Flatscreen Television | Theland E. Thomas

After work. Sleeves rolled up, collar unbuttoned. The sun beats down, and the air is stagnant. My car has leather seats that burn the skin. I roll all the windows down before closing the door, and I turn the AC on full blast. It’s after 4, and I have to pick my sister up from work at 5:30. I could go home, but I don’t want to because once I do I’ll be there all night. There is nothing to do in this town and no one to do it with. I should get something to eat, as I’ve barely had any food today, but even though my stomach is growling, every fast food option seems disgusting.

This week I told my coworker I wanted to buy a flatscreen TV. I still have the old boxy cathode ray TV I’ve had for thirteen years, and I’ve wanted something with better picture quality for a while now, but every time I consider it, I conclude that I don’t need one. She said, “So? I have lots of things I don’t need.” So do I. I have a computer, a tablet, and a phone. I bought a bamboo plant this week. I have a lamp with a blue lightbulb in it. Hundreds of books. Sunglasses. Netflix. Yesterday, I bought two blueberry-pineapple drinks - one for myself, one for my mom.

In that case, I consider buying a flatscreen TV. Because I want one. But they’re expensive, and I can’t justify spending $200 on something I absolutely don’t need. There is no practical use in replacing my old TV with a new one. I bet I can find a cheap one at a garage sale or something.

I turn the key in the ignition and venture onto the road. Windows down, music blaring out from my phone hooked up to the stereo. If it doesn’t shake the rearview mirrors, it’s not loud enough. Today I want it louder. Hardcore and metal blasts in my face, blasts down the street, windows down until the AC gets cool enough. A black guy in a shirt and tie blasting metal down the street, headbanging, and singing along. Amused, I often wonder if that looks funny to passersby. People never peg me as the kind of guy who listens to heavy music. Jazz, classical, or hip-hop maybe.

Windows up now, and I’m cruising down the parkway, looking for a garage sale sign at the corner. Instead, I see a sign that says FREE LARGE TV. Well, isn’t that something. I turn into the street. Look left, and I see corridor lush with trees and identical suburban houses. Keep going, up the street. Another sign: FREE LARGE TV, with an arrow indicating for me to turn. I turn down another street with identical track houses, every third house is the same with a different HOA-approved paint job. And then there’s me blasting metal through the quiet neighborhood. On the right, a huge set sits before the curb, black plastic and wood eating up the sun. The TV is mounted on a speaker, and the whole thing is much too big for my room. I’ve got a little media stand, which I’m just now remembering that I forgot to measure. And I’m just now remembering I have no cash. How would it look to try to buy something at a garage sale and ask if they take credit or debit? I could stop by an ATM. Yeah, if I see something I like, I’ll just run to an ATM. My bank is down the road, plus they have ATMs at every local grocery.

I’m on the parkway again. No more signs. Go up past the library, past the fast food shops, past the apartments and townhomes, to the boulevard. There’s a garage sale sign on the right. I turn in, and a few turns later I’m there, but they’re packing up, and there’s nothing there I want anyway. I’m only looking for a very specific item in the most inefficient manner possible. I turn back onto the boulevard, and see what looks like a garage sale sign on the left. When I’m in the turn lane, I see that it’s actually an open house. Crap. Illegally, I cross the white line and drive down the boulevard.

Now I’m well on my way to completing the big circle around my little suburb. I’m really hungry, and there are some shops in here. A Taco Bell, a grocery store. I could really use some chocolate right now. Or anything really. They say to never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry because you’ll end up picking up a ton of junk you don’t need. My good friend says an old friend works at that grocery store now. I briefly consider stopping in to see her, but then again things didn’t end too well between us, and I don’t think it would be good for me. Might end up having to go in there if I need an ATM though.

There’s another garage sale sign on the left. As I turn in, I recall long, hot Saturday mornings “garage sailing” with my mom, buying useless junk and trinkets that would eventually just end up in our own garage sale. I never thought I’d end up doing the same thing. A green garage sale sign on beckons for me to turn right. There’s an address written on it that I don’t catch. Another sign, another turn. It should be coming up any minute now. Nope, no more signs. I’ve driven through the entire neighborhood, but they must have packed up without the decency to take down their signs so that people don’t drive around thinking they’re being led even though their path is aimless.

I’m back on another main road, and here the speed limit is 45 miles per hour. I like to speed, so I usually go 49 miles per hour. No one really cares about that. 23 months ago, I got a speeding ticket, and the judge said that if I didn’t get another one for two years, it would drop from my record. But today, I’m going 54 miles per hour, and I don’t care. I see more signs on the right. This road has a lot of blind curves, and I speed past them. The pull on the car as I turn the wheel provides a slight bit of pleasure. My ears hurt from the blaring music, and I should turn it down, but instead I turn it up even louder. Can’t hear my growling stomach either way. After a few turns, I realize that this too is an destinationless journey. I see it’s almost 5 and remember that garage sales are generally a morning activity. I pull onto another boulevard. Whatever. I still have half an hour to kill.

There are surprisingly few cars on the road. Then again, I’m never usually out this late on a Saturday evening. There’s a garage sale sign on the right, and I turn in, acknowledging that this is probably another dead end, or rather the entrance to an endless maze of identical houses stretching forever and ever in infinite circles. A suburbanite sprawl. A suburban wasteland.

There’s a song called “Your Little Suburbia is in Ruins” that I want to listen to. I never paid attention to the lyrics, but I like the title, and in the music video they destroy a pretty nice dollhouse or something. I think it’s fitting to blast this as I pass by the nice, comfortable houses looking for a deal that doesn’t exist in a garage sale that doesn’t exist. A blonde woman scowls her blonde scowl at me as I pass. I smile at her, a small, devious, bowed-head smile. Your little suburbia is in ruins now.

Now, there’s a golf course ahead of me, and I turn past it. Someone kill me if I ever take up golf.

I’m in the suburb next to my suburb now, and there’s a mall down this street, and that mall has a Best Buy, so I figure I’ll just stop in there to check out the deals. In the parking lot, a man stops in the road for seemingly no reason and blocks my path. I almost get mad and honk him out of instinct, but then I remember I have nowhere in particular to be at the moment.

In the Best Buy are bigger and bigger TVs, stronger and faster computers, and newer and sleeker video game consoles. There is a little display about electronic mood lighting for the house or something like that, and I think no one really needs any of this crap. I walk to the back, and there are hundreds of TVs on the walls and on displays, each bombarding me with commercials detailing why that particular TV is the best one. One has the words PURE HAPPINESS in bold, white letters, but the high definition slow motion video is of a little boy, head back, laughing, swinging on a tire swing in the backyard, experiencing life in the twilight of a summer evening, far away from any possible TV. Is this the pure happiness that a new TV brings, or is the pure happiness actually watching someone else experience pure happiness on a new TV? If you buy this TV, you will experience pure happiness vicariously through this ecstatic child. This child has offered up his life force in service of your entertainment. Accept this humble offering and patronize it with your cash. The cheapest 32 inch TV I see here is $159. I can’t make a decision now though because I don’t know if a 32 inch will fit in my TV stand, plus I haven’t explored all my options.

I leave and go down the street to Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart. Scratch that I have a some love, mostly hate relationship with Wal-Mart. It’s the only store I’ve ever had nightmares about. Whenever I feel trapped in a situation, I have a dream that I’m trapped in a Wal-Mart, and I’m trying to find someone to help me, but because it’s Wal-Mart, there’s no one in sight. Their TVs are worse quality for the same price, and I think maybe I don’t want a new TV after all. Anyway, I can’t spend a long time in here because I have to pick up my sister. On the way out of the store, I see Fourth of July sales material. Napkins, plates, gross looking red, white, and blue cookies, pastries, and muffins. Poisonous. Wal-Mart flavored. America flavored.

Back in my car. It’s 5:23. If I leave now, I’ll be right on time to pick up my sister. Now I remember that I have a car-warmed apple in my lunch bag. I take a bite of the juicy apple and think that maybe this is what I needed to eat all along.

The Last Great American Freak Show | Alexander T. Damle

On a Warm October Night

            This far south, the turning of seasons doesn’t mean much for the temperature, but still people in the audience shuffle about impatiently as the sun sets behind them.

            “We live in a particular age, an age without truth. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, without truth, for, with the steady clip of technology, we find ourselves able to see anything, but believe in nothing. Tonight, however, ladies and gentlemen, I give you real truth, real meaning, real pleasure and pain and heartache, the strangest, the most beautiful, all the dark corners of this earth has left to offer us, and from this I give you a real truth! Tonight, I give you what you ask for every time the lights of the movie house dim, every time you step into a church, a synagogue whatever structure of brick and mortar you invest with a profounder meaning, every time you turn your eyes upwards to a screen, to a man with a deep voice, in a search for the answers. Tonight, tonight I give you the truth!”

            The dwarf on stage, name of Deluxe, dark, Mediterranean complexion, sharp, old fashioned features, if he was taller, he’d be the antagonist of an Orson Welles movie. He flicks his wrist, and the stage around him lights up with a grand light, a dozen shades of neon, sources indiscernible, hanging about the Arizona night with a hallucinogenic glow. Then he clenches his hands together in front of him, and, behind him, a wall of green flame.

            “I present you the Last Great American Freak Show! Acts compiled from all the world over for your particular pleasure on this night. But first, the meaning of those words must be understood, freak show. Freak. Just words, but such loaded, hungry words, cutting out from the darkness, inscribing their own malice upon our basic condition, but, at the same time, the words that grant us our higher calling, our juggernaut of force, our claxon to appear on this stage before you tonight! Yes, we are freaks, if to be a freak is to be something altogether... different. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, different. And, in age of lies, what is more different than the truth?”

            The audience seems ill suited to this brief introduction into freak discourse, these otherworldly philosophical asides, clad as they are in tattered jeans, torn wife beaters, thrift shop t-shirts. A man in the front row spits a wad of tobacco and it misses the open sandal of his neighbor by a fraction of an inch. The woman who belongs to the shoe looks to the man, stretch marks, fat rolling down under a tank top that stopped quite fitting a few years back. The man in the audience mutters an apology and the man on stage glances at him.

            “Yes, the truth. Because without the truth, what do we have left anymore?”

