The Fickle Sickle http://ficklesickle.com/index.php The Writings of J. Nelson Watts en shaka@shaka-zulu.net Copyright 2009 Pivot Pivot - 1.40.4: 'Dreadwind' Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:56:27 -0700 60 wet souls http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=29 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=29#comm & you can see the sky
through holes in the asphalt,
oil slick rainbows by the Jiffy Lube.
Worn leather shoes
can walk on the sky now
slipping on god's covenant.
I envy those who have no shoes
& cannot afford to sleep indoors.
They walk the skies barefoot,
rainbows on their souls... ]]> 29@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ poetry Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:53:00 -0700 arizona '95 - chap. 6 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=13 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=13#comm
I headed south down the strip, hitting the Mirage and just flat out purchasing a couple of beers at the bar. At midnight I went outside and watched the “volcano” erupt. Then I headed up to the Luxor, to wander around inside its pyramid frame and get an idea of how big the real thing must look at 100’ taller.

Around midnight I headed back to our crappy hotel room, stopping for a moment on the stairway that ran up the side of the place to gaze back at the hazy lights of the strip, noticing how the light that came out of the Luxor did not appear to shoot straight up, curving in the atmosphere and appearing to shoot off at an angle. It was another illusion of Vegas; tricking the eye and replacing reality with fantasy.

It wasn’t until I was standing at the door to our room and reaching into my pocket that I realized Bill had the key. I leaned to my right and tried to look through the window…it looked like there was a light on in there, but had we left one on or not? I thought I could hear Bill inside, watching TV. I knocked on the door and it was suddenly silent. Was I drunk? Was I imagining those voices? I knocked again. Silence. I turned and leaned against the railing, lighting my last cigarette and looking out into the night. Suddenly I heard the door open behind me and I turned to see some semi-cute chick whose upper torso was wrapped in a towel stick her head out the door and look to her right before scanning the hall and settling her gaze on me. Confused, I managed a sheepish smile. She avoided me, looking to her left and then popped back inside closing the door behind her.

What the fuck? Had I completely spaced on our room number? Embarrassed I jogged back downstairs to the lobby and found it dark. No. There’s no way I forgot it, the room number was 362, the last three digits of my folk’s phone number. I rushed back upstairs and lurked outside the window, I could definitely hear voices in there, and one of them sounded like Bill… but I still wasn’t 100% positive. Shit. I went back to the railing and sat there puffing hard on my smoke and pondering the night, the strange road that had led me to this moment. In the end I didn’t have the balls to knock on the door again, I resigned myself to spending the warm Nevada evening there on the walkway.

I finished my smoke, watching the red cascade of embers as I flicked the butt over the railing and down into the back of Bill’s truck below. If only I had the keys to that piece of shit I could spend the night in it… no sense in beating myself up over it, in the end I was the dumbass who let Bill take the key to the room, and I was the one whose drunk ass was too chicken to give the door of ol’ room 362 a good solid pounding, so I might as well make the best of it and quit propping up this railing and head back out to the strip to live it up.

No sooner did this thought cross my mind then I heard the sound of the door opening behind me. I turned to see Bill emerging, clothed only in my robe, holding an empty ice bucket in his left hand, and his right index finger to his lips as he backed out of the room. I coughed.

“Fuck!” the ice bucked clattered to the ground and Bill dropped into a fighting stance, “Shit man, don’t do that to me… I almost kicked your ass.”

Bill had earned a green belt in Kung Fu and a black belt in imagination.

“What the fuck do you have going on in there?” I smiled, “Did junior get lucky?” William D. Miller Jr. did not like being referred to by his title. But to my surprise he was unaffected by the quip.

“Oh man, what a night!” Bill was sweating with enthusiasm, “I blew through forty bucks on the slots like a fucking idiot, then I decided to head out to the strip to get some fresh air and this hot, HOT, chick walks up and asks me, ME, if I want a date? Are you shitting me? We spent my last $80 on dinner at the Mirage and a fifth of J.D., I’m just gonna grab the ice and…”

“Wait a sec bro…” I interrupted, “You have to be kidding me, this chick” I tilted my head to the right and looked over his shoulder at the one stocking clad leg I could see draping over the edge of the bed, “…this chick asked you for ‘a date’?”

“Yeah man, can you believe it?” gasped Bill, “I told you we’d see some beauty on this trip, and man oh man was I right!??”

In many ways, Bill had always had more street smarts than me, but I’d read more books. It appeared that on this particular walkway, on this particular night, in this particular heat, in this particular city, in this particular state, in this particular circumstance, and most of all in this particular moment; I was ahead of the game.

