thewestern

[thewestern]

The Stockman Bar

A short story by A. Charles Goodnight

In November 2020, Colorado voters narrowly approved Proposition 114, mandating that the state Parks & Wildlife Commission develop and implement a plan to reintroduce and manage gray wolves on designated land west of the Continental Divide. Since then, 25 wolves have been released. Nine of them have died. At least one of these deaths was confirmed by necropsy to have been caused by illegal poaching. No arrests have been made. 

The Stockman Bar is slower than normal on Friday nights. Didn’t used to be that way. It used to be a man drew his wages from the foreman or whomever on a Friday evening, paid cash in full, and sometime in the purgatory between late that night and early the following morning, a sizable allocation of that albeit paltry sum had been drained down a bottle or gambled away on eight ball or most saddest of all, spent in some foolhardy ploy to gain the affection of a good woman, right here at the Stockman Bar. 

But then some things change. 

Nowadays there wasn’t near as many working ranches hiring. And as for the few there was, nobody paid in cash any longer neither. The big operators paid via direct deposit. So then in order to cowboy you needed a checking account for your wages to be deposited into, directly. Provided the transaction processed in a timely fashion, one could go make a withdrawal from a cash machine, of which there was one directly next door to the Stockman Bar. For that transaction you would owe a nominal fee, unless of course the cowboy in question did his banking here at the Mountain Valley Credit Union, in which case said fee would be waived. In any case, if it was a cold beer or a hot meal you were after, you’d need the paper money, on account of the Stockman Bar remained — as it ever was — a cash-only establishment. 

Some things stay the same. 

Mostly they have done at the Stockman Bar. For a fact, if the incandescent lights strung up about the place were any indication, it was still Christmas, despite it for a fact being the latter half of March. Regulars didn’t mind. It could stay Christmas the year around for all they cared.

Ben wasn’t quite yet a regular, but the cash-only requirement that often tripped up tourist types didn’t stifle him any. He carried one hundred dollars U.S. to the penny on his person regardless of where he was going. His old man’d told him from his time in the Army, how he learned that a crisp hundred-dollar bill would get you out of just about any jam. That was about the extent of the knowledge Sergeant Second Class Salazar had passed down to his son, regarding his time spent serving our country in peacetime. That, and to always wear protection. A hundred won’t get you out of that jackpot, Benjamin. Take at least five times that, iffin you’re lucky and that’s all it costs you. 

Anyways.

Since he seldom got fatherly advice, what little he had received Ben followed to the letter. Albeit he carried smaller denominations. After all, he’d shutter to think how Rosie’d react to his attempt to claim ninety-seven dollars in change on this here purchase of a Bud long neck. Heck. You ask her to break a twenty and she’ll give you a family look like she could just as well break your kneecap. 

Rosie tended bar at the Stockman and her disposition was anything but. For a fact, she could be meaner than a rattlesnake with a toothache if you crossed her or even so much as slightly inconvenienced her in any conceivable way. Thirty-some odd years of disgruntled employment rendered over long winters had shortened her temper considerable.

Hadn’t this winter though seemed interminable, in particular. Usually by this time the ice on Walden Reservoir would’ve started to break up a bit at least. Yet here they were at the beginning of spring and Rosie’s beloved, Bill, and all his good-for-nothing buddies were still out there sitting around a hole and holding their rods like they were still worth a shit. Them or their rods. 

Ben tipped Rosie a generous fifty-percent and took his beer by the wood-burning fireplace, where likewise the stockings remained hung quite carelessly for it being nearly a quarter of the way to next December. On a busy night that’d been prime real estate, but he had the run of the place being how the only other patrons at present were Timmy and his boy, also Timmy. Albeit he went by L.T., for Little Timmy. Timmy’s late father had gone by Tim, hence how come he was called Timmy. By the time L.T. came along, it seemed a waste not to keep the namesake going, but them both going by Timmy could cause confusion, and it didn’t seem right that they’d go back to Tim. 

Timothy was out of the question.  

Ben was anticipating that L.T. would be by soon to invite him to play foosball, as had become their custom of the last few Fridays, but he didn’t want to be presumptuous as to impede upon their father-son time. But then there he was come scampering over in the way that only a boy his age could. Ben would’ve guessed he was about ten, or thereabouts, but then he himself was the age — after he was a kid, but before he had any of his own — when it became hard to tell how old somebody else’s was. 

Hey Ben wanna play foosball, L.T. asked without so much as taking a breath nor looking up from his little square-toed boots as they shuffled on the tired linoleum tile floor. Timmy had impressed upon his son the importance of looking a person in the eye and speaking clear, but damned if L.T. wasn’t shy with a stubborn streak. 

Sure thing. How about you go fetch the ball from Rosie and I’ll meet you over there. 

Okaybye.

Ben approached Big Timmy — and that he was, every bit of six-foot-two, two-hundred and change  — to get his blessing, again being as how he didn’t want to impose. To the contrary, Timmy was happy his son had made a friend, even if he was three times his age. In a town of six hundred-some, you took what you could get for as far as company went. 

Timmy. 

Ben. 

Before either had even the time to say something innocuous about the unseasonably cold weather, L.T. was back with the foosball. By the purpose with which he was moving you could tell he’d been looking forward to this all the week long, since last they played. 

Alright then. Holler if you need me. 

No, because of he was pleased to see L.T. be social, Timmy didn’t feel put out in the least. The only child of a single parent, they spent most of their free time with one another anyhow. As for foosball, he’d have played with L.T. himself, but honestly the thought hadn’t occurred to him. The lord knows how many times he’d set foot in this godforsaken bar, he’d not laid a hand on one of those twisters, or whatever they’re called. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago when Ben must’ve noticed L.T. looking all forlornly and invited him to play that he’d seen anybody use the thing. Not that he had anything against the notion of playing foosball. Just why would you, he supposed, when you had a perfectly good pool table right next to it, were his thoughts on the matter. 

Ben suspected it was slightly more complicated than that. That the Stockman clientele as it were suffered from a subtle anti-soccer bias, something he’d encountered previously in his travels among the similar small towns he’d lived in over the past five or so years. In a prior life, Ben’d been a soccer player himself, you see. At the Division 1 collegiate level, no less. Went from a walk-on to second-team All Conference at New Mexico State. 

Go Aggies. 

But out here the boys played football, damnit. Even if they hadn’t the numbers to field anything more than a seven-on-seven squad and that’s after combining with next town over. Not to mention the budget to buy every last one of them scrawny sum-bitches a helmet and shoulder pads. 

Timmy played some high school ball for his part. Fullback, inside linebacker and punter. Cut quite the imposing figure in that cowboy collar. He didn’t expect there’d still be a program by the time L.T. came of age for trying out. But that was quite alright with him. Brutal damned sport for kids to play, was the way he saw it in hindsight. 

L.T. lacked his father’s size beside. Rosie lent him the stepstool — the one she used to reach the top-shelf liquor on the seldom special occasion somebody ordered anything other than the house special: a shot of rot-gut whiskey and a domestic beer … in the city they call that a boilermaker, but out here they don’t feel the need to name every damn thing  — just so as he could see over the table.   

So are we playing spinners then? 

Last Friday Ben had explained to L.T. the unwritten rules of foosball. How it was considered poor form to remove one’s hand from the grip in an effort to twist it as hard as one could. 

Uhm, L.T. considered this. Me spinnies. You no. 

Fair enough. 

A handicap system did seem reasonable. Like many men of a certain age — of the generation before video games and the Internet converged to render all IRL games irrelevant — Ben could handle his business on a foosball table. As evidence that he could even juggle between the little soccer men, making the deft touch passes to set up open looks. This required some finesse. 

L.T. on the other hand subscribed to the grip-it-and-rip-it school of foosballing. Turning the kickers into little tornadoes, spraying and praying for a goal, which wouldn’t you know it he tallied one before Ben.

One-nil, L.T.

 Nice going, buddy.

 Timmy was watching over his shoulder. He tried his level-best to be encouraging.

L.T. knew better than to gloat, though. Quite nonchalantly he notched one of his tiles, retrieved the ball from behind Ben’s goalkeeper and carried on with the game. Act like you’ve been there before, his dad taught him in such a way that stuck. 

Just as Ben evened the score at one, the front door to the Stockman swung open, sending a cold burst of night air the length of the barroom.  

Hot dog, is it cold out there or what?

Rosie, dear, warm me up would you please? 

The man sidled up to the bartop expectantly. 

For a moment nothing was said. 

You gonna order something or not? 

Didn’t I just? 

Didn’t you just what? 

Why, order a drink, Rosie. 

If you had I’d be pouring it, wouldn’t I. 

Oh, come now, Rose. Quit playing so coy with me. How many times does a man have to order a Double Beam and Diet before you remember that it’s his drink. 

My job is not remembering drinks. It’s pouring them, Rosie clarified in the time it took to do just that.

And yet you seem to recall I take it with a lime. Darling, you aren’t fooling anybody. Mark my words, one of these nights I’m gonna get you to flirt with me back. 

It’ll be a colder night than this, then. You plan on paying for that? 

Put it on my tab, Matthew said with a shit-sipping grin as he backed away from the bar. 

He’s backed up on me, Rosie. 

Gee, thanks, Timmy. I’ll take it as an advance on my winnings, he said as he shadowboxed around his oldest buddy, who was perhaps the only person on Planet Earth tireder than Rosie with this attempt at repartee. 

Another pop, please. And whatever he’s having. 

The tenspot he slid over covered both their drinks as well as gratuity. 

They ought to fit him for a muzzle. 

Yeah, well. Don’t mind him any. He’s all bark. 

Then a shock collar would do.

No, he’d like that too much. I’d settle for a mute button.

From your lips. I’m gonna close the kitchen early tonight. Hector’s got a long drive over the pass, in these conditions. You or the little one want something before I send him home? 

No, thank you. We’re fine.

You sure? That boy needs to eat. 

Don’t I know. And you know I love your chili, Rosie. But L.T.’s convinced he’s a vegetarian. Hell of a thing for an eight-year-old to decide to be. Takes after his mother, with the being healthy, I guess. All the good it did her.

Timmy let that last bit slip. Boy, he hated to pity himself.  

But, anyhow, there’s no convincing that boy of anything. Suppose he’s his father’s son in that regard. 

Okay, hon, Rosie said as she smiled for the first time that week, albeit a little wistfull.

Meanwhile, as they were gossiping about L.T., Matthew was sneaking up behind him as if a mouth like his you couldn’t hear coming from a mile away. 

To no one’s surprise, he hoisted L.T. by his haunches off the step stool and spun him around, giving him the patented old Uncle Matthew tickle monster treatment. 

Matthew Matthew put me down put me down, L.T. pleaded through choked down tears of frustration. 

Alright, alright. Used to be you liked roughhousing with your Uncle Matthew. Careful now you don’t hurt his feelings. 

Sorry. It’s just we’re in the middle of a foosball match. 

A match, huh? Well, pardon me. Ranger, I hope you’re not turning our sweet, innocent Little Timmy into one of your soccer hooligans. For crying out loud I hear he’s already a damn herbivore. 

How’re you doing, Matt? 

Ben called Matthew, Matt, precisely because he knew he was particular about the -thew. This was his way of subtly protesting Matthew’s being a smart ass about calling him Ranger, which he was not, despite being as such employed by the Colorado Department of Parks and Wildlife. The more accurate generalization would’ve been to call him, Warden, as in game warden. But in CPW that position had been renamed District Wildlife Manager. They changed it some years back on account of the term game implied some element of predation, whereas their purview extended to critters all up and down the food chain. Point in fact, Ben wasn’t even a DWM, FWIW. Officially speaking he was the Wolf Conflict Program Manager, which gets to the crux of how come Matthew was giving him such a hard time from the first. 

I’m alright, Ranger, thank you for asking. Although you’ve been better, I gather. From what I hear, at least. He’s still hasn’t turned up, has he? 

 Who’s missing Uncle Matthew?

Perhaps in a pique of frustration, Ben let loose with an absolute bang on that hit the back of L.T.’s goal with such force it bounced right back onto the pitch.  

We got a game going here, Matt, if you don’t mind. 

I thought it was a match. And I just figured I was to find you, it’d be out looking. 

Looking for what? 

You haven’t heard about the case of the missing wolf, L.T.? Why, it’s the talk of the town. 

There’s a wolf went missing Ben? 

Afraid so, buddy. We’re hoping it’s just his collar malfunctioning, Ben said knowing it damn well wasn’t.

Which one?

2306. 

Oh no. He’s my favorite. 

You got a favorite, L.T.? My lord. 2306, was it? Alpha bravo niner seven. See I don’t get that. The way folks fawn over those furry devils, you’d think they’d give them proper names.  

Yeah, well, we try to discourage the practice. As so far as they’re not pets.

Certainly not. If they were I supposed somebody would miss ‘em. Like L.T. here when Taco ran off. When was that, last July Fourth? L.T., you must have put a poster in every store window in town. Granted there’s only the handful, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it. We told you up and down it was the firecrackers that spooked him, and he’d be back in time for supper, but you just wouldn’t take no for an answer. By the time you were out their pounding pavement old Taco was back home humping the furniture, wasn’t he Timmy? 

Take it easy, Matthew. 

Who, me? 

Yes, you. Quit hectoring them, alright. Can’t you see they’re playing foosball?

And I’d be loathe to interrupt that. But I’m just curious if how come Ben came to be our special wolf whisperer, what he’s doing twirling these little soccer men around, instead of going out and howling at the moon, or what have you. Surely you’re not gonna find a wolf in here at the Stockman. Lest Hector done grinded him up in the chili. Always thought it tasted like dog meat. 

Put hair on your chest anyhow. 

Sorry to disappoint you, Matt. I’m off the clock. And even if I was working it’s not my jurisdiction. The Feds from F&W are coordinating that investigation. Since we’re both here though, and you seem so concerned, maybe I ought to have a look in your truck bed. 

Alright, come on now. Both of you. 

No, no, Timmy! It’s fine! We’re just having a little fun. Speaking for myself, I enjoy some lively conversation around here for once. Iffin Rosie had her way they’d convert this place to a monastery and we’d all take a vow of silence. 

Yeah, whatever you say, Timmy said. Let’s just you and I play.

Hey, 10-4. And, L.T., you ever want to learn a man’s game, you just let your Uncle Matthew know. I’ll turn you into a proper pool shark in no time.   

A man’s game. Would you listen to yourself? Just rack the damn balls how about.

Geez. Since when did you get so sensitive, Timmy? What are you worried sick about this wolf, too?

Quit it, Matthew. I’m serious. 

Here Matthew did the thing where he put his palms aloft, like a soccer player protesting a yellow card, whilst the poor bastard whose shin he just dug his cleats into is there on the turf writhing in agony. Though in fairness he too could be a bit embellishing. It is soccer. 

Suffice it to say though Matthew was a bit of a button pusher by his nature. In particular when it came to Timmy, his brother not by blood but rather by some demographic luck of the draw or the lack there of it. One might say he was just being a pest for the sake of it. Timmy would. But then Matthew would say, Hey, I’m just trying to liven things up a little. Probably they were both right. 

Matthew placed his last quarter on the rail, saving a place nobody was likely to claim. Likewise he racked with a sense of purpose. Taking great care to alternate stripes and solids. Performing his little ritual of shakes and taps. Lifting the triangle as if it were a glass case protecting some crown jewel. And it worked too. A tighter rack you never saw. 

We all control what we can. 

L.T. hesitated before he put the foosball back in play — it was now four-to-two, Ben, for those keeping score at home. He was waiting for his dad to break. Every son has those little moments he remembers of beholding in awe of his father’s strength. L.T. hadn’t seen Timmy manhandle a heifer like he had done before he was born. But watching him draw back the cue and send those balls exploding outward to all corners of the table. By god. I mean, the sound alone. Like buckshot gone off in a bathroom stall. 

Well. It was some consolation, anyway. 

In defiance of the laws of physics and accordance with Timmy’s rotten luck, the table came to rest without a single ball dropping. So there Matthew was lining up his shot when upon he interrupted himself. 

Say, Ranger. Did I see right that they staked a reward for that wolf that went AWOL? 

Goddamnit, Matt. What did I just say? 

Relax, dude. I’m just curious, is all. You don’t mind, do you, Ben?

No, I don’t mind at all. I guess I’m a little curious though how come you only ask questions you already know the answer to …

Okay. That’s fair. I had said I heard something about it. Maybe you can shed some light as to what sum they put up for that bounty?

Last I saw it was a hundred. 

A hundred dollars? 

Thousand. 

But you just said it was a hundred. 

Christ almighty, Matthew, it’s a hundred thousand dollars he meant and you damn well know it. 

A hundred thousand? Dollars? Damn! Now that’s a king’s ransom. L.T., how much’d you offer up for Taco when he took off last July Fourth? Twenty bucks? 

Fifty. It was all I had. 

Fifty bucks, huh. That’s mighty good of you. Suppose twenty ain’t enough of an incentive. Not for a beloved family pet. Fifty would be more appropriate. But one hundred. Thousand. Carry the two—that’s two-thousand times the value you appraised poor Taco. And as we’ve well established, a wolf isn’t anybody’s idea of a pet. More liable to eat your dog than act like one. 

I think the wolves are cool Uncle Matthew. 

That so? Well, let me ask you: how old are you now, L.T.? 

Eight and three-quarters. 

Nearly nine already? Where does the time go? But the reason I ask, L.T., how old you are, is when I was your age, I remember thinking wolves were pretty cool, too. And, meanwhile, I was scared of girls. 

Matthew missed a wide-open shot and looked at the table askew, as if it must have been crooked. 

Now that I’m pushing thirty, though, I don’t much care for wolves. And I’m terrified of women. Just goes to show. 

I know what you mean Uncle Matthew. I used to hate broccoli but now it’s probably my favorite vegetable. Either that or tomatoes. 

Tomato’s a fruit, son. Technically speaking. 

Careful you don’t turn into a fruit yourself you keep eating nothing but them veggies. 

I said watch it, now, Matthew.

What?

I like asparagus too. It makes your pee smell funny.  

It does that. But, I truly do believe a man needs a balanced diet. Wouldn’t you say, Ranger? 

Ben didn’t look up from the table to reply that he didn’t much care what other people ate.

I suppose you wouldn’t, being how you’re new in town. But we raise beef in Walden. And we damn well eat it, too. 

Correct me if I’m wrong, Matt. I thought you worked for the county.  

Matter of fact, you are wrong. I work a road crew for state D.O.T. So technically speaking, you and I are colleagues. Although that’s in the summer months, so at the moment I’m between employ. I was the best damn snow plow driver this town’d ever seen until that bogus D.W.I.  

What’s D.W.I. stand for, dad? 

L.T. liked acronyms. 

Driving while a damn idiot. 

You poke fun all you want, but I aim to beat that trumped up charge just like I did the two prior. Facts of the case is I passed that field sobriety test with flying colors. They got dashboard cams now to prove it. Just wait’ll Judge Wilson sees me two-stepping down that white line. I’ll be back plowing circles around all you fools in no time. I’ll even do your driveway, Ranger. 

Whatever you say.

Damn right, Ben. And not for nothing, but I don’t appreciate your fucking tone. 

Hey! Now that’s it, damnit! 

Timmy didn’t often raise his voice, on account of he didn’t like scaring people. 

L.T. in particular. Hearing his dad holler like that, he quit his spinning and froze, looking straight up at the light above the pool table. He could’ve swore he saw it flicker.  

Even Rosie, who herself could yell like a banshee, she stopped dead in her tracks behind the bar. 

Everything alright back there? 

Fine, Rose. My apologies. 

And, you, he said, turning his attention to Matthew, maybe I can’t keep you from talking shit, which you are wont to do incessantly, but I won’t abide your cursing. Not in front of the kid. 

Remember that button Matthew was always looking for? 

There he found it.

You’re right, Timmy. And I’m sorry, L.T. I was wrong to use that language. It isn’t cool to cuss. Promise me you won’t say the F-word cause you want to be cool like your Uncle Matthew? 

I promise. 

Okay then. And, Ranger, I’m sorry also if I offended you. It wasn’t my intent. You just got me a little riled up is all. 

Maybe I should be the one apologizing to you then, Matt. 

Apology accepted then. And I know you know it’s Mat-thew. 

Copy that, Mat-thew. Ben’s alright by me, but whilst we’re clarifying, I’m not a Ranger. 

Here Ben did another one of those little nifty touch passes to himself and tapped one home, extending his lead to six-two. Generally, he wouldn’t run it up on L.T. as such, but here Matthew had him a fair sight distracted. 

Well, what do you mean you’re not a Ranger? You do work for Parks, do you not? 

You work for the state. That make you Governor? 

Touche-A, Ben. I guess I just thought with that funny hat—

Glad you like it. By that logic though I guess you play for the Broncos, then. You must be the punter. 

No, I’m retired. I played receiver and defensive back in high school, for the record. Timmy here was the punter. And a damn good one, too. Second-team all-state, if I do recall. What is your official position? Dog Catcher?  

Now that was a good one. Dog Catcher would be a promotion. Technically speaking, I’m the Wolf Conflict Program Manager. 

Is that so? Forgive me, Ben, but that sounds made up. 

That’s because it is. Nobody’s ever had this job, on account of there haven’t been wolves in this valley since before there was a parks department. Before this was a state, even. So they told me to give myself a title.

And you landed on Wolf Conflict Program Manager? Bit of a mouthful, is it not? 

I beg your pardon. What’s on your business card, Matthew? Ditch digger, esquire? 

Hardly. Ditches are all dug up. Careful you don’t find yourself in one. As for myself, I’m something of an entrepreneur. 

Get a load of Steve Can’t-Hold-Down-A Jobs over here. 

Now, Timmy. That wasn’t very nice at all. Conflict Management, though. Sounds above my pay grade. What exactly does a posting like that entail? 

Come on, Matt. Can we talk about anything else? 

No, no, no, Timmy. I’m genuinely curious. Scout’s honor, I’m not yanking anybody’s chain. 

I’m curious too Ben. 

Here L.T. was still a little shook up from his dad yelling a minute ago. He took a break from the match and sidled up on a barstool, from where his little legs dangled. 

Alright. Well, it’s just like the title says. I manage, or rather help to mitigate conflicts with the wolves. 

You mean with people? 

Not really. Wolves aren’t much inclined to bother humans. So, livestock mostly. But wild animals, too. Elk and other game. As well as the odd pet, I suppose. 

L.T. shuddered at the thought of poor Taco facing down a pack of wolves. 

What’s mitigate mean, he asked. 

Yeah, Ben, what’s mitigate mean, Matthew echoed, only half kidding. 

I guess it just means to prevent conflicts altogether, preferably. Or in the uncommon event that’s not possible, to resolve them best we can as they arise. 

As in I have half a mind to mitigate your Uncle Matthew’s big mouth, L.T.

Yeah, you’d do better to mitigate your lousy pool playing, Matthew retorted as he bricked another eminently makeable shot. 

So those little red flags you put up around the fence line at Earl’s place … that’s supposed to be a means of mitigating potential conflicts, is it?  

Yeah. That’s right. 

Huh. And those little red flags are really enough to scare off a pack of hungry wolves from having a free steak dinner a la Earl.

I’ve seen it work. 

Have you now? 

How does it work Ben? 

It’s called fladry, L.T. And it’s not just the flags. We string ‘em up on an electric wire. The idea being that the wolves, they aren’t used to seeing flags like that in nature. And things we aren’t used to can scare us. 

Like your Uncle Matthew with girls.

Good thing Tina is all woman, Matthew muttered at Timmy, in reference to his sister, Christina. 

So already the animals are off their guard, and when they get a little closer to sniff it out, they get a little shock on the nose. That’s usually enough to confirm their suspicions and bump them off their route. 

But does the electricity hurt the wolves?

Not really. It’s about the same voltage as the electric fences they use for dogs. Do you have one of those for Taco? 

Do we dad? 

No use. That dog’s too stubborn to be dissuaded from roaming. You could put up the Great Wall of China on our property line and he’d dig his way underneath the damn thing and out t’other side. 

Taco’s stubborn, alright, Matthew agreed. But he’s also damned smart. 

I know. I taught him to shake hands and play dead, L.T. said with pride. 

Useful skills around these parts. It’s true, dogs are cunning critters, though. And do you know who dogs are descendent of, L.T.?

Dinosaurs? 

Like any boy of a certain age, L.T. loved him some dinosaurs. As evidence of his dinosaur-themed backpack.

No, but Taco might could have some T-rex in him, what with his big head and those stubby legs. Most dogs, though, if you go all the way back to their great-great-great grand dog fathers, then that dog was a wolf.  

Really? Is that true Ben? 

I suppose. Some dogs more than others. 

Like how Matthew here is closer to a cavemen than me and you. 

Another sweet burn, Timmy. You’re en fuego tonight. But I take it as a compliment. After all it was the cavemen that figured out how to use tools from the first. 

Like building fences. 

No, Ben, those came later. First they built wheels to go places with. Then they built weapons — clubs and spears and such — to protect themselves when they got there. Against all the natural-born enemies that would do harm to them and their kin. Once those enemies were gone, only then did they build the fences. Because all those do is mark what’s yours. But even that doesn’t mean damn all anymore.

Geez, buddy. That was some speech. Should I see if they got any string music on the jukebox? 

Damnit, Tim. How many times do I have to say that I’m being serious here. L.T., you should hear this, too. I’m going to tell you what this is really about. A bunch of hippies in Denver and goddamn Boulder decide to call a vote on a matter that doesn’t apply to them in the slightest. As if you and I were to decide what kind of fake milk they put in their lattes. Or I don’t know. Anyhow, they call that vote, and we’re left to deal with the repercussions. And that’s bad enough. But we’re used to sophisticated urban types deciding what’s good for us simple country folks, aren’t we, L.T.? That ain’t nothing new. But for them to have the gall to send us one of their big city zookeepers, or whatever the hell it is you are Ben — and I mean no offense here — to tell us that the answer to all our problems which they created is to surround what little property we have left, that their bankers and lawyers haven’t already bought from under us so they can play cowboy on the weekends, while the real cowboys, like your dad and me, pay rent … son of a gun, I lost my train of thought. Oh right, Ben shows up — and he’s wearing that slick Stetson, so you know he wouldn’t lie to you — and he says, have no fear of the wolves at your door. Just wave these here little red flags. The wolves will think you’re selling used Toyotas instead of raising cattle. Psht. Little red flags. Do they come in white?  

L.T. looked at Ben as if to ask, is all that true? 

Just about. But you left out the part about getting reimbursed in the event of livestock depredation, Ben was loathe to respond, because he’d seen this same conversation play out it townhalls up and down this county and the next ones over, and he knew he was setting Matthew up with a meatball, right over the middle. Before he could hit it to the damn moon, L.T. interjected.

What’s a depredation mean? 

Good question, buddy. What does a depredation mean, Ben? 

This time Matthew damn well knew. 

But here Timmy butt in. His son was more acquainted with death than any boy his age had the business of being, but still he didn’t want Ben to have to fumble around in the dark, explaining the laws of Mother Nature to somebody else’s son. 

It means when a wolf kills a head of cattle. The rancher gets reimbursed.

What about reimburse?

That means they give you money as compensation. 

Anticipating a follow-up question about the word compensation, Timmy added, or to make it better.

 Again, L.T. thought about Taco, whom he’d staked the fifty-dollar reward on. Not necessarily about the transactional nature of life, but more generally, if being reimbursed monetarily as such would’ve made him feel any better, had Taco in fact been depredated, heaven forbid. He thought not. 

Yeah, L.T. They’ll pay you a fair market price for your calf. And it’s almost always the calves they go after, isn’t it Ben? And that’s all well in good. Throw so more taxpayer dollars at the problem, is always their quick fix. But the market doesn’t take into account the sunk cost. They teach you about that in economics class at college, Ben? I’m assuming with a management job like yours that you went. 

I did. I was the first in my family, for whatever that’s worth. Didn’t get around to taking Econ though. 

Then I’m happy to enlighten you. See, I didn’t go to college, but I’ve read some books about economics, if you can believe such a thing. Parts of them, anyways. And what sunk cost is everything you put in — yes the money, but moreso the blood, sweat and the tears — that you won’t ever get back. Not to mention the time. You can’t buy that back. Not at any auction I been to. Generations-worth of ranchers up here. My dad was a top hand. So was his father and his father before him. But what do I know? I’m the first in my family not to raise cattle. 

So here’s to being the first something, I guess.  

Nobody said anything to that. 

Well for an out-of-work snow plow driver I sure can talk a blue streak, can’t I? What’s more is I seem to be out-of-my beverage. How about another round? Get you a beer, Timmy. Or another pop, L.T. What’s your poison, Benjamin? Shirley Temple?

We’re good, Matthew. 

Okey doke. Well, I’m still thirsty as a mule. And you know I hate asking, Timmy, but I was counting on taking your money just then before you got lucky. Would you float an old friend, just until I take you double or nothing? 

You’re a piece of work. 

Aren’t I just though? 

Matthew happily accepted a five dollar bill out of Timmy’s bear paw for a hand and slapped him on the brick fucking wall he had for a back, before scampering his own skinny ass back to bother Rosie a spell. 

Pour me another, darling. And how about with some actual whiskey this time.

Dad I got to go to the bathroom. 

What are you telling me for? Wash your hands now.

I always do, L.T. protested innocence. 

Yeah, sure. 

Listen, Timmy. I’m not here to cause any trouble or anything. I’m sorry if—

No, you listen to me, Ben. You got nothing to apologize for. I apologize on behalf of Matthew. His behavior. It’s not right. But he’s always been like this. A little territorial. 

Yeah, well. I’m familiar with the type. I’d say it comes with the territory. I’m sure he doesn’t mean anything by it. 

Who doesn’t mean anything by what?

Here now Matthew had snuck back up on them like he had done before, successfully this time. Timmy had tried to signal Ben that Matthew was well within range of overhearing, but then how do you a thing like that subtly. 

Come on, Conflict Manager. Spill it. You were talking about me, weren’t ya? Don’t make me blush, now. 

You know damn well we were, said Timmy once again trying to diffuse the tension which was mounting.

I was explaining to Ben how you can be a hot head, and he was giving you the benefit of doubt, not that you deserve such a thing, saying as how that you didn’t mean anything by it. You got a problem with any of that? 

Just the last bit, about me not meaning it. Because you better well believe I meant every last word, he said staring up at Ben.

And here’s something else I mean to say. I’m glad that wolf went missing, although I got a pretty good idea I know where he’s at. Right where he fucking belongs  — at the bottom of a shallow grave. Not saying I was the one that put him there. Not saying I wasn’t either. 

You trying to make a confession to me, Matthew? 

You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Afraid not, though. For a fact, we got a saying around here as it applies to that. Insofar as how we manage our own conflicts with wolves, or any other such species we deem to be invasive. Are you familiar with the three S’s?

You shut up now, Matthew. I’m serious. 

That’s one of them. But I wasn’t asking you, Timmy. I was asking Ben here. And I’m serious, too. Don’t I look it?  

Ben took his time taking the last sip of his Bud long neck. Deliberately, he placed it down on the edge of the foosball table. 

I already told you once, he said. I’m not here to solve any mystery. Nor am I here to hand out some big reward. I’m just a guy here to do a job. If you’ve a problem with that, which I take it you do, then maybe let’s you and I take it outside.

What’s outside?

Now here was L.T. back from the men’s room. 

For the third time tonight there was silence. 

Oh, it’s nothing, L.T., his Uncle Matthew assured him. Ben here offered to take me out to his station wagon and show me some of those fancy flags. But I’m going to suggest instead he and I have a friendly game of eight ball. What do you say, compadre? 

I’d say rack ‘em. 

And with that, like the smoke that used to linger in the fluorescent light beneath the ceiling at the Stockman — another thing those city people decided was good for us some years back, although the place still maintained the essence of stale cigarette all these years later  — all the bad mojo that had been building since Matthew’d walked in the front door, it up and dissipated. Timmy was relieved, and not at all because he was afraid Matthew would make a move. He knew his oldest friend had a big chip, but likewise he knew he didn’t have it in him to do anybody harm. On the contrary, he was more worried about Ben. Sure, he seemed like a decent enough guy, but there was no telling how a man would react to being cornered. Seeing that he didn’t back down a square inch to Matthew’s baiting him, Timmy could rest easier knowing he wouldn’t bust that beer bottle over his big head. He’d seen that movie before. One might think Matthew’ve learned from the last few times he got tuned up as such. But then, after all these years, Timmy was beginning to wonder whether that was his aim. Who’s to say? 

Come on, L.T. It’ll be time we let Taco out. Get your backpack. 

Say, buddy. About Taco. Didn’t you say you had to run him to the vet this week? 

Yeah, it was nothing. Just some stitches. A few more in a long line.

What, was he trying to play Red Rover with the barbed wire again? 

Something like that. 

Well, I’ll be. That dog’s doctor bills might could rival my bar tab.

I should know since I paid ‘em both.

And that’s how come I love you, partner. 

Matthew finished his rack, perfect as ever. 

Alright, Mr. Manager. Your table. 

Bye Ben bye Uncle Matthew, L.T said bounding for the door with his backpack bouncing behind him. 

See ya later, alligator. Hey, Tim, that ice seems it’ll keep at least the weekend. How’s you and me take the boy fishing? 

Yeah, maybe. He’s got a science project due Monday. Actually, Ben, if it’s alright with you, he might call on you with a couple questions. I gather it’s something to do with wildlife, and he’s supposed to interview an adult that’s not his parent. For the extra credit. 

Sure thing. 

Appreciate that. Night then. 

Timmy joined his son at the door

 The cold flooded in once more as they crossed the threshold. Outside the light above the bar glowed dimmer still. 

Hand me your bag, Timmy said as they approached the car. 

L.T. climbed into the front seat. Timmy’d been meaning to sell this piece for the longest. They didn’t need the second car anymore, did they? 

The light turned on when he popped the trunk, into where he tossed L.T.’s knapsack with the dinosaurs on it. 

Right next to the Shotgun. 

And the Shovel. 

[thewestern]

Epilogue

Where are they now > End Credits 

Dead & Company. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door > Not Fade Away,” 16 May 2024, Sphere, Las Vegas. 

[This is supposed to be like the part in movies where they say what happens to the characters in the future. The written descriptions are to be accompanied by grainy, sepia-toned film footage. Starting with Billy, at Rockland riding his mini bike.]

Wilhelm Wolff III

“Billy” 

He didn’t get sent to Wilderness Renewals after all. Rather, his mother agreed to a compromise, that he be enrolled in graduate school. He is currently pursuing his Masters of Business Administration, in year-three of a two year program.

Ooh, Ooh (2x)

[Raj, intensely focused with a blunt resting on his lip, while he types away on a laptop.]

Rajit Patel 

“Yayo-L” 

As part of his binding non-disclosure agreement spanning the length of his friendship with Billy, which through it all remains ongoing, Raj received a lucrative incentive package from the Wolffenbeir Company, which following the collapse of the merger agreement with GloBev, likewise remains a going concern. In addition to receiving a considerable lump sum in the form of an annual bonus, Raj was set on a fastrack for promotion, taking Billy’s spot in the vaunted Rotational Leadership Program. He is now a Vice President of Information Security.

Mama take this badge off of me

[Mister X posing for a photo-op with Doctor Goodlove, giddily shaking his paw.] 

Name unknown

“Mister X” 

Thwarted in his dogged pursuit of Doctor Goodlove, Mister X settled for his backup plan for world domination, representing Globev in their acquisition of the Kraft Heinz Corporation. In hindsight, he may have been lucky to strike out with Wolffenbeir, on account of how the broader stable of brands at KH has provided the opportunity to build an extended content universe around these beloved products and characters. Of course, they are anchored around the singularly iconic Kool-Aid Man, who has emerged as something of a demigod-like figure in Asia, inspiring a truly zealous fervor among a legion of devoted followers the continent over. Presently Mister X has him preparing for a viral stunt, a la Evel Knievel, but with a key twist. Rather than jumping over some obstacle or void on a motorcycle, he will drive the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile, fueled by a jet engine converted to run on Velveeta cheese, directly through the famed Badaling section of the Great Wall of China. Already, all throughout Tiananmen Square, children chant his famous catchphrase: 哦，是的. 

I can’t use it anymore

[B-roll of wooks dancing.]

The Grateful Dead/Phish  

In modern life, we spend so much of our precious time staring at screens. Computer, phone, television. Everywhere we look, here’s a screen. There’s a screen. It’s gotten to the point that the term Screen Time has entered the lexicon, even securing coveted honours as Webster’s Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2012. 

You may even be reading this sentence on a screen right now. But do you even know screens work?

(Pinky promise this’ll be, like, the last one of these. So enjoy it.) 

Perhaps you’re familiar with the term, pixel. It was coined in 1965, referring to images being transmitted from the Moon via space probes back to Planet Earth. Etymologically it’s evolved to mean the individual units that make up a picture. Put simply, digital images are made up of a mosaic of pixels, and the more pixels there are, the higher resolution the image. Say for example your television is 1080p. That means the height of your screen is 1,080 pixels tall.

Now every cotten-picking one of those pixels is divided into three sub-pixels. Each of those is occupied by a single colour. Red, Blue or Green. They are, of course, the three primary colors of light. 

How a screen works, talking in layman’s terms here, is all those hundreds upon thousands of pixels get blurred together. So that rather than just those three colors, you can blend them all together — like Bob Ross on his palette — to create millions of colors. And then if you stand back a little, you the viewer can see those colors formed into pictures. It’s a little like those old optical illusion posters, in that regard. Magic Eye, they’re called.  

After Jerry died, the surviving band members reunited with one another intermittently over the years. There was a handful of incarnations. The Dead (drop the Grateful), Furthur and The Other Ones, among some others. A murderer’s row of otherworldly talented musicians sat in with them on those tours. Susan Tedeschi, Warren Haynes, Joan Osborne. Obviously, although they played his guitar parts and sang his lead vocals, they never deigned to fill the Jerry-sized void on stage.  

On the contrary, despite Garcia’s staunch insistence that the Grateful Dead were a captainless ship of fools, a power vacuum nonetheless formed in his stead, wherein the longstanding sibling rivalry between Phil and Bobby festered into something of a Cold War. As the twenty-year anniversary of their comrade’s passing approached, not only did a commemorative reunion portend unlikely, the Dead seemed headed for a more permanent uncoupling indeed.

That was until at the Eleventh Hour, when a New York-based music promoter by the name of Peter Shapiro — whom many consider to be the spiritual heir to Bill Graham — intervened on fate’s behalf. Between Lesh and Weir, he negotiated a detente, signing the group for a three-show Fourth of July-weekend run, to take place at the site of Jerry’s final performance with the band: Soldier Field in Chicago. Fare Thee Well, as it would be known. And to the untold delight of burnouts the world over, Shapiro lasso’d a very special guest indeed for the albeit unenviable task of assuming Jerry’s mantle: Trey Anastasio of the band Phish. For a universe of music that is so thoroughly steeped in Lore, this was akin to a great prince — the Prince Who Was Promised — taking up the banner of a fallen king.  

FWIW, some heads derided FTW as a blatant cash grab. They did after all gross 50 mill US. Not bad for five-nights’ work. (Two warm-up gigs were added at Levi’s Stadium, the recent replacement for Candlestick Park as the home of the San Francisco Forty-Niners, despite being a 45-mintue drive with no traffic away from San Francisco, in the master bedroom community of Santa Clara.) Nonetheless, the consensus was that they made for a fitting tribute and a hell of a fun time, and that Anastasio acquitted himself well. Even if he did sound like Trey Doing Jerry, that he could shred, no one would sure deny. 

Given the beef between Phil and Bob, as well as the fact that the boys were now all elderly men, everybody assumed that would be it. They would all go their separate ways. End on a high note. Go out with a bang.

Ah, but did you see the part where I said how much fucking money they made? Fifty, million, dollars, US. In the biz they call that Proof of Concept. Or in other words, when the gravy train is rolling, you better keep laying down track. And so they did. As for Lesh’s claim to the throne, well there was a simple solution. Sayonara! You can fuck right off to Phil and Friends. (What some consider to be the finest configuration of the post-Dead milieu.) We can get any asshole to play bass. Ah, but then, who do we get to play Jerry? Trey would be great, but he’s a non-starter. Not only does he have his own thing going —  some consider the Summer ‘15 tour to have been the pinnacle of the 3.0 period, and attribute Anastasio’s time spent practicing the Dead repertoire to sparking something within him — but he would consider the very notion of serving as Jerry’s understudy, in any other context than a commemorative one-off like FTW, offensive. He’s gone on record to that effect. Without Jerry, it’s just nostalgia, he says. Enjoy it all you want, but that’s the truth.

(There also persists a fan theory, albeit uncorroborated, that Bobby felt a bit upstaged by Trey. Specifically on night two of Santa Clara during Hell in a Bucket, there’s video evidence of Anastasio ripping a solo whilst Weir attempts to signal him to wrap it up, and appears visibly frustrated in so doing.) 

