Cyber Smoke

Readers of this ... so sad, a sinious spike of 20 amps bored out the circits of my computer. What is a writer without their tools. Reversion to ink and paper in a climate that dissolvs all carbon based materials in 2 months is a weak alternative. so I figgure to dump whatever I can salvage from past, reaching out into space and snathing the electo radiation back as it hurtels into oblivion. At least this will perserve a few shreds until the 2012 EMP. Kinda looking forward to that finality, as only a nihlist can.

So here's a few stories of the past, maybe not the pultizer type, but part of the quest, trails off the road of life. Charlie.

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DETONATOR

My name on the playa is “Detonator”. Here on a fossil lake bed at the head of the great basin, a vast city emerges for a week a year. 30 thousand domes and shanties, peopled with exhibitionist youth, blanketed in alkali dust. The masses sham worship a 50 foot wooden idol representing commercial materialism. They collectively spend approximately 11 million on entrance tickets and another 30 million on supplies, tents, gas, etc. It is the biggest private party known on earth.

Born of a few hundred angst driven post 70’s hippie/activist drug crazed megalomaniacs, the gathering has devolved into a tightly police controlled encampment of Kelty tents and Winnebago’s. The yearly temporal population grows to 45 thousand. In the illusion of freedom, the masses dress sparsely, suggestively displaying their sexual organs in retro or futuristic minimalist garb. There are no politics on the playa, no angst other than sexual, no animals, no old or very young people, few drugs, few exits. The burning man is a thinly veiled excuse to gather in a mood of mock hedonism and slutty public nudism.

There are no crimes. No sex crimes. In this Orwellian world, the slightest report of sexual misconduct has a phalanx of Gestapo police descend upon the orgasmically frustrated loser and hauled off with grinning police arrogance. So it is also with a thousand other crimes that might dispel the party illusion of the 20 something revelers. No fireworks allowed. No motorized vehicials but those designated as “art cars”, no public sex, no public masturbation, no loud raving (ravers strapped down and hauled off under the pretense of dehydration). Only excessive exibitisionsm. Women with out shirts, tight bare behinds below 3 inch skirts, men in dresses and sarongs, or nothing at all. Males strolling, patrolling, with light stick cock rings on their flaccid flopping parts. No erections, least the Playa police cuff the night stick beaten fool in the blink of his vouristic eye. The mantra here is .. “On the playa, the women make the rules”. This is a perfect matriarchial society.

But it was not so in the beginning. Then was a time of testosterone gun slinging, a time of no police and no rules, where car crashing was a sport, and drive by shooting at effigies was standard. Wilder, dangerous. All saturated in desert drugs and whiskey, where local authorities cared not what maniacs did deep in no-mans-land. Now the corporate children meet at the corporate controlled campout in false sincerity, with out angst, without statement, without clothes. To cover their banality, “names” are bestowed upon those who actually do anything other than touristically consume. Names like “Green Tea”, “Playa Player”, “Burner Bob”, “Giving Gwen”. First year “Burners” are called “virgins”. Virgins rarely get names. They do nothing other than gawk. I am a “Virgin”, but I have earned a name. A secret name. An illegal name. Detonator.

Arriving in the predawn amid a fifty mile centipede of taillights, 30 hours unslept, we are greeted with 20 foot concentration camp fences, fifty sheriffs, deputies and municipal malevolent’s. With their reflective sunglasses in our headlights, another hundreds of brown shirted “Playa Rangers” search our truck for contraband drugs, guns, smuggled revelers. In the distance, the towering effigy of “the man”. Maybe 2 miles distant, lit against the night sky in brilliant green Krypton gas tubes. “What the hell is that?’ I speak. “The Man, The Man” they eagerly reply. A red dawn rises among thousands all around setting up camps of domes and Chinese plastic, squabbling over every bolt and bungee with their camp commandant, his dominate self a recidivist “Burner”. My camp is but a simple affair of plastic and pickup, co-habituated with my cousin. Also a virgin. My tiny tribe.

Later in the afternoon, unable to sleep, unable to connect with the 20 something’s, I stagger into a neighbors camp of shade. There paces a megalomaniac. Denouncing the corporate camp of materialism, of loss of purpose, of freedoms vision gone awry. I’ll listen. Here is an amusing man. Short and sinewy, blazing eyes beset beneath a shaven head, bad teeth, prancing on his toes in frenetic energy.
“This is all bullshit. This is not what it’s all about. This is a tourist ritual. I was here for the first five Burning Man’s ten years ago. This makes me sick. I’m gonna do something! Do something!”
We climb atop a bus and survey the unfolding of the ‘city”. Black Rock City. BRC ominously logoed on the pockets of the brown shirts. There amid the hammering of constructions and tents are Reno rental Winnebago’s. SUV’s and Subaru’s mix with the tents as far as the eye can see. The city is 5 miles across, semi circular, centered on the fifty foot burning man effigy.
“Fucking Winnebago’s. What the fuck is this? I was here when this was free. When we had guns. When this MENT something. Now the BRC LLC with their 47 pages of rules for a $280 dollar ticket. This is bullshit. This is a phony corporate carnival. I’m gonna DO something. I’ll show these assholes. They’ll know how shallow they are.”
“What do you propose?” I venture. Barely acknowledging me in his verbal onslaught he continues.
“Going to do something. Going to show these assholes. Have everything ready. But I need a detonator. I need something to set it off. I’ll show those corporate bastards.”
Not wishing to know more information than this, but marveling at the ravers intensity, I suggest
“Well I have a huge bag of fireworks. Maybe there’s something in there you can forward your cause with?”
“Huh? Fireworks?” coming out of his pedantic haze, he eyes me curiously. “Lemme see” he demands in the style of the unmannered. Clambering back down the roof top buss we pause in my humble camp. From beneath my army cot I pull the bag of pyrotechnics. At first I give him a dozen bottle rockets, then a string of Black Cats. He thanks me weakly, still hopping from foot to foot in manic motion. “Need a detonator. A detonator.” Unwilling to see the proper application of high explosive go unrequited, I open a shoe box sized mortar kit. Aptly named, the Mad Bomber. On the box in Chinese graphics is a wild man not unlike he who fidgets before me. I hand him one of the stars, a composite firework.
“Maybe this will work?” I venture. “The base is a charge of black powder for ballistic thrust which ignites a chromium peroxide mix for the star effect. Very hot. You need only ..”
“I know. I know. I know all about these things. This will do. This will do nicely.” I can see inside his brain. A tangle of packages, fuse connections, tie ropes, cigarette lighters, all swirling into an engineered pyromania. I am hoping he doesn’t hurt anyone, torching a camp of drink and sexual sombulesants, but I see something greater in his mania. Anger, yes, but not malevolence to man. He has a statement to make. Far be it from my creed of actionism to deny a fanatic his day. Too pacified by the ravaging of time to participate in a “something”, I can only aid and abet from the safety of my anominity. Like the words of the devil as John Brown stood at his flaming gates “There’s no room for the likes of you in heaven or hell, John. Here, take this piece of fire and go start your own hell.” I am the fire hardware store.
“This will do. This will do just fine.” The fanatic cradles the bomb gently, then holding it before his eyes like a large gem. “This will show those bastards. Fuck the LLC. I’m gonna DO SOMETHING! Heh heh heh, this will do fine. Do fine.”
With out a thank you or goodbye, he slips oilily between the Subaru’s and tents, vanishing in the maze of the 5 mile encampment. “That was amusing” I think. “Hope there’s more people like him here. People of substance.”

That night, the lunar eclipse. 95% of the 45 thousand have arrived and set up their camps in irritated frustration. To pack and get here from many states away, no one has slept in 2 to 4 days. Exhaustion is absolute. In the 2 AM full moon, the edge of the glowing orb is nibbled away. Silhouetted against the dazzling lunar disk, a tiny solitary figure shinnies hand over hand up a guy wire to the chest of the Burning Man effigy. As the moon occludes, the brilliant white playa is shrouded in darkness, the shadowy figure lashes and ties, setting his work. When the eclipse is at it’s apex, unnoticed a tiny sparkling of a fuse. Unnoticed a figure sliding down the guy wire. Then a flash and a truncated burst of red stars in the effigy’s chest. Flaming napalm vomits down it’s body, erupting the Burning Man in fire. The Burning Man burns. A week early. Blasphemy is afoot.

The law abiding revelers at it’s feet recoil in Horror. Where is the ritual? Where is the schedule? Where are the other 43 thousand to whoop in pyrotechnic mania? But who is that hurriedly slinking away? The blasphemer! Get Him!! The mob surges the grinning and cackling maniac. Too stupefied at his own illuminating spectacle to register the flight mechanism in his legs, he is overwhelmed by the irate mob. Beating and screaming as the fire roars overhead. The culprit in his own private nirvana, oblivious to the pummeling of the weak media fed children. Soon the brown shirts move in en mass, pushing aside the indignant, saving the real burning man from the crowds increasing courage. Cuffing and chaining him in the terrorist extreme. Hauling him off to the prisons of the exterior. Fire trucks shoot their inept loads, extinguishing their idol, their charred and un-illuminated idol.

Red dawn again on the playa. The burnt man in his carbon dress looking down on the awakening horrified. They missed it. They are cheated out of their ticket price for the show. The spin goes around of an electrical fire in the Neon/Argon tubes. Later in the day, the local paper reveals the true nature of the terrorist act. The masses are confused, indifferent, obsequating to the party line of a disturbed man. An Oswald Burner. A man with a grudge for no reason. The Burner’s point is missed. The statement of corporate party is lost in the sea of the self satisfied. There is no angst among the crowd to sympathetically relate to this act. Down with corporations reads their SUV bumper stickers, but they cannot see that they are a vital cog in the wheels of the BRC LLC. The huge cash cog. The message of spontaneity and freedom is lost. The message of political action is not understandable. The fanatic has only himself to congratulate him.

By Tuesday eve, the charred remains are pulled down. Construction labors day and night in some hidden place to make a new Burning Man. By Thursday he is resurrected. The corporation has instantly restored the icon with a percentage of it’s slush fund, about a hundred thousand of it. The new burning man is properly attired in new neon, crisp lumber, fire effects. The show must go on. The masses hardly notice the saga that has passed before them. It is their entitlement to party in the largess and excess of the Black Rock City Limited Liability Corporation.

=======================

The Dead Cat Crime


Following this narrative, are letters sent to local municipal bureaucrats, in an attempt to save my ass from further destruction. The “cat incident” was given to me by the cosmos at a time of intense other complications. Murphy was God.

I borrowed 12,000 dollars to start a hovercraft charter business, consisting of a 6 passenger hover. At the modest speed of 45, the boat exploded ½ hour into it’s maiden voyage. My two passengers were sucked through the non-existent floor to the briny deep. After a few minutes of my horror, they floated to the surface with minor lacerations and funeral preparations were narrowly escaped.

I was being evicted from my shop so the building could be torn down after spending over a thousand dollars to bring the place into a habitual state. I had a hull half built and two employees of dubious character.

My employee was suddenly extradited to a small County jail in the unconsolidated sagebrush territories after a routine traffic check had found numerous warrants out for his arrest on parole violations stemming from a grand larceny charge. Must have missed that on the resume.

My current client proved to be a flaming alcoholic who wanted his boat finished 2 months early. That means that any profit had to go into additional labor who would then work proporanitly slower. First I had to pay the Country Judge $500 to spring my welder, as hunt’en was upon us and his Honor was look’en forward to that new gas grill for the “elk camp”.

My other job decided to make me Temporary Boss of the department. This consigned me to a 25% work time increase, of which 50% of the time was meetings. Much to their horror, I collapsed into a narcoleptic snore almost immediately when forced to sit listening to a monotone in a warm windowless room. Reminds me of the cabby turning the heat on full blast to pass out the late night drunk before rolling them.
A fellow employee who’s seething jelosey took a laundry list of my crimes to the director in an attempt to have me fired from what she perceived as her august position. I was called to the carpet to explain complete dis-organization of all paper work and staff (maybe true), using County computer resources to run my own business (only half true), and sodomizing the janitor (no… not true).

When I went downtown I received 3 - $20 tickets for illegal parking. This after moving the car each time to comply with the law.