“She’s a hooker, bro.” ]]> 13@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ stories Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:05:00 -0700 arizona '95 - chap. 5 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=11 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=11#comm
From the gas station we made good time to the border, we stopped in the middle of Hoover dam, standing with one foot in Nevada, and one foot in Arizona. We’d only spent two days there, yet I felt like I’d learned a lot in that time about myself, and about Bill. When we’d first met seven years ago, Bill wouldn’t have walked around the block to show me a mural, and probably would have questioned my sexual orientation at the mere mention of art. It seemed that being cooped up in a truck with me for hours on end discussing everything from poon to poetry, the trials and tribulations of being on the road, and the open spaces of Arizona had sparked something in Bill.

Currently he was leaning over the wall at the sideof the dam, his beer-bloated stomach obscuring the “Danger Keep Off Wall” stenciling as it flattened against the concrete.

“Shit man, watch yourself.” I was always worried when it came to Bill and heights. When we’d first met, when we were a couple of punk teenagers, we used to skateboard in front of the auditorium of the elementary school that served our San Fernando Valley neighborhood. There was a tree that grew right next to the three-story auditorium, and if you climbed to the top of the tree you could jump from it to the roof. We used to sit up there and talk for hours about the girls we were interested in, and about Bill’s problems with his old man. One night Bill had leaned over the edge of the roof and dropped his skateboard off.

“I bet I could stick that landing.” He boasted.

“Yeah? Well just make sure I’m already at the bottom so I can run and call for the ambulance.” I laughed. It was three stories down onto concrete, you’d have to be nuts to even think about it.

Bill stood there frowning, staring pensively at the concrete below.

“Nah, I could totally do it.”

We didn’t talk about it again after that night, but then one day a few months later, there was a knock at my door. My mom answered it and I could hear her gasp, “William! What happened?” I heard Bill ask for me and I wandered over to the door as my mom rushed off to the bathroom to grab the first aid kit.

There stood Bill, his jeans ripped, his chin split open and bleeding, his t-shirt stained with blood, clutching one half of his skateboard in each hand.

“I did it bro!” he beamed at me.

I glanced over the edge of Hoover dam and silently thanked God that we didn’t have a skateboard in the truck. I glanced up and saw a police car approaching from the Nevada side of the dam.

“Come on, Bill. Let’s get going.”

“Huh?” Bill looked over his shoulder at me and I gestured towards the patrol car. “Right.” We jogged back to the truck and hopped inside just as the cop rolled to a stop next to us.

“Move along, fellas.”

“Yessir.” Saluted Bill, “Have a nice day!” and then, under his breath as we started towards Nevada, “Damn cop.” He smiled at his pun.

It only took us about 20 minutes to get to Vegas from the dam. The hazy evening sky was glowing from the electricity that had been water 30 miles back. I remembered the first time I’d ever seen Vegas, from the bed of another pickup truck about four years ago, a bunch of under aged rock-and-rollers out to see what Vegas offered that the Sunset Strip didn’t. It hadn’t taken us long to discover that bouncers were the first obvious distinction, but that’s another story.

It was Bill’s first visit to Vegas; his older brother had filled his head with so many tales of this Mecca of decadence that Bill was practically convinced he’d already been here. Since this was my first visit as a legal patron, I decided to let Bill indulge in his fantasy and lead our foray into the flickering neon night.

We grabbed a hotel off the strip, some shithole that was probably used more for turning tricks than getting sleep, then we hit the showers, changed, and were walking down the strip within an hour of pulling into town.

Bill had a list of old-school casinos that his brother had recommended, and we promptly abandoned it after The Dunes (which was first on the list) turned out to be a construction site. We made our way to one of the older casinos on the North end of the strip, Bill’s theory being that the less popular casinos were more grateful for the business.

The casino wasn’t overly crowded, but it wasn’t dead. We walked along the faded, garish carpet scoping out the scene. Every person we passed possessed a gaunt pallor, amplified by the florescent lighting. Row upon row of slot machines, each one manned by a cookie-cutter blue haired lady putting in her quarter and tugging on the handle like some kind of assembly line where the final product is poverty. It was depressing.

Bill wanted to play the slots. “It’s a sucker’s bet.” I told him, “We should play the poker machines, the bartender is right there and the game is a lot slower.” I pointed over at the bar.

“Nah man, you can play poker if you want but I’m hitting the slots.”

I wandered over to the poker bar; I was the youngest guy there by at least fifty years. No one was playing the poker games that were embedded in the bar, they were all turned around, back to the bar, watching something across from them.

