54 - 14. out on highway x

by bofa xesjum

are you lonesome tonight, blackbeard sang softly to the moon. you should get a new song, little john advised him. i can remember the words to this one, blackbeard replied. the man will hear you if you sing too loud. he can hear me anyway if he dang so desires. i see we are dropping all pretenses this fine summer evening. in response to little john’s words, rain began to fall. the drops plopped on the windshield of the old vehicle . blackbeard and little john had been waiting for a while. since the beginning of time, according to some accounts. not quite so long as that, per other interested parties. in any case, blackbeard continued to sing his lonesome song. before dawn, right on time, a highway patrol car appeared. sheriff jane brown got right to the point, as usual. have we not encountered you two fellows before? she asked. and have we not previously told you to move along? officer mary white nodded her agreement in her forthright way. we have moved along, blackbeard replied in his imperturbable manner. but we have moved back again, little john added smoothly. why do you persist in your persistence, officer white demanded. you have a deeper purpose, sheriff jane brown insisted adamantly. and we will never give up until we unearth it. and that goes double for me, officer mary white concurred. we have the same purpose as the stars, blackbeard reorted. just to keep on shining, and to be lonesome tonight. oh, are you lonesome tonight, are you with me tonight?

54 - 13. eddie in the river

by bofa xesjum

the big guy watched from the window as benny parked. benny took his sweet time getting out of the truck. so how did it go? the big guy growled menacingly. it went smooth, how did you think it would go? so both packages were safely delivered, the big guy persisted. of course what else would i presumably do with them? the big guy took a small notepad out of his pocket. and a sharpened pencil, and handed them both to benny. write down exactly what you did, the big guy commanded. and keep your back to the window, he added peremptorily. benny rolled his sleepy eyes at the big guy’s paranoia. but did as he was instructed and quickly wrote something. let’s go for a ride, the big guy’s note read. the big guy absolutely never talked in his own car. they headed down the broad highway into the setting sun. benny pointed, then turned down a barely visible dirt road. they bumped along for about two miles, and then stopped. dirt was carefully smoothed over under an old black tree. looks like an awful big hole for a small package. i did not think eddie was that small a package. eddie! you moron! you were supposed to bury the money! and dump eddie in the river down by the mill. my mistake, i thought it was the other way around. the other way around? so then where is the money? benny’s trusty old .45 suddenly appeared in his steady hand. you can guess the rest - under an old black tree.

54 - 12. gilroy and jared

by bofa xesjum

the waiting room in the bus station was strangely quiet. the man behind the ticket counter exhaled slowly and menacingly. the young man with the ticket to indianapolis slept peacefully. his name was gilroy and he was called laughing boy. he was in love with a girl named olive branch. whom he had left behind in a state of expectation. somewhere in wyoming, or maybe somewhere else outside of montana. the heavy breathing of the man behind the counter continued. the name on his drivers license was jared hunter yancey. he was a direct descendant of the conqueror genghis khan. behind his counter, he often dreamed of being a conqueror. when he did not dream of being a hit man. or a trained deadly assassin, or a drive by shooter. or a movie star, or president of the united states. right now his mind was focused on gilroy, the sleeper. he read gilroy’s mind like a newsreel and a cartoon. he saw olive running down the road with outstretched arms. and saw and heard gilroy pledge his eternal heartfelt love. jared’s brain began to bubble like a witch’s black cauldron. i have to pull myself together, he suddenly thought desperately gilroy woke up and sat up - the connection was broken. jared took a deep breath and blinked his bulging eyes. gilroy got up and walked over to the coke machine. he carefully considered its bright red exterior surface and paused. he inserted the required coins and received his icy bottle. he slowly ,returned to his seat without looking at jared.

54 - 11. arthur and jennifer

by bofa xesjum

arthur jones was sort of different from the other boys. most of them wanted to be astronauts or omnipresent oligarchs. arthur aspired to be a kind person or a prophet. what those occupations actually involved he was not quite sure. so he saved his money and took to the highway. suddenly a black tornado appeared in the hitherto blue sky. this was an exceptional event in arthur’s stolidly uneventful life. he felt a vast something or other overwhelming his being. a gremlin in a red tuxedo made a sudden appearance. the gremlin made a sincere effort to articulate his message. and yet in the end he failed miserably and spectacularly. and poor arthur, none the wiser, headed into the maelstrom. all of these things happened a very kong time ago. they happened under the long reign of good king henry. and many of the details have been lost to time. despite this, arthur soldiered on down the ever broadening road. arthur’s mind was essentially shapeless at this point in time. so far his journey had not changed this smple fact. on the seventh day he met a woman named jennifer. she carried him away to her cave in the hills. jennifer had a vision of the way things should be. and she was not to be denied, then or ever. arthur's grand dreams became obsolete in no little time. a river ran from jennifer’s cave to the blue sea. in the end, arthur never made a single accurate prophecy. but he did always try to be a kind person.

