A Waking Dream #2

DREAMSCAPE

EPISODE #2 

            I watched as Wiley sauntered away into the gloom. He was there one moment, next he was gone, just disappeared. I kept staring, willing him to come back. I didn’t want to be alone here anymore. I turned inward wondering, “Is this a dream? What did I just see? I thought I was awake.” I slapped myself in the face. I heard the crack of my palm on my cheek but I felt nothing. A shivering fear rushed from the soles of my feet to the top of my head, raising the small hairs on my skin to attention. It seemed as if the hissing of the rain increased in volume.

            “I have to get out of here!” I told myself for there was no one else with me. Or so I thought.

            I turned away from the view of the rain and knelt to collect my ‘stuff’ and repack it in my backpack. The flickering of the fire caught my eye and I turned to look at it. The flames had changed. From the cheery, dancing yellow-orange-reds that threw a welcome heat, my fire had transformed into an icy blue, heatless flame that repelled me and solidified my desire to leave. I stood and turned to go. And immediately stopped. A man was standing at the mouth of the cave. A terrifying visage of a man.

            He was rather short, but wide in body. His hair was long and black, tied with leather strings so that it didn’t hang in his face. It glistened and glittered in the icy blue light from the fire. The man was dressed in leather leggings, breechcloth and moccasins. They were stained from use, but geometric designs, that had been painted or dyed on the leather, showed on them. His shoulders were covered with a cape or cloak made from rabbits skins that had been sewn together lengthwise so that the darker and lighter fur ran in stripes vertically. The bare skin of his arms and chest was a dark bronze. Yellow, orange, and black stripes were painted on his cheeks running from his nose to his ears. His teeth were large and white as Chiclets and clenched tight in a grimace of anger.

            The man was armed with an eight foot long spear, tipped with a leaf shaped blade made from black obsidian. He thrust it at my chest. I was frozen, helpless, waiting for the point to pierce my skin, my ribcage, my rapidly beating heart. The blade hung there, an infinitely small space between it and me. The black volcanic glass flashed points of light as if it had a light source inside that deadly form. The hands holding the spear shaft twisted it so that a burst of light flashed from every facet of the exquisite weapon. My hands slowly rose like I was being held up by a western movie bandit.

            Sound burst from the snarling lips, orders of some kind, I guessed. If it was language, it was nothing that I knew of. It sounded like gibberish to me. The moment that thought laid its track on my consciousness, a voice covered that track, saying, “Oh ye foolish white slug! What gives thee the right? The right to think that thine is the only way, thou would-be master of the world.”  The disdain dripped from the lips of whoever uttered those words. I looked around for another person who might have spoken. I couldn’t see anyone else.

            When I moved my head, the man shouted another line of words that I didn’t understand. I stopped moving. “I’m harmless, you don’t want to hurt me. Put the spear down. I promise…” the words had barely left my mouth when the savage man’s eyes widened, then squeezed into a frown. He thrust the spear, that fraction of space that I have mentioned, and some distance after that. How far, I can’t say, for I fainted. Dead away, the moment that the sharp point touched my skin.

            I awoke later, how much later, well, who knows. When I came to, I was in a tangled heap near the fire, the savage man squatting across the heatless fire from me. He stared at me with no apparent expression. I groaned, as I untangled my stiff limbs. When all was in order, I rolled to a sitting position. I looked back at the man.  His black eyes glittered with the same light that had flashed from the spearpoint. I bent forward, trying to stand. A huge pain raced through my chest, starting from the point that the wicked spear had pierced my skin. I groaned. This brought another burst of the unknown language. I stopped moving. The savage man gestured at me, pointing first to me, then to his own chest and then back to me. I looked down. My shirt was laid open and my bare chest was exposed. There was an angry red scar, from the base of my throat to the bottom of my breast bone. My eyes flew upward to accuse the savage of some dark deed, my lips opened to shout the allegation, “What the…”. The savage held up his hand in the universal sign for ‘STOP’. I did. The voice in my head spoke again, “Hold, foolish white man, you are not damaged. Ye may think that ye are, but ye be wrong.”

