Well, we’re back. My buddy and I got back from a trip to the Gila River around noon or so yesterday. It was beautiful down there, but it was also scorching hot during most of the day. Annoying, to say the least.
On the other hand, the nights were cool, but not cold. Made for great satellite watching and late-night talk, which we refer to as The Slathering of Philosophy.
I did no writing.
But the schedule was easy, which is to say, there was no schedule.
When we first arrived, we raced around our camp area like chipmunks on crack, and the sun be damned. So on Friday, I wore myself out early (in the heat) with a trek down to and across the river. It was only knee deep at the deepest, with a good flow.
Across the river, I located the fallen tree that had beckoned me. I cleared a few threatening twigs from the bark on top of it and sat.
I tipped back my ball cap, lit a cigar, and looked at the river.
It was just the right flow, with just the right rapids in just the right places. I commented to my buddy—let’s call him Dan—that it reminded me of fly fishing a back-country river in Montana.
“You know,” I said. “The kind where you park a few miles away because that’s as close as you can get. Then you backpack in. When you reach the first bend in the river (in all the better stories, everything takes place at a bend in the river) you continue, exploring a few likely spots along the way. Spots where you’re certain the trout will be hungry and will leap for pretty much anything skimming the surface.
“Then, when you find The Spot, you lay down your rods and make camp.
“Like every two-man team in history, you split the chores. You pitch a tent, stake out your sleeping places, gather firewood, and set the campfire. But no, you don’t light it, of course. Then you pick your bait from among the thousands of grasshoppers you woke up when you stomped into their living room.
“That isn’t a chore you split, of course, or share. Each selects his own bait, puts them in his own container. Otherwise you couldn’t be certain of getting better hoppers than the other guy got.
“Then as if obeying an unspoken cue, you pick up your rods and head down to the river.” I nodded and took a puff off my cigar as I cast my wizened gaze downriver. “Ahh,” I said. “Now that’s the life.”
Thinking he knew all there was to know about me, Dan frowned and asked, “Which one?”
The question was a hook that caught the shoulder of my fishing vest and tugged me backwards from my reverie. “Which one what?”
“Which river?”
I glanced at him, finally understanding. It was the end of the fantasy game. I took another puff off the cigar and shrugged, a little annoyed. “I don’t know. I’ve never been.”
By now I’m old enough to know better than to add, “But one of these days.”
I turned my attention back to the river and took another puff off my cigar.
No need to waste the words.
* * *
The next morning (so Saturday) we made a necessary trip into the nearby town. A true southerner from say Alabama or Mississippi would call it Lawdsbu’g. That was to snag our ritual breakfast. It consisted of the best juevos rancheros in all of New Mexico.
The place is a tiny dive (too small even to be called a café, really) called El Charro. Not to be confused with the foo-foo large chain restaurant by the same name. I recommend it, but I won’t tell you how to get there.
The place also is strictly local, except for the few hardy explorers who discover it. Out-of-town visitors are so rare that Dan and I have become recognized regulars. And we’ve visited only several times over the past six or eight months.
But I was talking about how small the place was.
The owners (presumably) even hung a banner on the only large inside wall. It proclaimed their pride in and congratulations to the local high school team for winning something or other. The place was so small they saved space on the banner by spelling El Charro with only one R.
Or maybe they inadvertently misspelled it.
But I count the place and the people there among my friends. So I’m going with the saving-space thing.
El Charro Lawdsbu’g has all the markings of the typical small-town best-place-to-eat, including actual regular regulars. Many were family members of the owners of the place.
At least one was a city father, to the extent that “city” applies. He was in the neighborhood of fifty years old. His air said that was a neighborhood he was neither pleased to have wandered into nor readily admit. He seemed to have been installed at that table and was prepared to receive visitors. He stood about six-two and weighed in the vicinity of three hundred pounds.
His hair was cut very conservatively, zero at the middle of his protruding ears and graduated evenly upward to a short horseshoe tuft that wrapped snugly around a bald spot. I was reminded of the remnant of a long-ago fire on a mountain top in the Sacramentos.
He was dressed in light-brown, textured western boots (faux ostrich?), jeans and a worn brown leather belt that made a sweeping dip. The belt held up his jeans and supported the underside of his considerable belly.
