Things will never be the same
Pulled apart and misshapen
This is how Evil wanted it
Destroyed but controlled
It feels like a certain death
Unaccompanied and alone
Could God know where I am?

The tides of ocean water
Pulling back, spitting forth
No souls to be saved
Not a body dragged out
Those waves are flames
Burning everything to ash
Does God know where I am?

And while in deaths throe
I am dying slow and uneven
And I am dead and unburied
Skin peeling like tree bark
My bones become the dust
Wind scatters me piecemeal
Will God know where I am?

“No, I am not lying,” Grandser said, feeling a bit hurt by the accusation, as he countered, “Can you see the wind?”

“Yes.”

I am not talking about seeing the clouds move by, that is jus’ the affect the wind has on the cloud.”

“Can you see the wind?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Dust devils, leaves moving…”

“That’s not the wind – that is dust and leaves that you see – not wind, you idiot,” a little girl spoke.

“She is correct,” Grandser interrupted before a fist-fight could start, “We see what the wind does, but we can not see the wind.”

Junior spoke up, “You must listen and stop interrupting Grandser while he is talking.”

“It is okay, Junior. Question are good things to answer.”

“Yes, Grandser,” Junior responded, “Continue about the head.”

“A man in a large mask came in and was going to have me killed, saying I was weak, because I had let a man take my food and then I was dangerous because I killed him for taking it.”

“That is crazy, Grandser!”

“Your story makes no sense, Grandser!”

“You talk funny, like many endless circles, Grandser.”

It took them another month to get beyond what had been Fallon and the naval air station that had been so vibrant years before. Here the land also reclaimed what man had so carefully cultivated.

Farm land, long fallow, no longer held food fit for a man to pick off the vine and eat. Not even the apple tree, once so plentiful, bore fruit that was sweet.

He pick and ate anyway.

One morning, he found himself riding down a steep grade, the old US 95, off to his left, fractured or missing in all places, when he smelled smoke. Refusing to get excited and expecting a grass fire, he rode the big bay towards the odor.

Much to his surprise, as they rounded a large set of rocks, he came into a clearing that held a small campfire and three people. They stood near the blaze and stared at the figure on the horse, and the man astride the animal sat staring back.

He held his hands up as a gesture of peace, something he’d recalled reading about once in a book about knights and chivalry. He felt hot tears well up and slip down his sun baked cheeks as the male of the trio raised his hands likewise.

They were survivors from Yerington, where a total of nineteen people, including a new baby girl, resided. They took him in and he has been with them ever since.

The real trick to intelligence is knowing when to play stupid.

The Objects sat in the quiet space of the gods and the plains of baser thought.

“Let’s be quick, before we are medicated,” whispered Reason.

Loneliness and Sadness swept through and were gone, making their energies known.

“There is nothing quick about any of this,” Elder Object said.

Then Middle Object protested, “Why must we be so worthless.”

No answer, for none was to be had.

Younger Object said “Let’s do something fun!”

Memory, stenographer of the group screamed, “Sex, lets have sex.”

Elder Object cried, “Pipe down, Memory. Recall ‘What can’t get up…”

The two Objects and Memory finished, “…can’t get out.”

Id laughed, “Christ, old boy, you need some new material.”

Meanwhile, Machismo stood at the mirror, touching itself, laughing like an idiot while its companions, Fear and Paranoia hid away, wrapped in each others comfort.

Middle Object snorted, “Why’s it always the female that calls for sex and has to transcribe these meetings?”

“Because we’re caught up in a man’s world of male pronouns,” Intelligence answered before anyone could interrupt.

“Go sit down, Intelligence, you weren’t invited to the party,” Ego shouted.

“Quiet, Ego!” Elder Object commanded.

Ego slunk off, butt-hurt and angry into a shadow, “Screw you, Freud!”

“Food!” called Hunger.

Not one response came as it loudly grumbled away to fend for itself.

Elder Object finally answered Middle Object’s question: “Who said it was a ‘she’ or ‘her’. ‘They’ is plain enough.”

Intelligence quoted, “But pure language! To be or not…”

“You can go away too, Mr. I.,” Elder Object said.

“Talk about the needing for new material,” Middle Object declared.

Younger Object cried out, “I wanna drink, I wanna forget.”

“What do you want to forget?” Middle Object asked.

“How worthless we each are,” Younger Object frowned.

“If we drink,” Memory said, pointing at Machismo, “We fuck, we forget our worthlessness and I want that.”