            Concrete and steel, pockmarked and graffitied, old chain link fence rusted through. The lights of the highway a few hundred yards away light up the horizon, people flying through the night, across the American southwest, seeking answers. So too, is the more immediate scene lit by car headlights, coming here from chopped up lowriders, and, in their midst, a single brand new forrest green Cadillac Escalade. The man who here all eyes are turned to speaks with the slow, measured control of an attack dog just waiting to get let off his leash.

            “Sounder, you motherfucker. I’ve always liked you. Really. You’re not the smartest guy I have. Not the best shot. Not even the strongest, no. But you can fight like no man I’ve ever met... and I’ve met quite a few wannabe soldiers. Yes, Sounder, in fact, I still like you well enough.” He takes a long drag on a burned down cigarette tucked between his fingers, its embers flicking off towards the black. “I just wish I knew why you had to go and fucking take my god damned money, you stupid cocksucker. I mean, if you’d needed money... I could have lent you some. You know that. Hell, I probably wouldn’t have even asked for it back. Because, because Sounder, I like you. If you had told me, you were in trouble, I would’ve helped you. But it’s too goddamn late for that now, isn’t it? So now... we’re here.”

            The man speaking goes by Pilgrim, and the man he’s talking down to, Sounder, six and a half feet tall, built like Pilgrim’s Escalade, covered in his own blood, just stares up at him, his expression hurt, a child betrayed. All around them stand two dozen wanna-be vikings with a variety of illegally modified assault weapons and cut down shotguns. Sounder. He may not be the smartest guy around, but no one is taking any chances on him getting out of here alive.

            “Son, you know what happens now, more or less. I ask you who was with you on this, because I know for a fucking fact that you didn’t con me on your own. Then you don’t tell me. So I beat you until you wish I’d just shot you in the head, then you tell me. Then I shoot you. And that’s how it’s going to go down. Unless, of course, you’d like to speed this all up. I’m a fair man. You know that. I won’t kill someone unless either they make it absolutely necessary that I hasten their trip down the road towards their inevitable mortality, or, or they do something to really piss me off. Let me tell you, Sounder, you're really fucking straddling the line between both those fucking assaults on my dignity! So now, you’re going to tell me what I need to know. One way. Or another.”

            Sounder stares up at Pilgrim, and the men around them shuffle their feet nervously. Finally, he opens his lips as if to say something, but instead splits out a globule of blood, only just missing Pilgrim’s cheap mockasin, a contrast to the man’s otherwise expensive outfit.

            “You know, Sounder, I really like these shoes. They’re goddamn comfortable, like no other shoe I’ve ever worn, and believe me, in my day, I’ve worn some nice fucking shoes. But the thing about these, beyond their comfort, is that I’ve never been able to find another pair quite like them... so my point is, I guess, maybe you should have gotten blood on them just now, because then I would’ve probably just shot you out of frustration. You have know idea how much I hate shoe shopping. Isn’t that funny how these things work out? Just an inch off, and I wouldn’t have to torture you. Reminds me of my own... choices. Have I ever told you about my young life, Sounder? Because the story is... well it’s something. You’d appreciate it. You know I have a business degree from the University of Chicago? But I made the wrong choice, a few inches off, and here we are today. Some gringo stealing guns from the federal government and selling them to Mexican gangsters. My choice. My little mistake. Stealing money, now that’s not a little mistake. But I digress. I need an answer. One name, two, it doesn’t matter, however many they were. What I really want is the truth, because without the truth, well... so...”

            Pilgrim stares at Sounder with an intensity that runs beyond the basic human processes of sight, something far more internalized, more visceral.

            Deluxe gestures, with all the practiced flourish of his years as a stage magician, often for audiences far more hostile than a bunch of half drunk red necks, at the center of the stage. Smoke begins to billow forth seemingly from the ground itself, and the lights begin to strobe.

            “Our first act of the night, found in the last forgotten pocket of Africa, a place so hidden that none of the destruction of a century of exploitation has been allowed to corrupt the art and pathos of the people, a man of talent considerable, and complexion, curious. I present to you Synth! The albino African, the world’s last great Jazz saxophonist!”

            With that, and one last flurry of motion, the smoke clears, revealing a man who is clearly not an albino saxophonist named Synth. He’s six and a half feet tall, Norse features, lying on the ground, bleeding. Sounder barely has time to look around, before Deluxe flicks his wrist again, a deep roar, a hiss, more smoke, and Sounder is gone, replaced with the man known as Synth, looking, even beyond his natural complexion, as if he’s just seen a ghost. The audience begins to pulse with an internalized energy threatening to flow outwards, to rip the shackles off the show and send the whole night crashing into violent chaos, but as soon as the pulse begins, it ends, as Synth begins to play with the reflection of man’s most powerful loves that imbues all the best music, a perfection of form such that it goes beyond the basic mathematical constructions and becomes something greater still, beyond technique, beyond artistry, towards a reflection of the soul itself. And in this flurry of notes, no one notices that Deluxe himself has disappeared from the stage.

            Meanwhile, Sounder finds himself in the back of an old airstream camper, walls hung thick with mementos from global travels, pictures of a handsome dwarf with people all along the broadband spectrum of humanity, from Bangladeshi street kids, to American politicians and movie stars, and what little shelf space the little camper possesses is piled high with all manner of decorations. Sounder’s eye is caught by a Winchester ‘73 repeating rifle, and he struggles his way to his feet, despite his injuries, to investigate. He knows an old gun should be his last concern at this point, but his mind can’t even begin processing what he just went through. As he is admiring the inlaid scrollwork that makes the gun less a weapon than an art show center piece, the door opens quietly behind him, and Deluxe steps in.

            “Like it?”

            “It’s beautiful.”

            “It belonged to Anton Chekhov. A literal Chekhov's gun.” The man laughs, and Sounder turns to him.

            “What?”

            “Nevermind... look, son, as much as I’d love to discuss antique weapons with you... I think we might have more pressing matters.”

            “Yes, I think so.”

            “That cut on your forehead looks bad. Are you alright?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Here, sit down.” Sounder sits down on a ratty old couch, and Deluxe hands him a glass of water.

            “So, I guess we’ll start with who you are?”

            “Sounder. Who are you?

            “Who am I... oh what a beautiful question! There's nothing anyone loves talking about more than themselves, don’t you think! I’m, in a word, Deluxe. I’m from nowhere, and everywhere, born, depending on who you ask and when, to a Greek diplomat and a Belgian whore, or some forgotten Rockefeller and a Swedish princess, a French legionary and a pretty Tanzanian beggar. I’m everyone and no one, I have a dozen passports and two dozen names. I’ve seen so much of the world... but who am I? In being everyone, I’m most of all no one, just an aging dwarf running a dying freak show, trapped in the rusting cages of America’s forgotten spaces... oh who am I?”

            “That’s all very interesting, sir, but, uh, freak show, is that where I am now?”

            “Yes, in some poor town thirty miles from Phoenix. You know the sort, I’m sure.”

“Freak shows... I didn’t know those still existed.”

“Mhmm... The very phrase... freak show... it has its own history, of course. Bias, hatred, prejudice, but a chance for people who society normally deprives of all real chance to forge their own destiny, their own path, their own fortune. We are artists as much as any other stage actors, visionaries of a world with a strange beauty beyond the paltry sameness of the nine to five normal and the superman! This, truly where we are now, however, is among the last of them, the Last Great American Freakshow, and I, Deluxe, am the show runner... and our touring magician.”

            “Magician?

            “Magic, science, sleights of hand, a clever mind. When wielded together, the four become indistinguishable, and become all the more beautiful for it.

            “Uh, can I ask how I got here?”

            “I honestly have no earthly idea... do you know where you were before you arrived on my stage?”

            “Yeah. Parking lot outside of Phoenix, used to be a factory of some sort. Closed now.”
            “And what were you doing there?”

            “I can’t...” he sighs, and trails off.

            “If you tell me, I can help you. If you don’t, who knows.”

            “A guy named Pilgrim, my former boss, was about to kill me.”

            “Why?”

            “I stole from him.”

            “What sort of work did you do?”

            “I was an... an enforcer. He’s a gun runner. Cartel connections, you know. I hurt people for him, when they didn’t do what he wanted.”

            “Hmm.” Sounder’s eyes suddenly snap upwards.

            “I... I don’t really like... talking about myself.”

            “Don’t worry about that, I can do more than enough talking for the both of us.” Deluxe stops and considers the situation for a moment. He stares at Sounder, his far off gaze, his hulking physique, most of all his intense presence. He reminds him of someone he once knew during a winter spent in rural Mongolia. A man who killed a wolf with his bare hands, despite himself being already half dead. And with that recollection, he makes his decision on Sounder.

            “My friend... as a travelling freak show, it is essential to the performance of our art that we, well, travel. Tomorrow we’re moving on, heading north to Flagstaff. I wonder if you’d like to come with us? I’m sure this Pilgrim fellow, if my reckoning of him is correct, won’t let you get away easily.”

            “I... I don’t even know you people. Plus, I don’t have any money.”

            “You’ll come to know us, and, I think, come to like us. You’ll find plenty to hold in common with a group of roving freaks. As for your other problem, we need a new security man. Our old one got married and decided to get a job with more... geographic stability. You seem well suited to replace him.”

            “I suppose I don’t really have a lot of other options.”

            “No, options are something that often come quite... rarely for people like us.”

Vermont

            Sounder ends up spending the night on the couch in Synth’s RV, and, in the morning, awakens, he looks out the window to see the desert rushing past, glimpses of an America he never saw, urban born and raised, mental patient committed, towering concrete, guns, violence, drugs, as gospel, but now, something real.

            He goes up to where Synth is driving.

            “Morning.”

            “Good morning. Uh, thank you, Synth, for letting me ride with you.”

            “No trouble. Plenty of space. I don’t know why I insisted on buying a full sized RV for one person. I had the money, and it needed spending, I guess.”

            “Does being a... a freak pay that well?”

            “No, not really. I have money from before.”

            “What do you mean? I thought you were from...”

            “Some forgotten corner of Africa?”

            “Yeah.” Synth smiles.

            “You’ve got a lot to learn, kid.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Place like this, we all have two stories. The one we tell, and the one we are. The story I tell, I’m from Africa, some self taught genius. Really, though, I’m from Vermont. One of ten black men in the state of Vermont, and I had to be born an albino. Go figure... anyway, I came from money. A lot of it. Three generations of surgeons. Me, though, I never had the head for that sort of thing. Music, that was my gift, and my parents knew from when I was small. Always the best lessons, the best instruments, you know. Anything they could do to ensure I’d... make it. I even went to Juilliard. And then I made it, actually made it. I was playing the best clubs in New York City. I even released a couple of albums.”

