and Johnny, and then, finally, yours truly. Pen as the mind of the matter, analysis of night. Train, like dream, music intermingling with myth. Zombie night, twitching, older men snoring. Torture mimics crying; non-abiding rain, a witch's brew of wine, incoherent rain. Tommy, even in sleep, practicing many a limerick, aloud, with punchline for amusement's sake. A lover's dream with sweet smell of excess, and excess leading to further life. Elise and Jacinto apart, yet the contravening thread from navel to omphalos. One unit, trailing behind the future. Life? Johnny already giving his all. Johnny, in dream, surfing the hugest of waves. Training strokes, particular crawl, backstroke, sidestroke fighting along undertow. Reverse course, head out to horizon's edge; life-giving water, not death, turned back on itself.

And Bobby in dream-state, along road culminating in mountain pass, an older memory of ski trip following momma and poppa downhill. Ancient, seven years of age, surrender as a whiteness with grey cloud cover, so very different from adulthood. A cold blanket to cover the warmth of forgetting.

And I revealing a vague sense of dread. A gathering self, sleep walking. A wandering self, a self detached from self. Wordless night. Sans rocket, spaceship, sans explosion. Future tense teased toward wind and water. Immune to the ravages of time. Senses secluded, beachfront empty, erosion, a lone dog. Empty legal pads. Broken pencils. Present? A precience. A piano note questioning itself. A request for sleep. Essence of time unearthed. Recalling the scope of the crime, an ulterior motive, a vision laundered through wind.

Calm night, as 3 A.M. turned to four. And the glow of dawn like a backing countdown. Time's rearview mirror, territory of fire. Diminishing, rusted over ashcan, glow in can matching glow on horizon. All deeply asleep, air tranquil, furtherance of remorse; a call to action in no other way, a doing nothing, stasis, inert function. Human agency tried and convicted. Tamed to itself, coiled and ready, unconscious. Floatation a dream device to wield. A layover of daytime as two layers superimposed. Space-time a brochure of planetary blackness. Blueness of water amid drowning away blues. Notation a mathematic of a new day dawning. Floating allowing as much to movement as to cognition. I as much as you. Them sequestered on seats of their own making. An inspirational chord connecting coast, overt barking on yonder hill. 4 A.M. turning to five. Energetics of dawning mind. Language, mathematics, musical notation floating off the page. A schematic of closure. Lounging dream, existence, a feeling co-equal with night. Merging day over hill, and below a truckers ransom equaling chance, another opening. Not seconds, thirds, a reasonable approach. A bet of forty-eight hours, or so. Movement of no movement. A truckers heart, mining down, the grit and dust of roadway; not inclined to a rear view look in the mirror. Soul excepting the unknown; self in other, as Jacinto and Elise waking to a knowledge of lover's touch. And, I too, blinking to wakefulness. As in a delerium of turbulent dream. Wave of crescent moon breaking-in, intruder alert to love's arrow. A quick tussel. Hand in hand, aloof, above ridge. I spied Jacinto and Elise heading, with back turned, into the house. All others asleep, and I lounging with eyes half open. And further cause to work or sleep? The coming day a difference, a departure, a coming to fruition no longer South of the border. Stasis coming into its own by overt movement. Blinking as data, digital essence on-off. Black interior monologue of history. Flake of sunlight baking in overly long strides. Now half-sun over shoulder and direct ray in half of eye. Turning to three quarters, open and yawn. Stretch. Secluded sector. I move to stand, unzip, pee. Against bush, and peeking over shoulder as wiz sound. Traversing through tinkling eave of sound. Fire not awakened by plight and not as much as a cure. Disaster as to curl upon one self.

Johnny aroused by sound, movement as wave invisible. Still, the journey not well traveled. A stop-motion action. Caught to inherit this opportunity. Convert Johnny and Bud to some further meeting. Catching my eye, I retreated from standing over the bush to standing over Johnny, now, grumbling for coffee. And I lending a hand up, "fucking good wine, eh?" I asked.
"Yup," said Johnny. "Check out those two," he finished pointing to Tommy and Bobby lounged out into a deeper oblivion. Beyond depth closer to current reality. And Johnny and I staggering into the house, our backs to the two drunk men sleeping away with contentment. Blood and wine.

In kitchen, rubbing my eyes, fiddling with cabinet doors, finally, extricating coffee beans. And the grinder was handy on countertop, and the drip maker adjacent. Also, I discovered the pack of filters and I adjusted mechanism for ten cups.
Poured worth of water from gallon jar on the counter adjacent refrigerator and switched the machine on and forward the dripping commenced and the gurgling sound augmented until the steaming liquid began to accumulate passed the two line four line limit and so on and so forth. Johnny jumping the gun swooped-up the coffee pot handle and poured himself a half-cup and sat down at table on a spongy covered metallic framed chair with his head down groping with left hand for his cell-phone, now, administered as a balancing act to coffee cup in right hand. I went back to searching the lined mark six cups, eight cups and my patience therefore unmasked. My attempt at further waiting proving futile, I poured myself a cup and sat down with Johnny at table. Sipping silently we gathered our wits at mornings first full coming.
"What's the story?" I asked to break the ice.
"Story is we've got to get around T. J. by way of Route 96 and make our way to the East. El Cajon. Bud will be waiting there."
"There and not Pendleton?"
"Pendleton's in flood-tide, all but covered. The troops have displaced to higher ground."
"Lovely," I ended gloomily and stared into the blackness of my coffee cup. With the morning light beginning to stream through kitchen window over sink and depth of feeling? An approach to tommorow and future songs. And the equivalent of a hung-over Tommy stumbling in to say, "O! Jesus, I need a gulp of wine to ease my aching head. Wine. Wine. No Christianity without wine." And following him around step, stride, cool, not hung-over. The discrepancy of youth and years.
"Old man," said Bobby. "Try the 'fridge, and shower-up. You smell like a French whorehouse." And we chuckled as Tommy stepped outside holding the glass wine jug over his shoulder with propped thumb like the olden days.
"Well, well. What have we here?" Asked Bobby and answering himself, "coffee, black and off to the pianos, boys." And Bobby sat down to table curious to know our plan of attack and a timeline to probe. The further quotient at hand and, of course, Tommy, outside, already paying homage to Aurora. Feeling better, alright, with atuned notes of his rugged tuneless trumpet.

Silence taking hold and coffee effectively in due proportion. Equal minds set at table. Creaking, and banging emenating from interior of house. The repetitive motion of grinning faces. Love-act propagating from interior of Elise and Jacinto's bedroom. And mischevous Bobby going to use the toilette down the hall, his half-excuse to probe the matter further. And adding insult to injury, he started whistling counterpoint to Tommy's baleful tune. Whiling away the thought's progression. The road North a future? A moment in time. And in comes Jacinto, tip-toeing, a gleeful attitude and a practiced non-chalance. The communal setting of sex? Just another overt act and none worth the comment.
"Good morning," said Jacinto. "Good to see you found coffee." And he helped himself to a cup and joined us at table. Sun moving continually up the window, now, light streaming more than half-way up the framing.
"Elise and I will accompany you to the border," said Jacinto. "We know the hinterlands pretty well."
"No need, really," said Johnny, "we know the area, as well, from our trips to Austin. You better stay close to home." We let the conversation slip back to morning sun and coffee. And outside, the continuing maniacal, jazz riff by Tommy like the pain of a blue, blue morning. He readjusted his fingering, correspondingly, a shrill set of notes, like a piano-note of watery despair. And Jacinto listening and draining his cup of coffee to the dregs. Standing, he retrieved a refill. He filled a second cup and now, standing at the threshold of the corridor said, "Elise loves her morning cup." And a quick wink at us, and he turned and walked into the bedroom. We stared a moment and then continued with our coffee and a moment of pre-planning our return to the disaster zone. To begin again, like finding an unseen love to follow back home.
"I'm heading back to the trucks," said Bobby. "I started to get the hang of the back-hoe." And with a breezy demeanor and a light-footed exit, we hear him outside, fake-kicking Tommy in the ass. And both hauling off downhill and the fading trumpet sound, then later, trumpet mixing with engine sound of back-hoe motor.

I stood and put my cup in the sink giving it a quick rinse, and looking up seeing the sun passed the window sash. And on my tip-toes, and clasping the counter with both hands, I reached for the protruding end of a cloth hanging from the shelf. I went back to faucet to scrub the baleful dirt accumulated, for lack of a better cleaning, and I turned, drying my hands and said, "I'm going to follow those two down...how about you, Johnny?" And Johnny unceremoniously began toying with his cell-phone. "I think I'll have another cup and try Bud, again," he said, "I'll follow you, soon." And as a final exit I straightened the chairs about the table, and with an encouraging slap on Johnny's back I said, "good luck, see you down there." And I was off, gathering a few moments distance separating me and Bobby and Tommy. The back-hoe now a faint turning of yellow angled down the mountain path. The edge corner down, truncated. Back-hoe march through time, no more rueful accents of crowded streets. No longer covered streets.

Johnny communicating. Elise and Jacinto's tripartite fix done. Gaining momentum as hill sloping down, at six percent grade, more or less. Gravity a force to be reckoned with, this land, a black space between objects, this here threshold. Bobby had the back-hoe in position and Tommy running the chain link down to the trailer. "We're going to pull the whole damn thing," said Bobby. "Good idea," I said coming up behind them at the hill's edge. With one foot on the twisted guard rail I was thinking, 'the whole freaking thing is going to break apart.' "Good," I repeated. Tommy, down below, with both hands on the chain and his godforsaken trumpet mouthpiece end first shoved into the back of his jeans. "Nice ass," I yelled down to him. The comical man turning, facing me, "you like that, huh?" He said and added, "truth is I have no ass, worked it off some time ago, haha!" And he turned again, shoving the trumpet further down the loosening jeans and the crack of his ass. And with hook end of chain appending to chassis of trailer, "looks mighty flimsy, Bobby?" he said up the hill. And he muttered to himself, repeating, "flimsy, flimsy, mighty flimsy." And Bobby about to unleash a ruthless verbal assault, opted instead for a loving encounter, "Old man, your negativity sucks, hook it up."

DON CHEECH

Don Cheech comes waltzing out of the timbers. Occult in bearing, wielding a chain saw. Smiling a convex, vertical smile. Don Cheech says, "Oh! Oh!" And the back chassis comes crashing to the ground like un-grounded upon a stalk of nothingness. And Tommy pulling the horn out of his ass. Like an inauguration of some golden ass, Don Cheech appears. It was Don Cheech peeking out the back of his sixteen hundred acre ranch. Pine trees, and surly, Don Cheech holding a walking stick, a thick bastone. Amused, Don Cheech smiles at the tuneless trumpeteer, Tommy. Accompanyong Don Cheech, a woman in blue pull-over V-neck sweater. So appeared Don Cheech, and flanked by woman, out of the midst of truck wreckage and forest glenn. Don Cheech wearing a white, spotless, long-sleeved t-shirt. The chainsaw dropped to the ground. "Ah!" said Tommy perplexed, "hello." And Don Cheech said, "Don Cheech at your service." And in a tumble, without ryhme, Don Cheech exclaims, "we got banditos at the border, banditos in the hinterland." And Don Cheech ended with a question, "you boys heading North?" And with appearance of Don Cheech a quarter retreat to camp, and Johnny would meet and see Don Cheech for himself.

Later, back at camp, "Bull," says Johnny. "Fisher Hills is the easy slam through, and Mal Hills through to the gas pumps of the Fortress Valley and then ease into the eastern flank of San Diego County."
"Or, as I like to call it," says Don, "San Diegito by the empty-river, Rosellita. Ah! Rosellita. Plenty of bandito's there, my compadre'." Don Cheech knowingly abiding in in backdrop of vision of Black Bean Mountains, western rim overlooking Valley of the Dolls, looking East toward Western Texas, and due North to Arizona. And due West to San Diego and the hinterlands, a warm glow of fuel oil burn and carcass of night.

And Don Cheech gathering together with us amidst barbeque, bringing us down to our senses with evening. "Black oil, hell," started Don Cheech. His way of speaking the telos first and leading back to the starting point.
"What's a barrel going for?" Asked Johnny.
"Nine hundred," said Don with a twisted smile. Only time now to crawl back to the rigs. But, first Don Cheech would lead us into the hills, a meet to plan our exit.

Jacinto and Elise by the campfire, reflection of lovers reflecting off the grille of the Peterbilt. Alone, twiddling our time and our lone nuts. Except, for Elise and Jacinto, lovers until time's ending. And we looked out under starlight, shooting stars. Don Cheech, Hilltop Rochetito, and Johnny with a man-made map at hand by the campfire. Johnny, with eyes intent, pointing to Pilgrim's Pass, over and across to border. "A dank hole of a pass if I ever did see one," said Tommy. The trumpeteer Tommy silent, with rising moon over shoulder. This pointed future junction, shaking in the moonlight, a joint in time, unhinged.

We came to the Flat Hills by early afternoon, next day. And so came trouble, instead of afternoon tea. We turned to Don Cheech, "bandito's in the dust, Vulcans."
"Eh?" says Jacinto to Elise by his side. "Babe, when we swoop down Route 99 lights out, O.K.?" Silence. Twin motors running. Peterbilt, silent running, wheel-wells lit, nearing the border, south by southwest, passed the extinct Union Oil fields. Bandito's alright, the Texas Badgers. The die cast, as Badgers protecting a munitions dump just north of the border, and they were joined by a contingent of Minutemen. A ragtag militia, trigger happy like a red-hot dawn, hole-up at Walt's Market at the 99 junction. "We'll swoop down like a school bus in September, and start our bid for the border," suggested Don Cheech.
"After our straight run down, break right just beyond Walt's," added Johnny.
"Hurry, we're a little late," added Bobby.
"They look like a trumped-up paint-ball crew," said Tommy, already six pints down by late afternoon.
"It's Signor Petard and his boys, Buck Fusher and Company. Don't let their measley appearance fool you," added Don Cheech. We wizzed passed Cooley and into the flea-bitten, dust-heap of Walt's. "Whoop!" Cried Jacinto. He was driving and Elise shotgun, when two, boom, boom, sounds pierced and joined with the caterwailing cries of Jacinto. Elise had been shot through the steel-reinforced Peterbilt door. Twin shots to the flank. R.P.G. Jacinto keeping on until the northern end, beyond Walt's, at the Benedetto Hills, just beyond the Baja border and just to the threshold to U.S.A. It was Buck at the Gatlin Gun. Petard manning a trench with shotguns and pistols. So, the battle plan seeing the light of day had been cruelly adjusted from the abstract. One dead. None wounded, except, for sure, the destroyed Jacinto.

We headed up the next ridge, pulling our rigs along a low-rise of row houses.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Wittgenstein

BOOK II.
SMILIE'S PORTAL

Smilie’s Doctor, and permanent resident of Ass-Trench, Dr. Belasco, entered Smilie’s darkened foyer, with kit in hand and wearing a three piece, grey suit. “Come in, Doctor,” Smilie said. Smilie was already pre-positioned on the wine colored leather couch. “Please, Doctor, sit, let’s get started, I’m, I’m quite anxious today, Doctor?” Smiley, of course, his usual self, asking for immediate attention. “Yes, Mr. Smiley, sir, coming sir.” And Belasco sitting with kit at his side in his own red wine colored leather easy chair. ‘With all due respect,’ thought Belasco, ‘the chalice of thought lay open, but, in a pseudo-capacity.’ No free exchange of ideas. No, the presence of Dr. Belasco served only to present Smilie’s peculiar non-attachment to neither, love nor, to work. The object du jour? The dialectic a mere covering over of for unrelenting self-obsession. A narcissism of intent tempered through Smilie’s fractured mirror-less image.

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Richard N. Smilie, Copley, California born and bred had won reelection and serving at the pleasure of the board of Smilie & Co. had gained the support helping organize a coalition of Northern California families concerned about increasing corruption, especially since the flood had scarred the landscape and adjacent cities as far south as San Joaquin and extending north through the Redwood Triangle and Copley. Only thing, Smilie pretended to help clean; Smilie a cool fat man in a seersucker suit had his good share of robust big lying laughter. His seersucker had outgrown its own potential. And the freak show needed more and more feed to cope with all the nastier cruel epistemology of Smilie’s City sworn to imbecility. Played for political cost. Always a cost, and the tabulator of that cost benefit analysis would, could, should be only the fat cool Smiley; raised on the dour streets south of the Mission and his father, Norberto, had heard tell, was abused, neglected and the father, literally Father Smilie, had run off with queer lover and fled back to Mexico City. Smiley, Richard took the bait and ran, ran to Copley; his method of operation, run from father as queer cross-dressing bottom. Be that a thing accomplished, and to a differing extent Norberto knew as much, about the growth, decay, mendacity of the soul in the cross pollination with American real-politic.
In due time, Smilie and Co. had cornered the market on California munitions and the outcome a shift after the flood to move most of the contracting development to the North. And the abusing truth was out. The gleam of a scheme comes to Smiley in the downtown offices, downtown Sacramento, his rationale and reason for being; the collective grip of fear in his constituents. You could tell by his gait, as he climbed at dawn the courthouse steps, and the appropriations committee were already gathering with interns and researchers scuttling about the place. Brown, and deeper brown, shading to near black the walls of the entry and the further hall and corridor. And meeting rooms with the lamp lights on each desk were turned either off, or, to the muted one-step of the adjustable bulb. The instant Smiley enters the hastening to add, by turning a lock pick, or, to have away in adjacent building, two well placed buddies, S. Singer and R. Moor, alert staffers for sale down on Bradley and Main Place.
The tabulations on behalf of the staff of Mr. Smilie was headed up by the locally notorious, Mr. J. Kinked. The abusive Mr. Kinked had worked through the campaign years up through the turn of the century at Cochlea and through-out the San Joaquin Valley finally building his state-wide glory in Redwood Triangle. And Copley as the center of the budgetary battle for the purse, Smilie, accrued the use of making the, ‘never enough lies through protest,’ or debate. But, the beauty of the system Smilie devised, pure genius, owed it all to Mr. P. Kellogg. The facts on the ground were key. Mr. Kellogg speaking to the Copley Rotary just last year, as reported, “Protest is dead and information control is the new ball game.” The scenario built upon information manipulation with the express purpose of leading the flock astray. The lies and misdirection, quite brilliant, for a while, ‘for a while,’ Johnny would say speaking of the set-up to Nick and Tommy. The plan was the plan. The man had made a choice. Johnny, he the decider, deciding what to do with team intact, post-flood.
As dawn turned to a second hour of morning, the crew of researchers, interns and faculty of the various think tanks, of Smilie funded, and, of course, projected a false wall of anti-intellectualism, and crude caricatures were allowed to predominate. The main room had turned into a small buzz of intent and cross talk. Coffee-talk. The abuse of the hour was a weltering, sweltering miasma of meetings, and the more now in the open, on the main stage, headlining the premiere point of the room and an elevated stage of some three steps high. What was the distance measured and what the quotient of the hour’s cost? No hope, no false knowledge; all in the conscious intent of Smilie, and he perused the stage and unbuttoned the top button of his tailored french blue shirt.
Strictly speaking the proof would be in the pudding. And the countdown to the day seen by Smilie at home in room playing at political dice with Kinked. Both Smilie and Kinked on stage, now, separated from the growing army of research assistants. Several men in overalls moving equipment, bringing several boxes about half the size of a refrigerator. The sky outside becoming more overcast as the mounting sun lay hidden/ Increasingly, from the watchful gaze, the basement across the street and Johnny feeling relaxed as the sun, more hidden, starting evening with warmth in the cold brick basement. Cold could not discharge; the circle had not been squared. The future had been sprung dilemma no longer a lack of preparation, no longer a motive to act, the collusion in the eyes of the faux children hidden in the wings.
‘Smiley, Dick Smiley,’ is how he introduced himself and with Kinked aloof and hospitably cloaked in fine, golden stranded elitism. The crux of the matter, as to what we, as say a people of the state of California, ‘we hereby do declare, we the people of the state of California find the defendant,’ Johnny dreaming and detached had seen the writing on the wall back two years ago, when at the request of the government stooges he had disabled the street lights at the corner approaching downtown. Johnny in working electric line repairman outfit rigging the tap. The consequence of Johnny’s staged interrogation, an easy escape at the hands of an inept, Smilie and Co. crony, then as now, filled Copley government.
Kinked and Smiley had by dint of talent proved the intent in the eye of financial disaster. Johnny following their long careers in the Southland had become expert at finding clues leading to the heart of the matter. ‘Look into one corrupt corner,’ Johnny would say to anyone bothering to listen; and asked after the flood, what happened? Questioning began in earnest, though the time lag was a thing not accomplished. Well, as the two brothers in arms, at the helm of ship called mediocrity, Kinked and Smiley had overrun city government by a deliberate attempt at drowning and a reintroduction to crony capitalism. The only danger is the incremental atrophy of the constitutional order. In any case, in June, Johnny’s Bud had officially registered web site spotlighting the California corruption via E.D 4312, and further intent, especially, in the defense contracting industry. Price gouging and the peony given from top to bottom in the hierarchy of the given powers. Downtown, Kinked and Smiley had ordered projects through fraud out of state shell companies; all in accordance with the Bingo and Co. and Bel-fore Industries, Inc. models; to the tune of billions in outmoded and hidden finance agendas.
Copley had gone from a city at per capita income of seventy-five thousand, to just under fifty thousand in less than six years and the percentage of residents under the poverty line jumped from six percent to an astonishing sixteen percent. The rhythm and rhyme of the injury done could be gleaned from both before and after photos, or time lapse photography or computer animation modeling without too much trouble. The real trouble was the decline in collective action. After the flood many in the Bay area had moved north of the wine country, looking for higher ground and a sense of safety from the scarred and fractured land. Smilie and his minions had ascertained as much and the only obstacle was grievous time. With everyone in his pocket and with corporate connections internationally, Smiley and Kinked and their various “projects” had concentrated enough power in the fewest possible hands and the rest was turned to rewriting San Joaquin history. The countdown to a collusion of control and the plague-like atmospherics were for Kinked an unmitigated pleasure. To Smiley, pain inflicted strictly for power and profit were the only games in town.
The morning with clouds in the image of nooses in the air above downtown. Smilie, an unreconstructed smoker, had walked out to the alley and further cars parked adjacent structure of four levels stood and revealed the blue Odyssey Van with the tinted windows all around and would qualify as Tommy and Nick undercover, together again. Not trucking but having van will travel. The smoking and talking began in earnest as Kinked stepped out to join Smilie, not in a smoke, but, out with from his coat and with booze addled hand made a concoction out of scotch and separate soda. The boys intent on making a good impression on Johnny had rigged the bug to a recorder situated on the computer stack array of servers Nick was toying with to the limerick eyed amusement of Tommy, happy go lucky Brynes. And Nick with headphones deciphering closely the apparent coding of the mad Smilie and his cohort Kinked. What this amounted to was sums in the billions, the amounting power clamp-down on California power. Political, that is, for generations, and hence the costs on the masses of the dirty heaving few at the top. The little man in the black booth with thick rimmed glasses; the freak is bigger brother like something close to Johnny. Would thinking and Nick make it so? Had a cue to deciphering the whole codices? Pattern seemingly the result of quotient over pi squared. Equaling the hypotenuse of the list of accomplishes. So, the list, after all was the thing accomplished by Nick and Tommy. The grey beard sidekick from parts unknown east of the Mississippi. On alert for more propaganda and the ear of Tommy Boy, atonement through jazz, to the insult of corporate lies. Nick hacked corporate and governmental servers with an ease as if a simple sleight of hand and the good thing Johnny loved? The pair as brothers, two, that much never having experienced.
The low and mighty had been in corrupt state since mankind delivered unto the preacher what the preacher did so declare. ‘It can happen here and it did,’ Johnny thought as he touched with a slight scrape of the finger to declare the ocean bankrupt and the country and the state, too. ‘Seems to be more than one villainy post flood,’ and Johnny, a truckers man, had no doubt heard as much through the grapevine. Johnny the translucent, the anti-criminal, the transparent oblique. The cure and turn to healing by distortion; media truth of the origin of civilization good. For more than nothing and less than all. Accomplished after the fact by technology, the grand inquisitor doomed to reflection. Like in hell gate turning, now, from Smiley Jr. to Smiley Sr. and in the background with lucid, abstract, gingery hand, waving Kinked the loner, aloof, psychotic genius. The manipulated daunt and the keen, ‘destruction for destructions sake,’ and the obscene distortion of fact to fiction, an optical illusion for a cause.
The alley reeked of piss, buckets semen, whores, sucking sounds and Johnny three doors down waiting. Wait for it, Johnny and Nick dozing and Tommy listening with eyes peeled on the alley and Kinked swigs another scotch and Smiley smokes. The limelight of greedy fingers; the conversation eludes pick up of micros. The damn night of computer hacking, pro government mob rigged media. Conglomerates and data collection. Having neglected to keep the resistance under control, Smiley, always on the lookout for the man. The black box silhouette smiling under a dark cloak of indoor light.

