Hick - Andrea Portes [57]
P. Paint. Q. Q. Q.
Now’s the worst part. Q.
The worst. Skip.
Skip Q.
R.
R. Rope.
Razor.
He’s done now.
Razor.
Ratchet.
Done.
He rolls off me and onto his back. He lays beside me breathing hard, staring up at the moon, waning.
S.
Soap.
THREE
TWENTY–EIGHT
Did you know that God lives in Utah?
God made Utah and the Mormons came and snatched it up and called it their own. And now no one knows that God lives in Utah because no one wants to be around a bunch of Mormons.
And I’m not talking about the kind of God who’s got dimples and a white beard, like Santa Claus dressed up in a robe. I’m talking about the kind of God who makes rain and moves mountains and lives in the mist. I’m talking about the kind of God who wakes you up at daybreak and says, Looky here what I made three-hundred-sixty-five days out the year.
They got buttes here with horizontal stripes on them going red, pink, beige, amber and then red again. They got rocks shaped like robot giants, with the same stripes, red, pink, beige, amber, standing off in the distance, watching you down the road. They got a blue-sky backdrop with no clouds for miles and a cactus thrown out in front.
They got mist hanging off the top of the buttes, mysterious and eternal, telling you it doesn’t matter what happened to you last night, or the night before that or forever back and forever forward, because God exists in red rocks and he lives in Utah.
TWENTY–NINE
I wake up later in a four-poster bed, in a wooden cabin, in a place called Beaumont Kluck’s Cabin Retreat. There’s nobody in the room with me and I figure out my whereabouts by three pamphlets on the bedside table. The first is a comprehensive guide called “Beaumont Kluck’s Cabin Retreat: Don’t Tell the Government.” The second is a pamphlet called “How to Kill Your Own Chickens.” The third is a pamphlet with a flag on it called “Libertarianism: Keep Your Hands off My Freedom.”
I leaf through the chicken-killing pamphlet, wondering if people give names to their poultry before they get the ax, but then see somebody staring at me from the other side of the room. It ain’t till I clock that this person is imitating me exactly that I recognize that I am this person, staring back at me from the mirror on the wall across.
My appearance is altered, that’s for sure. My hair’s shorn off to next to nothing and dyed deep black, almost blue. My skin looks porcelain pale and there’s some bruises here and there from whatever night it was by the side of the road, all coming back now. I look like some species of alien monkey that alit in the wrong place at the wrong time and got tumbled beneath the wheels of an eighteen-wheeler before a proper greeting.
Well, I set out to make Eddie’s eyes swirl, now, didn’t I?
I start to get up to make my way to the mirror for further inspection but now there’s a new problem. Looks like I got a set of makeshift ropes going up and down the length of my legs and over my body. The whole apparatus is fixed just so my arms can flail around and wave and grab, but getting up is not an option. I go to work trying to wriggle myself out of the knots but then realize that the whole contraption is fastened with a padlock and that the key to that padlock is the one thing separating me from the rest of humanity.
I guess I made his eyes swirl good.
I’m gonna trap this day like a firefly in a jam jar, keep it shut and wait to unscrew the golden lid until all that’s left outside is laughter and can-you-believe-its and I’ll-be-darned. Otherwise, I’ll just be bumping my head into the glass, over and over, useless. I take the day and screw the lid on. Better screw it on tight.
Looking around the room, there’s not a trace of Eddie. I wonder if he’s gone for good. From my little piece of rodeo heaven, looks like he pulled a disappearing act. My heart skips a beat cause I realize there’s nothing in this room to suggest that I’ll ever be leaving it. There’s no sign of outside life, only the birds chirping and the distant sound of a barking dog.