At my lovely home, my daughter decided to take 19 credits at college in a manic moment and was nearly hospitalized again for the resulting accompanying suicidal/depressive stage of her Bi-Polar syndrome cycle. My son signed up for Advanced Marijuana consumption class hosted by the local toothpick chewing gang and went into a state of mood swings he must have learned from OJ Simpson. My wife of 24 years got two jobs. To celebrate her newfound independence, she piled all my clothes in the front yard and said she’s keeping the dog. Don’t come back. Don’t call. This was an unexpected reward for years of artistic encouragement and financial support.

If the sun shown, I was in shadow. If a bird sung in a tree, it defecated as I walked underneath, if I bought a scratch lottery ticket, it said I owed them $2. My skin had broken out into hives which I scratched as vigorously as any fresh mosquito bite, I was chain smoking so hard I could barley breathe, and my teeth were permanently clenched into an 880 PSI bite. Thought I had the later stages of Tetanus. The jaw muscles on the side of my face were so tight they blocked my escaidia tubes and caused me to go deaf in one ear.

Went to the Emergency room. Filled out 3 hours of paperwork and got a plastic wrist band. Ugly people with scabs sneezed virulent spray on me. Dressed in a butt-wagging robe and laid on a stretcher, I was wheeled into a blue ceramic room.
“Now Miss Underhill” the scrub surgeon said, “We’ll finally explore here, .. and find if it really is your appendix that’s causing this discomfort that you imagine.” The scalpel glinted menacing in the light beam. As the gas mask closed on my face, the nurse got suspicious of the beard and checked my wristband. Miss Underhill was clutching her side in the other wing of the hospital, getting checked for an ear infection.

The tooth pressure of my dead man’s grin had shattered a few of the back molars. My tongue thought it was on glass clean up after a Wrestle Mania tailgate party. Emergency charged me $400 and told me not to stress so much, go see a dentist. Went to the dentist. Dentist in a rush, working 4 chairs. Finally pries my jaw open, knee on chest, hands dripping with some other guys shredded gums. Calls in everybody to look and have a laugh. UPS man wants to know where he can get those Halloween vampire teeth. Doc gives me a script for Valuim, no refills, don’t come back. I eat a handful. Wander out onto the arterial, screeching cars swerving all around, billowing smoke from braking tires, flailing arms flipping me off. Isn’t this nice, all the pretty cars. I am Jesus walking through traffic. I love everybody. Later I turn purple in Safeway near the noisy chip bags. I NEED to kill them all. Behead them, gut them, must wallow in gore and death. Hate, kill, dismember. I limp my brain out to the parking lot and lock myself in the car. Just narrowly got past the steak knife display. Kinda yin/yang these little yellow pills, from comatose to ax murderer in 50 minuets. Maybe should read the dose on the bottle.

So then the following happened, which is conveyed through the letters which were associated with the “cat incident”. (written in large print for the aging myopic prosecutor)




=================================================================================

Dan Van Thiel
Attorney At Law
No. 10 Sixth Street, Suite 204
Astoria, OR 97103
November 27, 2000

Dear Mr. Van Thiel,

Thank you for your offer to discuss the “Cat Case” with me, Report # 20001781. I am writing to you instead of visiting, in the expediency of time and so that you have a record of my statement.

I feel that I have been wrongfully caught up in somebody else’s business and put under great hardship for an issue in which I was only trying to act as a good Samaritan. I was unaware of the surrounding situation. I request that you throw this ticket out of the books and release me from this legal entanglement. At worst, I would ask that the ticket be reduced to a minor misdemeanor with a small fine in the $100 range, in contrast to the exorbitant fine, which has been levied. I apologize for having this issue a reality at all, and for wasting the valuable resources of yourself, and the court system. If you can waive or reduce the violation, I would greatly appreciate it, and request that you do so before Nov. 30, 2000 – 5:30 PM. At that time I will be appearing before the Judge and entering a plea of Not Guilty, as you have previously advised. I will also enter my statement at that time, if allowed.

As I may have told you already, I also work with the government. I am an Engineer for the Roads Dept. in Thurston Co., WA. and supervise a crew of inspectors working county-wide. I am familiar with process and violations. We deal with each situation with some measure of individuality, particularly when the issues are minor and there is no threat to public or private safety or a threat to property. In Astoria here, I own a house, am putting two teenagers through the high school, my wife is employed with a respected organization, and I run a business manufacturing hovercrafts for government use. I have had this business for about 5 years here in Astoria, and spend considerable money in town both for parts and labor, frequently employing two area craftsmen. As a small business, I am constantly on the red line, (currently forced to move out to a higher rent shop), and as such would be completely devastated by the fine as it stands. I would be forced to close up shop, put my tools in storage, and fire two employees. Please prevent this one minute incident from having deep and lasting effect on myself and on the community. I am hoping to turn Astoria into a manufacturing, training, and touring center for hovercrafts. I have had considerable difficulty to date and am unable to handle one more blow.

Thank you for your consideration of the facts in this matter. I can be reached anytime between now and the arraignment date at (360) 481-1662. Please call and let me know what you think can be done, or how I should proceed.

The following is the sequence of events as they took place the morning of Nov.13, 2000 :

• When I pulled into the yard area of the Bumble Bee Shipyard, I saw Officer Brian Sloty alongside the entry way and slowed to 2 MPH attempting to make eye contact and see if he wished to discuss any thing with me. As I received no acknowledgment, I proceeded.

• I pulled into the building and observed a dead cat in the entryway.

• At this time, John Overholuse did not come out of my shop to discuss any issue with me as he was wearing hearing protection and was unaware of my return.

• At this point I acted impulsively and moved the dead animal to clean up the public entryway and hasten back to the needs of the fellow working for me. I believed that this “trash” would remain in place indefinitely, as is the case with all other trash dropped by other locals about the facility. I frequently have customers coming by who do not need to see a dead cat.

• After the “incident”, the Officer came down to my shop and inquired as to the whereabouts of the dead animal. I then took about a ½ hour assisting the Officer in attempting to retrieve the thing and even offered the use of a row boat for the retrieval, which was refused. The officer then asked for my Drivers License and took additional information. I resumed work.

• The Officer then returned in approximately a ½ hour and cited me with the $3,600 ticket. I was surprised beyond belief.

• After the Officer left the premises, The dog owner retrieved the dead cat from the end of the whey’s building. The animal was taken to the Animal control department where they would not issue a receipt for the same.

• The Dog owner then went and informed the Officer (Sloty), who also would give no written acknowledgment of the animal retrieval, nor would he retract the ticket. He was noted to be chuckling and giggling over the fact that I had been issued this ticket.

• Since then, it has been noted that the Officer wrongfully imagines that I had, and have, an “attitude” in spite of my citizens efforts to assist the Officer. He expressed this to the dog owner at the police station and to the buildings owner, Johnny Terribocia on 11/19 with the statement in reference to myself, “This guy doesn’t like me”. I have never given any indication to that effect and am confused as to the origin of the comment. I would hope that the Officers personal self image is not an influence in this issue, which is more of a life or death issue to me, rather than one for humor.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Again, I request that this matter be kept out of the court system, and dealt with as a minor misdemeanor at most, or not at all. Please contact me with your conclusions with all haste.

Thank You,
Sincerely,

Charles Beyer – West Coast Hovercraft Inc.
865 Jerome Ave.
Astoria, OR 97103
Cell Phone (360) 481-1662
================================================================

My cries for justice went unanswered. As the last of my back teeth fractured, I appeared in court and took a pew next to the bald dog owner, gold hoop in one ear. The bastard had the Animal Police murder his dog in the hopes that he would get a lighter sentence. So much for dog’s best friend. What an asshole. The judge is a huge man with a dog face. His Honorable Judge Limerick. My turn on the docket comes up, alphabetically. I talk through my teeth, incoherently. “ If you request an abatement, please make a statement”, spoke his honor.
“It’s all a hideous misunderstanding”, I whimper. “I meant no trouble, only cleaning up, not my dog, no proof that the dog did it, I offered my row boat, am a respectable businessman, have pictures to prove it, the prosecutor said he would plead my case…”, whimper, snivel. His brow furrows at the mention of the attorney. I instantly know I’ve made a grievous error, mentioned his nemesis, I panic, fighting off the urge to evacuate myself.
“Ah Ha, the prosecutor, wee shall see,
before wee makes, our judicial decree”.
There is a loud noise as the Judge sucks in all the air in the room. He stands to his 12 foot height, 7 feet wide. I am beneath the mountain of municipal magnificence, face to face with his shoelace.
“The final court date is now delayed
The fines incurred are briefly defrayed
Into the river did you callously fling
The disgusting carcass, dead cat thing
Now to this court, your punishment unpaid!”

He deflates. I leave a slug trail out of the room. Two weeks later I’m down to gums in the back. Court is now in session. The prosecutor is accidentally there to hang some scum, who bought Vodka for children, then played nude musical chairs. The Mayor I think. Lucky for him it’s only a mistamenor in this town. I am called alphabetically. The Prosecutor speaks eloquently on my behalf, I know not why, some kind of lawyer’s lapse into public service. The Judge is hard to convince that I won’t lapse into recidivism, dump additional corpses into the river, like a cheap Mafia mammal movie. To keep me honest, I am sentenced to $100 and 10 hours of community service.

“Serve the time for the community good
help the people in your neighborhood
When you are done you will feel better
Send me the details in a certified letter
Do the right thing now, as you should”

“If you fail in this tasks I’ve given
For all the good, for which I’ve striven
Then the full fine, Oh you must pays
Plus 15%, for delinquent days
Debt my boy, ain’t much of a living”

Hence… My letter to the Judge.




=================================================================
January 29, 2001

Judge Limerick
Municipal Court
Astoria , OR

Dear Judge Limerick,

This letter is in response to your request that I notify you of volunteer community service that I have performed prior to February 1st.

My name is Charles Beyer, a resident of Astoria and an active community member . I was involved in an unfavorable situation with a dead cat back in November, and after much travail, came before you to discuss the details of the neighbors dog, killing a cat, a misplacement of the corpse in the river, and a resulting phenomenal ticket presented to me. The last judgment made in this matter by yourself awarded me $100 in court costs and 10 hours of volunteer service in the community. This letter then, is to report on that community service.

As recommended by your court, I called the Woman’s Center and offered my services as clerical worker, phone answering, odd job labor, computer training, or any other need they may have had. My request to volunteer was treated with suspicion, it was inferred that this was an attempt to further abuse misfortunate women. My phone number taken, and a statement made that some other person would be contacting me. This was early December, I have never heard from them to date.

Next I called the Senior Services Center and offered the same services as I had to the Woman’s Center, along with driving services, yard work, wood chopping or any other manner of mental or physical labor. Again I was answered with suspicion, con men and thieves had proceeded me. A cool statement was made that they would look into it and call me back.

Over the Christmas Holiday I drove out to Warrenton and wrote down the number for Habitat for Humanity. I then called this number repeated times, leaving my contact numbers and a small verbal resume’ of my construction experience and carpentry skills. I have heard nothing from them. Despite their large sign inviting volunteers, I must assume they are fully staffed.

Following the advice of my wife, I then contacted a local mental counselor of great popularity, who deals with a wide range of clients from old people to Vietnam Vets. Following a ½ hour talk with the receptionist (who is a friend of my wife), I was assured that the counselor would contact me with some small chores in which I might assist. Apparently my confession of operating under the court system caused them to evaluate me as crazy as any straight jacket walk-in. The phone line on this end remains silent to date.

Undaunted by such rejection of my skills, I learn that there is a state volunteer agency. To this I go this, mid January now with the clock ticking, state my request for 10 hours, and am given 5 pages of forms to fill out. There is also a book of jobs to volunteer for, and I write many of these down. The secretary deftly files my paperwork and informs me that it will be sent to Salem. Once the paperwork is received there, I may or may not be approved to volunteer ,….. in three weeks.
I entreat that I merely need 10 hours and I ask…is there not something that does not require criminal screening that I can help with?
The secretary says … that she’ll talk to the director of the program and call me back.
Three days later she calls me back and informs me … that the director believes I can be put to immediate use at the Community Action Center or the Food Bank.

I call the Community Action Center, long distance from my job in Olympia. The volunteer coordinator is highly suspicious that I ask for only 10 hours of work. I explain that I have had a minor infraction for which I am mitigating. The coordinator then insists that my clearance through the state board of criminal clearing house be confirmed, including fingerprinting. I must wait the 3 weeks.

