A Fistfull of Eggs
Gus always found himself watching the jewelry channel. Then he would go sit on the porch and watch the chickens. In between spells of silence and wind, he drove truck, looking at the cows in various types of weather and season, thinking about what they wanted and what they needed as one might muse through a book of poems.
They weren’t really his chickens. A nice lady who couldn’t speak English took care of them in his rhythms of absence, and they treated him like a wandering Jew.
That night he went the country mile to Brian’s. They called it a “Celebration of Life” for Danny, who had established that Coors was not the cure for cancer. They sat under the bare bulb: Brian, Danny’s life-long friend, Wade, Brian’s son, and Gus, Danny’s son, with an empty chair for the ghost or the memory. They thought more than they said and drank cheap whiskey to the moaning wind.
The next morning he woke up hating himself, tried to go back to sleep, watched a black person yelling on his phone, and then hated it all enough to get up. It was warmer than usual and spitting rain. He threw feed for the chickens, but they couldn’t be bothered. He drove over to Brian’s place and worked on the fence with Wade. They found a rattle snake nest and kicked the snakes as high in the sky as they could while drinking dregs of sweet whiskey. Wade hacked the snakes to pieces with a shovel.
“You know if we boil them they make your balls grow.”
“That’s an old wive’s tale.”
“Well the wives would know.”
“Man, they don’t know shit.”
An ambling turn took him to church. He listened and became frustrated, as always. He didn’t understand. He went back for the football but couldn’t care enough about the college game, so back to the jewelry channel.
He took a drive, trying to remember the last time her felt something, and saw a silver Saab parked on the shoulder with a pretty girl sat against a tire smoking a cigarette and two plaided dudes in the background laying in the dirt and point at the empty sky. Another girl did hand-stands in the bleak sage brush.
He pulled over and jumped their engine, but it wouldn’t turn over. He towed them into town, and the pretty girl was grateful. He felt like he should say something, but he didn’t know what to say.
That night him and Wade threw darts, and Wade was in a mood and all the sudden there was cocaine. “White girl,” he called it in hushed tones. Wade buzzed about his new Job. He had gone to school for agriculture, at a school that used to be known as the “Aggies,” where Andy Warhol had come to take pictures of bull seamen, not that anyone in Wyoming thinks too much of that incident. A degree from Colorado State University didn’t mean much in Colorado, but it did in the beef industry. Or it did at one time. In that time, CSU had a nice football stadium under the Horsetooth Rock, but it got torn down because people in Denver had strong ideas. They had a vote. Everyone—the townspeople, the students and the faulty—were invited. They all voted to keep the old stadium. So they tore it down and built a new stadium in the middle of town. That’s Colorado for you. Wade’s education specified in the killing of cows, taught by the famous autistic professor. She understood cows and how to kill them so they don’t fear before dying. This makes the meat more tender, and it seems better for the qualia of the animal. Wade was hired as the designer of the new meat packing plant. He had much to complain about, but not the paycheck.
After too much excitement, they went to the last bar in America where you can play pool and smoke a cigarette at the same time, except that they just replaced the pool table with more slot machines. “Less trouble, more money.”
On the televisions, the Raiders were playing the Steelers. When the Raiders were winning, Wade got too excited, and the bartender, his ex, cut him off. Then the Steelers were winning, and Wade got gloomy and left.
The Saab folks walked in. The girl had eyeliner on, and she was stunning. He watched her with a careful glance trained toward the game. He did have Pittsburgh deep in his blood and cared more than usual. The guys she was with fired up the juke box and started dancing, together, to the country swing songs we all like to dance to. Slyly, Gus inspected their footwear and, without looking, considered the dirt on his boot.
She walked up to him and asked if she could buy him a drink. They sat at the bar and he smiled more than he meant to. They laughed about something. Her friends made a spectacle. And then it was revealed that the one friend, Tom, was a Steelers fan. Gus realized the white girl was in his pocket. He and the lovely lady took key bumps in the bathroom, and he learned her name was Stella, but she went by Moon. The Steelers won with unnecessary drama, and Gus got more generous than he wanted to. He didn’t notice too much and it’d be better not have around The other friends started winning money on the slot machines, and the guy, Blue he was called, began laughing maniacally. The locals were clearly perturbed, but Gus remained aplomb. This girl’s eyes were like water that’s deeper than you expect, which enthralled Gus more than it angered him; for a while.
