THE CRYSTAL TIGHTROPE

Everything goes wrong and then ultimately everything goes right for Santiago–but he keeps hearing a voice whisper in his mind, "A crystal tight rope. It’s as dangerous to walk on, as it is to fall off."

Santiago’s first two books become international best sellers. He is miraculously declared free of disease, and finds a large bank account can make him happy, for a while – rents a house in the hills above Santa Barbara, California, buys a Mercedes Benz and a three thousand dollar Armani linen suit.

In Corsica, Martina wanted back in the picture. Santiago, said to her, “You know I already paid the price of admission to you more than once…I just don’t feel like seeing the movie again...eh, today..."

Yes, he knew there was something very odd about sex with Dark Eyes. My God, he had no idea they could do that to a penus.

The other puzzlement, Dark Eyes was the half brother of Martina. Had it been an accident their paths crossed in Paris? Was it orchestrated?

Also; the brutally murdered dirty-old-Corsican-sheep-herding-grandpa…what was that story?

As for Neil, his life long friend who had been his accidental savior in Vietnam and co-partner in lust with Martina, why was he back in Corsica?

The very strange coincidence of hearing about the “odd bloke who wore no underwear under his kilt” also had been connected to Yokomi,…instead she arrived with a Frog, Santiago nicknamed “Toy Boy”.

Who does he wind up with – Neil, Martina, Dark Eyes, Yokomi or someone not even seen yet?

Where is Leila, the ex-wife , and Tara, the daughter?

At the end of the second book, Santiago no longer can discern fantasy from reality.

He returns to America with a woman he did not even know 24 hours before, the new woman in his life.

1. J. Schnook, 2. M. Scudd, 3. Ricky Rosco, 4. Tattoo Tanya, 5. Thaana, 6. Haunted Mad Dog Hank, 7. Molly the Guitar, 8. Boring Cookie Baba, 9. Snookered Sashay Sue, 10. God as Its self, 11. Lucy Fur Who Wants To Be God, 12. Doubting Bill, 13. Santiago.

The title and notes above were in the cheap diary Santiago had in his jacket at the time of the accident. He did not remember where it came from or who wrote the words in it. He did not even know who he was. He was waiting for that lady to come back. Santiago decided to read a little of it...

I mean, here were the six women who had caused more than heart-ache. And there was his friend who had saved his life in Vietnam. Later, Santiago wanted nothing more than to murder his friend. Next to him was his Angel, the Assassin's Angel.

Martina, one of the six, looked at him with that lustful hook she had used so many times and said, “You can have me again if you really want it. “ She was ready to jump back into her old stories and his new life.

“You know I already paid the price of admission to you more than once…I just don’t feel like seeing the movie today, eh, maybe tomorrow."

"You can find me in Paris when you change your mind," He thought Martina said, in the way she had lured Santiago many times before. She was like a ventriloquist, because he never saw her mouth move.

He then looked at the truth of Dark Eyes, in fact number six. Yes he had been making love to a man. He/she not only turned out to be transgendered woman , but now that they were side by side, it was obvious Martina and Dark Eyes were siblings. They looked so much like Duke de Pascal.

The other four loves were singing some kind of strange folk song. He thought they were nuts.

As for the old Sheppard murdered up in the mountains? He was the grandpa that got sliced to pieces by Dark Eyes and Martina…revenge for years of childhood abuse. In Corsica no one would open their mouth. Justice had come to an honorable end.

Being suicidal did not help Santiago on his return to America in 1968. It was manifest karma he accepted when he was told he had terminal cancer by a VA doctor. And later, thinking he contracted positive HIV from Dark Eyes, his death wish was in full swing.

But hey, who would believe our government could confuse documents as well as identity? Geez, really unbelievable, yes?

The truth was some other poor jerk was happily dying without knowing about it. After all, he had Santiago’s records that showed he was a perfect physical specimen.

The most ironical truth was revealed by his old friend Neil when he told Santiago what had actually taken place in My Lai.

“But I remember raising the M16 and squeezing off a full clip at the people…I remember,” Santiago said.

“I’m telling you, I saw what happened and so did George. If he was alive he would tell you the same thing. Sergeant Gomez next to you opened up on all those people then got blown away by the old man sniper that hit you first. Santiago you were unconscious when the rest of the company opened up on all of the villagers---you shot over their heads. I saw all of that just as the MED-EVAC came in. I was the closest one to you and that’s why I carried you. George helped me lift you into the chopper."

"What the officers ordered in My Lai was inhuman---it was the same in a hundred other villages. Did you ever hear of the Tiger Corps or what the fuck ever your government called it? War is organized insanity and you were part of it but you never killed those people. It was Sergeant Gomez---you were not the assassin. You shot over them, I saw it I swear. Oh for God’s sake Santiago. I thought you knew.”

“You believed wrong Santiago. Forget that, and forget Vietnam. Nothing will bring anybody back, including 56,000 or so of your own. Live now Santiago.”

Santiago looked at Neil wondering if truth is ever found. Someday the memory of My Lai may disappear. Vietnam was a lifetime ago. He didn’t know what to believe.

Neil's voice became soft and serious. “I don’t want to talk about Vietnam or any other war. Thirty years of photographing murder and I have had enough. Tell me about a world away from war. Tell me about a life that can be changed. Tell me about life that is beautiful.”

Santiago hesitated, feeling the ironic complexity of losing a burden that never existed, a burden that had made him crazy and not care about a life through years of desperation and madness. It was a bad joke. The consequence of over 30 years of guilt could be lost in a millisecond, if he chose to believe Neil.

What the hell, it didn’t matter now; there was so little time no matter how you look on it. Life is big, but life is short.

He looked at Neil, then at the six women he had loved, two dogs and the Angel in his life.

He didn’t know what to say. The world would always have ghost files of useless information.

Santiago heard a voice in his head "...to return to where one begun, and know it for the first time..."

Not knowing who he was or why he should write anything, he began writing a story, involving a character, he thought was a stranger. He did not know it was the third book of his life.

Santiago had a pastis. It would be his last pastis in France. He had completed the journey begun more than a quarter-centaury before. He did not remember anything about it. Even his own name. The name Santiago McBoil belonged to a stranger. He wanted a name, any name. His mind was almost a perfect blank.

Santiago was sitting in AU LONG COURS, a small corner bistro on the pedestrian precinct near the old town of Nice. It was late morning, misty rain was falling while antique vendors set up their usual stalls filled with every kind of trinket treasure the world had regurgitated since the beginning of the 20th century---a very astute shopper might discover an article from earlier centuries, but nothing as a bargain---the collectors had emptied these rare finds long before in the bountiful years of Scot Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The beautiful and the damned now were a form of Euro-flotsam that permeated every square meter of Nice's fashionable streets. The time of American Bohemians had long passed. Santiago was just another tourist.

Corsica flashed in his mind for split second earlier in the morning when he stopped to look at a painting of the sun rising above a Mediterranean coastline. Just for a moment the urge to weep like a baby swept over his soul.

Santiago tightened his lips and walked back into the din of busy browsers. The feeling left him, but the craving for a pastis emerged.

In a few more hours he would be on a plane sitting next to a woman he just met, returning to America. She knew who he was and where he was supposed to go. She didn’t know she was leaving his daughter, Tara, stranded in Corsica.

It’s me, Phil Le Gree. I get to do everything here. I get to be me. I get to be the big-eye-in-the-sky that sees everything. I get to be all the dogs, cats and weird-ass populace that pops across these pages.

I like it like that and this is my story and I’m not going to change---not for you, not for them or any big shot publishers that want to squeeze a dollar out.

The fact is, I get to be God and that is damned powerful. You want proof? I can even put you in this story if I wanted to, because there you are, sitting or walking or laying down. It doesn’t matter. Your eyes are on this spot. Right here, right now.

To tell you the truth, that is a good question. The answer is this: it’s as dangerous to walk on as it is to fall off.

So anyway, the Big-Eye-In-The-Sky was talking about old times, France, Corsica and a thousand threads that came together once.

To tell you another thing, if I ever meet the real Big-Eye-In-The-Sky, I’m going to punch it in the N.O.S.E. I don’t care. I might even knock a few T.E.E.T. H. loose.

I bet you if I met the Big-Eye-In-The-Sky, (abbreviated hence to B.E.I.T.S.) he will say this, “Hey Dude, who is writing this story?”

Why would he be any different from 99.9% of the rest of the mess walking around denying any responsibility to the pickle we are all in?