Little did Trey know, while he was up on stage, laying waste to HIAB, there was a man in the audience, waiting in the wings to volunteer himself as tribute. Mother F-ing John Mayer. 

This could get contentious, so let’s all take a moment to pause, and remember that we’re all friends here. 

[Exaggerated coughing a la PSH in ACP.]

Like so many public figures today, John Mayer is a divisive force in our culture. But I’m here to tell you that he needn’t be. When you strip away the special interests and their focus grouped talking points, it’s actually all pretty cut and dry. Here is the common sense position on what John Mayer is. 

A massive tool. 

Now obviously it’s more complicated than just that. For a fact, there are many descriptors for what he is — a blowhard, a clout chaser, a star fucker, a fuccboi, a lightweight, a dilettante, a culture vulture, a hypebeast and perhaps, above all, a poseur — and all of them are accurate in their own way. In a vacuum, however, none of that necessarily matters. Because the world’s full of rich and famous douchebags. Rather, for the purposes of this exercise, since he has inserted himself into the broader discourse surrounding the Grateful Dead, the only relevant metric is how he measure up to Jerry. 

Spoiler alert: he fucking doesn’t, but let’s play it out for the sake of argument. Jerry was himself a lot of things. A banjo picker, a guitar player, a filmmaker, a painter, an underrated singer and avid scuba diver.  By no means was he virtuosic in all of those pursuits, nor especially was he always such a nice guy, nor even all that enlightened a cat. (Just ask the women in his life, recalling his bromance with the Hells Angels. Or better yet, ask him about his aforementioned opinion on hip hop.) But, above all else he was one thing: An Artist. With a capital A.  

John Mayer may make things. But those things are not art. They are products. John Mayer is not an artist. He is a bull shit artist. Morever, John Mayer is the Anti-Jerry.  

A lot of genuinely well-meaning albeit woefully misinformed people are reading this and to themselves saying, say what?! They might even acknowledge his past, shall we say, indiscretions — more on those in a bit — before they’ll inevitably say something like, but one can’t deny he’s one of — if not the — best modern guitar players.

Yes, one can. 

That’s not to say he isn’t technically skilled. He is. Indeed quite so. Particularly as a mimic. He can and does play all the greats’ riffs. But to that I say, so what? 

Here. Think of it this way. If you live in a major metropolitan area, there’s a guy playing in a bar Tonite who is as technically skilled as John Mayer. Is that city that you live in Nashville or Los Angeles? Maybe even Chicago or Austin? Then it’s likely several guys. That’s just the facts. 

(Obama voice: Let me be clear. That’s not to shit on guys that play in bars. Or even necessarily Mayer. They’re fucking sick at guitar. That rules. But it’s not like, divinely ordained, or anything.)

The difference between those guys and John is that the latter is a Pop Star. Always has been. His defenders would no doubt quibble with that designation, but just look at the guy’s discography. His major label debut, Room for Squares, peaked at number eight on the Billboard Chart. Every subsequent release of his thereafter has charted either No. 1 or No. 2. For the sake of comparison, let’s look at the Grateful Dead, arguably the Great American Band. (Go on, then. Who’s better? Beach Boys? Eh, maybe. But if we’re being real, it’s Brian Wilson and a bunch of guys. Allman Bros? Sadly, too short of a window. Van Halen or GnR? Too eighties. Nineties’ nominee would probably be Nirvana, but they had the same problem as the Allmans. As for the 2000s, it’s slim pickins. RHCP? FOTH. [E-Street and the Heartbreakers are disqualified, on account of they’re technically support acts. The Band on the other hand would be considered eligible, despite being more than half Canadian. I don’t make the rules.]) How many of their 13 studio albums would you guess were bonafide hits, cracking the Billboard Top Ten? One. Uno. Eins. In the Dark. Their penultimate effort, and FWIW, widely considered among Deadheads to constitute somewhat of a sellout. To the extent that the term In the Darkers has emerged as a pejorative for the yuppy, bandwagon fans of the late eighties. The Johnny Come Lateleys. (Looking at you, Tucker Carlson, you fucking evil piece of shit. Hope you die.)

But even that’s not to pop Mayer for being popular. That’s also fine! There’s nothing wrong with pop music, necessarily. But for our boy Johnny, you see, pop stardom and all its trappings, that wasn’t enough for him. Thus, and perhaps this was a calculated effort to avoid the pitfalls of one-hit-wonderdom, Mayer was always savvily self-branded as something more. A singer-songwriter. And it didn’t matter that there are lots of pop stars who write their own songs, nor that his compositions were cotton candy, bubblegum pablum. (See Your Body is a Wonderland, Daughters and Waiting on the World to Change — an anti-protest anthem and apathetic rallying cry for maintaining the status quo — for his greatest offenses against the adult contemporary canon.) Also, and arguably more importantly for the purposes of our argument, the notion was perpetuated through in popular media that he was a virtuosic guitar player. And by virtue of the fact that he played an instrument at all — something most pop stars do not, on account of their being too busy dancing — the bar for this was set quite low. Therefore, through playing up aspects of his resume, namely that he attended to the prestigious Berklee College of Music (nevermind that he dropped out after two semesters … perhaps the only chill thing about him), the John Mayer Industrial Complex was able to construct this myth around him, and fool all you fine people into thinking he was ever anything more than a more approachable, watered down Dave Matthews. Yeah, I know. 

(JM and DM have similar vocal affects, although the latter employs his to better effect. There are elements of breathiness and frat bro vocal fry at play in both their phrasings, but ultimately it’s a quality of a counter-melodic, call it, anti-singing. As if they’re both trying to Sing Funny, perhaps as some crude self-defense mechanism propped up against the otherwise unapologetic cringiness of their lyrical output. Specifically in Matthews’ case, it manifests in him sort of doing Adam Sandler thing. Eh-scooby-doo. Ah-la-di-dee. Zippity-doo-dah. It’s actually kind of playful. Mayer, for his part, just sounds whiny.)  

And wouldn’t you know that it fucking worked. Mayer was put on a pedestal of his own erecting. Basking in the glow of his critical acclaim as a solo act, he even went so far as to launch a side project called the John Mayer Trio (Lol), a seemingly simple branding tweak that nonetheless runneth overfloweth with plutonium grade pretentiousness. It’s not quite but close to Justin Bieber getting two other guys and calling themselves the Justin Bieber Experience. Or like if it were called, The Rock: A Film by Michael Bay. 

But people ate that shit up, too. And to further bolster his shred cred, he’d appear alongside luminaries such as B.B. King and Eric Clapton at various award shows and benefit concerts to Jam. The latter — an on-the-record racist dickhead and all-time bad friend … seriously, what kind of wanker writes a song … sorry, multiple song-s … mother fucking rock ballads … about another man’s wife … not cool, dude — even co-signed him as a modern Guitar God, which we’ve hopefully by now well established is Not Actually a Thing. 

Lo, but even a false apotheosis wouldn’t satiate his unquenchable thirst. So then he became a sex symbol, to boot! The Bad Boy of Easy Listening. (Sidebar: this is another thing he does. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was pretending to be self-deprecating about his shortcomings. This is Mayer’s gambit to a tee. He even titled one of his latter works, Sob Rock, as if to poke fun at himself. Haha. Don’t fall for it. I assure you, this man is deadly serious.) And full credit to him, he banged a lot of turn-of-the-century celebrity babes. Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift. Whoa, dude! Save some poon for the rest of us! 

(Those are some hot famous ladies, no doubt about it. Mayer, on the other hand, while by no means ugly according to modern beauty standards, is also nobody’s idea of a male model. Particularly as he matures, he’s got the problem a lot of middle-aged rock stars have of increasingly looking like a lesbian. Older men with longer than average-length hair suffer this affliction in general. It’s one of the few advantages of male pattern baldness.) 

Ah, but as we all know, pride and getting crazy amounts of pussy comes before the fall. Thusly he was among the first intrepid pricks of the post-Weinstein/Cosby paradigm to be Cancelled, and all for the sin of trying to be funny and play up his reputation as an irreverent provocateur, saying some bullshit to Playboy Magazine of all publications in the year of our lord 2010 about how sick it was to fuck Jessica Simpson, while also adding, apropos of nothing, that he wasn’t into black chicks. Okay. (On the topic of Playboy, the Grateful Dead infamously appeared on their short-lived television variety show in the sixties, and as legend has it, they dosed the entire production crew and studio audience with acid-laced coffee. Now, That’s Funny.) 

But since Cancellation was then as it remains, also Not Actually a Real Thing, in the end it only served to bolster the Myth of Mayer, wherein the act of his saying on the record that he had a white supremacist penis became all but the brief abyss in his longer-arcing hero’s journey. Following the now tried and true playbook, he entered a brief period of self-imposed exile, as he later recounted in breathless detail on the Ellen Degeneres Show, during which he bought a ranch in Montana, probably off some multi-generation dirt farmer who couldn’t afford the skyrocketing property taxes what for the encroachment of wannabe cowboy wads the likes of John Mayer. He also got sober, as he recounted in a separate interview — a possible explanation for his staying power is that Mayer has in many ways thrown a life preserver out to late-stage legacy media, being as he is a last bastion for cheap clicks — after drunkenly embarrassing himself at Drake’s 30th birthday party. (Humblebrag! Shout out @twittels, our tour guide to the cosmos. Sorry.) And finally, as to consummate his reputational pivot, he put out an accompanying record named Paradise Valley after the place in Montana he ruined by moving to. The material on said release is wholly immaterial — likely your standard fare, second-term Obama-era Americana. The album art, however, is a work of art in its own right. There’s Little Johnny Mayer, born of Fairfield County, Connecticut, transplanted to Paradise Lost Valley, standing in a stupid meadow with a MILF-hunting dog that if it ever was his to begin with, he one hundred percent put up for adoption within weeks of this photo being taken, staring wantonly up at him as if to say, please … pay any attention to me, whatsoever, whilst he himself heroically resists the gravitational pull of the camera’s lens to stare vacantly off into the middle distance, his brow furrowed under the cartoonishly wide brim of a Big Dumb Hat, paired with what looks to be a poncho or a hopefully smallpox-laced blanket, itself covering no less than five additional layers of flannels, twills, corduroys and any or all other manner of stolen valor workwear fabrics, including denim if you count his pre-distressed jeans that probably cost more than your entire wardrobe combined. (This is kind of a clunky analogy, and typically I would say Car here, but in all fairness to Johnny-boy that’s probably a reach. I’d venture to guess these one pair of pants ran him in the ballpark of $500 to $1,000, though. So depending on the blue book value of your vehicle, or certainly mine, maybe not all that far off after all.) And to tie the ensemble all together, he’s accessorizing with what’s known as a Squash Blossom, a Native American necklace often smithed of sterling silver and inlaid with turquoise to signify wealth and status as it was worn by elder members of the Navajo and other tribes of the American Southwest, which for those geography buffs at home is nowhere fucking near Montana, not that it matters but still. 

While Paradise Valley was commercially viable — peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 — Mayer admitted in an interview with his dear friend, the reality television impresario and cultural slumlord Andy Cohen, that it’s his least favourite of his personal oeuvre. Perhaps on account of it was the first of his releases not to receive a Grammy nod. (A seven-time winner and nineteen[!]-time nominee, he’s something of a Recording Academy darling. The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, despite amassing a grand total of zero nominations over their illustrious career, were nonetheless honoured with a life-time achievement Grammy in 2007.) Reckon that’s when decided to cut his losses and latch on to the wellspring teat of the Dead Industrial Complex. Rather though he claims it was a moment some years prior when the song Althea magically appeared on his algorithmically-generated music feed, when he became a Deadhead. How’s that for a meet-cute?

And by some stroke of Faustian good fortune, Mayer and the surviving members happened to share representation. One Irving Azoff, a titan of the recording industry in his capacities as a one-time major label head for MCA and Warner, the former C.E.O. of Ticketmaster and manger to Rock and Roll royalty, including U2, Bon Jovi and Steely Dan. Azoff’s longest-standing client of more than forty years, Don Henley of the Eagles — himself widely known to be an exceptional asshole — once described him by saying that he may be Satan, but he’s our Satan. (Azoff perhaps more than any other individual is responsible for the consolidation of the music industry at the expense of all fans, most musicians and really anyone other than Irving Azoff, and by extension his clients. Insofar as he presided over the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation, effectively monopolizing live entertainment through the vertical integration of things like ticket brokering and artist management and venue ownership. All Don Henley’s jokes aside, it’s true that the music industry is chock-full of shall-we-say colourful characters guided by dubious moral compasses. Bill Graham is a prime example, and even he wasn’t without his charms. Irving Azoff, meanwhile, is a reprobate without peer. A true villain amongst petty crooks.) As soon as the contracts were signed presumably in blood, John and the boys, newly christened as Dead & Company — itself a perfect moniker of incorporation if there ever was one — hit the road. And in defiance of the laws of time, they’ve toured off and on for seven years, culminating in this latest run of shows at The Sphere. 

A Domus Aurea for the modern day, The Sphere is the wet fever dream-cum to life of James Dolan (Azoff’s partner), a beastly little man who fans of his two previously most high profile assets, the New York Knicks and Rangers, can attest is as close as we currently have to an American Nero. Long since considered a punch line among his billionaire buddies, The Sphere is his attempt to once and for all prove the haters wrong, and in his own words, Reinvent Live Entertainment. And according to some, this Ewok-looking mother fucker may have just pulled it off. Those who have made the pilgrimage to The Sphere — if they ever do return — will regale you of its majesty. They’ll show you cell phone videos of its massive LED display. (A screen on a screen.) It was a life-changing experience, they’ll proselytize unto thee. But The Sphere can’t be understood by second-hand accounts. Nor either by seeing it in person. It’s simply too overwhelming to put into words. Like so much about our lives tday, it can only be truly grasped as a set of numbers. A linear regression of statistics.

2.3 billion — USD, what it cost to erect

366 x 516 — dimensions measured in feet 

1.2 million — lights in the 580,000 square-foot exosphere, each about the size of a hockey puck and containing a cluster of 48 LEDS

650,000 — approximate dollar amount spent to advertise on the exosphere’s surface with a 90-second advertisement running for a single week leading up to the presidential election by the Kamala Harris campaign

312 to 226 — Harris’s electoral vote margin of defeat to her opponent Donald Trump

34 — felony counts on which Donald Trump had been convicted mere months prior

5 — Auras, the brand name of a humanoid robot, stationed throughout The Sphere’s grand atrium as proto-tour guides tasked with greeting guests, answering questions about the experience and in some instances even making jokes or flirting

256 million — pixels in the theater’s interior screen, the main attraction, the highest resolution in history, measuring 160,000 square feet, or 20x the size of a standard IMAX

60 — gigabytes of data it requires to film one second of content on Big Sky, The Sphere’s 316 mega-pixel proprietary camera system (images captured on normal cameras would only fill a fraction of the screen, so they tried welding 11 cameras together … when that didn’t work they just invented their own)

12 — the minimum amount of people it takes to operate the Big Sky camera system

10 — the number of patents protecting Big Sky

120 — frames per second seen on its 18K film

165 — degrees of view proffered on it’s 1ft-wide lens 

10,000 — haptic seats that use infrasound and moving-magnet technology to create a 4D experience

167,000 — speakers, 8 per audience member, in its German-engineered sound system

Perhaps that last stat bears particular significance. These are after all concerts, aren’t they? For a fact, the system is said to be so advanced, that they can project distinct sounds to each individual seat. So presumably you could be listening to four octogenarian musicians and a 30-something glorified influencer play Mississippi Half Step in one seat, whilst the person next to you is listening to Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban on audiobook, in Finnish. It’s comforting to know that even in this massive bubble, protected by the unrelenting heat of the desert outside — did I mention The Sphere is in Las Vegas … and reportedly coming soon to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia! — we can remain comfortably in our own individual bubbles. 

And speaking of bubbles:

500 million — dollar loss accrued by The Sphere in its first fiscal year of production

But don’t you worry about that. Keep your eyes on the screen. It’s starting. The opening image is an easter egg homage to the Wall of Sound, which you’ll recall was the massive tower of speakers built for the band in the early seventies by Owsley “Bear” Stanley, the prolific LSD dealer. 

In the thereafter the big fancy light show shuffles through all the other Dead iconography. Roses and Skulls. Lightning bolts and tie-dye rainbows. Dancing bears and banjo-picking turtles. Motorcycles and busses. 

Alright, now we’ve reached the end of the show. It’s well past these old farts’ bedtimes, and Mayer’s got a private jet to catch back to fucking Montana. 

The encore begins with a satellite image of The Earth, our dying planet. We’re facing the Western Hemisphere, where dawn has just broken about perpendicular to the San Andreas Fault. Slowly we start zooming in toward Northern California, as the band starts in on KOHD. This is not a fast song as it was originally recorded, but the boys are playing it even slower still. Dead & Slow, as they’re somewhat affectionately known. 

The closer we get, we can start to make out the dramatic topography of the Pacific Coast. Yeah, now we’re entering our atmosphere. There’s the Bay beginning to take shape. Up at the top of your screens is where the guys currently reside, in posh Marin County. The bandstand itself is but a small plateau, right below downtown San Francisco, now the world’s largest open-air toilet, where human suffering is on full display, although you can’t quite make it out on this screen. 

Bobby bobbles his way through the first verse and chorus, doing some of his trademark scatting, somehow turning Door into a four-syllable word.

Hey, there’s Alcatraz. And now it’s time for a John Mayer solo. Resist the urge to leap off the Golden Gate Bridge. In all its myriad meanderings of bends and slides and pedal effects, it insists upon itself in a way that a Jerry break never did. Maybe it’s because Garcia’s improvisational influences cut such a wide swath, into bluegrass and jazz. Bill Monroe and John Coltraine. Somewhere between them he found himself. The way his stubby fingers seem to pirouette along the fretboard. Mayer, meanwhile, who fancies himself more of a straight-ahead Blues Brother, came up idolosing Stevie Ray Vaughn. Which is to say that his style, such as he has one, is already a photocopy of a photocopy. (Mind you, Garcia was by no means a stanger to the blues genre. It’s how he and Pigpen bonded upon their meeting. [They were the first two members to so converge.] Jerry particularly dug Big Bill Broonzy.) What you can’t hear over his ostentatious tone, you can just as well see right in his ofay face, contorting so, as he painstakingly tries to squeeze out the notes through a century of cognitive dissonance as if blood through a stone. Or it could be just that his fretting hand is weighed down by his full sleeve of traditional Japanese tattoos, or perhaps his wristwatch—

180,000 — dollars, the appraised value of John’s — ahem — Timepiece, a one-of-one special edition made in commemoration of his debut at The Sphere by Audimars Pigeon, the Swiss luxury brand for which Mayer has recently been named Creative Conduit (gasp), presumably a purely ceremonial title conferred in recognition of his well-known passion for horology as well as his prolificacy as private collector, which he put on display in a viral interview with the watch blog, Hodinkee, that you should stop reading this right now and YouTube if for some reason you want to know what it felt like to be a French peasant in the 1780s, taking a shit on the Champs-Élysées, as Mary Antionette strolls by in a gilded carriage, her olfactory so overwhelmed by her beloved perfumes, that she couldn’t even deign to be disgusted by your stench And gravity pulls us closer still. There are the famous Streets of San Francisco, ascending and descending like the stairs in that one famous painting. Two in particular come into focus. Haight and Ashbury. The epicenter of the hippie movement. And now the slate roofs of the Victorian-style houses. Most of them were reduced to rubble in the 1906 Earthquake that killed 3,000 people and destroyed 80% of the city. Except for a fortunate few historic landmarks. The famous Painted Ladies. The Full House house. And the one we see now. 

710 Ashbury Street

For the uninitiated, this is considered to be the spiritual home of the Grateful Dead. It’s where all five original members cohabitated for an albeit short period of time. They started as the Warlocks, a jug band gigging in the basement of a pizza parlor. After that they were the house band for the Acid Tests. But then at 710, they became The Grateful Dead. Houseguests included a whose-who of the San Francisco Scene, which looms larger in the American memory than it ever lasted in real life. In reality, it was only a couple years. More like eighteen months. (Larry McMurtry might compare the sixties counterculture to the quote-un-quote Old West, in that regard, which he characterized to be the Phantom Limb of the American cultural consciousness or something.) In addition to hosting their acid rock contemporaries, the Airplaine, Quicksilver Messaging Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin, 710 functioned as a sort of Salon, wherein members of thought-leading countercultural organisations would exchange ideas and bodily fluids. Among them were the Merry Pranksters and the Hells Angels, who you might’ve heard of, as well as the Diggers, of whom you probably haven’t. A group of mostly actors, since disenchanted with the limited capacity to affect social change through experimental street theater, the Diggers became what they called Life Actors, insofar as they Lived their Art, the central theme of which was always Freedom. Not so much Freedom in the way it’s been co-opted to mean by maleficent forces in the present day United States, as in the Freedom To Have or Do Whatever I Want As Well As The Freedom To Refuse To Do Anything I Don’t Want To Do. Rather the Diggers’ vision of freedom was somewhat higher-minded. Specifically, they proffered Freedom From Money and Freedom From Fame, the latter of which was interpreted to be anonymity, hence how come they all went by the alias George Metesky, the namesake a man who has suffered a severely debilitating on-the-job injury, had his worker’s comp claims were denied by his employer, Con Edison, the electric utility of New York and went on a bombing campaign of Manhattan, targeting such historic landmarks as Penn Station, Radio City Music Hall, Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library. 

 The Diggers were most known for their free food program. To be fed, patrons were only required to step through a colossal empty frame, not unlike the ones often erected at music festivals for wristbanded attendees to take pictures inside. The Diggers called theirs a Frame of Reference, on account of if you put a frame on something, it’s art, as the great avant-garde composer John Cage once said. When the Diggers Emmet Grogan and Peter Berg visited 710, they threw down a proverbial gauntlet of sorts for the Grateful Dead, according to the band’s official biographer Dennis McNally. We do our experimental street theatre for free. So, how about you play your music for free, pussies? 

And so they did. Played public concerts, that is, hooked up to a generator on the back of a flatbed truck, at the Panhandle near Golden Gate Park, where the Diggers distributed their gratis grub. Thereafter they branched out, playing free shows in support of like-minded causes across the country. At Columbia University in support of a student strike, and at San Quentin Prison in support of an inmate strike, just to name two. Per McNally, the act of giving away the fruits of their labour became a part of their DNA, as a band. Hence the laissez-faire attitude toward tapers, etcetera. 

But then again, all good things … it was only a matter of time until the whole San Francisco Scene spun out of control. The Haight became overcrowded, what with runaways from all over descending on the place like hopped-up locusts. They’d read about the hippies in LIFE Magazine and thought that all that free stuff — food, music, love — sounded pretty groovy to them. Not to mention all the drugs you could take. The cops eventually caught on to that tip. The block was hot, boy. Pigs even raided 710, arresting Pigpen of all people for possession, never mind that he didn’t partake in the pharmaceutical pursuits. Rotgut whiskey was his groove. Later they had the gall to book Bobby on charges of assault with a deadly water balloon. 

About the time their house became a stop on a guided bus tour, the band members decided they’d officially had enough and decamped for their greener pastures in posh Marin County, just across the bay. Over the years there were a few more free shows here and there — Altamont ‘69 was public, although technically the Dead never went on for their set — but they pretty much petered out in the early seventies. According to unofficial Grateful Dead blogger, Dead Essays dot Blog spot, the band played their last free show in the year of their tenth anniversary, back at Golden Gate Park, on an unseasonably cold autumn day in San Francisco, September 1975. Something about the cold in that city. It’s like Twain always said. It can go right through you.

(The Diggers, for their part, determined that in the face of fascism and imperialism and the oncoming cultural holocaust, the only truly revolutionary thing left to do was get addicted to heroin. Which, respect.) 

Justy shy of a half-century later, it’s a balmy 99-degree spring day outside The Sphere, where Dead & Company are finishing the opening show of their Las Vegas residency. Jerry’s been gone going on 30 years. How the time flies. What were we talking about, anyway? John Mayer? Oh, enough about him. Pixels. Remember. Red, green, blue. All the other colors are just shades. Variations on a theme. Kind of blue. Didn’t matter. Doesn’t now.  

It’s getting dark, too dark to see

[The Deputy leaning against a wall, holding his hands in his armpits, chewing gum menacingly.]

Brandon Justin 

“The Deputy” 

Although he was officially cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal affairs special investigation into the officer-involved shooting of Zeke, the deputy didn’t receive his coveted promotion back to his cushy post at the County Jail. Rather he was subtly managed out of the department altogether, whereupon he wound up working a security guard gig at West Middle School. The pay’s shit, and his cousin busts his balls for being a rent-a-cop, but, hey, at least they still gave him a gun. 

Feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

[Ari driving Hildy’s car, with one of her dogs licking his face, and the other sniffing his crotch.]

Ariel Zev Emanuel 

“Ari”

His request to be transferred off the Wolff account was granted, on account of a lurid sexual harassment claim he filed against Hildy with HR. Now he’s also working with schools on behalf of The Agency, albeit in a more dignified capacity than the deputy, who frisks 14-year-olds for their milk money. Ari runs active shooter drills. Not just at schools, either. Movie theaters, pumpkin patches, those big-ass gas stations that seem to be popping up all over the place, the occasional bowling alley. It’s pretty much a dream job, although he still also has dream of starting his own discotheque/distillery of vodka. One day, I do it. 

Knock, knock, knockin’ on Heaven’s door (4x)

[Jaime doing his Ted Talk thing.]

James Francis Delano

“Jaime” 

Speaking of dreams coming true, Jaime also achieved his dream of starting a podcast. It’s about The Culture. If you want to know what that means, just ask him. And like and subscribe. 

Mama put my guns in the ground

[Mayor Larry sheepishly emerging from underneath Hildy’s desk.]

Lawrence F. Mockingbird

“Mayor Larry”

He also got what he wanted, becoming Governor Larry after winning his election in actually kind of a landslide, although only after his staunchly anti-LGBT rights opponent was caught with his size-ten, steel-toed boot — the one he was always threatening, oddly specific-like, to shove up Larry’s hind parts  — under the men’s room stall divider in a public park, playing footsie with an undercover vice cop. So Larry may have Cruised to Victory by Default, but baby, a dub’s a dub. And as governor, he technically made good on his campaign bumper-stickered promise to Get Some Things Done. With regard to common sense firearm safety measures, the all-powerful gun lobby actually threw him a bone, allowing him to ban high-capacity magazines, like the one involved in the officer-involved shooting of Zeke. That was mostly it though, beyond his persistent and unsubstantiated claiming credit for making his state More affordable for regular folks. Legislative achievements notwithstanding, his tenure was marred by controversy. Particularly with connection to his acceptance of non-disclosed gifts in the form of first-class tickets — as well as five-star hotel accommodations and dining upon arrival — to Fort Lauderdale and the United Arab Emirates, which a specially-appointed ethics panel inquiry deemed to be Un—ethical. (Beyond said condemnation, no further penalty was levied in this manner.) Also, despite his affair with Hildy coming to an abrupt end, his wife up and left his sorry ass anyway. What’s worse, she didn’t even have the decency to take sole-custody of the kid. He had to agree to Co-parent. Drag. However, this served only to further fuel his desire to become America’s first divorced president. (Ok, second. Ole Jelly Beans Reagan was technically first, but by the time he took the oath, the Gipper had gotten himself remarried to the throat god, Nancy, as you’ll recall.) Alas, Larry’s bid for his party’s nomination was aborted almost before it began, as registered voters in the early primary and caucus states above all else made their apathy for him abundantly clear. So then he had to settle for the Senate, since deteriorated into a legislative backwater where the politically ambitious went to die. (Quite literally. Some 300 of those old farts have died in office. For a fact, the median age of a senator is 65, two years older than the supposed average retirement age, which keeps going up thanks in large part to the body’s only bi-partisan issue, the outright contempt for the concept of — if not at very least the refusal to protect from decades of erosion resulting from unrelenting austerity measures — Entitlements.) He won. Whoopty-doo. Wasn’t all bad, though. He did eventually find love. Married that gal from the gun lobby. 

I can’t shoot them anymore

[Hildy at the kitchen counter at Hank’s farmhouse.]

Hildegard Wolff

“Hildy” 

For her part, she never did marry. Not her style. Billy would say she was married to the game, as indeed she did remain at the helm of Wolffenbeir Co., where perhaps she always belonged. Until of course the board unceremoniously pushed her out in favor of the CFO, no doubt some limp-dick CPA. It had to be one of them. She took it in stride though, throwing herself into philanthropy, full-time. The music will never stop at the Edge City Philharmonic. Not on her watch. Additionally, in an effort to head off any civil litigation, she made overtures to Zeke’s mother and father in the form of a donation made in his name to SciTech, commemorated with the unveiling of a mural painted on the facade outside the Cavness-Baumann atrium. It was Zeke alright, in his favourite Newfy shirt. His parents did not attend the dedication ceremony. Doctor Goodlove did, though, solemnly.   

That long black cloud’s comin’ down

[Kitty grading papers.]

Katherine Maria Parker-Salazar

“Kitty”

Kitty gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl. If she’d been a boy, she would’ve named him after Zeke. But alas she was secularly Christened as Rose Salazar Solomon, or Rosie. Part of Kitty was hesitant to bestow on her a name that was too old-fashioned sounding, or one that could have also worked for a labrador. This on account of having spent so much time teaching kids called Clementines and Milos and the like. But, hey. There but for the Grace. She never did go back to West, though, like she and Mick planned. After everything that happened, she found she couldn’t be around kids, excepting her own precious daughter, whom she clung to for dear life. It was all too sad. As for gainful employment, she got a job in Development at Hildy’s new non-profit, the Mary Todd Lincoln Project, which was committed to scale the Sci-Tech model across the country, as well as generally to increase young women’s access to science-based curricula. It was fine. They had on-site child care. Parents weren’t supposed to visit during program hours, so as to increase the kids’ independence, but she’d bend the rules and sometimes wave at her through the glass partition. Hi sweetie! 

Feel I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door

[Grace driving the forklift, with Mayor Larry the cat riding shotgun.]

Grace Taylor Armstrong 

“Grace”

Maybe the only person that took Zeke’s dying harder than Kitty was Grace. They didn’t talk or even interact all that much, but at the end of the day they were companeros, weren’t they? Especially after all the shenanigans they went through together with Billy. But seeing him dead like that, bloody, on the floor. It broke her fucking heart. Maybe needless to say then she got the hell out of the brewing industry altogether. Joined the Pipefitters’ Union. Talk about some great fucking benefits. Health insurance out the ass. Deductibles for days. And word on the street is she’s making a go of it with the lovely Miss Anna Leigh, who for her part is off to nursing school. Must be some kind of catch, if she can make an honest woman out of a scamp like Grace.

Knock, knock, knockin’ on Heaven’s door (4x)

[The Cowboy saddled up to the bar, tipping back a cold glass of Bar Fight IPA.]

Carl Frank McDonald

“The Cowboy”

He died. Don’t shed no tear on his account though. He went peaceful, in his marital bed. Five minutes after five, after he didn’t rustle up on the hour sharply, his old lady knew he’d done crossed over the rainbow bridge. Undertaker wouldn’t be up at this early of hour, so she just went downstairs and started breakfast like always. By accident though she cracked their usual four eggs. It was just out of habit; they hadn’t spent hardly a day apart in fifty-odd years of matrimony. Still, always a shame to waste good eggs. 

Ooh, ooh (2x)

[The Twins behind the bar, flicking eachother back and forth in the face.]

Thadeus and Louisa Jackson

“The Twins” 

Alas, they also no longer work at the Newfy either, where their profane pitter-patter is only sometimes missed. To their parents’ surprise, they actually returned to the Church of Latter-day Saints. Their craft brewing sojourn didn’t count for a mission, so they’re off together in Alaska, of all places, spreading the weird word. Since of course you’re wondering, they mostly quit their quarellous ways. Even the incessant cursing, which they stopped cold turkey. Considered disrespectful to the Godhead and harmful to the Spirit. Foul language wouldn’t get them far with the largely native population to whom their mostly soliciting, anyhow. It’s a little-known fact that Eskimos — or Inuit as they prefer to be called — don’t cuss. It’s simply not a part of their language. All them words for snow and not a single one for fuck or cocksucker. What a thing. 

Outro [Hank in the Doctor Goodlove suit.]

John Henry O’Sullivan

“Hank”

For all the fanfare of his return, Hank didn’t stick around for very long. Found things had moved on without him, whatever that means. Last anybody heard he was down Mexico way, starting a scuba diving cult. Not a bad gig if you can get it. Billy went down for a visit, although he sson found that he and his old man didn’t have all that much in common after all. He’d rather chill with Uncle Ernie, to be honest. He always got me. 

Silence 

[Uncle Ernie, on horseback at Rockland, tipping his cap to us.]

Werner Otto Wolff

“Uncle Ernie”

He would’ve loved to’ve spent more time with Billy, but alas he was busy joining Hank’s scuba cult. Don’t you hold it against him though. This book is dedicated to Uncle Ernie, as well as to uncles all around the world. Your Uncle Robs, your Uncle Tonys, your Uncle Nicks, your Uncle Joes. To all the avuncular men in your life, whether or not they’re your blood kin, it don’t matter none. God bless you, every last fucken one of ya. We need you now more than ever. More than you know. 

[The Mick, writing or drawing something in his marbled brewer’s notebook.]

David Michael Solomon

“The Mick”

To this day the Mick’s still brewing beer. The last of the New Frontier Four. The long-awaited spontaneous fermented program was actually somewhat of a sleeper hit, and the lines reformed outside the Newfy, if only for a short whie. Eventually everybody started drinking Hard Seltzers and things quieted back down again. Now they brew those, if you could call it brewing. The process could better be described as artificial flavor infusing. Anyway, he’s got all new staff. Bartenders and an assistant brewer. The position of social media coordinator and event manager remains as yet unfilled. The new guys and girl are alright enogh though. None of them knew Hank, nor for that matter Grace or of course Zeke. So the institutional knowledge of the place is faded some. Even Kitty doesn’t come around all that often as she used to. Her hours are different, for one thing, as well as she’s just a little cagey about baby Rosie growing up in a bar. I guess who could blame her. 

Cast 

I wanna tell you how it’s gonna be

(In order of appearance)

Zeke … Jaden Smith

The Mick … Paul Mescal 

You’re gonna give your love to me

Kitty … Selena Gomez 

Grace … Millie Bobbie Brown

Mayor Larry … Jeremy Renner Strong

I’m wanna love you night and day

Hildy … Parker Posey 

The Deputy … Barry Kheogan Or Jacob Elordi

Ari … Jack Harlow Or Machine Gun Kelly

You know our love will not fade away (2x)

Billy … Shia Lebeouf

Thadeus … Timothee Chalamet 

Louisa … Timothee Chalamet (doing double duty … like in the Social Network, how the Winkelvi twins were played by that cannibal fella, the one who tossed Timmy’s salad in CMBYN)

My love is bigger than a Cadillac

The Cowboy … Peter Coyote 

Anna Leigh … One of them Fanning sisters … whichever’s cheaper 

Jaime … post-Ozempic Jonah Hill

You try to show me but you but you drive me back 

Yayo-L … pre-roids Kumail Nanjiani

Senora Emily … ugh, I don’t know … fucken, Florence Pugh? The other Fanning?  Uncle Ernie … Jon Bernthal 

Your love for me has got to be real

Mister X … Jackie Chan

Hank … Matt Damon Edge City … Pittsburgh/Atlanta/Vancouver/Toronto 

You’re gonna know just how I feel

– A J.J. Abrams Joint –

Acknowledgments 

With respect to Buck Owens and Don Rich

~ The End ~ 

Love for real not fade away

[thewestern]

[thewestern]

Chapter 30

The Intellectual Property Heist or the Great Train of Thought Robbery

Are we to decide how our own story ends?

Would it be then with a whimper?

Or, rather, with a bang. 

Some say that’s how they say it all started. 

Or, rather, that it began with the Word. 

Others say that. 

Them, they say it ends with a revelation. 

So then somebody learning something for once.

A-men to that, brother. 

A-moral to the story. 

There’ll be trumpets of hail and poison rain fell in a lake of fire, boy. 

Unto which all will be revealed in due time. 

In confusion and curses and blood. 

On that last bit may we all agree. 

Hildy had participated in many-a-corporate ceremony. Ground-breakings and ribbon cuttings beget demolitions. (Grand opening, grand closing.) For the former, they’d bring in a sandbox of sorts with soft garden soil, so that the executives, who likely hadn’t shoveled much of anything in their lives, ‘cept big bills and gold coins into their money pits, wouldn’t dislocate one of their dainty shoulders trying to break into the rock hard dirt of whatever superfund site they were digging up this time for subdividing. Undoubtedly unearthing some native burial ground, a headdress-wearing-ass, radioactive skeleton, unwittingly a victim of whatever curse they’d put there after the ground-breaking prior. 

Usually, they let you keep the shovel. Hildy had a closet full of them. Many have the patina of being gold-plated. And they’ve all got little plaques on their stained wood handles with her name engraved. Hildegard Wolff. Breaker of grounds.  

Likewise there were a pair or two of gigantic scissors in there, from the occasional grand opening. As for demolitions, she’d even had the distinction of participating in one of them. Always the guest of honour, wherever it was she went, they let her pull down on the plunger. This was a merely symbolic gesture — even moreso than the others — and the plunger was purely a prop. (The golden shovel and giant scissors were functional if not practical.) But the demolition was real. (By happenstance, none other than Thad and Louisa were in attendance for this ceremony. The building in question had been an abandoned mental hospital — they called it a sanitarium in those days — being demolished to pave way for SciTech. As for the twins and their stake in all this, suffice it to say that controlled demolition is something of a shared sibling hobby of theirs, and this had been one of the few opportunities to bear witness to one in person. Usually they’d had to settle for watching demolition compilations on the Internet. And by now they’d seen ‘em all. Even had personal favourites. They’d go back and forth on their all-time top five CD’s. Obviously, the list changes all the time, but talking in terms of precision, scale and engineering marvel, it’s probably the King Dome in Seattle, the Dunes Hotel & Casino in Vegas, the Grand Prince Hotel Alaaska, of course, the Tappan Zee Bridge in NYC and right down the Hudson, WTC7. IYKYK.) 

Companies and governments and really all manner of institutions use these rituals to demonstrate progress to shareholders and constituents. As well as to generate goodwill among the public. Look at us go. It’s like how they’ll take any excuse to issue a press release. Product launch. New strategic initiative. Thirty-fifth anniversary. Re-rebranding. Charitable donation. Meet the new CEO. Same as the old CEO.   

Hildy had never had the latter. Her capital c-suite coronation. What on account of her predecessor, Wilhelm I, marked the occasion of her ascension by taking a nose dive out of his third-floor bedroom and onto the gravel driveway below. She still got the gig, but it was just that his demise cast a pall on the pomp and circumstances, was all. Yet another rite he’d deprived her of. As such she’d built up this moment in her head. Announcing the Big Merger. It would be her Graduation. A giant Middle Finger to the Ghost of her Grossvater, who would have done barrel rolls in his grave at the mere suggestion of an Celestial — as he was wont to call the few billion folks from that continent — claiming the Wolffenbeir banner for his own. So she’d really do it up then. Go full Chinese New Year with it. Paper lanterns, dragons, mother truckin’ fried rice food truck, ya dig. 

But then came the revelation that these Chinese weren’t really buying the company, such as it was, after all. They wanted their golden goose, Doctor Goodlove. In America, he’d been out of practice for decades. But in China, DG the MD was emergent IP. Why? Nobody knows. Some error of algorithm or alchemy. But with the expansion capital provided by GloBev, he’d be bigger than Jesus. Virtual reality theme parks, ghost kitchens, space tourism. Goodlove would be the furry face of it all. 

As for the rest of the grand Wolffenbeir enterprise, fuck all with it, so far as they was concerned. Sure, they’d try to spin off the Brewing Operations to the highest bidder, or keep it running at the lowest common denominator, if only to satiate the stockholders. Because otherwise they’d be more than happy to convert it all into a scrap metal factory. To them,  this was all the square root of a rounding error. Recall what we concluded about the competing worldviews of deadheads and Phish phans, that life was either this grand metaphysical mystery, or it was a big cosmic joke, respectively. Well this was neither. Because surely there was nothing mysterious or funny about the way this played out. Nary a big discovery nor even a punch line. This was all linear. Lines. On a contract or a cash flow statement or a death certificate. A line graph pointing down and to the left, intercepting the Y axis at negative six feet. 

But, hey, that’s business baby. Hildy would go down with the ship, just so long as she had her golden parachute to cushion the fall. To hell with it, we’ll do it like an Irish wake then? Raise a toast to the good old days. No hard feelings. Maybe we tear down the portrait of Wilhelm I in Hildy’s office like they did Sadaam’s statue in Old Baghdad. Now that sounds like a party. Someone alert the media! 