I grabbed an empty stool and flagged down the bartender, handing him a twenty and asking for change and a beer. As he made his way to the till, I turned around to see what everyone was staring at.

Just across from the bar was one of those huge slot machines, the ones that are ten feet tall and have a gigantic handle that you have to reach over your head to pull, and standing there on tip-toe with the top of the handle just barely in her fingertips, was a petite twenty-something in a tiny red dress. She finally got her hand around the thing and then gave it a pull, bending over and letting all the old men at the bar get their thrills reading what brand of panties she wore. She released the handle and bounced in front of the machine as it spun up lemon… cherry… seven.

She turned and pouted at her audience, and the men all let out a sympathetic groan. One of them picked up a stack of silver dollars from the bar, crossing the aisle and offering them to her as a consolation prize.

I felt a tap on my shoulder “Here you go pal, enjoy the show.” I turned to see the bartender standing there behind a stack of silver dollars and a cold beer. I flicked the top dollar off the stack in his direction.

“Thanks.”

I played poker for about an hour, losing a total of five bucks, but drinking more than that in beer. In between hands I’d spin around on my stool and watch the slot machine spectacle behind me. After watching for a while I noticed that she was managing to pocket about half of what the geezers at the bar were giving her. Not a bad living I guess, considering her alternative careers in the city of sin probably held the dubious title of either “exotic dancer” or “escort”.

Tired of the poker and the repetition of the girl’s act, I wandered off to find Bill. ]]> 11@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ stories Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:30:00 -0700 arizona '95 - chap. 4 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=10 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=10#comm
I think that deep down he was still mad at me for my romantic interest in our friend Nicole in high school. She’d never been remotely interested in him, but she’d flirted with me, and I’d asked her out. She’d said she’d have to think about it (she was Catholic and hadn’t dated before), and while that was going on her friend Becky expressed an interest in me.At the time I was barely sixteen and “never been kissed” and pretty much just wanted to get it over with.

So Becky and I dated, and Nicole and Becky’s friendship was a casualty. Bill should have thanked me for it, after all Nicole cried about the whole thing on his shoulder, but I think that deep down he was upset that I’d so easily tossed aside the girl he’d decided was his soul mate.

All of that was ancient history now, five years in the past. Bill and I had both recently been screwed over by the girls we were dating, and part of this road trip was supposed to be an opportunity to sow some wild oats. But first we had to make it to Vegas.

We’d started up an incline that led to the horizon, and still there wasn’t a gas station in sight. Bill downshifted and slowed to 50, it looked like it was going to be quite a climb.

“Look on the bright side.” I smirked, “The truck is a lot lighter without any gas in the tank.”

Bill wasn’t amused; “We could lighten the load even more if I threw you out the window.” He growled.

I put my boots up on the dash and tilted my head back over the seat, feeling the vibration of the motor against my neck as we made our way up the incline.

“Wake me when we’re in Vegas and you need me to sign for the room.”

Being the only one with a credit card has its advantages.

Bill’s whole family had some novel concepts when it came to financial management, and the result of their unorthodox methods meant that by the time any child in the family was old enough to have a credit card, their credit was already shot. Bill had once seen a commercial on TV for a car dealer that boasted they could finance anyone, and if they couldn’t they would pay you $1,000. He drove all the way to Downey, but came back $1,000 richer and spent an hour lecturing me about how bad credit was more lucrative than good credit. I guess he had a point.

We rode for another ten minutes before it happened. The truck gave a jolt and began to sputter, lurching as it slowed. Bill slammed the clutch to the floor and actually leaned forward, as if he could will the truck further up the hill. I sat up and looked out the windshield, we weren’t too far from the crest of the hill, but it looked like we weren’t going to make it by coasting.

Bill cursed under his breath.

“I’ll be happy to volunteer to steer while you push.” I offered.

“Not yet.” Bill gritted his teeth and threw the transmission into first gear. The truck was almost stopped. As we slowed to a halt Bill let out the clutch and turned the ignition, then pushed the clutch back down as the truck jolted forward a few feet. He continued to pump the clutch and the key, using the starter motor to pull the car along.

“Dude!” I exclaimed, “You’re going to fuck your starter and your battery, cut that shit out.”

“We’ve only got a few more feet.” He hissed through gritted teeth.

I looked out the window at the crest of the hill in front of us, “A few feet to what? What are the odds that there is a gas station on the other side of the hill? Let’s just push this heap to the side of the road…”

“No!” he cut me off.

My neck started to ache from the constant heaving as Bill rocked back in forth in his seat, intent on making it to the top of the hill.

