2024 Phoenix
He woke with the dawn, knowing he had to move. If one tweaker knew, they all knew. His phone lit up on the passenger seat while he stowed the sun shield. “Nora, her pretty, needy face framed as an I.D. picture, smiled at him with serenity-wrecking levels of trust. Without thinking, he reached out and put the girl out of her morning misery, her wondering if some senorita, some squaw, or a younger version of her had captured what she could not, “Good morning,” he answered and she piped up, “Buttered corn bred, bacon and coffee in route.”
“Thank you, Nora. Up and packing—see you soon.”
‘Oh, no, she hung up—she’s racing here,’ gnawed ravenously the empathy in his soul.’
Banjo knew women well enough to know that she now raced here in fear that he was leaving town, that one last hug would be lost—that that hug might be their last!
‘Please, Lord, see her safe here. Something in me is too weary for the torment afoot in this gaslit world,’ he prayed as he fitted the ax in its scabbard beside the back passenger seat. He looked to the hatch, how even this old beater had not been up to his purpose, that he had no stomach for a trunk after Barry’s last ride and had modified the back seats into half-bed, making of the old trunked sedan a “hatchback” of strange make.
Some paranoia had grown in him that he could not be separated by the seat back from his rucksack, from the ax within. The ax, he fancied, needed him. At times he could have sworn that the ax bumped the banjo in strange concourse. Now, he stood looking down at the cut back back seat to see the banjo case and ruck, feeling somewhat uneasy about the ax sheathed there next to his sleeping berth.
“Friend, you are where I need you.”
The squeal of quality leased SUV tires, a 4-Runner, he knew, glassy white under the rising streaks of the sun, came rolling around the intake dock. He had to be out by 7:00 AM, to give the owners no reason to fence this off. Policing the area with his eyes he was confident it was the cleanest lot, home to fewest tweakers by night, just him, the unofficial night watchman.
“Your leaving?” the voice quavered as the door shut.
He turned to see her already crying, bringing the morning’s covered dish. “What did I do?”
He smiled softly, guilty, “I meant I was squaring away the car for the day. I have no plans of leaving this season—maybe a day trip into the desert.”
Nora, pretty to be sure, placed the plate [a real one, since it gave her a reason to stay until he finished] on the hood, and smiled as she peeled back the foil and handed him a pack of easy wiped.
In that moment he felt as if he had conducted some kind of sin against old Flood for painting the old car black—ugly, but it worked. Her nicest white polo shirt and shorts, topped her white ankle socks and sneakers. She was only thirty and thirsted for a husband, a domestic savior that would not beat her, that would comfort her in this gray world, who was not drunk or on drugs, would protect her as America descended into its own yawning abyss…
He saw all this as she begged with her eyes for him to eat her gift. Countless losers would live off of her, take advantage and stay in her family house. But she wanted the one man who she knew yearned for the lonely desert places that shivered her very soul.
He kissed her on the forehead and hugged her as she melted.
“After we eat, let’s ride out to Mesa for the morning.”
She snuggled into him like he was her hero and he knew he had just made his leaving worse for her, had deepened the wound that would never close. Tears wet his shoulder as he realized how hungry he was.
Oddly, the four vultures that roosted in the stunted black willow by night, circled overhead. He did not point this out to her, enjoying the buttery cornbread and bacon quietly, her wiping his hands, the hood, standing on tip toe to dab at his mustache and beard and remove the crumbs.
She cooed, “I know you don’t want me to domesticate you. Let’s get a room, a nice one with a view up in Mesa. I have the money. I can give you a manicure, a massage, there is turkey salad already iced in the cooler, agave tea?”
He smiled, “No manicure.”
She kissed him with the eagerness of the lonely, fertile, fallow land waiting years for rain, “Just around the parking lot, then I’ll follow you, Banjo. Maybe you will finally play that banjo for me?”
This was an odd game. No way could a vehicle be left here, so they would caravan. But Nora had this superstitious dread of abandonment, which she sought to keep at bay with this knight in a jet black beater rite. Once around the lot and she felt like they had circled the world of her tiny hopes and comfort would reign in the nights to come. She rubbed her string of crystals, wedding crystals he would bet, powder blue and pink mixed on a white silk string…
He walked her to the passenger side, shut the door behind her, and did note that her OCD focus was fixated on the rather larger crumb of cornbread, still attached to an actual kernel of yellow corn, dead center of the black hood.
Behind the wheel, he reached out for her aching hand as she momentarily forgot the crumb and he reminded her, “You are off today—it’s Saturday. No ranch mansions to clean.”
She smiled and hugged herself behind the seat belt she buckled, and pursed a cute frown at his refusal to buckle.
As he turned over the still smooth running engine a Chinese dove, the invasive species she so loved, that he never admitted to dropping with marbles from his wrist rocket for breakfast under the cottonwoods down by the river, landed inexplicably on the hood and picked at that kernel of crumb crusted corn.
“Awes, look at that beaker!”
“Strange,” he agreed.
“Beautiful,” she corrected in a soft ecstasy, taking this obviously for an omen as she touched at her perfectly filled out white polo, “We both wore white for Banjo!”
The dove seemed to understand and looked into her eyes. He simply could not engage the drive with this in play. He did not halt his action for Nora’s faerie tale sensibilities, but because he recognized birds as messengers from Beyond. Such deep held beliefs, were of course, never shared with such a delicate modern leaf as Nora, who hugged his shoulder with her cheek as the invasive Asian avian looked first at Nora then at banjo with tiny black eyes, holding the kernel in her delicate beak, “Awe, Beaker!”
Nora cooed, clutching softly for his hand now—and like a streak of night across the dawning morning a raven slammed into the hood, breaking the back of the dove, whose eyes rolled in starting pain and then to death’s window pane.
Nora screamed, a scream that pierced his right ear as the raven, looking into his eyes, transfixed him with its glassy eyes, then flapped its glossy black wings and rose heavily into the bright blue morning sky, the broken dove clutches in its inky talons.
“No, no, no—no!” she cried, sobbing.
Some feathers had been scattered, one white one remaining on the hood. He got out as for a funeral, plucked the feather gingerly, walked it over to the passenger side, opened the door, retrieved her sobbing form, and placed the white feather in her hair. She was almost in shock as he kissed her between the eyes and told her. “This is important. I will follow you home where you will pray. Then I need some time. Let’s go—we shall not stay.”
‘You iron-hearted prick on your cloud mountain—I’m listening.’
