Cholos, Trollops, Lotharios, Broken Bones and Letters Os

The television is on, and it's late in the day.  Ted's father fights his way from the reclining chair he's maintained for twenty years, blind to the dust on the surfaces of the furniture in the room and the small floating bits lit by the sun coming in the windows to the south and west.  He's going for the mason jar of mountain dew he keeps under the sink.  It sits there with the cleanser and scrubbers as if forgotten and forgettable -- you know, in case the law comes 'round.

There are chains on the refrigerators to keep his stores safe from bears and thieves.  He's old enough to be over the chronic lust for women but needs his shits and kicks as much as any old kook with limited education.  "Slim pickins" was how he'd phrase it to Ted.  There were a couple of old mountain hermits he got together with to have a laugh, talk shit, and play cards.  That was largely the extent of his social group, not including the keepers of the general store down the road, to whom he was an outsider.

Folks didn't just move to these mountains.  There was no draw but anonymity and insulation from the greater world.  Those who came rather than those who were born to the mountains were crooks, kooks, and criminals; outlaws who had taken a sort of vow and become hermits,  their time for reflection, kookdom, and magical thinking.

If he had some beauty, I'd say that he was so remote in his house, ways, and outlaw life and days that he wasn't exuberant about Americanism, saw no real allegiance but to the god that granted him his peculiar conscience, and was as wary of anything he saw coming from the television as he was strangers coming up the mountain to his house.  There was a rifle on top of the washer & dryer; this was also to handle bears and thieves and "just in case".

While I stood over a pot, stirring canned chili, Ted's dad unscrewed his mason jar and offered me a whiff.  There was an apple slice floating in the just slightly murky brew.  "Firewater!" he kooked, crimping his neck and stamping his foot, laughing through the contortions.  He offered me a sip and then watched greedily for my reaction.  I considered the strength of the drink as it burned my tongue and throat, then the warmth started in my core.  My reaction was a raising of the eyebrows and a nod of the head.

He smiled broadly and turned around as if to show his friends what had transpired.  "That's my injun boy!  Don't get into this stuff," he warned, "injuns can't handle it.  They go off wild."

I sighed silently and smiled at the grinning crew around the kitchen table, nodding my head and feeling like I should perform some sort of asian bow or salute of deference.  They were, after all, the white men with the gun and the liquor.  I could hear the traffic rushing by on the interstate highway through the trees up the mountain.  It had rained and was dark early, the winter wet carrying that hum down the mountain and into my head.  At worst, I could find this highway and thumb it to civilization.

I didn't need to, but I was in the habit of always considering means of disappearing.  I was a paranoid young man.  I had my reasons, though.  Even today, I don't want to give those options up, but 16 years ago it was all I knew.  Jason should be sleeping.  He was the driver.  He had a license, and it was his car.  Even though he's half blind, to the left, I always felt safe riding with him.  There was a drive when I felt I had to hit myself with a dose of diamorphine in the back seat because he was hurtling along a pacific coastal highway, mixing blindness with escarpment features that looked the perfect setting for a hollywood car cliff death.  It culminated in a personal crisis, and the D was all I had.

Out in the mountains, his crazy jewishness was a consolation and so long as he got some rest, we could be on our way soon.  The chili was heated up, so I offered to share the three can split with the three white men in the kitchen, mentioning that there were two more to feed from the pot.  They declined, appropriately, and I asked Ted to eat and find Jason.  Jason slept through the chili, but had his reserves of jerky, really good jerky.

It was a shack, sort of, this small house in the mountains.