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"Brittny, it don't matter anymore," Red said, rolling a cigarette. She stopped staring out the window, brushed back her graying hair and looked at him. "Come again?" "Brittny, I can't do it anymore," he inhaled the cigarette smoke, leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "Just what in the hell are you talking about?" "I'm talking about us... the world, everything else in general. Hell, I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just talking." "It figures." "Yeah, it figures." Red got up and walked to the door. He stopped and fingered the doorknob then looked over his shoulder and looked at her. "If you're going you'd better just keep on going," Brittny said, sticking her hands in the pockets of her gray quilt housecoat. "I'm tired, too." "Yeah, that's the plan. Go and keep on going." Outside, rain slashed washing the tears from his eyes. Fifteen years... fifteen years they had been married, dreams and schemes, laughter and tears, whiskey and beers, and he was leaving. Why hadn't someone told him it would end like this? He wrenched on the door of his twenty year old Volvo, it gave and opened. The odor of stale beer leaked out and he grinned, remembering last night at the jetty, watching the sun set above the brooding storm clouds drinking deep of the cheap malt liquor and dreaming dreams. Settling behind the wheel, he fired up the motor and stared out past the cracked window towards the beat up aluminum garage door. It was their dream home, a home they had built on the credit garnered from his VA loan. Brittny had picked out the colors and they'd thrown a housewarming party with Japanese lanterns burning in the yard, and friends coming over and wishing them well, and he'd smiled through it all, thinking life was grand, barbecuing steaks over a charcoal fire. It sure
as hell was time to hit the road, he figured, when he was remembering things
like
that. He slammed the car in gear and lurched out of the driveway, crashing through
the garbage can bursting plastic sacks filled with the refuse of the week, tomatoes
and lettuce
and beer bottles, (they didn't recycle) and careening onto the silver blacktop
and slammed on the brakes. He looked out the window at the mess. The door to the house opened
and Brittny stepped out silhouetted by phosphorescent glare of the television.
She looked at the mess and flipped him the bird. Brittny, sweet daughter of
a pharmacist, Brittny his Brittny, what a mess they'd made out of a perfect
life. Rice and bridle veils a garter thrown to a throng of lovely maidens, who'd
caught it anyhow... Red smiled, he'd had an affair with her years later in the
back seat of his Chevy in the soaking rain of the parking lot of Frenchy's bar.
Ah, Repressing the desire to moon Brittny...the Volvo was too cramped... he settled for giving her a double bird and backing over the garbage can. Shifting into first he slammed his foot down to the floor smashed the can to smithereens then accelerated down the street past the leaf dripping maples into the oblivion of the next moment. The one windshield wiper that worked picked up an amber leaf and smeared it in front of him causing him to run the first stop sign. A logger's pick-up truck, with a tank of diesel in the back, just missed him blurring past swerving to avoid him as it T-boned a school bus full of kids. Red, looked
into his rear view mirror and saw the diesel tank burst and explode. He drowned
the screams of children in insane laughter and pushed the accelerator down to
the floor. Blurring stop signs roared past, the needle nudged 80 miles an hour...