54 - 10. barton the dreamer

by bofa xesjum

boris barton, a highly regarded disciplinarian, seemed a sad fellow. he made a good living whipping recalcitrant lordlings into shape. those who employed him thought he must harbor some secret. the lads whom he disciplined were sure that he did. and had many sniggering speculations among themselves on the subject. but the lords and their offspring were both quite mistaken. barton waked slowly home in the evenings through the fog. very occasionally he stopped at a pub for a pint. he never spoke to anybody, and nobody spoke to him. he slept eight hours every night, and dreamed seven hours. he never remembered the dreams, or knew he had them. the dreams were never of persons he encountered by day. or of persons he had known in his earlier life. or of famous persons, or persons recently in the news. or of familiar animals — cats, dogs, horses, cows, pigs, sheep. or of lions tigers, leooards, jaguars, elephants, hippos, or dionosaurs. or of clowns, ballerinas, vampires, werewolves, zombies, or mad scientists or of being famous himself, or of performing heroic deeds. very well, then, what, if anything, did he dream of? i think we both know the answer to that question. pray, why do you not just tell me the answer? a woman named jenkins lived across the hall from barton. unknown to both barton and herself, she shared his dreams . they never spoke, just nodded, if they passed in the hallway. barton ate breakfast every day at the same corner cafe. he said good morning to the waitress - neevr anything else.

54 - 9. a picture in a hallway

by bofa xesjum

hortense escorted miss garberson into wroth towers, hortense’s ancestral home. a row of framed paintings lined the long dim hallway. most of them were portraits of long deceased unsmiling ancestors. but one depicted a hooded man hanging from a gallows. miss garberson stopped and considered it with a furrowed brow. forgive me for asking, what is this a picture of? it is a picture of great-grandfather walter wroth’s untimely demise. he was hanged? miss garberson asked with a perplexed air. the picture is clear enough, is it not? hortense replied. was he hanged for any particular reason,? miss garberson persisted. it was widely accepted that he was an unloyal citizen. but of course, miss garberson murmured softly, yes, of course. of course what? hortense replied, perhaps a bit too sharply. of course he was hanged - it was in his stars. what do you know about it? hortense, now amused, asked. we knew each other, quite intimarely, in a previous life. how can you tell, when he is wearing a hood? because i would know him anywhere - we were in love. we met on a summer evening, under a pale moon. i was an orphan - he was heir to a dukedom. walter was npt heir to any dukedom, or to anything. he was heir to my heart, miss garberson asserted confidently. but the old duke did not approve of my existence. and arranged for poor walter to be unjustly accused of - . of something dreadful, but it hardly matters now, does it? thank you so much for sharing, shall we move on?

54 - 8. bigboy and tulip

by bofa xesjum

bigboy liked to go for long walks in the rain. especially at night, when a cold north wind was blowing. and the lights behind the hills flickered and went out. because the new so-called humans had all gone to sleep. what a sorry bunch of pathetic sponges, bigboy mused contemptuously. how would they have fared, back in the old days? bigboy had roamed these same hills for a million years. he had seen a lot, but not so much lately. the signs were going out of the sky, night after night. it was good that the rain blotted out the sky. and that the wind blew away the ashes of mountains. and the great beasts were hardly more than a memory. by day bigboy worked at a savings and loan association. when the sun went down he forgot all about it. and returned to his beloved hills and wind and rain. things went on in this way until they did not. tulip tucker was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. all the daughters were ladies maids at the mountaintop hotel. they each worked at the hotel for thirty years . and then retired and married a game warden named troy. tulip was a maid at the hotel for thirteen years. miss jack was the oldest resident of the mountaintop hotel. one night miss jack asked tulip to walk her dog . it was a fearfully dark and rtainy and windy night. tulip and the dog lost their way and met bigboy. you can just guess what happened next - or maybe not.