“You’re giving me whiplash, asshole!”

“Then get out and push!”

The starter was beginning to sound tired, I heard the cooler in the truck bed tip over, and turned around in my seat to watch what little water we had slosh around and soak our bags. Then Bill let out a maniacal laugh and stopped pumping the clutch.

“See! SEE! I told you I had it figured out!!” he was screaming at me, his face red with the effort of cresting the hill. I turned around and looked out the window as the truck started to pick up speed rolling down the long hill in front of us, and at the bottom of the hill, shining in the desert sun, a lone gas station.

Bill coasted the truck right up to the pump. The attendant, an older man in his late seventies or early eighties, had seen us coming and was waiting for us as we rolled to a stop. Bill was giddy, out of his mind. He leaped out of the driver seat and beamed a smile at the pump jockey, “Damn Pops, you ever seen anything like that? We ran out of gas right at the top of that hill back there! That’s gotta be a record or something!”

“Very impressive son, what’ll it be?” the old-timer seemed unimpressed.

“Fill it up with regular.” Bill was undaunted, “So you ever seen anyone pull anything like that before?”

The attendant set the latch on the pump handle, glanced at the rolling numbers, then turned and squinted at Bill, smiling a toothless grin; “Well, about once every couple of months it seems some idiot doesn’t read the sign outside of Dolan and ends up barely makin’ it here. Other than that, no, can’t say I’ve seen anything like it before.” He turned his head to the side and spat into the dirt, and then headed over to a nearby bucket to grab a squeegee.

Bill stood there gaping, his face red as a beet. I just sat in the cab, laughing my ass off and pounding the dashboard while we waited for the tank to fill. ]]> 10@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ stories Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:01:00 -0700 arizona '95 - chap. 3 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=9 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=9#comm
“You sure you can’t make it another 30 miles?” I asked. We’d come a little over 50 miles since the “next gas” sign, and so far both the driver and the truck seemed to be suffering from dyslexia when it came to the gas gauge. I had a private theory that some kind of kinetic energy was keeping us going, and I had a fear that any change in our speed or direction might land us stuck in the middle of nowhere under a high-noon sun.

“You worry too much, this is supposed to be a vacation.” Bill pulled the e-brake and opened his door, jumping from the truck as it was still sliding to a stop. I turned on the radio and scanned the static while he trotted a short way into the desert to take care of his business. I glanced at the little orange gas pump glowing on the dashboard and reached over and shut off the engine.Damn straight I was worried, we were 30 miles from anywhere and hadn’t seen a soul in the last 50 miles. There wasn’t a sign of life anywhere, and the only water we had was what was left of the melted ice in the cooler. Add all that to the fact that we were already dehydrated from all the boozing the day before and I couldn’t even figure out what possible reason Bill had to be doing what he was doing out there.

Bill jumped back in the drivers seat, started the truck (to my relief) and suddenly swerved off the road, down into the desert.

“Goddamnit Bill…” I started.

“Shutup, you gotta see this.” Bill interrupted, “If it’s what I think it is you’re gonna flip.”

“What is it, another mural? An oasis? You best not be taking me off in pursuit of some mirage.”

“There!” Bill was pointing out the windshield, as I turned to follow his finger he slammed on the brakes and opened his driver door, leaning out the side of the truck.

“Take over driving, I want to try something.”

I instinctively slid over into the driver seat and put my foot on the brake. By the time I looked up again Bill was already halfway between the truck and the large, wild, black bull that was grazing lazily on the chaparral.

“Turn it around man, and get ready to gun it!” Bill yelled over his shoulder as he pulled his hat off his head and started waving it in the air, trying to get the bull’s attention.

I closed the driver’s door and leaned out the window, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, bro!” I shouted back, “Come on man, let’s get moving, we don’t have the gas to waste on this shit.” Not to mention that we were God-knows-how-far from the nearest hospital.

“Shutup and turn the truck around you pussy!” Bill could be very persuasive in his rhetoric when it came to convincing someone to let him risk his life.

I swung the truck around, put on the brake, and craned my neck out the driver’s window to watch the show.

The bull didn’t really give a shit about Bill at first, but the only effect that this had was to give Bill a captive audience for his antics. He started by dancing around with his hat in the air, then he dropped his pants and mooned the beast. When that failed he stooped over and picked up a rock.

“Oh shit…” I whispered.

Next thing I knew Bill was running for the truck as fast as he could with clutching his hat in one hand and holding his pants up with the other, laughing his ass off as the bull started to charge.

I let him get to within about ten feet of the truck before I gunned it, laughing as I watched him in the rear view mirror.