Above that was a long sleeve western shirt, reddish and blue plaid with occasional yellow-golden threads. The shirt sleeve cuffs were rolled up to his mid-forearms. The top three pearlite snaps below his throat were open.
We (I speak for my friend here too, who might deny any involvement) glanced occasionally in his direction and eavesdropped on all three venues of his palaver. He spoke, always seemingly on the edge of a chortle, to the waitress and anyone else who happened by, or to himself, or to his cell phone. His tone and the content of his conversations were enough to tell us that many, many far-reaching decisions regarding the administration of Lawdsbu’g were made right there at that table in El Charro.
I used to tell writers if they want to learn to write dialogue they need only sit in an obscure corner in Denny’s in the wee hours of the morning and eavesdrop. There they will overhear the conversations of cops, bums, politicians, laborers, homeless, bar hoppers, et al. The trick is to write down (surreptitiously, of course) what they hear.
El Charro makes an excellent, if somewhat stunted, substitute learning environment. I love it there.
We arrived on that Saturday morning at around 8:45. At the lunch counter were a man and two little girls, aged about 5 and 7. The man and they apparently were related by marriage and birth, respectively, to the waitress.
In a booth to the right front, his back to the kitchen, was an older man. A farmer, judging by the overalls, long-sleeve white shirt and thick-toed work boots. He mentioned to everyone who passed by his table that Old Bob was still in the hospital but doing well, pinching nurses and so on.
The farmer was about my age, which made me wonder about Old Bob, his age, and whether his mating ritual was what sent him to the hospital in the first place. At a certain age and level of health, it’s better to stop showing your plumage. At least that’s what I’ve heard.
A couple more working men occupied a booth farther along the wall toward the cash register and the front of the dive. Apparently they didn’t know Old Bob personally, though the one facing the kitchen was polite enough to smile and nod when he caught the farmer’s gaze.
Whereupon the farmer informed him of Old Bob’s status.
Completely caught up, the man allowed his smile to fade as he redirected his attention to the menu on the table. A moment later, he glanced around the room attentively if briefly, then returned his attention to his menu again. It was almost as if focusing on the menu was what the other creatures in the room expected of him.
And for a quick moment, he was an alien life form masquerading as a human being.
Somehow, I was able to listen in via mental telepathy as he filed his report back to the mother ship.
“No life forms of any significance here. One occupant seems preoccupied, albeit lazily and with a dash of what passes for sardonic humor, with life and death and an impending transition. All the others are focused on a printed menu, the contents of which are generally uninteresting enough to render something called ‘joo-way-vose ran-chair-ose’ the most attractive choice.”
I gotta give it to him. He was right about that last part. Although I thought any alien worth his antennae should have studied up on the mixed language.
Did I say we arrived at 8:45?
By 8:46 there were two glasses of ice water and two cups of coffee on the table. A moment later, those were joined by a fresh basket of warm corn tortilla chips and two small dishes of salsa. And a squeeze bottle from which we could refill the dishes.
“Need a menu?” she asked, vaguely remembering we were somewhat regulars.
I smiled. “Juevos rancheros, scrambled, green.”
Dan said, “Same, but over medium, red.”
So not the same at all.
But the waitress smiled, went to the counter and placed the order.
Then she made her rounds, tending to her children and husband first with fresh short stacks of pancakes and bacon. After that she grabbed the coffee pot and refreshed the coffee of the farmer. She listened patiently as he told her, again, of Old Bob’s status. She smiled and nodded and moved off to refresh the aliens’ coffee and take their order.
They asked for juevos rancheros, proof that they were of an advanced life form.
She left them and circumvented our table (we eschew the booths, preferring to subject ourselves to theater in the round) to refill the coffee cup of the city father and clear his dishes.
As she turned away, his gaze flicked to her bottom.
Now she was cute, but young enough to be his granddaughter.
Of course, she wasn’t his granddaughter.
A moment later she magically appeared at our table with the standard “the plates are hot” disclaimer. She set them in front of us anyway, then seemingly vaporized. But she was back in a flash with two small plates of fresh, hot, folded flour tortillas and the coffee pot.
As if seated at the Synchronized Eating table, we both unfurled our setups, picked up the fork, and dug in.
That’s when the three strangers came in.
* * *
Glancing past my right shoulder, Dan saw them a split-second before he rolled his eyes.