Out on the dance floor, she bit her lip and tipped he neck. He leaned in, but just then her friend ran up with an important picture on her phone.
“Moon,” he chuckled.
He woke up wondering how much a fool he made of himself with “When the Cowboy Rides Away” playing in his head.
He remembered that he told the girl called Moon that he would take her on a motorcycle ride. This angered him at first, but then he thought about how dusty his bike was. He drank coffee and considered.
He reved the engine outside of their hotel. She came out, wearing pajamas that were sure to be the subject of gossip. He grinded his teeth and avoided looking at his reflection in the windows. They rode through the Tetons. She tried to yell something over the engine, adding stress to an otherwise glorious situation. Soon enough, she got the idea.
They stopped at a vista point and watched the wind in thee trees.
“Do you ever go up to Crimson Bells?”
“No. What’s that?”
“I thought you were a local around here.”
“Born and raised.”
“And you don’t know about Crimson Bells?!”
“No.”
“Oh it’s amazing! A witch used to live up there, a white witch, with her daughter. She said she was in contact with seven other witches, but no one believed her. Then at her funeral, seven wild horses showed up for the service. They stayed till the end and then turned all at once and galloped away.”
“Huh.”
“I thought Crimson Bells was the big claim to fame around here, no?”
“Maybe so. You know I think I have heard of that, actually. I’m pretty she’s still up there, cooking meth. And they ran all horses down with helicopters.”
She watched his eyes and then laughed. He wondered if she could hear his teeth grinding.
“Well, I got you to say more than five words, so my work here is done.”
He inhaled deeply, secretly trying to smell her, then coughed and spat. They drove on.
They came back on the back road and he showed her his chicken coop. He had some pretty boujee chickens, and she giggled and inquired of their personality. He smiled more than he wished to show his teeth.
They walked to the house, and her friends were sitting on the front porch. Gus looked at the girl called Moon, who cooed to her people and glanced at her phone. The guy who’s name he hadn’t got flicked a cigarette.
“Hey Blue, how’d y’all get here so fast?”
“Not much else to do around here.”
Gus looked at Blue for a while. Blue held his gaze. Unblinking, Gus spat in the dirt and rubbed in the ground with the toe of his boot.
Gus learned from the ensuing banter that these people had come to town to protest the building of an evil new meat-packing plant. Their plan was to sleep in a tent.
He walked inside, turned off the television and cracked a beer. Immediately, Wade called bitching about the weather. The groundbreaking ceremony of the new plant would have to be postponed.
The next afternoon, Gus lay low across the Devil’s Backbone, observing these campers through binoculars. He grumbled to himself about their gear, and then he caught sight of another odd character approaching from the airy, empty East. It looked like an omen of doom, something out of the Book of Revelations.
The wind was picking up.
By the smoldering embers of a dying fire, pretending she was asleep, Moon heard bootsteps dragging toward her. He poked her head out of her sleeping bag and saw the figure approaching. He appeared to be made out of clay. Like a moth, he hovered over the fire and let out a long, rasping groan. Her fellow campers where dozing in their down bags, and the man didn’t seem to notice her nor them. He talked to the fire in a voice that seemed made out of rock. “How they comin’, shin bags? Made out of bliss” he exhaled, like a tree falling in a forest making no sound. The edges of his face where knobbed, as if their maker expected someone to turn them.
After a strained encounter, Moon learned that this human was inn search the rainbow gathering, and had been for the past two years. In that time, he had tripped 6 hits of the finest LSD every day. “I don’t need to sleep. You don’t need sleep.” He said, and finally lifted his gaze from microcosm to the macrocosm. His eyes were black like a shark’s. Moon shuddered and shivered and started to think this might have been a bad idea.
Later on there was a rousing conversation about politics that Gus watched from afar. He didn’t realize the tension between Blue, who had so many opinions, and the acid stranger, who was in such need of listening. It was like someone trying to set fire to a rock. But Gus understood the body language. A sheet of paper was passed back and forth.
