Lightning And Snakes For Peckerwood

I’ll refer to this long-splatter swayback peckerwood Coors toilet as Gus. His western shirt was faded and worn thin as fly wings, straining over his tool chest beer gut, and his jeans were work worn and stiff with dried sweat and rimed at the joints with human oil. His boots were dappled with squirt chili from gas station nachos and dried yellow mustard. Early fifties, but with a half a million too many miles. Gus was that guy. He came into the tattoo shop on a sunny afternoon to get a cow skull, and once he was in the chair, I knew I’d have to steer the conversation when he started complaining that Portland daytime strippers were too skinny. I veered to travel, and we got on the subject of Montana. Totally offhand, he told me a truly insane story that haunts me to this day.

It was payday after a solid month of stringing wire, and Gus cashed in and quit in Butte. It was a fine morning, but he was in the mood to get indoors, so he hit the bar scene. There, day drinking in a Montana dive and horny as hell, he met a frizzy haired blond with thick legs and a halter top. It was like she was made for him. They were on the crazy train from the second they met, he claimed, man, woman, and bottle, bound by destiny. The next two days were a blur, but on day three they parked on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, too blasted to go any further, and partied until she passed out. Gus listened to the wind as the sun set. In was night when the storm kicked up. Thunder, hard and deep and rolling for long minutes at a time, came to the van over the still fields around them. There were distant flashes of light, like bombs going off over the horizon. It got closer. The woman was still out cold when Gus climbed up front and looked out. A storm from the bible was headed their way. He watched it get closer, a huge black wall of cloud lit from within by almost continuous rivers of lightning. He woke the blond and she screamed at him for a few minutes, really pissing him off, and then the storm was on them. There were times when the lightning strikes were so loud he blacked out, so bright that he thought he saw her skeleton. They clung to each other and even though both of them were screaming, he couldn’t hear it. It was the most terrifying thing that ever happened to him, and his eyes were so distant and blank when he said that. It went on and on, and eventually he lost consciousness all together. In the morning he climbed out to a bright day. All four tires were flat. He’d picked up the van for two hundred bucks, and most of the value was in the tires. Far in the distance across a field was a farmer driving an old tractor. Gus started walking his way. He was so hungover, so shell shocked, he didn’t really know what else to do. When he was a few hundred feet away the farmer saw him and started screaming, really freaking out. Gus stopped and tried to make out what he was yelling. Snakes, he was screaming. Snakes, snakes, snakes. The storm had ‘pulled ‘em up an’ riled ‘em’. He was screaming for Gus to run to him and get up on the tractor. Gus looked down and his bleary eyes focused, and to his mighty horror, he found he was surrounded, walking through a field of snakes. “I like to levitated,” he said calmly. He ran to the tractor, and they made it safely back to the farm. There, broke once more, he worked for the farmer for a few days until he had a couple bucks, then he hitched to Idaho. I asked him what happened to the blond. Gus didn’t know and he seemed surprised by the question. He never went back to the van. He just left it. Four flat tires, he explained again, like I hadn’t been listening.

If someone wants to make a country song out of this, be my guest. I get 10%. Head on over to my website for cool book news and more magnificent song ideas.http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com