I call the food bank. Here is a kindly person who is dedicated to distributing food, on weekdays only. I say .. I would be quite happy to come in on a Monday, my day off.
Yes… but…she says that they are very amply staffed on Mondays.
I suggest that I can catalogue all the materials on the computer and write tracking and record keeping programs.
Well… they have two donated computers but nobody knows how to use them.
I will train them, I say, even if it takes 50 hours.
Well… things have been working pretty well without them, kinda complicates everything, maybe I should try some other volunteer leads, they say.

I call the Gray Elementary school. They have listed that they want reading helpers and assistants in the computer room. I ask to talk to the principal.
She is no longer with us, they tell me.
How about the current principal, might I speak with that person?
No….but they would be happy to take a message.
I state that I can be of great value in the computer room, or alternately helping kids read.
The school secretary is very hesitant and suspicious. Do I have state clearance, she wants to know?
Pending I say, never been a criminal before.
We’ll call you, she says. I can visualize the message on a pink post-it note, “Jeffery Daumer called and would like to help the children access pornographic sites on the internet,… interested ?”
Silence reigns from the elementary school.

I call back the state volunteer department. “What is the status of the paperwork?”, I ask.
“Oh You…” they say. “Well, we never actually sent that in, because it was so easy for you to volunteer at the Food Bank or the Community Action Center.”
“Well…could you send in the paperwork now?”, I ask.
“No…we just threw all the forms out because it will be so easy for you to get 10 hours of volunteer work. Everybody needs volunteers.”
That’s just great….another two weeks lost, deadline approaching fast.

At this point, I am feeling a little disillusioned and skeptical of the incessant public cry for volunteers that is blasted through the media. If seven public volunteer agencies cannot use a strong willing male with transportation, tutoring, carpentry, computer, and engineering skills, what exactly are they looking for?

I have at this point spent well over 5 hours and additional long distance phone time trying to rustle up some volunteer action. I take a new approach. Calling the Astoria High School, I somehow manage to get through the gatekeepers and am put in touch with the physics teacher. I volunteer to give a demonstration of an operating hovercraft and explain the mathematics of the same to the honors physics class. Luckily, my name is associated with my children there at the school, who are very good students. The teacher wholeheartedly accepts my offer and we arrange it for the January 29th, 2 hour class. I do not confess to my criminal infraction, which may negate the deal, given past experience. I then spend an hour preparing the hovercraft, 1.5 hours preparing a cirriculum, a half hour making copies of relevant equations and handouts, ¾ of an hour loading and unloading the craft for demonstration, ½ hour reloading and re-storing the craft, and the 2 hour class it’s self.

The class is wonderful, the demonstration kinetic, the students are attentive, interested, the lights are on in their eyes. The questions are adept, near the point, and the teacher is pleased. I tell the students of the many opportunities opening up in this field and that I will mentor anyone of them or their friends wishing to learn more of the business and operation of hovercrafts. I also tell many stories from the Human Fly to the great hovercraft sinking of 96'.’This then …. Has been a success.

Returning then to our original agreement, your Honor…. 10 hours of community service. I am not sure if I have fulfilled the appropriate hours in the appropriate way, but I surly have attempted to do so through all the normal channels, and ultimately by my own design. At this time, I have been requested by my job to work 5 days a week, so henceforth will only have the weekend in which to further volunteer in Astoria. I will continue to encourage the youth, as I do frequently with demonstrations rides and explanations regarding hovercrafts. My shop doors are always open for any interested party, young or old, to learn what I have to teach about this technology. Hopefully my High School demonstration will result in Future Seniors mentoring with me in the study of hovercraft Technology.

In light of these facts, I request to be released from my obligation to the Astoria Municipal Court System.
Thank You.

Sincerely,
Charles Beyer
865 Jerome
Astoria, OR 97103
338-6668
AKA “Kat Killer”


Footnote: By the time the letter was received, Judge Limerick had been fired for alcohol consumption on the bench and retreated to Lincoln city to do sleaze private eye work in recreational condos. The court had no record of my arrangement with the Judge. I pleaded that I was also picking up trash along the highway, which was a lie, and on March 23 I received a letter releasing me from all municipal encumbrance. To date I struggle to keep clear of the law, and aside from a few minor infractions, like carrying a grocery sack of picilociban mushrooms out of the woods in to the waiting arms of the state police, I am a law abiding citizen and standing member of the community. I avoided the drug dealing charge by telling the pigs I was going to eat the whole bag and see god.

========================

Puerto Rico


The iron clenching grip on my intestines pulsed twice in it’s spasmodic dysentery delight. She doesn’t give a shit, I think, as I spray a quart of foulness in the toilet. She’s really thinking about going back to “him”, the macho bastard with all the big screen TV’s, computers and sports cars. My ass is strangely clean for all the vileness it expels. I sand it down for the 20th time with what seems like nettle toilet paper. Splashing my sweat covered face in the sink, twisting the exhaust fan onto high turbo, I pull myself together and go back into the computer room. As I walk in, a screen of chat suddenly disappears.
“who’s that?’ I ask
“What? What do you mean?” a nervous note in her voice.
“Who you were just chatting with. Who was it?’’
“Oh all these liars are always tiring to chat with me. I didn’t really notice.” She replies
Who knows a god damned liar better than the sneaky ass pathological queen of lies herself. I can feel that she’s full of shit.

“you don’t have to go , ya know”. I say with a low growl
“What do you mean?”
“You could go stay with your mother. Or go back to HIM!” Save me about a thousand dollars, I’m thinking.
“I don’t want to go back to him” she whines “I came here to be with YOU.”
She lies. She’s probably dissing me on the net with him 7 seconds ago.
“Just giving you a way out … if you want it. It will be hard ya know. I wanna hack through the jungle and shit. We’re talking bugs and branches here”. Silence follows my statement.
Finally she un-committally says. “I wanna do that too.”
“I need an enthuastic partner, ya know. It would be good if you were into something!” I snap back.
She hasn’t been into jack shit since she got here. A steady diet of coffee, cigarettes and clandestine chat on the computer. Read no books. Blabbed constantly about the injustice of her old boyfriend. Sleeps all the goddamned time. Like pulling hair to go for a walk around the block.
“I can get into things. I’m interested in stuff. I want to learn.” The whiney tone again.
“What are you interested in?” I demand
“I made a list of hotels there. I dunno. I’m just in a sort of a slump now.” Yeah, heard this before to explain no electrical activity in the cranium. What’s with the hotels. Does she think I’m Paul Allen. I want to sleep in the jungle. Commune with the tropical jungle. Breath the primordial life. Dodge the snakes and spiders. Find the lost Spanish treasure. This ain’t happening. She thinks this is a vacation to beach hotels, $20 drinks with an umbrella served by a obsequesent dark skinned person. My ass feels like an air hose has been rammed into it. It’s time again.
“Squooze me. Gotta use the room.”

Puretro Rico. The Ex-patriots dream of easy living. Everything cheap. Tropical beaches all around to live on like Robinson Crusoe.. No Federal taxes. A hideout from the Northern chill and the teeming urgency of a commodity driven society. I promised my self I would go. Maybe never come back. I promised to take her too, a few months back when things looked brighter. When there was love. Where is the love now? We disrespect each other. To me she is a lazy millstone. An arm ornament at best. At 10 years younger, she still has a porn star figure. Wild and disrespectful hair. She is beautiful. Exudes sexual excitement. Acts affectionate. But there is no touching now. I am gray, overweight, starting to ache and make groaning noises when I get up. A typical older man. A Mark. A guy with some cash to blow. A guy with a vacation to adsorb. I know she’ll dump me like a stone in a cold river when we get back. I repulse her now. No fun. Grumpy in the knowledge of my withering demise. My impending dumping. And now, the trots. One big stinking asshole, crawling with bacteria. That’s me. About as appealing as licking a dog turd. I feel doomed. I’ll take her, but I know my fate here. Hopefully I can find a refuge there where I can hide from my country, the insidious police, Homeland Insecurity, my dis-functional family, the friends that I don’t have. Maybe I can find peace, find love. I must try.

Land is in sight now after interminable hours of open ocean. Thought the pilot took a left and was headed to Morocco. Below me is the Island. Island of hope. The housing looks queer. There are hundreds of shacks with various rusty mismatched corrugated roofs. They are densely clustered and mis-aligned to each other. The disorder reminds me of street confetti after a parade. Swampy areas meander through the windrows of roof rubble. San Juan comes into view below. The buildings are bigger but do not exceed two stories. They also are flung on the land in disarray. Streets run in random between like looking at a worm ball the dog coughed up. There’s the runway. Grass sprouts from the cracks in it. Black rubber streaks are where they should not be. Banking the plane at too low an elevation (in my opinion) the captain begins his final approach. A few moments of terror filled screeching tires and the roar of reverse jets, the plane slows and regains control. A cheer and clapping erupts from the Puerto Ricans packed in the plane. What is this? Is a successful landing unusual here? I join in the cheer. I’m glad to be on the ground.

Inside the airport the walls are lined with arcade games. Men and boys vigorously play these, thumping the sides appropriately to maneuver the ball. Baggage signs are in Spanish and have multiple arrows pointing in different directions. At least there’s some directions. We follow the mob. Down we go to a lower level. The floor is tile and covered in water. It is slippery as hell. Has there been a flood? It is musky and humid.
“I think this is condensation” she says. Adept I think. Makes sense. I do not praise her observation. Our luggage is last on the rotating machine. No one checks a damn thing. I could have taken the nice luggage and gotten some new polyester pants. Mine have leak stains now. I know I stink, but there are a hundred new stink odors. I can blame it on them. Must find the bathroom. Praise the international symbols for man and woman. The sign cryptically says “Cabolleros”. I’d have thought this was just for bullfighters. Inside is 1950. More dripping tile. Bespattered mirrors. Pull paper strewn. No sparkling urinals with radar sensors for when you zip up, only old partially rusted
plumbing with a germ covered handles. I secure myself in a stall on the worn seat. No time to worry about the cultures growing there. I am my own voracious ecosystem of seething bacteria, no doubt excluding any microscopic encroachment attempts. Explosively reliving my self, I pause here, resting my head in my hands as my guts clench and knot in it’s new found space. Eventually pull myself together and head for the sink. Only cold water, which is like warm. No soap. One empty soap dispenser for 10 sinks. I scrub my hands in the unknown water, and look for the paper towels. Empty. She is waiting outside, looking fearful.

There is no sign posted for our cheap auto rental place. I huaranng a few bus drivers and determine where to wait. Eventually a battered buss careens out of the 4 lane traffic and jerks to a stop at our location. The ride is my first taste of automobile operation here. The driver cuts in front of people and lunges headlong into traffic from a side street to make turns. I am impressed. So much so I tip him a few dollars. He gives me a bewildered look but then smiles and happily pockets the money. Our car is red and has air conditioning. This I check out right away. There is a large dent in the rear bumper, a decent scratch a meter long down the side, and the side mirror is cracked. They ask me three times if I want the collision insurance. Why should I want that? I’m a great driver.

We make our way to the old quarter of San Juan. Massive walls surround the place to ward off the ghosts of long distant pirates. The streets are 7/8th of a car wide. I see now why the mirrors are hammered. I kiss a few parked car mirrors, gently of course, but most are cleaved off already giving clearance to the tiny red car. The mirrors hang as if eviscerated eyeballs on their optic cords, glinting in the slanting light. All signs are in Spanish. After a few excitements, I determine which ones mean “do not enter” and “one way”. Everything is one way, but at random, such that many blocks must be passed to find one going in your direction. Police are everywhere. There are police and military standing on corners, going by in vans by the half dozen, police cars meandering around with their lights twirling and flashing. Apparently this means nothing, and they do this just because they can. No one pulls over. There is no place to pull over. Cars tailgate the police, the police tailgate everyone and all are honking to get things moving faster than the 10 MPH crawl around these canyons of antiquity. The uniforms are a mis-match of blue issue and personal camouflage pants or hats. All have guns, some rifles. Sinister automatic looking things. The pistols are of individual choice, generally being huge nickel plated of large caliber. These are prominently displayed, coming half way to the knee and well above the belt. I’m feeling a little paranoid and have to evacuate again. Time is running short. If one of them gets behind me with the lights going, I’ll crap for sure.