Alas, the pencil pushers at GloBev didn’t even go for that. For one thing, culturally, they had dissenting opinions on the role of a free press in society. But moreso, according to their vision, rather than a funeral or a memorial service or a celebration of life, this would closer resemble a public execution. Assemble all the employees — those lucky few that hadn’t already been automated into obsolescence — and inform them in no uncertain terms that their services were no longer required.  

Now, Hildy usually had no problem firing someone on a demerit basis. It’s not like she took a morbid, or even a mildly sexual pleasure in it. But at the end of the day, she was the boss. And it comes with the territory. Sometimes you had to swing the axe. This however would be more along the lines of a highly mechanized mass slaughter. Wilhelm I might’ve gotten off on that, but this wasn’t her kink. Certainly didn’t make for much for a going away party, anyway.  

And to get this fiesta started, rather than a big public show of corporate unity and globalist goodwill, the conquering Huns from GloBev simply turned everything off. (Actually, it was Yayo-L who did the honours. He was shocked by how easy it was to dismantle the entire network. Just a few keystrokes.) 

The employees arrived one by one, on this a Friday morning like any other. (It’s widely considered a corporate best practice to fire someone on a Friday. Insofar as you send them on their way with one last paycheck. And, hey, at least it’s the freakin’ weekend, amirite! Work’s out for-ever.) Didn’t matter if they were thirty minutes early, right on time or if they snuck in twenty minutes late with an iced vanilla latte. Nor if they arrived to a cubicle or corner office. (The culling was fully cross-functional, ironically only sparing Hildy’s departmental bete noire, Accounting. Them and custodial. Kept around long enough to locate the skeletons in the broom closets. As for her beloved Marketing, well, they’re always first on the chopping block, as fucking well they should be.) On their desk there was a folder embossed with the GloBev logo — a globe, obviously, Easter hemisphere facing out, with kind of a mug handle — stuffed with a single piece of paper informing them of their severance package, such as their was one, to be prorated based on years of service rendered. Phones, computers, tablets … all their screens were black. Did ‘em like Tony Soprano. Don’t stop—

Of course, Hildy wasn’t there to show solidarity or conduct exit interviews. Rather she spent the morning working from home, at the Wolffenhaus, picking at the full English breakfast that was prepared for her every morning. Wilhelm I watching over her from one of his gilded-framed, iron-bolted perches. 

There would be a ceremony that day. Albeit not at Wolffenbeir HQ. The New Frontier would play host. Perhaps this also warrants explanation. (You’re so needy.) Mayor Larry, may he long live, had included in his First One Hundred Days initiatives package, a suite of incentives designed to spur foreign investment in companies based within the Edge City limits. These incentives were quite compelling. To the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars compelling, delivered in the form of corporate tax breaks, sweetheart land deals and, if it came down to it, duffel bags full of unmarked U.S. bills. Already a Danish manufacturer of wind turbines had relocated its North American presence to capitalize on Mayor Larry’s generous offer. For a fact, Hildy was just now driving by one of their gigantic blades, spanning several car-lengths on a flat-bed truck, on her way downtown to the Newfy. Who, by nature of its being acquired by Wolffenbeir, before they were in turn acquired by GloBev, allowed the latter company to take advantage of the City’s program, Cultivating Global Investment, as it was formally known. Granted, for the rights to their coveted Doctor Goodlove, they could afford to pay any price. That being said, the yuan-pinching cheap bastards they were, weren’t in the business of turning down free money, neither. 

So it was that the Newfy would play host as a kind of Appomatox Court House, wherein Wolffenbeir would be granted its unconditional surrender by GloBev. After they had returned home from their Rockland sojourn, Mick and his counsel Kitty had themselves agreed in principle to Hildy’s terms. Also they offered condolences for her late son, which she likewise accepted out of mere formality. 

Then it was up to Zeke in his capacity as event manager and social media coordinator to plan the event. Now a seasoned pro at throwing funeral parties, Zeke set up the card table with the nametags leftover from Hank’s Celebration of Life, and penned a welcome message to their new corporate overlords on the chalkboard outside: Happy Merger Day! GloBev x Wolffenbier ft. Newfy. 

Hildy, as always, insisted on taking the scenic route down Collegiate Ave. Forgoing the interstate freeway banked by billboards for ambulance chasers and chop shops and payday lenders and shotgun shacks, Ari chauffered her past the botanical gardens, the mid-century modern architecture homes, the shopping district of farm-to-table-to-lip fillered eateries and boutiques that sold exclusively trinkets and, of course, the Canaan School, where the American flag was coincidentally flying at half mast, in solemn commemoration of a shooting that had taken place on Thursday in some other state at some other school. Although unlike Canaan, this had been a public school. (Of the three-hundred and then-some school shootings in the twenty-or-so-years post-Columbine, only about fifteen have taken place at private schools.) To be honest, though, this hadn’t been a headline school shooting. Only two dead — one a student, and the other an unlucky member of the custodial staff. Hence perhaps how come the janitor at Canaan had been so diligent about the color guard, ceremony of it all. If it hadn’t of been for the flaccid ensign, it would have been like it hadn’t even happened. 

Needless to say if Ari had been there it, it wouldn’t have happened at all. Alas, he was back to serving Hildy’s pleasure as her personal driver. Today he was co-co-piloted by the pair of feral terriers, from whom Hildy announced she required some space this morning. One of them kept attempting to lick the mother of pearl-inlaid gear shifter, whilst t’other was acheiving a contact high on the eucalyptus/cucumber-scented air conditioner/diffuser. As a means of ignoring this, Ari was blasting Deep House on the concert-quality stereo system, although this only served to exacerbate the canines’ acute anxiety and thus further provoke their unfavourable behavioural outcomes. Hildy, however, couldn’t here a nary a peep nor a deep or a drop, as thus she sat blissfully oblivious in her pristinely sound-proof cocoon of a cabin. Her echoless chamber. Scoring the anti-soundtrack to her curated commute. One last ride into town in the company car. (GloBev would be repoing that shit post-haste. Hildy would have to go car shopping. Ugh.)

From the opposite direction, Mayor Larry was likewise en route, driven as always by his patrol detail. Alas there was no partition dividing this absolute aircraft carrier of a sport utility vehicle, so the deputy simply had to suffer along through the Yacht Rock station on Satellite Radio, at the Mayor’s insistence. 

But what a fool believes, he sees

No wise man has the power to reason away

What seems to be

Is always better than nothing

Than nothing at all

Since it was he who’d brokered this imperfect corporate union, in a way, Mayor Larry would be duly compensated in meaningful ways — electorally and monetarily, mainly — except in the one he wanted most. The romantic affection or even mere acknowledgment of his extramarital lover. 

His ex-mentee, Jaime, likewise felt jilted. The fact that he wasn’t invited hadn’t deterred him from finding out what time the private ceremony would commence at the Newfy. He would be there with hell’s bells on, ready to object like Benjamin Braddock at Katharine Ross’s wedding, pounding on the stained glass like a preppy lunatic. He certainly had the slick ride, albeit his was a vintage pickup. You know, boxy with the two-toned paneling on the side. The boilerplate blue collar ephemera that modern hipsterdom is trafficked in. Old trucks for new money, if you please. (Credit the New York Times Style Section, arbiter of taste, trends and general tomfoolery.) 

For a fact, Carl the Cowboy, the down on his luck dairy farmer moonlighting as a process server, he had this same model truck, but back when it was cherry, fresh off the assembly line, long before it was a fashion statement. It had been a damn good truck, too. But, eventually, they all stop running. Now he had a newer old truck — one not sufficiently aged to qualify as retro — that he used to drive into town for to retrieve spent grain from breweries and distilleries. Motor started every morning; you give her that. But she got worse highway mileage than a dern lawn mower, so mostly for his odd errands and honey-dos he scooted around in his wife’s car if he could help it. She drove a Corolla. A sensible vehicle if there ever was.

Carl’s colleague and Jaime’s assistant, Anna Leigh, had agreed to accompany her boss on this hopeless errand, despite that she desperately didn’t want to give him any more designs on her than he had already. Instead, she harboured the likewise unlikely hope that she could win the fleeting romantic attention of Grace, on whom she was still hung up, indeed quite woefully so. For a fact, she’d been so bent out of shape that she’d backslid and slept with Sasha the snake wrangler again, despite knowing full well that she had a real live pet python in her bedroom that would watch the whole time. Fucking ew, dude.

Despite his rather illustrious record as a vanguard of both the post-harcore and craft beer-inspired battle rap scenes, Jaime didn’t much listen to music anymore. Lately he had been getting really into the nascent podcast scene. (He was even thinking out loud about starting one, and would often invite people to be hypothetical guests on hypothetical future episodes.) If I’m going to be investing my hearing equity by listening to something, as he mansplained to miss Anna Leigh, I want it to have some meaningful ROI. It’s the same reason I don’t read fiction.  

This particular program was hosted by a very nasally-voiced guy by the name of Guy. Jaime liked it because he interviewed his fellow entrepreneurs about their entrepreneurial origin stories, such as they were, inexplicably in front of a live audience. 

This guy is great, Jaime extolled. Will you reach out to their producer and pitch me as a guest? I think the beer-as-storytelling angle would really resonate with their demographic. 

Absolutely, she responded, with no intention whatsoever of following through.  

The twins were commuting in to work in the tooth van, which ironically or not, had no bluetooth player for which to play podcasts or any other media on. Perhaps their repartee could have formed the basis for a podcast, were it not for that they would both think that was Gay. Their banter this morning was especially sardonic, as they stared down the barrel of yet another work week. Recall that Friday was their Monday. Imagine that. 

Why is your blinker on?

Because I’m exiting. Any more questions? 

Yeah but the offramp is all the way a-half-a-mile the fuck up there. So to everybody else on the road you just look like an escaped mental patient. And, beside, you’re in the exit lane. That you’re exiting ahead is implied. If rather you were merging back onto the highway, then you could reasonably use your blinker. 

If I knew I was going to get a driver’s ed lesson from a special ed student, I would have used my blinker to indicate my swerving into oncoming traffic. 

Do it, pussy. 

Fuck you, you don’t think I will?  I’m ready to die right here in this van. Just so long as I take you with me it will be more than worth it. 

Ha, you’re too much of a bitch to commit murder-suicide.

Who said anything about suicide, kimosabe? I’d survive a head on collision, because I’m built different. Your bony ass, on the other hand, would probably get thrown out through the windshield and impaled on a mile marker. Also, for what it’s worth, I’m not going down on a murder rap either. They’ll plea me down to vehicular manslaughter, no problemo. I’ll be out in three-to-five with good behaviour, and the first place I’m going is the cemetery to piss on your grave.

Oh what-ever. You wouldn’t last three-to-five weeks in federal. 

Haha, okay — now you’re just being ridiculous. Because I’ve definitely told you my plan to join the Mexican gang and play them off the Neo-Nazis, so you know that it’s fucking foolproof. 

For the last time, that’s the plot to Blood In Blood Out, you fucking maricon. And what you’d one hundred percent do in prison, is try to become someone’s bitch. Too bad you’re so nasty nobody would want anything to do with your loose stanky boy pussy. 

Aha! Now I know you’re just talking shit. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. Ah, fudge, I missed the exit! 

Skip Engel was listening to The Word. One-oh-seven-point-five The Word, to be precise. Baseball season was over, after all. Ever thus it was Flashback Friday, wherein DJ WWJD spun a selection of classic sermons from way back in the day. Right now he was tuned in to arguably the mother fucking greatest. Billy Graham. 

Not to be confused with Bill Graham, — to whom this super-goy was no relation — the rock promoter extraordinaire to the Grateful Dead, Huey Lewis and others. His rock was not their rock. Bill-y Graham, though, was likewise a promoter. And he was damn good, too. Ain’t no preacher man out there could draw a crowd as good as Billy. The Dead, for comparison’s sake, played their personal record biggest show to an estimated six hundred or so thousand over three days at a race track in Upstate New York. Now, that very same summer, of Seventy-Three, the Reverand Graham delivered the gospel unto one-point-one million pilgrims on an airstrip in Seoul, South Korea. Seventy-five thousand of whom thereby committed their life to Christ! 

Now, obviously, it’s not a competition. (And if it was, it should be said that some statistically significant segment of the congregation at Watkins Glen thereafter likely devoted themselves to Garcia, but he wasn’t asking for anybody’s soul.) However there would come a time when quibbling over crowd sizes would trickle down from the highest halls of power to temporarily subsume the public discourse. It is all about eyeballs, after all. Always has been. Although it used to be ears. He who has ears, let him hear; friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. Now the goalposts have shifted further still. Our faith is measured more ethereally. In Influence. And unlike in the old world race for subscribers or ratings, peddling Influence is done on a global scale. Asia. Chickity China, the Chinese Chicken. That’s where the real money is. 

The Grateful Dead, for their part, never performed in the Orient. For a fact, apart from that one run of shows in Egypt, they only ever performed on two continents. North America, obviously, and Europe, where the year prior to the aforementioned Summer Jam, they reached their collective nadir, arguably speaking, as improvisational performers. Billy Graham, for his part, preached on six continents. Regrettably, he never did bring a crusade — that’s what he called his tours — to Antarctica, but then according to his website, four researchers at a station outpost on the South Pole did Come to Christ after watching an online sermon in Aught-Five. (Obviously it’s a flex for an evangelist to say he or she converted new followers from a place in the farthest reaches of the Earth, one that isn’t even hospitable to human life, but wouldn’t you be most susceptible there to a religious awakening, trapped inside of a double wide trailer with three other poor penguin fuckers, only going outside during the one hour of daylight into the subzero temperatures and gale force-winds to take permafrost samples or empty the shit bucket?) 

Granted, it was harder for the Dead to travel. Insofar as they had a bigger tent. (Billy Graham didn’t have roadies.) Also, what with their extracurricular pursuits, you run the risk of some boy scout customs officer finding some or other substance considered to be untoward, according to his or her country’s standards of decency in your carry-on luggage. Next thing you know you’re doing five-to-ten in a Turkish prison or a gulag somewhere, a hard labour bid, awaiting the State Department to negotiate a prisoner exchange for a warlord. So they strayed a little closer to home was all. That being said, they were no lightweights. Not when it came to selling tickets. They filled our finest auditoriums, fairgrounds, colleges, arenas and stadiums. Giants Stadium. R.F.K. Stadium. The aforementioned, Rich Stadium. Curiously though, they never played any of the iconic American ballparks. (Those above three are primarily football stadiums. As is Soldier Field in Chicago, where as you know they played their last. Their home stadium, such as you would say they had one, was Candlestick Park in San Francisco, dually-occupied by the baseball Giants and the football Forty-niners. Although they never gigged it, the Dead, they did perform the Star Spangled Banner on Opening Day in ninety-three, a pre-PEDs Barry Bonds’s home debut with the ballclub. He went two-for-three with a dinger, the first of forty-six in that campaign for which he was awarded his second consecutive and third overall NL MVP honours. The following year the players went on strike, and the year after that Jerry died. As for his and the band’s part in all this, they performed the Anthem, their one-and-only rendition, a capella, in three-part harmony. Garcia, Weir and erstwhile keyboardist Vince Wernick, their last and shortest-tenured full-time player of that instrument. Hired after his predecessor Brent Mydland drank himself to death, Vince was likewise a troubled soul, who following Jerry’s death and a throat cancer diagnosis of his own fell into a deep depression from whence he would not emerge. After being eighty-sixed from any heretofore reunion shows on account of his increasingly erratic behaviour, including a failed suicide attempt on the Ratdog tour bus [bleak], Welnick reportedly succeeded in taking his own life by cutting his throat with a knife in front of his wife, Lori. You say one foul thing about me and you’ll regret it the rest of your life, Welnick’s widow told the San Francisco Chronicle when contacted to provide comment for a retrospective on his life and death. I have been nothing but good to the only man I ever love, she went on. And you can put that in the newspaper.) They say those are our cathedrals. The great American ballparks. Yankee Stadium. Wrigley Field. Fenway Park.

Billy Graham played the former in fifty-seven to great fanfare. He even had a famous opener. The then-Veep, Richard Milhous Nixon. Although he would remain closest to Tricky Dick, with whom he infamously maintained a no-holds-barred telephone correspondence throughout his presidency, in his time Graham would go on to spiritually advise all the American commanders in chief from Truman all the way down to Trump. The latter has claimed to have been in attendance that day in the Bronx. He would have been just ten years old — fucking imagine him as a kid —, packed shoulder-to-shoulder among the one hundred thousand-plus estimated parishioners, a record crowd for that time and venue. Twenty thousand more who couldn’t get in gathered outside. Shakedown Streets of Gold.

Nixon, ever with sweat beading on his upper lip, did a tight five on the doctrine of American Exceptionalism, as it is divinely endowed by virtue of ours being a Christian nation Under God. (His boss, Ike, had added that last bit to the Pledge of Allegiance, as a stove-pipe hat tip to the Gettysburg Address … that this nation, under god, shall have a new birth of freedom. The original pledge was written as part of a promotion for a children’s magazine to help sell flags to schools.) Then Billy got up and riffed on individual salvation. That was his whole trip. And it’s what separated him from your everyday evangelist. A lot of pastors, they preach a more communal and uplifting gospel about the goodness of god. That church is a place for community, where all are welcome to gather together as family and friends and neighbors in worship of His Love. But Graham’s church took place on television and in stadiums, so suffice it to say he had a different sales pitch altogether. Night after night, he got up and he used scripture and cultural commentary and whatever else was on his mind, all in the service of saying more or less the same thing. That we’re fucked, basically. We’re all sinners. This world is damned. Christ is coming back. Like, soon. As in it oughtta be any day now. And unless you come forward and give your life unto Him, completely … well, then see you in Hell, Jack. The choice is yours, and yours alone. I’ll give you up until right now to decide. 

That last part was the real kicker, him warning his audience that this would be their only chance. Not tomorrow. Not next week. To-day. Choose you this day, he said, that day in the House that Ruth Built. You may never be this close to the Kingdom of Heaven again. 

But Skip wasn’t listening to the Yankee Stadium sermon. To be honest, it’s not his best. You can’t really blame him though; New York City something of an away game for god. Rather, this was a tape of his crusade in the Second City. 

Dr. Billy Graham: Almost Persuaded. Soldier Field. Chicago, Illinois,  17 June 1972.

Now this was one was a banger, indubitably. Sunday show of an epic sixteen-day run. (Bakers’ dozen, plusse trois.) It’s a sweltering day on the Lake Shore. Record temps for the Summer of the Chi. We’re talking triple digies. How’s that for a hot dog? A nurse testifies to two-hundred patients being treated for heat exaustion. Graham himself recalls he had to hold onto the pulpit so as to not collapse. But you wouldn’t know it watching the tape. No sir. Billy is in his bag. Hair slicked back. Wayfarer shades. He looks like a goddamn blues brother up there, telling the story of the Apostle Paul and King Agrippa, from the twenty-eigth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter from the book of Acts. Then Agrippa says unto Paul, Almost, thou persuadest me. 

Paul offers Agrippa the same deal Billy makes at the end of all his sermons. You can come to Christ, or else. Agrippa says, you drive a hard bargain, Paul. You almost had me, but I’m gonna take a pass. (Keep in mind, Paul is Agrippa’s prisoner in this scenario, and the former is the one threatening the latter with eternal damnation.)

Billy goes on to offer historical context. Sounds boring, but King Agrippa is no ordinary king. He’s the King of Rome, which is very sick. It’s become kind of a meme, but only because it’s true. Dudes love Rome. Rome rocks. However, as Billy explains, Agrippa reigns over a Rome in decline. That’s also okay, though, because one of the things dudes love the most about Rome, is debating about why it declined. You see, because whatever it is dudes don’t like about their lives in the present day — be it illegal immigration, climate change, gayness, famine — they can pinpoint that thing as the reason the greatest empire in human history collapsed … and they’d be right, sort of. 

Case in point, Billy cites the author of the titular work on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, in arguing that moral decay was the main culprit. Skyrocketing divorce rates among an increasingly sex-crazed populace, militarism and the building of gigantic armaments, unchecked federal deficit spending (lol), the masses appeased by bread and circuses. And it’s quite a compelling case he makes, standing on the fifty-yard line of a football field, in a publicly-financed stadium, named to honor the sacrifice made by soldiers in the most unnecessary and barbaric wars in human history (WWI, although at the time they called it The Great War, because they didn’t know there’d be a sequel), flanked by columns, designed in the neo-Classical style of the Roman Coliseum. Drawing comparison from these cultural decadences of antiquity, to those societal ills that plague our nation to this very day. Worst of all, Billy says, was the dilution of religion. That rather than piety for its own blessed sake, faith among the Romans had become perfunctory. They were just going through the motions. Keeping up appearances.

Aha: but here is where Graham gives up the ghost. Because Fast Eddie Gibbon was a man of the Elightenment, not to mention a Jack Catholic. It is as such that perhaps most of all he points the finger squarely at organized religion, what for hastening the end of the Caesar salad days and ushering in the Dark Ages. Because his is the Hobbsian view of the Church as a phantom presiding over the tomb of Empire. For a fact, he himself testifies that it was his inspiration for embarking on writing TDAFOTRE, he on a Roman holiday, musing among the Ruins of the Capitol on the Ides of October, watching the barefooted fryars sing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter. And to think, some two hundred and two years later, a former tent revivalist would play to stadiums, twisting his words so. 

But Skip isn’t familiar enough with the Classics to dispute Billy’s account of matters, Roman nor otherwise. Might as well be Greek to him. For that matter, neither are the two thousand-some proselytes that come to Christ that day in Chicago at Graham’s behest much acquainted with antiquity. And, even if they were, Gibbon’s telling isn’t exactly considered historiographically sound any longer. Though it nonetheless endures for the same reason that BG was able to convince all those people to give up their sin. That he told it good. In a way that perhaps no other historian who came before him had ever been, he was self-deprecating, ironically referential and adherent to his own irreverent voice. Put more simply, Gibbon was funny. (To be sure, so could be Graham, but that wasn’t his superpower.) And over six gargantuan volumes spanning thirteen hundred years of history, he spun a hell of a yarn. 

It doesn’t matter what I say, so long as I speak with inflection, that makes you feel I’ll convey some inner truth or vast reflection

Blues Traveler

Also, that title though. Decline and Fall. Damn. Sounds like it could be a fire mixtape, doesn’t it? Ain’t it funny too how people often malappropriate it to Rise and Fall. According to Gibbon there was no such Rise. Only fall. For it is his opinion that Empire is in a perpetual state of decline. It’s all downhill from here. Maybe that’s all our lot. To grab onto what we can of whatever’s left. Do what you gotta do and justify it however you can. Take your piece and make your peace. Most of it’s beyond our control anyway. Like Billy quotes that day, albeit not from the gospel. From Billy to Billy to Billy. That there’s a tide in the affairs of men. Of Billies. 

###

As the actors took their places, back inside the Newfy the stage was set for the final act. With the command of a veteran director, Zeke surveyed the barroom, blocking the upcoming scene in the theater of the surreal. Commedia del’farte. With his favourite olive green workshirt, he wore a matching military style cap. The one with a shorter brim. That was to be his costume. For a fact, all the Newfy four had their own funny fat. 

Kitty, for her part, wore a beret. Whereas Zeke looked a bit out of place in his lid — however, since he was a black person in a craft brewery, he looked out of place from the first, and thus no one noticed —, the Mrs. Mick looked as if she’d been born in hers. The way it sat on her head as if it had been placed their by some higher power, crowning her princess of a new utopian nation. It likewise matched her flowing black romper, the one she had bought as back-to-school clothes.

She stood stage left, behind the stick, drying pint glasses. The perfect mundane task for looking innocuous as you watch a plan unfold. Back in the brewhouse, behind the curtain, the stagehands were toiling away. Grace’s assigned hat was your standard black cuffed beanie, or so it appeared. She was rolling a J on her lap. Normally, she’d have the professional courtesy to take that outside, but today wasn’t going to be a normal workday.

The Mick, in his trademark hoodie and jeans, wore a cowboy hat, that for the record, he felt fucking silly in. Kitty thought he looked handsome and told him so. It came from the farmhouse. Hank’d likely worn it around the farm. Playing dress up. 

Raj was back there with them, making a few final tweaks to the A/V cues. He had on a turban, which he resented as typecasting. Alas, he had it left over from his cousin’s wedding, and the only other hats he had were just regular old ball caps. As for the rest of his ensemble, rather than the traditional Sherwani the turban came with, he wore the Wolffenbeir-branded motocross jersey from the dirtbike barn Edge City. The one with flames on the sleeves. 

Mayor Larry, meanwhile, although not a cast member necessarily, was wearing a silk-embroidered tunic, in a rather transparent effort to sartorially endear himself to his benefactees from the Far East. Obviously this wasn’t his first rodeo in kabuki political pageantry. Previously he’d donned a kimono, kilt (you already know he went commando), kente cloth and a full-on Mexican poncho-sombrero combo plate, none of which were remotely successful in engendering goodwill among the respective foreign delegations, who to the businessman were dressed in western-style suits. 

Nonetheless, with his Larry’s lackeys — as Hank was wont to call them — in tow, the Mayor was the first to arrive, dressed to the Chinese nines. Hifalutin functions such these, folks tend to show up in order of importance. Thus it fell to the early birds to awkwardly mill about, pecking at the catering spread, waiting for the bigger fish to flipper in. 

This time Zeke was undaunted, deftly ushering his Mediocrity the Mayor to take his seat on the far center left of the dais. Likewise the deputy took up his post at the entrance, just waiting for some other would-be assassin to make his day so he could pad his body count.

The deputy’s colleague, Ari, was next through the door, which he held for Wolff One. Hildy for her part had never worn a costume — not even for Halloween — and she sure as shit wasn’t going to start today. Best believe her pantsuit game was on point though, being how she was, after all, the OG Girlboss Supreme. The fabric, a grey sharkskin, flowed about her in such a way that it looked as if she were actually swimming across the parquet floor. Mayor Larry could just about cry. As well could she upon seeing him, this man-boy she deigned to allow to perform oral sex on her, looking inexplicably like a fucking geisha. Without so much as meeting his puppy dog gaze she sat down, leaving a buffer of two empty seats between them.

Next up was Mister X. Whereas Hildy and Mayor Larry, typically self-assured and jovial in their respective demeaners, wore the sullen expressions of the conquested, their conqueror was smiling like a China Cat. Proud walking jingle like the midnight sun he was, strutting into the Newfy to claim his latest bounty. Gleefully he shook hands with whomever he past, including Thad and Louie, who could’ve just met Ghengis fucking Kahn, for all they gave a shit. Zeke was more deferential, dutifully guiding the last variable to the small stage. The Mayor stood and bowed, to which Mister X smiled with bewilderment before continuing on to take the seat next to Hildegard. 

This left but one seat empty, for the guest of honor.

###

Back in Hank’s office, Billy was seated on a director’s chair. For once he wasn’t fidgeting. Instead, he looked straight ahead, right into the camera, breaking the fourth wall of the movie that was his life. Your life. All of our lives. Then, for the first and final time, he put on the mask. 

###

It was the Mick’s turn to talk first. He was supposed to introduce the Mayor, who would then introduce Hildy, who would present her intellectual property, like a proud father giving away his daughter on her arranged wedding day, to Mister X, who would not be making remarks. This according to the Run of Show as it was painstakingly approved by the a litany of lawyers and public relations professionals representing GBNA. Every photo-op made under the GloBev banner was stage-managed to the fucking pixel. This would be no different.    

Ahem. 

The Mick tapped the mic. This is something people do because they see it on television. It serves no purpose, except perhaps for saving one the embarrassment of speaking into a microphone that isn’t turned on. 

Is this thing on. Heh. 

Good morning, everybody. My name is Michael. I want to thank you all for being here on this … uh … eventful day. Before I introduce the Mayor, who some of you may know was one of our co-founders at the New Frontier … the other being Hank. Right, um, before I bring up Mayor Larry, my co-workers and I have prepared something to commemorate this … uh … occasion. 

Immediately the Mick had strayed from his pre-approved talking points. Of course only Mister X noticed. While outwardly he maintained his his placid composure, internally he cursed the Western imperialist pigs and fantasized about having this curly-headed recusant sent to a work camp. 

Yeah-so. Without further ado I guess. Put your hands together for our house band … Neil and the Giant Leap Forward. Hit it boys.  

Here the Mick did a little, loopity flourish with his index finger ending with his pointing across his body to cue the musicians. They’ve been here this whole time, setting up in the corner. It’s the same band from the beginning — Hank’s Celebration of Life — albeit they’re no longer dressed like they work at a livery stable. Today they’re wearing matching astronaut costumes. The shiny ones. Don’t worry, it’s all part of the bit. 

[One, Two, Three —]

Good love 

(You got to have love) 

Good love 

(You got to have love) 

Good love 

(Good love and plenty of it) 

Here the band settled into an instrumental rhythm. The fiddle player did the syncopated chord progression, the guitar player did kind of that palm-muted staccato arpegio, the standup bass player did a counter-melodic run and the mando player hit a little lead part. It’s not important. Because back on the main stage, the Mick was doing something truly outrageous, for him anyway. Dancing. 

If you could fucking call it that. His feet were cemented to the floor, and his hips were hardly moving neither. Rather, he was shimmying his knees and doing this bizarre move with his arms, holding them at his side, and kind of alternating punching outward at a forty-five degree angle. Strange stuff. But, to be honest, it was kind of working for him. Whatever this was, the Mick was committed. 

Okay, who’s ready for the big enchilada? There’s someone I want you all to meet. He’s the guy we all came to see. You know him. You love him. Ladies and Gentlemen, please give a warm, Newfy welcome to your favorite physician, and apparently our new boss …

Doc—tor Goodlove! 

I said now doctor 

(Doctor!) 

Mister M.D. 

(Doctor!) 

Whoa can you tell me?

(Doctor!) 

What’s ailing me? 

(Doctor!) 

He said— 

Yeah (5x)

(Yeah [5x])

All you need

All you—really need

Is good love! 

(Hey now you got to have love!) 

Good love 

(Come on, come on, come on … turn on the light) 

Good love 

(Say ah!) 

Good love 

(Say it again!) 

Good love

(You got-ta, got-ta, you got-ta have love)  

Whilst the singer was scatting into a sixties-style microphone like they would’ve had on the Ed Sullivan Show, or the one Bob Dylan went electric with, the Mick did the loopity pointy thingy in the opposite direction toward the swinging saloon doors that separated the barroom from the brewhouse, wherein Raj had taken his cue to fire smoke machine. From whence it was that Doctor Goodlove swung said swinging saloon doors open with a flying roundhouse karate kick, landing in a surf stance with his arms spread out in warrior two. Thereupon he jumped straight up and did the fist pumping, dog pound move from the Arsenio Hall Show, on which he’d been a recurring guest, and on his way to the lectern he high-fived Zeke, who was live-streaming the whole thing on his Chinese-made, hand-me-down camera phone.  

There on stage, from left to right, the Mayor was smiling like an idiot. He loved Doctor Goodlove without irony, having been a part of the key eighteen to thirty-five year-old male demographic when the Wolff Lite campaign made its heralded debut. He’d be in the breakroom at Cavness-Baumann and say, hey, have you guys seen this new Wolff Lite commercial? What a riot! During one pillow conversation, Larry’d even had the gall to ask Hildy directly, what was he like, in real life? 

What was who like, darling? 

You know, he said, tepidly. Doctor Goodlove? 

To which her eyes rolled just about outside of her head. 

Although in this very special moment, even Hildy — who was not prone to outbursts of sentimentality, it should go without saying — felt a pang of nostalgia at the sight of her greatest achievement reanimated before her. Emotionally It was about equivalent to the sharp pinching sensation of getting a flu shot. Perhaps that’s how come she felt the conflicting urge to look away. 

Mister X, meanwhile, couldn’t help but watch this train wreck rolling straight toward him. The Disorient Express. The intellectual property that was Doctor Goodlove, albeit highly valuable, was also very fragile, and needless to say none of this choreography had been cleared for approval by the censorship consultants. So much as one wrong dance step could render him a pariah within the party and thus tank his surging cultural appeal on arrival.

 Doctor Goodlove hopped on stage and waved both paws exuberantly to the non-existent audience. There were no customers, of course, because it was ten o’clock in the morning and the bar was closed. He did a little noogie of Mayor Mockinbird’s ripoff of a Kennedy quaff, which delighted Larry to no end. Then he mimed a little karate at Mister X who was not amused in the least. Lastly he gave his creator a big bear hug. No one else could have possibly noticed, but he whispered something in her ear. When their embrace broke, Hildy’s eyes widened and her jaw slackened as the blood drained from her face. Retaking her seat, she looked positively spectral. 

Lastly Goodlove approached the Mick, whom he dapped up like an old fraternity brother. Arm-in-arm, they approached the mic stand. 

Doctor Goodlove, after your many years of extinction from the corporate mascots ecosystem, it’s my great honour to reintroduce you to the foodstuffs chain. You sir, are an American Icon. 

Doc feigned a who, me, bit of modesty before doing the little the prayer hands—I’m So Grateful gesture a la Jaime, who had just now slithered into the bar with Anna Leigh. The deputy lowered his blade sunglasses to give the latter a thoroughly invasive ocular pat down.

And, and, as for the reason we are gathered together here today, not only are you a beloved and admired figure here at home, in these United States, but you are soon to join the ranks of fast food, missile defense systems and democratic capitalism as one of our finest cultural exports. Buddy, you’re flying non-stop to China. Isn’t that something, folks? Let’s hear it for Doctor Goodlove! 

Doctor Goodlove did some more fist bumping, as well as some roof raising, as Thadeus and Louisa applauded. 

But, hold on just a second, because before we send you off with a song, I’m sure it would mean a lot to everybody here if you’d say a few words. What do you say, everybody? Would you like Doctor Goodlove say a few words? 

Yeah, how about you say a few fucking words, Doc!

Louie echoed Thad’s words of encouragement. 

Speeech, bitch!  

By now Mister X’s dumpling was fully steamed. Not only had the representative from the New Frontier made a mockery of the proceedings, but he had invited Doctor Goodlove to talk. This was unacceptable for the following reason. 

Doctor Goodlove, does, not, talk. 

You see, there are two kinds of mascots. Ones that talk and ones that absolutely do not talk under any circumstances, capeesh. The former are of the new school. They have cute little cartoon catchphrases or they giggle when you poke their tummies. It’s pathetic, frankly. 

Real mascots, they don’t need to talk. It’s like silent film or mime — a French fucking art form. Theirs are libidinal forces at play, that they may use to communicate with their audiences telepathically. That’s what makes them such effective brand messengers. 

For Doctor Goodlove to say a few words would be for him to sully this illusion. And that’s at the very least. Because, for Mister X’s sake, the stakes were considerably higher. This likewise warrants explanation. 

In the aftermath of the debacle at Rockland, Zeke indicated that he had … a plan. In truth he had the concepts of a plan, but conceptually his plan was quite sound. You see, when Zeke had matriculated at West High, the sports teams had gone by the moniker, Warriors. As in, the West High Warriors. Innocuous enough. However the school mascot had been Chief Whippet the Warrior. An already acne-riddled student made up in full red face, headdress and buckskins to boot. This was until around Zeke’s junior year, when there had been a sweeping nationwide referendum on racist mascots, and poor Whippet got swept right up in it. The purpose of a mascot is to unite a community, said Mayor Larry when he offered his two cents on the matter in an official press release. Therefore, as a proud West High alumnus I am officially calling on the student body to once and for all, end Whippet’s divisive tenure as our standard bearer. 

And so they did, although they stopped short of taking Lawrence’s offer to name the team after him — the West High Mockingbirds. (Larry aside, actually not a bad idea for a name. Birds in general make good mascots. But pick something off the beaten path. Enough with the Hawks or the Eagles or the Cardinals. Like what about the Hummingbirds. Or the fucking Condors. Whatever. Go Birds. Tweet Tweet.) Rather they kept the name Warrior so they wouldn’t have to pay for new uniforms, signage, etc., and simply ditched poor Whippet. In his stead, wouldn’t you know it that they went with a wolf. As were most school supplies at West, the costume had been a hand-me-down.

Judging by the reverence with which Doctor Goodlove was referenced in the press release announcing GloBev’s pending acquisition of Wolffenbeir, Zeke accurately surmised that he had been more than just a bargaining chip in the negotations. So then his plan, such as it was, was to somehow sully the good doctor’s reputation, to the extent that it would tank the deal entirely. 

Actually, said the Mick, that’s not as dumb as it sounds. 

Thank you, Zeke replied, genuinely. 

Yeah. Especially since I saw on the Internet that Chinese people have these crazy censorship rules they have to follow when it comes to Western media. Like, I heard Winnie the Pooh is an enemy of the state there or whatever. So, maybe we could make Doctor Goodlove out to be some kind of dissident. 

Yoo— and we can make that shit go viral, son. All over China, ya feel me. From the window to the mother fucking Great Wall. 

But how do you Make something go viral? Suddenly, Kitty was the skeptic.  

Shit, how should I know? Why I always have to got the answers?

Meanwhile Mick was reanimated, Kitty was relieved to see. Hard to say how, but one could tell. Maybe he was a little more emotive in his speech or just standing up straighter. He posed a question to the group. 

Well, hold on … let’s play this out. What components does every viral video have?

Funny animals.

Obviously, but where are we going to get a funny animal? 

Aha. What if we already have one? 

Larry the Cat? 

No, no. We all love Larry, but cats are bad actors. Too unpredictable. The animal I’m thinking of is highly trained. Like as in he went to four-year medical school. Also he isn’t a real animal. 

Goddamn it. You mean Goodlove.

Yep.  

And what if we dress up as other animals. Like the ones he eats in the commercials.  

Ooh. Good idea. What else? 

Gots to have tunes. Yep. Gots to. Okay, this is starting to sound pretty viral. But there’s still one thing we’re missing. 

Fucking. 

Ew, Billy, no. 

What? You don’t mess with furries? You’d be surprised. There’s mad freaks out there. 

That’s true, Billy, but not really what we’re going for. No bad ideas, though. Actually, along those same lines, what’s something sex is often compared to?

Eating. 

Yeah, Grace, but what else. 

You mean, Zeke said, like dancing?

And Peggy was her name-o.

It was thus that the plan was set in motion.

Read, Fire, Aim. 

From there, a cursory Google search immediately yielded a listicle of 26 Things You Won’t Believe are Banned By Chinese Censors. Among them were, any denigration whatsoever of the Chinese Communist Party and it’s glorious history, especially Chairman Mao. Naturally. But also eighty-sixed were — more obscurely — Skeletons, which along with ghosts, vampires, zombies and any other renderings of the undead, are considered highly insensitive to fictionally depict in Chinese culture. For a fact, anything considered to be broadly Supernatural, is a non-starter. Time travel, for example, is expressly prohibited as a narrative device, maybe on account of the moral of such stories is often that only through reckoning with the past, can one change the future. C.C.P. isn’t big on dwelling on the past, suffice to say. (This resulted in the beloved American movie classic, Back to the Future, being labeled as subversive and pulled off of shelves at Blockbuster Video locations all throughout Mainland China.) Also not allowed, not surprisingly, pornography. For the last time, Billy, we’re not making a porno. Although, the last item on the naughty list was of particular interest. Talking animals. Straight up. The regulations are opaque by design, and there are notable exceptions — Peppa Pig is massively popular, for example. But the personification of animals, particularly by endowing them with the power of speech, is thought to be by its very nature, dehumanising. Particularly if those animals are conversing with humans, as they are in such movies as Space Jam, Babe or Babe: Pig in the City.

(There was one other thing they found out about all the Wiggers in China being rounded up and sent to re-education gulags, which gave Billy pause.) 

With that, the gang — now numbering six … Billy was finally a part of a crew — started storyboarding their viral video, which played out in one act as follows. 

###

Doctor Goodlove stepped to the mic, right out of the gate, violating the aforementioned sanction on talking animals. 

Thanks, Michael. How’s your hemroids? 

Thadeaus and Louisa laugh. 

Haha, I’m just joshing ya. 

But, seriously, what’s up you bedwetters? Damn is it good to be back. As my buddy Mike here just alluded, I’ve been on the shelf a long time. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and I’ll just say that everything you’ve heard about me is true. However, while I’d love to regale you all of my adventures, being marooned on the Island of Misfit Mascots, rolling blunts with Joe Camel and doing it doggy style with Lassie … I just don’t think it would be right for me to accept this honor as its been bestowed upon me by Senor Equis here and the fine people at GloBev. So I’m going to cede my time to a very  good friend of mine, who even more than me, has been criminally underrated and frankly overlooked by the good consumers of this country for far too long. That ends today. Boys and girls, give it up for the one, the only, Howlie!