General Westmoreland didn’t want to admit responsibility, nor a few generals before or after him. Ulysses S. Grant did, then drank himself to death. I hear even Lt. Calley is beginning to tell of his remorse of taking no responsibility,

There is only one thing to do. Admit complete responsibility and take charge of your actions.

B.E.I.T.S. is hereafter renamed The Beat. One gets tired of placing all those damn periods, period.

The Beat thinks this: See all of those wiggly things down there? No, I don’t mean your toes or those strange little electrical pulsations going around in Phil Le Gree's mind.

It is something so obvious and endless in the infinite multitudes of chaos. It is all those two-armed, two-legged, one-headed mutations from a source that has no definition of time or space.

It is the human crust of bubbles, never failing to make its ring of skin-scum around the perimeters of the observable bath-tub.

Homo-erectus, the plague and plateau of chemistry gone bonkers---the work of Merlin’s Merlin.

In the course of his life, Phil Le Gree actually touched seven million, two hundred fifty one thousand other wiggly things either on purpose or by accidental bum pings.

He passed some kind of communication such as words or lustful hum pings with five hundred, twenty two thousand wiggly things.

Roughly half were male, the other half female, spending on the average three minutes of shared consciousness of being in some space.

Phil Le Gree had some kind of human relationship such as family members, lovers or enemies with two hundred fourteen wiggly things which hence will be known as wiggly bump(s).

He knew one hundred and eleven by name and sometimes thought about their personal history and occasionally considered their welfare.

Out of the entire mass of wiggly bump interaction he killed six in 2.1 seconds in 1968.

He did not know them or their names or even touched them other than through the trajectory of metal in linear space.

After all the wiggly bumps he encountered in his 64 years of existence, the six who had briefly breathed in front of him for 5 seconds, before he stopped their breathing in 2.1 seconds, affected him more than all of the combined time of all the wiggly bumps he had ever seen, knew or heard of including the six loves who had shared most of his adult passage as a fellow wiggly bump.

I take the responsibility as well as the credit for creating the completely cursed and blessed wiggly bump known as Phil le Gree.

Thaana knew Santiago was nuts the first time she saw him but she just couldn’t stop herself.

He looked so good dressed up in those black leathers and motorcycle boots, even if it was only a 50 cc MoPed he was on.

There was something so familiar about him, all she could think, was Peter Fonda on that big hog in Easy Rider.

Somewhere deep down in her, she knew she was going to take Santiago to her bed, and he was going to be the best wiggly bump in her life.

spot at the same time, and I don’t mean period. It is the arrow to the octagon, it is the whisper to the heart. Who can tell why so much comes from so little?

A spot is different than a period because a period may come again and again, period.

Above the city of Ajaccio is the valley of the Gravone. The valley runs north to south.

La Gravone, one of the biggest rivers in Corsica, flows more or less down the middle of the valley into the bay of Ajaccio.

There are many little villages scattered on the slopes of the valley such as, Boccagio, Tavara, Carbuccia and Pére on the east slope, and Vero and Sarola on the west slope.

On one particular day Thaana and Santiago both got lost in the Gravone Valley, and through the gold-almighty-power of me, the Beat, they wound up in the same village at the same time.

Thaana had rented a car and was trying to get to the village called Sari D’Orcino which was in the next valley to the west, above the Gulf of Sagan.

She was looking for an old lover remembered from her wild young wiggly bump years in New York.

Her lover had been a Corsican playwright who had his first play presented by a small company in Greenwich Village.

She returned to her Jewish brain surgeon husband and the playwright returned to Corsica.

Twenty years passed when one day Thaana bought a ticket to Ajaccio and rented the car.

Santiago had been on the island of Corsica for over two months. He had once lived on the island. There, he was tested in the fires of lust and love more than once.

It was Corsica where he lost his wife and ran off with a jezebel Corsican who broke his heart not once but twice.

Twenty years had passed since the Corsican hussy had first burnt his bridges and scalded his soul.

Santiago had returned to find her one more time. He planned to murder her and then shoot himself.

She lived in the small mountain village of Pére which the Corsicans pronounced “Parr”.

Somehow is an overused word, for the meeting of Santiago and Thaana was not somehow, it was providence, but even so, somehow they both arrived in the village of Carbuccia at the same spot, which began a new period in their lives.

haana got out of her rented car, when she realized she was in the wrong valley. It didn’t really matter much because she didn’t know why she was in Corsica in the first place.

As she walked between two stone houses on the narrow road, she saw an old man dressed in the flat brimmed hat and hunting costume of old days, stop and watch another man approaching on a 50cc MoPed.

The man was dressed in motorcycle gear, black leathers, but on his head was a ridiculous bicycle helmet, the kind that looks like an elongated ostrich egg.

The black leathered ostrich-egg-head man slowed and came to a halt in front of the old man.

At this spot in time, the three wiggly bumps stood within a small circle of only ten feet. The old man was the center. Thaana was fascinated, knowing something unique was going to happen.

The black leathered Santiago slowly released the chin strap of his ostrich-egg helmet, pulled it off his head and said to the old man, “Bon jour.” He did not seem to notice Thaana.

Santiago was not good with languages. After years of living in a French speaking country the tongue still escaped him.

The old man scratched his chin in bewilderment, shook his pointed finger in to the northern sky, then said in broken English, “Paris? It is far away, across the sea…a boat…a plane is better. Too long on this little machine…”

Santiago now looked puzzled. “Merci,” he said while starting the MoPed and turned back in the direction he had come.

The old man went to the local tavern in Carbuccia and told the other old men that the tourists coming to the island were crazier than ever. Imagine trying to get to Paris on a MoPed?

Thaana went back to the rented car and caught up with Santiago a kilometer down the road.

Pére lies on the upper road going to or from Carbuccia. Thaana had gone through it on her way. Her understanding of French was as bad as Santiago’s, but she knew what he was asking.

What the old man said went over her head, but not the other old men he told the story. The tale of the mad American tourist on a MoPed would circulate around Corsica for years until it was manifested into The MoPed Rally, Paris to Pére in 2011. That is the power of the Beat.

She honked the horn and cut in front of him. He slammed on the brakes hitting a patch of gravel that sent him somersaulting ostrich-egg-head first into a large granite boulder knocking him out cold as mackerel.

The loaded 38 pistol tucked inside his leather jacket skidded on down the mountain and was found in 2011 by Henri Trousseau, one of the Paris to Pére MoPed Rally racers who had stopped to have a pee in the brush. Henri shot himself in the head after learning he had come in last. The destiny of that pistol was at work.

At the precise moment Santiago was knocked out as cold as a Mackerel, Martina the woman who had broke his heart twice, was seducing the 79 year old mayor of the small village of Pére.

The mayor was senile, rich and madly in love with Martina, promising to murder his legal wife with arsenic so they might be married.

A year later, Martina would succumb to her own madness and complete belief in a Mayan legend by shooting herself December 20, 2012 with the pistol found next to Henri Trousseau’s body. She believed the End Time was the next day, December 21^st. She was wrong, but the pistol at last completed Santiago’s dark desire.

The Mayans were wrong too, but not by much. The End Time came in the first week of 2013.

As everyone knows the number 13 has a bad reputation. Yet in the whole world only 13 people survived which gave a whole new story to the bad-assed number.

But I am getting ahead of my story. The Beat knows when to spill the proverbial beans.

ello, my name is Thaana. Would you believe it? I ran off just like some kind of lunatic to France---well not really France being Corsica is like a state---you know, like New Jersey is a state even though it’s a pit---but there you are. I mean, there I was. You know what I’m saying? Go figure.

I can’t even remember how I got there I was in such a state leaving that jerk husband of mine in Manhattan. 30 years I live with that schnook and he has the nerve to tell me he is in love with our maid. The nerve!

I say goodbye Harvey, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out‘a here.

He was gone only ten minutes when I go to the bank and transferred 300 grand to my personal account. Hey, that’s all he had left.

I find out from his secretary Mabel-what’s-her-face, he had three other floozies he was spending his brain surgeon payola on. The guy should’a transplanted his own brain. Go figure.

I mean, last I knew, we had over three million stashed away for our retirement in Florida and there we are down to peanuts. Hear what I’m saying?

So I take the 300 K, put the apartment up for sale, sell the Lexus to Charley, Mabel-what’s-her-face’s boyfriend and the next thing I know I’m on a plane to an island in the Mediterranean thinking I might see a guy I nailed when I was a hot young thing. Go figure.