“Fuck man! STOP!” he dropped his hat and started waving the dust from the back tires away from his face, “Goddamnit stop!”

I slowed down and he caught up and pulled himself up on the tailgate. I popped the clutch and floored it, and Bill tumbled off the back of the truck.

“Oh fuck!” I slammed on the brakes, but before I could look over my shoulder Bill was back up and into the truck bed shouting “GO GO GO!!” and slapping the top of the cab.

The Bull was only about six yards away. I popped the clutch out again, and the truck stalled. “GO! GODDAMNIT! THAT SHIT ISN’T FUNNY!” Bill was looking back over his shoulder as the bull lowered its head. I didn’t think it was funny anymore either, I turned the key and the motor started, I floored it and the bull began to shrink in the rearview, still it followed us all the way back to the highway. Once we were back on the asphalt, Bill stuck his head through the back window.

“Pull over asshole.” He growled.

I checked the side-view mirror for any sign of the bull and eased the car over to the right, then slid over to the passenger seat. Bill hopped back in the car, I couldn’t tell if he was mad because of what I’d done, or mad that he hadn’t thought of it first.

“I told you it was a bad idea.” I ventured. Bill glared at me for a moment, then pulled back onto the highway and cracked a smile, “You gotta admit, even if we die of thirst before we hit the next town, that was worth it.”

He was right. ]]> 9@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ stories Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:35:00 -0700 arizona '95 - chap. 2 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=8 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=8#comm
I had some crazy dreams that night. I dreamt that I was in a harem full of tentacled concubines who tickled me mercilessly. I tried to flee, only to realize that I was bound with silk curtains at the hands and feet that tripped me up and I fell out the window. Then I was falling naked through pine trees, the needles brushing my flesh as I accelerated faster and faster. Just before I hit the groundI woke up with blurry motes of dust dancing in the sun shining in from under a blotched old window shade. I untangled myself from the sheets, filling the room with thousands of tiny points of light. I stood up, straightening out my pants and shirt as I walked down the hall to find Bill still asleep, the empty bottle of bourbon dangling in his limp hand.

“Like father, like son.” I mumbled, and I kicked the couch, “WAKE UP YOU DRUNK!”

Bill woke up swinging; he’d once clocked his mother when she’d woken him from a drunken stupor.

He turned and looked at me groggily, “Fuck you.”

“Love you too bro.” I glanced at my watch, “It’s 10:30, wasn’t your aunt expecting us at 10?”

“Yeah.” He slurred, and started to pull his boots on.

“I hope they have some coffee.” I grabbed my bag and made for the door, still standing open from the night before.

“HOLY SHIT!” Bill yelled, leaping off the couch and running out the front door, “FUCK!” he danced around the driveway like a maniac.

“What the fuck is the matter?”

“Shit, motherfucking wolf spider!”

I glanced back at the foot of the couch just in time to see a 2” long spider retreat back into Bill’s boot. I grabbed a flyswatter off the wall and walked over to the boot, used the handle to pick it up, then turned and flung it out the door at Bill.

“Just knock it out, step on it, and put your shoe on, you pussy.” I grabbed Bill’s other boot, locked the door, and was silently grateful that I’d been too tired to remove any of my clothing the night before.

“Fuck you man.” Bill seethed as he knocked the spider out of his boot and onto the ground, “You’d have done the same if you’d stuck your bare foot in your boot and felt that fucker in there.”

“That’s why I wear socks.” I laughed as Bill batted at the spider with his limp boot.

The morning was sweltering hot, the road shimmered at the end of the dirt driveway, and in the distance the horizon danced in the heat. It was a short drive across the highway to Bill’s aunt’s trailer. Bill introduced me to his aunt Peg and then to his cousin Susie, who had just turned 18, his “newly legal kissin’ cousin” in his vulgar words… she was cute, but not as cute as Bill had built her up to be, and based on her shyness, I guessed that Bill’s stories of their teenage summer trysts were as full of hot air as the desert sky.

I told them the story of “Bill and the Wolf Spider”, which got a good laugh from everyone but Bill. Then we spent an awkward few moments sitting in the living room waiting for the coffee to brew. Suddenly I felt something brush against the inside of my leg. There was no one near me, but I felt it again so I reached down and could feel a lump under my pant leg. I jumped up, reached down my pants, and pulled out a wolf spider twice the size of the one Bill had found in his boot.

I lost it.

I stripped down to my skin in about two seconds flat, Bill’s aunt stood there blushing, doing her best to cover her daughter’s eyes and usher her out of the room while I screamed “Get ‘em off me! God damn!!” suddenly realizing the concubine-pine-needle-tentacles of the night before were all too real, and my mind was filled with visions of my lying on that disgusting bed with wolf spiders crawling all over me in the night.