We find our place. It is a door way off the street with a sign the size of a cigarette package. Incredibly there is a parking place 20 feet away. A rusted iron gate made of ½ inch bars spaced 2 inches apart is ajar. We go in. A tile and marble staircase leads up into darkness. On the second landing a glass door is open and a rotund balding fellow is shuffling about. He has what used to be a white t-shirt, now stained with food and lathered in sweat.
“Hello. Hello. We’re like a room please” I attract his attention.
“Como?”
“A room. A room for the night. El rento.” that’s stupid and I know it.
“Ahhh. A room. Uno noche?”
“Yes .. one night.” Guessing what he said.
“Si. Hoe K then. Want to see room?”
I don’t give a shit. Just want to shit. “Yes please” She says. What the hell are we going to do if she don’t like it? There’s no other place around. It’s getting dark. We’re starved. I’m sick. We have to take it. We walk down some corridors and he unlocks a rusty padlock on a 10 foot tall door. Inside is a spacious room about half the size of a gym with a ceiling 20 feet up. The walls are made of 14 different types of paneling and plywood. A single cloth wrapped wire runs up from a cracked switch that promises a shock in some foreign voltage, to a distant paddle fan. Proudly he twists this and the fan slowly begins to turn.
“Seee. Aero condition.” He proudly announces. It is about 103 in the room. The air dead as oil in a bucket. I wonder if this technology marvel will increase the room cost. A solitary double bed stands in the middle of the room under the fan, twisted iron bed posts, a raft in a sea of elaborate tile work. Two sets of doors that are really large shutters open out onto a deck with iron railing. This is cooler out there with the updraft from the street. The porch hangs out from the building, suspended in space. I like it. This place has character. I feel like I’m Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. She has a bewildered look. A mix of horror and astonishment.
‘We’ll take it. It’s wonderful” I blurt out. An icy stare drills me from the woman.
“Eeet iss fine then. Come with me.”
Forty five dollars later and ample instructions in broken English on the bathroom and the keys for the front gate, the room padlock, and the mystery key, we are issued a half roll of toilet paper. Back in the room I marvel at the ancient tile work paving the floor. A mix of Spanish and Moroccan design. Then out onto the porch where the people move about below uncaring of my eagles perch, the cars cram bumper to bumper at a crawl up the narrow street, honking all the way. It is delightful. All the foreign and exotic I could have wished for. The pastel three and four story buildings lean over the skinny street in either direction, iron designs and odd corners jutting out everywhere. The ceiling fan paddles a draft of molten air on her, laying pouting on the bed, saying nothing. What the hell is with that? Where is the excitement, the commentary, the enthusiasm? What a pisser. I head down the hall to the Caballero’s bathroom. Wet white tile paves the huge room. A battered sink, a toilet all alone on the other side of the room, a makeshift shower in a bathtub with one water handle. No soap. My body wrings it’s self out again like a kitchen dish rag. Roaches skitter in all directions like the people of the street.

Hunger. Four in the afternoon. Thinking a quaint café with crafted iron work and different pastel walls. A nice menu in English announcing ethnic dishes of …. What? I have no idea what the hell they eat around here. Haven’t seen a single café anywhere. No Mom and Pop corner bistro, no weirdo burrito stands, nothing. Just beer. Huge billboards decrying beer with ample white women barely clad cuddling a can like a breast. Every two blocks, a open air beer cantina. A counter, a few tables, a few chairs, lacking two walls, and 20 skinny shifty looking men drinking beer. All standing. Need food. Cranky.
“You’d think there’d be a Denny’s or a Shari’s around here somewhere. I don’t see any family restaurants.” I comment
“All I want is a steak. Medium rare.” A light whine in her voice.
“Do you see any goddamned steaks out there. I haven’t even seen any cows.”
“Just because you haven’t seen any doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
“Does it look like these people eat steak? Looks like they eat dog to me.”
“You don’t have to be such a racist. We’ll just eat what they eat.’ A decided pout in her voice.
“Yeah well, you just tell me what the fuck they eat!”
“I don’t have to tell you shit!”
“That’s cause you don’t know shit.”
Death silence. Frown lines cutting down her chin into the neck. Straight ahead stony look.
“There’s a damn McDonalds. You want a burger?”
“Yes”
So again, another meal in the ubiquitous Micky D. Same crap, different planet. Nobody speaks English in these places. You have to flail your order to a near comatose teenager. At least that’s the same.
“Quatro cheese burgers, uno dinero menu.” Pray the broken Spanish works.
“Como?”
“ummm , carne. Cheese burgers?” Pointing wildly at the menu now but might as well be pointing out the star Sirius. Holding up 4 fingers. Get out 4 dollars and wave them around. Now a spark in their eye. Rich Americano. Eventually the manager comes out of the back to translate the piddly order. We scarf the mush in the car and feel better. Back to being polite now, till the next crisis.

Thinking fruit and vegetable stand here. Or grocery store. Nary a one in sight. Haven’t seen a single grocery store and we’ve been over 70% of the roads on this weird Island. Where the hell do people get their food? What the hell do they eat here? Oh, for just one Safeway deli. Where’s the food? The Chinese take out. There’s only these strange ramshackle roadside stands. They are built of an assortment of odd boards and sheets of tin. Not unlike a kids first tree house. A typical stand is hollowed out of the right-of-way brambles. Looks like a green cave. Trash is festooned in the bushes all around. Plastic bags and fast food wrappers waft languidly with each passing car. The wares are only an odd assortment of plastic milk jugs partially filled with colored fluids. What is this stuff? It exudes bacterial contamination. Who buys this stuff? What are ya going to pay for a glass of this mystery fluid? Twenty bucks for an obvious tourist maybe? Twenty five cents to a local, I suspect. We’re not thirsty. The proprietors leer at us as we pass. Need something to grind in our teeth.

Another stand goes by, lathered in snagged plastic bags. Plastic bags waft playfully in the air currents of the highway like lost balloons at the fair. Plastic bags are all over the beaches and floating in the water as dead jelly fish mimics. The bags hung like fruit on every highway bush, drifted into aero-terrestrial mounds on the edges of all parking lots, flapping in the breeze in trees. This is the true Puerto Rican flag.

I’m looking for the goddamned fruit trees. Everything is jungle and stagnate saturated heat. Every kind of Gooba wabba plant all around, big leaves, verdant greens. I see no avocado trees. No orange trees. No tangerine, grapefruit, papaya. Disheveled banana plantations pass by the highway, but there are no bananas in the trees. Where’s the Harry Belafonta song about “picka de beeanna … daaaay oh”? All I got ringing in my head is “yes .. we haves no bananas”. What refugee from 4th grade English coined that?

With much inspection, by slowing my car and rubbernecking out the window to a serenade of swerving, honking Puerto Ricans, I do notice that there are Mango trees. There is a rotting mango mush under each of these trees. The fruit to high up to reach or to far gone on the ground. Never really cared for that slimy stuff any way. Sort of a cantaloupe with a glandular problem. A melon with the day care flu. The rind is attached like a carp skin. By the time you get it off, you have a mucus mud slide mess in your lap with an alarming sticky quality. So, screw that crap. At long last, I spy a citrus tree of some sort. I am nearing a mountain pass on the windiest narrow road since Hannibal went over the Alps. Parking at what I perceive to be the edge of the road, I triple lock the car and scurry back down to the tree. Pick ups and sedans tear past at 60, about 40 MPH past safe driving speed. At the next blind corner in 200 feet, their tires shriek as they swerve wildly into the oncoming lane. I stand on a mashed over road barrier and pull a branch down. Small green oranges? Un ripe tangerines? Green lemons? I slice one open. Yes, clear juice, tang in the air, citrus for sure. Hmmm green interior. A bite. Limes. A tree of sourpuss limes. Not bad though, in spite of the lack of Tequila, a refreshing tart taste. I load a half dozen into my shirt. This will balance my McDonalds scurvy compatible diet.

A massive horn honking is coming down the hill. The berserker is flat leaning on the horn. BBLAAAAAAAAAAAA. BLAAAAAAAAAAA! A restless deluge of sound. Accompanying this orchestra is the squealing of tires and minor horns bleating against the din. I cannot see ahead through the curves and trees what the approaching monster is. An elephant stampede through an office hallway seems safer. Finally I see it. A fuel truck that is twice the length of any curve radius. The wild eyed driver looks less than 16, baseball cap on backwards. He is careening the truck around the corners with one very busy arm, the other working the horn like a ping pong paddle at the Japanese Open. I see that my fragile rental car is parked right on the curve, and that this impending doom uses both lanes and an ample percentage of the shoulder. My god, no time to move the car. Should I get in and be slapped off the edge by the Shell brand crocodile tail? Sure death, that plan. I run to a short straight stretch and cling to a barren banana tree. My attention is riveted to the mechanical tsunami’s approach. Right at the curve, the driver realizes there is a car parked in his sonic shock wave. He dynamites the breaks with a rendering shriek and small cumulious cloud. Then off the brakes and back on the horn. Still traveling at 50 into the 20 MPH curve. Skillfully he spins the steering wheel, careening the truck across the entire road and diving into the curve. The paint on the rental is scratched from the air pressure of the near miss, the sides miraculously not crumpling like a bad memo. Then he is past. Stress factor 9 is gone. His massive horn recedes down into the valley below, doing the Einstein relative sound shift thing. I sneak my pitiful limes into the rental and speed the hell out of there, at 60, but with the windows down to hear the next truck.

All the crazies are on my ass like a fat woman on a bicycle seat. No matter what speed I drive, some son-of-a-bitch zooms up behind me and sticks on me like a thigh pimple. In the rear view mirror is the pop-eyed intense freako of who I can only see hood, windshield and eye whites. Can’t even see the bashed in car grill. Bastard can’t be more than 7 inches off my license plate.

I swerve halfway onto the median and the maniac punches it, flying past at 70. No thought to oncoming traffic. That’s some other fools problem. The oncoming swerve wildly to the road edge as the auto rocket roars up the center line. What the fuck’s the pricks hurry? There is no business to attend to. There are no appointments. There is only beer. Get to the beer. This is what is important. This is the mission.

Cars streaming by are a parade from a stock car race. They are all smashed up. Some are “T-boned” in the side doors, but most are diagonally mashed. Fine one eyed crunchings that appear to be 15 to 25 MPH impacts. The entire headlight or rear taillight systems are missing, crumpled into a used baked potato wrapper. There is no repair. The car still works just fine, 20 to 60 in 4 seconds. These scraggly tetanus traps have killed and will kill again. Bold alley cats have their ears in ribbons because they won’t back down from a snarling swing fight. Timid felines have abscesses on their rump from running in terror. The cars to stay out of the way of are smashed in front, the Loco Gatos.

Intersections are an anarchist cowboys dream come true. There are no signals, signs, or markings. There are no rules. The boldest, horn-honking, accelerating reckless maniac rules. Courtesy is for wimps. Wimps are pushed sniveling to the side.

Getting the local flavor of Puerto Rican traffic rules, I find my self sheepishly attempting a left intersection turn. To cross a 4 lane intersection the procedure is to charge out there in the fastest most aggressive manner possible, breaking only at the last possible second before collisions. Luckily, there is a more brazen maniac operator in front of me that hooks his vehicle into the oncoming traffic lane at a rakish diagonal and slowly squeezes the pre-smashed nose of his car into the traffic. This causes the incoming to swerve frantically in to the jammed lane to their right, which is speeding by at bumper to bumper 60. His mechanical foreplay is accompanied by commodious honking and fist waving. Full moons of bulging eye whites in the oncoming traffic blend with their locked tire smoke. Their hesitation horror creates a split second hole in the sea of iron. I burst ahead, careening the car into the gap, plowing chicken into the impeding collision. By some temporal miracle of chaos theory, another hole appears to shoot through. I hook the sidewalk for a little more maneuvering room, scattering pedestrians, bolting for their lives. Through the mousetrap, I blast down the side street to the thumping noises of impacting metal and blaring horns behind me. My whiny passenger has sunk her fingers into the dash board and oddly appears to have lost her tan. I’m feeling very Puerto Rican.