JOHNNY’S DUE
Phenobarbital and wine; shaky skeletons in the closet; with tooth brush hand silent kid on board. Ship to shore, oar to anchor. Travel from a to b. Place the place of last resort. The plans laid. But, best laid plans unwind. Alone, the silent willows. Planes of disregard for the optimist amongst us. Of clout from sea to shining sea. Well, Nick and Johnny Bobby and Tom as the sine qua non of the lost; the demented fabulousness of daughters and sons taken and held as opposing force; black hearts and the finger pluckers complaining to what? For Johnny and Bud-worth, as son and grandson to Don Cheech, with embedded alias to aforementioned authorities, Don Ho, Don Christopher, Don Dee, Don Chichi, Don Chi, (his preference), Don D., Don Duane, Don Dunno and Don Done.
Up San Joaquin way, community near Copley for meeting Johnny, Don Cheech, likewise, Bud son of Johnny and father to Teresa. So on the third day of May, infamy of a trial found, yet to be deciphered. But, case in point, induction in the A.M. and Copley as the marking of a line of demarcation. From the point, off hand, from local Captain to hand off to Marshall Simony and the boys Merck and Miller. To hell with Johnny, then Don, then Bud-worth buffered like thought stationed in the bowels of Ass Trench.
After the flood and the subsequent massacre at Ass-Trench the outcome was a breakdown of community. Families settling, many to the north of San Joaquin proper and higher ground the making point. And settling down to Don and Johnny and conversion from several years of making good money trucking to Badge, Texas, and Sage, Florida and later toward the end of that fleeting corporate experiment and the beginning of a long hall already set in motion. Well, to begin at the start, money itself insinuating a further tax upon a populace already afflicted by three major climatic shifts, two natural disasters and one unexplained, so far. With greater fear spreading through the coastal California areas now relegated to rich castles surrounded by fence and paroled private mercenary armies. It could have all been different. Remember that fact as you read histories of Ass-Trench.
A proposition for action at hand. For the family, the head capo, Don C. at seventy odd years had seen enough of relocation; what with a truckers life raising Johnny solo. With a deceased mamma and more than enough political discontent around to make California an increasingly inhospitable culture. With the end of war and the start of a perpetual battle commencing with Rush and Company, and some handful of years enough to unleash a miasma. A normal conversation would assume to be on par with natural disaster and/or a morally bankrupt terminology. Used on the street, prior to the recent plague years, a mounting crisis precipitated by wordy decisions, well hidden by the deciders. And the personal liability for us all? A call to ascribe further proof of the change. In this story, Nick would tell of an outside object inserting, as it were, an enema.
California, with the advantage, of separation by distance, and a non energetic infrastructure, the picture of the scene a safe detachment from the external political misfortunes of the majority of Americans. Here the start of the aggression on the basis an independent commercial aspect. Be it cannabis or tax dollars on alcohol? And with lagging indicators all showing no hope out from the detriment of deciders. And their minions? Johnny, story goes, received a slap on the wrist for protesting military buildup at Ass-Trench and hence, the massive growth of Ass Trench. Growing the beast until Bud-worth and Don, with recurring nightmares, turned on the military with the addled brain of citizenry. Of course, the next demarcation, the next generation of warfare; torn economy at home, distrusted abroad. The end of golden California. Gone and with tax burden augmented to comply with the staggering eighty percent military expenditure, excluding black box and mercenary budgets.
Scourge, California wide, emanating from Sacramento, where Johnny’s second confrontation, at the Federal Courthouse, rendered a slap on the wrist as an omen. Nick and Tommy had the honor on that fresh April day to be arrested. Without Johnny. The criminal trial of Smilie and Co. had occupied the political news-hounds for well over two years. A verdict was due anyway and Nick and Tommy had the duty of diversion. Tommy said, “we do this well, boss,” and Johnny had entrusted Tommy and Nick to map out, in intricate detail, the last specifications of his sixty-two page manual. The elimination from Congress of the warmonger class, of which, Smiley and Co., through hook, crook and bribe had extorted more than enough. The rightful owners of the money, the citizens of Copley. Following the logic we find a thing accomplished, condoned, even. The powers that be, would, at the instant exploded, surprised.
The earmark Johnny lost hold upon? Why munitions, of course. To receive tax breaks built into the political system increasing, nearing to ninety percent. By cutting into energy and water supply funding and sewage treatment and improving farm efficiency practices. ‘Hell, get the hubris,’ thought Johnny, ‘cutting food energy and water for munitions,’ and the few wealthy manufacturers encircling the Sacramento business hub, downtown. What Nick and Tommy could not hold down was the explosive charge of the smoke detonators. The further symbol of the pawn playing by Johnny, thinking ‘they were no fucking munitions triggers.’ The apocalypse occurred by nuclear triggers. Mother-suckers. Cursed. For the benefit of the fat man in the booth. ‘Suckers,’ thought Johnny. And the end in question a money-greed-hubris of excrement. The booth man with black shades, eye screwing itself. With his own hand, thet man in the booth be the pro war scoundrel. Faction took the other ten percent of budget for lies. Spit back at the investors, Smilie and Co. ‘may the mother of you fuck protest.’ And what Can of Pandora scheme of worm weaved by gutter note? Note, whether Bud was at Pendleton or Ass Trench was beside the point. Teresa was not beside the point. The worst was yet to come, and Nick knew as much. Tommy let on, being for the time being a cold limerick away from sober insanity.
We had access to the gold vault under Federal Building on Summit and Main Street. Following lucre we find the Johnny underground in adjacent commercial building safely ensconced with a buffer of one structure in between. The Synagogue for the downtown district, ‘too long, too long,’ thought Johnny waiting for the detonator to blow. The clock’s hand closer to dawn and an a.m. wake-up call. With communication black-out we had near refused the same. As ever, bastion of freedom land and Nick and Tommy included. We nearly blew the active volcano of citizen rage. Earlier in the year Nick and Tommy started the New Year slowly. The conclusion? Dues of the debt laden generation. ‘We don’t live in the next generation, do one?’ Asked Tommy to himself.
And we hooked passed the guards. The active building plan. Blame no-one. The blank wall of red brick framed the silhouette of Johnny. Amid the clutter of shelves of trucking memoranda and desk with black phone; up against a half window blacked out by paint and a piece of masonite; a small framed photo of Teresa in halloween costume. Gladiator and model by dint of Don and Johnny. Reality and the trucks of old. The new. The picture wall below the window extending the length of the twelve foot wide outside wall. The rigs. Thrilling to see again the old office. The fascinating Bud racing photos. And Don and the elephant. Bouncing with Bud and Teresa at the July Forth bash. Tommy keeled over the water fountain of the virgin pouring water from the urn. Tommy laying his boozed head down. The night Delia and Nick were engaged. And Don crossing the border at T.J. and Don and Rosy riding the Vespa sub-Frosinone.
‘Punks,’ thought Johnny, ‘Fucking punks,’ as he walked to the window sill. The course change with consciousness a thing hidden. A thing uncovered. Well, leave good enough, and you’d be wrong. With thieving all around on the upswing, the true extent a choice given. And the reneged? Well, what could be the cause? Money? Revenge? Retaliation for the years lost? Again, the mind boggles. Smilie knew more, far more than any broadcast could conceal. The internets the prime tool. Used to ensnare. And verily, Johnny without further contact to Bud, was all sufficient on this here day. Silence passing over the mind. City of Copley never the same. The family cursed at Ass Trench and Copley by the baron in the black box. Mr. Smiley, please, stand.

NICK AND DELIA
Harmonium Melodic. Just try to stop a frenetic jazz band at the height of a collapsed fugue. Especially, with Tommy prevaricating, mumbling, then bingo, a limerick or two. Then at the mic, with a sip here and there, and a shout out, “Jan-go baby, Jan-go.” And thus the rumpus room of barely pieced together notes. The tonality of circular breaths. In Tommy’s case, a punctured lung from the old smoking long time. Toting droner days. In any case, a fragrant wisp of notation attached to drum shuffle. Bobby picking at the soft high note of the upright bass. And the shish, shish of pad against skin. Add to the wood intone of fear and silence and abrupt change. In key after the jump, boys, Johnny grinning in the front row. “Circle breath old man, circle breath,” and the night jazzed essence of cloud over West Hollywood. Crisp air of munitions dump on the horizon light. Outdoors, night’s bowl, another chance to mimic olden days.
Delia and Nick cleaning tables. Our relationship had had enough of the rumpus room life. Of the closing liquor breath at the heart of frenzied action. Technically speaking, Delia and Nick had to fuck sometimes. She just having to have more and more. Delia presenting the undisturbed vitality of a clenched hymen. Diverted herself not from child bearing, but from an ensnared and happy enslavement. To give her her due, Delia a beauty from the west-side, out of the way, way north of Point Dune. And the mid sixties saw the land and tenants and union contractors fighting for the self-same land. Community groups fought. Delia, mother dear Ms. Cantaloupe, from Guadalajara, had some months prior arrived at the birth of dear Delia. And father Tiro appearing as in spirit at the border crossing. Even if in the end Delia came to ever see him again. Through several phone communications. With tariff overloaded capital, be that as it may, the beginnings were auspicious. What with Delia downtown making the ghetto sane. By comparison, yes. As heads turned for Delia, a strange jazz. Nick picked up early. On down by Front and Main. Club Jazz-Mania.
Center Grove with Mamma and Delia in the house. In the core of the downtown scene. Surrounded by yellow plastic Jesus and the dicey interchange of paint and artificial blinds. But, sun glorious. Sun on blonde Delia. Mexican flag over Front Street. And Father Terrencito, always with a keen eye for family, had Mamma and Delia set before Nick days. And nights before, Nick cruising west before Tommy and his liquid limerick miasma. Good enough for Delia. High school gone. Better things coming. Death. Mamma and the burn of cliff. Palisade illumined. Oil rig in the fiery, western night. Coast, oblique hills. On the island off Catalan and the smog lifting. And sunshine in the smile of the arc of the bones of Delia. In no hurry. The neighborhood was for waiting and Tommy and Nick with time enough to spare. Rolled into Long Beach, a tsunami of business-like temperament. Johnny before collusion, before weather and heat and illusion. Frogs slipping in and out of dream time drowning a slow, heated death. Good.
Curve of back of Delia with head suspended as if from above. Stretching, and the hip, wrist malleable. Track in skein of juice. Between legs Delia and animal hide and seek. The dust. Delia in home town, lost angel. Gone. Misplaced in the southern California desert. As an offering to Tijuana, and moreover, the cause and effect of pharmacy, brothels, skirt and run. Back across border, now a figment of collective memory. Hurrah! America is coming. Back a curl of the wisp of the tongue. Delia. Design of slow crutch. Ouch! No more border, now a gone generation. Lost like a citadel of the most peering kind. Delia, no longer an option of going nor returning. That choice had been foreclosed. ‘The beast from up north,’ thought Delia. The generation caught truly, this the generation seen in the squeeze of thigh. Delia. In just cause. Delia. Mamma in the wilderness of San Diego. Now one installation. First a grin and happy memory of Camp-Pendleton. Now, only, Ass Trench, and Delia. Calling all to the desert with the lash of the whip of the cause.
Ass Trench, the dirty sound adrift, incomprehensible, irreversible. To the previous generation, seething. Delia, as a reminder of Freedom Boulevard, and the collective Ass-Trench Association. So, Tommy and down the line to Don and Johnny and Bobby and Nick and Delia? Delia of the cross-starred heart. Longing in the eyes of Delia. Nick and fleeing from San Diego to Tijuana to Pendleton to Ass Trench and back, again. The only anchor, Bud-worth. And Johnny’s Bud, butter and guns at Ass Trench, and the lost angel Delia. Change better. Not to stay? Delia move north? Akin to San Joaquin and Copley Square? Nick’s due north? The divide though Delia and Nick. Sharing. The post- times. In the choice of the fractured rupture. A double intent anomaly. In quest’s burnt ember, so forth the detritus of dirt, Ass Trench. War. Delia and war? Here, at last, the art and science of the metaphysic of the contemporary. Modernity. Nick. Delia. True love at first sight. On the stairs at Pendleton. Before Sergeant Major decided to comb the corp clean. And the rest being the unexpurgated history of Ass Trench. The mongers were out a while. The fish, from the head first, stunk to sky-high heaven. Man. Children.
Beast. Delia knowing in the loins. Nick knowing the loin. What future rebellion? Revolution in the ranks? No denying the terrible reality. Differing from the official propaganda, not mentionable, in precise control. Delia, Nick a fete. And a tete. A gleam more than happy loins. Nick. Delia. A move. No longer angel lost. Delia, the one. Choose. Delia. Nick. In rain. Done. The pain of following. Create. Delia the loin of the realm. Nick. Nocturnal drive. Pleasure of the gap. Delia and Nick running. Running from tunnel, to sea to rain-hut. Shattered Tijuana of cabbages. By the road a hut of plywood. Rain desert. Rain of poverty. Swamp gilded. The realm? Yes, Nick a reverse exit. So brilliant. A fang shoo of action. No doubt. Hell. Delia and Nick. The steps outside of border citadel. Tough remembrance. Greater good in the belly of the beast. God. Delia. Running back through time. The mind of the matter? Delia, America, Nick. Escape south. Find a home in the world. Delia. Child. Nick. Lost angel must never as stated by chance, “I love you,” saying Delia. Giving it all away to Nick. Before the journey, the first step, quite the ping in the step of love.
‘Right now we keep moving for love and life,’ repeating Nick, endlessly. Through to turmoil and the trip south. A long road, twisted and accomplished. In the end Cabot Village as destination. A complete turn of life. In Noel City a new start. Old brick-torn village and church, original. Van and cars abandoned on the siesta streets of Noel. No wonder. Nick and Delia superimposed so much. Personality grafted, as it were, upon the bludgeoned carcass of the great beast. The complex north of Noel betrayed its distance from Ass-Trench. And yet, the grasping fingers of Ass Trench just about reached into the furthest expanse of Pacific Coast. And more-so in the intent of the so-called leaders. The monger movement. Alienate as many souls as the situation merited. Nick and Delia shaping the diameter of Cabot to Ass Trench and back. The demon child Ass Trench. No even number could do justice to the “Believers.” From Ass Trench only the half-correct. The specious, capacious lot derived from all over. Thus the imprint of Delia and Nick.
Sordid land and truth. Turning thought to survival of family and friends. And a good start for all concerned. Delia having the absurd notion to settle down. Without change. The rub, after ten years the semi marriage a mere thing. A word, hurting. But, to move the verb? Nick and Delia was what love? In all due respect, aught to have for each other. Delia now a lock of hair to mamma in the grey linen envelope. Enough of the move. The ships on war sea’s horizon. Green for bad luck. Night and a roll of the dice. Damn. Wanted. Keep moving. The dervish dicks at D.C. Tracking with little or no fight. Having computers go after communication, of course. Delia, the change in the heart of life. Living inside. Nick moving. Sell to sun as glasses to the fall. The ground a shock to the system. Delia, yes. Would do as well with or without daddy and war. Would be buffered by when and where exactly? To boot would be singing of radicals through and through. The opening of the pipes. North America ringing for a take-over. Fear not vanquished. A thing accomplished. A cost of debt. Delia. Home. Nick. Love.
Wing-nut training in heaven as on earth. Given over to home invasions. And wars. The troops with bloody maw creeping ever south. Proclaim the greater border. Yet, living in its wake, a non developmental disorientation. Quite. The more for the berating of the scoff law. Without motor vehicle registration, the years of opt out coverage insurance ended. Companies, the roads in general, south of the parapet wall at Ensenada. The state of disrepair can be likened to ditch within a ditch. Hence, wash comes more and more into vogue. The lineage of the lingua franca. Can be overestimated? The change in the disclosure of the periphery? Motion and stasis. Make-up the difference or connect the dots. The authorities are not the language. The law itself was without language. More codices of empty value acting as placeholder. A mere widget. Not one iota closer to the tongue of the matter. The trolls and the proletariat not giving in over to the rendition of the parlor boys.
Sweet parlors of torture. Lords of pain. The shit when it hit the fan wouldn’t you know? The time of the constitutional break? Twas the night of the dark night of the soul. Delia, Nick. Sweet fracture. Bad to badness. Sad to glad and pain and suffer, again. The shit. Tonight, technology. Written in the riot act. Ahead the coming and the going and the gloaming of the break. Delia and Nick caught, as it were, by the hand of shit. South of the border. Never was shit to Delia hell. Nick took notice of the hell. The purge be done. Mad to madness. Hell, the parlor game and codices, are your veil. In general, and running from the satellites, too. Great to greed. Fucked by the wand of science; and the personality of method man? Delia and not knowing whether to run or fight. The plague years a touching from within.
To run or to stay? That was the order of the day for Nick and Delia. You say the rub first was a communication break between Delia and Nick? Well, Nick wanting the sum to stay put, together. Wait-out the bastards. At least, the line demarcated south of El Paso would give out. And remembering Delia, would be Delia, last saying, “We aught to go west first over the bay and out to the Sonar and end at Wash Boulevard.” The bash at the Wash. Several years down the road and back upon courtship. Friendship and travel and the plan, together. Delia, dear. Go as a family to the outer marsh. Wait at the Wash. Fate. Ghost. Love. Delia. Hope. Delia. Movement out over the coast. Come on down to the bay. And Delia on the streets of El Paso. Delia and Mamma before the party years ended, had spent her high school years, with, yes a lost virginity. Under the arches of Semipro Fiddles High School. Black as coal eyes and nightingale time splitting the atom. Fracture of home, El Paso. Driven south. Sonar Indian. Sioux. Quixcouital. Side-splitting friendships and times past.
So it was decided. So let it be. Going under. The feeling of the heart of the matter. Is going apart the art? We had no Nick and Delia going forward. After the heart, love running, going to a further south. No luck within. Delia and a place to go. See into womanhood. Go. And Nick without his sidekick. The beauty of the eye in the kernel of the gleam of Nick. For the girl and much, much more. People. Friends. Mamma. Times good enough. The town, Wash, and add a more giving meaning. Otherwise, outside the border, infiltration mute. And the coming apart. Loving and Delia growing to maturity. A thing decided by the decider in chief. Being. Content in itself. Here. Call a spade a political torque in the eye of the sun. From the better half of shit demarcate the lies. Of the tower, and of the pain. Brothers for life. Nick and Delia a compendium of road and anti-road. Being as a space in life. Somewhere demarcate between here and there. Giving, away, taking. Losing. Ahead into some less than hopeful scenario. So, the log-jam out? The economy. To live outside. striven with grief. on the run and at home on Earth. In house-hold hidden in back of gross iniquity. Enough. Nick and Delia no more was to be given. Nick in a heart-beat to strike the road. The soft rubber of soul’s sole.
And like that, ten years gone down the line. An old injury. An ache. A soft twinge in the eye of the other. Gone-out. We pick up at start of a meeting with the old wits. And taco- bending wise-acre Tommy as the loquacious limerick mistier. All quaint with the absurdity of an America gone by the boards. Enough. Get the common weal from the old man. And twas Tommy, at the Long Acre Bar, that evening all derby day for evening. Why? The road was calling. All the disparate crew. The old timers. Where without question we asked for Nick for Delia. Letting-go. What, why, when, how, and when? Every citizen an investigator, too. Next citizen ad infinitum down the line. To boot, lay down the fear. Letting-it quit of its own accord. America post-decline. Years. Don’t look now. Wait for it. Nick and Tommy heading north to Phoenix San Joaquin. ‘Ah! The road,’ thought Tommy. Coming downhill. Why even hell darkened without the requisite hours. The link for Tommy? The sanctity of limericks in the profane days and hours.
The road, quaint. How the overtones to torture began? In marriage, simultaneously, with collapse, variance with collapse and vice versa. With Tommy at the helm of his Mack we headed out of El Paso. And a quicker lunch some time next day. Austin and then to California. Through the back entrances. Over range-scale testing, to the rig charging to Death Valley like a furnace show in late spring showing equinox to the German visitors. And the same in tour-deluxe in bus air-conditioned. Respect. Waiting for the signing statements to love. To all the remaindered, Nick in exile, waiting. Go back to what? The Delia? And leave the quest to who? What eye of moon-ball hacker? Never and the vice of the matter? Delia. Delia would have no part in the saga. The seeming separation was given over to the flame of Eros and the flame retardant held even closer, still. Through marriage death. And wishing made it so. And Delia had had enough. In the way Delia had enough the instant of the time piece second’s turning.