            “I’m seriously scarred, and permanently, it looks like to me. How can you say that you haven’t damaged me? Wait…how long was I unconscious?” I spoke back to the voice. I noticed that the savage seemed to be listening to the same words that I was, because he nodded in agreement at the right places in the discussion and shook his head side to side when I replied. “How can that be?” I asked myself.

            The voice replied, “Here all things be possible.”

            I watched the savage nod in agreement again. He genuflected, or so I guessed, not exactly like a Catholic, but close, real close. As this thought ran through my brain, the voice answered, “That is his way of saying the same thing, and it is also a sign of respect. Those two concepts are the same here.”

            The savage gave me an, ‘I told you so!’ look. The voice continued, “In the future, Coimirceoir will speak to thee in the sign language of his people and ye will  understand it in thine own native tongue. He is the guardian of this place. Coimirceoir means guardian in the language of his fathers. He is now guardian of thee as well.”  

            At this the savage grimaced in my direction. I grimaced back and rubbed my chest.

Getting Out of College, #2

TWO

I wondered, were you where my

mind’s eye saw you?

Did you do the things we

spoke of when you got there?

         Mike tried to pay attention to where they were going. He scanned the buildings and cross streets looking for someplace that looked like a college office building.  Most of them looked like brick cubes with sidewalks around them.  The lawns looked like most of the desert plants they driven by to get here.  Short and brown. “Do you know where you are going?” He decided that Shane was just as lost as he was.

         “I lived here all last winter! Pull your head out…” he hissed between his teeth.

         “OK…OK, just askin’, Jeez, it just looked like you was as lost as I am.” Mike pretended to be hurt. “When you finish are you gonna buy supper? Where we staying tonight?” he was worried about supper.

         “Just hang tight, I’ll be right back.” Shane parked the car and went into a brick cube that looked like all of the other brick cubes on the block.  Mike rolled the window down so that the breeze might cool him down. A sudden gust of wind caught his attention and he suddenly realized that the sky was darkening with clouds.  “It is gonna rain.” he thought. “Just what we need.” Men and women walked past him on the sidewalk, most were carrying books or bags.  He knew it was the end of summer school, and a few weeks until Fall semester started, so he wondered to himself why there were so many students hanging here.  He wasn’t complaining, after all the scenery (pretty girls) was almost as striking as hanging out at BYU. He decided that he would count blondes and brunettes and calculate the ratio of blondes to brunettes.  He was up to 5 blondes and 10 brunettes when the driver’s door whipped open and Shane dropped into the seat.  “Back already?” Mike asked him.

         Shane smiled, “I don’t let the grass grow under my feet. We’re heading out of here. What do ya say to Der Wiener? For supper.”

         “Sounds like a plan, did you know that I took a survey of blondes while you were in getting out of college?” Mike kept watching the girls go by.

         “Yeah, so”?

         “There are 2 brunettes to every blonde that walked by me. Now, the challenge is to figure out how many of the blonde girls were natural blondes.  What do you think?” Mike was digging for a pencil in his backpack. He found what he was looking for and opened the glove box for a piece of paper.  Finding a crumpled envelope, he smoothed it out and wrote the numbers that he had collected on it. “So, if I counted 10 girls and 5 of them were blonde, that gives us a ratio of 2 to 1.  If we ask ourselves, how many were naturally blonde, given that at least 1 of them is truthful about their hair color; that gives us a 20% chance that any blonde women we see are natural blondes. That isn’t very encouraging, but how can we determine that 80% of blonde women aren’t lying through their teeth about their hair color. After all, if they lie about that, what won’t they lie about? “

         “And the point of this is…” Shane maneuvered the car into the parking lot at the hotdog stand.

         “The point is….wait, I’m starving, let’s eat. “

         Ten dollars and ten hotdogs later, Mike reached into his pocket to hunt for another dollar or so. He was looking at the menu board above the take out window and was listing the choices they had already tried. “Let’s see, Kraut Dog-check, Chili Cheese Dog-check, Polish Dog-yep had that one, I don’t think we had the Hawaiian yet…you game?” Shane put his fist against his diaphragm and pushed a couple of times bringing forth a loud healthy belch. “Geez, I don’t know…Oh hell, why not?” he agreed.