Bill was on the floor howling with laughter, while I stood there naked in his aunt’s living room stomping on the clothes that were now strewn about her floor.

“Oh man that’s rich!” he roared, “‘Just shake ‘em out and step on ‘em, you pussy!’”

I was too freaked to be angry. I retreated to the bathroom to take a shower and do a thorough check of my clothes before leaving in shame. Bill’s aunt and cousin didn’t even show their faces to say goodbye, much less give us our coffee. And I could tell from the glint in Bill’s eye that I wasn’t going to live this down anytime soon.

“You alright man?” he asked as we jumped back into the truck, “You wanna stop at my cousin Dempsy’s place, he’s an exterminator you know.”

“Now it’s my turn. Fuck you.”

“Love you too bro!” Bill chuckled as he threw the truck into gear and bumped up onto the highway.

“Alright, alright, truce. I just want some coffee and a smoke.”

The one business in this trailer-town was a couple of doublewides that had been patched together to serve as a town hall, post office, and bar. It seemed that the only source of income in this place was social security, and the main source of entertainment was getting drunk. We tried to get a cup of coffee, but the place only served beer and whiskey. We bought a pack of smokes and were eyeing the tattered felt of the pool table when we noticed that a few locals were giving us dirty looks. Apparently word traveled fast in this town, even without phones, and we decided to hedge our bets and head for Vegas rather than waste our time trying to explain my sudden bout of arachnophobic nudism.

As we reached the edge of town, Bill suddenly grabbed the emergency brake and flipped a 180, heading back the way we’d come.

“What the fuck!?” I scrambled for my seatbelt.

“Settle down you pussy.” Bill chuckled, “I want to show you something.”

We blew back through the town at 90 miles an hour, headed towards Chloride. I caught another glimpse of Will’s sad trailer as we passed through, its withered two-by-fours twisting towards the sky. I tried to picture old man Will and his pudgy wife living out their golden years in that rusty can, fighting, drinking, eating, and fucking their last years away in the Arizona heat. It made me sad to think that the life I was imagining for them was what they were looking forward to, that it was their goal. How many years would they work, how much would they save, to escape to that hell? How could their life be so bad that living in that spider infested shack would seem like a retreat?

Bill pulled off route 93 onto county road 125 and blew through Chloride about two minutes later. He slowed towards the end of town then pulled a sharp right onto a dirt road that bumped up towards some rocky hills. After about a mile he pulled over and hopped out.

“Come on.”

Bewildered I grabbed the last smoke out of the pack on the dashboard, lit it, and followed Bill up the path to the rocks.

As I rounded a corner I was confronted by a vivid eclectic mix of Asian and Native American symbols, huge colorful murals painted across the boulders: A woman clutching an infant in one hand and holding the other in Karana mudra, surrounded by yin-yang swirls as snakes entwined her arms and embraced her bosoms. A serpent swallowing the sun, its tail ending in a talon that clutched at the town below. A painting of Chloride in its heyday, a silver mining town of two thousand residents baking in the desert sun. A vision quest recorded on the Arizona sandstone, fading as the years wash over it, yet still bearing testament to the creative fire in which it was forged.

I stood there slack jawed, waiting for all the richness and beauty of this place to funnel its way through my too small eyes.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d like it.” Bill had climbed to the top of one of the smaller rocks, this one painted with a flaming goddess, her arms reaching to the heavens. He stood there looking down. “You know I don’t know much about art.”

“I don’t know what to say, it’s amazing, incredible.” I finally managed to say. “Beautiful.”

Bill jumped down beside me and looked up at it, “Yeah, not a bad find for a guy with no soul, huh?” he punched me in the arm and turned back down the path towards the truck. “Some hippie painted it in the 60’s. So you comin’ or are you gonna stay out here until dark?” he called over his shoulder.

We trekked back down to the truck in silence, and headed back through Chloride, checking out all the strange sculptures local artists had made out of old mining equipment that lined the streets. We didn’t say a word to each other until we were back on the highway and I saw the sign just outside of town:

Next Gas 80 Miles



“Hey man, you think we have enough gas to make it 80 miles?” I asked.

“No worries, I have it all figured out.”