RETURN TO COPLEY
Don Cheech came over to the edge of the barely flowing creek and looked over the following ridge to the battalion line. The anecdote remembering. Turning to Bobby, Don saying, “Hello?” With pure, telepathic, ambivalent bravery in the question. Was the turning itself a good? An acre for Johnny to setting up camp for the night. The overarching means was the end in sight. In deed, in fact, no equivalency. There the night was wantonly, greedy. We had our music and silent night creeping in. Away north, bigger things.
The thinking at the time was to give in to peace. To the next day’s venture a further cross ing of river and border; to decipher exactly the notion of change. Tommy at the trumpet knew as much. And no mojave desert blues could change the fact. So, to music, again. And night was what we had. Tommy, tuneless and all from the start. The trip was consequential to us as a collective. No deviance allowed, but tantamount to treason. The group held, for as far as permanence could yield, at our backs to a Mexico bigger than we could have imagined.
There was neither infamy nor rest until we all but escaped. The whirling dervish of Mexican whores abused our better judgment. Bobby having to be wrenched from the top floor of Madam Henrietta gleefully, laughing. And we with empty wallets looked on flabbergasted. The sight of our ponies walking out of town at a slower trot. Would not have been enviable, neither would Tommy put down the bottle long enough to gather the sunbeams of the border town. Left us yearning for a taste of the border; and maybe, scouts would beckon us back though. Time was against us.
Johnny thinking about the first steps back from Badge. Night when that first series of explosions worked against the raiders. The official army at the southern tip of Badge. Confirmed, we hightailed it. Those were John’s words. The instant the oil refinery exploded. We insisted to listening as words subjected to, yields an indiscriminate policy of oppression. And crossing the bay at Torque City. What we had procrastinated until the explosion set off the lethargy. Showed us off to be nothing but useless. On the move again, a non-existence, so to speak, and Tommy let the trumpet bleed out.
“Don?,” I asked helplessly tending to the fire. With one hand pointing to Don as if to wave him closer. He acknowledged as much and stumbled over with weight against his cane. His right hand weighted and he said, “Che paso Nick?” The fire, well in hand, I eased back into my flex-seat and said, “Don, we have to cross back into the states soon? Anyway, to tell you the truth I know...” Don walking came closer and eased himself into his own flex-seat and turned to say, “Nick, not to worry, conditions are never as bad as what we imagine. Understand?”
What I didn’t see were the smoke fires over the horizon. And Don was oblivious to falsity and some say his courage grew out of an intense block. The outcome, in most times, times and places, the aforementioned courageous aspects of Don’s personality. We culminated the quick reference talk. With one eye open casting about ground level. To hide some fake breath not quite illumined by truth. The matter? Don said forward and forward we went. To doubt Don Cheech was not a thing easily accomplished. And with a turning from Don Cheech, we witnessed the imaginative laughter of Johnny and the Bobby of eating gruel from a coffee cup. And night fader to early morning. And the will- of-the-wisp was fragrant and dreams. Until morning, and the conveyer belt of thought leading to the first steps of new daylight.
Bobby snored through the night and Johnny and I throwing sticks, twigs and pebbles at him. Absolutely no effect on Tommy, and his potentially abominable noise making. We attributed meaning to the massive snoring. The obtuse visions of Bobby snorting his way through. His fatuous mocking of youth. At least as much as money made him do the right thing. In the end, fatherhood for Johnny was all well and good. The death of divorce another turning point. And with Bud off to Pendleton, made a conversion. A change, possible noisy, change. At that what the hours meant to Johnny? Sleep and sleep led to furtherance of pain. And pain at war held tightly for a time. Delivered unto the next generation. Talk, cheap war at hand. All around peoples at a threshold. Not vacuous. Not final. But infinite in its foreshadowing. Paint, not the victim, here as Johnny was wont to mention. The debt ridden fact of brothers and sisters. Praying to be beyond the twisted, body-politic of fading, modernity.
And with the modern came death, sex, dreams, violence. Whoever would have us would have trouble. So, channeling Tommy Bobby would have us believe, “Fuck, damn!” Said Bobby as he stormed off into the bush, cursing. And finally, when he was fifty yards into the river. The valley where it dips toward the Arizona land-fill, just under the abutment leading to the river bank. He plunked down and looked over eyes half-blinking, with a half-beard and a half-smoked cigar. With all due respect, for Bobby, over-flayed himself and tomorrow was absent in mind as in sleep. To dream often enough of the border and Johnny.
The border was the border. We came to it as any bride to her groom. Whatever we wanted, there, at the border we circumvented the abyssal eternity. Of country, fame and the allotment of time given over to civilization. With content for all. And the groove of a past of black alabaster lies. As a group we knew as much. We conclude as we decide. To cross back and forth with the vigilance of a flame. The country is gone, the fact of the matter for Johnny. Company minus Bud was a thing of ugly beauty. We knew the war was still an eloquent reminder of things past. We knew the oil wouldn’t last. The longer summer, the decision made, with no abstruse longing for a bygone era. A quick call was all it took. From Johnny to Bud-worth in the Southland the coast became clear. And abundant fuel was needed whether south or north. The fragrant border a demilitarized zone, quiet. And the longing for a picnic near the flower bed by the river. Was just about too much for Bobby. Under a darker cloak of conscience, walking back to the fire. Daylight and the minus of the snoring that sent us away.
“Come away from the fire.” said Bobby. “Help me out with the drums.” He waved me over to the van and we lifted a few bongo’s and two acoustic guitars to boot. “We’ll wake that snoring son of a bitch.” Bobby laughing making Tommy the butt of his perpetual jokes. on our snorer in chief well one thing led to another and the set up was complete the only electrified instrument was the bass guitar and with bobby on the snoring outs with johnny took an especial glee in cranking the small black Peevey amp to induce an illustrious jerking motion in johnny as the electrified jolt caused an abrupt ceasing to the malevolent snoring of our dear leader, johnny. Upon his awaking we gathered our wits and scrambled eggs to the warmer light of a northern breeze reaching out over basal cliff to the right hand of the father, that is satan at the border, where patrols normally seek retribution on the flagrant criminals of the threshold outer suburban sprawl.
“Fucking fucks!” Johnny on his feet starting the day oblivious to our ranting ways and that Johnny himself was the source of rage due to the article of faith called rem sleep without which our lives were just south of the border this is somewhat cruel and to finish all the traveling signs and the eloquent rants we abstain from bringing Johnny any further along into the land of the conscious. “Let’s pack, said Johnny. As if our hour long pre-wake up were left to naught. our camp had been broken down, breakfast had been cooked and Johnny’s crew being the well trained outfit of lore we amused ourselves with furtive glances and laughter below bit tongues and Johnny unchanging had left us amused.
God damn sun has us pegged a while as we broke camp light illumined over ridge and group working together now no talk just a speedy withdrawal from camp south of the border Elisie, Arizona was calling out to us like a soft pitter patter of rain on the windshield, only sun blazing and the dessert whispers in early morning as wind arc and sun coming up on seven a.m. and the lone call of wolf and fox were like a long ago memory and hearts in time respond as Tommy called to Bobby and Johnny handed the tent pegs to me and I in turn bringing the tightly woven package of mesh and vinyl over to the Explorer and Don was at the wheel waiting smoking a Dominican and the one by one of us now reeling into our designated spots Johnny riding shotgun and Bobby, Tommy and I holding down the back seat and the rest of the crap we carried piled so high in rear that the view was all but obstructed never mind Don was solemn and accurate in his driving and the lone freeway being all but empty the way we had become accustomed sand, desert, sky and more solitude in bend after bend of roadway and then the river in its depth not more than several inches being summer level and all.
Indelible imprint of man by the river desert sky unknown u.s.a screed of unknown authority control cybernetic and the net ruled as a weapon no access to information stranded in sand southwest bunker no mexico no more land that way north a poverty of weather and coming apart the rulers of nothing but the President Scaifee the cruel fascist and so what we had it coming an inveterate greed of people and politics cruel to be unkind dead the age the truth deadened and what the cruel joke as a westward band of iosolated tribes cut apart by fuel cost communication breakdowns animated hell on earthly heaven created and controlled wait for it you piece of shit pentagon mother- fuckers
Well all’s well cause the road after all goes on in military fashion and then us four truckless and more than anything hungry as the road can psychotically harm a further emotional well being johnny not so much bobby an internalized rage at a nebulous body politic tommy an adolescent heart hinged to an limitless bottle reservoir of water water and then some an spring
The route west in flood no doubt and the rain was no longer in play be it shallow the way west was a traverse of sorts the fertile plain due west of palm springs was an aftereffect of a cool edge of dense growth all pertaining to wind course alterations and atomic sight testing in tandem over a scorched southern california parchment which reads not an after affect of tsunami nor storm nor any seasonal abnormality only thing we could wish for now a stop on the gag order on information the pipes they say they but the road west of palm springs then due north to San Joaquin fertile slope and there a further tale of woe a tsunami no doubt a maladministration equaling ass trench yes ass you heard trench as in trenchant a millennium rage
Nick had been in absentia as it were on holiday only the after shock more precise would be nick dawn on us the beginning of a post stress disorder but now upon a generation of being raped we hereby take again to the road with limitless reserve and already exhausted energy a confluence of road as destiny and then some we approached the back side of southeastern remote access to the death valley entrance and thereby adjacent to the military barracks ass trench Bud and more a delirious town of hapless hypocrisy only wood left to burn a throwback to a womb time back a regression and story told irreversible learn the tale of nick begin again
Truth be told we lost a rig or two to lose a mack or further rig name it the loss hurt and so a thing accomplished we converted to land cruisers see only thing that had changed economically there was no work for rig nor rigging we headed home so to see family and ass trench was the nearest capital of commerce and so the risk of leaving mexican desert was in fact necessity by dint of cover to family of help the business in fact business was business no trap too small and we recorded a back log on piano delivery and no more movement around the states like pre millennium but to no longer speak in riddles nick was one part and parcel of a newer age the next generation of filthy tax paying
We came up out of the valley floor some three hundred meters across a flood plain and there we come upon the mighty gate of San Joaquin then further sortie to ass trench and meet Bud then again the rub a military communicational feedback loop or say black out space freeze in any case what had started as an experiment at Pendleton turned unit wide then pro force as Bud dubbed the special access project but onward we hoped to the coast then to further Bajia then homeward Mexican siesta night away from angela
The coast was clear and skies were too and we finally reached the outer wall of Ass Trench and we climbed clear of amber lakes and settled down in the lodge on main and center and called Bud in to town from a quicker jaunt from base camp only the quick call from the lodge turned into a quicker meeting as Bud and his sweet Tina were by the bye at the pub at basement level of lodge so we and I truly joined him spearheaded by Tommy in the lead and Bobby and I and also as an after thought Don and Johnny retired to plan of attack as Las Vegas was a further stones throw away and I guessed the next contract the next hill to mount in the second hand car and dreaming of rain and bedlam and those trucks in the ditch and the rim of the trucks lip in water and the pianos half submerged through and through a disaster of religious proportionality yes indeed the generational hubris augmented by speaking of evil twins technology and control the machine was us so to speak
Sweet Tina had her trusty laptop with voice over internet protocol and the upshot we had a radial five kilometer access to land and satellite communication that being said we succumbed to laughter as we had access at all as the last wireless we had was near Dallas last year around yuletide and we had here a quiet gathering over drinks and warm fireside and improbable accent to the evening with no further word nor sighting of the cheeses Johnny and Don and the boy Bud had further reason or knowledge of hierarchy of learnings descent to further hallowed ground and yule was our furthest hope and Nick and nick of time we were sloshed except the designated cannabis Nick gathering information with pencil and ink to boot and all that remained was to abstain and film the deal on the lamb
“We’re do at Ass Trench by 11.” Barked Johnny.
“Vafangool...Va...Fan...Gool...” Sang Don Cheech.
“Into Ass Trench, lovely.” Moaned Tommy.
“Fuck shit damn!...” Mumble-shout from Bobby.
Mute silence all around at the thought of Ass Trench. Ass Trench like a disease ridden ass donkey and the mothers called us back in like we wanted any thing to do with the bastards and I was not speaking for we but all intended were glad to be here now why because the sooner we get thee to a hell the sooner we see sun fly into the sun so to speak as a matter of fact the base was a chaotic post apocalyptic city within a city get rid of any subsidy known to regular citizenship we took the learning seriously we know propaganda when we the consumer are no accomplice to this pinnacle of dastardly deed and thought and
We called as introduction Bud as military attache liaison interstitial scope of the mission was absurd minus the only clause Bobby ever used in tighter circumstances , “Please, let’s get on with it...” said Bobby. And the interstitial slot in the chain link fence dividing the side entrance gate to Ass Trench was normally used by said military attache Bud but in this case the mission called for an infiltration of epic proportion because the informational pipes were located for the 9th district of which San Joaquin and specifically Hodardsville and adjacent Copley be that as it may the brass locked was picked quite easily and Bud passed the entrance key card to Bobby and then pass to Johnny who always and I mean always did the honors whether money cash at hand or simply a security breach situation or in this stellar case an afternoon jaunt to adjust communicational infrastructure and Tommy obsequious in his praise stated at close of gate and bringing up the rear with Nick said, “Drag Nam it, Nick...I don’t like the smell of this?” And I intervened with frank question to boot, “smell of what?” Was the job itself a criterion of critique for Tommy? Not. All in a days work and an empty bottle like an empty mind a thing accomplished and the boot of sympathy the ass and Tommy finished with, “Always bringing up the rear like some asshole locking the door and hoping it doesn’t slam me...? Nick took the back as much to scope the entrails of a new threshold no fear to Nick as not to be construed as victim or player with partner in a bottle as the dance the rhyme scheme worked and shut the trap of the gab man from here
“Where’s the old harmonica, Tommy?”
“Damn, left it behind at Rochetito, thought I had the old bugger but seems the trumpet will be my due and why do you ask?” End Tommy’s solemn dragging his feet talking without looking back to Nick who gave the old man some five feet distance walking room and the hall dipped slightly and turned as in some quasi small scale contemporary version of a catacomb reverie but the illusion dimmed as we turned and dipped quickly into a thinner lower roofed corridor for the span of thirty odd feet before opening out wonderfully but a bit chaotically due mostly from an after-affect of dark superimposed upon light florescent schemata of the open hall where paramilitary equipment vied for space with communicational devices some obsolete and a fewer amount of materiel used quite recently then again we could only guess as the custom had turned to an abuse of the serial number craze creating a black market of billions range to only clarify what dark silence we had inherited.
Cathartic in imagination at least the protuberance was an unqualified success to gain access to the storehouse the keys for a moment a stage an event like we had become used to a strange gut feeling not other than Tommy today, one day Bobby and Nick in a pass the go round as movement and stasis combined yes a binary unison when we had settled down to work Don and Johnny had been barking commands and we go about the work of ravaging quickly the best of the best equipment some for future sale and some for our need and use to be without meant just this a coded message and the medium was imposed as order as authoritarian malaise we gathered and commenced and sustained a twenty minute pack of goods on a gutter type trolley home made and the course back was similar and we switched the trucks but before long we had cleared away reversing our way out this time with Don and Johnny left to carry up the rear and the vanquished lot and storage was a gleam but the klieg light battlements were for sure the main rage the shutdown was the clamp down and tamp the people and just so Johnny under duress would have let launch correct and Tommy’s dismissal and intuition gave vent to a unaccomplished head of class matter.
We climbed up out of the bowl as the place was a down and out reminder of several years of abuse and degradation we called attention to ourselves at our own peril and a violent history of class struggle meant nothing to Johnny that was a time before Bud grew to maturity when the world had not been dumped upon for a generation weakened by truth so no explosion neither TNT nor Plastic we were not there as a unit though memory served we powered down was the newest refusal and Johnny spearheaded another more or less mix of fabled content with inexorable irreversibility not cause nor effect we shut the matrix of collection the mirror image and age turned upon itself a few short years and the correspondence was all the taking we had coming the light powered off by chemical intuition and Tommy animated almost an acceptance of growth wisdom soil at least in principle called learning the learned learn and continuing with all due respect the next time we came out of Ass Trench would be different the prayer was about difference.
The house light dim from across the hill and after all the communication building dubbed Atelier and numbered 660 Ass Trench Court and the bullion was not a thing known and the explosive was not named and about being in the dark here across the valley from a factory emitting no anger nor fume nor disgust and the telegraphing signal alerting us to change like a frog slowly boiled over we were unknown essentially to our own eye’s enemies if you know what I mean as Nick deciphered the recalcitrant map maker Johnny no word and Don unapproachable too much star gazing at horizon line at point of demarcation job threshold difference what matter what course recourse the ship of state turn turning turned and collapse o.k. you and I and Captain Kangaroo all’s well in love and better to have lived and lost and you knew the operation was done because no commands issued from Johnny no stares from Don Chichi are we there yet?
We go back to the inn bar pub and then clandestine meeting in the back corner shoved against plate glass facing back garden of azalea and barbecue pit and sand pavers and more never the less we gathered upon a cocktail and time enough to cry when we heard the plan let us call it x and blow the facility blow the facility in question mind you after stealing borrowing equipment not like we were on the dole or anything so to make a longer story part two was to get thee back to Mexico and safer quarters no by heaven to much to ask for as if a drink could ever be enough for a group assorted around the link missing yet dangling like for instance Tommy, “So, step one is blow it and then?” And then we wait for it Johnny stood with drink goblet in hand and Don was slower to rise but rise he did to speak first, “Blow it and then in to Copley we go.” In to Copley back to Copley a return albeit warped twisted call it what we would we had no clue what the flood had wrought we were of no mind.
We well you knew it was coming we I you who the fuck ever heard of returning to the scene of the crime I know I went along for it how many years now but no matter my ten years compared to Johnny’s twenty and Tommy’s thirty and Don’s forty? Well we all knew in that subterranean way implicit in the fact of the matter as some such thing present as a stone whether at the foot of Manhattan Island or the juncture of sluice called the dastard sin city by the lake Copley of the wine bars and exhausted truckers Copley of the miasma of a worst list and cow heap dung piled up high on the fuzz state of affairs in Copley a clamp down in so many words and now hither and tither we go cramping our way back when the head of the flame of exuberant disaster was called for so mean action and deviant behavior of priest and nun numerical vehicle of lead bastioned air guitar we were lead by leaders may you hear the curse and live in times behind go leaders so to go after and hitch our ride to Johnny and Don and a cohesive unit underlings are to fact what fiction is to deposition indictment creatures and then nothing.
So the intro was Asstrench and the main event Copley and the stars reigned down mourning on the West Coast and the flood tide nucleotide levee and more so called same as it ever was so infrastructure decrepit and miles of shoeless children embarked upon work for life programs bastard on the hill looking down from self exiled cage within a cage fuck him and all the minions that look like him and was Nick angrier at fact reality based or the consequences of decay as in detritus applied to Western Civilization what ever Nick wanted to talk about at that time was all asinine rhetoric centered around theses of distortion Duh we come up out of Copley two years past and a pleasant enough semi-retirement and now what decision made by the decider saying to which we go back in for what no matter fuck me him us we I and.
So Copley when A.M. aurora showed her pink fingers dawn long lean thin wisp of cloud over horizon Copley a night time vision of hope and the last things like Sisyphus and the other gods that never were or were before we abstained the governing bodies had ceased and we filled that much sought after niche Copley for what ransom Don could say or perhaps Johnny not Nick nor Tommy and Bobby some wild shoot hoary and irregular not shouting stretching combing his hair and whispering humbly a prayer through plate glass to her shiny rose petal lingerie and morning and the motive force for Johnny why the gun god almighty I tell you sir no matter what Copley stood out among the redwood cornucopia because of this fact reiterated every time by Tommy who else in a pre-morning stupor now gazing along with Bobby with brew in hand can half crushed against a miasma of sight and sound a roar decibel wide long tune through a wind tunnel depth as water in dream what ever will replace the Copley of yon youth go ask it and what?
Jazz mute tone in voice to a vigor of voice in Tommy go figure at the top of his longs after of buildup of four lines singing, “Ours is not to reason why...” and no one bringing up the rear but with arm now grasping Bobby and after the eighth bar managed to squeak a sly flourish from Bobby as finale going, “Our is but to do or die...” There we are in a mourning glory of cloud and ambivalent rain well the so-called plan is unveiled be it said moments after show time for Tommy we’d love to entertain with torch song and comedy all night then again what we come to decipher is a glyph of command call rapid fire release so called hit them first before they hit you only catch was the element of total surprise will only circumvent the plan crumbling it from within the matter no leaving its fact in deed as such.
We come out of Ass Trench with both barrels blazing and according to Bud our elemental surprise would be a matter of done in reality not fictive discourse we took pleasure in the extreme latitude in attitude given over by Don saying only, “In and out boys, that’s the code name that’s the image at hand, boys.” And with a grimace we gathered in silent reverence now over at the bar adjacent where Johnny had set chalk to board in a preliminary static void of abstraction to be here coordinate points a, b, and c at the further end of the board in blue chalk ant-ethical to the white superimposed image of Venn diagram refer to a, b, and c whereas x, y the probability of completing in surprise fashion the one two punch of Ass Trench communicational thievery and boom the snorkel punch twist with a brute existential force to motivate these buzzards was a secret unto Don Chichi and Johnny to be sure rapped the meeting in unitary voice with Don saying simply we move at thirteen hundred hour.
To hell with hell Copley was next as event as communicational hypothesis and experimental core of the matter go forth my son the sun was creeping higher and broke down camp and rooms and auto’s and materiel and came next the coming of the mid-day point quickened lunch at at fevered pace to do what will have it early on after lunch with an hour of free prep time left we gathered each our separate ways around the cluster-fuck of village life known as Ass Trench what was not so well known nor an accomplishment worthy of neither medals trophy’s nor alabaster lace and lapis accouterments and the lovely day of homecoming minus Bonnie minus the lives washed out at Copley what short timer would know we would relearn unlearn and the distorted truth was more a rerun than a return a gift or trick of the mind lost in its own pitter patter.
Later getting ready and readier the deciders in chief were at it again not to mention the leaving Ass Trench Phoenix San Joaquin Copley return to Rochetito in memory at least passed the waves and rock critters look the sea out pass Oxle-Moria Island not to further explicate the rotten road psychosis the pattern repeating through lives past no evening whispers now Tommy absolute and drunk existence a detective at sea Bobby sprawled smoking a joint against the back lit drape Don perusing maps and cipher Johnny on cell phone now laying it down to Bud as per usual first things first chain of command shit to coin a phrase we need to be careful that’s all saying Nick to all remaining in the love light gathering, “we need to be careful, that’s all.” Almost oblivious to himself Nick’s left hand not knowing what the left was doing perhaps.
So Oxle-Moria it would be and as the staging ground in question was a great choice genius thought Nick and the rest now would flow in that internal relation called destiny fate the motive force Don loved to lecture at length not the decision we see going a long way to the end point as in plan of action and with technical mastery a given now the stage set by communications supremacy the core feeling to Nick was happy enough to elicit smiles and by infestation reached out to a tinier circle excluding Don and Johnny but at last Bud returning in time to give the news and his blessings all around with hugs to the contrary explicit orders and then a dismissal not counting the time Bud created but shooting to Buds and then back to barracks before curfew both the curve of the arc of a plan now at least like a double rainbow accomplished a thing a fact a relation among proprietary means.
The order of the time of the launch of the pre-plan dinner give or take period of digestion and elimination leaving us with a grand total of several three minutes and subtracted from the thirty-three minutes as a synchronization we assembled downstairs at the rathskeller and all sundry and well the crew minus Don and Johnny and Bud were off being now the boat launch and the drop off and the plan of Bud Don and Johnny would take them on a return to Ass Trench for cover Nick believed and as much as we assembled from bow to stern creating a flag out of nothing the last master class in cartography coming in handy good for Nick and the fellow wayward detectives on course with a wave under cloudy overcast with blimp on horizon and the jeep now a tiny spec as we ventured out across Point Lejuria and the further coast Medelrea and on to Copley just adjacent.
Point Lejuria was a series of abandoned docks extending to a meat butchery district and light industrial stretching out over several three square miles with every light security due to budgetary factoring the last bit of funding had been just three four months before the flood and then the aftermath was a series of blunders not by the army corp but by successive administrations and the malfunction was one of greed and bleed with world wide instability would could be a matter of a calling ending in racked pain the city and abandonment a hopeless recovery and the course of the matter blundering was part of the plan then take care of the after calling a crime a crime is to raise our antennae as a unit of citizens Copley no different so go figure we gave an inch and they took Copley and made it their own by decree by signing statement the threshold was hear clear to all as a crack in the fabric all well and good to hell with maladministration to give fact and fiction a run for our well earned money flushed and for what global instability but the flood was the flood that’s why.
Would you give it and take it the warehouse is where we unfolded the maps the cryptography was excellent in the fact of darkness was enough to enlighten coming apart piece by piece and the afterwards a kick in the pants when Bobby with flash bulb on head with both red ultra-violet capability and white light infrared to boot with a giggle, “and look here with a point of his pencil looking at the entrance to the vault to keep memory in tact now looking back to give credit where credit is due we toasted in mind and nature to Don and Johnny and Bud now on the inside looking out to kill for these guys would sink deeper into debt for calling hope what is sometimes necessary is art of doing well by doing the action and technology was the name of the game, again. and again and to give it a thumbs up was not required the gleam in the eye of the participating crew we hold this truth and Nick toasted not with drink but a snort and a toke in word not deed and the word of the mission of the plan we tiger seek and calling for an infiltration and decode the nuclear team set as counter proliferation in essence proliferating on behalf of a chosen few and the recording of the fact the relation of which would be found on the mark x in the laboratory of Dr. Kin-sale.
We had studied Dr. Kin-sale from the terminal at Rochetito just before we towed the Peterbilt out of the seed marsh at the craggy shit hole that in the beginning was enough to get the team launched but not without much research and learning how to learn and how to forget but the scoundrels Nick and crew discovered would vomit the core constituency out of the roughest patriot but to not act was scenario causing harm both to self and country and country even be used as a misnomer for the batch of disparate tribes at a jumble of cross roads that previously were enjoined for soldiers to march from coast to shining sea and the cause was the infiltration a mole a scoundrel at root opened by x to lay claim to pandora herself vacuous.
The worst of the worst was a criteria we adapted when studying Kinsale from afar now to confront him and his minions in the flesh had intoxicated Nick from the start and a further reliance on the received wisdom of the elders Johnny and Don and following the lead of Bud was easy enough but school was school and the technical would be worked out here at Copley and the rub was Copley was the missing context and of course the foreground cum background without which Kinsale would have to reckon with cartoon cutouts but not to be because the rats at the bottom were by now melded with further radiant dishonor with time on their hands and stuck in the hull without the merriment of a jovial galley.
The outcome with minutes to go after leaving Baker parked at the curb two blocks south-east of the factory is what we coded the name of the building labeled C on the roster map greeting those entering the campus from the south-east we had devised plan cedar extract which amounted to a roof job well anyway roof by way of tree by use of grappling hooks and the mentor at camp was Tommy saying enough is enough but when he stood on the training tower and moments later on ground thirty feet hence so to speak Tommy laughing saying, “shit I could do this drunk.” and the rest of the class laughing when Bobby retaliated with, “you ARE drunk NOW you old coot.” and the rest of us with a bigger laugh took aforementioned old coot out for a nightcap and as preliminary was perhaps premature but to Nick the memory of the discipline of the training was made automatic not by mind but by stewardship of biblical proportions called.
The fact was fiction because the story didn’t start with the schooling nor any friendship nor pain like an injury rested and healed but only the latter a healing and the flood was it’s own tale the most incipient character in the tall tall is what or who a strange pervasive sense called x or y or z but no we knew enough at the point called the flood to know as much but the contemporary fact of robotic control was the illusion and deadly for the single reason stated and the road of main street leading uphill was deserted and just then was the image to hold in plain sight a town without inhabitants and yet each person a controlled unit because a Gloom a stress beast and the fracture inadmissible only under the moniker flood but flood was not mapped after the fact was numbered and registered before and there was the beauty itself uncovered and revealing the slime was the point not meant to be perhaps but at least a transition a threshold before us again not as act but as surprise.
The bridge encircling a moat and vice versa who the hell on a time close to equinox and the beauty of the hole we were digging out of the holy shenanigans and the blarney and the Hoes and the chicken feed crew what were promised is no end to war no a reclusive bit of nostalgia hidden within the nut of and then again fear of what the bargain not ours cost debt to who and the circle closing passed near far fear at the heart of the tunnel labyrinth and Bobby flagrant, “Cock-sucker!” And believe the heretic in the abysmal was to Nick a grin in the face of time glorious who asked, “Why?” No justification the call an amber call the calling and Nick turned twas Nick scurrying to the lead volunteering hurrah! and hah! and the fear recurs close the corp with individuality and Nick and Bobby tip toeing through the ramp hill forged of grass approach bridge better to have gone the other way which was what the back of the line there was no line passed us by but Don and communication silence of course good day.
With the map unfurled we saw x demarcated and we asked what nothing it was pre-rehearsed by Bobby and Nick like a ballet of Piccolo and Sayers say it again we were to back track and retreat at the abandoned 7-11 and smoke a dob but what a display of talent and the squeal of train in distance sound homonym to their stepping knee ankle learning how to move brothers so the love of the group was to obtain records of course now ladies and gentlemen recalling the lecture Nick once gave just as he exited class 303 and the Base and recalled information and communication still the pen and the sword moving round those two rhetorical florets and believe Nick then when the propaganda had no chance against what say it again transparency yes but not quite and the conversation trailing off in the night learning how and Johnny reinforced the same over long period of time learning is evolutionary and put the co. in that friend.
In New York the tally lines were being cut short and the gofer patrols were on hand from the history books the second wave we were taught of minute men at the border always nation states to cause a hot sound and the diskettes we sought a whisper in the stream of information and Manhattan Island basically a clampdown as information controlled at security level why for monetary gain in New York we had abandoned the core after training we had not enough troops was the official reason be that as it may on the west coast we had the luxury of greater space and spread of money to Tijuana was found as best place scenario because of tidal and seismic and perhaps new information to the contrary Bobby on call for information goodnight and Nick for technology seems the maps and specs said the casing aluminum was concealing papyrus information concealed in tech itself meaning the drives a ruse that had New York tied to the balls of Copley after all headquarters situated at 3 thousand meters elevation was genius owing to the anticipatory.
Ignore the immigrant population the song by the way get thee to a fag or smoke the butt end of a rifle Nick in turn returned smiling Tommy balling drink Bobby solemn in calling and bearing drinking with T and the association was silent and partying as cover for the time tonight in hilltop pub called Flannigan’s and the quotient a back room decorated by Rosita to ovens baked goods of good material fact and comfort to hell with fakery the time for rest for about an hour the meet and greet until Don and Johnny meantime relax and Bobby with stink of socks airing out next to the window eyes half glazed and thank you imam Roslyn helping at the tavern had cooked us special was more comforting then drink and had roasted and pre-glazed Nick and Bobby from smoke to dull the pain and cool the senses throughout the story ahead we followed our own path in the end what have we got but the room was smokeless in an airy earl sort of way goodness was in the air for a while yet.
Whatever in the hell happened on the way out is the story and Bobby began from reverie and the subsequent maltreatment was opened out to call Western Union and spend money to New York to open local chapter I knew enough to call myself a cretan not knowingly and all the thing Bobby wasn’t concerned they mean nothing in the end with what not coterie of bank notes of course to welcome him, “Fuck-Lards, listen up what are you doing we have visitors surprise we got visitors go figure the culmination of all due diligence act speak stand sit they don’t know and hurt, “a big hurt on all your asses a pox.” finished Tommy in all due decorum we had one two and punch tow stones with a bird two stones and a bird, “Tommy, you fuck put that trumpet away.” And Bobby giggling because he had apprehended fact from fiction through time space warp fear again not for bobby after the attempt to stifle repress the beauty of her brown eyes.
Kinsale the cock sucker will have had a greater laugh than him own true self would deserve and funny how Kinsale had started out in the nuclear trigger market and had escaped sentencing at least if not the ignominy of indictment but no no the sins recur with or without the law for king or no kings death abounds so Nick went over and raised a glass high, “good job and Johnny when do we see Bud?” Good enough then we cater to greatness not like fucks at end of spectrum black guile in evening sounds good enough not for Bud the next generation screwed by who not some petty fucks on the streets of Outer Bay-Villa no the fucks had the temerity to write books about some visionary non starter and we come across passion not the oblique abstract nonsense of mute ordained control of this or that municipality in the was of time Don would raise a glass as well, “To you dastardly felons my true heart to always do good through practice and now a moment of silence,” and a sip of champagne for good measure.
Better off in the weeds of new York not on your life starting the chapter by the city notorious and fun for Bobby maybe as sidekick Tommy but the good old days is the story Nick at least was trying to learn hence the difficulty the curious nature of phenomenon when looked at by creatures great and small the variable x no doubt a fun day in hell when the picture when find in the narrative history our kids would learn a given and the New York experiment not a thing ever to be and sing the day the corpus of which Nick vaulted into existence in the pages of Copley here the fact of the flood always was transferal to a broken rupture and a forgetting.