Elder Object snored, fell asleep, having heard all the machinations all before.

“Let’s fuck,” Memory shouted merrily, as Elder Object sputtered out wet and sticky.

Anger got pissed and Humor giggled.

Food was in short supply once he slipped beyond the fence. And while it didn’t take long for him to realize he wasn’t being chased and that no one would ever be chasing him again, he quickly became aware that he might starve to death if he didn’t reacquaint himself with wild-game hunting.

Strangely, he befriended a pair of dogs, an Australian shepherd and a Collie, who seemed more than willing to trade their wildness for a rub on the belly and a scratch behind the ear. These new companions proved to be wonderful hunters and often returned with small game to be cooked and shared.

They spent near three-years moving about the wilderness, hunting and surviving, where learned to eat foods that would disgust another ordinary and rational person. Soon the clothing he’d escaped with were worn away and eventually he began to wear the skins of the larger animals he’d killed or had found already dead and partly eaten.

In that time, he’d not seen another human being and had learned to be alone and solitary much like a male bear. Slowly, he made his way back through the mountains, passing through what once had been Redding and later Susanville.

Neither appeared as they had when people inhabited them, nor did they look like his dreams, the ones he held onto in order to cope with being being imprisoned and forced to labor for those he did not know. Because of sadness, he didn’t linger, proceeding on into what had once been Nevada.

It was south of Susanville and north of the long forgotten and overgrown, weed infested Janesville Cemetery, that he found an older horse, one familiar with the human, and who at first was indisposed to being ridden again, but who after some gentling became another companion the was grateful to have. The Bay proved to be gentle and seemed to enjoy carrying him along barebacked.

Little looked the same as he dropped in the Cold Spring Valley. Overgrown with weeds and tangles of thistles and vines, collapsed overpasses and fallen bridges.

Nine days later, he passed through the Hidden Valley and over the hillside from which he used to escape. The valley, Spanish Springs, was empty, devoid of life, save for a number of wild horses and a pack of dog that looked to be half-bred with coyotes or visa-versa.

This had been home and now it wasn’t. While he stayed for two days, he finally decided to continue southward.

Finally, he began: “It was the year 2012, a year of unrest that it began. I was many years younger than I am today and by 2015, the upheaval was so bad that martial law was enacted. When that didn’t work, they arrested people and moved them into camps for their protection.”

“What is a ‘camp,” Grandser?” a child asked.

“It’s like a village,” the old man answered, “Only we were made to live there and could never leave.”

“How did you get food then, Grandser, if you could not leave?” another little voice asked.

“Men brought it to us at the end of our work day,” Grandser answered, “And I was put in Camp Nine.”

“How many is ‘nine?”

Grandser held up all eight fingers and a thumb.

“I was there until the year 2020, the year of the Grand Pan,” he said, “I escaped during that year when prisoner in the camp began rioting. I was to be killed because I had killed a man who stole my food…”

“I would kill a person who stole my food, too” another small voice spoke out.

“Shh,” hissed Junior, “Let Grandser continue and quit speaking while he is talking. Mind your elder!”

“But what is the ‘Grand Pan,’ Junior?”

Grandser rescued Junior before he could answer, “It killed many people, more people than there are now in the whole world. Men, women, children fell dead quicker then they could be buried. This is what I believed started the rioting — this and fear.”

“But what was it that did the killing?”

“Something that you could not see unless you had a special tube to look through?”

“A tube?”

“Like a hollow tree, only much smaller like this,” Grandser demonstrated, holding his hand up to show the size of what he meant, using his index finger and thumb.

“You do not make sense, Grandser,” a boy near the back started, “Something we can not see? A tube that is a hollow log? I think you are lying!”

RonaSpace: the distance between people that prevents cooties.

Dove Chocolate tastes better than Dove Soap.

Wrote the day after Washington State’s Mt. Saint Helen blew and thought at the time it might be the start of a song. So silly. Can hardly believe it’s been 40-years since…

Spirit Lake
May be gone
Harry Truman
May be gone

But their
Memories
Live on
And live on

The she blew
And his legend
It grew and grew
Harry’s big end

Spirit Lake
It is Gone
And Harry
He’s gone

But their
Memories
Live on
And live on

The Mountain
She will renew
After her pain
Nature so true

Harry is gone
And Spirit Lake
Remains gone
Legends live on

But their
Memories
Live on
And live on

May 19, 1980