And then for no reason at all I chase a stranger I meet when he falls off his motor scooter.

haana didn’t mean to run Santiago off the road. She turned in front of him just as he was turning to take the high road to Pére where he hoped to find his old heart break, shoot five holes in her and with the last slug put it through the roof of his mouth. One rarely fails at termination from that placement of lead, unlike Santiago’s old army buddy Pete, from Mylai.

Pete managed to miss with a 12 gauge shotgun and blew off the right half of his face as well as performing a superb lobotomy. The good thing about it was Pete never again remembered Vietnam or what he did in My Lai.

Thaana was horrified when she saw the man in black leathers tumble off the MoPed and fly into the bush far below the road. “Oh my God,” she said with the hush of New York understatement.

She would have been more correct to have said, “Look what the Beat has done.”

Only five minutes later when she brought Santiago back to consciousness would she be marginally close to personal clarity.

Santiago McBoil was wearing a thin bicycle helmet when he landed on his head in the maqui of Corsica.

As it was Santiago got a severe concussion resulting in general amnesia that would last for over six months. He did not know his name, or the name of the woman he had been intent on murdering. He did not even remember her. He no idea of where he was although it seemed vaguely familiar.

He was born again, with everything seen for the first time except for a strange string of words that kept echoing inside his head. T.S. Eliot wrote the words many years before even though Santiago did not know who T.S. Eliot was or what the words meant.

Santiago’s mind turned white as the words dribbled away so faint he could not hear them at all. They were like drips of water on a flat rock at the edge of recognition.

ey, it’s me again Santiago. Don’t listen to the other guy, The Beat. He should be called The Beast because he’s a God-damned thug the way he screws with people.

He treats humanity like a little kid blowing through a soap ring, watching the bubbles glitter for a second before he sticks his finger in them or laugh as they crash and pop. Yeah. He’s a beast and all he wants are death bubbles and killing things.

Family and friends and the government wanted me to kill. One at a time, they took me to their killing rituals.

My dad Jose, gave me a rifle made in 1906. He bought it from another Mexican who stole it from a pawn shop. It was a 33 Winchester. Very few people even know about them, but the slug is like a freight train when he goes through something.

I was 11 years old the only time I went deer hunting with my old man and buddy Pete. Pete was a year or two older than me and he’d been hunting before. When we got older he got good at killing.

But this time was October 1955—the mountains were full of maniacs and the aspen trees were golden. We set off before sunrise and started walking up a valley.

My old man yelled, "Santiago, you stay up on the south side of the hill. I'll walk down through the middle, and Pete can walk up on the north side— so if something comes your way, you just point that thing at it and pull the trigger."

The explosion of the rifle and the way it slammed into my shoulder with that instant acrid smell of gun powder—all of that thrilled me. I didn’t think about what the gun was supposed to do—what it would be like when I killed.

I was seven or eight years old the first time I killed with the Johnson boys who moved in next door. Jackie, Ray and Lee. They loved killing things. They would invite me to come along to watch them kill. I didn't know what they were going to do. I didn’t know killing.

Ray the oldest,13, took one of the pigeons out of the coupe his father had built. He laid the sacrificial bird out on a board. Jackie and Lee held the bird, pulling its wings out to the side. Ray took a hammer and nailed the bird's wings down. I was fascinated by the pigeon's black eyes and his beak as it opened and closed. A puff of sound was all it made. “Look at this,” Ray said. He took a knife out of his pocket. It was a switchblade that he was very proud of slinging open.

Jackie, Lee and me watched Ray as he put the point of the blade on the breast of the bird and laughed. He looked up at us, and there was something strange in his eyes. He raised the knife up two inches and put it back down poking the blade into the bird's breast just a little. I gasped and Ray laughed again. He raised the knife again this time six inches and looked at it greedily.

I looked at Jackie and Lee. They were smiling, the same smile as Ray. They seemed to feel some kind of excitement that I wanted to feel, but I felt nothing. I just stood there watching, wondering if Ray was going to do it.

Without warning his hand shot up 12 inches then slammed knife down. I expected the bird to scream something like, “Don't kill me,” but the black eyes of the bird just got really big and its beak went wide-open. Silence came out. Its eyes fell like skin curtains—the lids slowly dropped over the glassy black as if the bird was going to sleep. It was almost peaceful, almost a dream. I was fascinated. So that's what death is, like going to sleep.

I couldn't stop thinking about the bird going to sleep, how peaceful, how quiet, how beautiful it was. I wanted to kill something. I wanted to see what it was like to send something quietly to sleep, so instantly. I thought about my lizard. He was a pet I kept in a box. I caught flies and worms and even gave him spaghetti once in a while. I wanted to see if I could send him to sleep. I went into the kitchen and took a knife from the cupboard and came back into my room and caught the lizard. I held him down on my table, but the knife was bigger than the body width. If I stabbed the lizard it would slice him in half. That didn't seem like the thing to do. I put the lizard back into the box and went looking for something a little bit smaller.

On my mother’s is sewing machine there was a big pin cushion with a long needle pin that had a fake pearl on the end of it. It was perfect. It was like a fencing sword in comparison to the size of the lizard.

“Right lizard, this is it,” I said, “you're going to go to sleep buddy.”

I took the pin and placed it the same way Ray had done on the pigeon. I pushed down just a little bit. The lizard nearly jumped out of my hand, and I had to hold a lot harder. It was difficult to raise the pin up and down the way Ray had done the knife, so I decided just to put the point of the pin on the lizard’s chest and push down very slowly to see if I could see him go to sleep. I pushed and the lizard thrashed in my fingers. He didn't want to go to sleep at all.

I pushed a little bit harder but the pin was so dull it wasn't going through the lizard’s skin. The lizard was making funny little kissing sounds and its tongue was licking around its mouth. I didn't know whether to stop or push harder. Suddenly the pin went down through the skin and blood spurt out onto my hand. The lizard twisted violently for a few seconds then went completely limp. It was not the same as the pigeon. There was nothing peaceful about what happened in my fingers. I began to feel very bad.

I heard my old man scream in the trees at the bottom mountainside below me. His voice echoed across the valley.

I didn't know what he meant. I thought maybe it was Pete coming up so I stood there not doing anything. I heard limbs and branches cracking. I looked down through the aspen trees and saw something earth colored moving through the white bark.

I didn't think. I raised the rifle and pulled the trigger without aiming. I heard the explosion of the rifle, I smelled the cordite and I could feel a muscle spasm in my shoulder. I was amazed when the deer fell on its front legs only 10 feet from me. There was a bright red gash, like bloody lips the size of a quarter on its shoulders. I stood just looking at the deer as it kept trying to get up on its legs while making a grotesque wheezing sound. It kept falling down on its front legs while its rear legs spread out like it was doing the splints.

“Good going Santiago. Ya’got the son of a bitch,” Pete yelled as he came running up through the aspen trees. My old man was a little further down the hill yelling, “Did he get him, did he get him?”

I was bewildered---kind of shocked. It was too easy to knock down a huge deer by squeezing your finger on a little piece of metal. The wheezing sound continued while my old man ran up to the deer.

“Good Fuck’n shot Santiago! You blew his ass out of the woods!” Pete said.

He had that smile of the Johnson brothers. So did my old man. I didn’t like the look.

I became aware of the rifle in my hands. It weighed a hundred pounds. I saw my old man lips moving but the sound of rasping breath was all I could hear. I slowly walked up to the deer. Pink frothed death bubbles were coming out its nose and mouth. I walked to the other side of the deer and was hit in the eyes like a hand slapping my face.

The bullet hole, the size of a quarter on one side had turned into the size of a dinner plate on the other, smashing bones through the lungs of the deer. The Vesuvius exit of the bullet left a blown-out swamp of bloody dripping meat. The breathing of the deer was gurgled drowning. It was not going to sleep— it was dying a miserable death. I felt bad.

Thaana had never killed anything bigger than a mosquito either on purpose or by accident in her life. The site of any creature suffering made her deathly ill, and if she saw blood she became faint.

When Santiago tumbled off the road, she ran down to where his twisted body lay crumpled on the ground. Blood was trickling down his forehead from the small tap the pointed boulder made just under his skin. For a dizzying split second the sky swirled in a spiral above her and it was all she could do to force herself to look away from the blood.

She focused on Santiago’s crotch and noticed the zipper had fallen open where below she could see ragged underwear looking like filigreed lace from the wholes.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe this,” she said then began patting his face trying to get a response. “Hey buddy, buddy, I’m sorry. Hey wake up Mr.”