and a red and
blue light was flashing in his rear view mirror. Red pulled the car over to
the side of the road next to Charlie's Burger Express, and remembered that he
hadn't eaten breakfast. Sheriff Joe Ferguson was moving toward the car. Shit,
Joe and he had graduated from high school together, played on the same basketball
team, chased Brittny and all the other
cheerleaders. Red wanted to reach beyond this to be taken onto a starship which
would plunge
him far beyond the stars into galaxies of Mars bars. And why not? This little
town was a
prison, this little world little more. He had to get out, get out. But it was
too late, too "Something wrong Red, you just ran the only stoplight in town." Red looked around and saw Joe smiling at him, a hint of concern in his eyes. "And every goddamn stop sign on the way to it too." Red responded. "You trying to set some kind of record." "Yeah, that's it. I'm trying to set some kind of record. I'm trying to go to the moon." "You all right." "You bet I'm all right. I'm so all right that I've accepted the invitation of a group of celestial beings to become their leader and to guide them in a war against a galaxy shaped like a banana a zillion trillion light years from here." "Does your wife know about this?" "Does she know about this? Shit she started the war." "I see. Have you been drinking?" "Fuck yes, I've been drinking. I've been drinking the serum of the universe, the illusion of freedom, the delusion of love, the..." "Red, I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to take you in." That's how Red started my career as an admiral in the third galactic fleet. But first he had to go down to the police station with Joe. He made Red park the Volvo next to the big oak tree in front of city hall. Little did he know that it was a beacon for Red's friends, and that within hours a galactic class battle cruiser would be hovering right over their little burg. And burg it was, Red had tired of it. The Centurions had explained that only he could save the Milky Way in it's battle against the ever expanding forces of the Banana Galaxy. The Banana
Galaxy is called the Banana Galaxy because, you guessed it, it is shaped
just like a Banana, and to a trillion zillion light years away must sound like
a lot for Red was
talking to himself, but wasn't making himself clear? Staying off the bottle
wasn't such great shit, he decided. Sure, he saved money, didn't bounce checks
and didn't provoke Brittny as much. But really, Is it worth it? He figured he'd die sooner
or later,
anyway. Anyway he'd been on the wagon for seventeen days after being fired from
his job of fifteen years as a faller for a logging company. Red was a big man, he'd
been a
football player, and cut the big timber they sold to the Japanese. He killed
the trees and had paid for a fiber-glass fishing boat and a middle-class home, doctor bills
and a million
thrills that came out of an electron gun and splattered against a phosphorescent
screen and
were meant to mean less than the mean, ultimately just to get into his wallet.
He paid
for it all and didn't care what it meant. They walked him into the front lobby
and "I'm going to call Brittny." Joe said. He'd made his decision, and as an admiral it was his right, Red, a pirate warrior, roaming searching the galaxy for booty, was lost he was bringing in the queen. Brittny was queen didn't they know? They'd put a crown on her at the homecoming ball. She would come and rain death and destruction on us all. But there was nothing Red could do. Brittny had made sure of that years ago, by tying him to promises and a vow. "You gonna put me in a cell," Red asked, hopefully. "No, Red we ain't gonna put you in a cell. Just sit over there and be quiet. How much you had to drink." "Too much... I've drank too much." "What were you drinking?" "Me? I was drinking the elixir of life, dreams." "Come on." "Okay, Mad dog twenty-twenty and peach flavored brandy." "Okay, mellow out." Joe left and went into his office...suddenly he came out quivering, Red put down the sports magazine he was reading and looked up. "What's wrong?" Red asked. "Jesus, a truck just hit a school bus and exploded, at least fifty kids are dead." "That's good news for you." "What?" "Get on your spiffiest uniforms. You're going to be on national news." "My god, you're right." "It's your chance to be a media star." "Uh, go ahead and call Brittny yourself. I gotta take care of business. And Red you have a fucked-up sense of humor." "I know," Red laughed and dropped a quarter into the pay phone. So the rain continues to fall, and I'm listening to it and all and I'm thinking about popping a beer, because that's the sweet nectar of life... and those that can't take it don't know, that their just marking off time, and they want to control everything around them...they want to have control of this sphere that's ripping around the sun at a vicious rate I mean if we're 96,000,000 miles from the sun that means that were traveling around the sun at 68,800 miles per hour according to my rough calculations... that is hoofing through the universe my friend... I mean can you imagine the force of that... I mean if the earth hit another earth traveling in an opposite orbit at the same speed it would make a real big bang...It gives you an idea of how little we are and our cares are... that universe out there is amazing. But back to reality... reality defined in terms of what effects me... which is how everyone functions... just trying to get ahead us little crustaceans on the face of the earth, actually we're not crustaceans, we are the creatures that create crustaceans... our buildings, our super bowls, our pyramids, they are our crustaceans... the world goes on and we're on it. Quite a miracle, eh... not much more than grease exploding in a frying pan all over a young girls, blouse... burned scarred forever at age twelve... one of those plastic blouses they make... and people's lives are changed... and we realize really the insignificance of ourselves in the moment... Try it out for yourself... try letting go and being free. What would happen if people just startrd working for their neighbors... I mean, if people stopped selling bullshit and started selling manure... what if small farms came back, what if greed died and civilization as we know it ceased to exist and people would have to measure things some other way than by money? Just what in the Hell would happen, if this delusion came true and we lived again in a medieval society?
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