Marisi
Ornstein
The sun’s not yet risen over the McCarty Homestead, a ranch so vast that it’s designated its own Territory, even though it’s not listed on any map.
A crisp dawn wind curls around an old and crooked horse post that Henry McCarty erected in 1883, the day he made his first million and exactly two years after Pat Garrett chose not to propel a bullet through his heart.
Will McCarty arrives at his cabin, ties his Valarosa to his ancestor’s post.
Will’s face and hands are deeply weathered.
He appears to be thirty-five, maybe forty-five, except for when he smiles, he seems twenty-two.
He’s wearing ravaged Levi’s Five-O-Ones, Red Wing engineer boots, an ancient Levi’s denim jacket with the collar up, and a threadbare orange bandanna around his neck.
A scuffed silver skull ring lives on his wedding ring finger.
His eyes are sharp and alert, taking in everything within his scope with the precision of a wild animal.
It’s difficult to get him into focus, he’s in a perpetual state of shimmering movement, even while stationary.
He tosses his horse a carrot that’s chewed and swallowed on the fly and leans against his old International semi cab, checking the timing of the sunrise against his watch.
Scratch walks from the barn and hands Will a thermos of coffee.
Will runs his hand over his Valarosa’s mane, “She’s favoring her left fore.”
He runs his hand down the horse’s chest to her leg and gently squeezes the lower tendon. She allows Will to lift her left front hoof, which he secures between his knees, searching for the source of the pain, “Could be a quill.”
“Go clean up, I’ll take a look.” Scratch walks the Valarosa towards the barn.
Will stomps the cuffs of his Levi’s down over his boots, sits on his porch and rolls the cuffs down, emptying them of sand and pebbles.
He watches a family of ducks strutting through the morning dew, as if they’re better than all the other birds. Will wonders what they talk about, and if they’re smart, and if they have their own folklore and code of ethics.
And if they do have their own code, do all the birds abide by the same code or does every bird have its own unique morals? He thought about how he’d go about teaching a raven or a bluebird how to do math, like a chicken.
Will’s eyes drift to a group of straggling Mermaids, sex workers of all genres, walking back to their cabins from the on-site roadhouse and twenty four hour diner, carrying their high heels after a long Saturday night.
Over a hundred semi cab generators buzz and rumble in the gravel parking lot outside the roadhouse, the drivers asleep inside.
Will wonders about how each cab is unique to itself, with its own colors, its own flash and bling, with lights of bright orange, yellow, red, blue, purple and green bouncing from the aluminum trailers, shining refracted through the foggy haze.
Will catches the scent of diesel intertwined with dawn in the wilds of New Mexico and breathes it in as deep as it’ll go.
He hears the sound of a woman weeping and his head drops.
The weeping continues, even louder, and it’s coming from the cabin next door to his.
He gets up off his porch, grabs an axe, walks to a pile of wood and starts chopping. His velocity grows into a rampage until he runs out of wood.
Will uses what’s left of his strength to throw the axe solidly into a tall oak tree thirty feet away, catches his breath, and walks towards the weeping.
He peers down through the bathroom window to find a woman dressed in torn couture, a Van Cleef & Arpels pendant around her neck, laying happily in an empty claw foot tub, wrapped up in an electric green furry blanket, her face bloodied, one black eye, a split lip, make-up running, and she’s holding tight to an empty bottle of Veuve Clicquot Yellowboam, singing rhythmic tones in an unbearably high pitch that sounds like weeping.
Will knocks on the window frame, “Morning, Veera.”
Her eyes light up, “Willie, I’m out of champagne.”
Will goes around to the front door and enters Veera’s cabin, the interior of which is impeccably designed in a mixture of a back alley opium den and Architectural Digest.
He plops down on the white floppy couch, exhausted, and throws his feet up onto the polished steel coffee table, but the polished steel coffee table shatters into a million pieces, like glass.
From the bathroom, Veera screams, “No!”
Will brushes the glass from his boots and dungarees, “Sorry.”
Veera shouts, “Do not tell me that was my Marcel Latrice glass coffee table that just exploded.”