            “So how’d you end up here?”

            “I got tired of the games, the bullshit, the celebrity. I just wanted to play and have people listen to me, you know? Modern jazz is... it’s cold, heartless, predictable. It’s a genre all about spontaneity and improvisation, but the whole genre is now so built around a crusty old establishment. More than that, me, my skin color, out in the real world all it made me was a freak. Here, it’s something to marvel at. Working for Deluxe, I feel like I’m actually, you know, just playing jazz, pure and simple. No business to consider, or people to feel sorry for me. I know I sell it as a lie, but sometimes a lie is more interesting than the truth.”

            “I don’t know about that. Lies always seem to get guns pointed at my head.”

            “Then, my friend, you’re in the wrong business.”

            The two drive for a while in silence, Sounder just appreciating the landscape rolling past the windows, Synth lost in the contours of the pavement.

            “So... what exactly happened last night? How did you end up on the stage?”

            “I have no clue, but Deluxe, is he? I think he had something to do with it. I mean one minute I was about to get shot in the head by a lunatic with a shotgun. The next, it was like...”

            “Things happen here. Things that don’t happen most other places. I don’t get, I don’t want to. It’s best just not to ask the question. Deluxe attracts strays like a strip club attracts computer scientists. I don’t know how or why, he just does.”

            “When you say things happen here...?”

            “I just gave you all I have as far as answers go. Anything else, the only one who knows is Deluxe, and he’s not talking.

            “A man of talent considerable, and complexion, curious. I present to you Synth! The albino African, the world’s last great Jazz saxophonist!”

            Then Synth rises from the trap door in the stage in a flurry of smoke and flashing lights, and he looks out across the audience, faces lit up with stage lights, gazing up at him with wonder. The scene is carnivalesque, popcorn smells, bright lights, kids running around and laughing, all happy, their everyday troubles cast away for the course of the show, replaced with Deluxe’s carefully re-written truths.

            As he plays, Synth feels the energy of the crowd course through him, power him on, past all the ancient hurts, his parents’ pride at his first recital as a kid, the first time someone told him he was special beyond his skin.

            He knows he’s here for his skin, but for the music too, the beauty, and he owns his hurts and his flaws and he makes them his instruments, as the saxophone.

            And he becomes the story, from deep in the forgotten heart of Africa, self taught on a rusted old colonial relic, discovered by an adventurous young dwarf named Deluxe, brought back to America as a portrait of a more perfect beauty, as something pure in a world long gone sour. Vermont, Africa, it doesn’t matter in the moment of the stage, under the hot lights, because in such conditions the truth is what the audience makes it, and the truth they see is that he is immensely, immensely talented, and, truly, he is something special, in amongst their day to day boredom, between the alcoholic rednecks and trailer trash meth heads, the teen pregnancy and high school dropouts, the casual American poverty, the biting tragedy of a people laid low in their youth by some invisible market forces, trickle down economics, redistricting to keep the poor out of the places where property taxes are high enough to actually pay for schools, in Synth, they see the world beyond gerrymandered county lines, and they, for the couple hours of the show, belong to a world at once out of some glorious past, and the messenger of a more perfect future. And he plays on.

Self Made

            Somewhere outside of Flagstaff, the night glow of the city, distant on the horizon, blocking out the stars, the last stragglers of the night’s show slowly make their way towards tomorrow. Sounder, taking to his new job with zeal, does his best to help them on their way. A cool wind blows in from the desert, and in it he smells motor oil, frying grease, the classic American night, laid long on the forgotten exits of a thousand highways, McDonald's dinners, Motel 6 casual sex.

            Deluxe approaches him.

            “Hey Sounder, looks like things are going well here.”

            “Yeah, it’s easier than... the sort of people I used to deal with.”

            “I’m sure. Once you’re done with these folks, you should go see America. She’s the owner, and, I mean she pretty much lets me run everything, but you should probably at least introduce yourself.”

            “Wasn’t she one of the... uh...”
            “Acts?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Yeah, but she’s also the owner. And a fair few other things.”

            “Alright, I’ll go talk to her once,” he gestures to the retreating crowd.

            An old man whose breath smells of whiskey, clothes stained with spots of nicotine, born of chewing tobacco fallen from between his lips, slowly makes his way towards the gate. Each step is a concerted effort, and his back is hunched such that his eyes seem owned by the ground. Sounder watches the man as he finally pulls himself into the front seat of a lovingly maintained 1960 Plymouth Fury. As the man’s life runs out, it’s clear he pours what little love and energy he has left into this car, shining chrome, a museum piece out of his youth, a remembrance of something magnificent, and at once, a memento mori, a sign of time rapidly rushing up to take him, as he’s left himself a relic as beholden to a glorious past, as the car. Sounder listens for miles as the engine, running with an essential, old school, Motown spirit, purrs its way through the desert towards whatever slice of deep-fried hell the man calls home.

            Then Sounder goes to make his introductions to America.

            Her trailer is a sleek black, and bigger than Synth’s. He notices the power hook ups, cables, a mess, lots of colors, jacked together in a manner he’s sure is not is OSHA approved, and he wonders at this briefly.

            America opens the door, her hands carbon black, sleek, the slightest mechanical whir held just below the surfac

e of each movement, a life hum. She’s tall, slender, dark, and, Sounder thinks, very pretty, though in a menacing, femme fatale sort of way. She also doesn’t have any natural limbs. The deficiencies of birth she covers for with her own grand designs, four advanced prosthetics, additions to the human form, something better than truth, more reliable, less subject to injury or exhaustion. Her eyes, a street-racer neon purple, magic to Sounder, colored contacts to the rest, sparkle with a great curiosity about her visitor.

            “Sounder. You must be Sounder... my new employee.” Her voice is perfectly pitched and modulated, as if tuned to a particularly appealing frequency, and her Mexican accent adds a treble note to her carefully chosen words.

            “Ye... yeah. Deluxe told me to talk to you...”

            “And rightly so. Here, come inside.”

            If the outside of her RV was curious, the inside is something wholly otherworldly, Gibsonesque, carbon and steel, aluminum, cast off shards of metal, computer parts spread around, but without the usual boxed in forms, no, these parts form loosely, but with a carefully collected common conscience, the basic lines of human bodies, arms and legs, hands, fingers, some the sleek black of America’s prosthetics, others wrapped in rubber made to resemble flesh, some more still without any aesthetic designs at all, instead bare metal ribcages, reinforced joints, hydraulic movements, something faster and stronger than just plain human. America offers Sounder a seat.

            “Can I offer you a whiskey?”

            “Uh, no, uh, no thank you.” She pours a measure of Ardbeg 12 year from a bottle hidden in amongst a pile of arms and sips it carefully.

            “So, Sounder, tell me about yourself.”

            “There isn’t much to tell, I guess.”

            “Let’s start with where you’re from, then.”

            “Phoenix. I never really left before...”

            “Now, Deluxe mentioned that you have some people after you. Not the sort of people you want wanting something from you, either.”

            “I, uh...” He goes silent, and America studies him. “I don’t really know how much to tell you.”

            “Everything. Look Sounder, this show is a lot of things, and we have a rather strange cast of characters, but every last one of us is an outcast and a fighter. We want to help you. We see a common, well, spirit, for want of a better word.”

            “Thank you. Really. People don’t usually want anything to do with me. They tend to cross the street when they see me coming...”

            “And why is that?”

            “Because I hurt people. Not, not for fun, just, just for money, I need the money.” He fades out at the end of his sentence, a practiced speech for the self unraveling as the sound waves pass into the ears of another. America smiles at him, movie star, perfect teeth.

            “No, you don’t. If you needed the money, you’d be a bouncer, a security guard, something straight. You want the money. Listen, Sounder, you’re going to have to be honest with me. But you don’t know me well enough to trust me, and I understand that. So then, towards that goal, I’ll tell you my story.

I was born in Mexico City. My father was a bartender, my mother was a school teacher. They didn’t have money. And I was born without arms or legs. Just one of those things... doctors don’t really even know why, in my case, at least. Most people, they would’ve just given up in the face of that. Instead, my parents saw a hope for me, a future. Something better. So they named me America. They tried to get greencards. They really did. They were patient, they played the game. Tried to go by the book. Eventually, though, they gave up on waiting. I was getting older, and it was hard for me to get the treatment I needed in Mexico. They crossed in illegally. My mom... she wanted to teach, but, well, you know how these things go. It’s America, after all. She ended up a night shift janitor at a high school.

But they made more money than they did south of the border. And, slowly, things got better. We even got green cards. I worked hard in school, trying to compensate for what I was missing.. Because I was America, and I was going to make it. There were some setbacks, some hard moments, sure, but, in the end, I got a full ride scholarship to Columbia. I studied robotic engineering, and graduated first in my class. So I went into the industry, advanced prosthetics, working in secret labs across the country, doing work ten years ahead of what I thought was possible. Every day, we were building stuff that, well, if I’d had access to it when I was a kid...

I got fitted with prosthetics I designed myself when I was 23. I’ve never seen my dad cry before. But the thing, about those labs, those miracles, is that there were always restrictions, always licensing and testing. We would build something, the feds would waste a decade approving it. I thought about all I could have done in life with an extra decade. Eventually, I just got fed up with the bureaucracy.

I left the system, and decided to work on my own, doing what we were doing in the lab, but without all the red tape to slow me down. I was building prosthetics better than real limbs... you have no idea what that felt like. My parents’ miracle. America. Of course, the feds aren’t big on people making money on unlicensed medical equipment, so I needed a way to launder the proceeds. Somewhere in the course of things, I met Deluxe, an old dwarf running a struggling freak show, desperate for a cash infusion. So I bought the place. And here we are. You know, every time I go out on that stage, I do it without my limbs, wriggling through the dust just to move. People look at me with such pity... and then I put on my arms and legs, tower over them, show them what real power is, what man can be if we just try... that’s a feeling that, well, you can’t imagine it. I always liked sci-fi movies as a kid. They were a world where I wouldn’t be slowed down by what I didn’t have. Every time I stand up with my home made legs, and I see the looks on the faces of the people in the audience, I feel like Ripley stepping into the power loader at the end of Aliens.