Santiago lay on the ground imitating 150 pounds of thawed out freezer hamburger. Even his black leathers began to feel like slippery wrapping paper under Thaana’s hands.

Thaana’s light taps on his face began to become ferocious slaps that sent tiny skin thud echoes across the valley. “Come on Mr., don’t you dare die on me. You can’t do this…hey are you even breathing?”

She was so terrified her own hyperventilation obscured any sound or movement that came from the limp body under her. It occurred to her the leathery figure would soon become a corpse without CPR, so she knelt over Santiago’s face, squeezed his nose like a mechanic’s vise and began to blow hot puffs down Santiago’s throat.

Instantly Santiago coughed and his body jerked convulsively as he sat up with one eye squeezed shut and the other full of tears and dust. He had no idea what kind of animal was attacking him, except it had very curly long black hair and smelled pleasantly of lavender.

“Mr., Mr., God I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run you off the road,” Thaana screeched.

“Who are you?” Santiago said as he slowly opened his shut eye and the face of some kind of woman materialized in front of him.

“Beats me,” Thaana said in the predestined checkmate game that was about to unfold. “But who are you Mr.?”

“I am…” Santiago began before the great void of nothing rolled over him, and all he could do was to repeat her refrain, “…uh, beats me too.”

For some unfathomable reason, Thaana and Santiago locked eyes and both began to laugh like village idiots. This was their beginning…

There are many reasons men and women get together, of which in the thousand of years human kind has wondered around the earth over a ten trillion combinations have been experimented, counting body positions, vocal renditions, philosophical puzzle plans and just plain rape and pillage variations.

Santiago and Thaana did not create any new technique or curiosity spark. He liked the deep brown color of her eyes and sugary bouquet that wafted off her hair. She liked his shiny black leathers and sharp angled nose hanging over a long bushy beard. But there was one thing they intuitively responded to—they liked the taste of each other. I don’t mean style, I mean the juices they shared when Thaana blew the kiss of life slurping down Santiago’s mouth and he unconsciously gargled back into hers. Love at first sip.

Another odd phenomena occurred. Being his brain had been bonked on the granite rock, Santiago’s mind was somewhat similar to a baby duck coming out of the shell. His first compulsion in seeing Thaana was to follow her where ever she waddled.

She on the other hand, had never given birth to a child, although her entire female spirit was designed to nurture something, although thus far she had only care-taken homeless cats and dogs. If Santiago wanted to follow her home that was all right by her. He was just another innocent creature she could protect from the calamities of the world.

This where it all started; the taste of a mouth and following the leader. Also this is where it all ended; the life they knew before.

Because of a fork in the road and a little gravel, Santiago and Thaana were welded in destiny to become two of the last 13 people on earth who would survive The End Time.

It is true that both Santiago and Thaana were eccentric if not down right crazy before they met each other. But on one hand Santiago was cured of his nightmarish insanity by the God-Almighty-Whack-On-The-Bean, that gave him a six month vacation from the memories of betrayal, murder, mayhem and rage.

Santiago became like Einstein’s equation, in which the fundamental force of gravitation is described as a curved space-time caused by matter and energy…uh, that is the equation determines the metric tensor of space-time for a given arrangement of stress-energy in space-time…oh screw it, in other words, something in Santiago’s brain was not disappeared, it was just transformed. Santiago began believing the voices and dreams that came in the next six months, were the direct messages of me, The Beat. Screw Einstein. Santiago’s brains were scrambled and he needed my help.

Thaana just wanted to believe in something, in fact almost anything would do, if it was real. I mean really real, not just in the flesh real. She wanted a dream to believe. Santiago would in reverse activity, show Thaana the way by in fact following her.

When Santiago stopped laughing, the first thing he noticed about lying in the dirt looking at a woman with very beautiful warm dark eyes, was there was a sweet fruity and booze taste in his mouth. He liked it.

The second thing he noticed was the woman was fiddling with his fly zipper trying to pull it up, except his ragged underwear was caught in it. What was odd about this was he knew what a zipper was and what it was supposed to do. He also knew what was under the torn shorts, but he had no idea why he was sitting on the ground with a woman he had never seen before.

At first it was peculiar but not frightening. In fact it seemed completely natural, and quite possibly he had always been there with her. She smiled at him and kept asking if he was all right.

That is when the whole thing became a little scary if not just weird. He started to answer her again, but the problem was he did not have a clue who he was, or for that matter, where he was. He was on the ground, sitting in the bushes with an odd woman fussing over him. The sky was blue, the air was warm and he could see down to the foot of a valley where there appeared to be a shoreline and some kind of big lake or ocean shining to the horizon.

“That’s okay honey, you just sit here for a moment and then I’ll take you to a doctor…oh my God, I hope I haven’t hurt you,” Thaana said.

“No, I’m…uh, I’m…okay, kind of...” Santiago wasn’t sure what was wrong with him but something was different. He saw the leather chaps and coat. He saw the split bicycle helmet and the bent up MoPed laying a few feet away. The road sign poked up over the woman’s head and he could read the name Pére. It all seemed familiar.

That is when he heard the voice. It was me The Beat. I said, “Shut up you moron and follow this woman where ever she goes.”

Thaana managed to get Santiago up on his feet and supported him as she walked him up to the rented car.

She drove to the village. A black-haired attractive mature woman was standing in the door of what looked like the village community center. Thaana asked her if there was a doctor near.

Thaana did not ask in French, nor did she think it peculiar when the woman answered in English, that the closest doctor was in Ajaccio, twenty kilometers away. The woman never took her eyes off Santiago, while he sat in the car looking like a blank black-board.

Thaana looking in the rearview mirror saw the woman come out into the street and watch as her and the stranger sped off in the direction of Ajaccio. Santiago smiled and felt like something creepy and painful had just evaporated. He never felt better, although, he had nothing in his mind to compare another day.

In Ajaccio at the emergency room in the hospital, Santiago was examined by an indifferent intern who found nothing wrong with him other than a large goose egg on his head. The intern mumbled in French to watch out for prolonged head-aches or any other abnormal condition which might occur. He gave Santiago a small packet of aspirin.

It was at the hospital when Santiago took off his leather jacket, an envelope fell on the floor. Thaana picked it up and discovered it contained a return Delta airline ticket to Nice, going on to London then Atlanta and ended in Albuquerque, dated for 7:00 PM on this day. There was also ten thousand Euros, his passport and a tagged key to a locker.

It was 3:00 PM. Thaana gave him the envelope and its contents. She wasn’t sure if the man on the passport photograph was him. The man was clean shaven and appeared years younger. The man in front of her had the beard of Methuselah and was apparently 20 lbs lighter and a lot older.

Santiago looked at the passport and the money. He did not remember a thing about either but he knew the key was his and instantly saw a bundle of books and bound manuscripts in a wall locker.

“Gee, I don’t know…I mean, the key is mine and something is mine in a locker, but I don’t know who that guy is…”

Santiago reached in his pocket and pulled out a folded brown leather wallet. He handed it to Thaana who held it like a bomb about to blow.

Thaana flipped it open, finding a social security card, a New Mexico drivers license, an AAA card and a Bank of America debit card. The license and the debit card had photos on them. Both were clearly the man in front of her.

“Honest…I don’t know. I just fucking don’t know,” he said as though he was walking on quicksand, and would be swallowed at any moment. His body tensed and his eyes closed to small slits.

“Ah come on honey, its all right…everything is going to be okay,” Thaana said seeing he was upset. “It was just that bang on the knob you got baby…probably just a simple case of temporary amnesia.”

“Yeah sure you’re somebody. You’re Santiago McBoil unless that is an alias on the cards.” She put the driver’s license and debit card in front of Santiago.

“Baby it’s either you or your twin bearded brother. The question is, what do you know? What about the ticket and the dough and the key?”

“Fuck knows. I have no idea except for one thing,” he said digging his fingers into the strands of his beard. ‘The key, its mine and I put some papers in a locker…they’re mine.”

“Why hey, they gotta be at the airport, cause look that’s the airport here isn’t it,” Thaana said holding Ajaccio’s Campo del Oro airport tag attached to the key.

“Baby, one way to find out. We go to the airport and get what’s in the locker, then you will probably just flash and remember everything, right”

Santiago looked at her. Deep down there was something in him that did not want to know what was in the locker, or remember who and what he was. All he really wanted was how he felt when he first saw Thaana and they were laughing on the hillside.