By now, the otherwise stoic Mister X — Monsoire Ixe — was as red in the face as one of Mao’s little books. As Doctor Goodlove took the empty seat to his left, jovially slapping his knee, the GloBev emissary turned to his right to shoot a death stare at Hildy, who for her part, would have rather had her dead Grossvater come back to life than see Howlie risen like this, from from the medical waste repository of aborted brands. 

And, as if this were now a late night talk show, the house band played Howlie’s walk-up music. Quick, think fast — what would yours be? Crazy Train, Enter Sandman … Wild Thing? All good options. Howlie went with Bad Moon Rising. Mother f’n John Fogerty. The obvious choice, although there are a ton of great moon-based songs to pick from. (Fly Me to the ___, Walking on the ___, It’s Only a Paper ___, ___dance, Dancing in the ___light, ___light Mile, among many others.) 

I see the bad moon a-risin'

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin'

I see bad times today

Rather than making his entrance from the saloon doors, Howlie instead descended from the ceiling — the Newfy had a crawl space … move past it — falling hard to the floor, but springing right up, doing a rather off-axis cartwheel and giving Zeke’s camera phone the Johnny Cash double birds with his two, four-fingered, white-gloved hands, before himself taking the mic. 

Haha, bitches! Howlie in motha fuckin Hizzouse. 

Ayo, big ups to my brotha from anotha motha, the one and only D-R-G, for the captivating intro. Come on up here, playa, and show your boy H-bomb some of that good love.  

Doctor Goodlove stood up from his chair and demurely mimed another, who me? 

Yes, you. Get back up here. You’ve been a Bad Boy, haven’t you? A big, bad wolf.

Haha, how’s that, Howlie? Haven’t you ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath? 

Now they were sharing the mic, as if they were doing a duet, a la John and June Carter. 

Come on. It’s aint like that, doc. I’m not accusing you of being hypocritical, or doing a medical malapropism. Howeva … I’m afraid your transgressions are far more severe. And I think, for the sake of our homies here from Global Beverage, before they pack you up in a kennel and put you on a business class flight back to Beijing, they oughtta know about the things you done. 

Whoa. Sounds pretty serious. Well, then, let’s hear it, Howlie. Tell the people what I allegedly did.

Aight, then, let’s begin. Ahem. All rise.

No one rose. 

I, the Honourable Howlie, am charging ye ass, Doctor Goodlove, esquire, with high treason. You, Sir, are an enemy of the Craft Beer Revolution. 

Here the twins set in with their heckling. 

Boo! Boo, Doctor Goodlove! 

Yeah! Fuck you, snitch bitch!

Whoa … now, hold on just a second here. I don’t believe this, Howlie! Me, a craft beer traitor? Hildy, what about you? Can you believe this? Won’t you testify in my defence? As a character witness. 

Overruled! The court will not hear Mrs. Wolff’s testimony, please. She is an accessory to your crimes, on that which charges she’ll be arraigned, uh, heretofore— forthcoming. 

Whether or not they had what they needed to go viral, the Newfy crew had certainly succeeded in shifting the pH in the room. Hildy, for her part, was white as a sheet. Mister X remained red with ire. Mayor Larry, colourless as ever, was mighty fucking confused. 

You’re saying I can’t call a witness? That settles it, then. This is a show trial. A miscarriage of justice of the highest order. A kangaroo court! I don’t recognise its authority, Howlie. 

Well, that’s all good, but it’s authoritay recognises your ass. And it’s hopping high time you were sentenced. Are you ready to receive it unto? 

If you insist, then I suppose I’m ready as I’ll ever be. 

Hang his mangy ass, Howlie!

Yeah, Howlie, cut his fucking head off!

Thad and Louie didn’t much have to sell it, did they. 

Doctor Goodlove, with the power vested in me as a craft beer mascot and celestial body, I sentence you— I sentence you to d— D— I sentence you to Dance! 

Three

Four 

Five

At once, the band struck back up with yet another song. Here the mandolin did the dirty work of the highly distorted guitar intro. Three rusty slides into a raunchy bend. Real Chuck Berry vibes, before settling into the classic, blues boogie thing with the power chords as the rest of the fellas joined in. Vocals:

You say you'll change the constitution

Well, you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it's the institution

Well, you know

You'd better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao 

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

The band carried on like this, repeating the part about Chairman Mao, like they were a playing a live CD that skipped.

Meanwhile, Howlie perp walked Doctor Goodlove off the small stage and onto the center of the Newfy’s sticky-ass floor. Thus was Thad’s cue to flip the party switch on the far wall, turning the brewpub into a discotheque, as suddenly the gallery wall behind the bar came undead with neons and flourescents and dayglos. 

The deputy and Ari, both of who up to this point had hardly been paying attention to the Smothers Brothers routine taking place before them, interpreted the house lights turning off as a threat level-indicator of some possible insurgency. In sync, they hovered their right hands over their sidearm holsters, itching to draw down on one of these fluffy motherfuckers.

However, before they could open fire and blow another crater onto Howlie, the front door opened between them. In came two persons, dressed from the turtle neck down in all black, albeit with a white section around their torsos. Their countenances were likewise made up in black and white face paint, miming the clownlike stylings of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope. Only on their heads were black hats with, each with two cute little round ears sticking up. 

Dear god … were these? Yes. They’re here. The Insane Clown Pandas. 

Just then a third Insane Clown Panda came through the front door, likewise dressed as an ICP, albeit riding in on the forklift. Mounted to the front atop a palette was the vintage electric chair from Hank’s office, and seated on said chair was the schoolroom skeleton they got Hank for his sixtieth. The one with the crown of plastic roses.  

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

The heat seat was gingerly set down next to Howlie and Doctor Goodlove, and the ICPs began encircling them two and the skelly with a rhythmic menace. Counter-clockwise they shuffled around them, doing a hybrid step landing somewhere’s between a powwow dance, a crip walk and the Electric Slide. Led by his lunar adjudicator, the good doctor himself began moving and grooving with the music, now seemingly a consensual partner in this macabre ritual. 

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

Like dueling tribal elders overseeing a doomed parlay, Hildy and Mister X looked on stoically, yet nonetheless overcome with a feeling of helplessness that which was so foreign to their senses, so as to it rendered them in a near catatonic state. The mayor, meanwhile, had resumed tapping his foot, as yet delighted to see two of his favorite brand mascots perform a long-awaited collab. 

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

Are you prepared, Comrade Goodlove, to plead your guilt, repent of your sins and swear an oath of loyalty to the Craft Beer Revolution?

Howlie had removed the mic from it’s stand and taken it with him in his comically oversized white gloves. 

O, yes, O, Howlie! I beg of thee to show thine mercy. I’ve been to the mountaintop and I’ve seen now that I have been a bad, bad wolf. There is nothing I wouldn’t do or give in offer of my penance. 

 Then heel! Heel before me, dog. 

Obediently, the doctor knelt to grovel at Howlie’s big, plush, moonboots. 

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

Now, Howlie … you will make a sacrifice unto Me, the Moon God of Beer. You will aid in dying these dancing bears, three. Now, euthanize these pandas! Wait … wait! Stop the music! 

Now Jaime entered the drum circle to do some groveling of his own. This was not in the script. 

Mrs. Wolff, it is I, Jaime, who betrayed You. Billy and I conspired to compel your acquisition of my company, #x_bruing. All of this is just a farce to try and sabotage the deal with GloBev. Billy made me do it, ma’am. He’s so, so dumb. 

I beg your pardon, but who are you?

I’m Jaime. Billy’s frie— former business associate. He never mentioned me? 

Billy’s dead, dear. And no, you never came up. 

Really? Because he said— wait, what? Billy’s dead?

To me his, anyway. 

Oh. Well, yeah. That makes more sense. Me too. Do you want me to kill him for real? I’ll fucking do it. Which one of you douchebags is Billy? I bet it’s you, he said gesturing at Goodlove. Come here you fucking mutt. I’m gonna put you down. 

Thus a struggle ensued. Jaime lunged, aiming at Goodlove’s headmirror and seizing him by his perpetually panting tongue. Desperately, the doctor tried to keep his head, but being how his paws lacked an opposable thumb, and were furthermore scrubbed up in black rubber gloves, he couldn’t get a good enough grip. With almost a pop, Jaime completed the Scooby Doo-style demasking, falling back onto his own skinny haunches, Goodlove’s decapitated head in his hands. Looking up, he joined the entire barroom, save for Hildy, in a collective gasp. 

The human face he unveiled was not that of Billy. But rather, t’was Hank. 

Hello, Henry.

Hi there, Hildy. 

You must have been really quite lost. 

You could say that I certainly was. 

For their part, Kitty and Mick were legit speechless. To be crystal clear, they had assumed it was Billy in the Goodlove costume. He had been during dress rehearsal, anyway. So far as they knew, Hank was still missing—presumed dead. But then just when you thought he was fresh out of magic bullets, Billy’d done pulled another fast one on ‘em, right under their noses.  

You know all these poor people presumed you to be dead. I’ll admit that I had as well, although I had a feeling maybe you’d just run off again. 

Well, it’s not that simple. It’s true that I had to go away for a little while. And I’m truly sorry to those people whom I left behind, without leaving word. Kitty, Mick, you in particular. You deserved better, and I hope you didn’t waste any time on account of my mourning. You know I wouldn’t’ve wanted that. 

Oh to hell with what you wanted, Hank! What about what we wanted? 

Kitty spoke up. Hank looked plain sheepish to’ve so upset perhaps his favourite person. 

Oh, Katy, please believe me when I say it breaks my heart to have — well — sort of to have left you hanging like that. 

Left us hanging? Seriously, Hank! You faked you’re own fucking death. You’re a fucking sociopath!

Hey! David Michael! Now hold on just a cotton-picking minute! Still, with the swearing. The fucking this and the fucking that. This is still a family place, after all. Beside, I wouldn’t necessarily frame it like that. Although I will allow that I left things— ambiguous. Why don’t we leave it at that.  

Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Hank. We had a funeral for you, you selfish fucking prick! 

I thought the card said Celebration of Life. 

Yep, it did. 

Oh my god, whatever! 

Listen. I know. It’s messed up. I said I was sorry. But it’s not all bad. For one, by the looks of things, you and the lovely Missus K — and a hearty congrats on your nuptials, by the way … I was awful sorry to have missed them — you both seemed to have really stepped up in my stead. The two of yous were always going to run this place someday, and I always knew you had it in you. It’s because you surround yourself with great people. Like the twins here. Aren’t I glad to see they’ve stayed out of trouble. 

You know I ain’t going back to jail, Hank. 

Glad to have you back, boss. By the way, we’re not mad you faked your own death. We think it’s awesome. 

Why thanks, Thad. Louie. And I haven’t had the pleasure of officially meeting your two new hires, but judging how they’ve wilfully taken a part in this escapade, they seem like real Newfy material. Solid culture fits. And, and you managed to offload the production facility. To our old keg washer, here, of all people! Dandy Jim! You know, since I’ve been on sabbatical, I’ve had occasion to stop by your new place in the Warehouse District. Not my cup of tea, but good for you, Jamie. 

Actually, it’s Jaime now. 

Sure it is, buddy. And best of luck with all that. But most importantly, all this has allowed me to start the process of reconnecting with my boy, Billy here. I love you, dad, Howlie said. 

Billy removed his moon face. Howlie was supposed to have been portrayed by Grace, before Billy compelled her to switch with a ten-dollar bribe, hence the confusion.

Thank you, son. That means a lot. 

So we’ve established that you’re alive. Great. What are you doing here? 

Kitty, now dressed as one of the Insane Clown Pandas (the others being Raj and Grace), still pissed and always to the point.

Same as you. Trying to put a stop to this foolishness about selling our beer companies, to Red China of all places. I mean, can you even imagine? Doesn’t anybody around here remember the Cold War? These are Great American Institutions, for crying out loud. Larry, I’d ’ve known you to open that komono of yours for anybody with a campaign contribution envelope, but you, Hildegard? I mean, I understand that we’ve had our differences, romantically speaking, as well as from a co-parenting perspective, but you and I both know this is bad business. Not to mention it’s a damn travesty.

Hildy, who until just a moment ago had thought her only son and his deadbeat dad for dead, looked serene. Indeed quite eerily so. Because her beauty — and not nobody would dispute that she was beautiful, and indeed quite breathtakingly so — her’s was a severe beauty, rather than, say, a soft beauty. The well-defined muscles on her cheeks and jaw toned by a lifetime spent sneering. Likewise, the scowl lines formed between them, rigid and perfectly symmetrical, as if eroded by a polar ice caps-worth of freezing cold tears. (And it all topped off with just a tasteful touchup of Botox.)  

However, now, with a representative cross-section of her life entire — love, family, work — disarrayed before her in complete and utter fucking shambles, she appeared perhaps for the first time in her life to be, at peace.

Then she charged, full speed, at Hank. 

Closing the gap in a flash of rage, she lowered her shoulder and absolutely truck-sticked her no-good baby daddy like Terry Tate the Office Linebacker, ranked by Marketing Millenium magazine to be the second most beloved brand mascot behind, well, who else. 

Themselves fully improvising now, the band started back in, right where they left off.

You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow

[Big ole’ banjo roll] 

Don’t you know it’s gonna be

Alright

Immediately upon impact of this perfectly executed form tackle, both parties left their respective feet, before they the former lovers landed atop one other in a violent embrace. With Hildy effectively choking him out, her sleek but toned thighs wrapped in a Burmese death grip around his neck, Hank did his level best to block her speedbag of haymaker punches to his temples. The mayor then, in a misguided effort to defend his own honour and come to his now former romantic acquaintance’s defence — unbeknownst to him, but they had been intimate for the last time, if in case there were any doubt —, which needless to say she was in no need of, sought to pull Hildy off his previous business partner. Then maybe he could have a go at Hank, and get his revenge for calling him Larry or other mocking nicknames like Short Pants all those years when he had specifically asked that he be called Lawrence.

Jaime, aiming to settle his own grievance and make this a proper melee, intercepted Larry on his way to Hildy, and open-hand bitch smacked him in the face. 

Ouch! What in the heck?

The two commenced grappling. They had both been high school wrestlers. Larry likewise wasn’t afraid to play dirty, and quickly resorted to biting Jaime and pinching his nipples.

Now Billy felt left out. In truth, he had never hit anyone ever. And that’s not to pile on him for being a pussy or anything. Despite popular media depictions of schoolyard brawls as being rites of passage, statistically speaking, most people go their whole life without throwing so much as a punch. According to one survey of more than seven thousand Americans, sixty percent responded they’d never been in a physical confrontation of any kind. As well they shouldn’t. Violence is never the answer …

Unless … well, of course there are exceptions to every rule. Not saying if you’re in such a scenario, it’s anything goes, international waters or whatever. Just, as for all matters in life, there are certain gray areas. 

Road rage incidents, bloody revolutions, public golf courses, prison riots, professional sporting events, for example, are situations where hand-to-hand combat is acceptable.

And perhaps most of all, the Great American Bar Fight. 

If you find yourself in the throws of one of them, then all bets are off. Hoist a stool over your head, break a pool cue over your knee, smash a long-neck on the bar rail and try to shiv somebody with it. However you want to play it, kimosabe. Find yourself a dance partner and do-si-do. 

Now for Billy’s sake, with his emotionally unavailable mother attacking his physically absent father, whilst his mother’s ex-boyfriend was playing tummy sticks with his ex-homie who had recently betrayed him, all four prime candidates for fisticuffs were otherwise engaged. That left Mister X, who Billy didn’t necessarily have beef with on a personal level, but then again he was trying to buy the family business out from under him. And you don’t fuck with another man’s money. 

Ay X-Mang. Come and catch these hands. 

Billy assumed a crude kung fu fighting stance, of course incorporating the five-pattern animal fist, a foundation of the Shaolin style. 

Alas, this bluegrass band didn’t know any Wu Tang — quick PSA: there’s nothing lamer than acoustic musicians doing ironic covers of hip hop or pop songs — so they seamlessly faded out from Revolution Nine into Street Fighting Man, a tune that neither the Grateful Dead nor Phish ever covered to this author’s knowledge. 

The little Keith intro part sounded a-perfecto on the harp. A bendy banjo subbed in for Brian Jones’s sitar and the stand-up bass made easy work of that little walkdown at the end of the chorus. 

Hey, think the time is right

For a palace revolution

'Cause where I live the game to play

Is compromise solution

Well, now what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock and roll band?

'Cause in sleepy London Town

There's just no place for street fighting man, no

…

Get down

Without so much as breaking stride, Mister X walked right up to Billy, fucking judo-chopped him in the neck and continued on out the front door, never to see any of these American Idiots ever again. Billy went down like a sack of potatoes, hitting the deck pretty hard. Kitty ran to his aid. 

Meanwhile Mick efforted to pry Hildy off of Hank, before she succeeded in actually killing him for real. 

By now Grace was fully making out with Anna Leigh, who herself seemed unperturbed to have the lower half of her face now fully caked in black and white Insane Clown Panda makeup. 

Desensitized to violence in all its forms, Thad and Louie were playing backgammon on the bartop, ignoring the polite overtures of Carl the Cowboy for another pint, please. 

Ari and the Deputy remained by the door, themselves neglecting their official duties in favour of comparing one another’s pieces. Ari’s Desert Eagle was no doubt the bigger of the two, but the deputy had done bypassed Sherrif’s department regulations to outfit his service weapon with some sick mods, including a red dot sight, an extended clip and a cute little flashlight, only the latter of which had ever come in handy, but for when he dropped his keys in the crevasse of a center consul in the Mayor’s SUV.   

That left Zeke, who at this point, assuming he had more than enough footage for a viral video, put the phone away and saw to separating Jaime and Larry. The two were entangled to the extent it was difficult to discern limb from limb. Zeke grabbed at some fleshy extremity, that turned out to be the Mayor’s left leg, and lifted him upside down out of the tussle as easy one of average strength might remove a trash bag from the garbage bin. (The Mayor was very slight in stature.) Turning him rightside up, he placed him gently on his feet and turned back to help Jaime to his. 

For those keeping soundtrack at home, the music has now stopped. It was in this viscous silence that the whole bar wafted with a stale air of regret. As in rumpus time is now over. 

Indignantly the Mayor dusted off his celestial blouse, now torn along the neckline. 

Oh, great. Now my new favorite shirt is ruined. Officer? 

No response. 

Excuse me, officer! 

The deputy looked up from admiring Ari’s pipe with an annoyed expression as if to say, ugh, what? 

Well are you just stand over there with your thumb up your butt while I get assaulted? Arrest this ungrateful jerk, will you? Now … please.

The deputy shrugged, handed Ari back his gun and removed his handcuffs from their little handcuff holster on his utility belt, on which he also carried a full compliment of what’s known in the law enforcement industry as Less-lethal deterrents, including a can of pepper spray, a good old-fashioned billy club and a state-of-the-art TASER 7 model stun-gun. He also carried a bowie knife that would make Crocodile Dundee shit his dungarees, although it was plenty lethal. Quite the EDC, as those macho man-boy scout, prepper types are wont to call it. For a fact, every beat cop you see is walking around out here like Batman, minus the grappling gun and the ninja throwing stars. But let’s not give them any more ideas. Lord knows it’s in the budget. 

(If you haven’t had the misfortune of being tased, it for sure sucks, but the consensus is that it’s far preferable to being pepper-sprayed or tear-gassed. That is unless you’re getting hit with a high-voltage, law enforcement-grade probe like the deputy’s here. One intrepid commenter to an online self-defence forum, who presumably had been on the business end of both incapacitants, described the sensation of being tased as shaking god’s hand. Fucking ‘a.)  

Jaime didn’t resist. Rather, when the cold stainless steel shackled around his wrist, he was terrified, that the only thing he ever really wanted — let’s be honest, to be famous, but then to shun fame, as if he were too good for it — would never be. 

Meanwhile the Mick had finally removed Hildy from Hank, who was now presumed alive albeit in bad fucking shape, what between a bloody lip, a visibly-broken nose, an impressive shiner and a ping pong ball-sized lump on his temple. Hildy herself looked no worse for the wear. Not a smudge of makeup nor a strand of hair out of place. In a moment she composed herself and returned her attention as well as her ire to Billy, whom Kitty had finally gotten to his wobbly feet. As had Larry before her, Hildy summoned her henchman. 

Ari, honey, forget about the shopping list I gave you for this afternoon. I want you to escort my son someplace for me. I’m giving you their card with all the relevant details. 

(You already know Hildy pronounced Details the fancy way, with the soft E.)

You are to accompany Wilhelm, forcibly if you must, until he is in the custody of the proprietors of this institution, dubious though it may be. 

Hildy handed Ari a business card, the name on which he read aloud in his silly accent.

Wilderness Renewals. 

Hearing that name again snapped Billy right up out of his stupor. 

No. 

No, what, darling? 

No, you can’t send me back there. 

I’m sorry but you’ve left me no other choice. 

Please, no. 

It’s too late, sweetheart, even for asking nicely. I’ve already confirmed your reservation, and I’m afraid it’s non-refundable. 

But I’m not a minor anymore. They won’t take me. It’s for troubled teens. 

That is true, dear, but in your case, they’ve agreed to make an exception for a very troubled twenty-something. Of course in exchange for a modest donation. That may be your legacy. From your school days and beyond: a veritable compound of academic buildings and performing arts centers and athletic facilities and now, the Betty Ford Bridge Program for Post-adolescent Re-assimilation, is our working name for it. To be quite honest at this point we’re running out of conservative women with whom to bestow upon your honour.   

Hildegard, please. Don’t send him away to that awful place. I’ll take him. He can work at the Newfy.

The Mick didn’t say anything but his eyes widened and he looked at Hank as if to say, what the fuck he will. 

Oh? So now you’re offering to take responsibility for him? As his father? Need I remind you both that you each arrived — independently, I might add — at the conclusion that faking your own death was the best course of action forward from the precise moment when life didn’t go exactly your way. Forgive me for not leaping at the opportunity to have you influence my only son, at least any more than you already have genetically. You may have been the one who chose to exit our lives, but when you did I made a choice of my own that day, that gone you would remain.  

Be that as it may, Hildy, you can’t just have the boy committed involuntarily. Not in this state, anyhow. Suffice it to say I’m familiar with the statutes. 

I’m quite sure that you are, Henry, but my lawyers say otherwise. You’re welcome to pony up for his defence, but I highly doubt the gun-tooting attorneys from Frontier Justice Law Partners have the litigious firepower to take on my in-house counsel. Is that alright? You then, be a good boy and go with Ari.

No, mom. I won’t do it. I won’t go back. I want to go live with dad.

Ugh. Ari, will you please? 

Ari stepped to Billy, who human-shielded himself behind Kitty. Ari would lunge to one side and Billy would juke to t’other, until Ari committed and Billy scurried over the bar.

The band also didn’t know Yakkitty Sax, so rather they settled into a fittingly soulful cover of When the Circus Comes to Town, something of a Phish standard, by the Grateful Dead contemporaries, Los Lobos. 

Could have had a chance to get out of this wreck

The time that you came and the day that you left

Could have had a chance

Could have had a chance

Again, Billy shuffled to and fro while Ari mirrored him, step for step. (For their part, the twins didn’t so much as look up from their backgammon game.) For all intents and purposes, Billy was trapped. He looked over his shoulder for some kind of weapon. There was the thunder bow on the wall, but he probably couldn’t loose an arrow off before Ari subdued him. (The katana was woefully just out of reach. It used to be lower on the wall, but there had been incidents, so Hank hung it a little higher.) Beside, he hadn’t done any archery since his last stint at WR. 

Come on, Billy. Think! 

Hey Billy, think fast!

Raj had come to the rescue, appearing at the end of the bar through the swinging saloon doors, holding a large device in both hands, which he then slid down across the bartop to Billy. Aha! It was the patent-pending Beer Can-non! (They had gotten the Goodlove costume out of a storage locker, where it was collecting dust alongside a treasure trove of relevant ephemera, including Hildy’s wireframe sketches of the character, when he was originally called Doctor Ezekiel Lupenstein, a framed photo of the three of them with Nancy Reagan when she was First Lady of the Nation and a signed first edition copy of his first book, Alpha: My Life as a Beer Mascot, Medical Doctor and Interspecies Sex Symbol.     

 Sensing his opportunity, as well as imminent danger (they are same), Ari lunged over the bar at Billy, who instinctually aimed from the hip and fired, scoring a direct hit of a full beer can to Ari’s solar plexus. Ari flew back several feet in the air and landed harmlessly  at Hildy’s feet.

Ben zona, he groaned.

Never thought I could make it this far

With a dent in my soul and a hole in my heart

Never thought I could

Never thought I could

Billy looked down at the barrel of the Beer Can-non in disbelief. 

Holy fucking shit! That was siick, he said, cackling. Hey Ari, he asked, leaning over the bar. How’s my D taste? 

With Jaime now safely in custody, Mayor Larry made another last-ditch attempt to endear himself to Hildy, deputizing his sheriff’s detail to detain Billy. 

Hey, Dingleberry … will you apprehend him, please, before he kills somebody with that thing!

Alas, this thing’s ammo was a fifteen-year-old special edition Parachute Can of Pack Light, of which Billy didn’t have any others on his person. 

But the deputy didn’t know that, so he felt obliged to draw his service weapon and aim it directly between Billy’s eyes, as indicated by the red dot dancing on his browline. 

Lower your weapon, now!

Aight, aight. It’s empty. Bruh. Sheesh.

Billy dropped the Can-non at his feet. 

Now let me see your hands! Above your head!

Dude, fucking chill out. 

Half-assedly, as if he had something better to do, Billy raised his Mickey Mouse ass-hands in the air. 

Don’t fucking move! 

I’m already still, stupid.

As the deputy approached, he holstered his gun, and pulled out his spare set of zip ties from his special belt, so that he could now handcuff the moon. 

Now put your hands on the bar, slowly. 

Okay, okay. Like this? Billy lowered his hands and said: 

Sike! 

He grabbed the cowboy’s pint glass and threw its half-full contents into the deputy’s eyes. (Alas, his chunky white plastic sunglasses had been wrapped around the back of his bald head.) 

Those who have been maced can well attest it’s a little bit like IPA in aerosol form, so suffice it to say that the deputy was thoroughly disabled, ocularly.  

He responded to having his sight as such compromised by redrawing his pistol and firing it indiscriminately in Billy’s general direction. This at last got Thad and Louie’s attention, as they didn’t hesitate in hitting the fucking deck, whereas Billy took off running. A cascade of rounds exploded behind him, detonating a controlled demolition of the assorted bric-a-brac on the bar wall. Chinese lanterns, Tibetan prayer flags, African fertility masks, the Newfy Mug Club mugs, all turned to dust. 

Head first, Billy dove over the bar whilst bullets continued to fly. As the deputy turned in their direction to follow his target, the rest of the patrons went down. All except for Zeke, who subconsciously pulled back out his phone and frantically scanned for the camera app. His was an overwhelming instinct to help, to protect Billy and put a stop to this violence, but all he could do in the moment was try to record it. But when the lights are turning 'round

And wheels are rolling on the ground

That day I'll burn this whole place down

When the circus comes to town

Billy barrel-rolled under a four-top and somersaulted into a booth as the deputy put a fist-sized bullet hole in the standup bass. Billy dove head first, sliding on his belly the remaining length of the parquet floor toward the exit. Finally, the extended clip was emptied. In the echo of this cacophony of semi-automatic gunshots and shattering glass and acoustic instruments, the only sound remaining was the deputy’s voice-cracking war cry, and the impotent clicks of his aftermarket carbon fiber trigger. 

With the ceasefire, the Mick leapt to his feet and took down the deputy, who crumpled without the slightest resistance. His gun likewise fell to the floor, whereupon Kitty grabbed it and threw it out the back window stained glass rendering of Dirtbike Jesus. 

Is everybody alright? Mick cried out. Is anybody hit? One by one, they each rose. Hank, Hildy, Ari, Larry, Grace, Anna Leigh, the Cowboy, Thadeus and Louisa. 

All except for poor Zeke. He lay still. His body was prone. Grace saw first and rushed to turn him rightways up. His eyes were open, but this time they didn’t move to avert her gaze. The entrance wound was through his left chest. A tiny little hole, right beside the name badge embroidered on his work shirt, as if dotting it like a period. Zeke. Grace sprung back up, out of utter shock. By now they all gathered around him. Kitty held her hand to her mouth as tears welled in her eyes. Mick embraced her attempting to console her best as he could. Mayor Larry, the cat, appeared. He licked Zeke’s lifeless hand, where the phone rested still. Mayor Larry, the person, looked around in a panic, whereas Hildy and Hank looked straight ahead, steely in their resolve. The cowboy knelt down and covered Zeke’s face with his ten-gallon hat. At last Billy cried, with the knowing this had all been his fault. 

The front door opened once more. It was Skip Engel, the delivery driver. And there he stood silhouetted in the doorway.

[thewestern]

[thewestern]

Chapter 29

The moment the Mick stood up from the desk where Billy had written his last words, he heard a faint sound. 

Wait, do you hear that? 

What. 

I don’t know. I hear a sound, but it’s faint. 

The Mick was showing off his good ear. It was true he heard a sound. albeit barely perceptible. More precisely it was a sustained double low C note. A dog whistle of sorts for film bros. Soon it gave way to a much bigger sound. This they all heard. 

Duh. Duhh. Duhhhh. Duh-duh! 

I heard that. 

They all knew it too, but only the Mick from where. 

Oh, damn. 2001. Very tight. 

He was referring of course to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the nineteen sixty-eight Stanley Kubrick masterwork. The Mick, however, was using a short-hand for Phish’s cover of the nineteenth-century tone poem that Kubrick uses to open the film, and to great effect. Although, for a fact, their rendition more closely hues to a seventies discotheque remix, that was likewise featured in a landmark film of the twentieth century, Being There, by Hal Ashby.

The song’s familiar crescendo synched perfectly with the yurt lights going off, all at once, enveloping them in darkness. 

Hey, turn on the lights! I’m not fucking kidding. 

For as tough as she was, and she was, Grace was deathly afraid of the dark, as well as, apparently, death. 

Then a second song queued. Likewise an instrumental, albeit one with which they were not familiar. Like the previous piece, it was brass-forward and accented with symbols, but that is where the similarities ended. Whereas the beginning song had marked a triumphant dawning of a bright future, here came an acid rain cloud, rinsing away the scum on the city streets, leaving them slick to reflect the neon signs of sex shoppes and the peep shows. And yet, sinister though it certainly is, the melody alludes to a post-modern, muzak mundanity. As if it were elevator music, playing along on your freefall descent to Hell. 

This is the main theme to Taxi Driver, Scorcece’s masterwork, wherein Marty largely eschews his propensity for setting his movies to popular music, rather to do the honor of collabing with the great film composer Bernard Herrmann, whose IMDB page is slaps only. His first feature — his fucking debut — was a little movie called Citizen Kane. Ever heard of it? Thereafter scoring what many consider to be the greatest film of all time, on his first fucking try, every director in town wanted a piece of him. But Hermann only wanted to work with one — Hitchcock. You see Psycho? That lady getting murked in the shower. The repeated stabbings set to shrieking violins. That was your boy. Hitchcock didn’t even want music for that scene. But Bernard insisted. Good call. 

Bernie was Marty’s first and only choice. Initially, he turned him down. Why would I want to do a movie about a taxi driver, he told him, hilariously. However, after being appealed to by Brian de Palma of all people — Hollywood! — to please reconsider and at least read Paul Schrader’s now iconic screenplay, he was all in. He completed the score in two days, left the studio, had dinner, went back to his hotel and died in his sleep. It was Christmas Eve. 

And that was what was playing in the yurt that day. Perhaps this mystery DJ was a cinephile, because something of a DIY short film was now being projected onto the yurts canvas roof. It was a mosaic of aural ephemera. Things like: 

A sped-up time-lapse of a flower blooming and wilting. Elvis shaking his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show. Another time-lapse, this time of traffic at night on a bend in the freeway. A rocket taking off. A woman in a fifties-era kitchen taking a casserole out of the oven. The Zapruder film. A massive industrial canning line. A mushroom cloud. Richard Nixon giving the double deuces. A hot air balloon taking off. Bill Clinton playing saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show. Lightning striking. A column of North Korean soldiers goose-stepping. Doves scattering. Nightly news footage of Rodney King getting beat on. A wave crashing. Osama Bin Laden talking in a cave. George W. Bush hitting a golf ball. A one shot of a horse running, as if in place. 

Etcetera. 

Then after a couple of minutes of that the music changed again. At last, this track had lyrics, recited in vocal staccato over an illegally-sampled piano riff by a seventies French new wave jazz composer, punctuated by a women’s scream. 

When I was just a little baby boy my momma used to

Tell me these crazy things

Dude, this playlist sucks.

Like Garcia, Grace hated rap. 

Oh, I like this song. 

Kitty, on the other hand, loved it.  

Yet another thing she and Billy had in common. Although, he was never an Eminem fan, per se. This on account of ICP had beef with him, dating back to Shady’s days as an aspiring emcee in Detroit, from where Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope also hailed. Things escalated to the extent of Em including a skit on his masterwork sophomore album depicting the duo performing oral sex on Ken Kaniff, a recurring character in the Marshall Mathers Extended Universe. One who exists exclusively as a device for engaging in homosexual acts with Eminem’s rap rivals, thus implying that they are, in fact, gay.   

The track playing currently in the yurt, Kill You, was cited specifically by Lynn Cheney, she the wife of Dick, in a Senate committee hearing on violence in youth popular culture. The Second Lady invoked the killings at Columbine High School, calling on Seagrams, the spirits conglomerate that also distributes music, including titles by Eminem and shock rocker Marylin Manson, who was reputedly a favourite of the Columbine shooters, to take responsibility for the irreparable harm their product inflicts upon young minds. I fully understand your duty to shareholders, she said, but can that duty be defined in purely economic terms? Aren't many of your shareholders women, who are demeaned by some of the music you distribute? Aren't many of them parents, who shudder at the debased and violent culture that Seagram is helping create?  

The visual narrative changed along with the soundtrack. Now it was grainy home video, shot on a handheld camcorder in all likelihood. Or at least, the colors were undersaturated in just such a way. It was footage of a young Hildy, cradling a baby, presumably Billy. A lesser woman would’ve been embarrassed to be caught like this in memorex amber, what in all her awkward nineties-ness. Not Hildy. She had Princess Diana’s style with Jennifer Aniston’s hair. And how she doted over this tiny angel. Pinching his cheeks, bopping his nose, blowing a raspberry on his cute little tummy. All the while laughing like a banshee. Sure she was showing off, but in a sweet, subtle way. Probably for the cameraman, presumably Billy’s proud papa.

She used to tell me my daddy was an evil man

She used to tell me he hated me

The film of Hildy and her baby was then interspersed with her other — much more successful — baby, Dr. Lupustein. First from his breakthrough commercial, breaking his Hippocratic oath by eating the woodland creatures who sought his care. But also clips from his whirlwind New York City publicity tour. Presiding as an honorary judge at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. 

Back to Hildy now. This time she’s decidedly less flirty with the man behind the camera. You can tell she doesn’t want to be filmed right now by the way she holds her hand to the lens and mouths, please, I really don’t want to be filmed right now. Billy, before angelic, is now crying. There’s no sound but you can see how loud he is wailing. 

Back to Lupustein, now joining the Late Show with David Letterman to list the Top 10 Signs You May Need A New Doctor.

Number Ten: The waiting room has a hostess. 

Number Nine:  The intake form asks for your height, weight and which part of your body you think would taste the best. 

Number Eight: Some of the other patients seem to be marinating. 

Number Seven: The nurse reads your body temperature off as medium rare. 

Number Six: Instead of an examination table, you’re sitting on a cutting board. 

Number Five: Is it just me or is it hot in here? 

Number Four: The doctor orders some additional testing and a side salad.  

Number Three: His white coat says Kiss the Cook. 

Number Two: According to the diploma on his wall, your doctor went to medical school at Johns Hopkins & Wales. Number One: He tells you to drop your pants but, hey, he’s not even wearing any.

Hildy has had it now. Distractedly cradling in one arm Billy, still crying, and in t’other a glass of red wine with quite a generous pour. Not even bothering to acknowledge the camera in her face. Why is he even filming anyway? Perhaps for evidence in the inevitable custody dispute. 

Dr. Lupenstein on Total Request Live with Carson Daly and Christina Aguilera, who’s making bedroom eyes at him. 

But then I got a little bit older

And I realized she was the crazy one

The camera is sitting low now, possibly on a coffee table. There’s no one in the room except for Billy, who’s on the floor playing with a Tiffany rattle and a Phillips head screwdriver. At least he’s not crying anymore. Hildy, however, is. She enters from stage left, backing up toward the door, shouting at someone just out of frame. Whoever this poor bastard is, she’s reading him the riot act. Just really letting him have it. 

 Dr. Lupustein on the Today Show, making beer-butt chicken with Matt Lauer and Al Roker. Katie Couric is off-camera, asking the producer for his pager number.

A man enters the picture. His profile is obscured by the buffalo head, which he carries over his shoulder. In his left hand is a likeness of Dr. Lupustein in neon effigy. The man walks past Hildy. He turns to tell her this is the last time. 

Who’s that? Grace asked.

I don’t know, replied Zeke. Ben Affleck? 

I fucking knew it! 

The Mick couldn’t resist.

The man, of course, was Hank. 

Kitty had also known. By now wasn’t it kind of obvious? Although, whereas Mick had just assumed — albeit with some basis — that if something was going wrong, Hank was somehow to blame, Kitty had known since the moment she had laid eyes on Billy in Baby. They didn’t look at all alike — even Hildy’s genes were dominant — except that they were of a similar countenance. Which is to say they had an air of mischief about them. Call it what you like — a twinkle in their fucking eye. But Kitty recognized the quality for its absence in Mick. He used to possess it in droves, but the bastards had driven it out of him.  

But there was nothing I could do or say to try to change it

'Cause that's just the way she was

When Hank left, the screen went blue. Likewise the music stopped. In its place clapped thunder and rang a church bell. A wolf howled. 

Suddenly the smoke started billowing again. The Mick could see it was coming from under a computer desk. It was obviously a fog machine, but the fog was marijuana scented. Looking back up, he saw awe struck on Kitty’s face. Following her gaze around he found the body of Billy, now convulsing, in the throws of seizure. As if it he had been possessed. It shook and shook, slackening the hangman’s rope like an out-of-control garden hose. However, the limbs remained stiff, indicating the onset of rigor mortis. 

What the fuck, dude! 

Grace said it best. 

Without warning, the canvas walls of the yurt fell around them. Like they were being revealed in a magic show. The roof remained in place, but at once, Billy stopped shaking. Now his body twisted, like a disco ball. On either side of them were two riders on a dirt bike and an ATV, but smaller. Both their faces were obscured by those cool helmets with the face guards and goggles with sick-ass, fire-mirrored lenses. They even had jerseys and body armor that matched Wolffenbeir-branded mounts. 

They commenced circling the yurt, menacingly. The one on the bike popped a couple of wheelies. The Newfy four for their part weren’t necessarily scared. More disturbed. Or maybe just bummed out. Still they stayed put. If only for the fear of being errantly run over by one of these lunatics. 

Perhaps picking up on that they weren’t getting much of a rise out of their audience, the junior biker gang stopped their engines. The one on the two-wheeler took off his helmet. Bet you five bucks it was Billy. 

Hey, where’s my mom?

She bailed. 

Grace again. She was emerging as the unofficial spokesperson for the group.

Already? For real? 

Yup. 

Well, how long was she here? 

Probably like, what, five minutes? Long enough to give a weird speech. 

Yeah, she do be doing that shit. Well did she at least seem sad? 

Yeah, sure. Maybe more disappointed. 

Word. Huh.  

That’s some pretty sick shit, faking your suicide for your mother. 

Right though? Thanks, yo. 

Wasn’t a compliment. So who you got hanging up there anyway?

Oh, that’s my just uncle’s sex doll. It vibrates. My homie Yayo-L here helped me string her up.

They turned to look at the one on the ATV, who had removed his helmet and was waving at them in sheepish acknowledgment. 

Ay Yay, help me get her down right quick. Shit’s Japanese. Mad expensive. Ernie will flip his shit if we break her. 

So what then, is Hank your dad? 

Who’s ass is Hank?

Confusingly, Billy said Hank in a voice that approximated a black person’s crude impression of a white person. 

The guy in the video? 

Oh him? I guess so. Hildy never told me his name. She been saying for the longest I was a test tube baby. But I seen these movies. I was looking through Ernie’s old-school porno collection one time and that tape was mixed in there with them. So I wanted to show Hildy to be like, I know I got a dad. That’s why I wrote that rhyme and produced that fire music video. Props to Yayo for doing all the editing and directing. He storyboards the sexual harassment training videos for Wolffenbeir, so you already know he’s got mad skills. All that montage shit? Bombs and all different animals. Psht. Stop playing. Spike Lee, holler atchya boy. 