That’s what I was afraid of. ]]> 8@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ stories Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:10:00 -0700 arizona '95 - chap. 1 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=7 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=7#comm
Thirty after Uncle Mike’s visit I stood at the North Rim, grinding out my cigarette with the heel of my boot as I gazed over the precipitous edge. The sound of an airplane in the distance filled the air as I watched a small white dot making its way up the Colorado River.I scanned the skies as the dot slowly worked upstream, and after a few deep breaths of the chaparral tinged air it occurred to me that the sound I was hearing was the engine of the boat, lagging behind by half a mile.

I let out my breath and a whisper, “Far out.”

My roommate Bill, who had initiated this trip and was currently relieving himself by watering a nearby Joshua tree glanced over his shoulder at me, “What?”

“Nothing man, it’s just a long way down…”

“No shit.” Bill hiked up his jeans by the zipper and got back in the truck, “Are you finished or are we gonna stay out here until dark?”

I looked one last time up and down the canyon, I sorely wished I could stay and watch the sunset play among the sandstone, flirting with the shadows as the quiet river carved an ever-deeper path. How far down would it carve before it was done? What secret beauty lies yet to be found? I took one last breath of sage, whispered “Thanks Uncle Mike.” and started back to the truck.

I flipped my sunglasses down to cover my glare, “Shit Bill, don’t you have any soul at all? Can’t you appreciate the beauty of all this?”

“I’ll show you plenty of beauties once we hit Vegas, get your ass in the car.” Bill laughed.

Bill was full of talk like that. He had a thousand different strategies on how to get laid, and could always tell you what was wrong with yours, even though he was about half as successful as he’d lead you to believe. No matter, I’d seen what I’d come to see, I was happy for the moment, even though I knew it would only be a matter of time before Bill was rattling off some new harebrained scheme.

The matter turned out to be seconds, not hours.

Bill let out a low whistle, “Man look at all these Joshua trees…” he pushed his cowboy hat back on his head and leaned over the steering wheel as he started the truck, “I hear you can buy 10 acres of prime Arizona real estate for two grand. If we could get a loan for two grand we could come up here once a week, load up the truck with Joshua trees, head on back to L.A. and sell them at $300 a pop. We’d be rich in no time!”

“Yeah Bill.” I groaned, leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes, “I hear there’s a huge demand for Joshua trees in L.A.”

“That’s the problem with you.” Bill leaned back and gunned the engine, fishtailing around onto the dirt road and spewing dust and rocks in his wake, “You play it safe, you’d buy ten acres out here and sit on your ass watching the sunset every night, while I’d be clearing all the land around you and developing it…”

“And once you finished I’d be sitting pretty atop the only undeveloped prime real estate in the area, ready to sell to the highest bidder without any blood, sweat, or tears on my part!” I interrupted. “You’re right, that’s my problem.”

“Fuck you.”

“Seriously” I continued, “I want to encourage you. I hear that Joshua trees just don’t grow in California.” I laughed, “Man, you would corner the market in no time, if anyone wanted one, they would have to come to you!” I gestured out the window to the empty desert around us, “And all this prime undeveloped land would be yours.”

“Ok enough, fuck off.”

We rode on in silence for a couple of hours; we were headed for Bill’s parent’s “winter home”, a double-wide in a small shantytown of trailers off the 93 just north of Chloride. Half the town were related to Bill, aunts, uncles, cousins, second-cousins, a family tree growing out of the Arizona sand. Bill’s dad, Will, had been making two trips a year out here with a trailer full of framed lumber, adding onto the double-wide and building it into a retirement home fit for a king-size bed. We’d convinced Will to fund the trip under the ruse that we were going to “check up” on the construction, since he hadn’t been able to get out here in the last six months, and we'd blown the "gas money" he'd paid us on cigarettes and booze before we’d even reached the California border.

The Arizona desert blurred past the window as Bill matched his speed to the highway 93 signs that flew past every couple of miles. The barbed wire fences that separated nothing from nothing subtitled the yucca foothills in the distance. We were coming up on Chloride just as the sun was going down, and we rolled to a stop beside old Will’s trailer just after dark.

“Sheeeit” hissed Bill as he tore off his hat and jumped out of the truck. I opened the passenger door and stood on the sideboard, looking over the cab at the twisted network of framing that sat illuminated by the headlights, warping in the Arizona heat. Bill’s mouth hung open as he gaped at the damage.

“Damn. It looks like some kind of bizarre modern art.” Was all I could manage.

“Sheeeit” Bill repeated “Will ain’t gonna be happy about this.” He turned and walked to the truck, reaching into the bed, flipping open the cooler and pulling out the last two beers. He tore one off and tossed the other to me. I caught it and pressed it against my forehead, two minutes out of the air conditioned truck and I was already sweating like a pig. Bill cracked his open, guzzled it, and reached into the cab to grab his smokes.