We had a bit of in the wind setting camp on the way out of Ass Trench Copley was one things with our tavern safe houses but Ass Trench without any standard aid from Bud caused us no end of grief and the one two punch led us out of San Joaquin in two steps and the forest outside Ass Trench adjacent the crypt as Grossly Square and the frequency of the forest was at least the first point outside San Joaquin Copley Ass Trench and after the desert seemed welcoming and the absence of border a clearing a mind at home in nature like the veins on a leaf a criminal minimal simplicity echoing the trans-decendence and the outcome freedom from San Joaquin and the favorite sons a thing of the past a good thing too or so the personality would have soured from experience to go forth and multiply yes except to be exile is the reason for being for movement and for stasis too.
One thing about the outskirts of Ass Trench now almost officially Five Fingers and the locals happy about relative freedom from Copley entitled to just an example of the old privacy and that was the joy du vivre of these Nick Bobby Tommy chemistry like hydrogen oxygen times two we accepted as fait accompli that in heaven hell purgatory all a gate or threshold and the beauty of Harbor Street leading where but out of Ass Trench and Five Fingers to desert just below the pass at Stricture point just three hundred yards outside the Route 33 entrance to Death Valley and of course the vacant the hope of land what in keeping with the king of fact fiction of the story.
The good thing hope is the second to last to go keep the milk cold by nothing doing nothing in the desert a stasis in internal fact and the outside same old entropy to corner our own humanity is good for us and the weather itself a thing following which enough was the word that came to mind and the context of the insight not in epiphany any longer the qua sine non of the equation zero sum but the villains have us struggle for no good not Don and Johnny that much we received as wisdom ask Tommy in a good temper ask Bobby of a morning ask Nick when the quiet sun sits orange on the horizon at Rochetito the good things is we had enough we admitted as much, “we are the circle,” said Tommy to Bobby and Nick as the stars and the desert.
“I Nick, raise a toast to new beginnings and the desert,” and the formal relations begin anew why because the guise of relation in relationship mates one in the case of Nick to Rochetito that scowl of no wisp hidden in breeze and the cost of making as opposed to thinking and the polite manner was make no waves because the justice is flame war in the bog heaven when wireless free access was still a dream the Congress could address but way pre-dating the second merger versus conglomerate and the only exit for the great pipe people was ownership the why and why not to cause and effect of people we know all good things ion the worst of all possible worlds the genie out of the bottle the cause of death space is so fun special is evil, “I know, I know Love conquers all,” Bobby kidding to Nick.
“Not kidding at all, what else would fit the ultimate against this background of sun and sand tell me Bobby.” No clue not to answer Nick or Bobby a straight forward matter in deed the mind was propagandized to the full magic of bye hello what else would propagate this whir and buzz be that the question or not the night in the forest by desert edge a something to experience and the volubility of the scene too much fun almost the best of an ancient rhyme the pure dirt was all in good fun left behind you could say the time was wipe for the turn see the ligature was a mint saying from Nick and Bobby conversing I knew as much as Nick and Bobby loved to start at the beginning what would else give meaning the travel the steps the why to justify the big bang am.
The call of Bobby and Nick at the threshold was based on the mimic of mimesis in the regard of the model in anterior fashion of the border that never was the border rather a sign for Don Chi and the stories of the battle at San Antoinette and the surprise attack at Chockville and barnstorming in Emoryville when the police and the federals what not the out and out lie at the farm some three hundred clicks south of Militate our one refuge still blocked from San Joaquin any way in a distance marked thirteen hundred twenty three kilometers and an exact not quite on three separate occasions we met the same fate from three differing freeways 99, 201 and the 63 not to mention the beauty of Sage Road in the a.m.
From Ass Trench to Outer Pass Road we gloomily laid back and called it groovy because Bobby was ramped up at the thought of the rig a new one to boot had been the surprise payoff hidden by Don and Johnny for the appropriate moment being now in the desert home stretch we come to see the Peterbilt in chromed glory sitting by the backside of shower row of hotel rooms back of the gas station and truck stop at Point Estrellita just beyond the previous outpost of former border patrol station now abandoned leading out to our further horizon of smoke filled tracking lights and white lines of the freeway south of threshold and the learning of the gleaming in the eyes of the heart of the matter truck reminding everyone by the blues wearing grins we wear except diverted by the wreck and wrestle of Bobby hightailing into the Rig capital R and the nicknamed truck with flair flames and nude calling herself Sonia baby in my arms.
Point Estrellita a gleam in the eyes of Bobby higher up on Sonia now and Don and Johnny truly flabbergasted at the result of the gift of wind a choke hold no doubt to unlearn all times has been difficult be that as it may Nick in the browner eyes a dear happiness sheltered and tempered by a failure a scene recurring in dream reality and studied mass of mind double takes of shadowy mirrors and bed of nail with too few spokes dear Nick the home is the heart is Rochetito what else-wise would the cue be Tommy had another fresh cold one from the vacuum sealed beverage storage area filled to the brim with high-line beers and situated as in the back cab rigged for four and another surprise rig number too so camouflaged and with-all time being the curse lifted by trucks as trick not treat on the rock cliff where piano submerged by windy rain howl in the basket of emptier tidings goodnight sweet truck sleep in worry free night the new accomplices after a hiatus here at last home at home and on the road notice Nick notice the retreat of Johnny and Bud to the.
We stash ourselves after showering down the jeep and the s.u.v. we break down and hide each in alternating caves at the underbelly of the Point and the cannon parked in front of the Absalom! Diner we ate with strong thickness of coffee bean in nostrils and spinach and eggs for iron and the stress position we fear is the fear of changing thresholds again the joint purpose of travel through time then place and without thinking now surrounded by desert without Johnny now roaming down and their Don’s truck called Betty without the nude just a throw back to Paige and the harem scare them prose of each infertile cultural response to another hundred years of American disregard for fact.
In any case the scoundrels in question right on the front page of the Point Gazette splashed in none to simply language a case of nuclear materiel missing two years ago from the storage depot fifty kilometers due north of Point Estrelitta not to mention the circuitous course of the fuel calling the headline NUCLEAR BLACKBALL and the D.C. bureaucrats all minus two or three members of the intelligence committee causing Scaifee no end of embarrassment and closed the palace guard to less than a handful of journeying west of Appalachia never in time only a couple of years late the hurry factor unexplained of course so the blackmailed individual a subcontract in time to receive a fund source some fifteen years in the making good enough for a trial, “Nick, cut that shit out believe me,” and Bobby more than a bit happy to dwell on the engine and leave aside matter of reality for those.
“Maybe I love to be annoyed,” answered Nick half jokingly not by half the quotient of symbolic tech. dream more than enough overlap in due course the body politic near extinction and reference to the betterment of mankind filled the fake broadcasting airwaves not isolated to the major pipe carriers now two for all Canada America and North of the Mexican line variously called Budget Line signifying a near miss to given answer the time being for instance with return banter from Bobby signals a retreat with a twist to calm days and sun without rain the persons may now see fit to debate and more the relative safety of these days with night even safety more than wide enough a talent separating us from the threshold north and noteworthy without subsistence fare of any kind we managed at the behest.
That Rochetito is three hundred kilometers south-east from Paella City and divided by the mountainous line of Chorea Range and you have a perfect spot out of reach and the goof is we never except Nick thought about the essence of the difference of separate but equal zones of influence to go and get the various funding the essential genius of Don and Johnny and to a complementary extent Bud down in Ass Trench the root core to have this covered is what Nick prayed to happiness for in that no guarantee of success then where would success find the crew in time estranged from fact as much as the situation east of the Mississippi especially with education and safe campuses obliterated by the wooly goat featured on page two Dr. Twill at the University Of Columbia in Missouri the case not sex the other bandit excuse but the liberality of truth and fact seems even the good doctor with Bobby laughing now as Nick mentions the all out fun of the doctor’s credential being a question of stripping away the liar.
Brown eyes hover over horizon line by the sign of it the course south over Plains Ditch and Wash Boulevard Avenue and the course of new Rig capital R and Betty knew as much and Sonia too quite a balance of course the never coming moon the time was 10 a.m. a time of truth scene of sign wait for it lover baby bay baby baby drink to the love moon still morning clear blue moon nicety and more steeple at San Frosinonito and the recall election just after the flood wait the flood waters subside the show ladies and gents lover creating the perception of a robotic voice sleight of hand gizmo trick wait the best is yet to come with crescent moon over dido horizon in streaks of sun orange red and ache in the balls of the church of the country and the matter at hand oops and boob patrol.
Sub blaze in heat’s rise and the Quiciutal voices sing bring it on out the chaotic stew of no thing but this thing vanquish the heat on the sword of the sky and language quote by Bobby, “To hell and back, baby” the false outcry over the demon seed open the box now careful Pandora was born on 10 December 2006 and on that day happening all in an instant flash this is called leadership meaning when we cause shit to happen so we crony men can get paid money from the treasury now long looted and the flagrancy of the vagrant bush on fire gleam not in the eye of Moses and Pandora growing up outside Jersey all content at birthday wishes ten years old the fun part at least the good times lasted until that day when little Pandora was all content at the chalk board before the flash hello the criminality came home this day of our lord in such a place long ago Melisitta, Arizona not so long as to make inhabitable the sour stream now called Styx.
And the vitriol in the eyes of mother recall Bonnie at the Bon Home with teeth in tact and not much else thank you please daughter muse Pandora with a mummy for a mom well and good if not the seal shared with Nick not demon cursed but in a relaxed way aired out the tough nugget of truthi-ness as in life Nick carrying much in the way of strain and the recap of the onion to ward off others like the human race at large at least as far as Melisitta, Arizona called no longer home but waste depot still for unvarying reasons home to a depot of sorts useful quite being four hundred kilometers due east of Reign Drop Hill in other words in terms of a symbolic hell gate for Nick twas this verified by the look of Bobby now streamlining the Sonia with ease and soft hush of break to wheel pneumatics hooray! next nothing much to do but dream of a day longer into the flag of the network nuclear scientist last in charge naming her Ph.D. in charge of malaise structure analysis.
Sonia Doctor Jones, Sonia Jones my oh my, lost completely in woods like recommended through the grapevine lo and behold baby, “the fucking hell of it is Nick we don’t have freaking clue what tomorrow will bring especially with Don Johnny tandem randomness, cap-ice?” and with Bobby instigating the long roll home down Wash Street over tree lined villas in the morning hill fragrant overlooking lake Acapuchela and the rain yesterday by the feel of it to the senses quite and accomplishment and Nick with being the fantastic counter-puncher damn, “eh Poisson me no caprice because we’re our own entity no matter how much you want to deny free will and all your shitty vapors,” like we said a rambling from Wash Street to Short to Valley Place and Fairview then home in quotes being the ranch and the Rig being Betty already atoned to the rising sun good going here we are the last time some six odd weeks all in all a grand month.
The mouth of the River Zunis behind the three bedroom shuttle ranch what we called a ranch with an additional courtyard to the front side and back of the house forming a pocket and termed shuttle according to the livability of the indoor structure and indoor form exceptional in any case an omen of things accomplished house a better half of the ranch and two of the three courtyards built by Johnny and Bud in the winter of 12 and the aftereffect an enlightening bit of history when Bud and the hell of Ass Trench culminated in the Demarcation Line Battle and somewhere between border town ex called Vallejo Village on the mexican barrier of half wall mazes and extended towers and parapets good tithing to the empire and gutter talk and the provincial madness of language curved into each other interpenetrating and for that.
Already included in some remaindered texts and as supplemental to newer texts primarily for West Coast shipment but then again copies have been substituted and pen transferred through computer and last year in the near by Village Talessa by hand as a graduate project in government accountability the fragrant battle cry of every worn and torn civil servant a mere generation after D.L. Battle the country itself a broiling notation of interlocking principalities more again to medieval settler villages form the crop center of farm circling a ring road of wall and village bastion only in this instance compared to Copley or rather than compare Tommy would fish about for a tune to cap with words and without stop nor any merry introduction needed to go ahead and unleash the god forsaken man of the trumpet and pamphleteer and good cheer to you young patriot old lurking in the bushes and not listening only Tommy, “Jango baby three fucking fingers you can’t take that away from him, ha!” and the wailing of Bobby running inside with a blazing eye searching for Tommy culprit.
And so night came to end on the first day back a coming to our sense a satisfaction to be sure a feeling for Bobby at least a boyish exuberance surfing and surfacing to the instant the magenta line hence desert outside Ass Trench and the wood dark bleeding out to desert always Bobby the excitement rage and breath of dry air bringing on the feeling of rejuvenation and mind of the matter quota in arms akimbo Johnny the opposing differential to Bobby a queerer recalcitrance a notion bordering on feeling but never quite relieving the essence more a stench at the border threshold border fence of memory and desire good and done Johnny with the countervailing instinct an anchor at least called Bud and of all the places for the feeling to be moored Ass Trench Boulevard and Bud and good evening comes the next day two the feeling again and again father son sundown in the Mexican desert with stars tracking no south spinning out of control illusion.
Well at the very least for all we know ass is what ass does and at Ass Trench and the forsaken bunch of warheads left dangling to eke out an existence in a post time when a generation passage to the end of the Pentagon and Don at that line in the sand of convenience the story Don tells only Nick heard the tale twice the least of the crew he was figuring as to when Don would spring the tale for the very good sign of a new beginning and a home feeling for Don the only native close to the sand ridden scowl of a valley and the Federals knew Don and the accomplishment at the time to intercede where narration fails and the tale is a chance a roll of the dice and stolen military secrets at the time the purge and Washington the town an anecdote because the children for the first time taught what at school by god how to question the very existence of the necessity of government and so to skip two generations we come to the feeling in the pit of the bloody gut of Tommy the eldest and so remembering to forget that altered state of past life a conversation between Tommy and Don yield would be.
The how do you feel metaphor for a self retiring soul like Tommy nay Don Chichi, too rattled by the cage of fate and noir sense a feeling then as in a tare rare against day base clef then tenor of light new dawn rose aureate coheres and more before the matter of meeting at dawn second day of course greetings to all and sundry and Vanessa brilliant in her cap and gown of alabaster twinkle and wine velvet and lace and to her hand given over in queenly grace to nary one abandonment as just tested in the mean time to call Vanessa through the plague years and bosom friend in the end with Bud not as though estranged not quite the benefactor of forgetfulness at such a late date and Nick would deal better on the road rather than rage rage against the crying of the plight of union and discord in the knowledge of how does it feel to Nick here a turbulent reflection on road and war and the debt laden return home.
The requiem in reverse dubbed by Nick when comparing himself to Bud at least the growing up the difference as in laboratory side by side examination of the slides variously Bud through half hearted estrangement equals x and Nick estrangement minus y equals a difference Vanessa in sum a letting go before death having a sweet tinge of bitterness whereas the computing for sums in Bud and Johnny and Mrs. god save her soul and stay for a while feeling on the level of feedback love mechanism and Bud then like Tele-machos a quest involved and the accomplished fact a license to the origin in Mrs. and Johnny and the given as in exile the plague year behind counting back the big clock and the fish serving deluxe as per usual.
Beauty in the presentation of the cause return night, rain fish and bread in the organ back drop music and pick up the scent in home return yes no only higher an repetition compulsion Delia too approaching with Tommy bloated in a good way slightly red in the cheeks, “old boy,” he said to Nick as arm in bosom arm with Delia and where the seating chart pure heart because Nick would surely have rapped the shit out of Tommy had he not deposited the sweeter half to the left of Nick and tucked himself Tommy away to the drink in sparkling highlight of c two o and awful night slip to tune of guitar strain in joyous saddening tone in welter of thought with rockets and firelight to drink a while the night of merry smoking in break waters by rear agenda meet.
Angel eye away Delia half way angel and the wine away to bedroom rosebud man old man Tommy nursing the teat it is what it is, “convince me otherwise,” dream away Don and dream away Johnny and greet me Nick and you Delia and dream not dream of quest as Johnny and Bud deal with the far away stars at Ass Trench no the land south ranchero delight small things now the post period heavens and mightiness the call now more than ever in the ears and Tommy wish wash night and liberal sleep twinge with regret of Tommy dangling half a soul in the twentieth century the mind not forgetting laden with debt upon surmounting debt yes amen in dream toasting in dream light and Tommy.
Loving in the end as in the Wash Burn Boulevard and the stranger in the land a ranches home and grange the forecast for the southland pleasant for the turning up of twilight skies and lack of hard breathing the easy life as was foretold in the pre years albeit the hairy thing Tommy would feel yes the prognosticators and futurist palaver as pertaining to one pet peeve of Mr. Tommy always bringing a despotic prevalence to any sociology of the wasteland of Los Angles and the foregone conclusion of course Tommy chiming, “well you know so much what good is negativity?” and the only Tommy becoming abject because as soon as he verbalized it the opposite fact proclaimed victory and so defeated his own argument good with all the good it would and after the fact.
Negativity now you have it accomplished glory be in the u.s.a. a dead brand if ever I we us ever did see one but a Kay showed x also will be rendered unto the sun devoid of the living and the dead gleam as if crossing the bridge at forty third and sixth glory be the people as if mummified and funny how the brand U.S.A. the same difference like the walkers on the bridge allied time by some and put that in brackets and, “shove it up your hoary ass,” Tommy in drunken dream state hah! the good the booze ever did at least the fun of the limerick man if fun in disease we be bound to do no harm well then Tommy in fun lunacy like the trickster child yes we can do it this way even if we break the neck of time, “o.k.” Tommy would answer in dream as counterpoint goody fun and more fun as the lilly livered are slowly cooked to be true to thine own self hah! good old Tommy single handedly take down thy guard old hand metaphysic eye hand the ear hear J. laughing in the pub light early morning like.
In the morning gather as the men gather around the hopeful table Delia walked us out to the back garden superficially lit by only the covering shade and the limelight is whatever Delia showing us the orange and lilac and the curve of the bell shape seat fun whimsy in the tail game pinning pins and bowling and pool and optical illusions and and and Tommy hung over with black shades eating eggs in the garden feeling how this second sojourn out of purgatory of desert and mind juiced in itself marinade of sun call it rain begin again said every inch of darling Delia escort the maze of trail worked into every spare three acres alas not enough to time and over for Delia and time ever for us on the balcony before Tommy so rudely interrupted by Chichi how dare he well at least what Nick was thinking though Tommy feeling ah! each other yes feeling ah!
What of Delia cooking by the fire out under sky morning ravaged good greater good and Delia by the pool and would he have it Nick not knowing doubtful not knowing he knew he knew well he knew too much and not enough and through Delia feeling running and rushing on my run yes indeed the fun begins with the service of Delia in the service of Delia forget under the pool blue eyes Delia magic wand globe of blue in image in eye of Nick passing a torch hot arrow the on the balustrade of point of touch and the brouhaha and all better now that the sting of love the prickly heat of tempting tunes under cheery moon lips of fire teeth of stone Delia pulling stones through water giant image shuttered in Luanne of star wander return and ship at dawn swimming pools and laughter yes and roiling seas count no man count no man count.
Count nothing remember to hold the pump this way the cool look of the shine in the hair of the blonde essence all hail the pool and the daughters of Albion and Delia sweet in rest Delia Delia suspended music Delia fresh coat of paint Delia sunshine illumine dark infestation Delia Delia of successful voyages Delia of ranting policy hacks when the breaking is a put down Delia anger in eyes of sea blue darkness as feeling Nick Delia and feel it Delia feel Nick ground and grounded protein good to greater good getting on and on to forgiveness love in the seed time only olive mist of oil skin tone Delia Nick in love lust kill born delia quotient sum of zero in peculiar yes space ah! Delia different in morning sit in the garden above rockets below blue pool of card in Delia see Delia Nick feel.
As to body heal as to mind mend strange idea coop the loop of cyborg city circuit dead deeds accomplished trams descend good better alright above with Nick below with Delia blue blue blue and the at hand long finger of Bravos see Delia at lakeside pond wishful thinking Nick feel to be it is to heal Delia rosebud turn to rosebuds gentlemen guitar please and trumpet and ships at war see Delia all in a hares breath for answering back sake on you live longer by following the wash downstream and where the lout meets the ancestral we give it on over Delia Nick darkness home and healing time at Wash Drive and Delia with Nick hand in hand at the beach perfect every last one saw the perfect image hang on wait for it hang it all there can be no perfection Tommy even laughing autonomically speaking eh! Tommy and the trumpet time was called by who? Delia.