“Anyway baby, it looks like you’re leaving the island in just a few hours…the ticket you know, it’s got your name on it too.”

It was only a few minutes in Ajaccio’s afternoon traffic to get to the airport. When they found the locker, Thaana opened it dreading a chopped up body would fall out on the floor.

Inside the locker was nothing except a yellow copy of a document for freight shipped to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was shipped express two days before, weighed twenty kilos and was in a box 25 X 40 X 30 centimeters.

They checked luggage to be sure it was shipped out. It was gone. They asked the clerk if he could track it.

He looked at them pitifully and made the hand gesture of rigid fingers wiggling on a rubbery wrist, which in

France

means something between Murphy’s law and the fickle finger of flying fate. “Putain de merde, it coood bee eenywherruh… perhaps it ees steel in Nice…normally they wait until the plane load theen sheep eet,” the clerk said.

“Look, I have an idea. Why don’t I come with you to Nice, and maybe then we can find out who you are and what you are supposed to be or whatever…I mean, I am sick of Corsica anyway and was thinking a big city would be more fun…hey I even have my bags in the car, and this is where I rented the car…hey baby, it’s almost like I’m supposed to go with you, you hear what I’m saying…”

There is a theatrical game, called WHO’S TO MOVE NEXT. At this point in time Thaana and Santiago began their version of the game. There was no script, and no consequence of what ever choice one made but to continue the game until its natural conclusion.

One either ran out of guessing, or guessed at a junction of crossed paths which one was supposed to follow. Thaana decided for Santiago, being for him, one choice made just as much sense as any choice.

His memory did not come back in Nice, so Thaana chose to travel with him to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was her fault he fell on his head.

Santiago watched the world around him like a kid in the zoo for the first time. Everything was so familiar yet so undefined. He had completely lost what his connection was to any of the people or places he saw, even though he sensed he was part of something. The fact was he had left his grown daughter Tara, in Corsica to fend for herself.

Tara had no idea of the accident nor realized he was no longer on the island. She assumed he had run away with the young Japanese slut he had been lusting after for weeks and that infuriated her. She would show him by disappearing with a young Corsican who was madly in love with her. Let Santiago worry about her for a change.

Meanwhile 5 miles in the sky Thaana was quizzing Santiago about what he did know. At this point, not much was the answer. The only thing he knew for certain was a desire to create—but what?

Thaana rationalized that once they were in New Mexico, he would find the box he had shipped, and the information in it would break the spell of amnesia. Anyway, the longer she was near Santiago, the cuter he got. It was kind of like finding a fuzzy little lost puppy.

The flight was uneventful, other than Santiago could not stop laughing at the feature film, Snakes on Planes. Thaana did not see the funny side to it and started looking nervously under nearby seats, as well as curling up best she could in her seat.

Ten hours later, somewhere between Atlanta and Albuquerque, Santiago went into a deep sleep and his head fell onto Thaana’s shoulder. She kissed his forehead and pulled the thin plane blanket around them.

Hah, you know I am fucking with you if you notice there are five periods above instead of three which technically is nonsense.................

What I want to do is to tell a story that will make you laugh because you deserve to laugh. Why not? LIFE IS UGLY. I quit. God.

There we go, suffer, suffer. Hey this is Santiago McBoil and who is surprised that life is ugly? Life is also more shit than you can swallow. Too bad huh?

Hello, helloooooh out there. This is Thaana and I just can't figure why we just don't like each other.

Jesus, you'd think it was their blood they are spilling when you know as well as me, I am the only One who really suffers around this joint.

These wiggly bumps and their whining just pisses me off. Just yesterday I was talking with my old nemesis and alter-ego Lucifer about the quality of this human-pity-putty and he agreed with me. It just ain't the same as say back in the time of the Greeks and Romans. I mean those wiggly bumps really knew the pure quality of refined suffering. Hitler is the only jerk since Caligula that almost raised the ante...

Scenario: It is late spring of 2013. The worst winter in the entire recorded history of winters. Five times more snow pack than ever known before has accumulated in all regions of the northern world, while unbelievable drought and floods have racked the southern hemisphere.

On April 1, snow has been falling for 24 hours, 30 miles directly east of Los Alamos, New Mexico in the Sangre de Christos mountains.

In the Locorado basin, 40 miles due south southeast of Los Alamos, more than 6 feet of new snow is dumped onto the 12 feet of snow that has been on the ground since Thanksgiving 2012.

At precisely 12:12 A.M. a unusually warm Chinook wind begins to blow.

At exactly 3:00 A.M. Los Alamos is attacked by an Al-Qaeda nuclear suicide squad.

The small nuclear war head they have smuggled into the center of Los Alamos detonates and sets up a chain reaction of several fusion bombs that have been assembled in the Los Alamos labs.

All of it blows. Tornado winds carry the energy and heat directly into the Sangre de Christos snow and glacier covered mountains. Everything melts in 1.7 minutes.

A giant wall of water roars down the Pecker Valley into the Locorado basin.

300 feet of water roars at 70 MPH down the Locorado River towards the 8 huge concrete motherthumping pylons the Mamaship sits on with 14 Babyships loaded with 280 squabbling terrified people, 24 dogs, 17 cats and a secret population of 300 pack-rats, and 4,000 mice.

***

Hi there, Thaana here. The funny thing is Santiago thinks he met me someplace before and for a while I thought, yeah, life is small, and like maybe he was that hippy friend of my ex I fucked one night.

But when we picked up that package in L.A., he had mailed when he was in Corsica and I discovered it was the proofs the publisher had sent back to him for final corrections, like that is when I read about Big Fat Thaana, and you know like the nerve of him he thought I was that big fat slob. I never saw the guy before Corsica, you know what I'm say'n?

So then I read on about Santiago's Thaana. Now I'm not even sure if there was one or two other crazy women with my name. The publisher thought Santiago should ditch the chapter called Happy Valley something or the other...

***

MASSACRE AT HAPPY VALLEY

This is my story or at least my version even if other people who survived are going to tell it another way.

My name is Thaana. I’m so embarrassed how I got into this condition.

I haven’t always been baldheaded and fat even if I always have been much taller than most people including men. But I don’t know where to begin to tell you how I got stranded outside of my trailer standing with no clothes on. It just all happened so fast.

If it hadn’t been for that mean old man Elmer, it wouldn’t have gotten so bad.

Of course there was Worthless Jimmy Retro, but everyone around here knew he was absolutely no good. The way he was carrying on with that bitch Harriet, it’s no wonder it turned out the way it did.

Well, to be truthful it was my big mouth that couldn’t keep shut that is to blame, but probably what was going to happen was written in the stars and my mouth just made it happen a little sooner. Still, I do wonder what happened to that weird artist guy and the Mexican gal that dog they took away.

Well, this all is so confusing isn’t it? I guess I should just tell you how it all started. The problem is, in a place like this, who knows how things began to unravel. It was a tragedy from the beginning.

One thing for sure, it is a complete mess now and I expect the police will be arriving soon. Boy, are they going to be surprised to find the Deputy Sheriff buried with that slut Harriet and Worthless Jimmy Retro. They will have to take my word for what happened.

I seem to be the only one still here with my eyes wide open. Me and the Mexican’s mobile home are the only trailers still left standing. Of course the Mexicans just disappeared because they knew the cops would be here pronto, and them with no papers and all them kids, no wonder they’re gone.

One thing for sure, Harriet’s husband Wilbur sure flattened most the whole damn trailer park.

I moved into the place about a year ago. At first I was depressed as hell about moving into a trailer park. I was in my trailer number 10 for about a week before I noticed the manufacturer’s model name. You know what? They called it the “Pontiac Chief.” At first I laughed at the ridiculousness of such a name, but then oddly enough somehow it made me feel better. The name made the trailer park seem kind of glamorous even though it is the worst place I ever lived. I knew I had hit the bottom one morning when I looked out the window and saw for the first time what it looked like -- what it really was – a white trash trailer ghetto.

There were only ten trailers. All of them were built in the early fifties. That was before they called them mobile homes. That lying pig, Elmer Retro lived in number 1. He owned the place and he called it the Happy Valley Mobile Village. That name was crap. Every word was a lie. Happy? It was the saddest place I’ve ever been. Secondly the trailer park was as far away from a valley as you can imagine. It was out in the middle of parched badlands. The only thing mobile about that place was the way all the trailers were melting into the ground. The only movement of this place was due to gravity and rot that was pulling it to the earth. To call the place a village was the biggest lie. It’s more like an encampment of hatred. Anyway, ten molting trailers with only a handful of people who never talked to each other was hardly a village. The location of the place was dismal as anywhere I ever been.