Darkness fell. The wind was frozen, hard. The world felt like an ice house trying to collapse. Snow danced in the yawning vastness. Fascinated by the scene, Gus ignored his aching elbows.
As the weather became more real, this person named Blue began taking his clothes off. Their tent blew away in a frenzy. Blue cheered and danced. Gus decided that was the martini shot.
He descended the rocky rampart and drove up to the bewildered gathering. The tundra gremlin was gone. Was he ever really there? The man named Blue was taking off his shoes and then putting them back on, with the expression of an Olympic athlete. Tom seemed to actually be trying to burry his head in the ground. Moon was wistfully inspecting Blues underwear strewn across a cactus, and the other girl was all deer-in-the-headlights. She was relieved to be visited by civilization.
“Get in.”
“Oh now the Blue Ferry rears her ugly head.”
The women and the Steelers fan bumbled into the truck, but Blue remained shouting into the wind.
“Hey moron, get in the…”
“And what about your brothers! The cows! Who will be murdered in cold blood? Who will be sacrificed on the alter of a consumerist nightmare you highly balding capitalist disgrace?! What about them? Mooooooo! Moo you!”
“For sure, whatever buddy, get your happy ass in the truck.”
“No!”
Gus peered through the cracked window into Blue’s inflated irises. He rolled up the window and hit the gas.
The women began shrieking. The pretty girl was tearing at his shoulder and hitting him with a shoe—Blue’s shoe, Gus assumed.
He stopped the truck, whipped out his gun, and pointed it at each passenger until there was silence. “Anyone else want to get out?” A pause, then the women wailed. Tom looked out the window as if nothing was happening. Gun in his lap, Gus hammered down.
A bit down the road a figure loomed. It was the acid creature. Gus pumped the breaks, and the being climbed in the bed of the truck.
In the morning, it was in the paper: “Man Freezes Protesting Beef.”
Wade called. “Can you believe this shit?”
Tires growled in the driveway: The Saab, gleaming under the blue sky like a sword thirsty for blood. The driver door flew open, and the girl called Moon strutted over to the chicken coup, rummaged madly and ransacked the coup. Gus felt sorry for his chickens. For a moment, he was lost in thought, and then an egg splatted across his window.
Shrieking obscenities, Moon hurled two fistfuls of fresh eggs.
He sighed whimsically, watching her slam the eggs across his porch. Enough. He burst through the door, carefully leaped down the ice-strewn steps, grabbed her hour-glass waste and kissed her, long and deep. She melted like the Witch of West. After a while, he pulled back.
“Shall we go inside?”
“What about Blue?”
‘What about him?’
“He’s dead.”
“You said you’re polyamorous.”
Aghast, her mouth twitched for words and then clamped shut. She slapped him hard. When he didn’t budge, didn’t blink, she back-handed him, slicing his cheek with her copious jewelry.
“Yeah. Moo you, chicken fucker.”
He chuckled. Somehow, she chuckled too.
Controlling herself, tossing her hair, swinging her hips, rolling her marvelous eyes, Moon turned, turned back and touched the his cheek. Watching him with those big fuck-me eyes, she licked the blood off her finger. Then she flipped him the bird and walked off down the melting driveway. “Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave,” he thought.
As the Saab roared off to its next adventure, Gus walked back inside and turned off the jewelry show.
He realized he had tracked egg yoke across the carpet and cursed. He considered shooting out all his windows. What a bother. Perhaps throwing something at the television. It was Tuesday. Tomorrow he’d be back in the truck. Oh well, the carpet was from the late ‘70s and had seen worse. That made him think of puppies.
He went to the bathroom and poured hydrogen peroxide over his cheek. There was more blood than he expected. It was dark swirling down the porcelain drain, like blood from a vagina.
Selecting the stupidest chicken, he broke its neck and prepared an elaborate feast, brooding all while about the best way to abduct Big Ben, the rottweiler, from his ex-wife. Maybe this time he’d actually do it. Maybe get shot in the process.
At church the next morning, an old lady was rocking back and forth as she prayed the rosary. Her voice echoed like a small flute played in the belly of a whale, or a candle flame on a wet cave wall, or a rife shot from a steam engine hitting a buffalo on the vast, empty plain.
“The Fifth Glorious Mystery: The Coronation…”