Ahhh ... the jungle. A sea of turbulent green. Weird creatures hoot and whistle in the deep of it. The cochi frog altos it's refrain, over and over. It's touted as the beloved mascot of the island, known as an invasive pest elsewhere. We are at a dead end road. Dead end because a mud slide, now dried, has gooshed over the pavement 20 feet deep. No municipal rush to clear this it would seem. We stroll the road a few hundred feet before I have to leap into the brush and evacuate. Two different plants attach their sticky and velcro seed pods all over me. So efficient that they stick on my skin like tiny leaches. At first I think they are leaches and scape the little attachments with a fervor. My brown paint slathers the exotic foliage. I feel good about bringing dysentery to this Island. With any luck this will wash into the village water system and spread an epidemic of some new virulent strain. I contracted this from wastewater of a EPA lab, so there is hope that it is some indestructible genetic modification, poised to wreak havoc in these peoples already miserable lives. Possibly they all have it already. That's why they are so skinny.

I trample a thick patch of 6 foot grass to put up the tent. She does not help. The tent is budget. Tiny. When our blankets are in, it becomes apparent that I only fit diagonally. She is smaller, she'll have to adapt. It is still a hundred something,the walls of the tent instantly dripping with condensation and running onto the floor,and sponging up in the blanket. Night comes suddenly and punctually at 6 PM. Twelve hours cooped up in here.

Outside the tent a fog of mosquitoes gathers, attracted by our CO2. These are minuscule creatures, 1/3 the size of an decent mosquito. Fast and vicious,they pack a poisonous bite. I am covered in welts from setting up the tent as she cowered in the car. Dengue fever, Dengue fever, Dengue fever keeps going through my mind as a mantra. No known cure, a life of half lidded tupor for the rest of your years. If it's out there, I got it.

I had envisioned this as a blanket under the tropical stars, toucans calling in the tree tops, cool air on our naked bodies as we make love in the resonance of nature. But here we are, huddled in a over sized plastic bag, sticky with sweat and microscopic organisms. Penned in from the ravenous hoard of insects foaming at the proboscis for our blood. A thousand feet below us are the local villages with their incessant mamba music wafting up to us. Occasional shouts and gunshots. They are drinking, as they are always drinking. But it is night now so there is justification. The babe is fetal, holding her knees and rocking back and forth. She is terrified that a car load of these revelers will come up here and rape us to death. She looks raped already.
“We're fine” I assure her, but I get my knife ready to slash the first throat through the tent wall.

Midnight something. The party's still going on the valley floor. The frogs continue their weird whistling. I scramble out of the nylon to relive my self. A huge firefly looms by. As big as a thumb. Acts like a tiny flash light on a helium balloon, rising and falling and wafting away.
“Hey. Get up, get up. You gotta see this”
“Uuuhhhh. What?” a classic groan
“It's really cool. A giant firefly”
“Oh.”
Quick. It's moving on”
Uuhhoo. OK” She drags he self to the tent screen, doing me a favor she thinks 'Where?”
“Well .. it gone now”
“Oh great. Get me up for nothing”
“that was not nothing. You were doing nothing”
“I was trying to sleep! Ohhhuuh” She collapses back into the humid nest.
Pathetic, I think. How the hell can she be so tired. We have done nothing except eat off the dollar menu. It is clear out now, the air cooler, the mosquitoes gone off to be frog food. I see the constellations in the stars, all twisted and crumpled from this low latitude angle. Now we should go for a walk. Discover the mystery's and wonders of the night. But she's afraid of the dark. Won't go out in it. What the hells with that. Aren't you supposed to grow out of that at age 7? I stay there with her. Wouldn't want to miss out on the raping. Probably do my asshole some good.

I fall into an exhausted sleep. She cowers in the 3 square feet left to her, fitfully imagining all the horrors of the six o'clock news befalling her. The morning is cool with a hundred new songs in the forest. A light mist obscures the valley below. The energy of the jungle is humming it's music. The locals quiet below, only the peace of the dripping environment. I want to hike up a creek, be off the trail. Adventure.
“Lets go hike up that creek just next to us. Be fun” I cheerfully suggest.
“let's not and say we did” Great. And always with some worn out platitude.
“Well .. why not?”
“Coffee. Need coffee”
“But we're here now. This is the time”
“This is not the time” She's not the movie star now. Her hair is tangled and stringy with sweat. Her skin a fevered pallor. I feel chipper. The gut is unusually quiet.
“Commme ooon, A little walk will do you good”
With much conjoling I guilt trip her out of the car seat after I have packed up everything. I jump off the road into the dangling lianas, flailing spider webs with a rotten stick. She timidly takes a reluctant step to follow.

Every step is a psychic prodding to get her to follow. Now down onto the rocks of the creek bed. They are covered in slime. Impossible to get any traction. Feet dancing like a hokey puck on the smooth stones. A broken bone poised to happen. With the labor of Hercules I get her to follow a few hundred feet. There is a beautiful pool of crystal water.
Oooh. Look, a lobster of some sort. It is wild looking, all striped in reds and blacks and white. About the size of a dinner plate. I rush to capture it with a stick but it hides under convoluted bolder.
“Did you see it. Did you see it” I excitedly express.
“no” She is bland. Bored.
“Hey, lets go for a skinny dip. It will feel good” I'm thinking I can get amorous, all clean and fresh in the warm water.
“No way!”
“Huh? Why not?”
“There's that crab thing in there”
“He lives there. He's no danger. He's scared out of it's little mind. Comme ooon. It's refreshing” I say as I splash my self with water.
“No”
“Dammn. Kind of a chicken Aren't you?
“Yes. Chicken” Shes not moving any more. Took an hour to drag her these few hundred feet. I'd like to continue on for a mile or so. It is obviously impossible. Come 7000 miles and she won't go a few feet.
“OK. Let's go then” I am resigned to her selfishness. Pissed, but resigned. Soon back in the safety of the rental. Our one connection with American civilization. Jungle behind us. Back in the maze of crappy housing. Groups of cadaverous men lurk on the street corners, eying us like roast turkey. A few lunge with sinister intent tword the car. Murder is in their eyes. I gun the gas and scatter them, running a red light at the streets end. She is ashen. Sunk down into the seat so that only her brow clears the dash. Eventually we get tiny coffees the size of water cooler cups. Buck each. She orders 4.
“Ouno. Ouno caafa?” The bewildered mc Donald teen says.
“Four. I want Four, danmn it! I want a lot of coffee” She holds up 4 fingers
“Ahhh .. Quatro Caafaa” the light dawns in the youth like the discovery of DNA
“Yes. Quatro. Si. Grasias” This is the most verbose she's been in Spanish since we got here, though I had insisted we learn the language. I might as well have suggested Mongolian.

The rest is a run for the airport. 72 hours of confusion, hard seats, bad coffee, public bathrooms, and cell phones, we are back in the NW USA. 8 hours later she leaves me for the bald bastard in California. A mix of heartbreak and good riddance.

======================

SECRETS OF THE OWYHEE DESERT

“Thank you for calling the 911 emergency hot line. Currently, all of our lines are busy assisting other victims. Your emergency is important to us. Please hold and an operator will be with you shortly.”
A robot voice. “Your…current…wait time …..is….twenty. two…minutes”. Then it cuts to whiney lite rock. As if somebody is supposed to sway and tap their feet to happy little thoughts while they bleed to death for 22 minutes or slither from room to room avoiding a maniac with a gun.

I put the phone under my coat collar to muffle the nasal music, hoping to hear the operator if one should come on. I turn my attention back to the car wreck beside the Washington I-5 freeway. There is a well dressed man in the mangled rental car. He appears to be in expensive clothes. I smell gas and burning wires. Not a good combination. There is a tree about where the car radio should be. The man’s upper leg is badly slashed. Blood has filled the seat, pooling below around the brake pedal in a thick puddle. He has been mashed between the steering wheel and the tree, some part of the dash board slicing him. With difficulty I drag him from the car to a tree 30 feet away, and lean his back against it. Quickly removing my belt, I make a crude tourniquet around his leg, cinching it tight and stopping the incessant spurting. The man groans at my efforts to make him comfortable. Suddenly, he becomes lucid.

“What happened?” he says in clear English.
‘You’ve been in a wreck, sir. Sit still. Help is coming.” I lie.
“Listen to me now. Listen to me.” He sputters with urgency.
“Stay calm sir. You are hurt. You need medical attention.”
“You think I don’t know that, stranger? I can see what’s happened here. I have to tell you about a treasure before I go. I have to tell someone.” My hearing instantly improved 300%. My memory went into photographic record mode. This is what happened in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, my favorite Western movie. To my disappointment, he begins to talk of his life

“I was born in San Francisco, growing up in the Hippy times of the youth culture. I took every drug that there was to be ingested. Eventually, I became addicted to 3 or 4 of them. I stole and I cheated to get another hit. I was a bad person, not worth the spit on the sidewalk. When I wrecked a BMW into a school bus in a toxic stupor, I was lucky enough to re-evaluate my life. With much difficulty I got into college and threw myself into the sciences. I cursed the years I had frittered away rotting my mind. The learning was not easy. In a few years, I had ideas, wonderful Ah-Ha ideas. I built strange gizmo’s from scratch and capitalized on them. I met a woman that I loved with all my heart. We were married and lived in love on a second floor in the Mission District.

Within a year, she was with child. When we had two children, old demons came back to haunt me. I resumed occasional drug use, which accelerated until I was back in full swing. My reasoning power gone, I dealt drugs for a living. My activities were not lost to my children’s observation, or my wife’s. The kids became involved in the seedy levels of society. Just like their Dad. My wife grew to hate me. In their teens, my son was shot and killed in a gang war, my daughter murdered in the course of her whoring activities. The wife promptly divorced me. She left, never looked back. I have never seen or heard from her again. I cried a river to pale the mighty Sacramento. Into a depression I fell, so deep that it lasted 3 years. I stopped all drugs and moped around a dark and foul smelling apartment.

One day I noticed it was Spring outside, trees were flowering along the streets, People were smiling. The sun was fresh and bright. Some Ah-ha ideas for medical equipment suddenly came to me, seemingly from out of the blue. With renewed vigor, I built prototypes that exceeded expectations. Soon I was making and selling a thousand units a day with 15 employees. Business thrived, but my heart remained damaged. It has never recovered. I amassed a small fortune which I converted to gold and silver bullion. This I have buried in the Owyhee desert of Idaho.”

Ahhhh… here it is. The good part. But no…. again he continues about his life.
“I have been a bad man in my life, hurting people, selfish, sometimes even evil. But I have been paid back in like coin for my transgressions, suffering along with those that I abused. For these things I lament and beg forgiveness to those who will listen. I am so sorry. But I have also been a good man, loved with all my heart, helped and cherished those around me, saved thousands of lives across the world with my industry. For this I have been proud to be alive. Proud to have alleviated the suffering of my fellow humans, proud to be regarded with esteem. If not for the mistakes and the stupidity, maybe I would not be here now, dying without love, in the rain and dark, telling of my soul to a stranger. Do not waste your life, stranger. Find what makes you and those around you have joy. Find my gold and infuse your life with love and happiness. This is my last request, presented to another man, unknown to me.” Tears were streaming from his eyes while these emotions overcame him. Some sobs convulsed his crumpled frame, choking in his chest. Men crying around men…. I was involuntarily embarrassed.
“I will sir….. I will.” I said. This seemed to comfort him a little. He coughed a few times, a broken painful cough. His lips reddened with blood, contrasting to his pale and drained face. Sensing his end, he began once more.

“You must head east, stranger, east on Interstate 84 to Idaho. About 25 miles after you cross out of Oregon and into Idaho, you will come to the town of Nampa. Take the third exit and head south on Hwy 45 to the Snake River. You will cross the Snake at a place called Walters Ferry.” Oddly, he paused in his directions to tell me a little story about this place.

“Walter was a huge 7 foot 4 black man who had escaped slavery in Louisiana in 1860. How he came to this place on the edge of the Owyhee desert is not known, but he built a ferry and a stone house which remains to this day. Walter was a little touchy about his heritage. He did not take kindly to derogatory slurs. People that unkindly called him “Boy” and the other popular words of debasement for Blacks, usually did not make a successful crossing of the river on Walter’s ferry. In 1910 when the ferry had mysteriously stopped running for a month, his stone house was entered . They found his massive rotting body slumped over a grand piano, his fingers decaying into the gaps between the ivory keys. The entire house was packed with elegant European furniture, no doubt gleaned from the unfortunate slurring pilgrims.

