Monday, April 19, 2010

Day 6

Caked in soot, the turbines lurch to life while I bleed their whir, grass festers at boot heel's caprice. Far above my head my arms cradle the blades, pare away the nickel, incise an anagram. Purple amoebas belch wet vapor beyond the silos. Perspiring icicles I feed them the orange slices, horrified, blotting their acuity. I pace, well aware the sun is tasting my neck, grin plastered with ingratiation. The watch dangles an appendix, informs me it's 12:41 for the tenth time.

Horned lizard chased by unseen forces darts and snakes through brush, corners a raisin, pounces, peels back its skin, devours its guts, sashays away. I swat a fly against my leg. A cloud of licorice and mothballs protrudes. Babbs said he would be here by now. Harvester must have held him up. Bet it was Sandy, another one of his crystalline visions.

A crag slides a wink my way. It's slippery. It sparkles and fizzes within the choked grass. Lunging in vain I rake topsoil, intake a solid wall, fall into a thicket near the bottom of the bedrock, cough grain for five minutes, rotate to shield the gash, expel sandy slugs through the sieve. Minute vine tendrils tighten grip around my ankles, the bush flails into the right side of my skull. Fuck. Too much this time, red and green begin seething, robbing each other of magic, wisps of nimbus begin a tango with the mesa, approaching nightmare, stop balling the jack, you're not Neal and you never were, oh shit the accelerator has been jammed all this time? Behind cacti leer cracked leather windshields, the smacking of their lips stifles the air, for want of any kind of purpose, leaking vats of prattle, eating holes in my frayed jeans, Babbs said he would be here. I begin to miss his commander parlance. Even Browning's foggy machismo. The sky began to bleed into ochre. A halo of ash from the northwestern corner of the map spits all over the turbine, drenches my feet with the ferocity of a marshmallow.

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