So this was all just a put on. First you faked your own kidnapping. And when that didn’t work you faked your own death.  

I really don’t know, yo. But I do been wanting to fake my death for the longest. It’s such a power move. On some Tupac, Elvis-ass shit.

What’s your next move then, Machavelli? 

Ah. Was curiosity getting the best of the Mick after all? 

I. Don’t. Know. How many times I got to tell y’all. What’s up with all these wack questions anyway? Isn’t that the whole point of making everybody think you’re dead? It puts the ball in their court.

Billy exaggeratedly pointed his index finger to his temple, as if to indicate that he was thinking on some other level, which indeed he was, albeit not a higher one by any means. 

He’s freestyling, as Yayo-L explained. You just got to let him go. 

Do I?

Yeah, you kind of do. 

Yayo-L said that in the least smart-ass, and most matter-of-fact manner possible. As if to say, it really do be like that. Because in his experience, it do. 

Sorry, who are you?

Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Raj.  

All his homies call him Yayo-L. 

Billy calls me that. You can just call me Raj. 

By now Raj and Billy had gotten the Japanese sex doll down from the gallows. They removed Bertha and the bespoke tracksuit to reveal an eerily lifeless-like form. She was arranged like a period-accurate, Wild West prostitute, with her auburn hair done in a messy bun and red dirt smeared in with her caked-on makeup. Billy was putting back on her frilly dress, distressed just so, back on over her long john britches.  

Shit’s crazy, right. He’s got a bunch of them but this one’s his bottom bitch, he says. Don’t fuck Prudence, Billy, he always be telling me, all serious. Any of the others, but not her. Psht. You already know I tapped that ass. Haha, nah, I’m just playing.

Did you know your mom tried to buy our brewery today? 

Nah … For real though?

Yes. 

Whoa — wait — she did? For how much? 

Billy and the Mick were both taken aback by Kitty’s news. 

I don’t know I didn’t look. 

Look at what?

She did the thing where you write the offer on a piece of paper and slide it across the table. I Just put it in my pocket. 

Damn … that’s kind of tight. Props to Hildy on that one. I know we got our differences but sometimes she does some baller ass shit. 

Hey, Kitty, what the hell? Why didn’t you tell me? 

I don’t know. I was going to. I was worried you’d accept. 

Well, obviously. 

Mike, don’t say that. 

What do you mean? This is it! This is our exit! 

What do you mean, exit? Do you even know?

Kitty, you know what I mean. 

No, I guess I don’t. I don’t want to exit. I want to stay. I’m happy here. 

Zeke and Grace, who had never once seen Kitty and Mick argue like this, looked on in mild astonishment. Of course, like any lovers they had their occasional quarrels, but they weren’t the type to air it out in mixed company.

Kitty, just show me the offer. Come on, please. 

She removed it from her back pocket and held it out to him, still folded. 

Aye let me see real quick first. Maybe I can match that shit. 

Billy jumped between them and intercepted the hand-off. The Mick rolled his eyes as Billy looked down at the number. Then he looked back at Mick, then Kitty. Then back down. Then he stuck the piece of paper in his mouth and began to chew, vigorously. 

Oh you gotta be kidding me.  

Deals off, bitch, Billy mumbled back to the Mick with a mouth full of paper. 

Whatever, it’s not like that’s a contract. We can just ask your mom. K, did she leave you a card or something to call her back? 

Wait, wait. Hold up, wait. 

Billy coughed as he choked down the last bits of cardstock, which actually had been Hildy’s business card, hat she’d written the offer on the back of. 

Aight, aight, aight. Let’s negotiate this shit. Just please don’t call my mom. 

No. We’re not negotiating. 

Well, hold on, let’s hear him out. 

Goddamnit, Kitty! What the hell’s gotten into you? Why do you want to keep pulling on this yarn? 

I don’t know Mick! Maybe because I’m fucking pregnant.

Mick took a moment to let this marinade. 

By that, did you mean, you May Be pregnant? Or, maybe I’m acting irrationally because I am, in fact, Pregnant? 

Good one. I Am Pregnant. Presently. 

Are You Sure? 

Yes. 

Well … I think that’s great. 

Don’t get too excited. But, really? 

Of course. We’ve talked about this. That we always wanted to have one-to-two kids someday. We’ll figure out how to afford it.  

Oh, god. Don’t say it like that! And I know we talked about wanting one-to-two kids, one day down the line, but I thought maybe this was too soon to start? Or just not the right time. You’ve been so depressed lately. Since Hank left. Before, even. Like the life we had wasn’t enough. You even said it felt like the walls were closing in a bit. And we were already tight on space. Where are we gonna fit the nursery. 

Ideally, for Mick and Kitty’s sake, this scene would have taken place in private. They were both, after all, intensely private people. However, some conversations are so overdue there’s no telling when, where or whom in front of they’re going to, erupt. It just so happened this particular one sparked up in the middle of a Wednesday on an out-of-work dude ranch with an audience of four not including the Japanese sex doll.

As for those bystanders, whose culpability varied, we’ve all been a party to that occasional awkward moment, and there are a range of available coping mechanisms. You can certainly lean in. Zeke, for his part, was rapt, hanging on their every word. Grace, for whose hunger took precedence, found a reprieve in the form of some beef jerky she forgot she had in her fanny pack. Yayo-L, or Raj as he’s now known, politely carried on with breaking down the staged suicide, coiling the rope and pushing aside the gallows, paying no undue attention to this intimate tête-à-tête. Billy, meanwhile, was filming it on his camera phone, not so subtly whispering, World Star. 

The Mick didn’t have a good answer for Kitty. He had been a real stick in the ass lately. And a lousy partner as a result. There’s no denying it. But that didn’t explain Kitty dragging out this bull shit with Billy. 

 Okay, you’re right. I’ve been a real bummer lately. I have felt stuck, and maybe even a little trapped. But that’s not you. It’s not us. It’s the brewery. Fuck it, the entire industry. It’s a hobby, honey. Hank had a hobby, and somehow we all got sucked in. It killed Russ. It would’ve killed Hank, had he not got himself killed on account of some other hobby. And here we are, stuck holding the bag. 

Don’t say that. About Hank. 

Oh, give it up, Kit. He’s gone! He’s been gone. All the way gone.

I know that, Mick! But you don’t have to celebrate it! Fuck! 

There goes Kitty swearing again. 

You talk about him like he’s this deadbeat dad. Sorry, Billy. 

All good. 

But he’s not! Not to us! He gave us all this! 

[Gestures around the yurt.]

Maybe those things were a little fucked up. But this is our life. Wouldn’t it be easier to try and like it than throw it away for something, we don’t even know what it is?  

But we do know, Kitty! We do know! Because by some stroke of dumb luck, between Jaime and Billy’s mom, we’ve got people banging down our door to buy us out! 

Buy us out to where! It’s a check, Mick. A few months on the mortgage, maybe! Then what? And don’t you fucking dare say grad school. 

Fuck, I don’t know. Hey G, weren’t you saying your uncle was a fireman? 

A fireman? What are you eight? We’re almost thirty years old, Mike. 

Yeah, he’s just a volunteer anyway. County don’t pay for shit is what I hear. 

You hear that? Grace says county don’t pay for shit. So stop playing daydreaming, David Michael. You’re a brewer. And you can self-deprecate about it all you want, but you make great beer. Maybe that’s a silly thing, but we don’t choose what we’re good at. Beside, you know I would’ve never married a lawyer. And even if it’s not art like Jaime says or big business like Billy here seems to think, who gives a shit? It’s fucking something! 

Every once in a while, maybe only three or four in the six or seven years they’d been together, Kitty said something that would cut Mick right to his core. But she went in steady and sterile, like open heart surgery. So that nothing got knicked on the way in or infected with bitterness. Still, it knocked the wind clear out of him. 

Mick? 

Hold on I’m collecting myself.  

Raj had sparked a J. Grace joined him. 

Okay, fine. I’m a brewer. Then you’re a public school teacher. Admit it, K, you’ve been hurting too recently. That SciTech place is a fucking scam and you know it. And I know it, and Billy’s mom knows it. Everybody knows it except the kids and their poor fucking parents. So I show up to the Newfy in rubber boots every morning for the next thirty years, but you’ve got to go back to West. 

Then the Mick remembered the kid. 

Although, on second thought, let’s stay on that new school healthcare until the baby’s born. And then maybe we call it at one. 

Kitty smiles. Mick sighs in deep relief. And they embrace. Grace coughs. 

Billy, displaying his innate talent for ruining any moment no matter how tender, butted in here.

Hug all you want. This shit ain’t over.  

What do you mean, we? So we’re not for sale. Tell your mom to find some other sucker. 

Psht. You’re the sucker if you think Hildy’s just gonna take No Thank You for an answer. Haven’t you seen Godfather One? She’s Donna Corleone. Make you an offer you can’t pass on. I don’t know why she wants your dusty ass brewery, but she does. And if she wants something, she gets that shit? Ya feel me? 

Sure, Billy. I feel you. But we’re a private company. We don’t have to answer to a board or shareholders. So even your mom and Big Bad Wolffenbeir can’t blow our little house down.

Hey, Billy. Did you see this all-company email that just came through? 

At Raj’s prompting, Billy drew his device. 

Nah, I didn’t get it. 

Zeke also instinctively checked his email. Maybe it is contagious. He also didn’t receive the email in question, although there was a new correspondence awaiting him from Mayor Mockingbird, subject line: Ezekiel, I miss you 

Here, come look. I can’t believe this. It says We’re the ones being acquired, by GloBev. 

Fuck outta here. What’s a GloBev? 

Chinese conglomerate. Duh. 

Here Mick, Kitty and Zeke all looked at Grace, as if to say, how the fuck you know that? 

What? So I do a little day trading. There stock’s en fuego. 

Yep, she’s right. Says so right here. The Beijing-based multinational is set to acquire Wolffenbeir, Inc. and all its holdings, including our newly onboarded subsidiary in the craft space, The New Frontier Brewing Company. 

Whoa. Now what the fuck? I thought you said you turned her down, Kitty? 

I thought I did!

What’d I say? I done told yo asses. My mom is straight gangster.

It doesn’t make any sense. How can you buy something that’s not for sale? 

Fuck if I know. Alls I do know is now we want the same thing. To squash this deal, so you can keep on doing your OG Belgian IPA-ass thing, and I can get up on some newer, cooler shit. No offense. 

Believe me, none taken. 

So what do we are we supposed to do? 

It says here that the merger will be publicly announced tomorrow at Wolffenbeir HQ, during a ceremony presided over by CEO Hildegard Wolff, Mayor Lawrence Mockingbird and special guest, beloved Wolffenbeir mascot emeritus Dr. Lupustein.

That bitch ass. I should have kidnapped that goddamn dog from the jump. 

Wait a second, Zeke thought. 

I think I have an idea!

Seriously?

Seriously. Doubt him though the Mick may have — and at his peril — Zeke, of all people, had had an epiphany. Because while his career in the beer industry had gotten off to an admittedly slow start, on account of his general confusion regarding most matters pertaining to his job as well as the world at large, suddenly he understood something bigger, that no one else in this yurt could begin to fathom. Put simply, he understood that it wasn’t that it’s not about the beer. That was obvious. Even Billy knew as much. The Mick had been hung up on that for years. 

But then what was it, all about? 

Not real estate development like Larry thought. Not tech like Billy. 

Not politics. Not money. 

Not jam bands or rap beefs. 

Not mothers and sons or fathers and uncles. 

Not Jesus or Jah or Joseph Smith or the Jewish Guy.

Not the man on the moon or the wolf howling at him.  

Not social media management or event coordination, although we’re getting warmer. 

But certainly not war and peace or crime and punishment. 

Not love nor hate. 

And above all, it absolutely wasn’t at all about beer. Big or small. 

What it was all about, insofar as it was about anything, was the gray matter, the binding alloy agent that soldered all those spinning tectonic plates. The words that gave them some semblance of lasting meaning. The stories we tell about ourselves. Myths and fables and franchises. 

It was about Content. 

Thus began the end of this saga … 

The Intellectual Property Heist 

or the Great Train of Thought Robbery. 

[thewestern]

[thewestern]

Chapter 28

It was about lunchtime when the Newfy Four rolled into Edge City, and Grace, for her part, was wondering if there was a place to get, like, a sandwich around here. Waffles this morning had fallen through for some reason, after Kitty had talked them up. The Mick made scrambled eggs instead, which to be fair were fluffy and delicious, but not quite sufficient for soaking up the five-or-so Pack Lights she’d consumed the night prior. So a burrito or something would’ve really hit the spot. And then maybe for dinner they could order from that new Indian place whenever they got back from whatever this was. Grace was always thinking two meals ahead. 

Zeke was also hungry, but the feeling didn’t consume him in the way it did Grace. Maybe because he was more accustomed to it. Or perhaps it was the sight of this strange place eclipsed his senses. You see, Zeke had never seen a Western film. Why would he have? (Ask your nephew, or whoever the next person you talk to who’s under twenty-five. Bet you twenty bucks they haven’t either.) Nor had he been to a rodeo or a square dance or even a kitschy, cowboy-themed steakhouse. So, apart from some tertiary sources, such as an Old West-themed episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants, he had no cultural frame of reference for this facade. Of course, it was laid out like any small town, with storefronts arranged along either side of a Main Street. But Zeke had never been to one of them either. Sure, his ancestors had great-migrated up from the postbellum south. But he was a mid-major city slicker, born and bred. So happening upon a place like this, a single-prostitute Potemkin village with a podunk patina, Zeke may as well’ve landed on another planet. It’s a funny feeling, to be a stranger in a strange land, and one that’s harder and harder to come by, in a world where everybody’s been there and done that. Come to think, closest you can probably come, assuming you’re a jam band virgin, is finding your nearest show. You don’t even have to by a ticket. Just wander around the parking lot. The natives call it Shakedown Street. It’s quite a bizarre bazaar. 

As for the Mick, this wasn’t his first rodeo. (For a matter of fact, as a boy he’d been a champion mutton buster.) And while he hadn’t seen it all, he had arrived at the age — call it a quarter-life crisis — when it sure as hell seemed like he’d done. Every movie a remake. Every episode a rerun. Every song a cover. Every painting a print. But, alas, he couldn’t stop watching or listening. Don’t stop or you’ll die. Thus here he was Edge City. Just another place he had to be. 

Kitty pulled the station wagon to a stop outside the General Colin Powell Store. Parking in EC was a breeze. She opened her driver’s side door first, and all three cascaded after in clockwise order, stepping out onto the thoroughfare. This would have been the appropriate time for a tumbleweed to come tumbling across the frame. Rather, the unmistakably skunky odor of a different kind of weed altogether wafted toward them from the other side of town. Led by Grace, like a cartoon wolf following her upturned nose toward an unprotected pie on a window sill, they ambled anachronistically toward it, until the yurt came into clear view. With smoke billowing out of the reservoir tip of its bulbous moon roof, as well as seeping from the seams in the canvas walls, it looked like a goddamn sweat lodge in there. As if somebody had opened up Pandora’s Hot Box. Approaching the structure now in earnest, Grace fell back behind Kitty, who looked to Mick, as if to say, you do it. And so he did, opening the French-Indian doors with both hands so that the fog enveloped him like the smoke monster from Lost, his and Kitty’s favorite show to watch during their collegiate courtship, quite often after smoking a bowl themselves. It didn’t linger, however. Rather it dissipated to reveal the only way this was ever going to end. 

Ah … drag, said the Mick, as sincerely as somebody could say something like that. It was genuinely how he felt, and not to mention about all he could muster, seeing a lifeless form hanging there above him. 

(For those of you perverts wondering about the logistics of all this, the genuine John Brown gallows had been rolled into the yurt from outside the jail. To be clear they didn’t come with wheels. Uncle Ernie had them affixed for sake of conveniance. If he only knew.) 

The as-yet-rising haze obscured everything above the knee. However, like the Wicked Witch — or more like that poor Oompa Loopa who offed himself … IYKY — he could identify the body by the kicks. Boots, more like. Billy’s trademark Tims. Then the pants, which looked comfortable enough for eternal rest. Velour loungewear, quite baggy and sagging well below the waist. Soon it became clear that the track jacket matched, which … you already know. Co-branded embroidery Wolffenbeir x Roc-a-wear collab. (Since he had it made on spec, this was a one-of-one piece, not unlike Billy himself.) On his breast, he wore a tall tee, another wardrobe staple. (Inspired by various luminaries of business, notably Steve Jobs, as well as such O.G.s of the rap game as Run D.M.C and N.W.A., Billy had taken in his final months to fashioning a uniform of sorts out of this bespoke sweatsuit and garishly large white blouse. One less decision to make every morning — although, more routinely he roused in the early-to-mid afternoon — would afford him more time for making money moves, as he explained to an as-yet unmoved Yayo-L).  

 Shining brightly around his neck, right below the hangman’s noose, was a twenty-one link silver chain. Encrusted with diamonds, a waning lunar countenance, wearing sunglasses and a wry smile. (This he only busted out for special occasions.) 

The dregs of the marijuana cloud lifted to reveal his death mask. He must have hollowed out the stuffing. For they had, at long last, located Bertha. Sitting atop Billy’s presumed head, like a pagan crown of thorns. 

The Mick looked Billy up and down. Had he ever seen a dead body before? IRL, obviously. Rather than, how did we get here, or where does one go when one dies, that was the question that sprung to mind. Perhaps an attempt at parsing this real-time traumatic experience from the bibliography of carnage one can reasonably assume to have compiled as a consumer of popular culture in the violent cross-section from late eighties action canon to early aughts internet snuff. He hadn’t, was the conclusion at which his internal monologue arrived. However, of course, he had. His grandfather had died in his sleep one night. The following morning all the grandchildren were brought in to say goodbye. How had he forgotten that? 

Grace, as a self-professed, last-of-her-dying-breed butch bull-dyke, didn’t consider herself a hugger. Apparently, though, death brought out the lipstick lesbian in her, since she bear-hugged the closest person to her, which just so happened to be Zeke, into whose ample embrace she buried herself. For his sake, this turned what would have otherwise been quite a melancholy occasion into perhaps the happiest of his young life. Although he was on the inside overjoyed to have Grace fallen into his arms, and he in turn right back into love with her, Zeke had the good sense to project outwardly a solemnity deserving of the moment. 

Kitty, for her part, responded not by thinking of her own feelings. That’s no shots at the others, either. It’s just that Kitty was a different cat. Nor, however, did she think of Billy, but rather of his mother. For we reserve our thoughts for those the dead leave behind, as did she when she said:

We should get him down. 

No, please don’t. 

And there she was. Hildy. 

Crime scenes aren’t to be disturbed​​. (Suicide has been almost universally decriminalized in the developed world. For a fact, so-called right-to-die statutes legalising physician-assisted euthanasia are increasingly de rigueur. However, it is still often considered an unwritten Common Law crime, even in some U.S. states, which could prevent the victim’s family from seeking damages from some or other culpably negligent party, assuming of course the deceased had been of copis mentis.)

 Irregardless of whether the investigation in this case seems perfunctory. Deep down even I knew this day would come. Studies have shown suicide to be hereditary, paternally in particular. 

(As to which parties Hildy’s referring, best leave that for you, the reader to parse. Suffice it to say though that having suicidal tendencies were about as close to a family tradition as the family Wolff had, apart of course from Der Sonntagsessen. Hell, they all thought about it from time to time. [Often during Der Sonntagsessen.] And while most didn’t fully commit — commitment issues were another common-held family trait — maybe they dipped their toe in now and again. Maybe leave the car running in the garage, just a little bit. Catch a buzz. Or what about seeing how those meds compliment one another — would it really be so bad? Hey, how long can do you think I hold my breath in this infinity pool. Half-hearted attempts. Heck, even the dogs got in on the act. Now, naturally, we can’t know for certain the extent of their intent to cause self-harm, but they were both known for ingesting foreign objects. Clothing accessories such as stockings or mittens,  household appliances including a chunk bitten off a vacuum cleaner, as well as various other small items, were a staple of their diet. One of them once ate an incandescent light bulb. Swallowed it whole without it breaking. To a pooch of lesser means, this would have no doubt spelled a death sentence. But not to these two, because each time they ‘et something they weren’t supposed to — between them their cadence was around semi-quarterly — Hildy would pony up to co-pay the five-to-fifteen thousand bones it took to have the something surgically extricated from their abdomens. She had written the habit off as a garden variety eating disorder — also hereditary to Hildy, albeit on the maternal side. However, more than one psychiatric veterinarian hypothesized that with each incident, the canines perhaps expressed an intent. One of hope that their owner would cut her losses, put them out of their misery and thus release them from this prison which were their deeply inbred bodies and utterly meaningless existences, as man’s best friends to a woman never had any use for one.)

I bet she starts a lot of conversations with, Studies Have Shown, thought the Mick, aghast at this lady’s la-di-da reaction to discovering her dead son, as were they all four except for Kitty. Just that morning, she had already heard Hildy deliver her maternal lament. Like she saw it coming. Kind of how newspapers pre-write their obituaries for super old or terminally ill famous people, which Kitty had heard somewhere they did. 

Sorry for your loss, said Grace, perfunctorily. Still she was clutching onto Zeke, who would have absolutely offered a more heartfelt condolence, were it not for the fact that on account of his being shown such affection by Grace, he may never speak again. 

Oh, don’t be sorry. Not for me, anyway. Be sorry for my little boy. If you can summon the sympathy. I know for our lot it’s in ever-shorter supply. Sure, it’s true he had every opportunity, but believe me when I say he never stood a chance. Maybe because I failed him when I handed him those opportunities. Or maybe I overestimated his capacity to seize upon them. We were so different in that way. While in other ways we were perhaps too similar. Such that we never really found peace with each another. But I loved him. Maybe I wasn’t the mother he wanted. They say becoming a parent changes you, but they never specify how. But I did love him, in my way. And more than that I always wanted the best for him. For us. I still do. I wish him the best.  

It was part eulogy, part confessional, part passive aggressive diss track. All Hildy. Her all over. And she didn’t shed a single tear as she delivered her remarks. Not because she thought she shouldn’t give in to her emotions. Rather because she physically couldn’t. Her ducts had been long since dammed up, probably as a side effect of some or other cosmetic procedure. Or maybe the well the well had done dried. After all, ahe used to cry all the time. 

There’s a note.

The Mick had sat down to collect himself at the computer desk, where Ernie’s Edge City employees would clock in and out and file complaints against him with HR. The monitor glowed white with a word processing document. 

Perhaps you should delete it. Whatever he said, I’m sure he didn’t mean it. Do me a kindness and contact the proper authorities. I’m in mourning. 

With that, Hildy peaced the fuck out. She gone. 

The Mick, for his part, took her words to be the sad coda to this entire strange saga. He was ready to get the hell out of Edge City, return to his life of brewing beer and never think about any of these people again, hopefully. But before he did, he wanted to read what Billy wrote. He had spun into his life like a fucking tornado. But the Mick still felt he owed him the courtesy of hearing out his last fucking words. And, hey, maybe then he could learn something from all this. 

Ahem. 

Suicide Cypher 

Bars by B. Wolf 

(Spit to the tune of Stan by Eminem) 

Dear Missus I’m too good to listen to my son 

Here’s my last pitch to you 

You can’t pass on this one 

Nah, I’m just playing, though 

I ain’t saying it’s your fault 

That’s on some bitch made shit 

That ain’t your boy at all 

He’s just tired, yo

This grind’s got him tripping

When’s a pimp ‘sposed to sleep? 

If you can’t ever let ‘em catch you slipping

I learned that shit from you, mom 

I took that shit to heart

But living up to it’s like this beat 

Shit go so fucking hard

So I’m gonna hit you with this fire 

‘Fore they pon me in the flames 

See you in hell, Hildy

Now say my mother fucking name

Okay. So much for learning something. But more than ever did he feel sorry for him. And as well for her. The feeling would prove to be fleeting.

[thewestern]

[thewestern]

Chapter 27

There are ways a-plenty to kill a buffalo, or so goes the saying. 

(Well, actually … It’s Bi-son, you’re saying. Because, in point of fact, there are no Buffalo on the North American continent. Only in Africa, and Asia. [Pause.] Okay. Are you done? Good. Because for the purposes of this albeit futile exercise, they’re fucking buffalo, although we reserve the right to switch back and forth. And as for their taxonomy, Jane Goodall … [For a fun fact, though, the genus species are bison bison, respectively. As for us, we’re homo sapiens, obviously. The gray wolf is canis lupus. Our friend the coyote is canis latrans. But for some reason some animals just have the same thing for both ranks. This is known in the scientific community as a tautonym. Other examples of tautonyms are skunks {mephitis mephitis}, Eurasian otters {lutra lutra} and Western gorillas {Gorilla gorilla ((which, along with Bison Bison, could make a good name for a gentrified ethnic food  restaurant or a late aughts indie band, if there are any out there in need of one))}.] Who gives a big buffalo chip? [Great source of fuel on the frontier, absent good kindling.] And, beside, who ever heard of bison wings or Bison Springfield or Bison Bill Cody or the Bison Bills, anyway? [It’s true that the latter was named for the former, as chosen by fans in a name-the-team contest. Previously they had been branded the Buffalo Bisons. Bisons Mafia just don’t have the same ring to it.]  

Hey, while we have a second, how about another of Russ’s deadbeat dad jokes? What did the buffalo say to her son when he went off to college? Bison. Yeah, fuck you too.)

For one thing, the primeval species of buffalo beat us bipeds across the Bering Land Bridge by a good hundred thousand years, at the least. And for all that time since, they’ve been the hunted. Back then by all manner of prehistoric beasts the likes of saber-toothed tigers. But, also, by present day predators, such as cougars, coyotes and big bad wolves. The wolves kill buffalo about how you expect they would. Fucking, bad ass-like. First thing, they hunt as a pack, obviously. They can’t, however, use the element of surprise, because even if these wolves had the drop on them, the buffaloes you see, by virtue of their collective mass, they have a considerable size advantage in any melee situation. So, instead, tbe lobos lope right on up to the edge of the herd, where the buffalo are grazing peacefully, and a standoff of sorts ensues. The buffaloes form a defensive perimeter, and the wolves circle around the outside. Sometimes this dance of death can last days. Eventually though, one buffalo — and that’s all it takes — will lose its nerve. Bang. He’s running. Shot out of a cannon. And when one goes, so do they all. It’s off to the races. The wolf pack gives glorious chase. The buffalo herd’s exodus shakes the earth, kicking up a mushroom cloud of dust one could see for miles. Until which point the weakest among them falls woefully behind. More often than not it’s a calf. Suppose that’s how come they can walk ten minutes after getting born, and run within the hour. That’s how they’ve evolved. As apex prey. 

Coyotes, conversely, they don’t have the same predacious prowess as their canine companeros. So they’ve got to be a fair bit more cunning. According to the Native American activist Russell Means, the band — although pack is acceptable, a group of coyotes is actually called a band … this on account of rather than forming multi-generational hierarchies, like wolves, they often remain as a family unit, with a monogamous mating pair reproducing one litter per year — would cut off one unlucky son of a bitch from the rest of his buffalo buddies and chase him around in a circle until he got dizzy and gave up. Means said it’s this tactic — crude, but effective — which the Plains Indians adapted for their own hunting purposes

(Native American versus Indian is its own debacle, on a whole different plane from buffalo versus bison. Of course, Indian is a bit of a misnomar, because Chrissy Columbus had been looking for India, a mark he only missed by three hemispheres, the fucking dumb wop. Since then a lot of cultural baggage has accrued, suffice it to say. Cowboys & Indians, etc., etc. Even though it’s worth clarifying that the cowboys never fought the Indians, who were just about whipped by the time we started driving cattle up and down the fruited plains. Irregardless, while NA is considered the more PC of the two, many Indigenous types continue to identify as Indians precisely because they believe there to be power in its incorrectness. Which is to say it don’t whitewash all the ways the white devil did them wrong.  Russell Means, for his part would have been one to bristle at being labeled a Native American, as he was in just the above paragraph. American Indian, was the nomenclature he preferred. We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonised as American Indians and we will gain our freedom as American Indians, he wrote. Then we can call ourselves whatever we damn please. 

Hell yeah, brother.) 

So the Indians, right, they had all kinds of cool tricks for killing buffalo. One was they’d wear, upon their naked backs, the hide from a wolf they’d previously trapped, get on all fours and casually crawl up to the herd’s outskirts. As you’ll recall, buffalo don’t run away from wolves, at least not right away. So, they’d let them lope right up into striking distance, when … wabam, bitch. Like Doc Holliday in the Okay Corral, they’d spring to their feet, shrug off their wolf robes and take point-blank aim with their concealed-carry spears. 

Now that’s pretty awesome, but admittedly not super efficient from a supply chain perspective. So the Indians, right, they had this other way, for taking scores of kills in one fell swoop. It was called a Buffalo Jump. Trigger warning, for all you animal lovers. It’s a fair sight gruesome. Basically, they’d light brush fires as a means of funneling the buffalo in a certain direction. Then some commotion would be caused so as to initiate a stampede. And the aforementioned columns of flames would lead said stampede right off the edge of a fucking cliff. The buffalo, like big lemmings, sometimes hundreds of the poor fuckers at a single clip, would form a screaming pile of broken bones and mangled flesh at the base of the precipice, whereupon the remaining warriors would be waiting to finish them off, one by fucking one, with their lances. 

(For all you tourists out there, should you happen to be planning your next family vacation in the area of Southwest Alberta, swing by the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. A remarkably well-preserved point of archeological interest, where buffalo skeletons can still be found to this day, it represents six thousand years of uninterrupted, pre-European communal hunting tradition and aboriginal way of life, to paraphrase the folks at UNESCO, who designated Head-Smashed-In as a World Heritage Site. Head-Smashed-In, heh. The name alone is worth the trip. Boy, they sure had a way with names, didn’t they? No pussyfooting around it. [Coincidentally, Pussy Smells Like Foot would be your sister’s Indian name.] Just get right to the heart of the thing, bury it at Wounded Knee and be done with it.)  

The squaws would then swoop in to harvest the carcasses, with a sheer utility you’d surely scoff at. Because everybody knows they used every part of the buffalo. It’s almost a cliche to say as much. However, it’s fucking true. The hide was used for clothing and shelter, and the brains were used for tanning the hides. The horns were used as cups or torch holders and the tongue was used as a hairbrush or to be eaten raw as a delicacy, as was the liver. The bones were used as tools, arrowheads and war clubs, as well as for making dice and other game pieces. The intestines made great tupper- and cookware. And the heart was left on the ground to give new life to the herd.

Pay special attention now to that last bit about the heart. Because killing buffalo, to these Indians, this wasn’t their going grocery shopping. More like they were going to church. Insofar as it was a spiritual fucking enterprise. The tribal elders and the medicine men were considered just as crucial, if not moreso, to the success of the hunt as were the hunters themselves. For it to go off, all the rituals had to be observed just right … the drumming and the dancing and the smoking and the carrying on. One of the things they did the night before a big hunt was to go outside and sing to the herd. They had special songs for it. Ain’t that something? Which Dead song would a buffalo like best? Brokedown Palace comes to mind, but we can keep it open to suggestions.

But back to the actual killing part … these guerilla tactics — the jumps and the ambushes — these were how Indians killed buffalo before the advent of horses, which the European explorers brought over on their boats. (Imagine, a horse on a boat. A thing like that.) As soon as the natives got their hands on some horses, though? It’s over for you bitches. Believe that, on the bare back of a pony, armed with only a bow and a few unquivered arrows, which were branded beforehand by each individual brave, so that he could unequivocally claim His kill, the Indian evolved virtually overnight. From coyote … to wolf. Oh, how the chase was great sport, as Gus McCrae would say. One with the gravest of stakes. Here the horsemen merges boldly onto the thundering herd, with the foreknowledge that even the slightest misstep would result in his being trampled utterly. It is therefore that he trusts only the most prized of mounts. Indeed, Indians coveted a good buffalo horse as a priceless possession. To the extent they tied them up close to the teepee at night to prevent their theft. Because not only could they cantor like thoroughbreds, but crucially, a good buffalo horse shared something innate with its owner: the thrill of the pursuit. So that when the rider sat tall and drew back, taking dead aim at the buffalo’s vital organs, which pumped blood and gave breath in rhythm with their very own, the horse steadied his gait and held fast. For a fact, it was said that if the hunter did fell, often his horse wouldn’t break stride. He’d just keep on running. 

So that’s the way the Indians killed buffalo. However brutally, always in such a way that honoured the animal, as well as themselves. As for the way the white settlers killed buffalo … 

[Stretches collar.]

Yeah, listen. Um, so, you’ve all heard the statistics at some time or another, and they’re pretty bad. A population of fifteen million, whittled down to a few hundred, give or  take, over the span of about twenty years, or just shy of, let’say. Hey, there’s no sugarcoating it. But, we’ll leave the serious business of relitigating these crimes against nature to more qualified parties. Rather, in light of our historiographical emphasis on the ways in which buffalo are predated throughout time, let’s reflect on our own near speciocide of the American Bison through the commonly-held characteristics that unite it with so many an atrocity. Namely, the utter senselessness of its aim and, in retrospect, the relative facileness with which it was perpetrated.   

Regarding the latter commonality, whereas the Indians had to risk their own hide getting close enough to penetrate the buffaloes’ with its lances and arrows, a buffalo hunter, equipped with a long-range, heavy-caliber buffalo rifle could register a kill from a considerably safe distance. And the really messed up part is, when one buffalo collapsed dead, since there was no perceivable evolutionary threat anywheres nearby, such as a snarling pack of wolves or a whooping band of Indians, rather than scatter at the sound of a gunshot, which they had no frame of reference for, the remaining buffalo would gather round to see what was the matter with their fallen comrade. You can guess what happened next. They’d shoot another buffalo. And another one after that. Until they were all picked off, one by fucking one. Because they all just stood there and took it. But don’t get it twisted. It wasn’t on account of they were weak. On the contrary, ne’er was there a creature so mighty. Nor were they thick. Recall, that they’d been hunted for millennia. They were incredibly keen. But we didn’t give them nothing to see or hear coming. Just a distant pop. And one more buffalo — another of their kin — was gone. As if by an act of god. 

Which is to say, the white man’s way of killing buffalo wasn’t very sporting at all. For a fact, it was business. And a booming one at that. Because, a hide fetched just shy of around three dollars at market. The tongue, which likewise became a fine dining delicacy among white folks, netted an extra twenty-five cents, or approximately the cost of a single rifle cartridge. So, hot digitty, you’re already in the black. As for the rest of the carcass, they’d leave it to rot. There they remained strewn by the thousands up and down the fruited plains.  

While the entrepreneurial among the buffalo hunters may have struck it rich, and a few found fame to go with their fortune — cough, Buffalo Bill Cody, cough — the economic impact of the hide trade registered merely a blip on the ticker. For a fact, the remnants from all them rotting carcasses netted more than the hide trade ever did. There emerged a cottage industry of independent contractor bone collectors who would forage the skeletons — perhaps you’ve seen the famous photo of their skulls piled sky high — for to fetch rebates from concerns the likes of the Michigan Carbon Works, whose core competency was grounding up them bones to make all sorts of stuff. Glue, fertilizer, inks and dyes. You name it.

Despite however fat the margins on the buffalo hides, nor the myriad industrial applications for their calcified cartilage, it would be naive to call profit the sole motive that incentivized the slaughter of fourteen million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand and a few hundred buffalo, give or take. As are all sinister enterprises, it was also a real estate play. In their efforts to protect their sacred buffalo hunting grounds, the Indians were stifling the white settlers from fulfilling their destiny of expanding westward. And make no mistake, they were relentless in this defense. Scalping men, raping women and kidnapping children were all fair game. Naturally, we could not abide this aggression, and with the Civil War all wrapped up, our troops were available to mount a counteroffensive. To serve as the commandant for this emergent theater, there was really only one man for the job: General William Tecumseh Sherman — or The Sherminator as he weirdly insisted upon being addressed by the other top Army brass. Not unlike the Indian raiding parties, he was a practitioner of Total War. In a Total War one does not stop with killing the enemy. You kill their family, too. Then you burn their house down and piss on the ashes. Total war is taking the fight to the enemies’ will to keep fighting. Kaiser Sose shit, essentially. (This is an embellishment, but Sherman was for sure a cold m-f’er. In reference to the Indian Wars, he once remarked how in battle his soldiers could not pause to distinguish between men and women, or even to discriminate with regard to age. As long as resistance is made, he wrote, death must be meted out. Yo.) 

Now, these nomads didn’t have any cities to set aflame or seaports to bockade or any other such infrastructure to destroy. However, the Sherminator knew that if he eradicated the buffalo, that would in effect achieve all the above and more. The bison was the Indians’ source of food, shelter, self-defense, fucking spiritual fulfillment. Without it, they would have no choice but to surrender, assimilate and take up the plow.

Therefore, while no explicit orders were made for enlisted men to train their Gatling guns on the herd, Sherman encouraged the practice of bison hunting among private citizens. For a fact, when Congress passed a law to protect buffalo from overhunting, he appealed to his old war buddy President Grant to have it pocket vetoed. So open season, year-round, it remained. Hence how come you have those awful stories of train passengers taking potshots of buffalo out their fancy dining car windows. 

So you can kill a buffalo with politics. For a fact it was the special interest groups that did them in. Railroads, mining and, ultimately, cattle ranching. Now here we’ve arrived at the great irony of it all. We replaced fifty million buffalo with approximately forty-five million head of cattle, give or take. Wetland cattle, more specifically. Shorthorns. The English breeds. Best suited for beef and dairy production. Unfortunately, however, they were very poorly suited to the plains landscape. In so far as cows are lay grazers. Remaining in one place, not only do they eat all the grass, but they do so with such an enthusiasm that the grass can no longer grow back. Buffalo, for their part, are by no means lightweights. Not unlike their bovine brethren, they’re basically a stomach with legs. (Perhaps you’ve heard that a cow has four stomachs. This is not correct. Cows, buffalos and all other ruminants — herbivorous grazing or browsing artiodactyls belonging to the suborder Ruminantia — have stomachs broken down into four separate compartments. This allows them to digest food through fermentation, which you’ll recall is how we humans brew beer. Cool!) That being said, more similar to the Indians, they’re nomadic. Oh give me a home … where the buffalo roam, as the song goes. So they don’t wear out one spot. And that’s not their only contribution to the ecosystem. They do this really cute thing, called wallowing, where they roll around on the ground, stretching out a bit and taking a little dirt bath. Now what this does is create a little depression in the landscape, which helps with water retention. And ecologically, from that little puddle, all manner of other little critters can come drink and wildflowers can sprout around. Maybe that don’t sound like much to you, but don’t forget there were once million of these buffalo, and thus many more millions of wallows. And millions upon millions of happy critters and fertile land. 

  But the cows chewed up the land until it was barren and the critters were sad. And it was all for naught, because they couldn’t hardly survive the unforgiving mid-Western winters. So many of them succumbed to the cold that the cattle ranching business mostly died out itself within the next half-century. Bad news for every little boy hoping to grow up to be a cowboy. Of course, there are still ranches, but the big ones are mostly subsidized by Big Oil. Cowboying as we know it today is mostly an avocation for banker and lawyer-types, playing dress up on the weekends. (This notion that we got rid of the buffalo only to swap it out for exactly the wrong animal is another hobby horse of Larry’s. McMurtry, that is.)

But, due credit to the cattle barons, because it was thanks in part to them that the buffalo didn’t go all the ways, belly up extinct. For a fact, it was one rich rancher’s wife — whose name escapes … it was definitely Molly Something — who may have been single-handedly responsible for saving the last dregs of the southern herd, rounding ‘em up one at at time, even going so far as to rescue orphaned buffaloes and bottle-feed them, raising them up all the way through into adulthood. Thanks to her efforts, as well as those of her fellow conservationists, many of them other rich rancher-types, the American Bison population has recovered to more respectable levels, albeit nowhere’s fucking close to reclaiming their once and former kingdom. But nonetheless sustainable to the extent we can go back to killing them. Have you ever had a buffalo burger? It’s fine. A little lean, maybe. Pro-tip for your next barbecue, you gotta have that eighty-twenty ground chuck. None of this ninety-three-seven bull shit. Don’t be a pussy and get the premade paddies, neither. Buy the big hunk of beef, grab a handful, shape it up so that it’s nice and round, get some wax paper and flatten it with the top of a pan or something. Rinse repeat. 