The dying man coughed twice and blood flowed from his mouth, dripping down his chin. He breathed in shallow wet rattles with obvious pain. I thought this was the end of his story, the blood loss and crushed torso overwhelming him. Mustering his ebbing strength, he continued.

“From Walters Ferry, head NW on Hwy 78. You will pass through the town of Marsing, which is of no account. About 10 miles past this at mile post 19 there is a turn off to the north to the town of Wilson. Take this road and travel the 2.5 miles into the remnants of the little burg. There is a road off to the left called Linda Lane. Follow this 4.5 miles to the junction of Linda and Rabbit Creeks. Back track one gulch on the north side of the dirt road. This is Cha lee’s gulch, named for a Chinaman who fell in love with the lily white daughter of a local rancher, Linda Lowper. Linda also loved Cha Lee. When it became apparent that Miss Lowper was gaining size, the women of the local grange grilled her extensively at the knitting bee. Finally she cracked under the pressure and revealed all. The love, the Chinaman sex, the plans to elope. A justice party was formed up among the cowboy ranchers. Linda begged the possy to be gentle with the man she loved. Cha lee was hunted down in the gulch that bears his name and shot 47 times with high caliber rifles. Left to rot and be picked apart by coyotes, the desert soon carried him away to the sand from whence he came. Linda gave birth to a healthy boy 6 months later, and Cha Lee’s son grew up to become the first territorial Sheriff of Owyhee County.” The man paused to search my face. Proud of his storytelling, even with his last few breaths, he wanted confirmation that I enjoyed them. I was seething with anxiety that he would die before revealing a more exact location, wasting the last moments repeating a bad Zane Grey plot. I nodded and smiled in appreciation, unwilling to speak and prolong the detour from the treasures location. Finally, he continued.

“Proceed a few hundred feet into the gulch. Facing up the gulch there is a small ridge to your right. Climb to the top of this ridge where you can see for 50 miles in every direction. Walk the hog back a few hundred feet in either direction until you find a large white cobble of bull quartz, about the size of small football. From there ….”

Here he paused again as though the effort of the climb had been too much. Again, more wet hacking and more blood slobbing from his mouth. I tried to gently wipe some away with my sleeve, ignoring the blood-bourn pathogen scare that’s so imbedded in our times. The man’s eyes were closed and he was still. The breathing was shallow now, almost non-existent. Sitting there with him, the rain drizzling in the dark, death lurking in the near shadows, I wondered what dreadful fate had brought him here.

“This is the 911 operator. What is the nature of your situation?” The squacking bureaucrat suddenly erupted in my collar. Fumbling the phone out, I replied.
“There’s been a car wreck on the interstate, about 2 miles north of Johnson’s Loop exit. A man is dying here with multiple injuries. Send an ambulance FAST!”
“What is your name sir, and what is your social security number?”
“Whaa?.. What’s this Homeland security shit? Just help this man, would you?”
“We’ll need your driver’s license number and proof of insurance also, sir. What is your reason for being there?”
“Goddamn it. I just stopped to help this poor bastard. Get him a fucking ambulance, will you? I’m not the one bleeding to death here!”
“An officer is in route sir. Please identify yourself.”

I hang up and turn my attention back to the apparently dead man. I gently touch his face, as if that will let me know if he is gone. I feel so sorry for him, dying here, alone from all who knew him. He gives a few weak coughs and opens his eyes. He seems surprised that he is still here. Still beside the callous rushing freeway, in the dark, in the rain, next to a stranger. He resumes right where he left off.

“From the quartz cobble, the treasure is straight down the slope to the east, a drop of 6 feet in elevation. Here is where I’ve buried the gold and silver. Fifty ounces of gold and 200 ounces of silver. The spot is not marked, so it will look like the rest of the desert. Sage is all around. It is set up to find with a metal detector. A few inches below the surface are two steel rings. Six inches below that are 3 railroad spikes. Another 6 inches deeper is a larger mass of iron, 3 rail clamps which should set any detector off. Keep digging. Another foot below that is a steel can with the precious metal in it. It is all that I have accumulated in my life.” The exact co-ordinates in degrees and decimal minutes are:

43* 01.692 N
116* 38.228 W

He gave a long sigh. The damaged body relaxed. In a barely audible whisper, so faint that I had to lean my ear next to his mouth, he continued.
“Find the gold stranger. Sell when it goes to 2000 an ounce. Live a better life than I.” As though he had been holding back the blood in his lungs, he exploded in a dozen violent hacks, spraying me with flecks of blood and what appeared to be scraps of lung tissue. A horrible death gurgle followed. His body went limp. He was still. I felt for a pulse, but could find none. An odd feeling came over me of his spirit rising out of his body and circling around. Then it was gone. He was gone.

Multi-colored lights flickered on his face, red light illuminating the fresh blood. A police cruiser had pulled up. Over a loud speaker came the arrogant blast of the late arrival officer.
“You there! What is your business here?” A search light wandered around the wreckage and then fixed upon my face, blinding me. Ten hours later I was released from the machinery of the police state, their being unable to pin the man’s demise on my doings. A grey dawn was outside, a mist filling the air, cold and gloomy. Exhausted, I slumped in the drivers seat of my car, my mind swirling with the nights events. Then … as if directed by another’s hands, I turned the car east out of the police parking lot, heading for the dry Owyhee desert.

A Jungle Story

A Jungle Story

The crimson sun rose in the haze of the Maya morning. The great buzzards, the Janco’s circled slowly over head. The thatch and stick village nestled in the limestone mountains was quiet. Deathly quiet.

Far to the north in the Dakotas, a tall white man of Scandinavian stock, awash in self doubt, questioning the meaning of his existence, struggled to please his stern recriminating father.
“By golly, you’ll never amount to nothing Clark.” His father would say. “You better farm and try to make summtin of yourself, other than being the worthless gangly Swede wit you are.” Hurt and confused, Clark pondered what he could do to change the world, his world. His psychology leaned toward the grandiose plan.

Clarks physiology was the product of generations of beef and hog, corn and potatoes, his bones long and generously covered with muscle. He was raised on a picket fence farm, publicly schooled in the American iconography of Columbus, French fries, new math, and movie stars. He was part of the greatest, smartest, richest, most superior society ever to live on earth. Through wise investments in soybean production, (to sell to the Chinese), his parents were able to send him to NDU where he dutifully majored in corporate Agriculture. A fine job awaited him upon graduation with Montesano Chemicals. Here he was a top salesman of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides in loads of 10 thousand tons … to the 10 thousand acre corporate farms. Every spring, this chemical layer would wash downstream, into the Missouri , then the Mississippi, then into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone the size of Montana.

Thirty one latitudes to the south, in a country bypassed by modern civilization, lived the descendants of Maya. The great palaces and temples of a thousand years ago crumbled on the hills beside their villages, great blocks of cut stone fallen into back yards, surrounded by chickens, waiting for the resurrection that would never come.

The villagers had been starved for protein for 900 years. Competition for this refined product was intense here, every mammal, land crab, bird and betel consuming all fragments of carrion within the hour. Then each other they devour. This lack of nutritants effected the garden of homo sapiens, failing to let anthropomorphic the fruit flourish. The Mayan man rarely measured over 5 feet, the women a foot shorter and bowlegged for the rapid production of replication. These people, beaten by the sun and rain, confined by the thick tangle of jungle, beset with poisonous bugs, devolved to a dark and leathery race. Plodding in their poverty, each day was as tomorrow, and the yesterdays reaching back beyond their time. No School or books were in the village, no time was lost to literacy. The education of rocks and brush, vines and village taboos was passed from one to another in an ancient language all their own, sounding to the outsider like an ox walking through a pile of dried sticks. They grew a runty corn in random patches, hacked and burned out of the jungle, this also devolved from the Aztecs 2000 years before. In a year or two, the emaciaciated ground was abandoned, new acreage carved out of the forest sea, the former plot abandoned to the green wave engulfing it. Homes were dark after nightfall, there being no power, only an occasional candle casting a weak and amber beam between the gaps in the thatch walls. The bathroom was outside, anywhere, the children barely taller than a chicken wading through the hookworm heaps with oblivion. The women did their laundry on a rock in the river, which ran crystal clear through the filtering limestone. Nervous wild pigs came to the rivers edge to drink, shrimp and bony fish patrolled the emerald water. Every creature avoided capture from everything else, as had these Mayans, first from each other, then the Spaniards, the British, and now the descendants of slaves who call themselves the government..

The sapiens bred fast, with 70% of their population being under 16, but also died fast of struggle and venom, rarely reaching the ripe old age of 40. Never numerous or prosperous enough to expand, to tenacious to expire, created hundreds of tiny villages with twenty score souls speckling the foothills of the Maya mountains. Hidden from each other and the world by the thick vegetation, they exist in harmony with the unpolluted virgin forest.

Clark left the Heartland of America after two years selling RoundUp and banking a tidy sum in commissions. He was an expert in chemical farming. He located 10 acres on the edge of a remote Mayan village for which he paid $1000. Employing the local labor pool for $10 each a day, he had them build him a small house and plow up the other nine acres. Constantly he was obligated to chastise the labor during the building, as the wood was cut short or long, the tape measure not intelligible or previously known to the natives. “Why is this door frame not square? This is a sloppy half assed construction if there ever was one.” The locals never used door frames and were at a loss regarding their purpose. To them, the stick house was weird in general, made of materials trucked in from the coast. Their homes were made of jungle sticks, vine twine, and palm thatch roofing. Termite food, they called Clarks construct.

Equally confusing was the farming. After the usual chopping and hacking, all was let lay for a week and then burned. So far so good. But then the crazy white guy has them digging up and removing all the stumps. This is unnecessary and demeaning hard work. At this point, if Clark had wanted to plant something, the Mayans generously pointed out the method of stabbing a hole in the ground with a stick and dropping in the seed. From there the gods prevail. “Quick thing” they would say. But no, Clark has them dig the earth down to a foot in depth, mix in bags of chemicals, and form the ground into rows at right angles to the slope of the hill. Whatever a “right angle” is? A hill is a hill.

Towering over the short sweaty Mayans, barking orders as though they were unruly children in a classroom, Clark forgets to be thankful this cheap labor pool. He does not notice that he is emulating his father. That he has become his father.
His attitude, ungratefulness, stature, and niggardly distribution of what appears to be an endless well of wealth from his pocket, grates on the local people. Every day Clark strides among the labor, extolling that this is the proper way to grow corn. His close spaced rows and planting is superior. That the ancient ways are nothing short of stupid, a waste of effort, proof of the ignorance they live in. He informs them that their yields are pathetic, puny, and that they are destroying the environment with their slash and burn practice. They should be thankful of his agri-missionary zeal, bringing them the salvation to their hunger, their toil, the great white visionary as the liberator of their suffering.

The Mayan suffering is not diminished by Clarks grueling directives. They must work longer and harder, applying chemicals, weeding, convoluting unnecessary dirt works. Instead of a group planting, full of chatter and comraderie, the work is solitary, dangerous and scrutinized. A normal work day is traditionally started around 8, a few hour break around noon, then home to the family by 4. For Clark they must slave from 6 AM to 6 PM, dripping in sweat the whole time. No Mayan ever sees the boss breaking into a sweat, except when he is in an apoplexy of ranting to have things done in his bizarre white way.

The paltry sum they earn from him is just enough to buy an extra bag of rice, hardly worth the trouble. As the super crop nears completion of planting, the Mayans begin to drift away. First a few, then most fail to show up for his labors. Clark is furious. He corners his Forman Chocoul for questioning.
“Where the hell is everybody?” After an impatient pause
“nuh-hna”
“Why aren’t these lazy people working?”
“Hunn-na?”
“ What the fuck does “hunn-na” mean. Why can’t you answer me in English? Where are those brown little bastards?” Silience.
You tell those sons-of-bitches to get their ass back on the job! You hear me?’
“Guunuk”
“I want this corn sprayed today with the di-methel-clorohydrate. I don’t want my corn riddled with weevils and ants like the crap you bring in from the jungle. How can you eat that garbage anyway, by Golly?” Silience from Chocoul. “No wonder you bush babies are still living in the stone age. You can’t learn, you can’t think, you can’t work … all you can do is make more little monkeys that run around naked in the jungle. It’s disgusting.” Silence.
“Answer me, you idiot”
“hummmm”
What kind of unintelligible answer is that? Don’t you ungrateful worms see what I’m trying to do for you? Don’t you see I’m helping you out?”
“ Mr. Clark …. ?” Chocoul sheepishly says
“What. What? Spit it out!”
“The people are not so pleased with your farm” This is a couched way of saying that everybody hates him.
“I’ve got the best farm in this whole country. That’s obvious. You little bastards are just jealous. You wish you could be like me.”
Yes, Chocoul thinks, rich and stupid. Never having to lift a finger or break a sweat, always giving orders. We hate you white man, but we’ll never tell you that to your face. Sure your corn is plentiful and tall, but you have put thousands of dollars of chemicals on it which we could never afford. We would never put all that poison into our forest anyway. Our maize god gives us all the corn we need using our old ways.
“Yes Mr. Clark” is all Chocoul can respond.