But the thing about what I do is that, well, I’m making money off desperate people. Lots of money. You can’t exactly use your insurance to buy something that supposedly doesn’t exist. I think about that sometimes. How much I’m hurting these people, even if it’s indirect, unintentional. But that’s America for you. Sure, if you’re smart, you work hard, you can make it. But there’s always a cost.”

            “But that’s not the same....” He sighs, and pauses for a few moments. He turns his eyes up and America is gazing at him. “What you do, you’re still helping people, but me? In the movies, guys like me, we hurt bad people, whatever that means. In real life though, we hurt everyone who makes the mistake of getting in our way. Helpless, desperate people. Makes me some kind of evil.”

            “Has your job always pained you this much?”

            “I fear to sleep.”

            “Then that’s what matters. Bad choices are bad choices. But yours are in the past. This is America, after all.”

            Darkness. From darkness, as all things. Then the lights, white, bright, blinding. A few members of the audience shield their eyes against the glare. This is intentional, as much a scripted part of the show as what comes next. As eyes adjust, a blank stage, except at the back, something hidden by a curtain, manlike, standing tall above them, but true contours hidden. Velvet.

            Then the lights all shift to one, one circle off at a murky corner of the stage. A few people laugh. Many more gasp, cover their mouths, some appeal to their god. They came here for freaks, and a freak here, they think, is what they’ve found. A torso, a head, no arms, no legs, wriggling across the stage, invisible but for the spotlight. The torso has a woman’s long hair, wears a dress, but they can’t think of it as a human, they can’t lower themselves to it, raise it to them. As it moves, its entire form undulates, like a snake. twisting along, kicking up dust bunnies.

            It reaches the front of the stage and it looks out at them, its eyes, unnaturally purple, drawing their gaze, to avoid seeing the sleekness of the rest of its form. Then it speaks, radio voice, and a few more gasp, for reasons even they don’t truly understand.

            “My name is America,” The curtain behind her begins to rise. “And I’m here to show you what so many have forgotten. The promise of the American birth, Potential. My birth was a challenge to god, and I’ve risen to meet it. The curtain behind her reaches its apex, and in its place are two legs and two arms, half held together by an aluminum frame. Then the thing reaches down, and takes America in its hands

            She looks out in rapture at the collection before her, weak, broken, left behind by the promise, forgotten on the shuttered exits of crumbling highways, dustbowl diaspora, everyone too thin or too fat, clothes not fitting properly either way, faces harshly lined. American pain for an American age. The real last American freak show.

            Then the arms deposit her in the midst of the limbs, and with a few whirrs and clicks, mechanized corrections, she stands on the legs carbon black, and the dress floats down over their tops, white and weightless, her face immense beauty, as a mechanical hand brushes a lock of hair the color of fresh tilled earth out of her eyes.

            She walks to the front of the stage, and she flashes her radiant smile. A few amongst the audience fall in love

            Above them all, stars twinkle away, watching from the heavens, they themselves forgotten for the blinding spotlights. The crowd lets out a roar of applause, but the stars don’t care.

Riace Warriors

            Northern New Mexico somewhere, a forgotten town. Name doesn’t matter. It isn’t Taos or Santa Fe, no one’s from here, no one comes here, no one takes their inspiration from it. It’s just a patch of concrete and rusting steel in amongst a grandiose desert nowhere, built up out of some single trade, it now lost with the sputtering slowdown of the American age.

            The crowd tonight is particularly unruly, as if looking for a reason to fight, to pull and twist and yank at the chains that hold them so firm to this sand. Sounder spends the show waiting for the next outburst of chaos, the next old drunkard to hit his wife, or, quite often, someone else’s wife, the next group of kids to pull knives, the next screaming match so loud it interrupts the act. When it happens, he plunges through the crowd. Most people move out of his way willingly. Those that don’t get flung aside by his pure force, hurtling towards a set piece conflagration, flaming up on the grid, disturbing the order.

            One guy, a kid, really, can’t be more than 21, 22, wears a shirt pulled from a thrift shop dumpster, well, he’s had a few, and he’s getting angry, getting bored. Who are these people anyway? They’re freaks and what, do they think they’re better than him, with their pretty words, clean faces? Doesn’t understand half of what comes out of that little midget’s mouth. He starts to yell out at Deluxe, every time he comes on stage to introduce a new act. Words, just words, as all words, ultimately meaningless. But these thrown with such force, as to threaten to shatter the invisible window pane between performer and watcher, act and show, and, well, that then means something.

            So, dutifully, Sounder hurdles into the crowd to find him. He moves by the sound of the kid’s voice, chasing echoes through a pitch black cave, distorted in amongst the shouts of joy, laughter, casual conversations in a place that was once sacred. But the shattering of the glass, that sounds out above all the rest.

Sounder sees a girl in the crowd, died black hair, black tank top, black jeans, ink, lot’s of ink, a giant spider eating the dead across one arm, on the other the whole earth swallowing itself up again, and he’s reminded of someone from a different world, a someone he hopes to his mother’s God is somewhere far away from here. Some beautiful white sand beach in Mexico, living like a king, finally getting a tan. Someday.

            He reaches the kid, and he gets his attention.

            “Hey man, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

            “Fuck you.” Mouth almost entirely without teeth. Lot of things’ll do that to you. Too much sugar, strong man’s punch, heroin. Out here though, it was probably meth. Different town, different family, kid could’ve been handsome, could’ve had a pretty girl here with him, a job, a life, a something. But it’s not a different town.

            “No, I don’t think so.” The kid moves his arm with what would appear to most a tremendous speed and anger, but, to Sounder, is a lazy disinterest. Then the kid is on the ground, his lip bleeding. He spits out a tooth, and Sounder grimaces. “Sorry.” The kid gets up, starts to raise his fist again.

            “Go to...” Sounder puts a fist in the kid’s gut, cracks another one across his jaw. This time, when the kid hits the ground, Sounder has to help him up. Kid has to put his arm around him just to make it to his own car.

            “Come on man. I tried to give you a chance. Why you gotta pull that shit?”

            “What else was I gonna do?”

            “Just leave.”

            “Yeah, I wish.”

            Back to it then, standing on the edge of the crowd, waiting for another kid to pick a fight. He wonders if he’ll ever see the girl again. Unlikely.

            After the last act, Deluxe’s last, grandiose words, the crowd, drunker than ever, begins to filter toward their cars, to slide across empty asphalt, headlights arcing out into the warm night, cutting through the darkness, pointing to a destination that the mapmakers have begun to forget to mark.

            The girl passes him again, the wanna-be punk, slowly, her mind a million miles away, a chronic problem in towns like this. He thinks forward and back, particularly to one unusually rainy Phoenix night a few months gone, guns, car, money, a smile through black lipstick, Mexico. Pilgrim. And he decides to do something, for once.

            “Hey.” The word half catches in his throat. The girl takes a few more steps and his heart drops as he thinks she’s decided to ignore him. Then she stops, pivots on the heel of a black cowboy boot.

            “Hey yourself.”

            “Uh...”
            “Yeah?”

            “I’m sorry, I didn’t think this far ahead.”

            “Yeah, I can tell.” A pause. “You part of the show?”

            “Security.”

            “You look it.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Big, scary, kind of handsome, but not enough it’d ever distract anyone from getting their shit kicked in.”

            “Oh. Well... I don’t know. I’d like to think I’m just kind of a big teddy bear.” These last words barely squeak out. He’s not used to talking like this.

            “Heh. A regular Teddy fucking Roosevelt. Yeah, I like that... I’m National.”

            “Sounder.” She smiles at him.

            “Look, Sounder... uh... when you’re done here, if you want, I own a bar in town. It’s like five minutes away. Head down Main Street, you can’t miss it. Come in and, well... we’ll see.”

            “Really?”

            “Sure.”

            “Okay, I might just take you up on that.” She leans in, punches him softly in the shoulder.

            “Do.” Then she starts to walk away.

            “Wait -”

            “Yeah?”

            “What’s it called?”

            “What?”

            “Your bar.”

            “The Dagda.”

            “Oh.”

            “You look disappointed. What, did you think it would be something real symbolic? Life doesn’t always work that way.”

            “Yeah, I guess. Well, I’ll see you soon, maybe.”

            Half an hour, and the crowd is mostly clear. Five guys left, late 20s, smoking. Not hurting anyone, not getting in the way. Sounder clocks them, but figures they’ll leave in their own time.

            Then the Captains walk by. Twin sisters, both eight feet tall, Bentleys. The sort of people that even Sounder would do his best to avoid a fight with, and that’s not something he finds himself thinking very frequently. One of the guys, well he lacks the same self-knowledge.

            “Hey ladies... what’d your mom do, fuck an Orangutan?” Eight foot tall twin sisters. And, according to them, both former captains in the Israeli army. No, this scrawny tweaker, four friends or not, is probably getting in a little over his head. Sounder begins to move towards the group.

            “No.” One sister.

            “That’s not how it works.” The other says.

            “Gigantism, it’s a tumor on the pituitary gland.”

            “Not that half of those words would mean anything to you.”

            “Tumor or monkey, it doesn’t matter, I’d still fuck you.” The guy, just digging himself deeper.

            “That’s funny.”

            “Real funny. Because we wouldn’t fuck you.”

            “Obviously.”

            “Also, an Orangutan and a monkey are two different things.”

            “Jesus Christ. And you both think you’re smarter than me too? Wow. You know what, you’re right, I won’t fuck you.” He takes something out of his pocket. Sounder catches a metallic glint, begins to run towards them. “But...” the blade of the knife flicks out, a dull click, a hiss through the air.

            The sisters move with a perfect unison of motion, leaves the guy lying on the ground in his own blood, crying, arm probably broken. One of the Captains pockets the knife.

            “Anyone else?”

Sounder now stands just outside the fold. He finds himself unneeded, as the rest of the trailer trash scatters for cars. One of them gets a dozen yards away, then turns.

            “I’m real sorry about my friend. He... well...”

            “Sure.”

            “We get it.”

            “Here, take him to a hospital.”

The one who stopped calls out for one of his fleeing companions, and together they carry the guy away. The Captains turn to Sounder.

            “Thanks, Sounder.”

            “Although I’ve got to say, I think we had it pretty much handled.”

            “Yeah, I see that. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

            “Israeli army.”

            “Krav Maga is nothing to laugh at.”

            “I guess so.” He answers.