But, yeah, a buffalo burger is a nice change of pace. You can grill ‘em up just the same. Five minutes a side, thereabouts. But you can’t kill them like cattle. You’ve seen the film No Country for Old Men? (Yes, there is a book, ya nerd, but it actually came out after the movie.) That doo-hickey Anton Chigur uses to shoot off doorknobs and murder folks — it’s called a captive bolt pistol. That, or some other like device, is how they kill cows. A compressed air canister propels out some blunt object, aimed preferably point blank at the animal's forehead, rendering it unconscious. Afterward you slit its throat and wait for it to bleed out. The practice is called stunning. But it doesn’t work on buffalo. Like your sister, their skulls are too thick. So, rather they’re shot with live ammo. Additionally, you can’t calmly lead them into a slaughterhouse the way you would cattle. Bisons don’t like confinement. It spooks them. So the prevailing school of thought is to shoot them in the field, where they’re comfortable, and also they least expect it. Not only is it considered more humane, but the stress associated with being corralled is proven to elevate cortisol levels, reducing the tenderness of the meat. Which we can’t have that. 

But that’s just one of the contemporary means for killing a bison. Some states have started back issuing licenses for hunting bison, although the lottery system for receiving one of the very limited amount of tags in a given season is highly competitive. But all you need is a driver’s license — or even a learner’s permit — to slam into one with your super-duty pickup. Or if you’re visiting a National Park, you can waltz up to one and take a selfie. When it likely charges, sending you to the shadow realm, rangers’ll have no choice but to euthanize. (Pro tip: Bison are responsible for more human deaths in National Parks than are bears.) 

As for the rest of the animal kingdom, reckon coyotes don’t have much use for killing bison any longer. It’s a damn lot of work. Beside, most of them mangy bastards have relocated to ex-urban areas, where it’s easy to scrounge for fast food scraps. Picking off the occasional small game, an overpopulated rabbit here, house cat or show dog there, if they get the predatory itch. The wolves, for their part, were mostly killed off by the cattle ranchers, exiled to the northern tundras and southern deserts. Although they’re making a comeback, too, thanks again to those same bleeding heart conservationist types. Likely they’ll go on killing cattle until the ranchers bitch and moan enough to get what they want, which is to trap, poison or shoot down every last wolf all over again. Hopefully, before that happens, somewhere out there’ll be one or two more of those standoffs. Wherein the wolfpack circles the herd. Until one of the buffalo — and that’s all it takes — loses its nerve. And then the chase. The cloud of the dust on the horizon beckoning the sound of the thunder. May it echo forever and ever more.

It's a far gone lullaby

Sung many years ago

Mama, mama, many worlds I've come

Since I first left home

[thewestern]

[thewestern]

Chapter 26

Do you believe in magic? 

Somewhat akin to splitting the atom, spontaneous fermentation brewing is an alchemic practice, bordering on straight-up witchcraft. (Which is to say, they’ve burned ladies at the stake for less.) One wherein man simultaneously assumes and resigns control o’er the forces of nature, albeit for the benefit of all humankind. Or, would it be to his and hers great detriment? What was it Mark Twain said about drinking? That it’s the cause and solution to all of life’s problems. (Words which had sometimes been paraphrased in chalk on the sandwich board under the awning on the curb out front from the Newfy.) I am become hungover.   

Back on the farm, not terribly long after the Stone Rock Boys had bedded down for the morning, the Gang of Four from the New Frontier had themselves awoken on the early side of reason. Before their as-yet unscheduled rendezvous with the boy Wolff, the Mick had quite reluctantly agreed to lead Grace and Zeke on a partially guided tour of the coolship room and the accompanying barrel cellar that Hank had converted from the previous homeowner’s survivalist bunker. Grace was delighted to have her suspicions confirmed regarding the subterranean room’s origins. 

(In a freak occurrence of fatal irony, the previous homeowner sadly passed away in his own survivalist bunker. And would you believe it was on account of he locked himself down there by accident? Most survivalist bunkers lock one way, from the inside, so as to keep any marauding bands of dystopian looters from burglarizing the canned foodstuffs and cache of seeds, which would all but certainly soon become the new currency. However, here was such a hardcore survivalist, that he equipped his bunker with a double-cylinder, computer-activated deadbolt mechanism, which would also seal him from the outside in. His reason being that he didn’t want to be tempted to resurface prematurely into a world that was sure to be hostile to human life. So, anyway, one Saturday afternoon he was down there tinkering on a few things, some routine grouting, mostly — doomsday prepping is a lot like homebrewing, or any other hobby, in so far as there’s a lot of busy work — and he must have pressed the wrong button or something because damned if the titanium-reinforced door didn’t airlock above him. Twenty-five years, the timer was set for. And he hadn’t stocked but a single bite of food, nor a drop of water. That’s supposed to be the final step. [Even if the food is non-perishable, you’d prefer it to be as fresh as possible.] Would you even believe if his AV guy had been scheduled to come by that very afternoon to install the full comms setup, as well as the entertainment system, but damn if nobody came to answer the front door. So it was that our intrepid survivor died twice. First of boredom. Second of thirst. For all we know he might still had been down there, if it weren’t for his then soon-to-be-ex-wife discovering his decomposing body some days later. [It’s the smell that’ll haunt her.] On account of they had been undergoing a trial separation, his now-widow was only just stopping by to get his signature on the last of the divorce papers. If he wasn’t in the house, flat ass planted firmly on the sofa, then she could bet the farm he was down there was playing in his fucking fort. Boy how he hated when she called it that. She never took him or his apocalypse planning seriously. Maybe it was for the best. Their marriage could have never survived the bunker. He would have written her out of the will altogether, had he made one to begin with. [When one has reoriented one’s life entire around the steadfast belief that the world is going to end, like in the fairly short term {nigh}, what then is the use in settling one’s affairs?] On the bright side, though, it would stand to reason that as his legal wife at the time of his untimely demise, wouldn’t she stand to inherit the estate entire? Not so fast, on account of since our story is taking place in a separate property state, rather she had to split the pot four ways with his two asshole daughters and one dickhead son from a previous marriage, which divides out to half of the half she would have gotten in the divorce! Mercifully, she did get the farmhouse, which she promptly put on the market for to cover her considerable loss. As a general rule of real estate, the presence of a level-five survivalist bunker increases the home value least twofold. That is, of course, unless somebody fucking dies in it. [In some states, including this one, sellers must disclose any death{s} that have occured on-property over the previous three year-period.] Then it’s basically moot. Because well it must be some lousy survivalist bunker, ain’t it. Hence in part how come she sold the place to Hank for a song. Some guys are just lucky.)  

Therein the ancient secrets of the ten thousand-year brewing tradition would be fully revealed, firmly placing our pilgrims on a time continuum that spans the millenniums, with the Dawn of Man in the Cradle of Civilization, the Sumerians of Southern Mesopotamia (SoMo), mercantilists in the glorious reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, peasant farmers in the seventeenth century Senne Valley, Hank and Russ in Hank’s garage and so on and so forth to the sixteenth power.

Meanwhile, Kitty would make waffles.

Although she seldom cooked — again, the kitchen was Mick’s dojo — when pressed, she could make a more than passable breakfast, particularly one for soaking up a hangover. Nothing fussy. The breakfast necessities. Some or other such menu of dairy, swine and starch. The latter preferably starting from a box with precise steps and measurements printed on the back. A control recipe from which she may slightly deviate with variable ingredients as so dictated by the scientific method. A dash of cinnamon, a dollop of sour cream or a splash of vanilla extract. 

She paroused Hank’s walk-in pantry for anything semi-perishable which could be combined with the outside groceries they brought along — a half dozen-carton of eggs and a vacuum-sealed package of bacon in a tent-pop cooler. For a presumed-dead man of going on a year, his wares were surprisingly well-stocked. Right at her eye level, beside the spine of a lone cookbook — The Joy of Cooking … For One: Big Flavor in Small Portions — was just what the doctor ordered: an unperforated cardboard container of pancake mix. And there staring back at her was the familiar face of an antebellum mammy with the Yessa Massa smile. Comma get ya griddle cakes while dey’r hot off the stove top nah. Mmm-mm, get’cha sum wahrm syrp to drizzle all up on ‘em. Y’all hurry up nah befuh I battuh dem cheeks wit mah wooden spoon nahu. (The beloved Big Momma Maybelline character is the trademarked intellectual property of the Amish Grains Corporation, a division of ​​Cyclospora Brands. Any reproduction of her likeness without proper consent is expressly prohibited and will be punished with commensurate lashings.)     

Diligently, Kitty checked the expiration date, which they were coming up on a month past. Hank himself used to deride the practice of labeling foodstuffs with so-called By-Dates. Best By, Sell By, Use By, Buy By, By and By; Bye, Bye, Bye. He considered it criminal behavior on behalf of the CPG Cartel to encourage recurring purchases. Next to nuclear proliferation and all these damn boy bands, of course, it’s Food Waste that’s the biggest crisis confronting humanity, he used to say. You know how long it takes a head of lettuce to decompose, in absentia of oxygen? Twenty-five years. About as long as you’ve been alive, young lady. Quarter of a century. And by that time it finally does disintegrate, that leafy green’ll leave behind a methane that’s twenty-something times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. I mean for crying out loud, Kitty, there’s a floating trash patch two-thirds the size of Texas bobbing around the Pacific as we speak. You can see the damned thing from outer space!

Notwithstanding the existence of an garbage archipelago, Kitty had done enough failed volcano science projects to know that baking powder does lose its potency, eventually. But the blood suckers at Big Food would have no doubt accounted for that fact and as such conspired to give themselves a grace period whereby unsuspecting shoppers would have to buy more storebought mix than they would ever possibly need. For heaven’s sake, how could Hank have ever finished a box this large to begin with, not that he’d even started. How many pancakes even is this? The Nutrition Facts (/Datos de Nutrición) say each serving size makes two units of four inches each, diameter she assumed. That radius squared multiplied by pie would make a mega-pancake fifty square inches in area, twenty-five inches the way round, talking circumference. Imagine that. Okay — Earth to Kitty — serving size is a quarter of a cup, or thirty-six grams. Box is thirty two-ounces. That’s nine hundred-some (seven) grams. Over thirty-six is — long division, f’n, f — twenty-five. Times two makes fifty. Fifty flipping pancakes. General Ulysses S. Grant. Half a hundred flapjacks. Oh, farts … it says so right on the back.  

  Anyhow, when and over how long a period was this Single Man supposed to consume fifty pancakes from this Family Size box. He hardly spent any time in that second house anyway. Kitty remembered when she and Mick first stayed for one of her three-day weekends. President's Day, or Was it Martin Luther King? One of those bank holidays they give you on the other side of Christmas, in the grayest stretch of winter, if only to keep postal workers from drive-by shooting their mail routes. Hank had been off scaling up or traversing across or spelunking down some four-dimensional plane in a faraway land for two weeks’ time, and insisted they Use The House, he said, as a token of his thanks for minding the store in his stead. Yea, as if his being here makes any fucking difference anyway, Mick would scoff. By then Hank’d been spending more and more time away, either planning the new production facility, or else off on another of his solo old dude adventures. Indiana Scones, Mick took to calling him to his face, because he loved traveling and breakfast pastries. He’d left the lonely farmhouse key — no chain or even a ring — on his desk next to the ship in the bottle off the starboard bow. On top of a yellow pad of post-its whereupon he’d left a rare-for-him note. 

K+M

Thanks for minding the store. 

XOHO  

At the risk of perpetuating this cycle of gratitude everlasting, whenceupon they returned, Kitty wanted to get Hank a little something to say thanks for letting them Use The House. Casual gift-giving was an important component of her personal culture. Yet what do you get for a man that has at once everything and nothing? A man who has enough expensive wheelie toys to round the curve of a mid-life crisis onto life’s home stretch, no matter the terrain. Who has every book ever written about any adventure ever over or undertaken. (Beside, getting someone a book as a present is poor etiquette, Kitty believed rather staunchly. Awfully presumptive, isn’t it?) Someone who saw his favorite band play on four continents before its founder and reluctant leader died a past-timely death. A man so devoted to his hobby he made it a profession. What do you get a man like that? A bottle of wine? He never drank the stuff. Only skeletons in his cellar. Maybe fetch him another from the janitor’s closet.

  That Hank was hard to shop for was no big deal to Kitty. For a fact, the challenge made the thrill she received from gift-giving all the more fulfilling. You know, she’d read something in a magazine recently — must have been in a waiting room at a doctor’s office, the only place she could have possibly encountered print media — about how experiences were the new possessions. Obviously she couldn’t afford to buy him another first-class round-trip ticket to Timbuktu. (One Wednesday Hank had casually dropped to Kitty that he was Diamond Status, whatever that means.) Nor could she bring Jerry back to life. (Hank had been one of the pious few holdout deadheads who’d outright refused to see any of the GD’s incarnations, PG, which he considered heretical.) But she could make him a breakfast treat. A baker’s dozen cinnamon rolls. The buns themselves came from a dough pre-rolled, canned and mascotted by a claymated Frankenstein’s monster with a crystalline blue male gaze, and the haunting falsetto chortle of a childlike ghost. (The prototype was painstakingly rendered via stop-motion, requiring its five bodies and fifteen decapitated dough heads be rearranged in the frame up to twenty-four times to shoot a single second of real-time footage. Since the early nineties, the beloved advertising character has been brought to life digitally, with the miracle of CGI.) But, Kitty frosted them herself with a homemade, Irish Cream-infused glaze, and topped off with a garnish of glittery green sprinkles. He was so heart-warmed by the kind gesture that he insisted Kitty stay for a toast to their good health over the first half pint of the new More Perfect Double IPA — as so christened by Mick … Hank had wanted to call it, God Exists — freshly kegged this very morning by her betrothed. Never mind that Seven AM is a tad bit on the early side for a Eight Percent ABV, or that you’re on your way to teach the Periodic Table to sixth graders. O, c’mon, Kit. It’s a half of a half. A quarter. 

And so they did.

What a fine memory it was.

###

Although she was blissfully unfamiliar with the term mise en place, Kitty did prefer to have her ingredients, utensils and other cookware prearranged in advance, like how a surgeon would have their instruments pre-sterilized and set out just so, with the corresponding donor organs at the ready for transplant in a little cooler not dissimilar from the one Kitty and the Mick received lightly used as a wedding present from Skip Engel, the Newfy delivery driver. That cooler is there on the marble counter, next to the waffle iron — which one more commonly receives via their wedding registry … although they were one of those meant-to-be type of couples who already proudly owned a waffle iron, so they left it off — with the mixing bowl, whisk, two shapes of spatula (one for flipping, the other for miscellaneous spatulate), measuring cups and spoons organized in descending fractional volumes. Griddle with the nonstick teflon coating that’ll be sure to give you bone cancer. Center-cut bacon strips and a stick of butter which will hopefully do you first. From Hank’s aforementioned refrigerator, Vermont maple syrup that you’d more than happily drown in. (She remembered he’d had that from there last visit.) And from the icebox, wild, Maine blueberries. For our dish this morning, a culinary romp through ye olde New England. The breakfast world is flattening. Two brown eggs, XL Organic. Pair of Free Rangers. Mama Maybelline, bonded there on the cardboard box in a lithographic phantom zone for all time. An additional pinch of baking powder for a little extra leavening, just in case. Her variable ingredient, lemon zest for which to compliment the blueberries. And lastly but not the least— oh fudge, I forgot the mother fucking milk. 

Kitty flung open the fridge in desperation, breaking off the vintage handle clean off its moor, and looked deep into the recesses of the shelves for some variety of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Dairy alternative Hank would no doubt have had stocked. Oh bother … either way it would long since’ve soured. Or does fake milk even have a shelf life? As she considered the potentially broad implications of plant-based pasteurization, basking in the cold hum of the refrigerant vapor, Kitty yet again began to weep. And not for the waffles that never were, neither, should it go without saying. 

Tears in her eyes, Kitty closed the now handleless door and turned back toward the kitchen counter, and promptly dropped the carton of quite possibly expired hemp milk on the Spanish tile floor, whereupon it exploded. 

Seated atop a barstool on the other side of the island, sipping a hot cup of coffee out of one of Hank’s hand-made ceramic mugs, as if she’d brewed the damn pot herself, was Ms. Hildy Wolff. Yep, that’s her alright, styled all immaculately in her country best, riding boots over jeans, a wax canvas coat over a cable knit sweater. Off on a cantor were you, Duchess? Is what it looked like anyway.  

My goodness … I hope I haven’t ruined brunch. Oh, don’t cry, dear. You know the saying. 

I wasn’t. And it’s hemp. 

Ah, how like Henry. Indeed. Always high off something.

Did you know him? 

Henry? 

Yeah, Hank.

Well, yes, of course. Also quite like him, to have never mentioned me. I’m sorry, but do I know you? 

No. I don’t think so. I saw you at his fun—ehr—celebraish— memorial thingy. You’re—

—Yes, but please don’t mention it. When we were already on to talking about you, who must have known him too, if you likewise attended his little gone away party. And I gather you’re staying here somehow in accordance with his will and testament. I saw no sign of a forced entry, anyway. I suppose squatters don’t typically make pancakes. 

Waffles, actualy. And we worked for him, at the Newfy. Well I didn’t. Sometimes I did. The Mi—my husband is the head brewer. Actually, I think I work for you.  

Is that so, actually, you think? How lovely. And in what capacity, may I ask? You’re obviously not one of mine on the fifth floor or elsewhere in marketing. And you’re far too handsome a girl to be an accountant. Human resources, then? No, that too would be a waste. 

English. 

Oh? The humanities. I was close then I suppose. Well, wonderful. I wasn’t aware we had a Department of Literary Studies at Wolffenbrew, Inc. 

Teaching. I’m a teacher. At Collegiate Acade— 

—Oh at SciTech! Of course … well, that truly Is wonderful. But I’m afraid you don’t work for Me, darling. Alas, you work for the public school system. And I’m not a city taxpayer, thank heavens. So in no such sense am I your boss, to be clear. I suppose that would be the principal. I am his boss, however. Such in my capacity as Chairwoman of the Board. May she long live, and he never forget it. In any case, as a fellow female educator myself — or at the very least as your devoted champion [clasping her hands, right over left, to her heart] — I always do try to make the effort to express my utmost gratitude, for what it is you do. So, sincerely, thank you, for all that it is you do. 

You’re welcome?

Kitty never knew quite how to respond when well-to-do types thanked her for being a teacher. It happened more often than you think. 

And you said your husband, was he, was one of Henry’s boys? The teacher and the brewer. How very— quaint. American Gothic, a revival. American Bohemian, maybe more like it. Anyway, sort of an odd couple are you? Compatibility-speaking. Now, I don’t mean in terms of dual income, although— oh, Hildy, stop it. What I mean is strictly from a practical standpoint, in terms of scheduling. As in, you’re off early; he’s hoe late. Well, who am I judge? Especially with regards to an accounting of one’s time spent with her family. Better appraised by quality over quantity, is all I’ll say on the matter. I beg your pardon, but are you expecting? It’s only— I couldn’t help but notice a certain, glow. I can’t imagine the compensation at SciTech is stellar, but the benefits for working mothers are particularly first-rate. You have me to thank for that, personally, not that I’m one to boast. 

How was this very rich lady making such a poor first impression, Kitty wondered. Something in the manner she spoke, like she was trying to talk her way out of a straightjacket. In that way she was faintly reminiscent of Billy, her excitable boy. She even affected the hint of an accent, albeit borderless and cosmopolitan. Suffice it to say her son’s island boy beatboxing had much more soul to it. As to the status of her uterus, Kitty ignored the question.

Have you come for Billy? 

No. Although I understand he also paid a visit to your brewery. 

You could say that. He drove his car through it. 

So I hear. And for that I’m terribly sorry. 

Apology accepted. 

How gracious of you. Motherhood is a lifetime appointment, I’m afraid. If it is indeed so, that you are … with child, then I hope you’re prepared for one excruciatingly painful day, physically, followed by pangs of psychic pain every day thereafter. 

So, I guess the glow wears off, Kitty gathered.  

As for your wall, of course, I’d be delighted to reimburse you for the full cost of repair. However, as is the purpose for my calling on you unannounced, I’d prefer to pay for all four walls and everything within them. I furthermore suspect it’s for this very reason — my stated intention to make you this offer — that Billy attempted his little car stunt, although his logic escapes me.  

I don’t understand. 

Which part? I aim to acquire the New Frontier, darling. The business and, more importantly, the brand. 

Why? 

What do you mean, why? 

Why do you want to buy it? To buy us. 

Oh, yes. Please excuse me. Why, would be the obvious question, wouldn't it? It’s just not one I’m quite accustomed to being asked. Hmm. Why, indeed. Yes, well, as it happens, I myself am being bought out, as it were. Don’t weep for me, though, as this is an outcome I’ve long since courted. I’ll be compensated handsomely, as so will you be I can assure. Originally I had justified this transaction — our mutual — as a means of one ensuring the other by way of exploiting a tax incentive loophole. It’s since been clarified to me they are not correlated. Actually, the takeover of Wolffenbeir by a Chinese concern has nothing at all to do with our storied brewing tradition, nor our beer at all. Are you familiar with Doctor Lupus?  

Sure. He’s up on our wall. Right next to Bertha. 

Ah, the bison! Perhaps you’re not aware of this, but she also belonged to me at one time. What a magnificent animal. I always admired how the cows have horns of their own, which is actually typical of most bovids. Of course, I grew up on a ranch, not terribly far from where we sit. Whatever livestock we had — however perfunctory it was — was dehorned. An abhorrent practice. The cowboys burned them off the calves’ skulls with a red hot iron. But not the bulls. They could keep theirs, if only for appearances I suppose. 

Unable to tell if this was a lament for animal rights or some form of country-fried feminism, Kitty disregarded it thusly.   

But, as for Ezekiel, while his cultural relevancy has regrettably been defanged somewhat stateside, abroad apparently he is an icon of sorts, particularly in the Orient. As such the time value of his intellectual property far exceeds that of the current market capitalization of the legacy business itself, lest depreciation. Can you even imagine? Perhaps I should be flattered. After all he was my creation. Giving birth to him was the career achievement of my life. Still, I can’t help but feel … 

A pregnant pause now. 

Empty? 

Kitty offered her armchair analysis, free gratis, to which Hildy’s brow furrowed — no easy feat for someone of her bone restructure. Not to cast assumptions, but Kitty was pretty sure that Hildy’s kitchen had undergone some remodeling. Wondering as such, she at once felt bad about feeling judgy. Kitty would often offset the private opinions she considered to be toxic by thinking something positive about the person or thing she had thought poorly of just previously. As for Hildy, she looked stunning for a woman her age, a complementary observation albeit backhandedly so, but nonetheless the best Kitty could do considering the circumstances. It was true, Hildy was of the rarified air for women of means who could afford to have work done that had the appearance of effortlessness. 

No, I wouldn’t go so far as to say Empty. Unwhole, how about. 

A cornerstone of Hildy’s success as an executive was her uncanny ability to conversationally agree in principle, without making any due concession.

Did you know him?

Did I know whom, dear? Do you mean Henry? 

No, Elvis. Yes, Hank. Kitty thought. To whom the heck else would I be referring? The presumed dead man whose second house we are occupying presently. She expressed her thinning patience with a facial gesture of her own in the affirmative.  

Hmm. Henry, as I knew him. Although his given name was John, did you know? John the Brewer. Once we were lovers. But only very briefly. Who could ever know him, beside?

You gotta be kidding me, Kitty snickered to herself. Hank could always pick ‘em. And, I mean, the nerve on this woman. We were lovers once! Ha! Who says that? As for the being unknowable part though, Kitty thought, point taken.

So, what do you say? 

As to what? 

I’m sorry. Here I thought I was being obvious when apparently I was being rather opaque. What do you say — saying as they do in a dealmaking scenario — as to the possibility of being acquired. You, by me. 

Kitty didn’t respond right away. There was no repartee to be had between these two people talking over, under and around one another in conversation as somersault.

So …

I’m sorry. I forgot where I was for a second. Does that ever happen to you? 

No. I’m cursed with a constant awareness of my surroundings, I’m afraid. 

Well, Mrs. Wolff,— 

Hildy, please. You know the first name policy at SciTech is another of my brain children. So as to create Buy-in, pupils should feel a sense partnership with their instructors. 

Guiding principle number seventeen, Kitty recited.

Yes! Perhaps it should come as no surprise I had a hand in framing the SciTech Pyramid of Principles. In large part because I’m passionate about ensuring that all stakeholders feel adequately engaged. In point of fact, rather than an outright acquisition, try to approach my proposal as a potential partnership of sorts, between our organizations, and as well between us as female professionals. Not to mention, women in STEM and working mothers, I presume, or otherwise expectant. 

No one’s ever referred to me a professional woman in STEM before. I’m flattered. However, Hildy, I’m not in a position to enter into partnerships on behalf of the brewery. My husband is the proprietor. Like I said, I’m just a teacher. 

And don’t we encourage a mindset of entrepreneurship our among students and educators the same?

GP number three. Why are you doing this? 

You asked me that already. 

But you didn’t answer. 

Does it matter? 

I guess not. 

So, then. What do you say? 

Kitty expected the Mick would have accepted her offer sight unseen. Since Hank, he had talked increasingly about Getting Out. About just such a scenario as This, being their ticket. Oh, yeah, huh? A ticket to where? 

I don’t know. I could get a straight job. I’ve done it before. We could use the money for grad school? Preferably yours, but potentially mine. Who knows, maybe we could both go back? 

No, my dear, we can never go back, she thought. Kitty loved the Mick infinitely — sometimes more than she thought she could bear. That being said — beware of the old, I love you, comma … whom among us — the prospect of investing the meager savings resultant of their modest dual income into his postgraduate education seemed of the low yield, high volatility category. Not the quadrant you want to be in, to be sure. And for her part — having spent, best-case-scenario, a quarter of a lifetime in a classroom — school was out. As in, of session, and as well the question. At least so far as Attending It went.

Which isn’t to say that she had any tangible objection to moving on from the Newfy. When Hank— went away, so to did the essence of the place dissipate, so to speak. The very idea of the New Frontier. It was always His. The man with the business plan. She wasn’t sure if Mick could Sell It with the same … feeling. So why not, then, Sell Out altogether? 

Well, because … maybe I don’t fucking feel like it. Uprooting my entire status quo. Is mine an identity entirely predicated upon a presumed missing gu— oh, what the hell, he’s dead. Hank’s as dead as a doornail. He’s disco, baby. So, is mine an entire identity predicated upon a dead guy’s stupid pipe dream to fuck off to drink beer with people he underpays to be his friends? Perhaps so. But It Is mine, and It’s Not for resale on the secondary market. So, because, maybe go fuck yourself, you, you bitch, Kitty thought.

What if I say no, was how Kitty said it, out loud. 

Momentarily, Hildy considered this. 

I hadn’t considered the possibility.

To reiterate, Hildy was in uncharted territory. As an executive her interactions were most always vetted in advance for certainty of favorable outcome. Short circuiting upon experiencing resistance, she changed subjects.

I’ve only ever tried to be a friend to my son.

That’s funny. Kitty’s first impression of Billy was precisely, here’s somebody who probably doesn’t have so many friends.  

Mine was a Difficult childhood. You may presume otherwise, that it would have been easy, because of who I am and all that I have. 

I don’t think that at all.

Bless you, then. But my mother, after my father’s passing, she became … quite unfriendly. So I tried to be the opposite to my little boy Billy. My only son. My mother wouldn’t just say No. She would chant it, like a mantra. She would almost hiss it. So I told my son: Yes, dear. 

(In many respects, Hildy considered her approach to motherhood similarly to her career as a marketer. As that of an Innovator. Today’s mothers talk of positive reinforcement like they invented it, but Hildy had been positively reinforcing for going on three decades. And in the face of all evidence to its ineffectiveness, she persisted.) 

Empower him the tools and the freedom with which to grow, I firmly believed. And I still do, by the way. There were variables we simply couldn’t account for. He was born at the wrong time, for one thing. Clinically speaking, that is, he was a patient in a period when the whole of psychiatry was gun-shy over the backlash to lobotomies and shock therapy, albeit deserved. Still, it stifled our imminent discovery of better living through chemistry. Pediatric pharmacology in particular has advanced by leaps and bounds in the decades since. If only he’d been born just ten years on, we might have had the tools with which to sedate him, compassionately. Alas, I had to make some difficult choices with regard to his mental welfare. Seeing those brutish orderlies grab him from the bed in the middle of a pitch-dark night. Blindfold him. Toss him into a windowless van. That was traumatic for me. Nevermind redundant. But I had no choice! His entire life, he was an escape artist. A Tiny Houdini. Have you any idea the strength of a rope ladder one can fashion from seven hundred-thread count Egyptian cotton linens? One could belay the El Capitan entire! So they were adamant, he had to be taken by force. Enrollment via the element of surprise.

I stand by my decision. No, in point of fact, I believe I believe I’m entitled to some recognition for having the courage to make it. After all, being a mother doesn’t allow for second-guessing one’s self. As you’ll soon see for yourself. Now, yes. Certainly, their methods are unconventional. That I’ll grant you. But, don’t we as educators know … the only way forward is through. And sure enough, out he came the other side, a different person. Of an improved disposition. One who at long last, wanted reasonable things for himself. Lo, they seem just out of reach. Oh, how I’ve tried to hand him them! They did say to expect a period of adjustment. Of course, I didn’t think it would last well into his twenties.

 Listen to me piddle away. I’m terribly sorry. What was your question again? That’s right: Why! And you rephrased it, as if the answer would reveal itself upon repeated asks. What if — was it? — in reference to your hypothetical refusal. So I’ll once again repeat myself, regarding these questions that I don’t often receive. They’re also not questions I would dare ever ask of myself. There is only the wish and its fulfillment. As per the dark matter between those two points, it simply does not exist. Or, at the very least, it’s none of my concern.   

Kitty could sense that it was her turn to talk now. And yet, her words had been sumarily sucked out of her. Whatever melancholy wind it was that Mick so often pissed into, a chronic exasperation she so often drafted off of, Kitty now felt herself head on. It was a considerable strain. Thus Hildy resumed. Now I’m going to do something I’ve never had occasion to. Perhaps you’ve seen this scenario played out as trope in television or film. I’m going to write a number on this hot pink pad of adhesive note paper, our informal substitute for a term sheet. The figure you see before you constitutes my offer, that is final. You may accept it, which I strenuously urge you to do. Or else, you may refuse it, thereby accepting the consequences for postponing my gratification, which are dire. Before we begin, do you have any questions? 

Why?  

[thewestern]

[thewestern]

OFFROAD INTERLUDE

Young Chop on the beat

To the uninitiated, a guitar solo can seem self-indulgent, somewhat. Masturbatory, even, one could say, at the risk of surrendering to cliche. But there one is, moving one’s hand up and down a smooth, wooden neck. Contorting one’s face as one hammers on, pulls off, slides and bends one’s way up, down and around the G-major scale. Outstretching one’s fingers to hit just the right notes … that last one’s for you self-pleasing females out there, tapping your clitori like you’re Edie Van Halen. Okay, sure. But it’s more complicated than that, obviously. Like one getting off by one’s self, guitar solos sort of get a bad rap. It’s our puritanical culture that’s to blame. Did you know that supposedly there’s a version of Catholic hell wherein the damned are sous vide for all eternity in a bubbling cauldron? But the twist is that they’re boiling in all their own wasted ejaculate. Wasted, quote en quote, whereby the Pope’s lofty standards, would constitute all the jizzum not expectorated in the act of heterosexual, post-marital intercourse made in the god’s honest attempt at procreation. Well then likewise, perhaps for our purposes there’s a version of secular hell wherein one’s soul floats along a Lazy River Styx to the meandering tune of a never-ending, very noodly guitar solo. Good news: hell isn’t real. Better news: Heaven is. Ooh, it’s a place on earth. Yeah, baby.

Take a page out of the Plains Indians’ book. Although as recordkeepers, they were notoriously sparse, we do know that they didn’t so much dwell on the Life and Death of it all, or at least not on the difference betwixt them. Rather, they were early on the whole consciousness kick. We are one being. All but blades of grass, in the grand scheme. Buffalo grazes. Man eat buffalo. He go in the ground. (Likely on account of eating all that red meat.) Man become grass again. Buffalo eat man. At the end of the day, it’s the end of the day. You dig? Theirs was not a vengeful or a wrathful god. Nor was it even a god to begin with. Nigh, it was a Great Spirit. Non-personified and ungendered. None of this whole paternal bull shit. No daddy issues here. Now, they did have a Great Father. Actually that was what they called POTUS. But that was really more of a put on than anything. A bit of poking fun at our white devil bureaucracy. Fatherhood, as it were, was an altogether separate enterprise from the matters of church and state to the savages. Family in and of itself was more an extension of community. So then, if your Pop happened to up and die, be it he took a bullet off on a raid, or maybe he succumbed to the coughing sickness, it wasn’t no big thang. In a tribe, the Chief was everybody’s daddy. And he was a wise man, which is to say he didn’t just know things. 

And, furthermore, as for religion, insofar as they practiced it whatsoever, was all about arranging that harmony with the natural world. Maintaining life-life balance. Therefore, whatever you have to do to keep that homeostasis — to square the circle of life, so to speak — that’s your fucking sacrament. Could be singing, dancing, chanting, smoking. Regarding the ritual form, they didn’t so much care. They were very results-oriented. So you do you, essentially. Long before any framers or founders, the Native Americans who observed freedom to worship, assemble or speak however you please. In their honor, then, say a prayer, have a hootenany, recite the fucking pledge of allegiance or maybe, baby, just beat it. (It, whether we’re talking about the famous Eddie Van Halen instrumental break on his genre-bending collaboration with Michael Jackson [Beat it {beat it}], considered to be among the greatest guitar solos of all time, or your meat.) 

Still not convinced? Fine. So what, then, if a guitar solo isn’t an act of patriotism or at least enlightenment? Maybe you’re even thinking to yourself it’s a waste of time. Okay. But, then, is that so bad? When you’re in the groove jacuzzi, what’s the sense in getting out before you’re fully pruned? Crank up the bubbles, will you, Reggie? Try a couple different angles on for size. Really explore the space. What’s the big rush, honey? Procrastination — there’s another thing that gets a bum rap. Our protestant guilt ethic at work again. For a fact, the term itself derives from the Latin Pro- meaning forward, Crastinus- of tomorrow. So, in point of fact, procrastinating is actually keeping things moving. Like if Time is like a big circle, then procrastination is just rolling along. Not bothering nobody. Searching a bit around the edges is all. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Us procrastinators are Searchers. Maybe it’s we’re searching for meaning, or maybe just searching for something fucking better to do. 

For his part, Billy could procrastinate with the best of them. Case in point, having only recently set in motion an event chain that could jeopardize his family legacy and fortune, he was in no particular hurry to make his next move. However, in his defence, at Yayo-L’s urging, Billy had been prepared to log into his brand new tablet — purchased for the express purpose of being the perfect-sized device for watching pornography, on the go — and launch an online propaganda campaign, so as to curry public opinion in the favor of his fictional political kidnapping. 

Me see pon de social media, youth make da ting go Turn Up. Intenet gon mad. Respek, yadono.   

Alas, he could not remember his four-digit security code. Prior to being locked out, Billy attempted five combinations, reproduced below in reverse sequential order from most to least likely:

0824 [his birthday] 

1017 [his mother’s birthday]

0420 [ayayayay: smoke weed every day]

6969 [nicenice]

0000 [factory default settings]

Having to reset his password or code nearly every time he tried to access one of his many digital accounts or tech gadgets was one of the great stresses of Billy’s life. That, and because darkness was washing over the sleepy town of Stone Rock, he and Yayo-L agreed to decompress for the evening and attack the morning anew. Although rather than retiring to the bunkhouse after a hard day of scheming, they set out for the barn to raise a little hell. Like the bipedal staff, the remuda of horses — six months out of the year they lazily grazed the surrounding pastures, tasked only with escorting guests out on the occasional horseback ride, or otherwise performing a purely perfunctory roundup — had been dismissed for the off-season. For them to winter in, Uncle Ernie had erected a state-of-the-art stables out on the mud flats over by the airport, complete with a highly sophisticated alarm system for thwarting any enterprising horse thieves. 

(In protecting against horse thievery, Uncle Ernie took the utmost precaution. It’s no wonder why, considering how many Western Movies he had watched in his late father’s private picture show, a mid-century precursor to a home theatre or entertainment centre. Quite often some expository character or other would utter the warning: Y’know … horse thieving is a Hanging Offense, around these here parts. [Spits.] It’s true that the trafficking in stolen livestock was a major economic liability in the pre-industrial period. But still, wasn’t it a little heavy-handed to always clarify as such? Of course it was a hanging offense. Just about everything was back then. Turning your sprinkler on between ten in the morning and six at night … that there is a hanging offense around these here parts, etc. Maybe the emphasis was on account of in the days before they laid track for the iron horse (the railroad), horses and mules and the like were your only means of transport. So this was something beyond petty larceny. A crime more akin to Grand Theft Equine. Because a man without a mount was plainly immobilized. And around these here parts — in these United States — that just won’t do. We Americans got places to be. Or was it more likely because stealing horses was the stock and trade of some native American tribes. [Based off the way we was branded / Face it,  Jeronimo get more time than Brandon.] But even to them, it was more meaningful than a mere felony. It was an art form. One to be honed, and to be celebrated. Whoever could sneak into the white devils’ camp under the cover of darkness and snatch the most or the best horses, that brave got all the finest squaws and biggest props. Debates would rage among the camps, who was the best horse thief — the most about that life. Bruh, they was telling me bout this one Comanche hitter from the Quahidi set. No cap this dude could clean out a whole damn cavalry in one night. Turn them ma’fuckas out on they asses. Back into infantry, y’erd. Yo, I heard tell this nigga stole the horse off this the other nigga, while this other nigga was riding it … on god … bitch looked down and he was saddled on some bricks, B, in broad daylight. Brrrdat.)     

Therefore, the period-accurate Livery Emporium was vacant, excepting for those stalls which were paved over and as such reserved for Uncle Ernie’s off-road armada of ATVs, gators, dune buggies, snowmobiles and, of course, sick ass fucking dirt bikes. The sight alone — neon plastic on polished chrome — would have been more than enough to deal Hank a massive heart attack. Nevermind the evocative aroma of the sputtering exhaust, so pungent you could taste its vegetal tannins on the undercarriage of your spittling tongue. Nor even their battle hymn sound played in four-stroke harmony. Mmm-m. The Mick, for his part, would have creamed his fucking coveralls. 

(In actuality, it’s the two-stroke engine which emits that sweet, sweet smell — you know the one, that reminds you of yard work and your dad. The website Motorcyclist Online once asked a professional perfumist to analyze the fragrance profile. Paraphrasing now, her trained nose picked up traces of benzoin and balsam (tree resins), cade oil (a species of juniper), and just a slight hint of patchouli. She described the olfactory experience as: ancestral, ritualistic, ceremonial, and medicinal. Altogether, she said, the smell is very human.

[Hey, ladies. Looking for the perfect stocking stuffer for your husband? How about a two-stroke scented candle, handmade with gen-u–ine, high-grade lube. Per the marketing copy: with this candle, we’ve strived to engineer a nostalgic, reminiscent product, and still remain nontoxic, while achieving as close as possible olfactory experience with out burning raw oil and fuel inside your home.])

For their moonlight ride, Billy and Yayo-L selected the mini bike and mini ATV, respectively, on for which to convey themselves away. (Yayo-L was woefully inexperienced with extreme motorsports, so Billy suggested they start small. Not that he minded none. After all it was Uncle Ernie who always said, the minis were just like mopeds or fat chicks. Fun as all heck to ride, just so long as your friends don’t find out.) On their way out of town, they stopped off at the San Ernesto for to raid the robust wine cellar. Although Billy was deathly allergic to beer, he did enjoy the occasional glass of Burgundy, of which Uncle Ernie happened to be among the Western U.S.’s most prolific collectors. With an audacious nonchalance, Billy chose a bottle at random. Then, trudging back upstairs to the saloon area, he fetched from a sleeve of four white styrofoam cups he had previously stashed in a cupboard, dividing them equally between himself and Yayo-L. (Ayo, real quick, let’s talk a bit about styrofoam cups. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But ask yourself … if we don’t who else will? Okay, so, what we commonly know to be the styrofoam cup isn’t made of actual Styrofoam, which is in fact a brand name  — it’s sort of a Kleenex or a Xerox situation — trademarked by the Dow Corporation, which developed the substance, albeit completely by fucking mistake, in the forties. [Inventor Otis Ray McIntire was going for more of a rubber replacement. Dow would go on to merge with DuPont in the mid-twenty-tens, at last joining the two largest American chemical companies in holy matrimony.] The generic name is extruded polystyrene, and the genius of it lays in the extrusion, which is basically the titular process of foaming. The result is this super material, that’s ninety-eight percent air, making it incredibly lightweight. However, it’s also so dense that it’s extremely durable, as well as it’s buoyant to boot. Thus qualifying Styrofoam for a range of use cases, from military-grade personal flotation devices — how it was first used dating back to World War Two — to building insulation — its primary present-day application. Now, quote-unquote styrofoam cups, as well as similar food packaging products, are likewise molded out of polystyrene, a synthetic polymer made from monomers of the aromatic hydrocarbon styrene, however rather than being extruded, it has been expanded. So suffice it to say, it’s even lighter than styrofoam, but considerably less durable, which makes sense given you only need to use a cup the one time. [The only downside being that it’s still durable to the extent that it doesn’t decompose, and boy is it a real bitch to recycle.]