Chocoul says he has to go get a pair of pliers from his house around 10 AM.
“Quick thing. Pliers done.”
“Yeah, Ok. Clark says “You probably stole them from me in the first place.”
By noon, the Swede is pacing back and forth on his porch overlooking the corn experiment. A few scurrying Maya women pass in front of him from the trail leading back into the bush farms, their head bowed, furtive glances toward the seething white devil.
“Tell that Chocoul monkey to get his ass back here!” he shouts after them, lending acceleration to their steps. No one returns. Clark is alone in his empire. With a sigh, he mixes his imported chemicals and heads into the corn rows with a sprayer.

Six weeks go by. Every morning and evening the Mayan men pass in front of the white mans house on the trail out to their wild corn patches. Every morning and evening Clark cat calls from his porch, deriding the passer-bys with his greatness.
“See this corn, you idiots. It’s twice the size of your pathetic jungle crap. Just look at it!”
The Maya refuse to look at it. Finally, in frustration, Clark grabs a 12 inch ear of corn off one of the plants, and plants himself in the middle of the trail. Chacoul is returning to the village with a few men and some women, each carrying a child and surrounded by a half dozen more.
“Look at this you moron. It’s three times the size of your corn. Three times as healthy and nutritious. Why don’t you fools want to grow this? What the fuck is wrong with your stupid brains? Answer me!”
“Let us pass, Mr. Clark”
“No. You take this. You eat this and tell me how much better it is. Go on, take it.” He taps the ear against Chocoul’s chest annoyingly. With hatred in his eyes, The Mayan brushes the thing aside knocking it to the ground. “Why you ungrateful bastard …!”
With a spontaneous eruption of frustration, isolation, and revulsion all mixed together, Clark slaps the leathery face with the flat of his hand. The women yelp in surprise, which starts the babies crying. Chocoul drills the looming white mans face with his smoldering eyes. Says nothing, and pushes past the intruder with his troupe.

The evening darkness now. Clark lounges in his hammock on the porch. Laughter and talk can be heard from the village below. He feels alone now, self shamed by the striking of the Mayan. What did he do wrong? He brought the new worlds bounty to the starved jungle, taught them how to make ten times the corn. And there is so much more to teach them. But they ask no questions. They are disengaged. Could it be that they don’t like me? What has that got to do with anything? Maybe I’ve been too hard on these children of the forest? Why don’t they invite me to their village. Why don’t they invite me to have dinner with them?

In a moment of lucidity, he steps outside of him self for a moment. He see’s his overbearing father, chastising him over something he cannot understand. He hears the insults about stupidity and laziness, coming from his fathers mouth, his mouth, he is the father. What was him, is now he. What he hated and despised, he has become. Now Clark knows why. Now is the epiphany. From here, things will be different. I’ll tell them that their corn is good, not that mine is better. I’ll give them all the corn to eat and sell. I’ll have the heads of the village over for dinner. I’ll get solar lighting for the houses. I’ll change. I’ll be a better man. I won’t be my father, the bastard, I’ll be loved by my community. I’ll marry a Mayan woman and raise a super specie of combined brains and monkey. Things will be better now. Things will change.


The light of dawn filters through the jungle trees like liquid diamonds, glittering the dew on every leaf. The sky is turquoise blue, unmarred between horizons, except for the twenty black kites circling high above, their 5 foot wing span casting fleeting shadows on the ground. The Janco vultures. On Clarks porch, another 20 of the mammoth birds jostle clumsily about, hopping about on the blood soaked boards, bulling each other for a scrap of meat. Clark is dismembered. Chopped to pieces in his hammock. Feet from the legs, hands from the arms, the arms and legs from the body, the body halved, his head atop the pile with an astonished expression, eyes open in horror. Four birds engage in an avian wrestling match over a hand that has fallen to the floor. The gore drips and dangles from the hammock, now swinging in a macabre way from the weight of the shifting Janco’s strutting back and forth on the body parts, tugging randomly, losing their balance. Clark has changed. Clark has saved the Mayan pride. Clark has redeemed his abusive ways by being the recipient of a midnight hack fest by the indignant locals. No more will they have to listen to his insults. No more will their morning walk to the fields be fraught with the sourness of indignation. The problem is solved. Nobody did it, and everybody did it. “Thing done” they will say.

In a day, rumor of the deed reaches the coastal town. A pickup with 6 kaki clothed police men drive up to the porch, crushing the precious corn on the side of the trail. Some vomit at the now putrid sight, the rest charge into the house grabbing the laptop, the phone, and any other electronic device. The textbooks on agri-business are leafed though looking for hidden money, then cast into a heap in the center of the room. Trashed and looted, they set fire to building. The village men are gathered and questioned in a surly manner. No one knows anything. No one saw anything. This is all a surprise to the villagers. Unable to connect anything to anything, the police leave with their booty. This is an unsolved murder. Only the whispering of the wind in the crumbling temples knows, knows of the Aztec violence genetically ingrained in the mountain Maya people. Clarks corn rots in the field, unpicked.

Hovercraft video in Belize

I realize that there may be those amoung you who gag and sputter on excess verbage. I have a shred of sympathy, because most conversations down here sound like gagging and sputtering. To coddel the dislexic, a video link is presented here, which will give you a jaded view about how wonderful everything is. Which is really ... mostly the truth, but the contents of the video only occupy 1 X-10^6 of my time.

More wordage later, this time an easy ride. Captain Cha Lee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX-Orpk27DY&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Worms

“The Hoose Eye” The rasta guy repeated with some irritation for the third time. Still unable to interpret, Kim comes to the rescue. “Horse fly?”
“Jay ya .. Hoose Fry”. His dark and bony hand slowly creeps up on the yellow and green insect patrolling his leg, seeking a place to sink it’s proboscis. The hand approaches the emerald eyes of the bug, not an intuitive choice for a sneak attack. The fly cannot see it for some reason. At about 4 inches out, he snaps his palm onto it in a flash. Now, with pride, he holds the mildly thrashing fly by the wings and gloats over it’s distress.
“Dis-a right ear” pointing to the flys 5 millimeter nose “gots de worm” Caint see de worm, but puts ia der right inna de skin. Gotts-a dake iddy-bida tatcco ands stuff id in de ole.” Loosing interest in the mangled fly, he drops it and demonstrates shredding a tiny fragment of cigarette tobacco and pantomime packing it into a tiny hole in the skin. “de tatacco kill de worm.” Because the communication is so difficult, I don’t bother to question what becomes of the dead grub buried in ones flesh. It can’t be good. In fact, I can hardly believe a shred of this story. After tales of hurricanes that level the town shanties, snow an inch deep on Christmas, snakes that jump 6 feet to sink their fangs in your neck, and Malaria in every mosquito bite, I’m a little numbed to these jungle legends of environmental horror. The stories seem a bit contrived to terrorize the plump white skin of the First World invaders. If you were to believe every one, a body would have to keep themselves sealed in a concrete tank. What kind of tropical paradise experience is that? But then there are the scorpions. Wouldn’t want to forget about them crawling the walls.

Thirty years ago, I heard about the worm. A confederate of our adolescent associates, fed up as we all were in the Nixon era, disgusted with our fathers working for Boeing, craving the frontier experience leading to manhood, Thorr Jensonal traveled to the Yucatan. Here he dressed as a peasant, in white slacks and shirt, his Nordic blond hair flowing long over his shoulders. Blistering and peeling, the melanin deficient skin traveled on foot between unknown Mexican villages, a tall red and white stranger in the short brown peoples. The locals insisted that he wear a hat. But a hat is hot and concealed his beautiful flowing locks which the children all ran to touch and fondle. So he did not. The angst of conforming to northern protestant morays still tortured Thorr, even though immersed in a world so different and alien. He decided to cross the Yucatan peninsula on foot, a spirit journey, transcending from the commercial comforts of his youth to a jungle hardened, accomplished man. With minimal knowledge and a poor sense of direction, he set out.

The jungle is a labyrinth in which to be lost. And lost he became, wandering for days, through twisted thickets, ever the oppressive green crushing in on him, crossing streams which appear and disappear in the ground like spider webs in the wind. At time he would swim lakes of quick sand to reach some further distance in the green hell. His clothes soon became filth rags, torn to tatters, the insects feasting on his exposed flesh. Ants of a dozen kinds rained from the trees on him, every one a biter, mosquitoes swarmed in a frenzy, ticks attached, and fly’s of every type swarmed his face and golden hair The flies crawled through the yellow locks, caught a drink from his eye, insanely crawled in his ears. How long he thrashed about out there is not known. A few week? A month? Eventually he stumbled out of the green maze into a clearing of some thatched huts. Tall and skinny to begin with, now bones covered with thousands of raw sores. He was delirious. Raving about the “brain eaters”. The locals washed him, watered him, and put the feverish youth to bed.

In a few days, he had recovered enough to travel back to the cities of civilization. His head was covered with lumps. He could feel the insects eating his brain. His eyes were sunk in blackened sockets, the brilliant blue of the Norseman blazing out in frenetic panic. Thorr finally got to Mexico City, to a doctors office, where his condition was quickly appraised. He has worms in the head. Seven worms. Because he wore no hat, the flies landed on his fair noggin and bored their worms into his scalp. Now a few weeks later, the worms have grown to the size of peanuts, each packed tight under the roots of the fair hair, each an abscess an inch high. With care, and in Spanish, the doctor sliced open the festerings and squeezed two inch worms off his skull. The seven of these grubs lay in the dish beside Thorr, the indelible image adding to his horror driven madness.

Returning to the Safety of the USA, to the TV’s and stereos and drug obsessed friends, to the relived but aloof Scandinavian parents, Thorr was not the man he had wished to become. He was haggard. Fearful. Emaciated. Obsessed. He was convinced that the Mexican doctor had not removed all the worms. That there was still one worm which had bored through his skill and was laying a billion eggs on his brain. Madness and death was the only option. No surgery could extract the creature, no doctor could find the malignant marauder. He was convinced he would soon die. With grim countenance, he gathered his boyhood friends to his postered room in the suburb house. “You must take this” he says, handing his stereo to a closest friend. Then his stamp collection to another, his radio to a third. “I am going to die soon, you must take this.”
“No,, no” the assembled cry “ you are not going to die. You are fine. You are well. We won’t take this stuff.”
Angered in a Viking manner, his tallness towers over them, insistent, intense, wild eyed. “I’m going to die ... can’t you see that? The worm has bored into my brain and I’m Insane”. The friends, nodding in agreement, looks of pity on their face, one by one get up and leave without the commodities of the American endowed teenager. Undying, Thorr eventually recuperated and drifted off to Texas to sell home owners insurance.

On weekends we prospect for gold, here in this forgotten central American country. I have come across a collection of old British military topographic maps along with assorted “geologic reports” which are little more than speculation as to what lays under the inpenatratable jungle mat … 100 meters thick. I pour through all this information, trying to find a more passable way to points interior than hacking with a machete at a mile a day. Points are picked off the maps where rivers converge, their co-ordinates entered into my GPS, these aquatic nodes for sampling and determining which branch to follow. There is a really big river, the Sittee, which snakes west deep into the Maya Mountains, 30 miles to the crest with 30 tributaries. Having hiked miserable muddy trails on previous weekends, penetrating a maximum of 4 miles to where the green walls consume even the creeks, I devise a new tack. The interior will be assaulted through the unused aqua highway of the mighty Sittee, using the hovercraft.