Well, that’s better than a double-dog dare, so I twisted around in my chair.
They looked like bikers. Well, the first two looked like bikers.
The guy in front, we’ll call him Number One, looked like someone had put a slice of watermelon on to fry, then forgot about it. The dude was ugly cubed, with seeds popping.
He was wearing a red-checkered bandanna around his head, and the bandanna was wearing his sun shades. (He just looked like the kind of guy who would say shades instead of glasses.) Above that, his only redeeming feature was his long, thick, luxurious black hair. It began somewhere behind the bandanna and swept back to hang to his thick shoulders.
Below his fried-watermelon face, a black leatherette vest was stretched over an obviously almost new blue-jean shirt.
I shifted my gaze to the open buttons at the top and didn’t see a t-shirt. And in that instant I grinned, hoping his nipples were rubbed raw. Hey, you wear a new denim shirt without a t-shirt under it and see what happens.
Below that was the standard-issue double-hole black leather belt with plenty of chrome studs and a chrome buckle, greasy Levis and jack boots. Yeah, a real live rebel without a clue.
The guy was six-six or thereabouts. Still, apparently to impress the room, he ducked under the door as he came in. Then he stopped and eyeballed the room as if looking for threats.
I swear, he actually ratcheted his eyelids down until he got the precise slit he thought would seem genuine Hell’s Angels-ish.
As I said, he stopped cold when he came in. But he didn’t stay there long.
Number Two entered in much the same way, looking about as if scanning the room for threats. Uncannily, he was dressed in like fashion to Number One from the jack boots to the angled shades. The only significant difference was his blue bandanna. It was peppered with little stars, I think to intimate Old Glory. But if that were true, the US had apparently gained roughly another 250 states.
He stood about five-eleven and was shaped like a football. Sloped, narrow shoulders, tiny ankles and feet, and a gourd for a belly. The only impressive thing about him was the moustache that framed his otherwise featureless face. I mean, his face probably had features, but who would notice past a moustache like that?
The thing was trimmed perfectly so it covered from the base of his nose to the top of his lip. It draped perfectly a good four inches down past the corners of his mouth.
Anyway, Number One had stopped cold to impress the audience. As you will recall, that consisted of a farmer and two aliens (I’m pretty sure) on the right; a waitress, a short-order cook (if he was looking), the waitress’ husband and two little girls to the front; and a city father and two old guys on a camping weekend to the left-front.
The girls, both of them, put their hands to their mouths and giggled.
And just as Number One began to raise his right arm and point in an attempt to intimidate his chief, if minuscule, antagonists, Number Two slammed into him from behind.
Number One took one small hop forward with both feet and yelped as if he’d been hit in the hello with a cattle prod.
Number Two flapped his arms out to the side, cocked his head and yelled, “Hey, what the hell, man?”
Enter Number Three. Calmly and with a certain joie de vivre, he said, “Oh boys.”
Number Three had crept in quietly behind Number Two as our attention was diverted by Number One’s hop. But I’ll bet he created quite a stir among the local populace outside as he was crossing the parking lot.
Numbers One and Two parted to turn and look at him. In so doing, they inadvertently gave the entire floor a glimpse.
He was dressed like a Number 2 pencil, all decked out in canary yellow. That was his jumpsuit. Around his neck was a silver scarf. Hand to God, it actually glittered. And the whole thing was topped off with a pinkish-red stocking cap.
You see it, right?
Yeah, that’s exactly what it looked like. A number-2 pencil.
His right hand was on his hip, which was extended slightly out of line with his body, the fingers pointing backward. With the other, he flipped the loose end of his shawl up over his right shoulder. “Boys, you simply must settle down.” He glanced nonchalantly about the room. “Certainly none of these chretins will hurt me.”
Of the farmer, the two aliens, the father of the two little girls, me, and the city father behind me, his gaze settled Dan.
Oh oh.
Number Three looked pointedly at Dan, then raised that same left hand and flipped his index finger out. “You. Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?”
I watched, almost amazed, as Dan transformed. He put his palms on the table, sighed and shook his head. He pushed back his chair with his legs and stood.
“Nah, I don’t wanna hurt you, little fella. But these walkin’ chunks of puke have to go.”