William A. Dart of the Dart Container Corporation developed the expandable polystyrene cup in the early sixties. His sons, Kenneth and Robert Dart, after inheriting the company, would go on to renounce their U.S. citizenship in the mid-nineties, explicitly as a means of avoiding taxes on their foam cup fortune. [Listen, there are all kinds of tax dodges out there, but renouncing your fucking American citizenship is on another level, dude. Fucking sick.] The brothers Dart subsequently established a relationship with the nation of Belize, and generously offered to turn their shared residence — a mansion in Sarasota — into a consulate, with themselves serving as sibling co-consuls, thus shielding their estate from any further action made on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service. Alas, the State Department intervened, thwarting their entrepreneurial attempt at sovereign diplomacy. Shortly thereafter the place in Sarasota burnt down, suspiciously, and the expatriates fled to the Cayman Islands, which famously has a zero tax rate on income earned or stored. Freed at last of this burden, the reclusive Ken, for his part, has gone on to become the territory’s largest private landholder. Some Caymanians speculate he owns more than the government itself. Real estate speculation has emerged as the primary business of Dart Enterprises, as it’s now incorporated. It also trades in distressed foreign government debts, making a killing on the global financial crisis of the mid-two thousands, as well as tobacco company stocks. As for the foam container business, Dart has since spun it off.) Into these their grails, he poured three parts red wine, one part lemon-lime soft drink — fresh out the soda gun. Here was his own special blend, although he had not given this his proprietary wine cocktail a proper French name. Let’s all try together then. S’appuyer, sil vous plait? Or, how about, Boisson Violette? Phonetically, would it be, L'année, perhaps? Mmm. And what a bonne fucking one it was. Mixed with a coveted vintage worth in the ballpark of three times the blue-book value of Kitty’s fucking car, despite its being some decades older.

(Unbeknownst to Uncle Ernie, this bottle — as well as those from several similarly-appraised cases he had successfully over-bid for — was a counterfeit. Concurrent to this time, a young connoisseur out of Encino had been exploding onto the rare wine scene. Over the course of the previous calendar year, his vast collection had fetched him north of thirty million dollars at auction, the record for a single consignor. Alarm bells would be raised however when it was discovered by one suspicious estate manager that some of his wines were indeed so rare that they had in fact never fucking existed in the first place. One in particular, from a year inwhere a famous French vineyard had quietly suspended its harvest, owing to a catastrophic infestation of Japanese beetles. Of course, this good samaritan would swiftly alert his dear friend Uncle Ernie of the discrepancy, who would hire a Perlmutter Agency private dick on the WolffCo company dime to investigate matters further. This Brother Shamus sniffs around a bit, takes some pictures with a telephoto lens, slides them into a manilla folder, marks confidential care of Werner Wolff, calls it a day and tips off the feds. Thereupon raiding his seedy one-bedroom apartment, with a gen-u-ine Italian sports car conspicuously parked out front, the FBI would recover reems of label forgeries, every last one of them painstakingly hand-distressed like a pair of designer blue jeans. Working out of his kitchenette sink, often blending cheap grocery store wines — we’re talking two-buck chuck, here — this regular-ass dude successfully duped the entire fine wine world. And not just suckers who had it coming like Uncle Ernie, neither. Mother Fucking, Master Sommeliers, may it please the Court. Those whose palettes are tuned like a musicologist’s ear or trained like a police dog’s snout, so as to detect even the faintest subtleties of terroir or whatever the fuck. One whiff of a fart, it’s said, and they can discern without a shadow of a doubt what he or she who dealt it had for breakfast. But then here comes some guy, this criminal mastermind, an fucking alchemist apparently … and he takes them all for the ride of his life. In a fucking Lambo, no less. Mercy, mercy, me.

Shame then his ride had to end. The Encino Kid, as folks took to calling him, was indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s office representing the Southern District of New York, which had all kinds of time on its hands leftover from recusing itself of any prosecutions as it pertained to the perpetrators of the global financial crisis, the fallout to which was also taking place concurrent to these events. Perhaps the white-collar crime statutes were too opaque to be applied practically. All the while our antihero became the first defendant in the esteemed history of our justice system to be convicted on counts of what the presiding judge officially deemed, Wine Fraud. 

[Voiceover: In the criminal justice system, wine-based offenses are considered especially heinous. {Fade in title card.} In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Vinos Unit. These are their stories. {Cue music, b-roll, intro credits: Starring Joe Pantoliano, Carla Gugino, Flea, etc., etc., From Executive Producer Dick Wolf.}]

Subsequently he was sentenced to ten years of which he served six. BOP #62470-112, incarcerated at the Ward County Detention Complex in Big Springs, Texas, a publicly-owned, privately-operated correctional facility ranked eighth on a list of the Ten Worst Prisons in America by the online edition of Mother Jones magazine. A distinction earned after widespread riots were provoked in response to, among a litany of other indignities, the sub-humane level of medical care made available to inmates. This after ongoing incidents culminated in the death of a prisoner held in solitary confinement, who despite repeated pleas from his family to fill his long-standing prior prescriptions for epilepsy medicine, had only been treated with ibuprofen for his severe seizures, to which he ultimately succumbed. Shortly thereafter, his comrades reported seeing his lifeless body being carried out in what appeared to be a garbage bag. Upon questioning, prison officials deflected, claiming that all healthcare services were subcontracted to a third-party provider. This was true. However it was also true that said third-party was awarded the contract strictly on the basis of its explicit promise to reduce the county’s expenses by cutting back on prescriptions, and other such costly Wellness Amenities. That, and some years later, State Senator Omar Uresti was brought up on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, citing evidence that he colluded with Ward County commissioners to approve the contract in exchange for kickbacks and promises of future payments.

To reiterate, none of this has or had happened at the time of this writing. As far as Billy knows, the bottle he poured into that double cup was the real deal. Though he didn’t much care either which way. Had he known this was a phony — that he was consuming physical evidence in a federal case — well he would have been amused by that fact. His Uncle Ernie, on the other hand, when he would eventually find out he’d been had, would go on to blow his fucking stack, predictably.) 

With one hand on the handlebars, they proceeded with abandon through the empty thoroughfare, past the JK Corral, and into the Curtis Hixon Sportatorium, an arena Uncle Ernie had erected for hosting VIP rodeo-based fundraisers for right wing political candidates and other conservative cause célèbres. (Hoedown for Hardline Immigration Reform, Giddy Up for Responsible Gun Ownership, Do-si-do for Subsidies-backed Domestic Crude Oil Production on Federal Lands.) Billy’s master key opened the announcer’s booth, where Yayo-L was able to get his MPThree player hooked up to the aux cord on the PA System, which previously had played only two songs — God Bless the U.S.A., words and lyrics by Lee Greenwood and The Star-Spangled Banner as performed by Alan Jackson. (His affinity for that particular rendition notwithstanding, Uncle Ernie was of the steadfast belief that the former should replace the latter as Our National Anthem, and had lobbied as such repeatedly to his dignified guests, of whom included several U.S. senators, three of the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court and one sitting vice president, among many other figures of political prominence. It was an issue he had great passion for. Also, Lee Greenwood was a friend.)

For his part, Billy had recently been put on to this rapper, Chief Keef, a Chicago-based artist from the city’s infamous, rough-and-tumble SouthSide projects. His shit had been blowing up online. Notably the music video for the smash hit single, I Don’t Like, had spoken to Billy. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before, and he’d been watching music videos on television — as well as even television shows about the making of music videos — for the longest. Billy was like an art historian for music videos. They say jazz is the only American art form. Nah, son. Music videos. Mosaics of money, hoes and clothes. (All a nigga knows.) Although, notably, this particular music video had none of the above. Mostly it was just a bunch of dudes with no shirts on. Chief Keef, only sixteen years old, and all his homies in a living room. Not a baller living room neither. No flat screens or stripper poles or crush velvet couches or exotic fish tanks to speak of. Only visible cracks and stains in the drywall. And all they were doing was smoking blunts and making gang signs. One guy was flashing his piece, a matte grey pistol with a High-capacity Magazine. And there was no breakdancing or otherwise elaborate choreography. Just headbanging. Chief Keef sported a mane of dreads, about the length of a Beatles mop top. He was rapping not about the lofty heights to which they aspired, but rather the lowly existence to which they seemed generationally relegated. As if their’s was a despair so routine to them, that it had metastasized — as despair so often does — in the form of these petty grievances with everyday life. That’s That Shit I Don’t Like, or These Are A Few Of My Least Favorite Things. Bootleg designer jeans, felony indictments, disloyal friends (a.k.a. fuck niggas, snitch niggas, bitch niggas … ahem, Jaime), shwag weed, parents that just don’t understand, so on and so forth. Billy thought it looked like the most fun ever. 

He downloaded the mixtape and had been banging it, on repeat, ever since. Back From the Dead, it was entitled, in reference to one time Chief Keef got in a gunfight with the police. According to the responding cop’s accounting of the events, after a brief on-foot pursuit, the suspect turned and brandished a blue steel-plated handgun. His partner squeezed off two shots in the assailant’s direction and missed. Then yada, yada, yada, and the unsub was then apprehended without further incident. However, in contradiction to the official police report, somehow word on the street got out that Sosa had died in that officer-involved shooting. At least that’s what his opps were saying. On account of nobody had seen him around the block in a minute. But that was because, in point of fact, he was serving a sentence of thirty days’-home confinement at his grandmother’s house. So then he called his subsequent release BFTD as a tongue-and-cheek way of saying to all his haters: Surprise, Bitch, I’m not dead after all. I was at my Nana’s this whole time. 

Billy had always loved hearing stories like that, about rappers putting in work. Back at Canaan Country Day, during certain art electives they were allowed to listen to music on the radio at a reasonable volume. Billy took Metals especially for that reason, and also because you got to use a blowtorch. It was the only class he would arrive to early, so that he could set the FM dial on the boombox to the local rap radio station. (Also for to call dibs on the blowtorch.) Sometimes, right before class, he’d even sneak into the Laura Bush Teachers’ Lounge, and dial nine for an outside request line. 

Caller Number One?

Hey, DJ Clay! It’s your boy Billy Rolling on Dubs, reppin Canaan Country All Dizzay. Can you please play In Da Club by Fifty Cent? 

Alright coming right up for ya, lil’ homie. Now shout out the radio station that gave you what you wanted. 

Wild n’ One-Oh-Eight Point-Eight, Today’s Hottest Hip Hop and R&B!

Go (x6)

Go, Shorty 

It’s your birthday 

We gonna party like it’s your birthday

We gonna sip Bacardi like it’s your birthday

As the good Dr. Dre’s unconventionally off-beat rhythm harmonized with the cacophonic choir of circular saws and cross-peen hammers, Billy would try to endear himself to his rail splitting classmates by regaling them in Fifty’s escapades. Did you know he was shot nine times? How sick is that? As always when it came to matters of Billy, they just thought he was being weird, and pretended like they didn’t want to be distracted from whatever they were working on. Well, jokes on them, because It was Billy’s piece — the pimp cup with a soldered-on AK-47 — that was selected to the CCD Permanent Collection, where it remains to this day. His teacher Mrs. Reese heralded Billy’s chalice, as she insisted on calling it, to be: a subversive artistic statement on the relationship between toxic masculinity and violence in schools, or something to that effect. Shouts to Mrs. Rza. You da real MVP.      

Do you know that feeling of falling in love with a song with your whole heart? Whether it’s a melody or a lyric or just a riff, it worms its way through ear canal and hooks onto the squishy part of your brain that controls your impulse. And then it keeps nibbling at it, scratching, so that you are compelled to listen again and again. And again, for days on end, until you can listen no more because the sound makes you physically sick to your stomach. Seriously, do you know that feeling? It was the kind of feeling Billy had that was so powerful, it made him wonder how anybody else could possibly could relate to it. The kind of feeling that if we all — people of earth — felt it at once the world would end probably. Maybe I just connect to music more deeply, he thought. 

(If you’ve ever attended your favorite band’s concert, and seen tens of thousands of others sing along with the very same songs you know by heart, you’d know that music resonates strongly with lots of folks. Billy, for his part, hadn’t attended hardly any. Concerts, that is. Actually, not a single one. Sure, he had the means to afford the toughest of tickets, but have you ever been to a show alone? That’s some loser shit. Once he tried to run away from home to join the aforementioned Gathering of the Juggalos, where famously no one is alone. Rather, at the Gathering, when you’re here, you’re family. [The Gathering: Tonight’s the Night You Fight Your Dad. The Gathering: These Pants Aren’t Going to Shit Themselves.] He made it all the way to the airline ticket counter where he attempted to use his mother’s diamond-encrusted wolf broach — the closest thing to hard currency he could get his little hands on — to barter for a boarding pass to Lambert International Airport in Missouri, the very same from whence Charles Lindbergh took flight on the Spirit of St. Louis, which according to the directions he printed out in advance was a short three hour’s-drive from the site of the Eleventh Annual GOTJ, held at Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, a small hamlet on the banks of the Ohio River. [The namesake cave{-in-rock} was an infamous refuge stronghold for frontier outlaws and river pirates beginning in the late Eighteenth Century. River pirates, huh? Cool!]

Blast, as the albeit well-meaning ticket agent predictably snitched on Billy, handing him over to the proper authorities. In retrospect, though, he may have been lucky to have missed out. Many ninjas cite that year as a turning point for the festival. The Jugallos’ Altamont. Their Little Bighorn. In addition to the Psychopathic Records stable of acts, including Twiztid, Dark Lotus, Anybody Killa and Blaze Ya Dead Homie, all of whom were mainstays of Gatherings past and future, beloved by Juggalos the Midwest over, ICP, Inc. had padded out the lineup with more celebrity guest appearances than ever before. This in part to promote the world premiere of their second straight-to-DVD feature film, Big Money Rustlas, a slapstick Western prequel to their critically-overlooked debut, Big Money Hustlas. This year’s gathering is sort of like an ode to the Wild Wild West, says sweet Sugar Slam in the infamous infomercial, touting the Nation’s Only—True Underground Music Festival—With No Corporate Sponsorship. Luminaries of West Coast hip hop such as the regulator himself Warren G were in the hiz-ouse. Naughty by Nature, Vanilla Ice and Tone Lōc too. And since Juggalos are so well known for their axe-sharp senses of humor, comedic stylings would be provided courtesy of Gallagher (melon smasher), Tom Green (bum rubber) and Ron Jeremy (both of the above). Despite or perhaps because of their A-List statuses, to marquee names the likes of these, the Jugallos were often hostile. That is if the performers didn’t come correct with their A-Games — bring the wicked shit, per their parlance — they were liable to be booed, or worse, by the ninja throngs. 

Tila Tequila was for what it’s worth, arguably the first-ever Social Media Influencer, amassing a following of one-and-a-half million Friends, mostly by way of posting sexually suggestive photos to a popular proto-social networking site. She parlayed that success into reality television stardom. And it was from that black hole of American culture that she attempted to revive her career, such as it was, with a pivot to rapping. Thus was the sequence of misfortunes that led her to the Gathering, where she was foretold to be the objectified of the Juggalos’ disaffection, taking the stage some three hours late on what festival organizers had quite optimistically billed to be, Ladies’ Night. Just as soon as she started in on lip-syncing her smashed single, I Fucked the DJ, the audience began pelting her with partway full cans of beer and other debris. [When they weren’t mixing Faygo-based cocktails, Juggalos were known to enjoy the Pack-line of sub-premium Wolffenbeir products.] Nevertheless, she persisted. 

Cream in my middle like an Oreo

Got you on rock ride cock like the rodeo

Drop like stock you can check the portfolio

Cuz my pussy pop like it does e-44

Robert Hunter writes — in the preface to the book Box of Rain, a career-spanning compilation of his contributions to the Grateful Dead canon in his capacity as proto-poet laureate — that song lyrics are often embarrassed by print, and that some of his are no exception. Rhyme, rhythm and manageable phrasing impose restrictions on what may be said, he says; fortunately, once and a while, the very limitations help to create something which could be said no other way. 

Tequila later alleged that she had been struck in the face by human feces that were catapulted from the mosh pit that night at the Gathering. Trying in vain to appease the seething mob, she acquiesced to their demands that she remove her sequined halter top. Regrettably, the gesture of baring her surgically mutilated bosom only aroused their ravenous delirium the furthermore. The fervor reached its apogee, when according to Tom Green’s eyewitness account, she was chased offstage to her trailer, hotly pursued by a posse of horny men in full clown makeup.

To this day, Juggalos and their apologists maintain that the frackas was wrought by rogue elements in the Gathering masses. That these were non-ninja, agent provocateurs. They submit into evidence how earlier that very day, at the ICP annual seminar, Violent J specifically implored to the Juggalo delegation that no harm be brought upon Tila Tequila’s acutely angular head. [Did you, or did you not, order the Mountain Dew Code Red?!] However, on cross-examination, the prosecution would be remiss not to establish for the record what Violent J’s partner, Shaggy 2 Dope, said immediately after that. Yeah, because I’M trying to fuck that bitch.  

Whether or not this insurrection marked a loss of innocence — a failure, if you will, of their grand experiment — will surely be debated by generations of Jugallos to come. For Ms. Tequila, it could certainly be considered the incident that precipitated her own precipitous downfall. When her worm began to turn, as it were. Not unlike the aviator Lindbergh, her coping with this and other traumas manifested in a public flirtation with the tenets of national socialism. Starting with her sharing to social media a photo of her infant daughter, Isabella, miming history’s most infamous moustache. Hashtag: BabyHitler. Her radicalisation then crystallised with an entry to her blog, evocatively entitled — Why I Sympathize with Hitler: Part I. Shortly thereafter she posted a crudely photoshopped self-portrait, costumed as a scantily-clad, femme-Nazi, superimposing in front of the Birkenau gatehouse, straddling the train tracks that led directly to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II, a Waffen SS cap resting atop her shoulder-length bob, an auburn hue of blonde that could only be achieved alchemically, one hand held aloft bearing an American-made, nickel-plated Colt 1911, the other placed defiantly on her hip, so as to more prominently flash a red swastika armband, and probably also somehow to appear skinnier still.

And here's to you, Mrs. Tequila

Jesus loves you more than you will know

Whoa, whoa, whoa

God bless you, please, Mrs. Tequila

Heaven holds a place for those who pray

Hey, hey, hey

Hey, hey, hey

[Sung to the tune of Mrs. Robinson, by Simon and Garfunkel. {Made famous by the movie, The Graduate, although technically it doesn’t count as a needle drop, since it was written specifically for the film. Well, sort of. You see, the director Mike Nichols had been using a separate Simon & Garfunkel song, The Sound of Silence, off the duo’s debut album Wednesday Morning, Three A.M., released the year prior, but only in the editing bay as a placeholder and pacing device. However, when Nichols tried to substitute it with a track from the original score, nothing seemed to work as seamlessly with the images on the screen. So he paid dearly for the rights to keep that two-part harmony — Hello Darkness my old friend … — over that famous title sequence of Benjamin Braddock, the avatar for postwar suburban youth malaise, floating there in his parents’ swimming pool, no doubt obscuring a disaffected gaze behind his acetate sunglasses. Woe be unto you, Dustin Hoffman. Nichols’ use of a pop record on a film soundtrack was considered unusual for that time, if not altogether unheard of. Thus making TSOS among the first, if not The First Ever needle drop. [Surely someone could easily find this out. Surely.] Boy did they knock it out of the park with that one, huh? First pitch fastball. There’s a drive deep to left field by Castellanos, and that’ll be a home run.

For a fact, Nichols was so enamored by the way that melancholic arpeggio ascended the diatonic scale to his antihero’s disillusion in those opening frames, that he appealed directly to the guitar player himself, Paul Simon, commissioning him to write another song specifically for the film’s denouement. He wanted their music to bookend his story. Simon didn’t think he had the bandwidth to compose something from scratch, on account of he and Garfunkel were touring at such a breakneck pace. But there was this one idea he was working on, about times and peoples past — Joe DiMaggio, John Lennon, Jack Kennedy. It had been tentatively titled Mrs. Roosevelt, in reference to the first verse about the former First Lady Eleanor being institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, which she never actually was, although there are probably several named after her. Simon sang Nichols the opening melody — Dee (x13), Doo (x9), Dee (x13). Nichols stood up out of his chair and said, whoa …  kid … stop the record. I’ve heard enough. [Dramatic pause … Simon feared the worst. Say something!] It’s not called Mrs. Roosevelt anymore. It’s Mrs. Robinson. And the rest as they say is history. It went on to become the first rock and roll song to win the Grammy for Record of the Year. It would also have taken home the Oscar for Best Original Song, in all likelihood, had it not been deemed ineligible on a technicality. Fucking Garfunkel forgot to fill out the paperwork to submit it, of course.

Years later, at an Italian restaurant on Central Park South, Paul Simon bumped into of all people Joe DiMaggio, whose name he of course drops in the final chorus — Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you / Ooh (x3). What I don’t understand, Joltin’ Joe says, is why you say I’ve left and gone away / Hey (x3). I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial. I’m a spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank. I haven’t gone anywhere! I’m Joe D, for chrissakes! Demredly as he could, Paul Simon replied that he didn’t intend any disrespect, clarifying that the lyric wasn’t meant to be taken literally. On the contrary, Simon considered him, DiMaggio, to be an American hero, and this song was explicitly about this turbulent time when those were in short supply. DiMaggio accepted the explanation, the two shook hands and parted ways. Shortly thereafter, Simon made a guest appearance on the Dick Cavett Show alongside none other than DiMaggio’s pinstriped slugging successor, Mickey Mantle. In point of fact, as a Jewish kid growing up in the Fifties, playing stickball in Brooklyn, probably — — everybody in Brooklyn in the Fifties played stickball, apparently — it was the sweet-swinging Mantle who Simon idolised, rather than DiMaggio, who by then had past his prime. Aware of his generational appeal, during a commercial break, the Mick came straight out and asked him: say, if I was your favorite ballplayer, how come you put that old Wop in the song instead of me? Put into the unenviable position of having to elucidate his creative process to yet another Yankee legend, Simon said, well, it’s because of the syllables, you see. Rob-in-son, Di-Mag-gio. (Roo-se-velt, Te-qui-la.) Three syllables. Three beats. Where have you gone, Mic-key Man-tle? There’s an extra syllable. Rhythmically, it’s no good. Although, and he didn’t tell him this, but metaphorically it wouldn’t have worked either. Mantle was nobody’s role model. He was like Elvis, Simon later told a reporter for the New York Daily News. An incredible burst of vitality and youth, and its eventual corruption. 

(Mantle was asked to recount his favorite memory of the old Yankee Stadium, on the eve of it’s fiftieth anniversary and imminent closure for a multi-season rennovation project. He had a Hall of Fame career’s-worth of achievements from which to choose. Such as, during his triple crown season, hitting a home run to right off the famous outfield facade, which would be replicated in the renovation and re-replicated in the new Yankee Stadium. (Actually it’s known as a frieze in architecture circles.) That thing was up longer than Alan Shepard, remembered an onlooking little boy from Brooklyn. Paul Simon. Just kidding. Actually, it was Billy Crystal. And he was from Long Island if memory serves.

Rather, Mantle responded in writing, on the ballclub’s letterhead, to this the prompt of recalling an outstanding moment in his storied career at The Stadium, that he once received a blow job under the right field bleachers, adjacent to the Yankee bullpen. To the follow-up question, when on or about did this event occur, it was around the third or fourth inning, by his recollection. I had a pulled groin and couldn’t fuck at the time. She was a very nice girl and asked me what to do with the cum after I came in her mouth. I said don’t ask me, I’m no cock-sucker. [Sic. {According to the Guardian style guide, the only available online source and thus the authority on the subject, it’s cocksucker, one word. Cock-sucker and cock sucker are both incorrect.}] 

Signed: *Mickey Mantle

*The All-American Boy)        

DiMaggio died at the age of eighty-four in Ninety-Nine of natural causes. (Natural as in complications from lung cancer, resultant of keeping up a three-pack-a-day chain-smoking [redundant] habit throughout his Big League career and beyond. Those were the good old days, when a professional athlete could take a mid-game smoke break without having to worry about losing an endorsement deal with some bogus sports drink or energy bar. For a fact, DiMaggio himself was a pitchman, for cigarettes! You Bet I Smoke Camels. [Garcia’s brand.] Along With All That Swell Flavor, Camels Are Extra Mild, For That Fantastic Finish, Like A Walk-Off Home Run, Deep In Your Lungs.) As a companion piece to his New York Times obituary, Simon wrote in an OpEd about how his lyric had been a sincere tribute to DiMaggio's unpretentious and modest heroic stature, in a time when popular culture magnifies and distorts how we perceive our stars of stage, screen and sport. Quoting now: In these days of Presidential transgressions and apologies and prime-time interviews about private sexual matters, we grieve for Joe DiMaggio and mourn the loss of his grace and dignity, his fierce sense of privacy, his fidelity to the memory of his wife and the power of his silence. 

So then he was the strong silent type. Gary Cooper. Also that explains the bit about Mrs. Roosevelt. You see FDR didn’t let his withered legs slow him down from chasing skirts behind his wife’s back. Before you weep for her, Eleanor was getting it on the side herself, as well as possibly even batting for the other team. (She was oft-rumoured to be a barely closeted lesbian.) But that’s beside the point, which according to Paul Simon was that whatever they were up to, they all kept their mouths shut about it, and also that such tawdry gossip hadn’t yet been commoditized as tabloid fodder. (Infamously, although it wouldn’t have been reported at the time, DiMaggio’s picture-perfect marriage to Marilyn Monroe had been marred by abuse — substance and spousal — behind the scenes. Quite literally, crew members recalled a violent incident on the set of Monroe’s star turn in the Seven Year Itch, wherein she has her famous closeup of the skirt blowing up from under the subway grate, the sight of which sent Joltin’ Joe into a jealous rage.)

The April following DiMaggio’s passing in March, for a special ceremony in his honor, Paul Simon performed Mrs. Robinson during the seventh inning stretch, making a lousy-fucking fill-in for Take Me Out to the Ballgame, thought most Yankee fans, probably. Singing to a sellout crowd, standing there alone in centerfield donning a baseball cap just like the one the players wore, beneath a billboard advertising a big-box electronics store local to the Tri-State Area that read — Nobody Beats The Wiz. You can faintly hear the Bleacher Creatures trying helplessly to clap along in four-four time over the sound of Simon’s tuned-down dreadnought guitar. That afternoon the Yankees beat the visiting Toronto Blue Jays by a final score of four-to-three. Second-baseman Chuck Knoblauch scored the winning run from third, batted in on an eleventh-inning, walk-off bloop single to the gap by Bernie Williams, DiMaggio’s fellow center fielder, as well as Simon’s fellow singer-songwriter. Bernie and the Bronx Bombers went on to win the World Series that fall, their twenty-fifth such title, sweeping their National League nemeses of the Nineties, the Atlanta Braves. Simultaneous to this, their second consecutive championship run, plans for a first-of-its-kind music festival were being conceived by Jumpsteady, brother of Violent J. The idea germinated while he himself attended Gen Con, the largest tabletop game convention in North America. The subsequent summer, the first of the new millennium, the inaugural Gathering of the Juggalos was convened at the Novi Expo Center in Novi, Michigan.}])   

In any event Billy was feeling some type of way today. Stimulated, you could say. Re-sensitized. Colors appeared vivider. He even took a beat to appreciate the sunset, something he wasn’t usually want to do. Because, sunsets are gay, he’d once said. But tonight a blood-red dusk cascaded over the rolling desert plains, and although he wouldn’t have necessarily phrased it in just such a way, he could appreciate the natural beauty of the moment. His taste buds were likewise in bloom. All of a sudden, his immature palette could adequately discern the acidity of the wine as it contrasted with the sweetness of the soda, and also how the carbonation underscored that juxtaposition, quite playfully. Scent too. Whereas Stone Rock and the surrounding acreage generally wafted of hot dirt, a chilled, almost menthol aroma had rode in on the northerly wind — sure as good a sign as any of an impending winter storm. Also, Yayo-L had rolled a fat L with one of Uncle Ernie’s pre-Castro Cuban cigars. Although Billy didn’t partake for fear of inducing a debilitating panic attack, his number one hitter Yayo-L was for his part a prolific pothead. (This is a lifestyle choice not uncommon among information technology professionals, believe it or not. Keep in mind, even your run-of-the-mill IT guy or girl is still a huge fucking nerd, who will forget more about computers than you will ever know, or care to. Now square that with their job description, which entails troubleshooting bullshit support tickets — we’re talking, Talking Paperclip-level … Looks like you’re trying to write a suicide note — day-to-day, in and out, for absolute noobs making three times what they do, base salary. As such, it's a boon to one’s IT employee morale to be Off That Loud on company time, whenever possible.) Even if he didn’t blaze the weed, Billy enjoyed being around drugs, drug users and paraphernalia. It lent him a certain street credibility, or so he thought. And the earthy aroma was likewise pleasing to him. (And that I smell a dankness.) Did you know a lot of rappers have personal blunt-rollers on the payroll, he once asked his metals teacher, Mrs. Reece. That’s such a flex.

And whoa be to, The Sound. The triumphant roar of the synth brass infinet reverberated for miles down valley, like a regimental march come riding over the bluff to wage war on eternity. 

I'm cooling wit' my youngins

And what we smoke one hunna

But, nigga, I'm three hunna

Click-clack, pow, now he runnin'

Billy felt three hundred years old, and at once born anew. (And you know we don’t give a fuck it’s not your birthday.) This in spite … nay, on account of there being so much drama in the club, proverbially, between him, Jaime, and his mother. With #x_brüing and Wolffenbeir and the New Frontier. His nemesis, the dastardly Dr. Lupus, and Billy’s beloved Howler, whose wayfarer sunglasses he still imagined in silhouette against waxing crescent moon, its sliver peeking out from around the encroaching stormcloud. Like the evening fog, today his burden would be lifted, as he was baptised in the currents of his own creation.

We are the boys that take delight

smashing the Limerick light when lighting

through all the streets like sporters fighting

and tearing all before us 

All these sensations  — his feeling like the luckiest man on the face of the Ea-Ea-Earth — emulsified in frequencies of equal amplitude between his legs. Not his loins, per say, although he had been unusually cognizant of his own libido of late. Whereas he usually regarded his appendage inanimately — as an on-demand application … a stress relief valve of sorts — today it had awoken with a mind of its own, in the form of morning wood. Albeit always welcome, his erection was irrelevant to the present moment. Because, like his heart pumping blood directly to the tip of his penis, now time itself was beating with tribal rhythm. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two. A highly unique, eleven-eight time signature, in the pocket with the vibrato of the Fifty CC engine on Billy’s mini-bike. He and Yayo-L were doubles barrel racing, riding mixed motocross. Tokyo drifting in perfect figure eights. Maxing out those little Japanese lawn mower engines to their absolute limits and beyond. Bursting through barriers of sound and color and common fucking decency. 

There was an old saying that Billy had never heard. Hank had been known to use it from time to time. It went something to the effect, paraphrasing here: money is a sixth sense with which you may more fully enjoy the other five. Hank used it unattributed, naturally. Depending on your internet search algorithm, it was either the intellectual property of the early Twentieth Century English playwright, novelist and screenwriter, W. Somerset Maugham, whose masterwork Of Human Bondage tells the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story of Philip Carey, a club-footed orphan who abandons his artistic aspirations to pursue his medical studies, only to be derailed entirely by a decidedly one-sided love affair with a manic depressive waitress. Among the authors who cited Maugham as a literary influence were Anthony Burgess, Ian Fleming, Stephen King and George Orwell, who said Maugham was the modern writer who inspired him the most.

Or, the quote might have belonged to Richard Ney, the American actor turned financial advisor to the stars. His big break arrived in the movie Mrs. Miniver, arguably the first of a great many Second World War films to earn sweeping critical and audience acclaim. One begrudging admirer was Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, for its subtle and yet overwhelming accomplishment of an anti-German tendency, as he called it. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was likewise smitten; Mrs. Minniver won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Actress. The latter gold statuette went to Old Hollywood starlet Greer Carson, her fifth-straight in the category, tying her for the record for most consecutive Actress in a Leading Role wins with Bette Davis, who herself starred as the aforementioned bipolar server in the film adaptation of OHB, although she was snubbed for that portrayal. In Mrs. Miniver, Ney played a supporting role as Greer Carson’s erstwhile son. Subsequently, undaunted by their considerable age difference, he would enter a somewhat fraught offscreen May-December marriage with his onscreen mother, which predictably fizzled. Thereafter, Ney puttered around to various bit parts. Notably, he had a one-episode arc on the Western network television series, The Tall Man, playing a wealthy dilettante who hires Billy the Kidd to guide him into the wilderness for to hunt a mountain lion, but only as a clever ruse for efforting to kill Billy himself.

But eventually the acting work dried up, and by the middle nineteen sixties, Ney had successfully transitioned to a career as a financial adviser and wealth manager. Beginning at a Beverly Hills brokerage firm, he went on to start a successful investment newsletter — The Ney Report — which counted petroleum industrialist J. Paul Getty among its subscribers. Although he was an avowed capitalist and enthusiastic materialist — Ney was chauffeured everywhere he went in an extravagant motor carriage not dissimilar to Hildy’s — he maintained no illusions about the structural unfairness of our financial system. He would go on to write three books, each highly critical of stock market manipulation and speculative trading, including the New York Times bestseller, The Wall Street Gang. No place on Planet Earth hosts more sheer larceny per square footage than the New York Stock Exchange, he was attributed as saying. Whether or not for expressed purposes of manufacturing consent (what was it Noam Chomsky said about eating pussy?), Ney was one of two former guests to be banned for life from reappearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The other was Ralph Nader.  

The boys carried on revving their engines in reverie. Having grown up with unfettered access to these and other motorized toys, Billy was a skilled extreme sports polyathlete. Showboating a bit, he popped a wheelie on the zeitgeist right in Yayo-L’s grill mix. Bucking there on his back tire, he looked and felt completely invincible. He was like a damn Comanche warrior on horseback. Billy had heard how they could unload a full quiver of arrows hanging Upside down from Underneath their horse, this while galloping at a full clip, mind you. Uncle Ernie missed out on Vietnam on account of a dubious diagnosis of late-onset clubfoot, so rather he would romanticize about the Indian wars from the century previous, with which he would regale his incredibly impressionable nephew.

Recall how Uncle Ernie idolised the great lawmen and military personnel of the Old West, for civilizing the frontier at its bloody bleeding edge until it could be duly commercialized. (Equally he admired present-day troops and first responders, as evidence of his annual Hokey Pokey for Heroes, a bolo tie-optional gala benefiting double amputees that lost their limbs — must be plural … triple amps were also eligible to apply for the program —  in the line of duty. ) Wyatt Erp, Kit Carson, the Texas Rangers, General Custer, the latter after whom he called his own beloved canine companion, who had a luscious golden mane just like his namesake. Although the pooch’s curls didn’t shed. Uncle Ernie had bad sinuses and hay fever to beat the band, so Georgie was one of them designer dogs specifically crossbred to not furry up all the furniture. (Of course Custer was famous for his blonde locks, but by the time all that bad business went down at Little Bighorn, he was already on the retreat in another fashion — male pattern baldness. It’s true. And you can bet that pretty boy son of a bitch took it hard. For he was as vain as they come. There’s even a historiographical school of thought that losing his trademark hair had him so out of sorts that it clouded his tactical judgment, which was otherwise well-known to be highly astute. Hence causing him to haul off and do something reckless, like send his already dog-tired battalion on a kamikaze charge of a heavily outnumbering encampment of savage hostiles. After such a scrap that ensued, it was the squaws’ domain to sweep the battlefield, and tidy up after any of the missed opportunities for post or preferably premortem mutilation that their husbands, brothers and fathers had overlooked — male pattern blindness. Supposedly when it came to ‘ole Custer, there wasn’t hardly any there left to scalp. Kind of a letdown. Because wouldn’t that have been the ultimate trophy. Alas, they settled for shoving a poison arrow up his piss hole. 

But those were Sioux and Cheyenne. Not to be trifled with, to be sure, but also nowheres near the warrior horsemen that the Comanche were. The Lords of the Plains, as they were known on and around the plains. Apart from music videos and shows about the making of music videos, Billy’s favorite thing to watch on television was a basic cable program called Deadliest Warrior, wherein the producers would pit two of the most deadliest warriors from different historical eras against one another — such as Samurais versus Ninjas (Japanese, not juggalos), for example — and simulate which would prevail in a fight to the death. (The Ninja beat the Samurai on account of being much sneakier, in case you were curious.) The Comanche got matched up against a Mongol. A who? … you may be asking. Those old Chinese food bitches? How about they fight somebody that’s actually bad ass, like MS Thirteen. Whoa. Hold your horses, kimosabe. Mongols are no joke. Underestimate these bad mama-jamas at your peril. As a collective army, the Mongols probably had more bodies than any fighting force in human history. Forty million, according to some estimates, which at that time would have divided out to eleven percent of the global population. As for how they would fare one-v-one with a Comanche brave, now we know because each episode had a melodramatized reenactment — like in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, or on Unsolved Mysteries — where the producers and their consultants in historical combat would handicap the fight and choreograph out the moves. This particular back-and-forth bought looks like it’s about to go the distance, before the Comanch emerges victorious by twelfth-round TKO, owing in large part to his superior horsemanship. 

Back in Stone Rock, our anti-heroes joy rode on out of the arena and back onto the access road leading through town. There was just enough twilight reflecting into the red dirt to guide their way. Yayo-L had misplaced the earth-toned, short-sleeved, button-down shirt he wore some variation of every day to work, and changed into a chinchilla coat he found in the San Ernesto, from behind one of those dividers women would get undressed behind in the olden days. It was two sizes too small but it fit him just right. Billy was likewise nips out, in shirtless solidarity with his companero, although he wore a protective rodeo vest, designed to shield bull riders’ vital organs from being gored-and-or-trampled upon. He thought it resembled a teflon flak jacket, similar to the one Fifty wore to perform In Da Club at the Video Music Awards, where he took home Video of the Year. Like Yayo-L’s mini-ATV, Billy’s mini-bike was fully Wolffenbeir-branded, as if they were being sponsored to compete in the Special X-Games. The numbers on the nameplate were four-twenty and sixty-nine, respectively. 

Racing out past the property line and the barbed wire fence which marked it, without any particular destination in mind, they hung the same fateful left turn Billy’s grandfather had made every morn’ on his commute to the brewery. Rounding the bend, they reached the covered bridge which dissected from overhead the crystal brook. A picturesque scene by any other context. Skidding to an abbreviated stop, they saw there standing on the bridge — backlit by the dissipating daylight and staring straight through them — was a four-legged mammal of an as yet unknown genus. It was smaller than a wolf or a mountain lion, but bigger than a designer doodle or a one-eyed dumpster cat. 

What kind of animal are you? Billy asked, rhetorically. 

I’m a coyote, he answered back. But you can call me Peter. Pleased to meet you. 

###

For a while after Uncle Ernie lost his power struggle for the Wolffenbeir Company to Billy’s mom, he would tell anybody who would listen how he was plotting his comeback. In what was akin to a corporate crucifixion, he believed Hildy and the Board had colluded against him. In the intervening period of his unjust exile he’d drunk approximately eight hundred Wolffenbeir beers in the span of eighteen months, for no apparent other reason than to quantitatively prove that the quality of the product had deteriorated under his sister’s stewardship, precipitously. Stay tuned, he forbode. Their day of reckoning was upon us. Like the mighty dragon, I will arise from the ashes, as he would often mistake his mythical creatures. Tales of my death have been exaggerated, greatly, he was lastly fond of saying, this time misquoting a line that had itself been misattributed to Mark Twain. 

(Of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous observation that there are no second acts in American lives, Uncle Ernie was blissfully unfamiliar.) 

Perhaps precisely by nature of his being the most quoted American author, Mark Twain is also the most misquoted. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its boots, was a maxim also oft-mistakenly credited to Mister Twain. (Honorable mis-mentions: [A] Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. [B] I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time. [C] The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.) Unequivocally though, we can quote with the utmost accuracy what it was that Mark Twain said about coyotes. In his semi-autobiographical travelogue of the American West, Roughing It (originally titled, The Innocents at Home), he writes (emphasis added):    

The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolfskin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely! -so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.

THE COYOTE IS A LIVING, BREATHING ALLEGORY OF wANT.

Damn, T-Swizzle. What a coyote ever do to you? For real, bruh. A Tolerably Bushy tail, you say? Well excuuse me. 