            Sounder walks into the ramshackle little place with “The Dagda” scrolled in a disconcertingly pretty cursive font above the door. The place looks rough, real rough, and a different kind of rough than he’s used to. These aren’t angry street kids, these are pissed off red necks, confederate flag patches, goatees, lots of leather and denim. He looks around, feeling a little out of his depth. Her eyes catch his from behind the bar.

            He sits down, asks her for a whiskey. She’s distracted, busy, trying to keep the palpitating violence from hurtling out of control, but, when she can, she talks to him, and, for a rare moment in his life, he, of so few words, thinking each hindered by some great stupidity, speaks back.

            Finally, closing time.

            “I was thinking about taking you back to mine, and fucking your brains out.” He blushes brightly. “But I think I like you too much.”

            “Heh, well, I like you too, National.”

            “Good. Uh... if you guys are in town still tomorrow, well, it’s my night off, and I’d like to take you out, properly, you know...”

            “I... the show moves out tomorrow. I’d really love to stay, but... well...”

            “No, no, I get it. I wish I could get out of here just about every night. You can. I can’t deny you that for a girl you barely know.”

            “Thanks, really, I do like you but...”

            “If you guys ever come back here, you should stop by.” This time he smiles at her.

            “You should smile more. It suits you better than that constant scowl.”

            As he walks back into the show’s little camp, the captains lean out of their trailer.

            “You want to come back to our trailer, Sounder?”

            “Have a cup of tea?”

            “I’m more of a coffee person...” If he was to be honest, he found himself a little afraid of the two.

            “We can do either.”

            “Anyway, I prefer tea.”

            “And me coffee.”

            “So you’re saying you have conclusive proof that coffee and tea preference isn’t actually genetic?” The joke comes out clumsy, the words not quite fitting the mouth. They laugh.

            “You’re smarter than you look.”

            “Or, at least, you’ve been spending too much time with Deluxe.”

            Their trailer is custom built with high ceilings. The walls are largely unadorned. One sister puts on water to boil.

            “So what do you practice?”

            “Practice?”

            “Martial art?”

            “Oh, you know.”

            “No.”

            “That’s why we’re asking.”

            “Well, as a kid, I was pretty much self taught. Did some boxing in school, but mostly, well, whatever kept me alive. Then, when I ended up with my last boss, maybe six years ago, he got me some real training.”

            “Like?”

            “You really take a lot of prodding to talk, don’t you?”

            “Uh, well, Tai Chi, mostly. Some Penkak Silat, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. A little Muay Thai. I was taking some lessons in Wing Chun earlier this year, before I... got fired.”

            “Come on, Sounder.”

            “We all three know you didn’t get fired.”

            “Well, in a sense, he did.”

            “Oh, don’t be a pedant.”

            “Fine. Whatever. Before I stole from my boss and he almost put a bullet in my head. Happy?” He speaks with some irritation. He’s had this conversation enough times that it’s beginning to feel like pulling scabs.

            “Sure.”

            “Enough.”

            “So, not to be nosy or anything, but, well, what are you two’s stories? And your names.” This time, the words tumble out quickly, he beginning to overcome his shyness.

            “Hmm.”

            “Indeed, hmm.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Well, the thing is, we take a different attitude towards this whole freak show thing.”

            “Different than all the other acts, at least.”

            “In fact, we disagree pretty fundamentally with Deluxe’s basic philosophy.”

            “The rest of them, they have two stories.”

            “One for the stage, and one for life.”

            “We don’t play that way.”

            “The story we tell, it’s better than the truth, just in its basic nature.”

            “Two twin sisters, born with gigantism in Jerusalem.”

            “When we turned 19, we did our service with the IDF.”

            “But some people, and I’m sure you know this,”

            “Are just meant to be soldiers.”

            “We’re good at it, by nature.”

            “The killing, the fighting.”

            “Of course, we don’t frame it that way.”

            “For the show, we put it in the language of Greek gods.”

            “We got promoted. A lot.”

            “Both of us.”

            “More or less in tandem.”

            “Until we both hit captain.”

            “Why not use your real names, at least?” He’s finding it hard to get a word in edgewise.

            “It’s part of the show.”

            “What’s a name but an identification?”

            “And we’re happy to identify as one.”

            “Why?” His question seems to catch them off guard.

            “Hmm.” There is a long pause.

            “Tell us something, Sounder.”

            “Your old job. You hurt people. Killed people.”

            “Good people, bad people.”

            “Whoever they told you to kill?”

            “Yeah.” Sounder answers quietly.

            “Well, why did you quit?”

            “I realized there was something better.”

            “Better than what?”

            “Than never being able to sleep.” His nose itches. He doesn’t like this line of questioning.

            “Ah, the demons.”

            “Dead mens’ eyes.”

            “Well, Sounder, think of it this way:”

            “What if, upon waking, the faces, the eyes, were still there.”

            “What if you never wanted to wake up, because your sins hurt you all the more in the daylight, when you knew you couldn’t awaken to escape them?”

            “What would you do then?”

            “I... I don’t know.”

            “But what if you had another half of yourself, a soldier too, but one without the same demons?”

            “What if you could free yourself from your past?”

            “By killing your past self.”

            “I don’t get it.”

            “Lebanon, well, things got bad.”

            “Forget the politics.”

            “Atrocities, both sides.”

            “It was just how it went.”

            “You know how it is, when all you have is kill.”

            “One of us didn’t want to come back.”

            “So she didn’t.”

            “And from where there were two, now there is one, all the stronger.”

            “The demons held back behind the gates.”

            “But the people... they’re still dead.” Sounder interrupts.

            “Sure.”

            “And one of you is still responsible.”

            “We were both officers, both part of decisions that led to, well...”

            “We’re both responsible.”

            “So why not live a different life? Where war is still honor and glory, where we were both heroes, now come to America to share feats of strength, like ancient Greek bronzes of soldiers, always brave, always strong, always honorable, always perfect.” Both sisters’ eyes are bright.

            “Kill history.”

            “Kill your past.”

            “Let your demons die.”

            “And live in the bright glow of a million tomorrows.”

            “And if you have to, kill a part of yourself.”

            “At a certain point, there’s nothing left to hold you back.”

            “My demons haven’t, well. I can’t sleep, but...” Sounder looks for a complete thought in amongst the swirling mess of his past, but he comes up blank. There is an image though, blue sky, gentle waves, pale skin...

            “You’re not yet ready to kill that part of yourself.”

            “There is a part of the older you still held to this earth.”

            “By a commitment, unfulfilled?”

            “An enemy, still alive?”

            “Or a love, a second part of the same self, but a different kind of love than ours.”

            “Not the kind of love you can just vanish inside of?”

            Sounder remains reticent, and the two give up that particular cause.

            “Well, either way, here you are now.”

            “In a good place.”

            “Where strength is beauty.”

            “Not control.”

            “Where to be able to fight is simply a design on being something better.”

            “Rather than an instrument of destruction.”

            “Now is your time to kill your past.”

            “While still you can bear to wake and face yourself.”

            “Choose a different life.”

            “You mean different than a security guard?” He looks at the ground as he asks.

            “Different than a soldier.”

            “I got out.” Now he turns his eyes to them.

            “For now. You’re still here though... waiting for something.”

            “You stole money from him. Use it. Leave the country.”

            “Unless, of course, my sister is right, and there is something keeping you here.”

            “In which case, I fear you may have some soldiering left to do.”

            Stage lights all shining up, never down, for these two souls reforged as one, a perfect bond of sisterhood. They walk on from opposite sides of the stage, back corners. From where the audience stands, the sisters’ true height remains hidden until the absolute moment of perfect wonder, at stage’s edge, staring down on the mass.

            Muscles cast in harsh relief, Riace Warriors, strength for beauty’s sake, the best the human form can ever be.

            And yet... with their height comes too a curse, beyond the cries of condescension from drunken masochists, societal tut tuts about what a woman could/should be, a curse that runs deeper than words, wrought onto the very flesh, carved into the bones.

            To be a giant is to stand above all, but so too is it to burn out fast, circulatory system, skeleton, the basic blueprint of the human form unable to accommodate the sheer mass. But then is it not better to live wonderfully than to live long? Life’s far off horizons are all grey hair and atrophied muscles, but to live and die as gods, what then is that?

Magic

            A dusty old diner, a few miles too far off the highway, once part of a town proper, now all that’s left. Deserted buildings, broken glass, old graffiti. The owner knows he should sell, but not just yet. Something may come around still, give him one last chance to show them all what he’s made of. He half hopes, too, that one day some asshole will show up with a sawn off shotgun and a ski mask, and he’ll be able to die a death worth dying. He knows if he gives up on the diner, the alternative is rotting away in some VA sponsored retirement home, waiting for his heart to give out, it still ticking along now as the only gift of a life lived clean. He wishes he’d picked up a drinking problem back when he was young enough to still enjoy it. Now, though, one whiskey and he’s done for the night. That would have almost been easier than the shotgun pellets infecting his brain, chromatics against neurons firing, boozy haze over long precipice.

            Then dust kicks up on the road outside, a great plume of the stuff, swirling up towards the sky, momentarily blocking out the windows. A mighty caravan, a dozen RVs, campers, trailers. He sees one long and carbon black, and he remembers names and faces he hasn’t seen in five years, and his eyes light up with a smile as Deluxe wanders in the door.

            “Hey Hangman, how’s business?”

            “Oh, you know Deluxe. Pretty shit.”

            “Yeah, well, what can you do?”

            “Get a massive, unexpected cash infusion from a suspiciously wealthy benefactor?”

            “Yeah, yeah.”

            “So what brings you folks out this way? It can’t be my cooking.”

            “Nah, sorry to say. We were heading this direction when one of the RVs started pouring smoke, and, I mean, I don’t know much about cars, but I don’t think that’s a good sign. So I decided we’d stop here while someone more accustomed to the inner workings of machines than me takes a look at things.”

            “Well, I’m glad to see you, why ever you’re here.”

            The rest of the show filters in behind Deluxe, puts in their orders with Hangman, burgers and fries and shakes, pie and meatloaf and cheap steak, all coated with grease and half burnt, but, then, that’s what gives the food its unique character. Deluxe gestures for Sounder to sit down with him.

            “How are you finding things?”

            “I don’t know, you’re a weird bunch, but... I like you, or those I’ve met, at least.”

            “I’m glad to hear it. What do you think of the business?”

            “The freak show? I... I don’t know. It seems almost...”