The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?)

Wittgenstein

BOOK III.
SAN FRANCISCO

I had left hospital and with renewed senses stepped out to view the street of San Francisco at Grand and Pine, downtown. Downtown, to be sure, and a limp in the ankle to boot, twitch of pain at rain slicked sidewalk; cracked vision of downtown, hilltop vacant stores and emptier parking lots, vacancy of streetcars, silent downhill park, at Glover emptier still, and further ‘till commercial crossing at Gillette, not one soul in all my field of vision, I turned back to gaze at the hospital entrance lobby and saw one person, an elderly gentleman, smoking under heat lamp overarching canopy brights, and the mission creep of classical music escaping to mix with pitter patter of drizzling rain. Pity the man and me turning uphill, again, walking to some light at the next street corner three story house, and opposite corner an office tower veering higher than all its neighbors combined, and the next corner, clockwise, the LampLight Tit-Bar and finally the Chinese Gate Restaurant, with the Freedom Beer neon sign advertisement in the front glass and big screen t.v. greeting me inside greened out and barman pouring me a scotch without me ordering. “Scotch,” I said, and apparently as an afterthought I added, “and a short beer.” Calm soft light inside, while outside patter pitter of night rain. Barman coughing and from further retreat, near back of barroom at the corner booth, rustling as of newspaper. A shot and a beer, a necessary cure and as to the better gotten gain like a softer trickle of pain in my ankle subsiding. Walking toward back end of bar to pay the man, and leaving a five spot on the oak bar I stumbled under glare of mirrored light and noticing, too, the dirt under my finger nails. As I slipped my left hand index finger to bite down, I feel a queer feeling of not remembering to what this excessive dirt as comprised of what work? Some mechanic job? Almost, feeling a bit nauseous at the discovery of the freshness of the dirt and looking up noticing the man at the back booth watching me as I approach him. I have a better view of him due to the light creeping from back room adjacent the booth. The door ajar was to the toilette, where the water from bowl kept running, continuously. ‘The ball cock is worn,’ and I remember, funny thing, thinking, ‘I never used that term before?’ I looked more closely and the mustached man seated, pretending to be looking passed me, over my shoulder. I mumbled annoyance, audibly. Upon cue the fellow said, “hello.” And he stuck a black, gloved hand straight out to shake mine. And from my corner peripheral vision, I backtracked having already passed his booth, heading, as I was, for the toilette entrance.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

Wittgenstein

BOOK IV.
NEW YORK

Johnny had bucked out of Tulsa, within a simultaneity corresponding to Bud at San Joaquin’s point A. and Nick at point D. and Johnny on Forty East, just west of Needles. In the slow lane Johnny Boies big rigs going and left lane Bobby as spearhead and middle lane Tommy some yards back in formation, like leading emptiness further in horizon’s reach. Go, go, go and keep at it no questions without answers and Smilie’s time had come with cohorts apprehended, witness Corrado and more than these pawn the financial backers were being smoked-out of their caves. Lawyer killing figurative lawyer, animus of change coming to fruition, and consequence from responsibility grows.

Needles, historic Route 66 extending Forty to 95 passed Topock Bay, Beal Lake, Kingman, Mountain View Cemetary, Hackberry Road, Fort Rock, Silent Bridge Road, NF-910, Billy Williams, Devil Dog Road, Williams, Garland Prairie, Pronghorn Ranch, Flagstaff, Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater, Winslow, Holbrook, Petrified Forest, Gallup, RedRock, Chaco, Bluewater, Milan, Grants, Albuquerque, Petroglyph, Bernalillo, Los Lunas, Tijeras, Moriarty, Tucumcari, Adrian, Vega, Amarillo, Panhandle, Groom, Claude, Palo Duro Canyon, McClean, Pampa, Fort Elliot, Lefors, Shamrock, Elk City, Foss, Burns Flat, Dill City, Hobart, Bessie, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Carter, Rocky, Clinton, Lookeba, Binger, Gracemount, Crowder, Lake, Calumet, El Reno, Custer City, Union City, Tuttle, Mustang, Oklahoma City, Norman, Choctaw, McLoud, Bethel Acres, Shawnee, Pink, Sparks, Prague, Bowlegs, Maude, Cromwell, Hanna, Rentiesville, Webber Falls, Vian, Sallisaw, Muldrow, Gans, Fort Smith, Arcoma, Spiro, Shady Point, Panama, Marble City, Burnt Cabin Ridge, Tamaha, Bokoshe, McCurtain, Kinta, Quinton, Stigler, Whitfield, Barling Van Buren, Caulksville, Branch, Midland, Morrison Bluff, Blue Mountain, Coal Hill, Altus, Ozark, Lake Dardanelle, Magazine, Boonville, Mulberry, Rudy, Bonanza, Rock Island, Hackett, Cameron, Paris, London, Pottsville, Casa Birta, Ola, Corinth, Havana, Lick Creek, Oppelo, Hector, Dover, Bixby, Joplin, Springfield, Mt. Vernon, Phillipsburg, Lebanon, Newberg, Doolittle, St. James, Steelville, Robertsville, Onondaga Cave, Rola, St. Louis, Granite City, Bloomington, Muncie, Dublin, Columbus, Parma, Stow, Hermitage, Beaver, West Salem, Donegal, Cleveland, Warsaw, Rush, Madison, Snow Shoe, Armagh, Middle Paxton, Packer, Penn Forest, Kidder, Pocono, Mt. Olive, Mt. Bethel, Tewksbury, Washington, Blairstown, Independence, Sparta, Jefferson, Hanover, White, Tunkhannock, Lackawaxen, Delaware Water Gap, Kinnelon, Roseland, Boonton, Troy Hills, Bedminster, Chatham, Lincoln Park, Clifton, Roxbury, Stanhope, West Caldwell, Cedar Grove, Carlsdadt, Paramus, Paterson, Montclair, Kearny, Elizabeth, Scotch Plains, Milburn, Lodi, Oradell, Ramapo, Seacaucus, Hoboken, Harrison, Teaneck, Englewood Cliffs and, (as Telos), New York City.

And by this cross continental trip’s ending, Johnny, Bobby, and Tommy had grown to the convoy of seventy two rigs strong, now parked by the Hudson River, waiting.

There are, indeed, things that can not be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
Wittgenstein

BOOK V.
BEFORE THE FLOOD

There was no use in writing; (I see with hand-made monocle.) Anything close still yet far. Further from being one among many; three plus one an art more than an abstraction. A mathematic of mind and nature. And Johnny stillborn to know as much about Bud. Enough to remember, to talk it up on cellular phone. Now, and forever at road’s end, San Joaquin, yet, furthest, a new California, post tsunami. Men and women, accenting on the here-after. With monocle in hand, enough for a religiosity of word and deed. A coherence of under-estimation. Bobby, quintessential loner. Born to be side-kick, Tommy. Reality inverted; a useless existence. Transcendence descends and our group’s intent a talent of back roads and whiter lines of sense and sanity. On course we of the Peterbilt with door unhinged. Truck a bit worse for the wear, a tree branch stuck into edge of metal. Rock buckling the quarter panel. Like a virgin pussy waiting to give life and windier thoughts on a diary of sorts. Thru and thru a pre and post dynamic. Notebooks, maybe, time’s honored phrase like turned-out whore. Woman, indeed debt burdened, passing on love as narrator to scribe. Post-tsunami; lover gone. To wit, Tommy saying goodbye to Copley. Forever the quelled eyes seeing up and down the road. Mostly, thru rear view mirror truckers deciding to move North. Driving all hours and time enough to dangle notes to trucker friends, art, the watery flood all a necessity. Poles apart like a trucker’s dream. The rule of the road a nihilistic accomplishment of traffic, Peterbilt truckers, the not dead dead-enders. A demented crew for a demented time. Pacific Rim a circling of circling sorts. Curling DNA entropy of language. Like a virus symphony of tsunami, wave unleashing thin veneer of space. Dear gentlemen, do we like it now? An accomplishment of fact or fiction? The road more travelled by Peterbilt trucker than by the sorrier souls of the hinterland. Conserving energy we hungered for soul questing thru desert sand. Pacific tide sensors posted for excesses of and to desire. Questing the self thru wickedest eyes. Two sleeping, two driving. Snoozing like long lost puppies. Johnny and Bobby on emotional cruise control. The quotient of a karma of changing scenery, looking out upon a road of nothingness. Out of town own fuel strapped in barrels to our truck. An analytic term, Ice-Age, as lark, artifact or subject? Like the scrutiny of a worm turned upon itself. Roadless warriors going nowhere, future sale gone by the wayside. Johnny humming Ray Charles’ Georgia. Bobby clapping in time. Longer desert road heading east to El Cajon. A backwater now of newer beach town. Johnny having soon enough reached Bud, and just as quickly an interference pattern broke the call. Palm Springs, Twenty-Nine Palms and a complete turn to water. Ghost of oil passing deserted ghost-filled town. Back water beach tide, what once were streets, sure enough Copley a brief respite from the blood and wine of anger, more a waste of such buck folk. A no nonsense way to say a beautiful handmaid, a tail for a horse-shoe and a Peterbilt for four. The rig hauled as in a dive of conversation, sex talker verbal excess. Mouthing like a pre-verbal hyacinth bee, the map a sun and rain of phallus. City-plain down turnout route 99 South-east by North-west. A three hours run in the best of conditions. The unknown part of travel the left foot not knowing the right praxis of action. Mentality of dream the sleep of reason. Empty search in hourly time the lost sensation of music. The notational curiosity of curing love’s stain, and a monocle for a twig in the eye. Remain nearer a distant further closeness like a door unhinged sticking out in the wind. And with a head nod to Bobby we switch back to front and vice versa. His eyes upon the road and Johnny upon the wheel. Compass needle eye desert is deserted. No vehicles only us lone lost lovers. True bard with one eyed lens? The quotient of tears to number as cover accepting epistolary sensation. Cell-phone recorded sound wave impenetrable, discuss. Our mutiny on board wheels, like a tiger meeting its match maker in heaven. Earth, to recall a writing in the past, a snippet of conversation. Replacement, as it were, for Johnny at the wheel, intent arm frozen.

ALEXANDERPLATZ

When the mother of all fucking waves hit we were up on the curve at Rochetito. Tidal wave curling. Hope. No way. Wave appeared as horizon orange-blue volcano. Underwater spout colliding with moon. No way to stop. We careened over a concrete embankment, and rolling downhill. My feet trapped, and Bobby like hell-fire, and Tommy back flipping, and Johnny on the cell-phone to Bud. Careening absence and collapse of moon. A long mute distance. A cell fragment voice bouncing up. Johnny with the balancing agility of a jack-rabbit, stood up and said, "no time, there's no time, now." Like a sales-pitch crushed under a template of sound. Guys on the coast of time. Time itself lost, one sure consequence. We walk uphill over the course of some three hundred meters. Tommy drunk and pissed cracking crisis-mode jokes, "how's the crack, mate?" And the gang at a cross-road, abandoned, along a beaver style edge of swamp. Ditched within flood waters now creeping-in. Mission Creep. And the road-path led southward over highland, then inland plains. Without supplies, farmers fleeing in tractors. Communication reduced to nothing. Bud, now cracking in on the cell-phone about a doom of rain over South Australia. And a swath of flood in the Mediterranean. Water and fire in the sky. Bud now coming in clear. "A catastrophe." Crushed by, crushed by waves of tsunami, cause unknown.

And the bicycle appeared as in a dream, with lock and key, to boot. And damn Tommy trying to sing his way out of crisis. On the trail of ugly cause and effect. And Bobby selling the idea of taking the bike long-distance, south-east and find a route to a further separation. Remote spoke of an ever looping wheel. And Bobby adamant, behind, flood-waters beyond. And the clenched lips of Johnny. And the dream of reason. And the lowlands flooded without remission. And Bud's voice descending, again, "mother-sucker!"

And the hill folk up around Guastito, not knowing. Killing the dream with a watery beach-head everlasting. The almighty chord of nature in the arms of and, and the pianos tuned and, and at rest in the waves. And my eyeglass lens and cracked and one lens lost in the flood. The pianos, at best, prepared. Suspended in nothingness. Like the sun setting on some Rembrandt moment of repose.

And we made our way to Bobby, in dust, the hill collapsing in spokes of anger. Bobby pedaling too fast. And the lower wheel always the lowest. A tipping forward and never a landing. "Sprool?, drool, shit happens. Sprool?, drool," Tommy singing. Bringing the shitty absurdities. “My horses ass,” says Bobby, staying put, blind, half-bitten. We keep moving in the desert, in circle of coast, high altitude. Cold at night. Walking. Sleeping in cave.

The sun-coast lit up in morning. Water receding. Sprool?, drool. No change, finally I say, "Up ahead is the old farming village of Juliotito. I re-named the spot Alexanderplatz, an island refuge for a new water-age. Tommy with an acoustic singing about Mojave stars. Me, mostly, incommunicado. Johnny in a rare mood of mania. And Bobby, talking about the inevitable walk back to the pianos. Midnight under the stars.

Rochetito

Tommy could keep his jokes to himself and his CB tuned to whatever high night lonesome talk. And two more miles to a hairpin, at Cinquito Cornita. And a last climb to Bahia. No sunlight, but the home-fires of the village came into view. Pulling further into ranch, acres, split-level house. River glistening under moon. Bridge being built, some construction lights illumined the scene, orange sign to be on guard against rugged road. Turn right on to dirt road in pine needle darkness. Night reflecting moon and tree timbers vacant except for a few at the top. We approach and roll in to driveway and sing sweet-tune of another trip's half-way point. The glee of truckers tumbling to a halt. Me and the pup waiting, watching as Tommy opens, exits and slams truck door cursing in his alcoholic stupor. And against the nearest tree piss breaking again. Puppy dog eyes gazing in night-time glare. I exit and keep the truck headlights on. Headlights lighting the drive and entry way door. Wood chopped high and tight in an alcove, covered porch.

Tommy looking soporific and swollen. Me achy. Pup resting. Horror tainted with pity. Headlights flicker, we, simultaneously, look over and begin a low trek over to the porch. We alight upon a last minute artifact. Stones are all about and a child's swing and some balls strewn about. Some leaves in a pile; the road, having come this far, around telling a truth, loneliness. Hither and tither, all about, loneliness. The fire of art occupying a place above suspicion. We had never intended to stay-put, that was a mirage from long ago. The road never ended, only a brief respite from will ever circling, laughing. We took to the street rather than maintain a false equilibrium. The attempt to maintain as a remedy, not as a solution, a window into any notion of decency.

Tommy reached up first to step in to the doorway, and thanks to doorbell missing, a knocker on the flip side of the coin. A missing bell smack-up against consciousness. A sign crept-in allowing me to question the mark. Peaking around bushes and rocks to see in passed window, monarch-framed. Photos, fridge, couch, piano, stove, kitchen and further porch. No person, however. Just a delivery scheduled, as a matter of fact. No thermostats, no alarm, nothing automatic. No light, as an aid, in front, nor at side entrance.

