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I have absolutely no idea of what to make of this.  Enjoy.  PS-my regular article posted earlier.
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His Country, Hoss


by D. Ritchey

1.

I was almost out of supplies. I pulled off the interstate when I saw the giant sign for Stall Mart. The lot was half a mile deep, after the tacos and sneakers. There was a large jeep in front of me. It was moving too slow.

“Come on, come on!”, I yelled, punching the horn. I was new and had not learned humility. The driver, he slowed down more, glaring murder at me in his sideview. I looked over his truck, saw the stickers, stickers for auto parts, military organizations, racing cars. I saw “88”. I saw, “My Daughter Is Serving In The U.S. Army”, and “Proud Parent Of An Army Daughter”.

I pulled up beside him in the outer ring. “Your daughter is turning tricks in the bunker at El Ramiyeh,” I told him.

He punched me in the face. My legs crumpled, I heard cracking bone, echoing inside my head. I daubed the blood with my bandanna. I go down quick, I recover quick.

He screamed, “Yer runnin’ down my country, hoss!” He was standing over me; he thought he was holding Excalibur or something, and I was at his mercy. He stood there, opening and closing his fists, waiting.

“You’ll learn,” I said, walking away. “You’ll find out the hard way.”

Inside the Stall Mart I found peanut butter, Swede crackers, shave cream, razors, foil, the things a rubber tramp needs. I wandered around, having plenty of time. It was a goddamn C5 hangar for Chinese crap. (Lords, have mercy on our land!) It could hold four or five. I got in line. It moved slowly. Nobody cared. Everybody was somewhere else. The line crawled forward like a starving worm. Finally I came near the checkout. The woman in front of me said to the checkout guy: “In Europe, we use string bags.”

The checkout guy said, “Well, this ain’t Europe, bitch. This is the Kwa.”

I paid and came back out. The big red jeep was gone. A big dent was in my driver’s door. “There is a way out,” I thought to myself.

Six months later I received a letter from him.



Dear Sir:

You were absolutely right. My daughter returned from her third tour in the M.E. I found $183,246 in cash, in small bills, in a duffel under her bed. I guess she thought I wouldn’t see it because it is camo.

Real sorry I wailed on ya.

Peace,

Bud.



You might think I felt satisfaction from that, but I did not. I am a sensitive fellow, you see. I play tough because my sensitivity embarrases me. I’m really a puppy dog. Pick me up, I’ll lick your hand. So the letter disturbed me. It indicated a deep malaise in our society. I couldn’t stand it. Where was the singularity, the becoming, the transcendence? Why is the world an open sore? Why am I living in an ’83 Sonoma with no cap?

Over the next few nights I couldn’t sleep. I want the world to get along, I want it to get love and stay love. I want women and wine and laughter. But of course there was nothing I could do if Bud’s daughter was turning tricks in a combat zone. A few months later I received another letter from Bud.



Dear Sir:

I regret to report that my daughter was murdered last week. The crazy animal guy she was going out with, he tracked her down. He left a note nailed to her sayin’ he didn’t get his money’s worth.

Now what am I gonna do with all this cash?

Peace,

Bud.



I wrote back:



Dear Bud:

That is blood kin money. It is holy, and must be used in healing ways. We must buy land, my friend. We must get back to the land. Industrial society is crumbling. It is finished. We must get out and start over.

Peace.



Bud wrote me back:



Dear Sir:

What kind o’ faggot idea is that? Now, if you wanna kick some ass, I’m all for it. But I ain’t gonna cut ‘n run to no goddamn faggot hippie farm.

Peace,

Bud.



To which I responded with:



Dear Bud:

You asked me what to do with all that cash. Now, do you want to continue the Stall Mart way, or do you want something more? Think about it, my friend. I’m wide open to you ideas...

Peace.



I trailed off with that ellipsis as I took another hit of Six Rivers Godzilla. I watched the smoke roil up blue and moss, roll and boil up into a lovely topaz haze along the ceiling, hungry for the sky, where the Green Lady watches over us. I didn’t finish the line regarding his ideas. I’m sure I didn’t sign the letter. I remember mailing it, licking the flap of the envelope until all the glue was gone, thinking about Gloria, my ex.

A few days later Bud replied:



Dear Sir:

My idea to do with the money is we should start “a farm,” all right, but you know, with a special!! kind of crop. You know what I’m sayin', hoss?

Peace,

Bud.

P.S. You owe me 45¢ for a stamp



I set the letter down, wondering, first, why we didn’t talk on the phone. This ancient form of communication, the missive, was working. Why? Before I could answer myself, my front door caved in, wham!, wham!, crack! In burst four guys in black, with shotguns and machine guns, who fell on me. They punched me silly and cuffed me and hauled me away. The charge: illegal possession of a controlled substance.

I sobered damn quick in the back of that squad car, let me tell you. The love was fading. I could not feel the love. And where was the singularity? I don’t feel that, either. Thinking all this as I was trying to figure out who had snitched on me. My neighbors were cool, my landlord was cool. So far as I knew, Bud was cool. I was about to find out exactly how cool...

We had just passed the light at Henderson and Vine when a large vehicle flashed into the path of the cruiser. Shocked, I watched through the cage as the reddish vehicle balled down, piloted to crash us. Between the shaved skulls of the two officers in the front, I watched the red off-road vehicle growing larger, larger. It was all slow motion. You know how it is. Life, about to end, slows down.