         Mike dug the money out of his pocket and unfolded the wrinkled cash.  He placed their order and stood back to wait.  Shane said, “Are you ready to hit the road, we can flop on my sister’s floor if we get to Cedar City tonight.”  Mike nodded in agreement and the hotdog girl called for him to pick up the order. Shane got into the car and started it up and as Mike closed the door, he put it into gear and headed out of town.  

         The guys are driving to Cedar City.  It is dark and a hard rain begins to fall, lightning flashes almost continuously. The road is nearly invisible in the dark with the rain falling on it. Shane leans forward closer to the windshield,he asks if Mike could help them stay on the road, “I wish I could see this road, it’s getting worse, the headlights shining on the water are blinding me, can you see the lines on that side?”

         Mike strains to see the right side of the road through the cascading rain on the window, he replies, “No, it’s even worser over here, the wiper isn’t workin’ so good.  Maybe we should pull over ‘til it lets up.”

         “It ain’t lettin’ up.  There isn’t anywhere to pull over, the shoulder is too narrow.  We’ll just have to keep goin’, there’s some taillights ahead of us, I’ll just follow them. You never said if you had any dates in Arizona.” Shane tried to ease the tension of driving in the storm. Mike was glad to talk about anything but the driving rain, “Well, there was this girl who checked groceries at the store, she was a looker.”

         “So, what was her name?”

         “Ethel.”

         Shane laughed and repeated an old ditty that they had joked about when they worked at the service station, “You washed the windshield, and I pumped Ethyl!  Hahahaha.  Really, Ethel?

         Mike grinned to himself on his side of the car, “Yea, she was stacked. Look out, a deer!” Shane jerked the wheel and narrowly missed it, “Whoosh, that was close!” he said, his voice shaking with adrenaline.

         “You better watch the road closer and not worry about my love life. I didn’t ever take her out.”

         Shane turned to glance at him, “What? How come?”

         Mike pointed forward out of the windshield, “Watch the road. Well, I almost did.  I wanted too.”

         “Whatdya mean, almost.” He turned back.

         “I talked to her.”

         “Wow, what a ladies man.  So them other stories you told about Wanda, and Cyndi, they were BS then?” Shane accused him of embellishment.

         Mike didn’t let that stand. “No! No way!  I can prove that to you, we’ll stop at BYU on the way back and call Wanda, you’ll see.  Hey, that sign said a rest stop is coming up.  Pull in there.”

         “Watch for the turnoff.  Why didn’t you take Ethel out?  She have a boyfriend?”  Shane wanted to know the details. Mike’s adventure in Arizona had been a topic they discussed all of the time. He thought that Mike was full of bullshit most of the time, but his stories were pretty good. And he did tell a lot of them.

         “I don’t know, I never asked.  I also liked my landlady’s daughter, but she was pregnant.  Good lookin’ though.  Her old man would’ve took a dim view of me talkin’ to her.” Mike replied, distracted by the heavy rain.

         Shane must have been too, because he was confused by the answer, “Ethel? Are we talking about Ethel? Was she married?”

         “No, the landlady’s daughter.  I could’ve beat him up, he was just a skinny lookin’ nerdy guy.  I just was too nervous, I guess.” Mike cleared up the confusion.

         “I’ll bet, you layin’ there naked under the cooler and all, nervous as hell.  Hold on, here we go!” Shane wrestled the car off of the road into the rest stop.            

Michael D. LeFevre         (Adapted from a Short Play of the same title)        Copyright 5 June 2001

A Waking Dream

DREAMSCAPE

EPISODE #1

            I walked out of the trees into the clearing. It was raining. When I say that it was raining, I mean it was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock (sorry about the crude analogy). The view of the wide valley was obscured by angry, dark storm clouds and sheets of rain.  The only sound was the hissing of the falling rain.  I searched for signs of life.  Any movement at all.  A bird call, a frolicking rabbit, a shy deer. “Probably all hid up, out of the rain, if they have any sense at all.” I told myself.  Continuing on, I sloshed through the mud, slipping, sliding.  Sticky clay, sticking to my soles like taffy sticking to my teeth. The rain didn’t let up, it poured from the sky like a waterfall, streams of water, not individual drops.