It sat next to the intersection of Mud and Water Street where the traffic roared 24 hours a day. To add to the volume there was the Interstate 10 which was only another hundred feet to the west. On the south side, right across the street was the truck stop. Generally about 20 to 40 big rigs were parked there and at least a dozen were moving all the time. But that doesn’t matter much being those damn truckers kept their trucks running 24 hours a day. There was the noise from those clicking diesel engines but worse were those angry little generator motors that cooled the cargo down.

Of course all of that seemed comparably quiet to when the train rolled through a dozen times a day. The train track was between me and the truck stop. The trains blew their whistles for miles away to warn the truckers at the crossings. By the time they passed the trailer court they shook the pictures off the wall. Once I was in the bathtub and the train caused so much vibration the water had waves like the Pacific. It was scary. But the trains were kind of enjoyable because they just sliced through time like a big noisy cleaning machine.

The noise and that really bothered me was the slamming and banging that came from the beer bottling factory just on the north side of the trailer court. For some reason the delivery trucks loaded up between midnight and 5:00 in the morning. The forklifts made a kind of irritating chunky noise but it’s the darn sliding and crashing sound of the retractable doors on the back of the truck trailers that drove me nuts. The sound was something like you imagine a toboggan would make if it came sliding down an icy shoot and crashed into a metal wall. It took me nearly two months to get used to the noise before I could sleep.

I wouldn’t have lived here at all except for two things. I didn’t make enough money to live anywhere else and I work as a waitress over at the Travel Inn Restaurant at the truck stop, or that is, I used to work there because I expect things will change now. The truckers were nice enough but they don’t tip worth a damn.

Still the convenience was something. I could just walk across the street and be at work. I don’t really like walking since I gained all of this weight, but I didn’t really have any choice. My little red Toyota truck finally died at 307, 000 miles. You know I would drive the 100 ft. over to the truck stop if the thing was running. Still I guess the walking did me some good. The bad part about the job was the boss could send one of her boys over and nab me for an extra shift any time one of the other waitresses didn’t show up.

I haven’t always been a waitress. Like I said, I haven’t always been fat and baldheaded. In fact back a few years ago I still retained some beauty and charm. That was before the treatment started and I lost all my hair. I was good looking, I had a career and I was going places. As far as I could see, my freelance work as a photographer was something that would never change.

My work had actually fulfilled a childhood curiosity. You see from the very early age I was kind of a paparazzo. Of course when I was a child I didn’t have a camera, but I had a photographic memory, or at least I imagined every time I saw something really interesting my brain would go click, and I stored the image in there somewhere. It’s because of that ability that started me at a very early age being what some people call a “peeping Tom,” or in my case a “peeping Thaana.”

I guess I was that sure enough. I don’t even know when it started. I might have been five when I used to go to my parents’ bedroom door when I heard all the noise and banging of their bed hitting the wall. I would stand in at the door and look through the keyhole and just see the top of daddy’s butt as he pumped away on mama. I had no idea what they were up to, but it made me laugh and I couldn’t stop from watching. Later on I was so curious I even cracked the door open to get a better look. That is, until the old man caught me one time and beat the living hell out of me. I better explain something. He wasn't really my daddy. He was just an old man that took to my mama and he stayed around so long I started calling him daddy.

But I’m not telling you how Happy Valley Mobile Village was a trailer court of desolation, or how I fell to the earth as a lowly waitress. I was more than that in the good years. I was not only a photographer, but an intellectual.

If Steinbeck was alive and young he would have found Happy Valley Mobile Village and continued the theme of Tortilla Flats.

Everybody at Happy Valley was down and out but sort exotic characters -- kind of like a weird cross between The Rolling Stones and skid-row winos. They were like mental patients, drug addicts, and bandits, illegal aliens and old men hiding in trailers with rubber women. So what the hell is this all supposed to mean?

It is probably easier just to explain trailer by trailer and describe the contents that fill each of those dismal cavities. I can’t think how I can do this and not mess with your mind, but what the hell. If you want to know about a bunch of sick and hateful people just hang with me for a while longer.

I’m exaggerating just a little bit for the effect of drama, but some people make me wonder how humans get through life. I guess it is because there are some people that make you believe life is worthwhile.

For instance, there was that weird artist, Santiago, and that gal of the illegal Mexican family. I think her name was Gypsy Queen, but that doesn’t sound Mexican to me. Anyway, they were the only two people in this hellhole that had some element of human decency, but it was the dog -- I’m talking about the dog owned by that damned evil Elmer Retro – it was that dog that brought them together. Well, it was the dog and that crazy old man in number seven, who let the dog loose and then got beat by Elmer.

People like Elmer shouldn’t be allowed to own animals. It used to break my heart to see that poor dog on that short chain out there in the rain and the snow and the sun and whatever could punish him from the world. Elmer, and his ugly wife, just didn’t care. To the Retro’s, that dog was just a beast that was born to suffer.

All that is over now of course, and who knows where Santiago, and Gypsy Queen and the dog and that old man from number seven have gone. Good for them is all I can say.

I might as well start at the beginning.

You see, it was Elvira, that was Elmer Retro’s wife, who met that fat slob husband somewhere back in the fifties I am told. Elmer and Elvira, what a combination -- with names like that they were bound to meet each other and they were so mean and spiteful I guess it was natural they found each other. People are always saying the longer someone is married the more they look like each other. Elmer and Elvira both look nasty from the beginning I bet. They just deserved each other and with names like that it’s no wonder they wound up looking like a couple of matched cracked old marbled bowling balls.

All ten trailers was laid out in a long skinny kind of “U” shape. Five on one side and five just kind of opposite. Elvira and Elmer, they owned of Happy Valley Mobile Village. They live in the front trailer number 1 right next to the gate -- that is, they used to live there with that worthless son of theirs, Worthless Jimmy Retro, but I don’t think any of them is alive right now. They kept that poor dog chained right at the front gate so it was impossible not to see the dog every time I came into the trailer park.

Next to their trailer was number 2, the trailer of the truck-driver Wilbur. I never did know him very well, even though he used to take most of his meals at the Travel Inn when he came back off the road. He was gone most of the time and when he did come back it was only for a day or so. It was a funny arrangement, but his wife who lived in number 3, the trailer next in line, which was right next to the deputy sheriff’s trailer, number 4.

From my position at number ten, which was right across from number 1, I could pretty much keep tabs on and the coming and going those who visited her. When Wilbur the truck driver came home, I used to watch the ritual between that weird pair. He would stand at the door and knock for a few minutes before she would answer. Then I would hear him begging and pleading to let him in. The poor man would almost be in tears before she would open the door, and that was always after he had taken out his pay envelope from his shirt pocket and showed her as she peeked through the window. It was pitiful. She would crack the door open and he would pass it through.

Sometimes she would just slam the door and tell him to come back when his pay was a little bigger. I would hear him say that he had bills to pay and that was all he had. Usually he would keep begging until she would open up the door. But sometimes she would just go back to her bedroom and turn music on real loud and ignore the poor man. After an hour or so I would see him slump his shoulders and he would go back to his own trailer.

I have no idea what gets into the head of some men that they could love such a nasty human being, but he sure did have something for that wife of his. I know one thing though she was absolutely no good.

It wouldn’t be an hour after the truck driver had driven away, that I would see that Worthless Jimmy Retro shambling down from his parents’ trailer and just step into Harriet’s trailer like he was the rightful husband, and sometimes the deputy sheriff would just walk in. It didn’t even matter, if Worthless Jimmy Retro was there. He would go in and damn if I wouldn’t hear sounds like monkeys in a zoo for the next hour or so. They would start playing music and get drunk and make more noise than the whole damn truck park, beer warehouse and railroad put together.

Worthless Jimmy Retro would keep visiting Harriet until the truck driver’s paycheck ran out then he’d go back up and sponge off his parents again. Worthless Jimmy Retro was one despicable little bastard. I saw him kick that dog more than once. Some people just aren’t worth the time of day. As far as the deputy, I sure think he had a few kinks in the his head, cause he only would drop in Harriet’s whorehouse if Worthless Jimmy Retro was there.

On the other side of the deputy was number 5, were the illegal aliens, the Mexican immigrant family. They had six kids and all of them were boys except for Gypsy Queen. She was the oldest so she had to watch after the whole pack. The family seemed to be nice enough, and I think it was all her father could do to keep them alive with the money he made at his construction job. I expect he was a common laborer by the amount of dirt I would see on his clothes every day. I think Gypsy Queen must have had to wash all of their clothes by hand, because her hands always looked so red and she was everyday hanging the laundry on the clothesline in the front yard.