I, at the front porch, watching. Tommy back at the truck with pup. I see him now with a beer in hand, lounging. I was almost tempted, so suffused was I with lethargy. I moved feeling about the yard. Mostly redwoods, some cedars. Some outdoor furniture made from cedar plank. Feeling the dew, and around further to wood shed, or small barn. A small wood-plank door, open, revealing hay bail and machinery in chunks. Rusty parts of a yellow cab. The end of the room illumined only by moonlight through the cracked glass of the rear-side door. I backtracked around to the back of barn and walked slowly up to the door. Looking inside, the same picture, but reversed now. The back of the taxi, hay-bail, and hunks of rusted junk. And inside a few steps revealing a hatch basement door, leading down. The handle was all but rusted to pieces, so, I grabbed a rag from the equipment stack, adjacent. I manage to sneak the rag around and under the edge, and catch-it, and with two hands, open. I see horrible sight of sights, I take to be a carcass of dead dog decomposing. Strange. Indeed, was a dog skeletal toy for kids, in truth. And all sorts of toys filled the remaining space in this basement storage. Toddler stuff. Boys bicycle.

Retreating a few steps, I whisked the door shut with said rag. And walked passed the hay-bail at front. Veering toward house and yard and Tommy sitting, waiting, drinking. Me prowling the moonlit forest. I walk over to Tommy and notice he's asleep, with 'do not disturb' written on his forehead.
R.E.M. sleep, the man and his jokes. I climb into the front passenger seat. Eyes hurt, rest, get some sleep before dawn. Pray, now, to the inverted stars. Sleep.

Human order and disorder; change is all. Figuring mightily thru the calendar years, the fingerings and turnings of the wish. To dream, perchance, the end and the beginning. Amen. I deem it necessary to fill out the form called infinity. The clipboard showing the work of delivery date, time, place. Together in triplicate copy out the transfer dates. Form the bill and copy to index book. A box of index card, in chronological order, with tabs representing each destination. The progress of a trip's miscellany. And I tucked the lock-box back under the passenger seat and tossed the key in the glove box. And I tucked myself back with head resting on blue leather head rest. And a ball cap perched low over brow and eyelids turned close. What sleep devoured was a trip from point A to B over rough road and missed exits. Turn-about u-turns filled with ghost snowmen. Snowmen with differing expressions hovering above the white-lines. And a big-boss snowman by the roadside barking commands. The others, obeying in like manner, seemingly caused accidents they were attempting to prevent. A traffic of fog and darkness. Thin moonlight turning to image of pale indian face, with peace pipe. Exhaled smoke floating out clear. And the indian playing pied piper to the ghosts. They lined up in rows, in the field, waiting for their turn at the pipe. True night. Twinkle and fight over a blast of night.

The cell-phone ring waking me from sleep. half-dozing to answer, "hello." Not noticing the blinking disconnect light, I run to ground some twenty-five feet north-east of the parked rig, "hello." The reception of incomprehensible cross-signals. Hanging-up registering only, 'unavailable.' A potential call refrain. I stumble back to the rig. Tommy and pup still over and out. By the time I was seated, the phone rings, again. This time clear, "hello, boss?" I say.

THE PIANO MAN

We pulled-out of Copley like clowns used to our own catastrophes. Little did we know the why, or why not, existence itself a game of words upon language upon sense. Gone, like a bird of heaven accepting all that hell will allow. The current diagnosis giving desire a bad name. A crisis named, as ever, the mechanical destruction as plan of attack. 'Go forward,' Johnny would say, 'with the same tact and guile you’ve always known.' In the case of Johnny, the clusters of stars above said as much. Air, wind circling to new experience. What others called excess, Johnny called organismic-terror. This drive, all the world knew, said nothing about the steersman. Like a trucker heading far north breaking into storm-clouds. The beauty of rocks, trees, river, flowers and forest. And we came to town, high-up and stopped to eat.

Sometimes, the road is all that is the case, and one whole world is not the case. As a case of hardwood and ivories going forward.

Alone, isolated in common by marriage and children, fight to fight, and left town, with no money. The glory in what to do next. Hell. High-water, the object-lesson, crude, keeping driving forward. The exit ahead reading a 'detour.' And thank you, heading thru town double-time. What goes on in the mind of a man of movement? No sense. But move. Why leave here, going to there, to find-out the why of other people? Life's travail keeps leaving impermanence. And the white-lines of sensitive analysis, the heart, quite forsaken, in the boy of the child of the man. Johnny's past gone and the bridge to a new home, fire blown-apart.

'No more rat-race,' he would say grieving like a child. And at breakfast he would bray against the, 'hopeless body-politic of death.' And then Johnny's mind like jazz notes fading into a wicked world. A crowded forest of war. The gathering clouds and abundant rain, rushing about, admitting no error. A fool's logic. A discourse, for Johnny, creeping close to prayer.

We stopped for the night adjacent an apartment complex. To hell with occupation of encapsulated hours. A hoary question whatever it says. About the call-up, telegraphic light; opalescent crease over forest. The doubt of a middle-aged Johnny? Or, did death turn, even him, inside-out? With burned bridges and a monkey-man past, the core belief was, only way out is over canyon height. His whole being said, 'fuck, please, boss let us drive.' Love is an eternity of driving, heeding self-identity, nothing but angst. Not fear, but youth taking-up the burden.

River-valley and wineries under sky-blue verdant hills. Ring-road circling town. A city in the mountains near Black Gravel Beach. Remembering, as a boy, his last trip to the Plaza. Memory as a pledge to hope, made again, and again. Johnny by the south-shore boat-launch, rollicking, in sweet loneliness. Perhaps, sorry for keeping no company nor darling during sleep. An old sleep. Snoring raining down. A night driven to escape; an unknown shape, no exit. An imagined form? Or, a forest hiding an aggressive force?

Johnny's last goodbye as to her like the white-lines, saying God-bless love, flower of time, never to return. Too stuck together. Too much to ask, for one without blame? 'No, no no.' with Bud by her side. 'You did not respond.'
'I'll keep to it.' he would say. Time and space require it; pain and blockhead to future sensibility.
'Too late. Goodbye.' Good to hear her voice, though, this time only in his head.

Sun over western-ridge, pine and cedars soothe. All along, following curve and heights, belonging to no-one. And all past gone to memory that cruel impostor. A melancholia of man in crisis. The true, the senseless self. Love's atmosphere flowing, otherwise, downhill into Grove Street. Growing straight. Persistently fine. Like white peaks in my mind. Encyclopedic-gains sway over paths of self-restraint. Go on to future infamy, and glory. Loneliness. Searching a field, the hunter of infinity foretells, not only knowledge, but place, and time. A rote learning. A child’s a, b, and c's.

Same pathway. Exit. Turn-off. An inexpensive replacement for lost love. Presently, traverse in song, or, in tall-tale, all the way down. A learning cycle in retreat. Coagulated love, by growth, circumvents the cycle. Sing. Wipe away memory, crime, pain, indolent behavior as so much detritus waiting for winter.

Keep moving north. Decay and belligerence working as a scare-tactic. Failure of will. Of, yes and no. Answer depends, on she and he a related-paradigm, with an immense gulf between. A throw of the dice; the cool simmer of covalent equations. Like a modern Triton, traveling thru upper-elevation of fog and cool air. An alliance, in times of trouble, with the sea at our side.

Whatever else was known was fire and water, to time past, a savory blend. City-slickers proceeding like abstraction-hating, fools rushing in. The society of rat-like behavior forever, moving the cheese. Screw the underground rats not playing along. The outside is the inside in another guise. Password irrelevant as coy, absent voice, "hope will cease. Love goes on."

We keep-on without logic, conclusion unclear; and thought, again, a receipt for love's quarrel. A fair-trade vanquished. Not existence. Not non-existence.

Coifed leaves by the road-side. To be parceled out at a later date, an anguished lovers cry, sitting cross-eyed in the wind. Crucified, redeemed, love's will, full of power. A bundle of excess proud, and sure.

Pouring coffee. Fuck. High-up, in woods, in a place called Indian Bone Hill. And the call-waiting on the cell-phone. I picked-up. Seeing up and down the whole expanse of land in foggy seascape.

Genius fluttering in radio-wave and change-up clutch, and carry these here pianos high-up in music mans country. Turn hairpin, turn to hill-top, trees in shadow. Sun cuts blazing across shadow, sun-path. Hours to go before a fitter rest and a stop-over for meat loaf, yummy. Mile after mile, raining, windy. Shifting, turn left, turn right. Shit. And so on ad infinitum. A prettier corner of land, a caged expanse, a time and place, a farm, therefore, we end up at a bar called Hiltons Head Rock, which juts out of the highlands like some promontory from hell. Lovely white surf, stormy cliffs. Victorian Bay and then up and down Main Street.

Tommy sensing something. "Let's talk over a beer." I say to him.
"What about the possum?" he asks.
"Yeah, funny." Tommy's head stilted, oblivious. Cell-phone ringing, clear as a bell, this time, "hello boss." Three times his voice ending clearly saying, "get back here, change of plan, you're going to Bahia, Bahia, Bahia" Another truck load of pianos, requisitioned by the wealthy Mr. Lenntito south of Bahia del Sur. Four Grand and six Baby Grand. Twelve upright DM115's.

Overt, burnt-desert wash, crumbling adobe edifice. Scrub-Wolf and Desert-Fox roam. Add a coastal scene of undeveloped outcroppings where mountain, sea and desert meet. Bahia.

Johnny Boies

The fertility of the soil, of course, is just another dimension. Time and space laying down together. We abstained and we feasted. We starved, we called out to others and we walked, like Jesus, over the subterranean waters of love. Life's struggle, time's course; the southern exposure of living growth. The soils change of temperature and micro-climate. Time a ferry and cure for a flower; melancholia in a land of sun. Quickly, one turns to blonde wines, the hills in summer fire. Months of dusty trails. One wonders for a chance, a ticket, a number high enough above wind. Some Olympus, minus Gods, multiplied by sky, sea, sand, cliff. We gather here and talk of circumference, laterals and high exposures. We engineers of vegetative growth. The allure of soil in the making of showers. A healing rain, music, then a cloudburst. Dry wind high up on cliff face. Abundant coercion of oceanic discharge. Johnny Boies of such stock, driven hands, another junction directions multiplying. Talk, the tell-tale signs of a man living by the shards of the wheel. Some forty odd years loving his oil-can existence. On both coasts, global antipodes, for him an additional kick. Time-zone travels and fading impermanence, taking a stand by taller trees and warmer sunlight. The masses may even carry on to the fjord and call it a tumble of stones. What matter which end up? All things, so conceived, end up where they will. Higher sirens give vent to thermal clouds. Spring. The underwater currents, the miasma of thinking. Heard, seen felt; the paradox of clocks. Spheres of uncouth turnings. A truce of the road. A land shark tuning to a mindful presence. A thing, a man altogether mindful of existence. Such a man is not a man. Time enough, end on end, placed in the distribution chain. And when the bottom fell out we looked to Johnny. Cousin to a fine torrent of rain, Johnny.
Arrow. A hunters task giving way to tusk. In these parts a fine and dandy thing. A hunter, a fine man, is the target. And cross-purposes an order of interlacing fragments. Digitized analgesics. Variance and conclusions. The irony of a compass, here in the dust. Grime-filled times. Hoodlums with sense, under a dark regime. The cool anxiety of trellis and wave. Johnny's the tale of a desert rat, thru and thru.

His mom saying, 'keep it up,' would translate into a porno guise. A predisposed manhood for all Hollywood and the Valley beyond. Would take notice, and they did, for a time. It was a 'nice' three year stint, he recollected. Sweet. He wrenched the truck into third gear. "God damn pass," he said. And after saying, "please, God." And swearing under his breath. O.K. And now how about a sandwich of turkey, tomato, mayo on a bun? And a gallon of iced, sweet tea. Luxuriate in the dessert, now a cool heat meandering. And gas-up, hills again and down at 6% grade. Goes how far up around tunnel? Vision, white lines, an abandon-absent dreaming. To be here now eating. A guise, a mask, Johnny knew as much to begin at home. Copley Square. And the bring-down? Many nautical miles and a compass point to go from hilltop to southern domain. Approximate and seen herd of animals. A calling bred in the bone. A progenitor. Shift to second, down at 10% grade thru wash and river melt. Origin first came down as part tunnel, part vision and in-part called it Rabbit Hill. Some four hundred and seventy miles from X. Mapping the geography from space; aerial, hot circumference of wheel. A zig-zag time, out creeping around the world. A ghost on wheels. With fine dinning came t.v. A love act between Johnny and a sharper demarcation from his boyhood. Difference. A town's upkeep not nearly as coherent as the life he came to know at Copley. A time's upbringing, as ever, under repeated breaths saying, "will be time enough." Now a wad of peppermint gum to hold him over. Two pills, first, to ease him into the night. Downhill rainy spree. "Ken's at nine, then Dick's open 'till two...and have a last one." O.K. Dick's was no mirage of the like minded. Heaping dust upon dust, time sprawled. Earth with topping of soft mulch. The pass at four thousand feet. Johnny was dreaming signaling an end run. At 10% coasting down to Copley. Load the ready-load and take cross-town. Then back hook up to working convoy. Gather the team for trek south. Prep the move. Frank, still in the office, stacking paper clips. And talking with food bits coming out of his mouth. The background? A life of hauling, dumping, cursing. All in all, with a back to the rocks, nine plus five go getter mentality. World, and end around down to Sunny Wash Road, hook left, bang a right and Copley Square at the end of a rough hewn loggers road.

Frank, and Joe Kekam working under the hood. Jackie behind the transponder. Further equipment stacked hurly burly. Electronics. Wires. An obstacle of monitors. Graphs. Scribbled note-paper. Legal pads abounding. And Johnny jacking the rig. Stop at the so-called muffin shop, next door. Single dozen blueberry, next please. And total recourse running the shop. Bloodhound and twin labradors. Good quiet way, on a wood cedar bench, to day nap. Roads end, nights beginning. Together again at home away from wash upon wash of road. Blur of homeless wheels. Noiseless spokes keeping all the road holds back. Past as well as wiped clean?

Try though I might, keeping the trips and skips and ups and downs and Jacks and Johns straight and sorted, tough, at long roads ending, day. Night watch journey across river. Across bridge I lay me down to sleep. Cat nap next to Katie. Pet and man. Water trickling rain outside the tilted window near w.c. Horizontal sun shower and dream a sunny, smiling dream; a time and place to dream on cedar wood planet Earth drum. Katie, soft and scrunchy, by the wall, and me on the day bed, tucked against the wall. Watching window and door mantle. Shower stalls and dancing pianos. A sleep, per -chance, a wink. Katie near the counter, coffee machine and cash register. Above, small wall safe tucked under carriage ribbing of metal lathe. Eyes dreaming coming to a fixed point. Rugged ceiling sand painted like blasted pigment. Dreaming full of bird outposts, sanctuary of cliff rock dwelling. Light flickering in cat eye, corner interrupted by a feline hair. Bright orange cabinet. Smile. The only thing, beginning again, dark eyes shuttered against today; a day's dawning set for another trip. Let that sink in from the top trickling down to known origins. Beginning here at A, then shift to X. Figure on a signatory beyond the futile. Cat eyes open, whiskers cozying snuggle. Quick, close eyes tight. And pussy eyes closed. We sleep on one pillow breathing cat breaths. Ten minutes, or, ten hours? Eyes last shut dreaming, Katie one more dreamer. Infinite, repeating, random affairs. Tunnel of light, interior monologue. Floating above the room. Paw and paw waving. And a flag waving. In the distance, a little shelf, a photo of trucker and his pussy. Sleep overtaking pussy cat. Pussy of day dreams. Collapsing time like a bubble at sea. Wake. Movement. Action. The graded, if senseless, efficacy of the jumbled dreamscape. Cause and effect. Will. A braid around ten minutes. A fine truckers life. Advocating for a weaker version of the forty-eight hour day. Contrast to the pussy cat slumbers, heaven. Abstain from judgment, the worldly remains add up to Katie-cat rubbing her eyes. And me on a mission for coffee. Embark next door, and the workers kin about their mid-afternoon break. Just in time, sliding into a booth, Katie now left to her own devices. "Coffee, please, " shouting across to the duly vacant waitress. Annie comes thru swinging doors carrying coffee pots in each hand says, "Coming." And then all in one breath without pause she says, "Coming how you been good the usual?" And shrugging off with a wave of hand gruffly saying, "Yeah Annie." Her future movement, to a-butt any liking she felt toward progressing right into the space fronting the table. My left arm now occupied the same space. And while stroking her arm saying, "that's right, Annie, you turn right around and fix me up." And she said nothing. And shrugged her hand in a wave motion, almost a reflex, reaching to make some wholly unconscious contact. Without malice, almost an amoral shift. An absolute matter of gradations. And coffee working into his brain and blend showing an increase in voltage of singing bodies. Heavens. I said, "Annie, thank you, babe." The peculiar way she had of snapping out of a seeming reverie to expose a full frontal compliment. Eggs, on the runny side, scrambled. Since childhood, indulgence, an almost silent meditation on scrambled eggs. The scrambled form, fluffiness, runny color, texture. All elements in an aesthetic of contemplation. But the happenstance, occurring this morning, bringing egg reveries to a wistful inconclusiveness. A din out front. A racket midway between coffee shop and truck stop. Two employees, out of view, were fighting. Tony and Romy, fist to fist, had started out back of the transmission shop, and fighting across the fenced acreage and around to this side entrance. Presently, moving down State Street, passed Johnny, bemused, studying the scene from the rig cab, parked out front. I kept watch thru the plate glass of the store front, bemused, sipping coffee, conceding, with a smile, "always at it, Annie...those two?" And Annie stepping behind, wiping the booth table, "yeah, sounds like a money fight, or an old lady thing," I had dropped the paper coffee cup in to the garbage cart and walked outside. The two fighter had tumbled down to the next corner. They were being slowed down by the inconvenient placement of stop sign, mail box and bus stop bench. A small group was gathering adjacent a wall facing the last house on the street. Apple trees and puddles decorated the rest of the street scene.

Johnny, the outer utterances unheard, could only see the spent dust of the clapboard, rung after rung splintered. And by inference the blue sky glowing orange and red. An eerie light and background noise. Johnny angled around the rig, and came walking east toward State Street. Two minutes and two zig-zag patterns later brought him to the same stop sign. The same shop he had frequented many times in boyhood. Now, under blue weather beaten skies, he popped money into soda machine. Before a long haul, sun-hole to end a long, dry day. Weathered face standing against all heat, sun, wind and rain. An eight or nine year old boy could be heard singing. Mom singing too, to the dream of hasty youth, and an equivocal avocation. Johnny's mom, Eva, with her claptrap, had the boy convinced her house of cards, was a home. Never mind the gloom and doom stirring in the boy, high on the beauty of hookers and crooks and an indie pot of gold.

The boys had stopped rumbling. Johnny had come up behind them by crisscrossing the street. He continued passing them on the opposite corner. His vantage, with back and shoulders to the town, an anonymous guise. Johnny, to a man, would never mention the course of doom. Nor, would he share his ghostly travel songs. Songs of duty, conflict and the bonhomie of being a team member. Breezy night. Cool dust down to the ramparts. No consequence, no place unmoored from Johnny's idee-fixe. From the first, he saw no fun and games. He smiled, the antecedent was always the next trip. The first dawn and eternal night. Johnny, it was plain, would fight for the next trip, and the next. The difference, and the succession of points, a sojourn half as heavy. He came down off each ride like it was the last ride. For all intents and purposes, he would remind us, each night was a walled night. He believed, and said as much, that thru love we came to loneliness. Johnny had begun the end of his marriage some seven years prior, and took him a solid three years to achieve a reckoning toward self. He would have said no to an equilibrium, the law of laws, being imposed from the outside. Johnny, true to the last, would place learning at the top of the hill.

When he first came-up out of Scottish Hills Texas, his training ground, he would swoop up and down those roads, until his step and hands became a symphony of chord changes. Ecstasy in union with action, the root of the road of the realm. Props to the mothers, men and mice in those hills. He grew-up with their lore in his head. He came to love the road and the madness of the livelihood of his calling. The sun upon son as child to the man. Grand-mama, mamma left and right until he was fed up with them hills. And them hills, to Johnny, a much different place than to grand-papa. The automobile the difference that conquered difference. Johnny, and family ties, a juncture of road and man. A sort of cross at once eternal and sacristal. Stillness, and the keeping of the trust of the times. Crossings, and returning in reverse. A paradox as tight as the burden of work and love containing its own seed of life, and destruction. Co-equal to itself like a mirror reflection of self. A comfort, of sorts, in his heart of hearts. Identity on the roadway breaking point between hill and dale by horse-drawn chariot, or, guzzling gas behemoth and bane of all humanity. The precise juncture of the nameable itself. A vacant days candor. The impending icy field of memory. A video filmed to studied perfection, called the 'Fuel of Time.' Cocky fuckers in ocean. Lovers coy with time and the essence of love's discharge. A surly dream of Texas and Johnny in the buried time-line. A dementia buried in a notorious hole of lies. A tattered pendulum in night's pit. A car renters cost. The rental, leased option, insurance option, collision.

The thesis and anti-thesis, whereby, Johnny acknowledged the balcony above the office. Oblong, six-foot, good material overlooking State Street. And the office light, below, lit. Shinning in the gloom-doom of dusk. Night beetle shinning on twilight moon. The transmission shop's chronic noise above the dusty street. Garage door screech. Motor, rubber, repair. Oil, cable, chain-lock, underbelly. The continuity of Johnny snaking in and out and around garage where the lit office revealed Sonny sitting, smoking. The door leading to the corridor open behind Sonny. To the side, the mapped plan and the sketched-out remaining moves. The play of moves of business and markets. The adherence to economics, not homeland. Home and household, one among many. And Sonny of such Ponderosa Pine stock. The builders, movers and shakers of mountains. And a surety bond quote a necessity. The cause? Figuring the best route to deliver a stock of pianos from Sonny and Sons to San Cristoforo Church. Bahia, Mexico. The mechanics of music and the families of the good Earth. Dwelling on creation. Sonny of mid-age, fifty, and sure of sense. And grateful to music for life. Three generations as a corrective for the atmospherics of piano manufacture. The past receding in a still further recession. The original from scratch manufacture. Wood mill. String and coil manufacture. Factory synthetic weighted keys. Nigerian Blade Ivory. Inlaid blue diamond key signature. The lasting touch of density and porosity of key stroke. The outer shell of interlaced, vase-cut timber. Stain-paint and three coatings to buffer the system air-tight. The hum of keys out over the wilderness. Johnny, far and wide, listening with keys in mind. Johnny, under the spell of both an inner, as well as, and outer necessity. Not linked, but adjacent the springs of coiled action. Mind of pure-being giving birth to each self. And under the timber balcony a cast shadow across State Street. And the gravel path leading to the main room, setting of meeting with seats, table, platters, mugs, and a mess of papers on one wood block table. Lights dim. At the back of the stage an entrance and second way in or out of Sonny's office. Sonny quietly ensconced on the soft seat of the corner chair. Sonny's silhouette rocking, waiting.