            Finally, I came to a shallow cave, deep enough to be dry inside, just enough.  I unslung my rifle, for I was hunting, dropped my pack, and began to gather dry sticks from a pack rat’s nest in the rear corner, to build a fire.  Maybe I could dry out some and heat my lunch in the bargain.  I gathered the smallest twigs for the base, they were the first to catch the flame of a match. Then the medium size placed on top of this flammable pile.  Digging through my pack, I found the waterproof vial with the strike-anywhere matches. I removed one and scratched it quickly across a small rock laying near the pile of tinder.

            The match flared and I laid it in the pile of small twigs, hoping for the flame to catch and build into a heat intense enough to enflame the rest of the pile.  While the small flicker and crackle of the fire steadily grew, I gathered more twigs. The fire burned nicely with the wood stolen from the nest. I carefully peeled my wet outer clothes off and draped them on some longer sticks. Far enough from the fire so that if they fell they wouldn’t drop into the flames.

            I dug into my pack and pulled out a sack that had four slices of bread and some sliced Spam and onion. I found a flat stone and washed it in the rain water dripping from the front of the cave. I set it in the edge of the flames to dry and heat up enough to roughly fry the Spam. I had included some mayo and mustard in some small plastic bags. That morning I had included two cans of beer in my lunch sack. I lifted one out and popped the top, quickly lowering my mouth to catch the foamy rush. When the stone was dry I laid the sliced Spam on it and listened to the sizzle.

            I adjusted my drying clothes as my lunch heated. The rain didn’t let up, if anything , it rained harder. I puttered about arranging the bread and cut the onion and divided it evenly between the two sandwiches. I decided that the meat was warm enough, my stomach rumbled with hunger. After assembling the sandwiches and setting them on the pack, I sat cross-legged on the ground facing out into the rain, eating slowly and washing the pungent sandwiches down with the beer. The fire radiated enough heat that it was comfortable even in the cool dampness.

            Obviously, hunting anything in this storm was a waste of time, but I was out here now and I didn’t want to go home this early in the day. So I threw another stick on the fire and watched the rain fall.

            Sudden movement at the edge of my vision caused me to turn quickly in that direction. What I saw caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. A large coyote sauntered up to the cave’s entrance and stopped. It stood there looking at me with that feral predatory look that large wild canines adopt when they find something worth pursuing. Without taking my eyes off of the threat, I reached around behind me searching for the leaning rifle. I failed. I didn’t dare turn around. Just as I was about to leap up in desperation, the coyote said, “Fooled you didn’t I. You thought I was going to eat you. No way, not after you ate that stinking Spam and onion sandwich.”

            My mouth dropped open. I swear that my chin bounced on my chest. And I’ll bet my eyes were as large and round as a saucer.  The coyote grinned, you know what a dog looks like when they smile, well, a coyote’s smile is very similar.  “What you doing out here in the rain, you soft, white human being? Besides polluting your body with that nasty canned meat?” he said. I decided the coyote was a he by the tone of his voice.

            “Huntin’” I replied.

            “Oh…huntin’ what?” he asked.

            “Deer” I said.

            “In here?” the coyote’s ears swiveled, and he cocked his head as if perplexed. “I don’t see any deer in here, not even any sign that they have been in here.” He sat down and stared at me.

            “Well, I have hiked for 4 hours in this rain. I was wet and hungry, and kinda cold. So I decided to get out of the rain and have some lunch. I didn’t even see a fresh track in all that time.” I whined.

            “No doubt, deer aren’t stupid you know, a little dull and unimaginative, but not stupid.  Likely, they are huddled under a tree somewhere. Staying dry. You could’ve stayed home in your soft, warm, and dry bed” he laughed, silently.