In Roughing It, whole sections of which were borrowed by the Western television series Bonanza, Twain also writes very critically about sagebrush, local journalism and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As for the Mormons, he himself admitted them to be a popular, humorous topic capable of yielding a great deal of low-grade ore, which he had the ability to mine effectively. If Hank was correct in his assumption that Mormonism as the most American of religions — not only by virtue of its provenance, because according to the prophet Joseph Smith, the Garden of Eden was located in Independence, Missouri, four hundred miles by car to the foot, across the length of the Show-Me State, from Cave-in-Rock, Illinois — by extension can we say that the coyote is the most American animal. A living, breathing allegory of want.

Billy and Yayo-L turned away from the coyote without remark or incident. With the last dregs of light, they rode back to Stone Rock and up to the top of old boot hill, which overlooked the thoroughfare. Here, beneath a sprawling live oak, laid the Wilhelms, I and II. Whereas Uncle Ernie’s chosen aesthetic of Wild West kitsch and kabuki was anything but subtle, the Wolff family burial plot was understated and classy. A white picket fence with a modest, lattice archway. No moseliums or headstones of hand-carved marble. No Pax Eterna  or any other dead language epitaphs. (Sic Semper Tyrannis, uva uvam vivendo varia fit.) Just the two wooden crosses. 

Billy bypassed his grandfather’s and his great grandfather’s graves for the barren dirt just beyond. In yet another rare moment of reflection, he wondered if this was the empty space reserved for his eternal resting. Then he threw up. But, like, only a little bit. It was more of a wet burp. A purple, sizzurpy film coated his chin. Yayo-L untied the handkerchief tied frontways around his forehead and offered it over with a kind word.

You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. 

Thanks, man. You’re my best friend, Ramesh. 

That’s tight.

 Hey, Yay. You know how I been saying about my boat?

Of course he did. Billy’s albeit-hypothetical boat was among his favorite discussion topics, in addition to womens’ asses.

Yea, Billy. 

I think I changed my mind. 

You don’t want a boat anymore?

Phst. Stop playing. Just about the name. I think I’m gonna call it Finally Rich. 

###

Grateful Dead. 13 February 1970, Fillmore East, New York City. 

Bill Graham was a Holocaust survivor and concert promoter. He got his start in the sixties in San Francisco, thanks in large part to a black fellow by the name of Charles Sullivan. Sullivan was the negro business king of the Bay in those days. Among his many concerns and holdings were a citywide network of cigarette vending machines, a jukebox rental business, the Booker T. Washington Hotel and a liquor store, as well as a vast portfolio of recreational spaces spanning a hamburger stand, pool halls, roller rinks, nightclubs, lounges and others, including the Fillmore Auditorium in the Upper Fillmore neighborhood of the Western Addition district of San Francisco. Sullivan — the so-called Mayor of the Fillmore — helped turn the surrounding area into the Harlem of the West by booking a stable of black artists the likes of Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Ike & Tina Turner, whose band at the time included the talented player by the redundant stage name of Jimmy James, better known by his forthcoming nom de guitar, Jimi Hendrix.

In spite or rather because of its status as an burgeoning epicenter for black culture, the neighborhood was targeted by City Planners for sweeping redevelopment projects. The bevy of beautifications had the bypass effect of artificially raising rents, subsequently causing many such Black music venues to close rather unceremoniously. In feeling the squeeze, Charles Sullivan was no exception. Therefore, in a last-ditch attempt to preserve his tenuous grasp on the Fillmore, he sought to sublease the room to an enterprising white promoter. Enter Bill Graham, a struggling actor turned up-and-coming tastemaker, whose debut promotion, a benefit performance for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical theater company, was a smashing success. Sensing opportunity, Graham secured an exclusive contract with Sullivan for all subsequent open dates. Shortly thereafter, after returning home from putting on a James Brown concert in Los Angeles, Sullivan was found dead beside his rented Impala, sprawled out across the pavement at the corner of Fifth and Bluxome Streets. (Precisely four miles as the crow flies due East from one of the most famous intersections in the world, according to the magazine Boulevard Digest, along with Times Square, Place Charles de Gaulle, Shibuya Crossing, Piccadilly Circus and Dealey Plaza.) The scene of the crime was a once industrial district, which is presently home to the San Francisco Giants baseball team and Golden State Warriors Basketball team, who play at Oracle Park and the Chase Center, respectively. Sullivan was shot directly through the heart with a .38 Special. Responding SFPD officers ruled the death a suicide. The City Coroner, meanwhile, strenuously disagreed and classified it a homicide. The case remains unsolved. Immediately following his former partner’s untimely passing, Bill Graham assumed control of the master lease at the Fillmore, where many of the musical vanguards of the sixties counterculture would go on to get their starts, including the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead. Some thirty years later Graham himself succumbed to the fiery crash of his personal helicopter, after it struck a high-voltage transmission tower on a return trip from a Huey Lewis and the News concert in Vallejo.    

Forgoing to bunk down amid the bountiful splendor of Stone Rock’s completely vacant five-star accommodations, Billy and Yayo-L returned to the yurt for to turn in on the pair of bedrolls the seasonal employees had set aside for sleeping off hangovers. Head-to-foot, they arranged them beneath the circular skylight, through which their weary eyes could see the stars crossfade into the night sky as it gave way to a reluctant dawn. Beyond the canvas walls of the tent-like structure, they were lulled to sleep by the high-pitched Hey-There’s of their new canine acquaintance. Similar cries had once haunted little Ernie, before he became the ever-jovial Eternal Uncle, when he was only just a soon-to-be orphan. Those were coyotes’ calls of distresses. They sounded like a woman screaming. Cries that harmonized with those of his newly widowed mother, who wasn’t long for this world herself. What Billy heard was of another octave entire. It was howling in a major key. A foxhunt yip mashed up with a banshee squall. Like the Comanche Whoop which beget the Rebel Yell. A war cry singing out. The sound was almost Pavlovian, in the sense that it commanded a response. Like an answer in the form of a question.

​​Shall we go, you and I while we can?

[thewestern]

[thewestern]

Chapter 25

Mayor Mockingbird was ensconced in the private dining room of the vegan steakhouse of which he was a part owner. That morning there had been an incident at City Hall wherein one of his schizophrenic constituents — an ever-increasing slice of his core demographic — had charged the door to his office brandishing a hatchet. His sheriff's department detail didn’t hesitate to Put the [Assailant(— redacted/sic, profanity)] down, as he so phrased it in the official report. After preliminarily engaging the unsub with six warning shots to the torso area, I preceded to fire a follow-up, security round to the facial and head region, to heretofore confirm the neutralization of the imminent threat magnitude in perpetuity. 

(Here the deputy had partaken in a controversial practice called Canoeing, which he’d heard about by way of his cousin, Jaxson, who served a half a tour overseas. Popular among American servicemembers, canoeing entails shooting a high-caliber bullet at point-blank range directly into the face of an assailant who has been previously mortally wounded, if not killed outright. This, as a primitive means of marking them — like a calling card. Thoroughly macabre. The deputy bragged how his cousin was special forces, but in actuality, he had only achieved the rank of enlisted private before his dishonorable discharge for unrelated offenses. [He was caught with his pants down — around his ankles — as he masturbated onto the bunk of his commanding officer, in retaliation for putting him on Shit Detail {Cleaning out the latrine}.] The commanding officer wasn’t present in his bunk, {Jaxson} reiterated in the incident report. I’m no faggot. Not that those JSOC jagoffs are any fucking better. Tell you what they’re a bunch of psychos. Serious, dude. Ever wonder how come there aint been no serial killers recently? What … you mean after Gacy and Bundy and Dahmer they all decided to pack it in? Like they was on strike? The Local 666. Hell no. Don’t believe that shit for a second. It’s cause serial killers are for peacetime is the real reason. Look it up. War is when those crazy sons a bitches get paid. For plying their trade: wasting fools. Poppa said if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life. Mother fucking freaks get recruited like they’re five-star prospects. Right of high school — presumably you can make it through without shooting the place to high hell — it’s straight to Camp Jeffrey or Fort Ted, Jack. Boy, they’ll make a useful fucking American out of you yet.

[Speaking of spree killers, rumours had recently circulated on a popular online message board — one typically used for soliciting restaurant recommendations and complaining about the weather — that one was active in the city, and that the local police was covering it up. It was true that there had been several young men who had washed up dead in relatively short succession on the river banks just downstream from the old train yard, not far from #x_brüing. No, it wasn’t Jaime. Actually, homicide detectives had quite thoroughly investigated the deaths and determined conclusively there was no foul play. The sad truth was those boys had more than likely fallen in the river and drowned by accident. Probably they were drunk. It’s a reality of bodies of water in urban areas. Happens more than you think.]) 

This was the first time the Deputy had the honour of discharging his service weapon in the line of duty. (In service of killing a man, that is. Routinely he took on-the-clock target practice at the empty energy drink cans that piled high atop the passenger seat of his cruiser. All ammunition was carefully inventoried at the station weapons depot, so these were rounds he purchased himself at a local sporting goods store which offered a discount to first responders, active duty military and veterans.)  As per department protocol, the deputy would thusly be required to attend No Less Than Three mandatory sessions with a county sub-contracted psychiatrist, so as to evaluate the effect of this violent event on his mental state. You didn’t need to be Sigmund fucking Freud however to tell by the shit-eating grin plastered on this son of a bitch’s face that he was, in a word, giddy. No doubt this would get him off this shit detail and back into a cush post at county lockup, where he’d get his time and a half. (Not to mention whatever he made on the side … trafficking toilet wine, prepaid cell phones and the like among the inmates, that is.) For the time being, however, he had to keep biding his time babysitting Mayor Muffdiver here, who had insisted that he order anything off the menu, what as a token of his gratitude for saving his hide. That’s right, you fucking pussy. Unfortunately, he didn’t recognize any of the items on the menu. I thought the sign out front said Steakhouse. (You couldn’t really fault him for not comprehending the Sanskrit-font fine print above that said Vegan.) But this ain’t look nothing like the Sizzler. Even the sides are dogshit. What the fuck is a Quinoa Risotto, he wondered to himself, pronouncing it Quinn-oh-Ah in his head. Whatever, it’s free. So then preternaturally he defaulted to ordering the most expensive thing on the menu — the sixty-nine-dollar tomahawk shiitake. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t drier than that old lady’s taint. Beet juice was no substitute for blood. He should know too. What having just this afternoon bukakee’d a brain stem’s worth of it all over the Mayor’s fucking drywall. Hoo-hah. 

A self-described lapsed pescatarian, Mayor Larry also wasn’t feeling particularly appetized, even at this restaurant he owned in part. In truth, like the deputy, he preferred red meat. Secretly, he craved it … insatiably, in fact, at all hours of the day and night. Alas, his intestines were tied. For one thing, he had made Nutritional Education a cornerstone of his platform, campaigning on the promise that proper diet and exercise were the two most powerful weapons with which to combat poverty. (Government assistance finishing a non-competitive fourth, just missing out on the podium.) Third and more importantly, the Natural Foods Mafia — a powerful local lobby of health and wellness-oriented grocers, restaurateurs and CPG purveyors of granola-based snack bars, flavored energy pastes and fermented beverages of a non-alcoholic persuasion (hell yeah we’re talking about kombucha, bitch) — had been instrumental to his political rise. Larry had joined their ranks as an unmade consigliere of sorts after departing the New Frontier, during his first foray into angel investing. He was participating in a seed round-funding of a FoodTech startup that which aimed to create a speculative marketplace for trading — of all fucking things — seeds. Would you believe they called it, the Stalk Exchange? (That was back before the first dot-com boom went bust when at least the fugazi tech companies had real names at least. Meaning ones that say what they mean. Pets dot com. Diapers dot Com. Product We Sell or Service We Provide dot Com. Now all the startups had stupid fucking names that had hardly anything to do with their business. And as if that weren’t confusing enough, some unofficial style guide called for most vowels and all letter casing to be omitted entirely. Billy was hip to this game. For a fact, when #x_brü inevitably got so big it would have to restructure into a conglomerate of shell corporations so as to skirt antitrust regulation, Billy planned to rebrand that new holding company DRFT. Like a startup shorthand for Draft, as in beer.) While that investment didn’t bear fruit, it did help him to cultivate some deeply rooted connections in the budding organics lobby. (Punch me in the fucking face.) Fortuitously, it was their coveted endorsement that helped to earn him a narrow victory in his first hotly-contested primary election. What Mayor Larry didn’t count on was that once you owed a debt to the Natural Foods Mafia, they owned you for life. Like some other fraternal organizations you may be familiar with, they were very much a blood-in, blood-out, sort of situation. La Couscous Nostra. So here he was, trapped in a restaurant for which he was coerced into buying a minority ownership, waiting on another of his unpaid lackeys to smuggle in a mostly beef hamburger through the back door service entrance. 

Suffice it to say, Mayor Larry would have much preferred to be back home at City Manor, unwinding with some fundraising calls, were it not for the nagging omnipresence of his wife, Matilda. She was already angry about having to chauffeur their son, Carter, to Tuscon tomorrow for a soccer tournament. Youth sports culture had gotten out of control, as he was fond of commiserating with his fellow parents at cocktail parties. For Pete’s sake, this was the U-Eleven division — we’re talking ten-year-olds here — traveling all over the country to play against other children. Interstate airfare, hotel reservations, chartered buses, catered orange slices. Like they were the Pittsburgh freaking Steelers, for crying out loud. These boys haven’t even hit puberty! And Larry’s son, in particular, hated soccer anyway. Probably on account of he was born with a mild case of clubfoot. Hey, don’t look at me. I was second-team all-state in fencing. Any lack of athleticism, he got that from his mother, who herself meanwhile through some acrobatic feat of albeit well-earned marital resentment, had resolved to blame his father for being attacked by a lone axman. Don’t ask him how.

But then, even if it was sincere regret for its failure, at least Matty felt something about the botched assassination attempt. Hildegard, for her part, hadn’t so much as called. By now she must have heard. It was all over the news. Before his would-be Wilkes Booth had even hit the ground, the Mayor had quite savvily called a press conference, cashing in the political capital of his near-death to pump some desperately needed life into his currently flatlining gubernatorial campaign. Woe for the maneuver backfired, when his opponent used the violent attack to rhetorically counterattack Mayor Larry’s stance on gun control, tepid though it was. Common Sense Reforms and Best Practices for Responsible Weapon Ownership, was how it was clumsily copywritten on the website. (Visit More 4 Mockingbird dot com slash donate today! … the web domain for 4 More 4 Mockingbird dot com was already being squatted on for his reelection, all the more improbable though it may now have seemed.) Now here we got ourselves a situation where a bad guy Did Not have a gun. It was a battle axe, or some sharp, throwing implement of sorts. Because, isn’t it the god’s-honest truth that most radical terrorist acts aren’t carried out with firearms in the first place? Statistics bear that out. I believe it to be the case it’s because they’re too yeller to look a man in the eye and pull the trigger. Instead, the Islam-ists here, they’ll use whatever they can get their hands on — anything from a kitchen knife to explosive de-vices, ignited in their damn’d underpants. You name it. Whatever causes a maximum output of pain with the bare minimum input of guts, them cowards’ll use it. Hell, they’ll stampede a crowded market in a truck if it so suits ‘em. So you tell me this … howsit that Mayor Mockingbird knocking on your front door, and taking away your guns, to which you are constitutionally entitled by the Almighty God, Himself, howsit that that’s going to stop something awful like this from happening to you? Or to your children, heaven forbid? I don’t need to remind any of you fine folks, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun — or a boxcutter, or a bomb, or an ali-baba sword or a foreign-made truck careening through a crowded pedestrian area — is an even badder guy with a gun. And guess what, Kimosabe, you gone done found him. [Here the chosen candidate of the opposition party sidestepped the lectern and slowly pulled back his barn coat to reveal an as-previously concealed carry hand cannon holstered on his right love handle. It was an Austrian-made, polymer-framed piece with a matte American flag finish; but only the red, white and blue were swapped out with black and two very menacing shades of gunmetal gray, and the stars were interspersed throughout with skulls. Returning to the bouquet of microphones from the assembled press, he resumed his diatribe.] If you d’ruther take your chances with a rape whistle or a pocket knife or a damn wrist rocket, for all I care, well then that’s your prerogative, Mr. Mayor. I don’t tell you your business. You don’t tell me mine! 

If indeed the pen were mightier than the sword, never mind the semi-automatic pistol, then Larry had better get to work on crafting an in-kind response to these scurrilous and inflammatory attacks on his character. Unfortunately, he was previously occupied with a separate bit of oratory entirely. The Office of the Mayor was issuing an Official Civic Apology on behalf of The City for the historic blight that was the Main Street Melee, a massacre carried out on the order of the then-Mayor Curtis Hixon. It was a nasty business, wherein Hixon — or Hick, as he was Affectionately Known, who mind you had been duly elected by no public vote, and was rather named Mayor by power of self-appointed title and homemade-sash only — deputized a posse to retaliate swiftly and unconditionally against a war party of renegade Indians. This, for their Unprovoked raid on an arriving wagon train of white settlers, wherein two poor German immigrant families were murdered quite brutally. However, being that the band of hostiles in question was by that time already long gone on down the warpath, the militia of mostly drunk miners — hastily, they had been commissioned for duty inside a saloon … another thing they had in common, in addition to their public service, was that outside of their political lives, Mayor Larry and his predecessor Hick were both part-time publicans, as well as avid real estate speculators — settled for settling their score on the account of some innocent bystanding Indians, who ironically were in town to negotiate a treaty of peace on behalf of a separate tribe entirely than the one the renegade braves formerly represented. (Hence, they were Renegade.) After a brief if-you-could-call-it-a standoff, eight elders and twenty squaws, unarmed to a one, were gunned down right there in the thoroughfare. A more perfect butchery, there never was. Thus epitaphed one of the massacre’s co-authors, apparently he who fancied himself a fucking poet. 

These events unfolded — more than a century ‘ore — on the present-day site of a salad store, part of a burgeoning fast-casual chain of restaurants founded by a trio of business school classmates. Three Masters of Business Administration. (Per their business plan, this was the End of the Line for the Salad Bar, which conjured up distasteful images of sneeze guards, wilted lettuces and those dressing dispensers in the dining hall, the ones that would get all gross and congealed on the slide-open lids with weeks-old ranch and thousand-island. Rather, this would be a premium dining experience for on-the-go professionals. A loyalty program would incentivize online ordering through a proprietary mobile app, creating a more frictionless meal-fulfillment process. Recipes would be calibrated with seasonal ingredients from local farmers, and curated in collaboration with celebrity chefs, superstar athletes and more … ) Mayor Mockingbird had been a ground-floor investor. The following morning — right before the lunch rush — he was scheduled to make these, his belated condolences and present a commemorative plaque to be displayed semi-permanently outside the storefront. He would be joined by the acting chairman of the tribal council, a senior-ranking representative from the state Office of Indian Affairs, and the salad company’s Chief Diversity Officer. ( … For a limited time only, try our newest salad bowl collab, Beet Don’t Kale My Vibe, inspired by our partnership with Grammy-winning recording artist, Kendrick Lamar.)

Ten times out of ten, he would have delegated this thankless Speechwriting assignment to the liberal arts doofuses on his communications staff, who would have no doubt poured over every word of these brief introductory remarks like they were the goddamned Gettysburg Address. Mother fucking sermon on the mount, ass. However, not only was his office closed for obvious reasons. (These same staffers had spent their afternoon fielding quotes from among the concerningly competitive market for crime scene cleaning crews, — although, by far, their most common customer use case was Suicide by gun — awarding the winning bid to a locally-owned family outfit called Trauma Cleanse, LLC, a name that resonated with them in particular. At this very moment, their certified technicians were power washing the scattered brain matter off the drywall. Back on Main Street, a bounty of scalps had been paraded through town and triumphantly nailed to the wall of Mayor Hixon’s saloon, cleverly called City Hall, right above the bar.) But also, per security protocol for any such violent incident, his entire staff had been furloughed indefinitely effective immediately, while their email and phone servers could be shut down and fully crawled for any forensic evidence. Most likely they were looking for instances of proper protocol not having been followed for flagging threats. Or perhaps on the off chance that someone within the Mayor’s inner circle had colluded to do him harm. Larry wasn’t sure that precaution was altogether necessary in this case. I think we can confidently rule out that the hatchet-wielding lunatic with feces smeared across his face like warpaint — as for the excrement, investigators deduced that it was presumably human, likely the suspect’s own particulat … although whose poop was really anybody’s guess  — spewing an incoherent diatribe of mostly racial slurs as he kamikazeyed my office door, was doing so on behalf of a vast political fucking conspiracy. That he was in cahoots with anyone apart from the chorus of voices in his head, is highly unlikely, you nincompoops.

 As for the speech, all he’d managed to type thus far were two words … I’m and Sorry. And indeed he was. Sorry for having agreed to participate in this public farce in the first place. (It had been his idea, as he’d already forgotten.) Sorry that he ever left the private sector. Sorry that his loveless marriage would have to last him another two election cycles, as a worst-case scenario for his sputtering political aspirations. Sorry that the woman he did love treated him like her bureaucratic errand boy and non-reciprocal sex toy. (The Pulsator MK-48 — nuclear torpedo or prostate massager?) Sorry that his only son couldn’t walk a straight line. Sorry that he part-owned the city’s first and soon-to-be-last vegan steakhouse. It’s a contradiction in terms, you fools! Yes, Lawrence Mockingbird was feeling very sorry indeed. So sorry that he longed for the only person on this planet who had ever understood his struggle — of course, his mother. The doting Mrs. Helen Mockingbird. At times like these, as there had been many, only she could have consoled him. Isn’t it so unfair? Oh, how she would have moved heaven and earth to spare him from enduring even the mildest frustration. Especially as a schoolboy, when he’d complain incessantly about his homework. It’s unfair, mother. The teacher hadn’t covered this subject adequately. You’re right, dear, she’d say. It is unfair. And then she’d do it for him. No matter the subject. This woman learned Spanish in her spare time, all to help her only son. Su hijito solo. This pattern of co-dependency continued all throughout high school, and into college. Even as a graduate student, he’d call home to her for help with a vexing problem set. Alas, she couldn’t help with this tedious assignment. A five-paragraph political essay prompt. Why should I apologize? I never massacred anybody. I know, Sweetie. It is unfair. No, she was no help to him now. Now that she was put away in an Assisted Living Community. Larry paid her room and board on the first of every month, although he hadn’t had the occasion to visit. Not in the past year. But not because he didn’t want to. He’s not a monster. Simply, he couldn’t bear it. How she couldn’t recognize him. 

And so the cursor on the otherwise blank, as yet Untitled document was taunting him. 

Come on, Lawrence, think. Okay, how about we don’t open with, Sorry. Yes. Because it sets a bad precedent. Instead, let’s lead with gratitude. 

I would like to thank these esteemed representatives of the Tribal Council for joining us today, as well as the fine folks at springleaf for their hospitality. Also, they have marked this momentous occasion — as well as they will be catering a brief reception immediately following the ceremony — with a special edition commemorative salad dish. The Native Lands Southwestern Chipotle Caesar Bowl, most all of the ingredients for which have been sourced in collaboration with peoples of indigenous descent. Additionally, a portion of the proceeds will go to benefit a STEM scholarship fund for reservation students. The Native Lands Southwestern Chipotle Caesar Bowl is available for a limited time only, while supplies last. 

Much better. Ease ‘em in. And, now that you got their stomachs churning, hit them on the heartstrings. Time to right an historic wrong— 

—But maybe don’t take outright responsibility — like, as in, individually. Lest we forget, Lawrence … first rule of political discourse: never give a convenient soundbite. A personal apology would be all too perfect attack ad fodder. Besides, contrition makes you sound weak. 

[Deletes I am, types all with his index fingers (hunt and peck style), We are. Adds, On behalf of all the citizens of this city, I would like to say that.]

And that is how it’s done, son. Dodged another hatchet job. Self-satisfied, Mayor Larry leaned back in his faux leather throne and cracked his knuckles. Now all that’s left is to pad this thing out with a little exposition, borrowing liberally from these bullet points here printed out in outrageously large font by his interns, who had in-turn wholesale copy-pasted the information from an internet encyclopedia entry of some dubious provenance.

Where we now gather before a progressive beacon of entrepreneurial spirit and nutritional inclusivity, here on this hallowed ground, some seven score and four years ago, independent contractors acting on behalf of this municipal government committed our city’s original sin. One for which, too long, has gone unatoned …     

Just as he was hitting his rhetorical stride, punching the keys with rhythm and verve like a young Donald Fagen, his creative process was so inconsiderately interrupted … 

Jiminy Christopher, Jaime … Would it kill you to knock?

Jaime looked behind himself through the beaded curtain door, perplexed. He came bearing a brown paper bag, keeping his hand outstretched to prevent the visibly pooling grease from seeping onto his #x_brü-branded Workshirt, a selvage chambray with hand-stitch embroidery and pearl snap buttons. (At #x_brü, Merch was a strategic business priority on level par with beer. [Core Value No. Eight: Think outside the Beer.] Jaime painstakingly designed and sourced all pieces in-house himself.)

Well, let’s have it then. Come on. Burgers and fries don’t travel well.

Larry further scrunched his already scrunchy face and tapped his cheap rubber sports watch. Jaime was immediately thrown off guard, having never had the Mayor — whom he considered to be his mentor in personal brand building — behave in such a belligerent way toward him before. It was true that the Mayor typically saved his short temper for the members of his staff and immediate family, who naturally were bound to-a-man, woman and child by airtight non-disclosure agreements. Perhaps being the target of a homicidal maniac had revealed a blemish in his carefully manicured facade of the unflappable, Clintonian/Bushian statesman. 

Placing the bag and the plastic soda cup — so extra large as to defy any cup holder that should hope to contain it — a safe distance from the Mayor’s laptop, Jaime eagerly started in on his pre-rehearsed ass-kissing.

Lawrence, I would just like to say how truly sorry I am that you had to endure this trauma. This is a dark day for our city. May I add how I am eternally grateful, foremostly for your safety, but also that the perpetrator of this heinous act of domestic terrorism has been exterminated from—

—Save it, Jaime. I’m fine. And take it easy with the terrorism stuff. This wasn’t a radical idealist. Probably just some junkie. Poor bastard was pumped full of bullets before he even laid eyes on me.

My god. I hadn’t considered that. And this after all you’ve done to rid our streets of the scourge of drugs.

By now Mayor Larry had all-but devoured half his burger. A dollop of special sauce splashed onto the spacebar. Suckling audibly from the bendy straw, with a mouthful of half-chewed, diet cola-soaked meat, he asked the existential question: 

Jaime, why are you here? 

Because you asked me to deliver your supper? 

Which is cold, by the way. Stale fries and a soggy bun. Have I died and this is hell after all? What did I say about fast food never traveling well.

But wasn’t that what you wanted? You insisted—

—I insist you tell me why you’re kissing my butt. Rather, what for. I mean, why … obviously, because I’m the Mayor of a mid-major American city. But, usually you’re much more nuanced in your flattery. Of all people, I should know. Day and night, they come to kiss my butt. Heck, how do you think I got here in the first place? Because I happen to be a world-class butt-kisser myself. Without peer, if I do say so. Although I do see some of myself in you. 

Thank you. Jaime said this with the utmost sincerity. 

But this … this is something different. Desperation. For the both of our sakes, it’s unbecoming. So, then, spare us, will you? Out with it. 

Um. Well, while I’d be loath to trouble you at this time, there is an urgent business matter on which I would seek your wise counsel.

Oh, baloney. You don’t want my advice. You want to couch whatever request your about to make in the form of a question. It’s the oldest trick in the book. I should know. I wrote it. But, fine. At least, now we’re getting somewhere. Please, then, arrive at your ask. Although if it’s another investment you're after I’m afraid the books are closed, indefinitely. The political action committee is a little cash-poor, at the moment. They’re even advising me that I should start self-funding my campaign, in part, if you can believe that. For the optics. And to take some of the heat off. I’ve got the Secretary of State so far up my you-know-what, my proctologist could just as well file a public records request. 

Oh, no. We’re not raising a round at the moment. And you’ve already been so generous in that regard. Besides, I think our capitalization requirements have matured beyond the friends and family phase. 

Is that so? Well la-di-da. Here’s a bit of unsolicited advice, Jaime: Don’t get in the habit of turning down checks, Jaime. Especially when they aren’t on the table.  

You’re right. I’m terribly sorry. I intended no offense. It’s just, as you know, we’ve been positioning ourselves for an acquisition for some time now, and I believe we’re currently optimized as such for just such an exit.

Is that so? Well wouldn’t that be nice. I’m currently optimized for a blow job from Christie Brinkley.

Who is that? 

Seriously? Supermodel. Swimsuit issue. She married and subsequently divorced Billy Joel. 

Who’s Bil—

—Ah. Don’t you dare … ask me that. [Uncomfortable silence.] You know, it’s my understanding that the markets aren’t exactly foaming for boutique beer makers. So then, by whom, may I ask, are you hoping to be acquired? 

By the Wolffenbeir Company, of course. 

Thus followed another, even more viscous silence. The mere suggestion of Hildegard — so soon after his crude allusion to oral sex … the receiving of — sent a painful tingle down Mayor Larry’s dungarees. It took him a moment to compose himself. 

I’m sorry to say, Jaime, but that’s simply preposterous. What in the world makes you think the Wolffenbeir Company would want to buy a craft brewery?

I know. It was a moonshot, but I think we’re in striking distance of a deal. This is strictly confidential, but I’ve been cultivating a relationship with WIlhem Wolff III, and—

—Wait. I beg yoru pardon, but did you say Wilhelm? Do you mean Billy? As in Billy Wolff, Trip, Born on Third, the last and decidedly least … Jesus, Jaime. How can I put this diplomatically? Take it from a fellow butt-kisser. Billy is a horse’s ass. The poor son of a gun won the egg lottery, and since then he’s spent his entire useless life pissing all over the winning ticket. And now you’re telling me that this is the mule to whom you’ve hitched your wagon?

Sir. Respectfully, I know Billy can be a bit of an eccentric, but I’d hardly call him a lightweight. In fact, he’s the head of the Beverage Advancement Division.   

Oh, my, the Beverage Advancement Division. Have you ever heard of anything ever so serious sounding? It must be real. Somebody call the Wall Street Journal. Come on, Jaime. And it’s Was, by the way. 

It’s Was what?

Was the Head of something or other, is my understanding. His mother has been in the nasty habit of inventing jobs for him, if only to keep him a safe distance away from the actual business. Only now that he may have stumbled jackass backward into something of actual value, she’s resorted to shuffling him away on some or other makework, wild goose chase. You see, Jaime, our mutual friend Billy is something of a Don Quijote figure. Only he’s trying to fuck the windmill. Come to think of it, I suppose then that would make you his Sancho Panza. Tell me, how’s that going so far? 

I’m sorry, I don’t understand the reference. Also, while I certainly empathize with your skepticism, I can assure you of this opportunity’s utmost legitimacy. Until very recently, I had been given assurances that the deal would be presented to the board, imminently. And that, furthermore, approval was all but a formality. 

Oh, really? And then what happened? 

Well. Just some complications. It’s only temporary. This is coming from Billy himself. 

Is that so? Complications, huh. How apropos. Billy is himself a complication. His entire existence on this planet, I mean. A perpetual stillbirth. His mother would tell you so herself, if only she were here. If it were Hildy running for governor, it’d be on a platform of legalising abortions in the one-hundredth trimester. In that regard — socially, I mean — she’s quite liberal. Fiscally, of course, she’s Attila the Hun. 

Jaime was yet again confused. Something was — amiss. The Mayor he knew was a champion of a woman’s right to choose. Larry wasn’t his usual self.

Sir, are you feeling alright? You’re not your usual self.

Oh, like you know the usual me. Maybe it’s I’m feeling more sympathetic toward the Right To Lifers, having survived such a brazen attempt on my own. Hey. Now this, perhaps that’s not such a bad idea. What’s another flip flop or two anyway? I’m already running out of real estate in the center. So maybe this time I tack a bit to the Right. My political career is a fetal heartbeat away from flatlining completely.   

Jaime hadn’t the slightest idea what the Mayor was talking about. Once more he tried to get through to him. 

Mister Mayor. Lawrence. Again, you’ve been so generous, to myself and all the #x_brüers, of which I hope you count yourself among. For that we are eternally grateful. Speaking of Hildegaard, at the risk of asking too much, would you be willing to act as our intermediary to her? I know you two are close. If I could make the connection directly, I’m quite sure I could plead our case as a viable target for corporate takeover. Our brand equity is at an all time high. We project to reach profitability within a five-year window. Production is ramping up—  

—Whoa. Wait just a second, Jaime. Ramping up, you say? How, dare I ask, are you affording that? You said so yourself in our last board meeting. You’re debt-financed up to your nipples. 

Yes. I’m excited to announce to you now — this with the anticipated capital influx as resultant to our iminent acquiring on behalf by the Wolffenbeir Company — we have secured a handshake agreement to ourselves acquire the new New Frontier production facility before it goes online. 

Hearing this, Larry spit out a bit of his soft drink. 

Hah! I’ve really got to hand it to you. You’ve got a knack for spending other people’s money. Another quality I also possess in great quantity. Perhaps a political future awaits thee, my son. Although you’re taking a roundabout approach. The New Frontier? You know I divested my interest in that fledgling concern some twenty years ago. Why ever would you wish to own a piece of that money pit? 

What do you mean? You started the Newfy. I thought you would be proud of me.

Is that a joke? 

No? 

Hmm. That’s too bad for you. Well then, it’s time for your last free lesson, Jaime. It may be too late yet for you to learn it, I’m sorry to say, but I implore you to listen all the same. Because unless you’ve got a rich uncle out there whom I’m not aware of, this is the last time we’ll speak. Are you listening? Because here it is:

We aren’t in the business of pride. Look around you. This [the Mayor was again gesticulating, this time with a soggy french fry] … this is the business of debasing ourselves to the highest possible bidder. Now, what you did, was you tried to build something. And good on you for it, my boy. To be sure, it was a quite absurd something which no one needed, but then again are most things. And this something, You tried to build It. Of That, one could be proud, in theory. Of course I won’t be proud of you. Don’t be silly. However what I have done and will continue to do is take that pride and sell it. Or maybe I borrow against it, in a manner of speaking. Securitize it. Whatever the transaction or the financial instrument may be, we are its licensed brokers. It’s our reason for being. Certainly it’s why you’re sitting here today. It’s why tomorrow I’m apologizing for a genocide that happened a century ago out front of a takeout salad store. It’s … you’re like our yeomen farmer, Jaime. A vision somewhere’s way off in the distance. The further we get away from it, the clearer it rounds into view.

Vision. Let’s talk about vision. Entrepreneurs such as ourselves talk of having Vision. It’s possible you do see further in some direction, but your sight is distorted through the jagged prism that is your pride. Because here’s a question: what’s the difference between seeing visions and hearing voices? The answer: very little. Particularly when your head’s too far up your keister to smell your own bull crap. Sound familiar? It should. Because that’s what this is, nine-hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine times out of a million. Absolute buloney. But then there’s that one in a million times. Why wouldn’t it be me? There’s your pride. They use on Us. It’s really white slavery.  

Who are They? You’ll never know. I do, of course. We all used to know them. Everywhere you looked, their names were carved into marble. Your Rockefellers or Fords, your Carnegies, Vanderbilts and Hearsts. Our dear Wolffs. Not anymore. Unless they suffer a three-quarter’s life crisis and do something foolish, like haul off and buy a football team. Imaging feeling so existentially depressed that you resort to buying the Buffalo Bills. Have some pride and kill yourself. But hey, it happens. Apart from that, though, they’ll remain totally anonymous. That’s how they prefer it these days. To them, pride is a writeoff. Of course, shame comes at a high cost, but they can afford it. 

Now where I went wrong was I thought I could be one of them. It started I was just like you. I hung up my shingle. You know that used to be the extent of one’s personal brand. Look at me, mother, I’m a small business owner. Of course we didn’t own anything. Least of which the ground beneath our feet. So, I get wise. Okay, I say, I’ll quit this racquet and start buying up properties, like a real big shot. Strip mall here, warehouse there, condos everywhere you look. I have my own little fiefdoms. And then you give a mouse a cookie … which is to say now that I had the land, of course I wanted the power to go with it. So then I ran for Mayor! Ha! Are you still looking, Mother? I’m the mayor of a mid-major American city. So now I’ve got the power. I’ve got the land. But these people. They’re not people at all. Forgive the cliche, but they’re dieties. Their power is within the land. It rolls the country like the weather. God of fire. God of wind. Natural gasses, precious metals, Drinking Water, fiber optic cable, Old King Coal. Taking it out, putting it in. Transporting it — all around the world. Killing, or at the very least permanently displacing whoever stands in the way, if necessary, which it almost is. Schmucks like you and me? All we’re good for is selling what comes out the other side for a ten-percent commission and a holiday bonus. You had a good month? Congratulations. Here’s a set of steak knives. And you get a company lease on a luxury sedan. Hell, maybe it’ll be a convertible, if you’re lucky. Gold watch and a pretty good pension come time for retirement. And from time to time, the real bosses will come down from their corner offices and their ranches up on magic mountain. They’ll pat you on the back and tell you good job. They might even invite you to one of their secret sex parties. Ah. That’s the closest you’ll get though. All they’re really here for is reminding how truly replaceable you are. 

For a moment nobody spoke. All that yapping he did, Mayor Larry understood the dramatic purchase of a well-timed pause. He picked up many such flourishes along the way, studying history’s great speechmakers, with emphases on their cadences. Adolph Hitler — to name one example at random — orated with a rhythm that some Hitler scholars described as, erotic. To start out he lured in his audience with a sort of rhetorical foreplay, in the form of leading questions and some friendly banter. Then gradually he’d build toward his climax. The trademark fascist gesticulations and foaming out the mouth declarations of restoring pride to the father land. For a fact, whether it was due to his undescended testicle or perhaps his micropenis (both alleged), the Fuhrer was known to have suffered acute symptoms of erectile dysfunction, which according to urban legend could only be assuaged by the sexual release he achieved through this, the addressing of large crowds. Which is to say, coloquially, that he got off on that shit. That, and schizer play (also allegedly). And here meanwhile Mayor Larry here would have settled for the occasional blow job. 

Wait. What were talking about? I lost my train of thought. 

Mayor Larry was daydreaming about Hitler’s genitals again. 

Oh, right, Billy Wolff. What am I saying? Everybody knows the story. It’s Icarus, it’s Macbeth. It’s whatever — don’t go chasing waterfalls. You took a wrong shortcut. Now the game starts over. It’s okay. Maybe you’ll make it all back. More than likely, you won’t. But maybe. And if you do, hopefully I’ll still be here to slap you on the back. Until then, goodbye forever, Jim. Thanks for the hamburger.   

Jaime, whose ass-kissing days were just about over, had as of this very moment had just about enough of this bullshit. First the Mick was up to his old tricks. Then Billy had up and gone full retard. Now suddenly his trusted mentor, Larry — something of an absent father figure — was forsaking him? And, furthermore, he had the gall to act like it was all for his own good. What the fuck? You have one near death experience and now you’re here doling out life lessons. How about you suck my dick, Lawrence, was how he felt. Although, as much as he would have delighted in telling him so to his scrunchy fucking face, — to suck his dick — just as he had told Billy, Jaime still understood something: that there were guys you could tell to suck your dick, and guys you couldn’t. Mayor Larry wasn’t quite a guy you couldn’t tell to suck your dick, but nonetheless, he thought it prudent to withhold from biting the hand. So, like a big boy, he stood there and took it. Content in the steadfast belief that he would make it all back, albeit probably in some other incarnation. He was Buddhist in his ambition. Willing to do anything in service of his ego god. As Larry alluded, he’d already reinvented himself several times over to get to this point. What makes you think I won’t do it again? Bitch, I’m D.B. Cooper. Madonna. Kaiser Soze, mother fucker. Take your pick. Underestimate me at your mother fucking peril. Fuck you. Fuck. Fuck me. Why couldn’t have I just gone to nursing school? Is it too late to get a masters? Shit. I’d be fucking thirty by the time I graduated. Beside I can’t take on any more debt. Fuck. Fuck it. No. Yes. Fuck yes. I’ll be back. So fucking back. Baby, I’m coming. At least Icarus could fucking fly. 

But he didn’t say any of that shit. All he did was clasp his hands together in secular prayer, bowed to his once and former master and made his exit. Thus allowing the Mayor — blissfully oblivious to his mentee’s inner torment — to return to drafting his conciliatory declaration. 

On that day which will live in infamy, on this hallowed ground, it was my predecessor in the Mayor’s office who made the fateful decree, that which will echo into eternity: 

A dead Indian is the only kind I like. If you see one, 

shoot on sight. 

Today, as a gesture of my goodwill, I officially rescind that civic order.

[Pause for effect and/or possibly applause]

[thewestern]