“I thought it was metal.”
“It’s supposed to look like metal, it’s a piece of art, you fucking moron!”
“It’s your fault, having a coffee table that isn’t what it seems to be.”
“Fuck you.”
She begins to sob, “I loved that table. I loved it, I loved it, I loved, loved, loved that table.” She plays with her nose, “I think my nose is broke again.”
Will gets up off the couch and pokes his head into the bathroom. Veera covers her face, “I’ve got blood all over my face, it won’t come off.”
“I just got back from riding, gonna get cleaned up.”
“Clean me up first.”
Will heads towards the door, “Outside. Five minutes. We’re going for a ride.”
“No.”
“Out front in five.” Will purposely steps on some glass on his way out.
“You are so not nice, William.”
An hour and twenty minutes later, Will goes back inside to find Veera asleep in her bed. He lifts the sheet and rolls her awake. She’s got fur from the blanket glued to the dried blood on the side of her face, “Get this blood off my face.”
“I’ll get you a towel.”
Veera checks her face in a Chanel make up mirror, “Blood never dries, it just gets more and more sticky.”
Will cleans Veera’s face with a warm wet towel, “Who’d you mess with this time?”
Veera puts her hand on Will’s and begins to cry, “Wasn’t my fault. Her man threw me a wiggly eyeball and she rushed me, blindsided me. We went at it pretty good and we made up right away. We’re fast friends, she’s the best.”
She roughly wipes away her tears, “Oh, Willie, I’m a bad fuckin person.”
He wipes off the last of her running make-up, “You ain’t so bad, just a little wild, that’s all.”
“Can’t help it.” She falls asleep.
Will picks Veera up in her furry blanket and carries her outside to the International, gently laying her onto the passenger seat. He tenderly kisses her forehead and buckles her up, tucking her into her blanket.
Veera sleepily smiles, “You’re a very good big brother.”
“Thank you. Fall asleep.”
Will settles behind the wheel, wakes the ignition, throws it into gear and takes off, digging up gravel.
Hours into their ride, Veera stares into the reflection of clouds on the windshield, “Problem is, I drink too many variations of the various liquids that I drink.”
Will shoots her a glare, “What the fuck does that mean?”
Veera sighs, “I’m gonna stick with Peyote, Mezcal, juice and water from now on. And, hash. Keep it simple and natural.”
She packs hash into an ornate lacquer pipe, “Let’s hit Vegas, have some fun.”
“I’m never going to Vegas with you again.” He leans into the gas pedal and the engine freaks out.
She puts her hand against Will’s cheek, “Thanks for lookin out for me.”
“Fall asleep.”
“I’m gonna fall asleep. Hold my hand so I don’t get lost.”
He takes his little sister’s hand and glances down to his filthy dungarees, Veera’s bloodied clothes, and realizes he’s got no money, no wallet and no options. He decides to open the ever-flowing faucet in his mind that invites the more iconoclastic ideas to flow, and, sure enough, twenty minutes down the road, a monolithic shopping center appears, and Will takes the exit.
He finds a spot in the lot and lifts Veera out of the cab, furry blanket and all, and carries her through the front doors of the cavernous super-store, where he is frozen in his boots by the ridiculous enormity of the place.
Veera perks up in his arms, “Willie, we’re in the world of fuckin everything!”
She wiggles from Will’s arms and runs deep into the store with her green furry blanket flowing behind her. She snatches bug-eyed sunglasses off a rack, and a bright red life-sized stuffed bear from a display area, and heads to the lawn furniture, where she curls up and falls asleep in a hammock, snoring like crazy, as shoppers congregate around her.
Will decides to leave Veera to her own journey and uses the opportunity to gather essentials like white cotton tees and raw Five-O-Ones, which he somehow scores, and tucks up under his own ancient Levi’s jacket.
In Veera’s dreamy mind, blood thick aqua blue water fills the lagoon, bathing her body under tall Miami Beach coconut trees, as fairy hummingbirds sail around her, combing her long hair with their soothing electric fingers. She stands and grows until she is tall enough to pluck twelve coconuts and promptly eats them, like jellybeans, each bean, a brand new taste.