            I looked at him, embarrassed a bit, by the obvious. Something caught my eye and I looked at him more carefully. “You’re dry! How can you wander around in this rain and not be sopping wet?” I was amazed and not a little confused. If the truth was known, I was getting scared now, this didn’t seem to be normal.

            The coyote sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. It makes this a lot more complicated.” He paused. “I’m a special coyote. You might have already guessed that. What you don’t know is you picked THIS cave to hide from the rain…big mistake. BIG.” I wanted to ask why but the coyote shook his head as if saying not to. “Don’t ask, I can only tell you that this cave is a spirit cave…a portal to the realm of the Gods. I can’t tell you what that means or what happens next. You just got to go with the flow.”

            Now I was scared. Not of the talking coyote, but at his latest revelation. I am easily spooked at ‘spiritual’ doings.

            “Gotta go, you take care now” he barked, “Remember who you are and where you came from, and keep an open mind. Maybe we’ll meet again, maybe not. But it’s been fun.” He stood and turned to go.

            “Wait! What’s your name? Do you got one?” I wanted to postpone his leaving because I knew that when he was gone, I would really be frightened.

            The coyote stopped and turned back, “Everything in creation has a name. And I don’t mean some trumped up Latin concoction, I mean an individual name. Mine’s Wiley…Wiley Coyote.” He laughed mirthlessly, then he turned back and started to walk away but he stopped at a large clump of grass and cocked his leg and gave it a couple of squirts.  He walked into the rain.  

Faction - - A little truth, a lot of story

Getting out of College is based on a real road trip. The dialog and events portrayed are just figments of my imagination. For those of you who know me, know that Shane, Don, and me were pals since grade school. There is plenty of raw material for future tales. Grist for the mill, so to speak. I hope that you enjoy Chapter one of this story.

New Old Story

Getting Out of College

ONE

I read about your death today,

it happened just in passing.

It’s been at least a couple of years

since you left us behind.

         The little baby blue Ford coupe, pulled up in front of the double-wide mobile home and honked.  Shane was driving. He always drove.  “Let’s get this show on the road; they ain’t making anymore daylight.” he fumed. His red-headed pal come busting out of the trailer carrying a backpack, a battered pillow and a bulging paper sack. He jogged over to the passenger side and opened the back door and tossed his bags in the back seat.

         “I sure am glad that you talked me into this trip, I would have just sat home all weekend alone.  Speaking of home, thank God, I’m outta Arizona.  Tell me again why we are going to St. George anyway?” Mike begins talking before he even gets in the passenger seat. Talking is something he does best.  “It was damned hot down there, whoever said that it don’t rain in the desert sure hasn’t been in that one.  100 degrees one minute, downpour the next, here comes the flashflood, then out comes the sun, I swear it was just like the sauna at the gym.  Kinda took your breath away.  Slept naked as a jaybird with the air-conditioner blowin’ right on me, thought I’d die!”

         “Geez, Mike take a breath.  I’m getting outta college and I need to get my tuition money back.  I’m not going back to school this year.”          Shane put the car in gear and they began the road trip. They made small talk for a while and as that wound down, Mike reached over and turned the radio on.  He pushed the channel changer buttons, one after the other looking for a suitable station.  They were a long distance from the radio stations so the signal was pretty weak.  Finally, as the miles rolled by the scratchy static overpowered the music and Shane twisted the knob and turned it off. The scenery was pretty bleak.  It was late summer in the western desert of Utah, and the only visible green for miles was the olive drab juniper trees that dotted the hills.  The road was bordered with tumble weeds and rabbit brush that was showing the yellow of new blooms.  The rumble of the road had allowed Mike’s mind to wander and his eyes to slide closed.  His head had just begun to droop when Shane let out a yell.

         “Damn” he twisted the steering wheel to the left and then right, there was a double thump. 

         Mike’s eyes flew open, startled he asked, “What’s that?”

         “Another one bites the dust.  Them jackrabbits have got to have suicide on the mind. I think this road is fur-lined, have you ever seen so many rabbits? Arizona was hotter than home then?” Shane answered as he looked in the rearview mirror at the dead rabbit.

