Archive for October, 2007
Everyone was prepared. They each had weapons and some defense, strips of old tire rubber strapped down their arms, a gun, a knife, football helmets.
We raced into the trees and hacked through them. We ran them down with ATVs. We swung machetes from the back of motorcycles. We blazed through dark shadows among the trees and nobody fell.
Everyone was strong and confident, had put all fear away and kept going.
We came across the field with strong gestures like professments of faith. We stood together as the whole street came into view, full of strategies:
Men raced on motorcycles dragging tripwires. Bicycling boys with bats, geriatrics in reinforced golf carts, a woman in hysterics guarded by chainsaw-wielding muscle men. The night was full of triumph. Everywhere people became symbols of activating forces.
My own troop arrayed on the slope, renegade champions one and all, regrouping, catching their breath, surveying what went on below along a row of suburban lawns.
Everyone was a whirling razor. We skirted what we could. It was best to keep our distance from the others. Leave each to his determination. We found a two story ranch house with a lower deck giving out to the field and a pond.
It was cleared and barricaded. We were tired. We slept in the mud and the blood. Some bathed in the pond while others stood guard. It was a good place for the moment. Room enough for all of us.
We preferred it cramped. We liked to pack against our neighbors in the warm safety, the swaddle.
It was hardest in the kitchen. Everything was eaten before most had awakened. We would need to barter weapons for food, begin the work of constructing new safety. We lost some good people right off as they raced into new opportunities. Some never intended to stay with us. They went off deeper in their directions. We never saw them again.
In my dream, there was a membrane that held us apart from the others. An impossibly thin, nearly invisible bubble we pressed against to no avail. We could not be parted, nor could we bother with what lay beyond the will of us all.
In my dreams, sometimes I am beyond the membrane trying to get back in. But it is impossible. The membrane exists, a veil that distinguishes an impossible distance of space, a void that will not suffer return.
I am mainly concerned with this membrane that separates, the most substantial of all materials and no material at all. The zero to hold among the aces in cosmic certainty.
Sometimes I dream I am all of shadow and the false choices of the past have led me to believe untrue things of an essential nature. Sometimes I am so shocked by panic and shame that I believe I have taken up the Hindu Zombie Fever.
Mainly, I am here to study the membrane. I am here to draw the invisible line of some just importance. I am a discerning instrument in the hands of this scattering troop. I am a surgeon and the infection is clear. I can tell at a glance.
I am Adama, giver of names.
When the troop came together, we laid claim to each other with such names as could be conjured. We forged a new language with just these names. Our names are what we belong to.
We have a symbol. I have sewn it on everyone’s jerseys and jackets so I can know at a glance who to worry over:
It is the river that flows into the cave and the cave itself. The flow of water into the emptiness where it is again purified, through a myriad permutations, into just itself.
It is the membrane and the flow of life, the forces dwindling in the darkness. Where man will grow back into the light perhaps, back in the caves.
I am always counting us. Our numbers rising. Our numbers falling through chance, accident and urgency.
If someone falls among us, I cannot cure them. I can only point and stare, hysterical. I can only cry out:
“The membrane! The membrane!”
I shine my fear like a beacon in the night.
Sometimes, when fear is at its worst, the others start when they see me, as if they had lost certainty of just those things which I can answer to.
Each day, I count them. In truth, I just count the symbols. I know by their disposition which are in deepest doubt. I urge them to polish their symbols, keep them sparkling, so I can see the change. All will be safe if they revere the symbol. They need only fear a stain. They wash them every chance they get.
It was important to discern those to call in times of particular alarm. Sometimes we are well spread out. Some wear two symbols and are counted twice. We need a certain number to stay safe.
There were those among us who had fought in many battles, whose limbs had been severed, who had lost so many things and yet kept on, perversely racing with no other concern than the race, ancient soldiers who would bear all and sacrifice themselves to the membrane one day. Their worst shame would be to survive to the last. They must choose how best to save us, which tree to vault from, what dim spark to blow into new flames. They stood among us, half-recovered from heart attacks, staunching fresh wounds.
There were those that broke and rolled against the membrane for some fleeting glimpse of something lost teasing them beyond. Some abomination of the past haunted still to scar the membrane, claws tearing for release.
Sometimes a scratch was just enough.
I heard the sound of thudding against the double pane glass of the slider.
Beyond the membrane, some chrysalis melted down to essentials, whatever goo next things would manifest from, whatever form sought flesh.
The cage of my thoughts shook with each thud. Wavelengths of sound filled with intention, boiling over with desires, just those forms I am most afraid of. I peek from behind doors. I am always spying. I just want to know where we stand. What is the situation? What is our number?
I smell worst of all of us. I haven’t changed my clothes since the troubles began.
The one I call Henchman stared out into the darkness, not seeing anything to be riled about, in fact, just sleeping, standing on her feet, in that place of ultimate vulnerability we lapse into at the end of exhaustion, strung out on worries, dead tired and no longer afraid. Sometimes we get to have that time.