A day of preparation. Gas and more gas, peanut butter sandwiches, tools, three kinds of knives, cigarettes, lighters, flashlight, and a roll of mosquito netting should we have to bivouac for the night. The camp will be in the soggy boat bottom, wrecked as we may be, it would be suicide to sleep on the swarming ground. The launch site a twisted dirt road down to a river bar under the highway. The highway bridge is a temporary construct of jungle logs and boards, the former bridge swept away 2 years ago in an apoplectic 3 day downpour. A new bridge is being built by dreadlock workers, who stop every thing to line the high banks and watch the launch. The river is 100 feet wide here, promising an easy run up it’s current. Everything loaded including Kim in her designer life jacket, we roar up stream to their collective amazement. This includes a throng of Maya women pounding laundry on the rocks, their children standing in the water, frozen in gape jawed awe like so many tiny brown gargoyles. In a half mile, the river narrows to little more than boat width, great ramparts of rock rising vertically out of emerald pools. Rapids on either end, choked with boulders to be maneuvered frantically around. Up and through the hovercraft goes, climbing the turbulent water stairs to the next pool. Fish dart beneath us, birds of all sorts dash between the canopy wall above, brilliant white egrets herd ahead, to stupid to leave the surface of the river.

We stop at a great outcrop on a little beach and jewel pool to pan a little. Now three miles out, there is not a trace of human imprint. Only the rustling jungle crowding into the rivers gap. No small towns with auto parts stores, no bordering fields, no roads or trails, only the buzzing billions of bugs. The bugs descend on us like rain. Tiny ones crawling through my hairy arms, mosquito clouds feasting where they can, and innumerable flies of unknown sort zeroing for an unseen snack on the flesh. Panning for gold is interrupted to swat at the chomping larger ones. It would be preferable if I could do this underwater, completely submerged. The pan contents disappointing. No black sand, no garnet, no gold.

On we go deeper into the interior, the river winding and climbing small rapids regularly. We come to a junction of two same sized rivers, a 200 foot sand bar below their union. Here I fiddle with the GPS, determining which branch to take, how far in we have penetrated. We are at the start of the Coco branch, the one with reports of gold. Up this aquatic avenue we proceed, at first deep pools hemmed in by vertical rock, then opening to stair stepped riffles. The river is now a creek. Huge trees overhang the way, lianas hanging down to the water which must be avoided by the propeller, not with entire success as the chopping of the blades attest. In about two miles a huge log 4 feet in diameter blocks the whole span of the creek. We are stopped. I check the bashed propeller, which is unraveling, separating layers like a phone book thrown on the floor. The tip I wrap in electrical tape, trying to prevent further disassembly. For an hour we wander about the area, finding pools full of tadpoles, dodging figs hurled by iguanas in a tree above. Good bedrock outcrops are here, with fossil gravels of fine color mud. A half a dozen pans are washed, but none with the tiniest point of gold. Some hematite’s, abundant quartz, but none of the yellow metal we seek. A steady battle with biting flies continues, mixed with mashing of blood gorged mosquitoes. It is now 2:30. Time to turn around rather than risk being in the dark, on the river, in the wilderness. No goddamned gold anyway, what the hell would be the point of going further?

The hover is running badly on the way out. No thrust with the damaged propeller. Only the downhill slope of the rapids allow us to make headway. Vibration shakes the entire stern of the flying boat. Half way out of our journey, the thrust stops. The belt has jumped off the pullies. We are in the rapids where the current twists us and jams us into the rocks. I try to pull us to the streams edge, but before I can, the still running motor grabs the flailing belt, wrapping and shredding it, jamming it against the engine, stalling the motor dead. The damage assessment shows that the fan and prop have not been destroyed. I have a spare belt. There is hope. But the bolt holding it all together is gone. Rattled loose. Disappeared. The tool box is rummaged extensively for a replacement, but no luck. I contrive a twisted wire contraption that may work to hold the tension. As I go to monkey wrench the thing together, I see the bolt down underwater, under the boat. With much gyration and Kim’s narrow arms, we retrieve it. The hover reassembled, it fires up and lifts out of the rocks, limping drunkenly to the streams edge, to the sanctuary of a sand bank. The skirt is drained. I feel a bit drained, the fear of maroonment, the quart that has become airborne by the local insectivore residents. In another hour, the launch site is reached. The Mayans continue their gape in piling position as we pass, the construction workers all stop what they are doing to watch us with intent. We have gone 12 miles into the interior and back in 9 hours, the first to do so in this land with a hovercraft. In this country, a mile a day is the norm for travel without a helicopter, of which only the military has but never strays from the coast. My arms are peppered with red spots, a proboscis pox.

Life too rapidly returns to normal in our village world. The Guatemalan employed day after day as we hammer together the great form of our house foundation. Bureaucratic paperwork still hangs in the ether as always, waiting for an approval from some lackluster petty official for some annoying permission. The most of the jungle bug bites vanish into my immune system, a few festering to a zit from the poison, which is dispatched between finger and thumbnail. But a couple itch like hell. I scratch them when I’m thinking or not. When I’m sleeping. When my nails are full of jungle dirt. In a few days they are finely infected. One on my wrist and another on the forearm. They are so accessible. I can’t stop fucking with them. Sometimes I get out my pocketknife and dig and scrape with that .. after I have cleaned my nails. Kim is horrified. “Stop that! Stop squeezing and digging on that. Let it heal!” I am making it heal, me thinks. I can now squeeze a fair gob of pus out of the things every time, surely that can’t be left in there. I have to squeeze them. In a week the sores are as big around as a half dollar, the skin red and hard as walnut shell. A tiny Mt. Fiji stands up a ½ inch from each, easy to get a grip on for more investigative squeezing. “Stop that, goddamn it” says Kim.

“What the hell are those?” the neighbor asks, turning his head in disgust but keeping his eyes riveted to the now mountainous miasmas. “Just some bug bites” I say “There’re getting better.” I want to believe that. The landlord Chet see’s them. “WORMS! ..You got the worms. You need to pull them out. I had seven of them in my head back when I was the platoon commander of the British Jungle survival course back in … etc, etc.”
“Well how the hell can you tell?”
“Don’t you see that little hole in the middle? That’s where they put out their breathing tube. Never heals. Never get’s better. Can’t you feel them chewing in there?”
“And you know how to make it better?
“Of course. I know everything.” This is so conversationally apparent I’m under whelmed by the humility. “You have to get the worm drunk by pouring British tea in the hole. When the worm puts his head out to get a breath of air, you grab it. They don’t struggle so much when they’re drunk.”
“Yeah, right.” This conversation is over. What a bullshitter. He continues ..
“your neighbor had 27 in his head .. the asshole” he adds “made a tea of Juaca root and soaked his head in a towel for 3 days. Whole top of his head swole up like a hydropsallic and the drunken worms fell out on his ears and shoulders.” This is enough for me. No worms will rain into my ears. I have infected bugg bites. Nothing more.
“Got to squeeze them out.” He adds. I have to squeeze this guy out of my life. He’s annoying at best.

Kim bandages the sores that evening, applying antibiotic cream, our last few American Band-Aids, some tender care with a slather of athletes fungicide for good measure.
“No more squeezing. Let them heal. I’ll kick your ass if I see you squeezing them again.” As if her 100 pound frame could …on a good day. In the morning the Band-aids are rubbed off. The sores look no different. Is that chewing I feel? I want to squeeze the volcano’s, but fear the wrath of Kim. She is giving me an evil scolding stare, scrutinizing my intent. Off to work with the Guatemalan, Louise. As we load tools in the truck, he sees the festers.
“Ahh, animalioto’s! Esa Animalito’s” He grabs my arm in a backwards wrestlers grip and mashes the mounds with his work hardened steel fingers. The usual pus and gore. I let him. It is what I wanted to do anyway. “Squeeze it for check it” he says. “Mi haber siete en mi cabeza una vez. Mi check it” Some more mashing. No worms come out. There are no worms. Why are there always seven worms in the head, or some multiple of seven? I take my sore arm to the job site.

Still bad in the evening. Now apply more household medicines of dubious quality after I swab everything with mouthwash it being the closest thing to alcohol without sacrificing any Belizean rum. Need to drink that for courage. The sores are wrapped in masking tape. This will slow down my manipulations. Two days later the skin is dying under the tape. Itches like a son-of-a-bitch. I work my pocket knife under the tape for a little relief, trying to be good and not gore the bulging bumps. The evening inspection looks no better. A rum wash, mostly down my throat but some on the festers. Maybe there is something to what they say? I dismember a cigarette butt and try to pack a little tobacco in the hole. Not really possible. The hole is tiny. Piling a small mound on top, I re-wrap in the masking tape. The next day they are burning, heated up. Something is happening anyway. The arm is almost too sore to work with. Tiny sensations analogous to a rock being rubbed on a file are deep under the skin. The affixation of the epidermis is driving me mad with itching, sharp pains, discomfort of the 9th degree. I rip off the tape, enjoying the agony of the hair removal over the nagging of the problem points.

In the afternoon the hotel owner James comes by seeking drugs or amusement of which I have none. I have to show him the arm, now, not excluding the worm theory.
“Ahh !! Beef Worms! Have to suffocate them. Poison them. Squeeze them out. My dog had 14 of them on his balls.” Thank whatever gods there be that this is not on my balls. John is the local self appointed medicine man, another know-it-all in the herbal department. “Make a mixture of garlic and soft wax and cover the sores. The garlic will poison them and the wax suffocate them. Have to plug up their blowhole so they Can’t breath. Kills them. Then you can pull them out with needle nose pliers.”
“Thanks John, I’ll try that.” Not really thankful for the information, but give this guy a little more credibility than the rest. Sounding more and more like it’s real, but still can’t imaging a worm lunching under my skin.
“Beef worms!” he says with pride and a huge smile “Fucking beef worms in there.”

That night I mash a pile of garlic, try to mix it with candle shavings. The shavings are stiff and crumbly, so I mix a little gasoline in with it. That makes a soft paste now. Pack and slather the stinking goo. Wrap with the masking tape again. No pain. All the nerves are dead in these areas. I vow to leave it alone for 2 days. Day one … the garlic has gone into my bloodstream. I reek of it. I taste it in my mouth. I hate garlic. Some kind of Germanic genetic necessity to ward off vampires, the ancestral necessity I had hoped to evolve from. There are different sorts of pains in there now. Needle stabbings, imagined thrashings. Somehow I leave it alone. Day two. Mostly quiet on the arm-bone front. The tape is driving me wild, as usual, things itchy, but normal in a way. In the evening I can’t stand it anymore. I have to look.

Under the tape with the last of the hair on it, the mounds are white and soft, slightly stinking. Squeeze I must. I do. Squeeze the easiest most accessible Vesuvius on the forearm. A small white rod appears out of the hole, about the diameter of a pin. Not zit goo, as it is not soft. “My god! My god! Kim .. get the tweezers. Quick!” Whatever it is, I don’t want it disappearing back down the hole. “See that! Grab that damn thing.”
“I can’t see it very well.” Fine time for myopia.
“Give me the tweezers. You Squeeze.” She squeezes. I clamp the white thing. Pull. It get’s longer. Then longer. I get a new grip, careful not to crush it and cut it off. Pull. Now out about a half inch. A flexible white rod. It stops coming out. Pull steady and insistently. A sharp stinging. Then an emerging of a body through the tortured hole. A body as big around as a pencil, a grub attached to the tube. Black and white striped with some kind of earwig type clampers on the back end, still clutching some gore. Almost a half inch long fly thorax of undescribed uglyness.
The animalito is dropped on a piece of table paper.
“Holy SHIT! What the fuck is that?”
“Oh my GOD!”
“That is a horror. A horror is what it is. Guess there really was a worm. Unbelievable. Do you agree to squeezing now?”
“Yes.” Is all Kim answers.
We sit in repulsed amazement for a long time before I get the camera out. The stories are true. I am reluctantly living the story.

The second worm is more hesitant to give up it’s post. I drip liquid wax directly on the hole, feeling no pain. The next evening the dead creature is extracted with the same practice, a little less panicky. This one comes out of a different hole, the creature having drilled 4 breathing passages to escape suffocation. Over the next week a hundred zits surround the area, the worm poisons and defecations working their way to the surface. Never thought it could happen to me, a civilized man of shopping malls, video stores and Chevron stations. Stories don’t really happen.

When I go back into the jungle, and I will go back, I think I’ll wear a hat and a long sleeved shirt, even if it’s 120 degrees out.