Her clothes melt away and a burst of red, blue, green and yellow phosphorus light crystals float her into the sky, flying through the purple clouds, into the darkness of an ocean storm.
The stars hum and the vibration of their humming makes the tip of her nose tickle, as she lands in a deafening wildflower field on a Swiss hillside and rolls down the hill, the phosphorous floating all around her, and the grass is laughing, as she slides into a deep turquoise lagoon, where thousands of tiny flying dolphins sail her into a strobe lit cave where Robert Plant is singing Going to California, while Jimmy Page drapes her like liquid and strums her back.
Veera takes a breath and swims underwater, inside the music, until she reaches a coral reef where yellow orange snake sharks interweave like flames, drifting in with the scent of blueberry muffins cooking in her Mama’s oven.
She drifts through the curtains in her Mama’s kitchen and hovers near the ceiling, watching herself at the table wearing a red and white checkered dress with ribbons tying her long curls back, her eyes wide, as the oven opens and her Mama’s smiling face turns towards her with a platter of fresh muffins with blueberries oozing, and they aren’t even too hot to pop into her mouth.
Her Mama picks her up, brushes her cheek against hers and carries her to the fair, where they eat cotton candy and ride a ferris wheel, her Mama’s warm hand still smelling of blueberries and pure love.
She cuddles into her Mama’s arms, her face buried in her Mama’s hair, her legs wrapped around her Mama’s waist.
And the horse they’re riding gallops way too fast and high up over the fair, above the farms and the fields, and the coconut trees that grow and bend and crack from the rogue wind come blowing in from every direction. And the tea cups explode, and the ground implodes, and the thunder pounds in her gut, and she rises through the clouds faster now, strapped to the beak of a red hot rocket of a pirate ship pulling a white hot freight train up through a savage tornado’s core.
Veera wakes with a booming guttural yell that frightens even her, startling the mesmerized shoppers who have been watching her sleep, filming her with their mobile devices.
She takes in the crowd and stands like a diva to greet them.
Shortly after, Will finds Veera well into her performance of a grotesquely slow conceptual dance for the large crowd of astonished shoppers.
The bulge of pre-stolen items in Will’s jacket is so obvious that a security guard walks over and stands next to him, watching Veera’s performance.
Will turns to the guard, “That’s my sister.”
The guard looks at him, “Did you find everything you need?”
“Yes.”
“Get your sister out of this store, you can keep whatever you got stuffed up under your jacket.”
“Yeah?”
He turns to Will, “Cool?”
“Enthuzimuzzy.”
“What?”
Will nods, “Cool.”
He begins to applaud loudly and the crowd joins in. Veera elaborately bows and waves.
Will leads her away and the security guard walks them through the ringing alarm bells and out the door, where Will settles Veera on a low brick wall.
A shopper hands Veera a bottle of water and steals a selfie and, soon, a selfie line forms.
The guard kneels down to Veera, “You okay? You safe?”
Veera peers at him through strands of hair matted with dried blood, “You’re kind to ask, but I’m riding with Will McCarty, man. I’m the safest woman on this whole fucked up planet.”
The guard’s eyes widen as he nearly snaps his neck, turning to Will, “Are you Will McCarty?”
Will quickly picks Veera up and walks briskly into the lot.
The guard tags behind, “Hey, you really Will McCarty?”
Will walks faster.
“I thought you was a myth, like John Henry.”
“John Henry ain’t a myth, man.”
Will is now running with Veera’s head bopping on his shoulder, “You got trouble on line. Somebody fainted.”
The guard turns to look at the line, and when he turns back, Will is nowhere to be found.
He feels the vibration of the International’s engine erupting before hearing it.
The monster of a semi blasts a long burst from the air horn, kicking up a cloud of melting rubber, and hits the road, and the security guard stands waving, as a freezing wind tumbles down over the mountains, bringing with it the first blizzard of the season in its wake.
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