“I told him that if he let that framing sit out here unprotected through the winter it would warp.” Bill was already rewriting history, I had been the one who had pointed that out when he’d told me of his father’s plan.

“Uh huh”, I grunted as I groped my empty pockets, “Hey man, toss me a smoke.”

We leaned against the truck, staring at the twisted wreckage of Will’s efforts as we smoked in silence, cicadas serenading us in the heat of the evening. After a few minutes I took the last swig of my beer, crumpled the can and threw it into Will’s deformed and unfinished living room.

“We’re out of beer.”

Bill started as if he’d been awaken from a sound sleep.

“Oh, no worries” he recovered, “the old man has a bottle of Jim Beam around here somewhere…”

Bill grabbed his suitcase out of the truck bed, and I reached into the cab and grabbed my knapsack, following him up to the dark trailer door. As he opened it foul, hot air rushed past us. It smelled like shit in there, musty, dusty, and rusty.

“Hang on a sec, let me find the lights.” Bill worked his way inside, knocking over what sounded like a month’s worth of recycling. He swore and pushed his way around the dark room, finally emerging with a hangdog expression, “The fucking power is out, fucking piece of shit trailer.”

I turned and looked up and down the highway, trying to remember the last time I’d seen a telephone pole. I opened my bag and pulled out a lighter, “You think your folks have a lantern in there?” Bill’s eyes lit up with new hope, “Yeah, I’m sure they at least have a flashlight or something!” He reached into his jeans and pulled out his Zippo, rushing back inside under a halo of burning butane. Within moments the filthy windows of the place lit up with a brownish glow.

As I entered the trailer I stepped over the bakers rack that had fallen across the door, strewing Bill’s mom’s collection of aluminum can pinwheels across the floor. I stooped to pick move them out of the doorway, and could hear Bill shouting from the back of the trailer, “I found it! Bastard always has a stash of booze somewhere.” He emerged from the hall triumphant; a bottle of Jim Bean and two dusty Laughlin shot glasses held before him, “Let’s party!"

It had been a long day and neither of us had eaten since lunch. A couple of shots on top of the six or seven beers I’d had since then and I was ready to get some sleep. I kicked a dusty stack of Reader’s Digests off the end of the couch and put my knapsack under my head. Bill had grown frustrated with the shot glasses and was taking a pull off the bottle as he saw me starting to doze off.

“Hey man, you don’t have to sleep on the couch, there’s a king size bed back there.” he tilted his head towards the hallway.

I opened one eye and stared at him, “No shit?”

The trailer barely looked big enough to hold the two of us and a couch, much less a king size bed. I pulled myself to my feet and staggered down the hall, pulling out my lighter and thrusting it into the one, tiny bedroom. There was a full king size mattress wedged into the room, curling up around all four sides. Bill was looking over my shoulder and laughing, “The sonofabitch does everything ass-backwards”

“What about you man, don’t you want the bed?” I asked, after all it was his family’s trailer.

“Nah man, I can’t sleep in that thing, knowing what my folks have done on it.” Bill laughed, taking another swig off the bottle of J.B. and stumbling back down the hall.

Our whole circle of friends were familiar with Bill’s parents escapades. Every Friday night like clockwork old man Will came falling through the living room door straight from the bar, drunk off his ass, and horny as hell. Bill’s folks would head to the back of his house and within moments the whole place could hear the headboard banging against the wall. I turned an apprehensive eye to the mattress in front of me, then looked over my shoulder down the hall at Bill already sound asleep on the couch.

“What the hell.”

I jumped onto the mattress and was out like a light. ]]> 7@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ default Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:30:00 -0700 forest leaves in autumn http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=6 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=6#comm cheeks traded for lips,
ear for a heart...

& the stars fall from the heavens...

Just shy of two years,
just out of the woods
you saw your world without shadows
& ran back to the forest
shoes flying from your feet,
sinking in the grass
lost in your wake.

I held the glass slipper,
wiping blood from the cracks,
realizing that it never really fit you at all... ]]> 6@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ poetry Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:08:00 -0700 muse http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=5 http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/entry.php?id=5#comm & I've been chained to yours for years...
Toiling under the blazing moon
until I thought my soul would burst with
love's great despair.
& now as you mount my vassal breast,
even the freedom of your embrace
binds me to your volcano, your dormant groans
not hot enough to melt these shackles...

& in my simple confidence,
the power to move worlds.

Don't ask me why I'm constrained to this peak,
ask the hill why it's on my leash. ]]> 5@http://ficklesickle.com/pivot/ poetry Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:55:00 -0700