The thudding grew more pronounced. She did not stir. There was only shadow heaping on shadow beyond the membrane, scraping the walls of the embankment, darkness growing denser, nothing signifying, no purpose, no symbol.
I touched her sleeve near where her symbol was pinned. She started and snapped to attention. She saw my face and trusted it. I was never in question. That was the rule. I had the one job and if it were inviolate yet, then we were safe. If not, then what else mattered? The membrane rent open, each on his own.
dream, fiction, zombiedream, fiction, zombieHis First Novel
He would tell me his burgeoning philosophy some nights. We would sit over coffee at the gas station. He was working at the plant, loading boxes. He was quite good at that sort of physical work. He was a great asset to them up there and they liked him very much.
He would say: "It's all about reintegration. The broader the context of resolution, the greater the insight. Do you understand?"
He'd always end such statements with a question as if he were unclear if he had contained his reasoning to a human scale. I would admit that I felt I understood him. I think that was when our friendship truly began, when he felt I'd understood him.
I had followed his progress sympathetically for weeks. I helped him however I could. I made inquiries for him. I helped get him the job. He was outgrowing the character of his surroundings very quickly. He was ready for something like the city. I helped him even there.
My publicist got him an interview. He worked part-time as a copywriter. He wrote little ads for the classifieds. It was the perfect thing for him. What he sought most of all was succinctness. He was quite happy to do this task as well as loading boxes on the docks. He learned from all manner of people. He had a reputation in diverse circles. His first poetry reading was before a very mixed crowd.
No one even suspected he was a bigfoot. It was such a politically correct environment that his ugliness and other monstrous qualities were revered almost perversely. People seemed to want to worship him. At some point, he withdrew again into the forest to write his first novel.
bigfoot, The Light on the Hillbigfoot, The Light on the HillMose Stetley? I never cared a lick for Mose Stetley. Them ole boys’d poison you at the wash, kidney punch you at the weigh in, all them dirty ole tricks, they’ll try em on you like that’s just part of playing. And then they go bringing up some mangy lot of curs like you’d want to pit your boys against such sorry critters. Mean spirited, surely, but not a lick of gameness in the lot. Bunch of tortured souls howl at the moon like coyotes first sight they get. Horrible dogs.
I ever tell you about old Arc that time he run them boys out? Three fights in one night, if’n you’ll believe it. Them boys kept begging for another shot at him. Shoot, he done gave them three pounds. Ole Arc was game even still. Nothing would stop that boy in the pit. He’d tear into anything. I swear he got his hackles up, it was just an insult to him that someone’d bring such a lot to pit. He’d have taken them all at once. I swear on my mother’s bible he won three matches back to back at no more than 10 minutes a one. And it was Mose Stetley holding the last two. He and his boys who weren’t 12 years old at the time but always scrapping.
Now them boys had some gameness. There was more to fear there than any of their dogs. And it was that night Josiah lost Arc. Now you just try to tell me Mose Stetley didn’t have a hand in it. Can’t think of nothing worse than robbing a man of his livelihood in the dark of the night. Snatched him right out his pen and he ain’t been seen since.
It weren’t three years before we seen ole Mose Stetley back in the game though with a fresh lot of dogs looked decidedly like they was sired by ole Arc. They had his red nose and his chest bump like no other dog did back then and he started winning all over Arkansas with that lot and every convention that was all the talk like Josiah should do something about it or we should all just bar the man from fighting, but you know how dog men are, it’s the dogs we love you know and them boys was a fierce sight.
Don’t know what bitch he bred him to, and he weren’t telling, but the result no one would turn from. You didn’t want to stand against them boys. Not long and he couldn’t get a fight off them, but folks was lining up to breed ‘em. If Mose knew a thing about business, he’d a made hisself a rich man, but he was just a mean spirited cuss cause he just turned them all away. All’s he wanted was to fight, didn’t care a lick no more about making money. Wouldn’t let no one near his operation. Wouldn’t bring them to stud, weren’t even selling pups. But weren’t no one gonna pit against them neither. They was so dead game, they was killers plain and simple. They ate up a dozen good dogs cross the state till word got full round what they was made of.
Josiah hisself offered Mose five grand for one of them pups. How’s that for a fine how d’ya do? But what choice did he have? He’d lost his best dog ‘forin he had a chance to prove him bred so he had nothing but a lot of curs long time after that, but that’s the dog game. Take a man ten years to get back what he lose in one night. Finally just wasn’t no use in Mose even come around. He weren’t participating in any way.
About that time, Floyd’s Eli was tearing up the circuit and that dog was smart. He had great technique. Very focused dog. Another dog even blink an eye toward turning and he was finished. All the best dogs is proud like that, just a lick of doubt across the way and the match might as well end there. He was culling some pretty fine dogs heading toward being a grand champion when Mose started showing up to matches again.
By then he and Josiah had started up in secret, like Josiah was to front his dogs in the matches, at least that was what Josiah was hinting like to better the odds and its true he was showing some red nosed dogs about then, but they was curs in my book. He weren’t winning them.