            “It’s almost a lot of things. Almost exploitative, mean spirited, low, sure, but that doesn’t matter as long as it’s always just almost.”

            “Yeah, I guess.”

            “You met Pitcher yet?”

            “Pitcher?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I don’t remember seeing his act.”

            “He’s not an act. He’s the closest to a real, bonafide freak as this show has going for it. But we can’t very well put him on stage.”

            “What does he do then?” Deluxe gestures at the lurid, detailed painting on the side of an RV outside the window. The figures are tiny, writhing in pain, tortured expressions, immaculate details, Boschian to the extreme, but with all the authentic, heartfelt pathos that Bosch never quite managed. Each figure seems to look out of the design, gazing deep into the soul of the watcher, freak to the audience but without the daytime escape of a life lived normal, eternal prison of perpetual torment, life inside a broken, brilliant mind.

            “I don’t really know anything about art, but all our posters and stuff do seem a little... particular.”

            “Yeah, that’s down to Pitcher. That little A-Frame that the Captains pull behind their trailer? Pitcher is in there. You should ride with him on the way to Pueblo tonight, once we get back up and running... you should know, though... he has some mental issues, pretty severe. That’s why he can’t go on stage. He’s been doing pretty well recently but, well, sometimes he can get violent.”

            “Shouldn’t he be in a hospital or something?”

            “He was my... well... he has a spectacular mind. Simply incredible. When things started getting bad the first time, I had him committed, but I couldn’t bear to see what the drugs did to him. On the drugs he was just another dazed out nobody, waiting to die. When you talk to him, just kind of let him talk, you’ll see what I mean, why I can’t just confine him to the drugs. If he gets violent, well, radio me and I’ll stop the convoy and you can ride with Synth. You should be able to handle him though. I think he’ll like you.”

            After America gets the beat up old camper back up and running again, off white, orange stripes, cracked paint, someone used to love this place, Sounder joins Pitcher in his camper.

            “Hey man, you Pitcher?” The guy is scrawny, moves fast, almost twitchy, like someone is looking over his shoulder, watching his every move.

            “Yeah man, yeah man, I am, Pitcher. That’s what they call me. Have you noticed how strange everyone's names are, man. Pitcher, what kind of name is that? But you man, what’s your name, man?

            “Sounder...”

            “Sounder, I like that name, I like the way it sounds, hah, sounds, Sounder, isn’t that funny? Sounder, Sounder, I like saying it. But enough about words, we’ve had too many words, Sounder, and not said enough, you know? I don’t think we’ve really said anything, just, we’ve just, we’ve, what’s the use anymore? I used to like words but now I have too many, you know? But really, who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing in my trailer, Sounder?”

            “I’m the new security guy for the show.”

            “What show, the “Freak Show? What a fucking thing, man, what a fucking thing, a freak show, everyone is a freak, we all know that, but they say we’re the freaks. Why, man? This is America, man, god damn this is America, we’re supposed to be freaks. That’s the whole, you know, American persona, we don’t got a place, we’re just here, man, drifting around, sleeping through sunny days waiting for the clouds to let loose with rain, for the sun to vanish over the horizon, we exist in the nights, the forgotten spaces, the rotten sheets of wood, fractured concrete, bent rebar, shut down motorway inns, gas stations with their heady reek, that’s us, that’s the American experience, the gone bits, and we love it, man, we all love being part of the same big nothing, but they call us freaks because we look something special, talk a different way. You, man, you, are you a freak?”

            “I thought you just said everyone’s a freak?”

            “Sure, man, sure. Freaks. All freaks, one big freak show, Jesus Christ up on his cross condescending down upon us, his great judgment as he bleeds from holes in his hands, a cut in his chest, a crown of thorns. I got a crown a’ thorns once, but then they told me I wasn’t special enough to suffer rightly. How can we be freaks when our savior himself was not even born of man? It’s a standard of non-normal, we can never beat it, man. That’s what this game has always been, man, you know, freak shows, look at the freaks and see how normal we are, what with our ignorance and incest, our grand pestilence, man as, as, as a disease upon the very dirt beneath our feet. Freak shows became popular when the individual died. But I digress, I always do that, I’m sorry, tell me if I’m digressing again, I really, I try to focus, but they tell me its my mind, my freakery, I can’t, but I digress again. Sure, we’re all freaks, but are you what they all call a freak, or are you one of them, the bright eyes amongst the footlights, looking up in revery?”

            “I’m just security.”

            “No one is just security.” Sounder found himself waiting for Pitcher to launch into another monolog about the American experience, or something similar, but it didn’t come.

            “Uh, well, I used to be an enforcer for a... an arms dealer. I hurt people if they didn’t pay.”

            “Ah, so you were one of those.”

            “One of what?”

            “High functioning sociopaths, man. I knew plenty, when I was in the hospital, everyone was high functioning, that’s what they’d tell you, even as they wore a straightjacket for beating their pretty young wife’s head in with a ball peen hammer. Docs too, nurses, visitors, janitors, all high functioning, even as we fall apart... But no, you’re not them, I’m sorry man, I’m sorry, I see it in your eyes now. You aren’t a high functioning nothing, if you were you would be just a security, get off on beating us up, no, man, you’re something different, something special. Different time, man, bombs falling, forests burning, babies screaming, guns, steel, desperate, my dad, he was, well, you’d do well in those times, sure, but something more, too. You hurt people first, but you do it out of something deeper, man, some love, maybe? But know, for now you have to hurt people because that’s what you got to do. You enjoy it, even, if only for the moment, while you still have your enemy to fight, something to fight him for.”

            “I don’t like hurting people.”

            “Sure you do, we all like hurting people, it’s part of the human condition, some of us just hurt them more than others. A bullet to the head, a ball peen hammer, a word, freak, we all like hurting people, keeps us going, gives us a meaning, makes us pure, let’s us feel special because we aren’t them, we aren’t them, we’re never them because then we’d learn we weren't special in our normalcy. They’re wrong though, so wrong, the special ones of us are the ones who are happy being freaks, take heart, man, run with us long enough, then you too will be a freak.”

            “You don’t seem like such a freak. I mean, you talk a lot, but...”

            “No need to say more, no need, you’re one of us, so you won’t see it like the rest of them. Here, see my painting?”

            “Yeah, it’s... it’s something else.”

            “Else than what? Else than the Renaissance masters, their huge figures, muscles, man in all his glory, big dicks, the sparkling gold image of god, the Byzantines, Greek bronze, metal made as supple as flesh? Etruscan love, funerary art to hold love above death? Rococo, the last grip on a time of endless pleasure, eternal leisure, the passing of thousands of years of traditions in bright colors, sex? A Japanese woodcut, nature as the Byzantine gods? Else than Rothko’s colors, Picasso’s pain and fear, Dali’s psychosis? Or is it else than Bosch? Everyone says it looks like Bosch but it’s not Bosch because Bosch was crazy and I’m not crazy, Bosch liked hurting people so he spent a life dedicated to every torture he could think of. Me, these are me, every one, the faces that run through my dreams, mocking and laughing, screaming out that never shall I be free, shackled to my own skin. These are the faces I see, the long gone of America, old man shambling down back road, rural Michigan, bad leg, assembly line accident, giving him grief as he looks for his dead wife and a home the bank took away, kids playing in the dusty streets of Laredo as their folks break their backs working shit jobs, running from Border Patrol so their kids can break their backs too someday, this time, though, as real Americans, gang bangers rolling through Baltimore, windows down, eyes cool and empty, waiting to die, but not just these, no. These are the faces of those tortured still by the dying magics, by the pimps spouting fire from their fingers, the dealers who with a word can make a man blow his own brains out, see, I see it. The magic on these old empty roads, the last truly mystical place left in the world, where hope in a hopeless age is allowed to run rampant, the last places magic is allowed to exist. I met one of them once, you know? A magician? And he saved me, spirited me away from the hospitals, the drugs they put in me to kill the faces, put down the voices, suppress the beauty for the pain, spirited me away, I was there then I was here, and now I paint for him and he saves me, but you know, magic isn’t a pet goldfish, you can’t keep it in a bowl and watch it while you shoot up, no, it’s like a big fucking Dobermann, it has to be let out to run wild, so he let’s it run wild and he lets them all see but they do not see because it’s all games to them, they can’t see the real truth to it, a truth we’re fast losing as the magic finds itself seeping into the drought stricken dirt, blown away by the wind storms, shadowed in sand and time, but here at least I can paint, and when I paint, people can see the truth.”

            Then they stop moving, and, wordlessly, Sounder gets out of Pitcher’s trailer, as much to get away from Pitcher’s increasingly direct psychosis, as to see why they stopped.

            Outside, the sun glares down in condescension at the stopped convoy in amongst an endless horizon on all sides, sagebrush and sand, blue sky dappled by clouds. Sounder wanders towards the front of the caravan, where Deluxe stands, near the intersection of two old two lane highways.

            “What’s going on?”

            “Something’s about to happen.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Look.” Deluxe sticks out a bony finger at a distant speck on the horizon, long down the empty intersecting road. Slowly the spec becomes a car followed by a cloud of dust, and, with a few moments, sirens.

            “How did you see that?”

            “Good eyes. For every disability, comes a gift.”

            The shape became clear, an old muscle car skating along the shimmering mirage line that always accompanies asphalt in the desert, psychedelic heat ripples, slowly interrupted by the angry angles of an orange 1967 Camaro SS, front grill swallowing up mouthfuls of sand every half minute mile, and as it approaches, a small fleet of cops in Chargers start to come into shape behind, all the cars mottled with dust and mud, and the roar of the engines starts to deafen, blurring out even the desert winds, the sound of idling RVs.

            The Camaro roars to them with a fiery anger, then, halfway through the intersection, begins to fishtail wildly. Deluxe and Sounder look through the passenger window and for a moment that, as time tends to, in the presence of mortality’s immediacy, yawns out past the hereafter, see a scared girl, covered in mud, blood oozing from her forehead, pretty in a different place, sundress, tattered, hanging loosely on thin frame, clinging desperately to a shotgun, and, next to her, in the driver’s seat, a guy younger than he looks, thick black hair hanging across his face. In the eyes of both is fear but also resignation at the imminence of something else, finally, amongst all the madness.

