Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Stupid Bird or Messenger?


For three days, there's been a young robin oustide my upstairs window. It keeps flying into the window, falling to the ground, flying back to the branch next to the window, where it shakes it's shoulders, and then flies back into the window.
It does this about every two miniutes for an hour or two, then takes a break and starts over.
If I had a pole saw 15 feet long, I'd cut the limb it launches from off. I've stuck things on the glass to scare it away, I've blasted it with the garden hose, yelled at it, but still it keeps thwacking at my window over and over. Thwak! Thump, shake and repeat.
Maybe it's a message from the universe, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out. I'm not sure I want to get the message if it is one.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Monkeys and crawfish part two



Her voice always surprised him. It should have been as deep and powerful as
her swing with the bat but instead it round and fruity, a sweet chuckle.

"So.....watcha' doing, lover?" she asked in that sweet voice. She had an
unreadable expression on her face, and that big old Winchester '97 short
barrel in her hand. Donnie managed a mumbled something about coming' home
from work but before he could get it all out, she interrupted him.

"You been drinkin' some, Mr?" That little playful lilt at the end of the
question tied his tongue in a figure eight. His only answer was a very soft
belch, mouth closed. He eyed the bag, then the shotgun, then the bag again.
His eyes left the bag and traveled up the arm holding them: his gaze rested
on her brass name tag for a moment before meeting her steady gray eyes.
"Roxanne". the tag said.

The very corner's of the deputy's eyes crinkled down a bit, while the very
corners of her mouth turned up a bit to meet them in something resembling a
smile. "I'll bet you're wondering what's in the bag, aren't you? It’s just
a little something I've been working on for a while now, kind of a
collection, I guess you'd say. Care for a closer look?" She held out the
bag a bit, and took half a step closer to the Ford.

Donnie found he wasn't nearly as curious about the contents of the bag as he
was about the contents of the shotgun. Monkey heads be dammed! They were
one and the same with coconuts or acorn squash as far as he was concerned.
Only a fool would stick around long enough to find out first hand what kind
of load that shotgun was carrying too, and although Donnie Delacroix's mamma
may have raised some mishappened crawdaddies, she had raised no little Cajun
fools.

Donnie stabbed the gas pedal just as Roxanne took that half step. The rusty
door handle snagged the mouth of the bulging bag just as it was held out.
In one moment the scene exploded into a swirl of dust: the Ford made a
break, rear bumper bouncing like a concertina, the bag caught and spun and
tore, spreading it's contents in an arching cascade. Roxanne spun too,
clutching her dislocated elbow as the bag was torn from her grasp.
To her dismay, she would need a pinch hitter for the rest of the season.

Friday, June 16, 2006

The Wolf You Feed


One evening a wise old man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old man simply replied, "The one you feed."

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Donnie and Darlene 2, Cops and Crawfish

It was not being a good week for Donnie. First, finding what looked like human bones in his compost pile threw him for a spin, and now, his head full of scary romantic breakup shit and the tail end of 40oz Mickey's malt liquor buzz, the last thing he wanted to see was that flashing set of blue lights in the rearview.
Mumbling a few prayers and a lot more curse words without even realizing it, he pulled the big rattletrap four wheel Ford over and waited for the inevitable ticket. There always was one, even when he wasn't cruising with a slight buzz and half a rear bumper.
To make matters even worse, this was one of those county assholes, all full of bloated self importance, donut grease and Rolaids, no doubt itching to take out his pad and fill up his share of the county's "revenue enhancement" quota.
It could have been much worse, at least he wasn't speeding. He knew the drill by now, and kept his hands on the wheel, and waited till the county boy shuffled up to make his life even harder. He still had nightmares about that State Trooper who not only whipped out that big service revolver and drew down on him, but also threw him over the hood of his truck, cuffed him and searched his truck the previous year.
That one was mostly humiliating, and he got off with a warning and a reading of the riot act about not leaving the vehicle. The county guys were meaner, and just had no use for him. Or his kind, anyway. He wondered why he had ever come back home.
He didn't intend to stick around after he dropped out of college and came home to work for the summer, but somehow, it happened. Being a transplant in a dink town is never easy, but being a southern transplant, with a last name like Delacroix, having a Cajun accent, and having a set of parents who were both notorious fuck ups didn't make it easier.
Sometimes he thought people were still mad about the smell his parent's failed crawfish ranch had thrown over the town, but mostly he just figured it was a case of northern polacks not having much use for outsiders. Even ones who had been there for half their life.
He realized with a start that he'd been daydreaming when he looked up and noticed it wasn't one of the usual pricks that had pulled him over, but a the cop, a big dyke who played on his wife's night game softball team.
She must have went about 220, and he'd been more than a little scared of both her ability to swing a baseball bat, and how much his darlin' seemed to be obsessed with her. It was just one of the weird vibes he'd been picking up for a while.He was more than a little surprised to see her standing there with a shotgun and a bag of what looked like big monkey skulls, though....

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis." Ralph Waldo Emerson