Johnny eyes the stage, then closes his lids, softly, a nap of one minute duration. Eyes driven, not blinking. A dream of mindfulness. A dream per day is free, save in the debt to action. Work, or play Johnny moved forward. Not necessarily back, as road leads in both directions, and is a marked and understood byway. In this case, decipher and open eyes against the twilight room. Like waiting for the green light announcing start-time. Tomorrow. And to a man, only Johnny was too early. 'A man late is out of sorts,' he would say. The doctor is in, but what is needed is eye with lids half-closed, waiting. Sit down a moment to still the blood and mind, before movement moves back.

A side-entrance sliding-door, feeling his way out the side plaza path to State Street. Then ninety-degree right to Bee Street and the bungalow housing. The housing space comprising some five-hundred square-foot compartment. A single room unit. A stay long enough for a plight over night. And so on ad infinitum; if x then not x. And he came to sleep, alone. And the lamp post on Bee Street working fodder of repeated question and answer. Like a gallant treasury of wisdom passed down from Sonny to his smoldering driver. The opinion settlement-clause had no effect on the serious attraction the drivers had for Bee Street. Fitting, it would seem, as a final port of call. A beginning to rest. A listening-call where no ocean, no roar of engine and endless white-lines. A fever, far and away, for a world on the move. And sleep. A catalogue of hours, where Johnny a good old boy amongst good old boys. The comings, goings and groupings of night's last rest. Reassuring, to the last among us, the promise of a musical dream. A tempo like the road itself. A rhythm to wile away the ups and downs and the swerve of mountain pass. Impenetrable, to any but higher love. Life's arrow laid-out by Cupid. A shaft a-plenty. And the shafts of light diminishing over the western night, extinguishing the soul. And infinite dark matter. And first cause linked to origin linked to unknown x. Johnny's rock and roll insistence.

And the long-awaited kiss and smooch. Home, the sweet unconscious and upon awakening eyelids twitch, and pooch Russ, in a huddle by the head-board. And snout rousing Johnny to play. A miasma of sight, motion and sound. And Johnny just as quickly turning back to sleep for another fifteen minutes of sheer abandon. Honesty, rarer than rare, and sleep a colonnade of trellised garden cut to fit a yield of crop. Hope from the gilded sun, red-hay seed a churled graphic insignia to out-sized humanity. The human-abnormal, once limited, now a response to a threshold crossed. Factotum. A yield of innocence and forgetting, of course, and Johnny's dream of no clocks, no more dog in a tumble. The wear and tear of corrosive night passed as a dream blanketed by coal-black planets. No clarion call to summon Johnny to action. No A to B roaming void, as observer wanders at dawn. And Johnny waking, knew the dream as waking. Like a cool craving. Socks, clothes, hat, minus boots. And this sleepy-head, Johnny, melding with the rising sun and a hollering about his head outside the open window.

COPLEY

While loading and unloading one has the sweet taste of a limbo deferred. And to hell with time and space. A good cubicle of warm water. Shower and bathe and a massage. A respite from terror of empty night. Road an eternity of black and the notion of rest is one luxury, one luxury enough. As we step up to the plate, again, we wait. Hurry up and wait. I showered. Napped in the dingy light of a back room sofa, near high window partially ruffled blanket, or muslin taped up against overhanging moulding. And to catnap ten minutes or twenty minutes outside the roar of roadway was enough. And truck to be overhauled. Why man? Driver, or else time-stop and space a lonely affair. Not a home. Place not even a hole to disappear into. At least the white lines pertain to dream. Perhaps, the progression, numbered and ordered and laid out for inspection? We mount our lonely-other scheme, joined as a frame of reference, obsolete. And so steady. Head and heart. To begin again is all. Ever was so. Abstain in the same ballpark. We sit still to move and vice versa. I sit still so I am. Would not be far off, to move therefore I am, as a muse will sleep well enough as mortals do. As a nap will do. True dream of daylight. And days last retreat from night howls; owl retrograde fever. Like singers about town, we lounged with ourselves, recouping grace, the road, and a last trip’s voyage. Benefactor to stars and bars. Alone, we now and in the hereafter yearned only to learn. Here and now, after the present declared, we moved on into a receding past. Lime-light to gathering stream. Stay put or go. "We seem always on the verge." Tommy would notice in a gleaming moment. Intone. Under spangled lights. True enough, that was en-route to where-ever. That may be these interludes, are respite of an unknown limbo. We questioned just these facts. We abhorred a vacuum and like nature we filled it with all sorts of war stories. Tommy made sure of that. And love's lost labour? The pups, and dolls and amusements. Tommy and I flying around ourselves, as the road unraveled. We became every bit a true bit. Whore we would not deny. The occupation of olden times would suffice. For lucre in every day has sufficed. Its impact has been reduced itself to zero. We dropped any distinction. After the fifth veto of back and forth, correspondence we conclude, all other failings being equal, to stick to moving. In all a sizable chunk of reality. Rolled into a neat ball and rolling. Almost, except the here and now respite, the cool calculated way we moved from long haul to short haul and back. Each calendar year departed we resume, yet another departure.

Roll out of nap time with head reeling. Roll out the next feat of wandering. Lust filled moon, last night, and morning a different reel of time. Showing about a cool hiding place. South into the hood. Heated entrails. The next long lease of life. A life fruitful enough. Transparent. We demurred in soft coffee talk. Light becoming softer. Time of water bearing insolence, pride not withstanding. We better leave off again where last trips banter gave way to innocence. Chapter and verse, a continuation of unknown duration. Per chance, one meaning extracted along the way, stowed-away by memory. So the trip's way, port and measure, test of each descriptive notation. We jump to the call. Of duty and work as play. Would have us as cohorts and majestic supporters of boss man. Sonny and his hapless son, Tucker. Of all his workers, only the son, the father, as post-delinquent. Manufacturer of lies. Other extreme looseness with words. Sense as opposed to apparent history. One asked, how could family dispensation, being what it is, always remain? Only this act witnessed, the dispossession of protest. Called duty but not for keeps. And Sonny had on more than one occasion reprimanded, in public, his only heir. And future worth of difference, Tucker was a non-germinating seed. In level timing of facts, the order was apparently given.

We gathered pre-trip to here the boss speak. Give us the lay of the land per trip. And out back, farm with shop and mill. casements hand made cedar to spec. And to code handed down from Sonny. Craftsmanship. Went so far as to summon order from afar. Mexico village of small coastal town. Shipments, design and concept. Therein, the matter became one of building. The entire process, design, absorbed as much for the fact of the object itself. Dispossessed now. Smelling the wood-room again. Back together and sense of lumber curing. Cured cedar, pine, oak and maple. We sampled as much walking passed open shop window of mill. back door open to hay bails. Outpost of smiths. Worker bee Brian putting finishing touches the joinery of the F115J Maestro. And his mate, of a sort, passing tools of all sorts. And even, at one point, had an open box of fresh ivories, weighted appropriately, packed in jaundice-yellow cardboard. And metal bracing of under-board. Key-hold and grip of inlaid material, too. And I walked passed around to front of shop. And turned into doorway. Now, facing back at Brian from vantage of thru doorway beyond register counter into back of shop. Front anterior being a sales office with laptop, copier, fax, telephone and tele-conferencing screen. Capabilities set-up retreating from door to my left. Clapboard porch open on end with three steps down to dirt floor. Round corner to steeple and church replete with original benches. Tucker at the altar minus tabernacle. Table retrofitted with a cloth of green and yellow. Oak table with metal folding legs. Back behind, thru seminary entrance, exit of vestibule, Sonny was speaking. And between peeps at Tucker, popping in and out of view, Tilly with a tray of crumpets and a kettle. Hand in hand with blue check apron. Barely audible with scream from further back. Of infant, or equal, circular saw. And various carpenters walking behind the two conversing. And Tucker fumbling with box on make-shift altar. Slamming lid open then close, then open and close, again. Lighting a cigarette, walking across the clapboard, backtrack to corner and following the shingle wall along stained glass length of meeting hall. Out back to porch looking at adjacent seminary colonnade walkway. Double door entrance to hall both swung open to reveal vestibule. Carpenters joining and Sonny gathering notes. Now speaking with Tilly, then peeking in at Tucker. Then talking to carpenter about joinery at stained glass panel installed on inner door entrance with inscription in leaded lettering. "Sanctum." And below, stained glass in red, yellow, blue and green. Depicting Jesus at the cross with two arms under-turned lifting the horizontal cross-tie. And heaving with bent knee just rising above blood stained earth. And brow dripping blood on to stained robe. And torso twisting back, eyes gazing thru.

Swinging round on a dime, I made my way out around corner, back to front of steeple entrance, up wood stairs to mount vestibule and down center aisle. Turned right along aisle facing toward Tucker. Huddled near Sonny, both spun upon seeing the crew assembled in three neat rows. And I slipped down in row three and kept to the wall. Now, the burnt sun was passing down outside. And the illumined glass cast rays adjacent a statue facing Tucker. At the altar Sonny approached the microphone. Tapped on it with ring finger and announced, "Now settle down boys. We've assembled here a second convoy for delivery to Bahia. Having three days, you are to meet south of Tijuana at Ponte Scurro. Then south to Bahia del Sur. Total order being 12 grand and twenty-four baby grand. Spearhead to begin tomorrow at 0 five-hundred hours. Any question?" No questions. And then Tucker peeped down from the wings, "is the timing essential?"
"Yes, dear boy, yes," an exasperated Sonny looking back with a cowled expression. "Now." Unfolding a map. And with Tucker's help tacking the four foot map up on the back of the altar space. A processional quarter. Then with pointer, he came back to the mic. And unhinged it and walked back with pointer and mic saying, "here at Ponte Scurro, turn out at the end of Scallina Road and meet up. That's a two day journey and a third, over rough road to Bahia." Now, with the opening of the map, hands in unison. Three or four popped up. And Sonny with a grimace tinged with hope said, "yes, Brian?" And Brian stood taking off his navy blue ball cap and shuffled his feet a couple-three times and said, "Now, at Ponte Scurro...can you give us an update on amenities...once we cross the border?" And Sonny grumbling, but was really phlegm loosened and swallowed clearing throat he began, "Now, good question Brian...I want you guys prepared to stay in your vehicles for the whole journey...we may have a lay-over spot...we'll contact en-route...at this point...lodging at Ponte Scurro and the old farm house at the ranch Pasquale Torito." Some remember assembling there several years back. They were in the process of re-constructing the Olde Church. A day to day basis about completion at journeys mid-point. The Olde Hotel, Leoness, at Chiuachaco. Some twenty-five miles from Bahia. After delivery there will be rooms available reservations were made with Sergio, at time of order. Further along, his property, the last actually, the one, additional aspect of order upright CM4135P cedar shell with inlaid redwood for Sergio at Chiuachaco. Perhaps have the upright ready for first delivery. Then on to Bahia and back to Sergio. Gathering for departure at jobs completion. Any amenities found, by any other name, will be personal choice. The congregation seemed somewhat focused. Focus on the duration and proposal of trip.

Sonny motioned to Tucker and the boy now genuflecting at cabinet adjacent altar. Revealed several bottles of champagne, California varietal. And popping two, passed around plastic cups, and all near the steps, to altar, raised their glasses and quick swigs all around. Sonny dismissed us readily and said in parting, "let's do a good job, you hear?" And in unison the gang went out mumbling and talking louder as the group approached the back of the church hall. And Tucker could be seen at the altar, alone, fumbling with the casing along the edge of table adjacent mic stand. Pulling at a loose moulding and mumbling, "yes, loose, too loose, need nail...hammer."And the crew out front slowly dispersing. Several of us gathered near the wood shed, near the creek, lighting cigarettes as the sun moved over hill top and tree canopy filtered light. Minute details of the road were optioned. And each preference came to be seen as one choice among many. And road not being free. Choice for each was limited. A thorough-fare that led straight back to once upon a time. Straight or curved time; for the equality of men? Road and movement over unseen territory. These last days preceding a warming to the facts. The impermanence of rainbows itself a figment of perception. Alone, I gathered energy on a cot near fireside and wool blanket pulled up over expanse of body. Watching the last light through aperture between window sash and violet window covering. And eyes dozed for next day time itself and journey over land. Start up. Go. One, when dissecting the life of the winding road, master mind of all sleep, perchance.

May, morning, Tommy at the window barking fake commands. Out of some escapade, antics with a can, slurping, of course. Splurge down cheek and throat. And me in my crib squinting, "yeah, yeah, old man. Old dog should I say?" Rolled out at five. Still dark. Light barely perceptible in tinge of grey. Still a shade lighter, framed, as it were, by Tommy's head. The window sash, and the trees beyond, and the pups, now in the foreground. I recoil against the dastardly omen: no coffee in the room and down to my last cigarette. "Warm her up, old man, and coffee?"
"Yes-sum boss." Some faint light. And road still the same. Together again, and yet again. New pups to tag along. In rear view mirror, leaned to call out, "let's roll." And Tommy with five gallon hat skipping and running, to add insult to injury. And the rig rumbling in the blur of early morning. And packed, with Tommy, and two drinks. And I say, "get us down to grade, I'll be awake by Metro Coffee." And so we came out of Copley. Time. Heading south. In a manner kind to all others. Some convoy. Allowed to remain at distance. And coy copy to destroy with vague assurances. Brian at helm, in front, as wind breaker. For next ten miles wandering thru scrub forest, pine, cedar. Then down to the Central Valley. And Cooley Pass. And Metro Coffee, copious and full of errant men. Road gory folk, all out and out, circumspect. To be sure, not Tommy. Hand over hand. In lock-step. Kept, as usual, a hard hand and many a limerick flowing. Now and again, on ever rarer occasions, we came to an impasse. And incommunicado. We, I should demand the first few bars of The Monkey and the Lion. "Let me, dear sir, recite the Monkey and the Lion?"
"Yes, old boy, yes." With a chuckle, and grab, the pup now at the center motor hump shift box. Get the meaning of the words. The first few bars cloy at the hem and haw, about the unified theory of nothing. And head reeling came to rest. And all questions incorrect. Haste, makes a mind of coffee mint-cakes. And flower wind. And rain, up to me in all likelihood. Handle the wheel. Dry road. At the helm of sixteen strong. Sun over south-east ridge, calling my eyes forward, over ring-road and beyond Telegraph Avenue. And down to river, side-route along spine of coast road. Then hook back over the 47 to the 5. The thing accomplished, Tommy whistling, singing old show tunes. And then jazz lectures circa 1930's, with special emphasis, he liked to say. "Three fingers and the thing came alive." And then the rest-stop brought us further room for inglorious rest. Go and rest, like music. And Tommy coming down off the rig and straight to the w.c. And I for water, and cakes and coffee. Streaming down over western ridge cloud burst, dust. And over the counter, coffee-bean heaven, sky-high blue. Revealed, a bag full of cakes and coffee. And Tommy scooping in, and me in the drivers seat. Down. Road sign at freeway ramp. Three hundred yards up stony causeway ramp. Leaving Copley Township. Then on down to the river valley. "Oh! Las Noches, Las Noches de las Grandes Tetas!" Tommy now imploding at the thought. And more, of course, always more. And then to boot he says, "be sure you all come down, be a bad-ass show." And referring, as if, to some yet deeper south. Way down San Diego way. Tucked back San Ysidro. "Sure enough, old dog. Don't pop a gasket. We'll be bay-side soon enough."
"As I was saying, Jango..." And on into the bleary tide-filled night. Wasted. No thing to come. Still we remain, go. In all words cast not I. Yet, I, and the way led there, opposed to two days ago. Rain. Showers passing. Full moon showing down our own Euphrates. In a barrel rolling with both oar and sinker. "Oh! the monkey begat the lion, and the wench the shot gun." Tommy now in the most pleasing state I could hope for. Upon an impending road trip, flights of fancy may yet save the world. A cosmic joke. Bigger than big. It could surely be called the new quotient. Thought tumbling down thru the rabbit hole. Becoming, in point of view, a frame of the road. Movement of spleen. A coherent member of another school year's cruelty. Painful, like teething. Growth. Movement. Roadway in flight. To San Joaquin, and the darkening ring-roads proper to the north. Giving way to a conceit of riches, torn between a tipping point. And, no doubt, the center a bread basket and seat of sympathy. And bone of contention. What better bait and switch? The metaphor? To build on with misinformation. Well, as good as any bone of contention. Believable as far as lies of omission go. And down over waterless valley of channel-pumped concrete aquifer. Pipe and more concrete and an overlay ending with topsoil. And finding it good, we fed a nation under arms. Collusion. In any case, fun. Soused. Of the sort, would never recognize a mere artifact. Contemporary man. A new descendent. A season out of joint. Generation? A queer fellowship of men mainly caught in the whirlwind, and catching a faint wisp of peace. Conflict in the blazing empty desert. Ending a spell. Repatriated. A long days wandering, driving still. "Did me time in the car pool, my boy." He'd say when I brought the war talk. Tradition. Discipline. True enough. And anger. A wager lost to the future. Speak illicit and more than just enough. A cock-pit full of beer. Good eats. Next point. Simplicity. Implicitly followed the soaked logic, gleaming under the weakening of age. Inertia. Still, the emerald in his eyes stood for some notion of free will against the dark stench of the times. Another, together. Like a chain link fence bordered by everything and so on down to Fresno. The gateway to fading dawn. Another way out over mountain pass to coast. A circling ring of days. Out to ocean, now. And imagination. Out of the box, now, Americana out of control. The sky blue and red. Oh Tommy ole boy. Playing with pup along for the journey, while the others laid back at Copley. And Tucker, Sonny too, able to cope better, when a love light shone on their own storied time and place. As yet no growth of forest, or, plumed beast to capture. This fools errand we keep to remind us of what's been left behind, namely a love of no recourse. Sourly the hours pass. Vicissitudes of existence proper. And the other shoe dropping off. Like a mind and body moored away by a generational wind. The personality of the pup, Rusty, quiet. A fool for love. And a genius at creating space. The back compartment seemed cozy, dear Rusty. Two cots and a hollow pillow of turned out leather, with a ring around it of rabbit fur.

In the hills, south of Copley. rumbling passed the bay of upper Santa Barbara. And down thru a patchwork of farms, sorghum forest and wineries dotted along the interior hinterland know as Pigeon Point. We were all in the best of repose and refused to stop as the road required. We had attained the sweet spot. When a scheduled stop, even for hot food, was passed by. And passing the Pointe Diner almost caused a wisp in Tommy, and undoing another can of Pabst said, "Here's to this stretch of road." And five hours headlong to San Diego, and to the coast of our last favorite taverna. An old-school sort of place that Tommy, in a sub-concious moment of clarity, named Las Noches De Las Grandes Tetas. The last stop. So, crowing passed the Pointe Diner mattered less as a quotient. Just another trip, not excluding a turning-point. A Mexican past, peculiarly. And Tommy recalling in a murmur of alcohol and road-induced grumbling said, "last time we took the Palm Springs route, San Ysidro, this time old friend, old gringo, old boy." And he did his Joe Mexico routine all the way to Las Noches. Over moon aura of bay of San Diego a numeral of road and sign-age. And mileage markers between a rolling of A to B. Time itself unrolling, back thru a rear-view mirror hurtling forward. And back again, saved from stupor only by change. A local transfiguration. A horizontal and vertical notion of the journey. A quest from north to south. Direct, without obscurity. No mist could mar this needle pointing omni-directionally. Our compass of interior space, and down thru exterior of country. An arbitrary boundary, or border. Such a place could measure events, and characters. A lens showing, in outline, the stress-points, the taint of misdirection.

A surfeit of Five South, turning over to the headlands of Simi Valley. Dawn upcoming; talking ceased. And without duress, Tommy said, "no stopping, only for piss break." And me shaking my head, sighing, and pup too, in dawn-bleary distance, puppy eyes to say, 'jeez boss.' And the others, far from radio contact, had stopped south of S.B. and snoozed. All together one split apart convoy. Heading, due south, turned on the occurrence of time, a limbo, stretched again. Light trickled over grazing-land. Up over hinterland and ocean coming to view. Strip of land finding razor thin grey of willow light. Trans-descendance. Solution? At all cost, find a way to stop. Find a way, counting cost. And time requirements. Keep low, calculations now trebling. Taking a turn, Tommy un-cramped his arm. Tuned to make a steel rod envious. With movement, the road, as if a track with ghosts following. Every move of helm an apparition. Conduct fast thru dark tunnel of night. Cut-up the valley floor. Shoot-up thru arroyo. Spit us out in the lap of downtown Los Angeles. And behold another glowing road south. And a prayer for Tommy. And a wink to dawn traffic. He would have us down to Orange and a shuffle from there to Las Noches. And the grand Ysidro Swamp, of which we so affectionately called Los Grandes. All glee and turning thumbs. Tommy, from exit ramp, to piss-break, to out with another twelve pack. Stars and moon gone, descendent of a burnt, leftover sun. Hold on. Announce another call of arms. Global temperature change of human slug. Snail-like behavior. Learn non-sense. Learn truth. The process is not, to be sure, communicative, in a despairing proposition, to count upon one hand. A fellow that corresponds on the level, by a thread. Something accomplished, but the road overhauls this or that, as loss and gain. Zero sum. Airy river, now slanted toward Pacific expanse. A catholic feeling. An outline of process coined equality. Made to travel, as change remains unchanging. "I've worked me ass off." Tommy, exposing his hairy mid-rife, then smacking himself on the flank of his ass. An American life, spent it working. From the bombed-out WW II years, then baking in the North African sun, then thirty years down the road. East coast. West coast. A cannon ball destined to come round to the start. We came to the blank stretch of road south of Orange and thru Pendleton. Thru the S.D. basin, and by noon, thru La Jolla. Then fixing a Route 1 bee-line for San Ysidro. And time for a stop. Water-front park. Denizens, dogs and waves kicking up white water. Evergreen manicured bushes. Swooping south, from light to light, like a string tied from beach, to lingering beach. Suds, pounding sun. Loose sand and recoil, spit back what ocean had left vacant. Another year of vagrant passages about town. Less a boardwalk. Less a pier. Less a jetty, nor bridge, the flattened bay, (stretched thin over expanding tectonic), of the northern tare. Ocean more prominent then sky and city swath heading south-east. Continuous basking in late mid-day sun. Scowl of brown patch. Curve, swerve passed Old Town, Mission Bay and downward to port. Naval Way. Lay station for seamen of the western core. Coast downgraded. Still station enough. Focus. Empire In-House Ship-Builders. Practice in one place, the South-West. No amount of Mid-East mobility would coerce or intervene to distinguish this from any of the East coast naval bases. The Pacific rim fleet strung out like a daisy chain, worth noting, beyond empire's last stand. A stalling pointing to a further sliding toward sunset. Spin, turn-out to further sea. The altruism of western rage, mobile men of ruination. Investors move west, and then stop. Stop to gather horses, then re-submerge. Liquid change. Movement leaves behind the low-land of the bay; climb up over low ridge. Cross-over, leading to flat lands north of the city. Border of open expanse. Built-out, first by corporations, then by builders moving cross-border. Swelling back, no coagulation of peoples. Only valuations and the turning of personal vendettas. Coin of the realm? Whatever the rulers take for themselves. Instead of a continuing journey, reify, historically, from the standpoint of the victors. The losers, undercover, learned how to ride in to the sunset. No other way to say it, but from within the journey itself. Only here do we speak from the same standpoint. Register that. "Check, Charley, come on in, toot, toot." Tommy, joking and pointing to last exit before border, and smaller sign behind exit ramp, with arrow pointing, San Ysidro, Downtown. Hard left, as we came to the end of the ramp. Over bridge, causeway, hard right and bang smack into barrier wall and fenced alley of stores.