            Then the Camaro finds the edge of the asphalt, turns perpendicular to the path of its own motion, and flips three, four times with a horrific squelch of metal and bodies, before coming to rest in the dirt, fire beginning to pour hot from the the thing’s underbelly. From within come screams, behind the squeal of sirens. Then Deluxe begins to jog towards the wreck, gestures for Sounder to follow.

            “Sounder, the door, get the door, I think the girl is alive!” Ghosts. Just when you find yourself free of your past, the ghosts start to float up through the waters to pull you back down.

            “I can’t, the fire...” Indeed, the fire now licks up the side of the doors, the orange paint twisting and melting into shapes with a hint of malice to their very design. Then, without warning, a dust devil swirls out from the road’s embankment, squashing out the fire. Sounder’s eyes expand, caught in headlights.

            “Go!”

            Sounder bends down, finds the door stuck, then begins to pull, feels his muscles twinge beneath his shirt. With a great effort, the metal bends and squeezes, before finally popping out of its frame.

            The scene within is cast in burgundy, sticky, smells of iron. The guy is bleeding from a big hole is his chest where a chunk of glass has pierced him, and his eyes are open and unblinking, but the girl, with the door’s removal, she stirs, and turns, big, saucer eyes, amber, towards Sounder, and he pulls her out of the car, as the flames find themselves returning. She bleeds heavily from her head, her chest, her arms, and her eyes are slowly glassing again. Ghost again, her memory as gunfire around them, sandstorm whips through the city, but that’s in the past now and she’s free, but this girl, she’s not.

            The cops pull up to the scene, and young guy in front, a rookie, he gets out of his car, and he knows what he’s supposed to do, but he just can’t make sense of the scene, huge guy, certainly not their suspect, holding the girl, so pretty, so young, her body, broken, and he’s crying, big tears, washing down his face in swirls of blood and dirt, splashing down onto her sundress.

            The girl looks up at the man who has her in his arms.

            “Are you here to take me away from all this?”

            And then she dies, and he kneels down on the asphalt, and lets his head hang.

Straightworld Tonight

            The stage lights come up as the camera swirls to the left. Behind Parker is only contoured green screen, but the people, they see marvels, all the world splayed out in 1920x1080, dynamic contrasts.

            “Tonight, a special feature on a unique attraction here in Pueblo, for this weekend only. They call themselves “The Last Great American Freak Show,” and I visited them in the parking lot of the South Pueblo Mall to get some idea of what they do.

            When one pictures a freak show, they imagine faded images of old American sideshow attractions, often something messy, old fashioned, and exploitative. Many may think that these icons of an earlier time have completely gone the way of the dinosaur, but this is not true. A few roving bands of so-called Freaks still wander the American backroads, selling a particular sense of wonder to anyone with the few dollars it takes to buy a ticket.”

            A cross fade across to the footage from Parker’s expedition earlier in the day, accompanied by a cheaply assembled CGI graphic. Back in the studio, Parker tips his head back, considers how the hell he ended up reporting on an escaped circus act in Pueblo Colorado. He did, he remembers, always want to be a war reporter. There would have been glory in that, excitement, maybe even a Pulitzer, beautiful wife, nice house, fast car, but in this, in this there is nothing but decay. Then he remembers those he met earlier in the day, and he smiles, considering life's branching paths, choices, the common brotherhood of those who choose to make a life spread eagling their terrible faults before a paying, ogling audience, fame at any price. Or maybe something else.

            Parker, four hours earlier, stands in a parking lot near a stage still being assembled, a dozen RVs, he framed particularly to call attention to the black behemoth that is the strangest item in the collection of vehicles. Next to him stands Deluxe, shot with a distractingly awkward misunderstanding of the rules of headroom by an inexperienced camera man.

            “As seems appropriate for a group contented to call themselves a “freak show,” I’ve met a colorful cast of characters on my visit here today, but none stood out to me more than the show’s manager, Deluxe. So, Deluxe, tell me about “The Last Great American Freak Show.”

            “Well, we’ve been around for over twenty years now, with an ever changing cast of characters. Even as many of the last freak shows have fizzled out of existence in the face of the distractions of television, movies, video games, and the like, we have remained, in part due to, I’d like to think, good management, and a real commitment from all of our acts.”

            “Now, one thing I think some of our viewers might be concerned about is the potential of shows like this for exploiting the so-called “freaks” involved.”

            “That’s actually a concern we hear quite frequently in this business. That said, I think we, as a show, do an excellent job of handling that issue. We are run by freaks, with both myself and the owner participating as acts, and we try to keep in mind the particular sociological concerns of our business. Frankly, I see being in a freak show as the best use of the particular conditions of my birth. I’m free to make money how I choose, unreliant on others, marvelled at rather than pitied. It’s something beautiful, not exploitative. Freaks are everywhere, I mean, you turn on the TV or go to the movies and all you see is super-mutants fighting bad guys. There’s nothing exploitative about that, and we’re no different than those characters. No different, that is, except than that we offer something true.” Behind the two, Sounder walks through carrying a crate of equipment.

            In the warm, false tropical central atrium of a Spanish colonial style Phoenix mansion, Pilgrim sits staring at a laptop screen.

            “How did we find this?”

            “A guy in Pueblo saw it and recognized him.”

            “Are we sure it’s him?”

            “I wasn’t totally sure, but I looked online and the show was outside of Phoenix the night that Sounder... well whatever happened to him.”

            “Fuck. Fucking fuck.”

            “What? We found him.”

            “Yeah. Well, now we have to go to fucking Colorado to kill Sounder. I can’t believe this shit, you know? I honestly really did like the guy, I mean I’d much rather have to put up with him than-” he gestures dismissively “you, or any of your compatriots.”

            “Boss, what if we just... let him go?”

            “Let him go. Yeah. He stole from me. Forget everything else, for that we have to kill him if we want to retain any kind of respect. Any idea where the show is going next?”

            “Some town in southern Colorado called Fordston.”

            “I’ve never even heard of it.”

            “It’s small. Quiet. A lot of mining and not much else. Local law should pose no problem.”

            “Fine, put some men together. Six, including you, should be enough.”

            “What about what happened last time?”  Pilgrim turns from his soldier.

            “It won’t happen like that again. If whatever it is helped Sounder escaped two months ago rears its head this time, it won’t matter how many men we have. The fewer the better, in fact, because every last one of us will die. We’re arms dealers. Not gods.”

            “Huh?”

            “Trust me. There are some things in this world that you can’t kill with guns. We’re going to show up, we’re going to kill Sounder, then we’re going to get the fuck out of there. Or we’re all going to die. Two choices. A binary. Black or white. On or off. Kill or die. That’s fucking it.” He pauses for a long moment, takes a sip of the beer on the table in front of him. “You know you would think this job would be simple. We buy guns for cheap. We sell them where they’re worth more. We hurt those that try to stop us. We aren’t evil, we don’t kill for fun, we don’t hurt innocent people. No. Maybe we do have something in common with gods, sitting back in judgment on the rest, letting them do what they will with what we provide them. Fuck that.

            It’s about time I got out of this business. I have the money. Do something good with my life. Or even just do something. I hate the god damned desert, maybe I’ll meet someone, move to the mountains. Open a restaurant, maybe. Something where I don’t have to kill the people I love. I’ve been saying that for so long, but I guess that’s not my role, is it? We need monsters playing at being gods for society to function. What would all that power of good do without something to fight? You can’t cage shit like that.”

            “Uh, boss, you okay?”

            “Haha, what do you fucking think?”

Chekhov’s Gun

            Fordston, tucked right in the cleft between two immense walls of stone, a little valley, the town itself trying hard to be one of those forgotten ghost towns of the old west, persisting still, in spite of itself and the precious metal contained in those walls.

            A few hours before the show is set to start, and Deluxe talks animatedly away with a handsome young man, dressed far too well for his surroundings, the Northface jackets patched with duct tape, hiking boots, that mark the informal uniform of this variety of little mountain town, replaced instead by a vintage leather jacket, white v-neck shirt, Japanese made jeans. The boots were similar to the standard uniform but, somehow, different, nicer than all the rest maybe only in the way worn, or the people wearing them. Hope against an impending storm.

            “So, Harmony, what do you do here in Fordston? You don’t really seem like a miner, if you don’t mind me saying.”

            “Oh, I’m not. I own the bookstore.”

            “Doesn’t seem like the sort of town that could really support a bookstore.”

            “Well, we’re also a printing and copy shop. That’s where the money comes from, mostly.”

            “That’s a shame, you ask me. Books have truth. Not like this...” He waves an arm at the show rising behind him, “But enough.”

            “People have given up on stories here. Stories remind us of a better world. Only direction Fordston has to go is down.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Mine is about to tap out. Only a few years left.”

            “What will you do then?”

            “We’re Americans. We’ll do what Americans always do - leave. Leave until there’s nowhere left to leave to.”

            “Is there anywhere left now?”

            “Alaska’s pretty empty.”

            “Yeah, I suppose.”

            “You look like someone who’s done a fair bit of traveling, Deluxe. Tell me, if you didn’t have this show, where would you go, what would you be?”

            “Well, when I was a kid, I always wanted to be an adventurer, wandering around the world, meeting interesting people, getting myself into trouble, having sex with girls with strange accents. Thing is, as a dwarf, even in the 21st century, there are certain health concerns.”

            “Aren’t you, though?”

            “What?”

            “An adventurer. I mean, you wander around the country with a travelling freak show, pulling all manner of strays, plenty of whom I’m sure have stories of their own. Sure, you may not get shot at, or have sex with girls with strange accents, but... well, the first of those at least is probably a good thing.”

            “You’re probably right. Still, I’ve always wanted to kiss a Russian girl.” Deluxe muses.

            “You’re still young.”

            “Some of us always are, and yet we never get any younger, and that’s all we really ever want. Plus, I mean, she may not have had a strange accent, but there was that night with Marilyn.”

            “Oh, come on, man, I’m being serious.”

            “I may still be young, but I’m older than I look. And let me tell you, Marilyn... well... the Kennedys weren’t the only deal she had going.”

            “I can’t figure you out.”

            “I’m a magician. It’s a trick of the trade. Let me return your question to you, though, Harmony. You could go anywhere, be anything, what would you be?”

            “Anywhere but here, doing anything but this.”

            “I don’t know, it seems to me you’re doing pretty well here for yourself. Own your own business, intelligent, well spoken, well dressed.”

            “Yeah, but imagine what I could have done if I was from New York City, or Shanghai or Tokyo or Milan or Edinburgh. The places I could have gone.”