         “Hell yes! It never cooled off even at night.” Mike grimaced at the thought. Shane thought about that for a minute then offered a positive comment.

         “Just gettin’ you in shape for Viet Nam.  You won’t be sleepin’ naked over there.  You’d get caught short, or shot in the ass.  Wouldn’t that make a hometown article for the folks to read ‘Local kid stuck in the Butt with Punji stick’ or ‘High school hero shot while sleeping naked, film at eleven’.”

         Mike pretended to be outraged, “Sure, rub it in smartass, Mr. Smarty pants who got only a 278 lottery number, best one in our class.  Even Don got better’n me, 35; the only luck I got is bad luck.”

         “Yea, 17 is pretty low.  Has the draft board said anything to you?” Shane was kind of solemn as he replied, he started to say something else, but stopped before any word slipped out.  Mike didn’t answer the question. He just stared out of the windshield.  The miles kept flashing by. In the distance a red and white rectangular sign caught Mike’s attention. 

         He sat up and leaned forward trying to read it. As the sign zipped by he read it aloud, “Hey...look at that, an ol’ Burma Shave sign...”Even tho’ your car is flyin’ “ ...where’s the next one, do you see it?”

         Shane tried to calm Mike down and get an answer to his earlier question, “It’s up here, hold your horses, what are you going to do if they call you up?  Going to Canada?  Stay outta the Army?        

          Mike was now focused on the highway advertising, using it to divert Shane’s probing question.  He spotted another sign in the series and leaned forward to read it as it went by, “Wait! There’s the next one...’the miles rolling beneath your wheels’ ...I don’t know, maybe, just maybe.  What would you do?”

        

“You know if they would let me fly one of them Cobras, I would join in a heartbeat.  But they won’t let me fly with my glasses.  Look here comes the next sign...’make sure you don’t leave your girl a’cryin’ “.  Shane dodged another jackrabbit that jumped out at the last second, daring fate.

         Viet Nam was on everyone’s mind, it seemed that it had been forever. Several of the upperclassmen that they had gone to school with had either joined to avoid the draft or had been drafted.  Several stories had circulated around town from those men, besides the news stories.  They had taken on legendary proportions. So far no one they knew had been killed, though a couple had been wounded.

         Mike had taken several of those stories to heart. He had a definite opinion of what he might face. “Yea, I hear you, just the thought of being a grunt in that damned jungle sends shivers up my back...them little slant-eyed Commies popping out of the ground, or the shit-smeared punji sticks, I heard that ol’ Jimmie Ray gotta leech on his dink, ohmigod,(shuddering) anything but that.  And the snakes, oh shit, I’d fight a hundred wars in the desert and not have to go to that jungle, if I could...can you picture me, the original desert rat, in Viet Nam?”

         Shuddering at that thought, Shane recalled a heroic TV show that he liked, “Yea, remember “Rat Patrol” on the tube?  The jeeps with the .50 cals were pretty cool.   Here comes the next one...’the rasp of whiskers the last thing she feels…”

         “I wonder… where were the whiskers that make her cry?  I don’t want to go to no Viet Nam!  I been shot at before, stupid Californians during the deer hunt, hear a sound, and blooey, shoot the noise before it gets away.  My cousin heard ‘em talking about it at the store, ‘didn’t get one, but had a couple of sound shots’... damned fools anyway.  The bullets sound like buzzing bees before the boom gets to you.” Mike shared that bit of information.  “I could of reached out and touched the bullet, they were that close.  I hit the ground and laid down behind a log.  I wanted to shoot back at the bastards, but I just yelled at them instead, they shagged ass outta there when they heard me holler.  I should’ve shot back, seen how they liked hot lead flying at them.”

         “At least you heard ‘em, you don’t hear the bullets that hit you.  At least, that’s what they say.” Shane added. He was thinking about the last sign, just what did they mean by that…the rasp of whiskers left her crying? Shane wasn’t sure, but he saw another sign coming, “Here the last one comes....Get ready! Together they yelled, “BURMA SHAVE!”

Michael D. LeFevre         (Adapted from a Short Play of the same title)        Copyright 5 June 2001