nerves.” In one gulp he put back the entire glass of whiskey. He grabbed the knife, cut out a giant wad of gauze and saturated it with the booze.
“Ready, set—” In a flash the gauze stung my forehead. He pulled it away and scrutinized his work, then jammed the glass into my hand and stated, “As your Captain I command you to take four of these per hour. Starting now!”
I vaguely remembered promising Mona I’d lay off the booze, but the memory was hazy enough to ignore. I took his advice and put it back. He cut off another strip of the gauze and wrapped it around the top of my head. Pondering the wrapping, he blurted, “Shit—we need the healing stuff of Chief Rain-In-the-Face.” He poured another glass for us both, and roved across the room to a closet, where he rummaged through a bunch of miscellaneous stuff. “Alas!” he sauntered back and held up a feather. He tucked it into the wrapping on my head, put back his drink and declared, “Captain Stockton T. Jager does it again!”
Five shots later I was “feeling no pain.”
In fact, I wasn’t feeling much of anything.
My host had been scribbling on random sheets of paper and feeding them into his fax machine, rambling things like “take that you pinko bastard!”
He glanced over at me, examined the almost emptied bottle and declared, “Man—you gotta be black-ops. Anyone that dares fuck with you had better fly one way, because they are not coming back!”
He brandished a revolver pistol from his desk drawer, opened the chamber, spun it and clicked it shut. His fax machine began spitting out a message, prompting my host—the good Captain Jager—to yell out “evasive maneuver!” whereupon he tumbled over, took aim and unloaded three rounds into the machine, annihilating it. He grabbed the sheet of paper, scrutinized it and set it ablaze using a Zippo lighter, then lit his cigarette via the flaming document prior to stomping it out. He surveyed the damage like a military field commander after a battle.
“Damned collateral damage,” he grunted, sitting down across from me and pouring another round. “What’s the score—what’s your story?”
“Uhhh, I was headed toward an old friend’s and I thought I’d take a short cut—and now here I am.”
“Here indeed.” He stubbed the burned down cigarette into the already full ashtray and poked a fresh cigarette into his holder, lighting it. “That’s the ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where.’ I need the ‘why’ and particularly the ‘who’ dammit!”
What the hell was this maniac getting at? This was a question I wasn’t sure I could fully answer.
“Who? I am Eddie Bikaver, a shitty writer from Los Angeles who seems to be suffering from a schizotemporalistic condition.” I paused. “And possibly some varying degrees of psychosis, on top of alcoholism and probably a few other things they have either not figured out or invented yet.”
He nodded, pushing his goggles up to his wrinkled forehead.
“At one point I was a bum, and I rolled with this character named Fillono, who moved out this way and founded some sort of resort art community. The reason why—”
“Whynot!” he interrupted.
“Eh—yeah—I suppose so. Why not. Nothing better to do.”
“No you rube! ‘Whynot’ is the name of the goddamned resort town Fred Fillono runs. Yeah, it’s a hoot. It’s what you’d get if you tossed 1984 and Aspen, Colorado into a blender. I was one shitsucking vote from becoming sheriff of that place. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to vote. Mescaline is a helluva drug!”
The rain began to blink on the cabin roof. My buzz was in full effect.
THE BOOZE had taken hold, Jager was attempting to light a fire in his fireplace while I eased back, taking in the mountain evening air and listening to the millions of pellets of water frolicking, after their long skydive from the mothership storm cloud, off the roof of the Captain’s cabin. I pondered the point of view of one of those
“Ready, set—” In a flash the gauze stung my forehead. He pulled it away and scrutinized his work, then jammed the glass into my hand and stated, “As your Captain I command you to take four of these per hour. Starting now!”
I vaguely remembered promising Mona I’d lay off the booze, but the memory was hazy enough to ignore. I took his advice and put it back. He cut off another strip of the gauze and wrapped it around the top of my head. Pondering the wrapping, he blurted, “Shit—we need the healing stuff of Chief Rain-In-the-Face.” He poured another glass for us both, and roved across the room to a closet, where he rummaged through a bunch of miscellaneous stuff. “Alas!” he sauntered back and held up a feather. He tucked it into the wrapping on my head, put back his drink and declared, “Captain Stockton T. Jager does it again!”
Five shots later I was “feeling no pain.”
In fact, I wasn’t feeling much of anything.
My host had been scribbling on random sheets of paper and feeding them into his fax machine, rambling things like “take that you pinko bastard!”
He glanced over at me, examined the almost emptied bottle and declared, “Man—you gotta be black-ops. Anyone that dares fuck with you had better fly one way, because they are not coming back!”
He brandished a revolver pistol from his desk drawer, opened the chamber, spun it and clicked it shut. His fax machine began spitting out a message, prompting my host—the good Captain Jager—to yell out “evasive maneuver!” whereupon he tumbled over, took aim and unloaded three rounds into the machine, annihilating it. He grabbed the sheet of paper, scrutinized it and set it ablaze using a Zippo lighter, then lit his cigarette via the flaming document prior to stomping it out. He surveyed the damage like a military field commander after a battle.
“Damned collateral damage,” he grunted, sitting down across from me and pouring another round. “What’s the score—what’s your story?”
“Uhhh, I was headed toward an old friend’s and I thought I’d take a short cut—and now here I am.”
“Here indeed.” He stubbed the burned down cigarette into the already full ashtray and poked a fresh cigarette into his holder, lighting it. “That’s the ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where.’ I need the ‘why’ and particularly the ‘who’ dammit!”
What the hell was this maniac getting at? This was a question I wasn’t sure I could fully answer.
“Who? I am Eddie Bikaver, a shitty writer from Los Angeles who seems to be suffering from a schizotemporalistic condition.” I paused. “And possibly some varying degrees of psychosis, on top of alcoholism and probably a few other things they have either not figured out or invented yet.”
He nodded, pushing his goggles up to his wrinkled forehead.
“At one point I was a bum, and I rolled with this character named Fillono, who moved out this way and founded some sort of resort art community. The reason why—”
“Whynot!” he interrupted.
“Eh—yeah—I suppose so. Why not. Nothing better to do.”
“No you rube! ‘Whynot’ is the name of the goddamned resort town Fred Fillono runs. Yeah, it’s a hoot. It’s what you’d get if you tossed 1984 and Aspen, Colorado into a blender. I was one shitsucking vote from becoming sheriff of that place. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to vote. Mescaline is a helluva drug!”
The rain began to blink on the cabin roof. My buzz was in full effect.
THE BOOZE had taken hold, Jager was attempting to light a fire in his fireplace while I eased back, taking in the mountain evening air and listening to the millions of pellets of water frolicking, after their long skydive from the mothership storm cloud, off the roof of the Captain’s cabin. I pondered the point of view of one of those
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