Number Two was livid. He glanced over his shoulder at Number Three. “Joo hear that? Joo hear that? I’m gonna—”
Number Three flicked his index finger. “Go.”
And Number Two rushed Dan.
But Dan was gone and Cullen Michael Baker had appeared in his place. Very proper, as always, he muttered, “I’ll say!”
And quick as that he raised one hand, palm out.
Number Two hit Mr. Baker’s palm and stopped cold, arms stiff before him, still reaching.
Mr. Baker craned his neck just a bit to see around his own forearm. “Three, two, and—”
The biker crumpled.
His eyes closed, his arms dropped, and the air rushed out of him. And he dropped to the floor like a sack of manure.
Mr. Baker took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped Number Two’s sweat from his palm. He wedged the toe of his boot beneath Number Two’s left shoulder and rolled him over.
Between Number Two’s eyes was a brand new third eye. A one-inch steel ball bearing was firmly planted in his forehead.
Mr. Baker nodded at the inert form, then shifted his attention to Number Three. His usually proper Brit voice took on the slow verve of deep-south Georgia. “I believe, suh, the stress of the transplant was more than your friend could rightly bear. Have no fear. He’ll wake up later, no worse for the wear.”
He looked down at Number Two again and cocked his head. “How fitting that his new facial feature matches the studs on his belt.” He glanced up at Number Three again as a sardonic grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Attractive, wouldn’t you say?”
Seething, Number Three glowered at Mr. Baker. Spit dribbled from the corner of his mouth as he quietly addressed Number One. “Johnny?”
No response.
Number Three hazarded a glance in Number One’s—Johnny’s—direction.
Johnny was still scowling at the little girls, who were now taking turns sticking their tongues out at him and wagging their hands near their ears. He leaned forward as if wanting to attack, but being restrained.
Next to the girls, their father had swiveled around on his stool and was laughing.
From behind the breakfast counter, his waitress-wife was doing the same.
Number Three turned his head slightly, redirecting his full attention to Number One. A frown formed rapidly beneath his eraser. Flustered, he yelled, “Johnny!”
Finally Number One looked around. “Huh?”
Number Three produced a swagger stick, which he pointed in the direction of Mr. Baker, who was rapidly fading. As a sneer crossed his face, he calmly said, “Kill him.”
But Mr. Baker was no more. He had gone. Vanished.
Several feet off the working end of the swagger stick, regular old Dan smiled at Number One.
Johnny glanced back at the little girls, who were still taunting him, then glared at Dan. Dan didn’t look like all that. Besides, he was hazy at best.
Number One—Johnny—turned slightly, preparing to charge.
The haze shifted, began to take on other-human features, especially if you broaden the definition of human.
Then Dan was gone.
In his place, Bull McKenzie stretched, rolling his broad shoulders beneath his buckskin coat. A broad tan belt held the coat in place at his waist.
Bull looked about the room as he reached down and dusted his buckskin pants. The dust fell to coat his buckskin moccasins, his focus finally coming to rest on Number One. “You? Is that all?” He laughed. “Hardly worth the trip.” He gestured toward the biker with his right hand, his fingers curled. “C’mon, boy. Let’s get you home to yo’ mama.”
Number One growled long and low, a locomotive building steam as the brakeman held it in place. He glared hard at this new apparition.
Bull grinned and wiggled his eyebrows.
And Johnny charged. His shades slipped down to his nose where they canted at an odd angle over his eyes.
At the last second, Bull sidestepped and twisted to the right. A skinning knife appeared in Bull’s right hand. With his left, Bull snatched a fistful of long, black, luxurious hair and removed it from his scalp. It was tucked safely behind his belt before Johnny hit the floor face-down and slid into the chrome base of a counter stool.
The shock almost dislodged the stool.
I looked at Bull, who was fading rapidly. Dan was coming back to us.
I shook my head. “Dayum, Dan.”
He shrugged and grinned. “Hey, y’get what y’pay for. It’s complicated.” Then he shifted his attention to the pencil and pointed. “You. Drag this crap outta here. Me and my friend have breakfast to finish.
And do you know, Mr. Pencil himself faded into a big pink ball of frustration. He tried to yell as he pointed at Dan, but all any of us heard was, “I’ll be baaaaa….”
But I’ll bet he never was.
* * * * * * *