LAS NOCHES

Johnny knew as much about Las Noches as any of us. It was Johnny who mapped out the first extremity of cliff. To Johnny, the dirt sand road looked good outside Pendleton. There the dunes made more sense to Johnny than most locales, and over the darkening sand, we made it over to Route 1. And down the escapade of back road until the bigger city of the bay reached open. It was neither a margin nor worse than everlasting. And the bay a fingers breath of land separated by channel, then sea, upon outer flank of the temple, of inland San Diego. And the war ships in flanked rest west of the city. And the buoy wooing the sea, as the city slept. And so too, nation, and global coast. Weather-vanes pointing due-south. And the yearling sun of summer out flowing to bay and oceanic discharge. Calling us forward to some buoy- shape against sun's calling. And the vacuous piste of road churning down to the southern edge where Bodega Street merged to an instant out over a welcoming curve of horn. Over banquet lands dispelling calls of winter. No siesta on this side of the coast. The other side of the coast wilder. We discerned some other port of call, and a trucker’s ransom was as much as a cure. All blending was the route south. No border town stop. No lover’s call waiting to secure some sure home-ground. And the tolls, not dollar versus peso, as yet were not free-floating. Our calling opposed nothing so much as itself. The road, back and forth, said as much, needing no mediation to further sell the seed back to its creator, Johnny. That seed-body as whole as any one man. Like one second jumping and light-beam bouncing, populating each space in time, consecutively. And so on, for whatever onerous course of events. We called the work to be done a debt collected and recollected. And the call was always more, more, with limits deferred. The road from the start was a coming up from stillness, to a furthering silence. The call-up began from this point, and was as much as scripted. A further clue and a bastion of truth, a line of demarcation. Our stomping grounds were gathered as much south of the border, as north. Johnny map-maker to us younger souls. We all came back like a vanquished wall, stones still deferring. From city-dweller to country carpenter, Johnny knew the courses of time’s repeating over and over. And the call-up began, despite the coming of the best- timed innocence. And time was shut up in the space of grey matter. Now, some thirty years, Johnny still running to his destination of first choice.

Las Noches had worn in the extreme, like Johnny. Wood claptrap exterior and face curved worthier by wind and rain. Like curve of arc of rain spattered road. And the curving rain of thought and memory. Still the same entrance to Las Noches. Same gravel walkway. Same grey sign, GRANDES TETAS and in smaller letters LAS NOCHES. And Johnny as two magnets, the repulsion of which like time and the Las Noches darkness. And the curve of a leather seat, the crush of klieg lights. The light of sepulchral lime-light. The in-team assembling, and the stage cast in flights of flesh. Skin-tone of Latina. Her skin and tits flying as a breeze in time. Her quotient of nerdy glasses kept her brunette hair flowing and towering above Johnny, now seated. He ordered a draft beer and with time enough not to care about this or that piece of roadway. Or, the curve of fate. Nor, the fatuous lies of empire casting its teeth into the maw of the world. Sips his beer and chalks it up to crises created out of smoke-filled air. Cigarettes burned and smoked out of ashtray, too. His blues continuing out of nothing. And Johnny with a smirk and a flick of the wrist rolled a twisted dollar bill out of sight of Maria. And tossed it on stage. And Maria with a graceful genuflect picked up the dollar and flashed a smile at Johnny. Johnny smirking back over at Maria. And Maria with her tongue licked her bottom lip, from left to right. Touching, also, her bottom with a smacking hand to her own ass. And this caused in Johnny no mere artificial balance. (He caused some women no more trouble than most men.) Johnny reached around to his back pocket of jeans and pulled out a war-torn black wallet. And Maria smiled as she saw its tattered condition. And he removed an inch thick collection of bills. And he tossed the now empty wallet down on the bar. A Johnny saying, "that’s seen its better days.” And he handed her a five-dollar bill, this time brushing her forearm in the process. And she turned now on all fours, showing-off her butt. Her ass hotter, now, and her gyrating hips produced, in Johnny, the twitching hand that parted more and more from his money-pile. And this time the shot, like the others before, proceeded by and washed down with a short beer. The shots were of gin on the rocks. And the beer a Tecata draft, guzzled. And just in time for Maria to accentuate with her hands the hotness of inner thigh, groin, ass. Johnny could have sworn the twitching in his hand had a reality all its own. And the dark, cavernous back-room like a closeted shape in the gloom. And the bar would have been empty of noise, except for the hard-metal music Maria enjoyed so much. Johnny moved sparingly, at first, then more quickly, pushing another bill toward Maria, then re-positioning himself down the back of a red leather booth, surrounded by other booths, now empty of patrons. And Johnny motions with snapping fingers overhead, “another round.” And simultaneously, door swings open allowing gust of dusty wind followed by Tommy, exuberantly surveying the scene. Tommy allowing the door to resume its backing, semi-closed position and me catching the door before its final click. And darting my head around the half-open door I smiled briefly at Maria. And Tommy already ordering rounds and making his way toward Johnny, who’s leaning back in the booth smiling a smirky hello. And when Johnny sees me, he smiles, and again, snaps his fingers ordering another round. The lights and music change and Maria naked, retracing her steps to make way for the next dancer. The eloquence of the dancers and the announcer, too, with faux baritone delivered in a stream of consciousness style monologue. Now, for instance, the announcer’s bald head shinning under the bright, white light, sitting at his console. He switches the music to a slow ballad, cover version of Knocking On Heaven’s Door. He announces, "put your hands together for the beautiful, Mandy." Enter the blonde with thick, muscular thighs and an ass that would make quaint the notion about how Sally was built like a brick shit-house. Mandy, a professional, more acquainted with the pleasures of desire than with any idea of a static image. More like flowing, semi-contained water. A waterfall’s chasm with limits transgressed. Johnny standing and clapping, and yelling, “you’re number one, Mandy." And Mandy acknowledging pointed her rotund ass toward our group, in the back corner booth. Johnny giving Tommy and me bear hugs. He kept on cheering, and the night’s incoherence began, at first, imperceptibly. Perhaps true, for someone not on intimate terms with both Tommy and Johnny. And looking askance at Johnny, especially, was not a thing easily accomplished. When I looked up, was a split second after Johnny had snapped his fingers for, yet, another round. Then he got busy scoping the stage, and he began twisting his dollar-bills the way he would after his first few drinks. A tight wrap of a bill, and then with a wink he said, "here we go." He stood up, quickly, walked to the stage and passed a bill with a fragile twist of the wrist into Mandy’s bikini bottom.

And, like so, the night’s odd essence came slowly to the fore. The time had come for drunkenness and the forgetting of previously lost time. Like a moment escaping fragrant from sun’s eclipse, or moon’s vacuum. And whoever partied with Johnny knew as much. Las Noches was located just adjacent San Ysidro. A town, a nowhere place on the brink. An outpost on some invisible, post-civilization’s border. A cross-point of lies and disciplined money. To be sure, Johnny was drunk. And I looked over at Johnny and noticed his dropping eyes. Still swigging the last of his beer, slowly, like he was recovering some long-lost childhood memory. He caught my eye and said, "the more things change, the more..." And his voice trailed off and was transformed into a, “whoop!” And the next lass came strutting on to the stage. I thought I noticed a fresh glint in Johnny’s eye, but, it was only the track lighting changed-up, overhead. He winked jovially a couple-three times and I shimmied over toward him, moving around the booth toward the middle spot he was occupying. Placing my arm around his shoulders I said, "how was the trip down to here?" First he shrugged his shoulders, swigged another sip and he said, finally, “smooth until I hit Pendleton at rush-hour, didn’t open-up until I was way passed downtown, so I stopped bay-side and looked in on Bud.” His expression froze for a split second and I asked, “how is the boy?”
"Good, thanks. He just returned, last week, from the Caspian. In fact, he brought you a tin of caviar" And then he shrugged me off, leaned forward, his right hand gently touching my forearm and said, "Check out Anna. She’s new, just in from Tijuana." Her bright orange bikini appeared as burnt orange under the stage spotlights. I wink at Johnny and say, "she’s my type." And Johnny responding, “not so fast, partner.” And he smiled a big smile and began clapping and hooting for Anna.

It was a year since I last saw Johnny’s son, Bud. It was the weekend of the South-West Motor-Cross Championship out in the Nevada desert. He was another two months away from the start of boot camp, and his last race to show-off talents honed since he was seven years old. The dirt dunes were his calling, culminating in two regional titles for San Diego County. And by then a fervor had taken hold of Bud, the type of fervor not lessened by time’s passing. And if listening for a calling were an art, Bud possessed what youth normally gives away to trial and error. Bud felt there was error in not expanding talent in a God-given direction. And across the sea and around the world was a staging ground of Caspian proportions. Over hill, dale and far off sea, but the corpses were a thing unimaginable. The why and wherefore of existence, an inkling Bud never gave much thought to. Like a lone wobbly, scaffolding separating the fighters from the love. A not so merry tune, the closed book of new life extinguished. From some dark womb of conscience, the boy had grown under the influence of life changing violence. Politics. Bodies crushed under the weight of a bankrupt fable. Lost. Shattered through over-exposure. What communal dream existed, existed in memory, only. A type of phantasmal celluloid emptiness. And to buy into a cast-off dream was not a natural inclination for Bud. To imagine the cost was payback enough, what with Johnny a thorn in his side. Johnny was just, as was the quest to remove the thorn. Be it unconscious, the removal was a learning to learn. In other words, an emptying. And Bud took what he re-learned and transformed it, making it his own. If to be a soldier was all, then a growing out of frailty was the system. A countering of what debts were piled on the young. The principle still held. Why Johnny, with all the input of a caged beast, would berate the boy? A will languishing, through and through, was an unwelcome ugliness for Johnny. A type of hearing without a calling. A type of learning without heed to times passing. How, you ask, could Johnny pass such harsh judgment on Bud? A mere eighteen years of age, and if the will were unwilling, Bud interceded with a change of scenery. What I came to believe, it was a testing for Johnny, as well as for Bud. Another way of saying, a letting go into unknown territory. Map it out, move, find the emptiness at the end of full time. The quest was all. In a time of war the reality was in bringing it all back home. There was time enough for philosophy, absolutely. Time enough for scarlet troop movements, daily abstracts, commandments, branded officers.

And the road, for Johnny, was what kept the likeness in the family. The same tracing out of pattern through movement. Just like the white lines leading to unknown likeness. Even if the path was well-trodden, the tempo required was a fine thing. Mind holding steady to some personal quest. Even omitting loneliness, the quest, internally, at least, could be well established. If only time enough to try. And I asked Johnny, "what’s left on his tour of duty?”
"Just over a year." And then Johnny turned to face me, winked and said, "Check out who’s up next, Andrea...you’ll never...” And his voice trailed off as the announcer worked up the patrons. “What?” I countered. “What?”
"Andrea is the daughter of Vanessa, the only mother-daughter team I’ve ever encountered.” And the spotlights were dimmed by half. Andrea began her stalking catwalk. Black leather hot-pants and matching halter top. And her black locks sprinkled with sparkle powder. And the corresponding glint off the faces of the patrons. Las Noches was a kick with a smile attached. The re-done patterns. The call of loneliness and the question. Las Noches or not Las Noches? And the quaint fact was, not Johnny, not Bud could ever tell the direction of war. So, conveniently, Johnny created categories. This kept an almost airtight conditioning on each fact. And attached to the violent core of lies was an emanation from the center. The clock showed 11 PM. and the patrons began gathering in earnest. Bar room now more than half-full. I asked, "what time are you guys pulling out of here?"
"I was thinking early morning." Said Johnny.
"I was going to push off by midnight, be in Bahia by dawn."
"What about this tangle of booze? Don’t you need to sleep it off." Said Johnny.
"You got a point?" I said.
"Let me drink... I mean let me... think about it.” And on that note I ordered a burger. And I walked over to Tommy to talk about our scheduled departure. Tommy without saying a word was betrayed by his lower lip. In a depressed fashion he says, "Ah boss why can’t we stay?" And the cluster of men sitting around the bar were so united in their admiration of Andrea that to peel Tommy away would leave a gaping hole where none existed before. And I said, "We got another hour, you hear?" He smiled and said, meanly, "good, good." I turned and proceeded back toward Johnny. And Johnny leaning back in the booth, eyes closed, sipping the last of his beer. And so forth, and so on, continuing this way, through the night. In any case, Johnny took his cue from intuition and there was time enough to be one with the boys. Johnny said, “you know what? I’ll cut the night short and convoy it with you, tonight."
"Let’s get it done," I said. And with change the pieces of the night fell together. An insistence gathered by tooth and nail. At most a vestige of different times, when men were divided upon themselves. And growing-up not quite sane, but still appropriating change. Changes of heart. One man’s equipment as a supplement to change. Whether there or not there, a cause none the less. We followed a path and the quest we saw in others, we impinged upon ourselves and called it all. And Johnny was no different. His thinking back some twenty years, almost too much distance covered. Over many tracks of many moons. And Johnny owed as much to work, as to play. He could chalk-up a son and a career, and a livelihood out West, far from the landed gentry of the Eastern core. And though departure was no cure, it allowed as much for what came next. Like a thorn characterized as a negative vow. The promise could be Bud’s or Tommy’s. Just a vague, insistent cry deeper than any one vessel could contain. An empty night’s dark cry. The answer was not love, but, the quicker beating heart. A quarter of a leaf’s cut sickness. To be over and out, gone, ghostlike in the night. In a bar room call, hither and tither, not withstanding a half-wits calling. Blackness and night operating like a call-up. And minus any personage, the road was enough for any one man. All Johnny wanted is what could not be deciphered. Not the edge of threshold, but the full sweep. The quotient unveiled. Only the night was the matter. And Johnny would call out 'with you too, with you other ones,' in his sleep, bewildered with drink and carrying out his curtain call.

Johnny and Tommy both awoke with hangovers. Tommy was worse off by far, dry heaving and telling obscene limericks. Johnny was in an ill temper. The one thing that enlivened him was the idea to stop by Corrado’s house. Corrado his friend from their years growing-up in Henderson. And both of them, together, had come to San Francisco. Corrado, now, was holed-up in a small apartment overlooking the Tijuana crossover point. The wall, as a matter of fact, was a part of the row houses and commercial establishments. The front facing grey brick wall topped by fencing and a patrol walk, gated away from public view.

Bobby Schiller was seated at breakfast, as we stepped down into the kitchen. All of us feeling locked out of time. And the four men grabbing breakfast. Eggs, bread, butter and onions peeled back. All of us showing a revealing layer of old humanity. And the European in us braying. And the U.S.A. in us like one ox to another. Do as the donkeys do, bray in the country. And the U.S. a company so far-out that this company of men subverting the machine. Like the glance of a journalist revealing a lonely man. Cool glance. And Bobby says, "What you been selling? Pianos, land, usury?" And being alerted I said, "Bobby, Bobby, are you straight, crooked or cock-eyed?." And Bobby smiling started his eye assault on me. And Johnny and Tommy, in a unison frightening to some, said, "we be selling our asses off." Meanwhile, Corrado in the corner all swollen with pee. All bleary eyed with too many dire cans of beer pulled back and bled-out, a toxic horror. Scrambled eggs and morning eyes ablaze. Memory begging what is it? Come right out with it, a piss break, oh! Corrado with cock enraged. In heat peeing, as it were, on the shoes and at the feet of Bobby. Peeing out the bloody beer, wine, a waste. And Bobby shot off with a delirious wicked back-hand. (It nearly rubbed out Corrado from the top down.) And Corrado, shot downward to lie half-collapsed in the mess of his own making. Like the mass of Holy Sunday passing into Monday. And full moon to ever forgiving moon. Bobby, unknown ‘till now, for his smack downs. One to the face and one to the chest. Bobby knew as much and said, "Get up...and you, Tommy, bring me one of those fresh beers.” Bobby had come out of New York via West Florence, at Bay’s Ending, tide returning without end. And Tommy returning with a cold long-neck. And Tommy popped the cap. Bobby was tempted. The hapless Corrado dangling from Bobby’s grip. “The piss is going to be so fresh and so sweet,” said Bobby. And the look in Corrado’s eyes as he pleaded, "No, no, not the dirty beer pee."

This morning’s commencement became an integer of day’s passing. Four in one. One in four. An integer seared in acts, aching. The structure and design a technique out of the ninety-ninth percentile. A choice, always a choice. And Bobby’s act coming to a head, literally. Something out of Tommy’s Monkey and the Lion. And Bobby emptied his own bladder, entire, the aching valuelessness herein exhibited. Showing, for once, how the fickle tiger of fortune goes and goes. Infinite in its lust for living. And death, in no small measure, a part of the whole. Like love an insult if not split and cleaved in half. The lonelier part valid as the sun’s void shinning on the lighter parts. With that Bobby hanging along with our crew. Corrado left back, again.

Midnight, San Frosinone and over to the next threshold of border towns. Four moving south in convoy. A chance, a roll of the dice. This way against the darkness and the eloquence of Tijuana and sub San Frosinone. Bahia Del Sur by morning. Many bitter drunk days in background, bleeding-out over time.

Now as to the pianos, we assembled before them at the back end of the trailers. Opening the truck’s rolling hatch, and the truck interior quivers with potential sounds, strains, percussive bits. On the sand, by the river a broader perspective opening out, to the flat plain of San Frosinone. Midnight, the same scene repeating, as if moonlight was the same event. Soft strain of jazz key under moon. The soft hop of tinkled ivory. Strange scat ranting, mingling in Mexican space-time. A sing-song relationship between North and South. And all the money pretending otherwise, to no end, Guastito was an end of the road town. Guastito, the first town south of Tijuana and then due east. A town full of workers, humble servants. A place where the spectacle of God, through festivals and prayer, was still alive and well. Gusatito, a burnt-ember of a town. As two days turned into a third night, new orders came in from Sonny. We learned the score, the timeline, a quick delivery was all but promised to Signor Alimenta. And the clock, as always, winding down, as the wheels of this here convoy came to a halt in Guastito.

We came as four horsemen gleaned clean and observant on this first day south of the great monster. And us all refueled and capturing the notes of a long lost chord. An arpeggio of content and form, the least of which went underground. And us two, Tommy with a wizardry not easily accomplished by any other shotgun personage. And Johnny and Bobby, a duo not seen nor heard from much; only the longer last episode of love's last chance. Together, the final escapade was always around the corner. The escape was long and lost; and to find again, by interior monologue. To each his own by beauty and ugliness seen by two eyes, thru each, an interior struggle. Not seen, but heard on the street. Thru ears a-tuned to the final note heard springing; and hitting all the rest stops to begin again. A stop and start to call our own. And all love, to give was the only possible answer at this late stage in the lives of men grounded, yet flying up and down the coast.
And yet again, home, a mentality not far gone, but called its own. A thing not in itself, but the self a stationary object moving thru time. Of notation. Of chord changes. Of groupings strange to the eye, but not the ear. The rumbling of motors and interchanges on the byways and back roads. Only to demonstrate the opus sought by most, if only in a dream. The road a type of dream. Imaginary in nature dealing with illusory types. And ending with a forgery, a deceit of time when empty, like a black wall on the freeway. Full stop or angle around with vision? New change and stability of heart around a new core. And these the best this grouping could commit to. And the journey in itself a cause celebre'. A quotient of like cause on top of like cause. The cause unknown because causation itself the ultimate frontier. And an illusory one at that. Tommy beckoning, "the bar 62 is open at the back end of Rodittez Road."
And I, "assume you ran out of beer, and your temper..." A bit diffuse and with that the call of a wilder sense. Not a comportment, but a bitter refusal of time's essence. None at all, but better for that category of mind. Non-existence, and in that way an existence all its own. Tommy gauging my temper, as well, said, "Let's have a quick one, and you have some tamales by Rosita, too." And me giving myself over to a newer threshold. "Let's do it." And on the radio to Johnny and his response, yes, a further meeting down the road. Down the finer roads south of Guastito at the start of the Auto Road Nationale. Johnny saying only, "The rest stop at Camp Tellos, midway to Bahia." A place complete with rooms, fireplace and coastal view of fishing town. Boating town of streets leading to a dock of restaurant, locals skimming about town. To following a crooked passageway along the cockier shore north of boat launch called Frazionez. The town was all but deserted. And the call came up so close to holiday time. As a newer customer to find out the bloodiest of economic hardship. To find, more or less, an economy dependent on the bigger brothers to the north and south. Of course, the camp-out, the end of exit road San Charlea led straight to a coastal village. And after a brief respite at Guastito's Bar 62 we made our way to base camp at Camp Tellos. And the rigs had a comfortable spot under a grove of mixed trees, flanked by flowering shrubs and a short walk to the beach. As soft lapping waves brought on the darkness, and a rising moon half-full. And the four gathering round a campfire, whistling, playing guitar, drinking beer and whittling a walking stick. In that order we wiled-away the night. The lonesome high notes of an un-played, un-splayed piano loose somewhere. In the sky above, pointing as a white smoke area to a deeper south. Somewhere south toward Bahia.
Bobby whittling waxed poetic, "This is my favorite part of the journey...where a newer beginning is still possible." And I playing counter devil to his optimism answered,
"Only if the end of the road is also a new beginning." And his primordial cynicism long ago countered by a prevailing sense of ordered time. A history in progress like a tectonic plates shifting. Imperceptibly at first, then to dramatic effect. A new ground opening where none existed. Or, at the least, existed in an altered form. I plucked a six string while we chatted and I said, "this part of the journey is always the part I sense most. Where one culmination is visible." As fragments of a conversation unknown to each conversant, we abided in an empty time. Silent under the stars course, and the river flowing thru behind us, leading to an unknown outlet some miles down the coast. Tommy finished guzzling his can and crushing it between both hands said, "this feels like most of the other journeys, one long continuation marked by altered states and events between. Calling it a beginning or end defeats its own purpose." And with that we fell into a deeper silence. A silence passed shame into a non-derogatory emptiness, to call that end to any future beginning. The summation of thought wrapped in an enigma. To be found out. Farther from home and closer to a colder separation. The night seemed a distant closer, as starlight to shine on emptier eyes. For closeness; each one his own. A closeness unto itself.

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PHOENIX, SAN JOAQUIN A NOVEL BY AXLE RYN

PHOENIX, SAN JOAQUIN: A NOVEL BY AXLE RYN