Then he shows up with ole Mose and they standing next to one another though they ain’t talking. Just watching and waiting there and there’s a buzz go through the whole fraternity, They ain’t betting or nothing, just standing like a couple crows. And Eli down in the pit makes Jonesy’s Freighttrain turn and there ain’t nothing but hoots in the air for that dog Eli so’s Mose steps up and challenges him on the spot midst all that caterwaul and how could Floyd back down?
They set it at 55 pounds. They got the ref setting a date two months out. And boldfaced as can be, ole Mose says he’ll pit him out against Arc Jr. Arc Jr.! Josiah standing next to him with a sly little grin and everybody knows they in cahoots. Man, was it exciting. All them old boys just piecing it together looking over at Josiah now like we all been snaked.
At that point, either them old boys were the cleverest lot ever played the game or they was bluffing bigger than shit. Now I ain’t kidding you, stakes on that match was up to three, four grand a head. There was more money floating around than I’d ever seen in a game. Men had their whole stake on that game and there weren’t going to be but the one match that night.
Josiah, Mose and his boys bring out Arc Jr. and damned if he ain’t the spitting image of Arc. But Eli, you know, this is a dog of some renown. Floyd been making money hand over fist breeding him and he’s already a grand champion. This here’s what the games all about.
I’ll be damned if at the weigh in, ole Floyd don’t show two pounds heavy and forfeit the wager. But he’s a clever one all the same. He knows what he’s doing. He’s got the only dog gonna go against Arc Jr. so he knows Mose going to fight him all the same so he’ll take every advantage he can get. Sure enough, Mose goes right on ahead with it, fighting a grand champion two pounds heavy. Any other man would of walked away and counted hisself lucky for the chance to save his dog, but there was a lot at stake that night.
Now I seen a lot of matches in my day, I saw Joshua’s Holler take Randall’s Samson in just under two hours. Some thought that was the greatest match ever run. Back then I was a dog man 15 years already and in that time I had some good scrappers, a couple winners and a whole mess of curs, but nothing even near these dogs for gameness. Here we got the two greatest game dogs on the planet, one of them unproven yet but of the finest pedigree, and every dog man that night is just singing in his heart grateful to be alive. Watching a dog get proved out is exciting, but against a grand champion, well that ain’t something anybody heard of.
Now Mose had his oldest boy Jake in there handling and his youngest over snooping at Floyd’s corner and he and Josiah stood at opposite corners watching the go. Reb was reffiing that match and I don’t envy him down in that pit with them fierce mongrels. I swear, even after 15 years, the gameness of those warriors put the fear of God in me. It was the most unholy sight I ever did see, the way they punished each other. It weren’t 5 minutes in that they’d both lost an ear and were bloody all down their faces. It was clear that once these dogs were done with each other, they weren’t gonna be good for much but stud. And that was the longest match I ever seen. It was two hours like that with Floyd and Mose’s boy Jake just hard eyed willing to stand. Weren’t no one gonna pull their dog out. This was gonna be to the death and it got down right grim with both dogs gone through it all, not a turn. They battered and tore and crushed at each other, getting holds and tearing loose like gods, you know, like little engines of destruction tearing beyond the flesh, like they both wanted to just shed their bodies and pit their raw rage against one another like little balls of light gabbling through the machinery.
Arc Jr. was blind by the first hour mark and he was game all the same, coming on as fierce and cruel as ever but that advantage was sure enough for Eli. Can’t say that Arc Jr. was too smart, but I ain’t never seen a dog scrap so fierce was blinded in both eyes. After that Eli just started picking him apart, pressing him down, punishing his nose but Arc Jr. never cried out, even with bone showing on his cheeks and blood all over him that dog weren’t going to let up.
In a normal fight, the ref would have called it, but there was so much game left in that dog even as gored up as it was, he let it go till you could see skull through on both them dogs and they was cinched up real good shaking blood off onto the ground and the pit wall and the people lined up on the pit. We was all plum wore out from screaming and on they went with narry a holler. That place done slowly got real quiet like we’d filled some vision of what all the sport and breeding was leading to. Like we was watching God hisself part the waters.
There those two skull faced dogs oozing thick streams of blood fought on like there was no such thing as pain, no such thing as dying, just this pure terrible living crying out against itself without end. I tell you the churchs were full the next day. Men were born again after that battle.
There were no concessions. Though it was true that Arc Jr. finally got the jugular of Eli and great rockets of blood geysered from him so he fell slipping, he never stopped fighting, never relented a second, just his body did, just the dumb machine of it let go and it was a damn shame to watch it happen. His guts let him down.
Neither dog lived an hour past that match. Floyd wrapped his mangled Eli in a blanket and took him out. Arc Jr., half dead as he was and quick on to dying, rose for the scratch and the guts and gore scattered all about weren’t nothing to him. He lumbered over and that was that.
Ole Mose had his hands on more than he could know. I don’t credit him with none of it. Arc Jr. was the most dead game dog ever was. There weren’t born another like him in my day. Truth told, I’m glad of it.
dog fight, fictiondog fight, fiction