I used to watch her out my bedroom window and I saw the first time that Santiago came over and talked to her. Santiago is the weird artist who lives with his drug dealing daddy in number 6, across the way from the Mexicans. I think I might have fucked him once in Portland a few years ago when I was dealing drugs. Who can remember such stuff?

Number 7 had already melted into the ground and I guess nobody lived there but rats and crack-heads.

Next in line was number 8 and it must have had some problem, cause people would move in, be there a day or two then move out. I bet you the Retro's never gave them their rent back.

Then there was the crazy old man who lived in number nine. He had all of the shades pulled down, so I could never see inside the trailer but there sure strange noises would come out of the place late at night, like rubber squeaking and hippopotamuses humping. He had a little work shed in front of his yard and every once in awhile I would see him grinding on some kind of machine in there that looked a like a cross between a motorcycle and a sailing boat. The thing was painted all orange green and purple. He came to the Travel Inn to have his breakfast and once I asked him what it was he was building. He said it was a portable sculpture he was going race in California.

Well after he said that I figured sure enough he must be crazy as they come. He told me the biggest problem he was trying to figure out with the machine was how he could get the music to play as it rolled down the street. I figured it was better just to agree with him and say that’s nice. I didn’t ask him about the machine after that, but it was hard not to watch him when he was out there working on that thing in the yard. I have to admit I got pretty curious about it, and actually it started looking kind of interesting although I hated the colors. I would see Santiago helping the old man work on that machine once in awhile.

Santiago lives with his old daddy who is the local dope peddler. The daddy looks like some kind of ancient hippie from the sixties, complete with the ponytail and missing front teeth. There must be five or six different cars that pull up to his trailer at night time. Usually they’re only there for a few minutes. Everyone has to make a living, so I have nothing against Santiago’s daddy except I could see that he was doing nothing good for his son. Santiago used to come over to the Travel Inn a lot so I got to know him better than anybody else at the trailer camp. I can tell you that he was a very talented and intelligent guy. He deserved a whole lot better than have a drug dealing daddy. I never said anything to him if he had ever been in Portland, as that was maybe just my imagination.

Santiago told me all about how he had fallen in love with Gypsy Queen, and had a plan to take her away. He said he was going to steal the dog that the Retro’s chained up. I didn’t believe him.

The deputy sheriff worked the night shift, so his deputy sheriff car was parked out front of the trailer all day long. Usually about 6:00 he would drive away and then about 7:00 the clients to the dope dealer would start arriving. That used to strike me as the funniest thing, as I wondered if they actually knew that a cop was just across the row from them. More than likely the deputy sheriff was in on the drug deals too. There ain’t anything that would surprise me about that.

It is amazing what can go on in one little incestuous white trash trailer park. Oh my god, this story is more than I can bear and I don’t even know how one can explain the circumstance of so many hateful people coming together in the same space and time. But it is better for me not to think about it at all and just tell you what I know and what I have seen. In fact, everything becomes totally confusing to me because there are several ways I see the details. It’s like a million particles of dust in the air swirling and mingling but no way can you find anything that is connected.

Whatever Elma and Elvira wanted in the beginning no one can tell for sure. What is obvious is what they created in the end. The Happy Valley Mobile Village was the place where everyone had something to hate.

You could tell just by looking at it. That was because Elmer and Elvira hated each other. Their son, Worthless Jimmy Retro hated them. The dog they kept on a chain hated its masters. The Mexicans hated anyone who wasn’t a Mexican. Harriet hated her truck driving husband. Her husband hated anyone who paid attention to his unfaithful wife. The dope peddler hated the Law or anyone who tried to interfere with his illegal trade. Santiago hated not being a successful artist. The deputy Sheriff hated anyone who worked in the daytime. And I hate just about everything. So I guess it was best that we all should live in such an encampment of hatred. In a way, we all deserved each other and brought the events that happened just as surely as if we had put a coin and the machine and pushed a button.

Everything just happened like a small pebble that starts rolling down a mountain because a mouse bumped it, and the next thing you know it has turned into a darn full scale avalanche and half the mountain just comes rolling over you. I was there and I heard the first whispers of disaster and saw the thing get started. It was that Worthless Jimmy Retro that brought the mountain down on us all.

It started at lunch time when Worthless Jimmy Retro came over to the Travel Inn to have a greasy hamburger for his breakfast. He must have just got out of bed with that tramp Harriet, because when I happened to walk past him he said to a truck driver he knew, “Yup, makes you mighty hungry pumping a long distance truck drivers wife all night, cause they are on a diet, if you know what I mean…”

Well the truck driver he was talking to thought that was funny. I don’t think he was married, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have thought it so humorous. So this driver turns and tells the little joke to the driver next him and the guy laughed because that was what he was supposed to do, or maybe the first driver improved the joke and it was funny. Anyway, whatever from there on it was like that old game they used to call Chinese whispers, because I kept hearing variations of the little piece all afternoon long until about four, which was the end of my shift, when one of the regular drivers, Bubba, who calls me Cutie, came over, took my elbow and whispers, “Hey Cutie, you know why a truck drivers wife never gets skinny?” He didn’t wait for my utter bewilderment. “Cause they always get pumped up when their husbands are away—har, har, har…”

Well I just smiled at him and gave him my most tip-getting tone of voice and said, “Oh, Bubba, that is just so darn funny, honey.”

Wouldn’t you know it but it was also just then when Wilbur, Harriet’s long distance truck driving husband walks in, and damn, I don’t know what got in me, but I turned back to Bubba and said, “Honey, that is just a scream. Why don’t you tell that sad looking driver over there that story? I bet it will just cheer him up a bunch.” He said he thought he would, and I went into the office to punch out and put all my waitress stuff away. I hadn’t been in the office a minute when I heard the commotion out in the restaurant. By then I had my coat on and was preparing myself for the long distance shuttle of 100 feet to get back to my Pontiac Chief trailer home.

My God, I walked out and there was Wilbur just beating poor old Bubba all over the head. I don’t know why, but I just panicked and ran like a scared chicken. Before I knew it I was back in my trailer peeping out the windows as usual. That was about 4:30 p.m. the best I can figure when I see the deputy sheriff come out of number 4 and head for number three.

I figured Worthless Jimmy Retro must be at Harriet’s hole again otherwise the deputy wouldn’t be going there. I watched and sure enough that Worthless Jimmy Retro opens up Harriet’s door and in prances the deputy. By this time I am beginning to get a gloomy feeling because I know what I just left in the Travel Inn and some how I know it won’t be long before poor old Wilbur might just show up…the thing is I didn’t reckon on how he’d arrive.

I guess it was about 5 p.m. when first I heard all the crashing and banging across the street at the truck stop, and then it was only a few minutes until I heard a whole bunch of sirens that seemed to be coming my way. I went to bathroom and decided to take a shower, because you know when I get nervous like I was then, a shower just seems to calm me down, and damn sure I needed to calm down. I tried not to think about what was going on over there at the truck stop, but somehow I just knew it was because of my big flap. Whatever was happening over there, I had somehow started it.

Well that noise over at the truck stop just kept getting noisier and noisier. Even though I had the shower on full blast I kept hearing all this crunching and crashing sound over there. Sirens seemed to be going around and around over there in the parking lot as well. I tried to ignore it all by shampooing my wig, but finally curiosity just got the best of me and I stepped out of the shower to peep out of the little bathroom window which I had to wipe the steam off. What I could see was kind of weird. A big truck was going real fast with a whole bunch of cop cars all around it. Well, you know what I was thinking. Wilbur had done lost it and it didn’t look good. “Oh my God,” I said as I watched the big rig turn sharp and run right over a cop car. Worse than that, those evil headlights on the truck seemed to be just looking at me, and they kept getting bigger.

Well, I just stood there looking at them lights like I was hypnotized and they just kept getting bigger. It wasn’t until I realized they were getting bigger and that damn truck was busting through the hedges on the opposite side of the road from the Happy Valley Trailer Village and heading exactly towards my bathroom room window, that I just dropped my wig and ran for my life out the side door of the trailer.