            “That wouldn’t be you, though. Maybe, born in Edinburgh, you wouldn’t have had such a passion to fight back, and you would’ve been just another kid from Edinburgh.”

            “Anything is always better than the moment.”

            “Right until you’re dead.”

            “Sure. Strange words, coming from the ever-young.”

            “A king once said something similar to me.”

            “A king? Which one?”

            “Any of them.”

            “What?”

            “It doesn’t matter for the story.”

            “What’s the story then?”

            “The king never wanted a kingdom. But he got it. And in the end, rather than making the best of it, he destroyed it, and brought a lot of people down with him.”

            “Are you trying to tell me something?”

            “That’s a good question.” Then Deluxe sniffs the air.

            “Harmony.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Get out of here, now. Something’s coming, and you don’t want to be around when it arrives.”

            “What something?”

            “Some manner of king. Now go.” Something in the dwarf’s eyes convinced Harmony of a truth in his words, and he runs for his motorcycle, rides like hell away from that place.

            Meanwhile, Deluxe knocks frantically on America’s door. She opens it, looking annoyed at having a nap interrupted.

            “Something’s coming.”

            “What kind of something?” Her eyes narrow, because she knows the answer.

            “The kind that only I know when it’s about to hit.”

            “Get the Captains. And Sounder.” Deluxe finds one of the young men recruited to help assemble the stage, sends him off for the other essential cast members.

            Deluxe and America stand at the entrance to the camp, with a certain resignation to face whatever’s coming.

            “You think this has to do with Sounder?” America’s purple eyes flash electric.

            “Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter.” The Captains run up to them.

            “You have guns?” Deluxe asks.

            “Sure.” They each pull .50 Desert Eagles from their jackets.

            “Not enough. Not nearly enough. Where the hell is Sounder?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “We haven’t seen him this afternoon.”

            “This about him?”

            “America asked the same thing. I’m not a psychic. I don’t know.” Deluxe responds.

            “Then what’s this?”

            “Seems pretty psychic to me.”

            “Intuition. Prediction. Science.” Deluxe sounds slightly perturbed. If they felt what he felt, they wouldn’t be speaking anything but prayers.

            “Magic?”

            “Psychic?”

            “Yeah, yeah. Now pay attention. And don’t draw unless I signal.”

            “What’s the signal?”

            “Bird noises?”

            “Would you two stop? Jesus.” Deluxe likes the Captains, but the way they finish each others’ sentences always creeps on his nerves.

            “Soldiers, before a fight.”

            “Always the same.”

            “Easier to laugh.”

            “Than face death head on.”

            “We know something bad is about to happen.”

            “But...”

            “We’re not dead until our hearts stop beating.”

            “Gun stops firing.”

            “Bodies begin to decompose.”

            A big forrest green Cadillac Escalade races into the parking lot, followed by a plume of dust and six lowriders. Seven horsemen. The cars stop with a squeal of tires. Out of the Cadillac steps first a beat up old moccasin. Then the rest of a man in perfect contrast to the shoe, tall, enormously handsome. Perfect dark hair pushed back with a surgeon’s precisions from his eyes, held in a subtle slick of gel. His jacket and jeans both carefully, expensively tailored. In his hands, a sawn off double barreled shotgun.

            The Captains smirk slightly. One whispers to the other -

            “Didn’t know we were fighting Mad Max. Thought we’d at least be shooting a professional.” Deluxe elbows the one closest to him.

            Then, from all the lowriders, a collection of men in expensive suits and cowboy boots. The Captains clock two Kalashnikov’s, a Spas 12, two FN FALs, and a M259 light machine gun.

            “Well, guess we will be.”

“Or an amateur with a really small dick.” Deluxe shoots them an evil look.

            “You must be Deluxe.” Pilgrim purrs out.
            “I am. And who are you?”

            “Me? Me, I’m, I’m nobody. Just some guy with a gun, and some other guns backing him up. My name’s Pilgrim, but that doesn’t mean much, not unless you’re in the right industry, and, let’s be honest, none of you are... Now, if you were in the right industry, “Pilgrim” would mean one hell of a lot. In a word, fear. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not that psychotic man killer you see in the movies. I don’t kill for fun, for sport, anything like that. In fact, I don’t really like killing at all. But! And there’s always a but! I will kill if pushed. If someone steals from me, for instance. But you didn’t steal from me, so no worries there. Like I said, always a but. As part of that fear, however Pilgrim would mean you were dealing with someone particularly, what shall I say, professional. I will negotiate, discuss, be reasonable, and, most of all, I will do business. I don’t expect something for nothing or, even, something for violence and fear alone. Enough, though, about me. We’re not here for me.”

            “Who are we here for?”

            “Please don’t fuck with me, Deluxe.”

            “Sure.”

            “Don’t fuck with me. You know we’re here for Sounder, and I know he’s here. Somewhere.”

            “Sure we are. We’re here for Sounder because some kid with a huge distrust of his own brains, something I’m sure you have something to say for, stole a lot of money from you, then, even with a gun pointed at his head, managed to escape from you.”

            “Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.” Pilgrim sighs. “Look, Deluxe, I have more of an idea as to what you are than you think I do.”
            “And what’s that?”

            “Someone not to be fucked with. Just like me. Fact is, though, whatever power you have, I have a lot of guns here, and even if you can slaughter every last one of us and not even blink, I guarantee this machine gun here can kill at least half your friends before that happens.”

            “That’s a fair guess.”

            “So, I guess we’ve reached an impasse.”

            “No.”

            “No?”
            “I’ve dealt with assholes tougher than you, and I’ve always made it through. I’m not afraid of your bullets.”

            “No, but they might be.”

            “What, two Israeli veterans of the war with Lebanon? They may have plenty of fears, but bullets aren’t them. Or the woman born without arms or legs, now worth more money than you are, all through her own work? You have no idea the sort of fearless strength that takes. No, I don’t think she’s afraid of you either.”

            “An interesting suggestion. Still, though, Deluxe, I doubt you want to sacrifice these old friends for a kid you barely know, one who’s apparently too much of a coward to even show his fucking face for our little Mexican standoff here.”

            “Cowardice and common sense are two different things.”

            “Be that as it may, I’ll give you one more chance.” Pilgrim points his gun at Deluxe’s head.

            “Deluxe, he’s right.” America speaks for the first time in the confrontation.

            “I’ve faced more dangerous situations than this and lived.”

            “He has a shotgun pointed at your head.”

            “Not the first time, hopefully not the last.”

            “Time’s up...”

            From the side of the set piece Pitcher bursts, runs in between Pilgrim and Deluxe. Taken aback, Pilgrim points his gun back down at the ground.

            “Okay, who the fuck are you?”

            “Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I? I’m Pitcher. And you, you’re the pale rider, and I don’t mean that Clint Eastwood movie, man, no, I mean like in the fucking biblical sense, ‘I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death.’ I’m sure you know it, we all do, it’s one of those biblical passages that has appeared in more action movies than it has in sermons, right up there with, all that about the valley of death and fearing no evil and all that, I’m sure you know that too. Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe you’re not death. No, instead I think you’re the devil, I never thought I’d meet the devil, but you’re the devil, not a killer yourself, not mainly, at least, but a facilitator of death. And yet you may look down and disdain on us as freaks, but my freakism is a simple disease of the mind that lets me see, while yours is a cancer of the soul that makes you blind.”

“I’ve had about a fucking ‘nough with you assholes...” Pilgrim raises his gun to Pitcher, and his finger slips onto the trigger.

A deafening crack, a far off flash of fire, echoed across this earth as it has for so

much of the American past, from the fields of Shiloh, to Bunker Hill, through the swamps at New Orleans, great men made and unmade. The crack is followed as flashes of fire and echoes of thunder always are, by six more, then an eerie silence as death rides not his pale horse, but now truly the very air, the smell of iron and sulphur hung thick.

Then with a quieting of the thunder comes a peace, as a new layer of violence settles itself again over the town of Fordston, in memory of the would be heroes of the old west who laid down their lives for what America could have been.

Pilgrim and all his six men lay on the ground, skulls cracked in, surrounded by blood and viscera, brain matter, long ill used, now gone to fertilize the weeds that grow up in the cracks of the asphalt.

The Captains stand with their guns raised tentatively, while Pitcher lies on the ground, covering his head with his hands, America trying somehow to

shelter Deluxe. Then from Deluxe’s trailer behind the dead men emerges Sounder, his brow slicked with sweat, in his hands that old Winchester ‘73.

            “Chekhov's gun, I guess.” Sounder speaks the words with a new confidence, a smile, alien across his face. Deluxe comes out from behind America.

            “I can’t tell you how happy I am, not only to be alive, to have that bastard dead, but to be able to actually make that joke properly now. I thought you didn’t know Chekhov?” At the friendly voice, Pitcher stands, looked around in stunned silence.

            “Pitcher told me the joke.”

            “I didn’t know Pitcher knew Chekov.”

            “Pitcher knows a lot of things.”

           

End Run

            That night’s show was almost cancelled, but, in the end, the town sheriff decided, with the less than gentle prodding of the local union rep, that it might be best if the monsters were to disappear into the mountains around the town, and not draw undo federal attention to the town as a whole.

            After all the lights go dark, till the next show, Sounder sits with Deluxe, America, in a little place called Rosie’s Bar, eating cherry pie.

            “So what’s your plan now, Sounder?”

            “Well, if you think you can survive without me, find a replacement or something, I think I should move on.”

            “Sure... I have someone in mind, actually. Move on to where?”

            “Somewhere quiet, beautiful, and maybe a little broken.”

            “A little broken?”

            “All the best things in this country are.”

            “Live off the money you stole from Pilgrim with whatever pretty girl helped you do that. 
            “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll let the past bury itself, for once. I’m content to be a security guard, or a bouncer, or whatever it takes, till the end of time.”

            “It suits you. Better than being a gangster, certainly.” They eat in silence for a few minutes.

            “Sounder, can I ask you something?”

            “Sure, Deluxe.”

            “How did you steal the money? And manage to hide it from him for two months?”

            “Magic.”

            In a place with long blue skies, yawning white sands, Sounder pushes open a door, wipes the dust off his boots walks to the counter, rests his arms, waits for the bartender to notice him. Finally, she turns to him.

            “Hey, you think you need some help around here? Someone to keep the assholes in line?” Her eyes sparkle to see his face.

The End