Then, CRAAAACK!, loud as a blast, metal collapsing, glass imploding, the cruiser spinning... It reminded me of that moment when Bud’s fist slammed into my head in the Stall Mart lot... Bud! Yeah, hell yeah!—it was Bud’s vehicle slamming the fuzz car! The cruiser swung around, knocked off its axis of travel. My head bounced off the cage. Then we were still. The officers in front weren’t moving. I was looking at them through watery eyes. We were at a crazy angle. Then Bud loomed up, huge and hairy, his face red. He yanked open the driver’s door and snapped the lock button. He opened my door and hauled me out.

“You okay, pardner?” he asked, looking medically into my eyes.

“Yeah... okay,” I muttered. I just remember the sky, and a few cars passing slowly, and the vehicles there all askew along the road, and the smells of destruction: engine coolant, petrol, electrical fires, hot rubber...

Bud rifled the cops. “Here.... yeah,” he said, fitting the key into my cuffs. My hands came free. I was free. He whipped around, cuffed the unconscious cop to the wheel. He was an operator.

“Move, move, we gotta move!” he was yelling, his voice from far away. He was looking wildly around. We were hunted animals. In the distance sirens were rising. I was wobbling like a busted radio tower, wobbling towards his jeep. “Get on it!, get on it!” he was yelling. I saw him stripping the cops of belts, pistols, radios. He heaved them into the back of Big Red. Still drunken-like I stumbled before him as he shoved me along like a shepherd dog. I remember falling into the front seat. I remember him stomping brutally on the accelerator. Then we were rocketing away, bouncing down a wash into the forest.

2.

Dawn, and birdsong. My eyes opened on green light, a green I didn’t understand at first. A spike pain from the back of my skull. The picture swam, then steadied. Coming out of a wounded dream, deep sleep. Gradually the green identified itself as leaves, a great canopy of green, hissing in the wind. Instantly a sense of peace and refuge came on me. I was on a seat, the back seat of a vehicle. I struggled up. Bud was crouched over a fire. I looked in a mirror, the eye of Big Red, maybe looking back in time. My own eye was swollen like an egg. Like a cripple, I unwound and stepped out.

Bud had twelve squirrels roasting on a spit. “Welcome

come back, partner.”

“Why’d you do it? Why’d you rescue me”?

“Time for a change,” he answered, slicing a shank off. He tasted it, nodded. “You remember that cop on the passenger side?”

I nodded.

“He’s the one murdered my daughter.” He tossed a porn magazine into the fire. “I took this from his jacket.”

My mouth dropped. “Are you sure?”

“She wrote about him in her diary. She wrote that he swore he’d get her.”

“This is like trailer trash,” I said.

“We are trailer trash,” Bud said.

I said nothing, but I thought, “Good riddance.” And what was I?

“Here, outlaw,” Bud said, offering a spit, upon which was a row of shrivelled rodents. He had left their heads on. Their eyes were popped, half exploded, like popcorn. They were staring at me. I bit into one. It was quite tasty.

“You kill them?” I asked, nodding towards the city.

In reply he pointed in another direction. “Don’t know about that,” he said.

The wind was in the trees, stirring clean and cool. I inhaled deeply, feeling it cleansing me. Bud looked at me. “That eye’s gonna be a plum a few days. It’ll go down.” He stripped the bones, tossed them, reached for another. How is it?”

“Not bad,” I answered truthfully, as I chewed. I dislike deception anyway. It isn’t natural to my character. I noticed he was wearing one of the police pistols. “What’s next?”

He didn’t answer right away. I sensed his wheels turning. I watched from the corner of my eye, watched him slowly chewing. What’s next? He didn’t know. Neither did I. But I had an answer for right now: keep moving. Don’t stop for a long time. Maybe that would work, but it didn’t change us. We were minnows, hiding in the reefs that gave us shelter, but the currents were stronger there, and tossed us around. We had flopped out. Now what? The only thing I knew for sure at that point was we could never go back. They’d kill us. We’d never make it to trial. That’s the way it is.

I looked into the distance, and said to Bud, “If we’re going to do this, we need women. Where’s your wife?”

“Ran off with the sheriff.”

I looked at him. He wasn’t the same guy who’d busted my head in the Stall Mart lot. I guess the murder of a family member will change you. Discussion over for now. Bud went back to the squirrels. He was on the tenth.

“We can raid the St. Agnes School,” I said. “The private girls’ school over in Bushrod. They got plenty of girls. Some of 'em are dyin’ in there. They’d go willingly.”

“You better get another while you can,” Bud said, extending the spit. Two left. I took one, he the other. He yanked it in two, wolfed it down, gaw, gaw, like a dog eating entrails. Then I finished up. Not bad, not bad at all.

Damn, it was nice here. I stretched to get my blood circulating, and looked at the clouds. Blue sky, birds singing, miles and miles of canopy, boiling rich green to the horizons. This was peace. This was a land for men and women. I lay down on the leaves. Before I could stop myself, I was asleep.

Night was on us when I woke. The fire was in a pit now, a Dakota hole, the tips of the flames barely showing. Bud was watching me.

“Welcome back, partner,” he whispered, holding a finger to his lips. I thought the fire a bad idea now, but he was at ease.

“Now what?”, I asked, snaking up to the fire. The light and heat were holy. To be in the woods at night without a fire is creepy, unless you’re cocked and locked with a 12, loaded with four or zero zero. Still, I thought it would give us away. I was nervous. I wanted to move out.

“That’s a good question,” he replied.

“You got the cash?”

He paused from sharpening his knife, pointed it at Big Red.

“Then we’ve got energy,” I said. “We’ve got juice.”

“Indeed we do, partner. Indeed we do.”

“So let’s go start that farm,” I said. “It’s your country, hoss.”

He nodded.

We were good.



THE END.