Yep, I was there in the back corner of the park, huddling behind a big tree, nude as all nature when I saw that 18-wheeler come roaring by the Pontiac Chief, missing it by a couple feet. But he sure didn’t miss Harriet’s Trailer. He nailed it dead on, and boy, shit flew everywhere. Wilbur just kept making a big turn and then that big old truck came straight on down the line and wiped out 5, 4 and what was left of 3, then he got his own number 2, and rammed right across Elmer and Elvira’s hacienda. He had made another turn and some how missed the Mexicans trailer by an inch or two and was plowing his way down the line towards the Pontiac Chief when the clapping noise of guns seemed to just happen everywhere. The truck came to a dead stop with its front bumper just kind of stuck into the side of the Pontiac Chief like a French kiss. And there I was standing behind this tree, with no clothes and me without my wig.

I don’t know how I’m going to explain, how this all happened, when the cops get here.

***

Nobody here. I'm nobody because I can't remember who I'm supposed to be. I don't remember writing any of that stuff the lady and I found in the package. As far as the publisher who was writing; I didn't remember a thing about agents in London and New York.

One thing I can tell you. I was more than confused when the agent wrote, as soon as this guy Santiago sent the corrected proofs back, there would be a money transfer of $100,000 put into the bank account they had for him in Santa Barbara, California. I was convinced it was a mistake. The lady seems to think I am Santiago, so I agreed with her to make her feel good.

                                                                        ***
Hey, it's me God again. I think Santiago was getting off the track with the money I dumped on him. The first thing he did when he got the dough was go buy himself ridiculously expensive Armani suits. Jesus Christ he lived for over three years on the amount he spent on dull rags he would get paint on in just a few weeks, and then put in the free box in Santa Barbara's free box for the homeless.

I liked the Mercedes Benz coupe he bought, but then he drove it off Skyline Drive on a drunken binge the first week he had it.

The house he rented up on the hills overlooking downtown Santa Barbara was pretty cool too, but then that gal Thaana who I had directed to pick him up in Corsica didn't keep to the dream she was supposed to manifest.

She got off track too and filled up the house with 47 cats, 13 dogs, 3 pigmy goats, 1 pot bellied pig and a pen of bunny rabbits that ate all of their neighbors fancy Fiji transplant orchids, in fact about $75,000 worth. That's why the rental broker had to enforce their eviction.

So that is why I started the new series of dreams with Santiago after the second book became an international best seller. I could see the fortune and fame my old poker partner Lucifer had kicked in was certainly going to tip the scales in his favor towards Santiago's confused soul. Of course I had agreed with Lucy (that's what I call Lucifer just to bump his wagon) that he could use any cheap trick he wanted.

I had to do it naturally because I never agreed that I wouldn't cheat too.

To begin with, for seven nights, I whispered into Santiago's dreams. I did with it with my favorite Jesus trick of parable bullshit. I kept repeating, "When the world comes to an end, the harbinger will not be flames or flood, but by a GOD ALMIGHTY SQUEAKING."

The second thing I mantra chanted for 13 weeks was, "The hole in the pole will be the Earth's last goal."

                                                                             ***

Yeah, roger God. I gotta tell you, I think that bump on Santiago's head did more than make him lose his memory. If you ask me he's going a little bananas.

"Thaana," he says, "I have this theory." Yeah, I says, I already know cause he's been telling me now for two or three months. He tells me all about it until I think I'm going to turn blue, you hear what I'm saying?

He called it his Black-Shadow-Door theory. Said he thought God was giving him messages the world needed to know before it was too late.

What's too late I say.

He says, "Before the earth gets sucked up its own asshole."

What do you mean I say and that's when he says again for the thousandth time, "Well, there are four parts to my theory about the Black-Shadow-Door."

Yeah, what are they I say just to make him happy, cause you know it's my fault he's a little bit nuts.

"To begin with," he says, "One; the Black-Shadow-Door ain't a door, it's a Black Hole, but it ain't round."

It isn't round, I correct him, wondering how he got to be such a famous writer with such lousy grammar.

Two; It's triangular shaped entrance into the new world."

"New world, huh?" I reply like I've never heard this stuff before.

"Three; the Black Hole is plugged up at the moment with a great big mother-humping chunk of ice."

Plugged up? I thought a black hole is supposed to suck-up everything that gets near it, I says.

"Well, yes they sure do," Santiago says, "but that chunk of ice happens to be the North Pole which has a frozen magnetic reverse spiral right across the top of the Black Hole."

"Oh yeah, that'll plug the crap out'a things," I say thinking how does he come up with this stuff, but then that's just me being so logical and all. Go figure.

"Four; when the earth's temperature raises dynamically because of a global nuclear war, the entire North Pole melts and the Black Hole becomes the last unplugged concert of humanity as we know it."

Fascinating I say. So how do we get out of this predicament I ask and that's when Santiago goes into his rap about the Ark he is going to build.

"I see a Great Flood and we have prepared for it, by building a Giant Mothership that is made up of 8 Babyships where 13 humans will gather. They bring with them 3 ducks. 2 hens, 1 rooster, 1 gander, 2 peahens, 1 peacock, 3 cats, 2 dogs and without permission come 47 mice, 1 packrat, 1 rattlesnake, 2 bullsnakes and a multitude of spiders. Only the all, of the above, will survive the Great Flood and find land which was the top of a mountain, once the center of an island somewhere in the Mediterranean."

I says to him , could that be Corsica by any chance?

"Corsica, Corsica, The name seems so familiar...I don't know..."

Never mind Baby, I says , so what happens next?

"As my last act as an artist in this life I will write stories for children, even though there are no more children in this world, and there are no publishers to make a book. It will be the last thing I do before this earth is sucked into the Black Hole and a New World will begin. And that my dear Thaana is why we must build a Mighty Ark."

Yeah, sure, right, I always say to Santiago. The man is a mental case. What can I say?

But you know what? People drive me crazier than Santiago ever could. For Gods sake! He got that hundred thousand smackers in the bank and then the royalty checks started while he was on the best seller list. Wouldn't you know it the scumbugs flowed like Niagara Falls.

The first one was that bitch Martina. She even flew in from France to get Santiago back in her bed. That surprised me of course because I read about her in his second book, but I didn't put two and two together until I saw her and then remembered her being in that little village called Pére up in the mountains of Corsica.

The biggest surprising part was Santiago remembered her face, but he didn't remember a thing about being in love with her or wanting to blow her brains out. You should have seen that bitch turn around. God, People drive me crazy!

                                                                         ***

God here.

Thaana used my name again in her charming way, so I have to explain the whirlwind I put her and Santiago in once they found the package in LAX.

She had no idea the Pandora's Box she had taken him to, even though it was him, who had put everything in it, and mailed it to himself on the instructions of his agents in London and New York.

That bump on his head had leveled off a lot of detailed history for several months.

The Big Thing was the finished manuscript.

He promised the Big House Publishers it was coming. But it was the two Agents, James T. Schnook and Michael B. Scudd who were really bananas.

They had no idea where he and the manuscripts were, but more important, the hefty commission they were looking towards, had disappeared.

It was 100,000 words of self indulgent blubbering the Big House Publisher knew the public was dying to read...you know, humans love the pathetic underdog who climbs to the top of the wretched human dog-pile.

***

Nobody here again and I say goddammit and fuck it, and there too, is Phuket, Thailand, and I don't give a big goddam because you know why?

"What the fuck, what do I mean,? I lost god-dam fucking faith in any thing anyone can believe in. Are you stupid or do you know what I mean?"

I was driving down a street, somehow I had seen a thousand million times before, all so known.

Why care? If it is all a joke, I mean, if the observable fucking universe does not give a wink about your fucking life, why should you be bothered? That's what I said to myself.

I mean, actually, if this fucking gizmo universe keeps inventing itself for whatever reason, and you are seeing it, isn't that good enough.?

Nobody again. I just woke up this morning and a weird voice said to me, "You know who you are! You're the ZenCowboy!"

I got so puzzled I went up to the village where I knew straight thinking was not a problem. And as days go, I have no idea but I thought I was going to be doing one thing but had to do the other, so I talked with Pete and Liz and took notes listening to them make a declaration for a new nation.

Then later we came up with this novel idea:

Our motto in English;

AT OUR BEST
WE EQUAL EARTH WORMS

Hence a pseudo Latin motto we comed together in creating. We had no idea if this was close to real Latin but we made a picture of our flag anyway, with a spiral earth worm, our mascot.

So no sooner do I hear the voice that I am the ZenCowboy than I Write down a list of stories I had to tell. They were all same in most ways but each one had a special point. It was an idea I had to follow, so I began to write.