Taking It on the Lam by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Page 13
thrown him out, but I’m not like that. I only steal from the dirty government.
Wondering if this was some sort of test, I told him; “You keep that and don’t show it to anyone else. You can get back to the reservation duck soup. I don’t have as far to go. After you drop me off at my home, just follow the signs to Route 66 West, and stay with it all the way to LA. Then make a left.”
He looked like someone dazed, who was using his last remnants of speed to keep him up after a three day binge. .......... Or maybe happy like a kid on his first Christmas. He started bumping gums and a lot of it wouldn’t have made any sense at all had I not already had been overdosed with bizarre events that evening. The continuation of any type of “unusual” events make them become as null and normal as federal governmental crime.
He said; “Hello my friend! My name is Bit’aa’ni. I am of The Folder Arms People Clan, born for The Red-Running-Into-Water Clan. The Bitter Water Clan are my maternal grandfather's clan and The Tangle People are my paternal grandfather's clan.
.......... You can call me Bitty. I’m Navajo.” He found that funny. I think that he was about medium sized, maybe a bit on the small side and thin. It was hard to tell with him seated.
His kisser had many sun or smile lines and his eyes were green and maniacally wide. His clothing looked more department store than tribal, but that’s common now.
He said that about three months ago he had hitched over to Tulitown from McKinna, home of his Navajo tribe. He had heard that Tuli was a good place to make lettuce, as long as you do not cross with Naashgali Dine’e and his Mescal warriors. I figured that Tuli was Chicago and McKinna was what he called the reservation in Gallup. Naashgali Dine’e and his Mescal warriors sounded like a mystical name for a Chicago street drug gang. I’d later find out that might not be exactly right. It’s possible that Naashgali Dine’e and his Mescal warriors were a group of trickster Navajo spirits, but I’m not sure.
Bitty said that he had worked legitimately in Tuli, got robbed on the road, and then was arrested in the confusion. He was put in County Jail for a few days, and then when he was released he
found the clams he had shown me on that wide strip of land bordering the road in front of but not near County Jail. I didn’t say but thought this sounded like an inside job by the screws which didn’t go as planned.
He said that his people were desperately poor, were sporting lint, and that the men no longer have any elk to hunt, not even a lowly milk snake. In the side-view mirror I noticed lights steadily a hundred feet behind us. At first I didn’t think much of it. Just a little strange with no one else on the road. But, I quickly re-assessed and decided that it was my fed tail, and started to feel uncomfortable. I asked Bitty to slow down to see if they would do the same. He did and so did the tail. In the meantime Bitty kept chinning and staring at his dough, but my mind wasn’t on him anymore. He was spilling about how the Tribe Council had told them about how rich they were going to get if they approved gambling on the reservation. He said that they borrowed the swag from someone he called the Hashke who also did the construction of the facility named; “Inn of the Eighth Age”
and the attached hotel. They also supplied the machines and managed the place.
I thought; “Hashke sounds like the mob and that ‘Eighth Age’
could mean ‘The end,’” like the Biblical references to the unnamed eighth day. But, it’s probably more like Revelation ending
an age, whatever specifics you choose to manifest and insert are really just different names used by different people with slightly different meanings. But, getting back to Bitty’s story, it seems that few people came to the casino. That makes perfect sense to me as it’s in an out of the way location and already had stiff competition from others in Vegas.
He said; “So the Tribe had to make large payments to the Hashke and what they owed kept going up, despite the payments. Many left the reservation, and the ones who stayed started taking white people on hunting and fishing expeditions to pay their tax, depleting the natural food supply.”
My current main thing was that this heap behind us was getting on my nerves. When we slowed down, they did. When we slowed even more they did too. When I told Bitty to turn, it did too. All I’m seeing is that no matter what we do we got these goddam lights blaring in my side view mirror. I know that sometimes people who don’t know the road do this at night, though normally they follow a heap with its lights on. But, now we’d given them five strong hints that we ain’t all that happy about it, but they persisted. Besides, this road is three lanes including both directions and lightly travelled after dark. If you don’t know where you’re going you can get in the middle one and have lots of room for error on either side. So, now I’m thinking more
possibilities than I’m going to go through. But step one was to make a U-turn and see if it continued to follow. When Bitty did, it did, and I was sure that we had gotten into the middle of some kind of shit. When we passed by the tail I couldn’t see who was in the jalopy. I should have told Bitty to flash his brights on them, but didn’t think of it at the time. If it was just a local cop he’d have put on the cherry, pulled us over, and given us a ticket for the U-ey. Now I’m thinking maybe the Navajo is in on it too, as he seems to be paying no attention to the tail, but I can’t figure what or how. Maybe he’s not even a Navajo.
The only thing I know for sure is that the first thing I’ve got to do is lose this heap.
I started to direct Bitty more unswervingly toward the house I shared with Winnie. What I considered odd, the tail either dropped off or turned its lights off. I figured that I was dealing with a small time operation, and either had happened to cheese it into two cases of dementia in one evening or that they had a Plan B after scaring me during Plan A. A small time Plan B
seems much more likely.
Bitty seemed oblivious to the whole thing. I never was one much for that meta stuff; but open to the infinitely spacey. In seeming mid-thought, Bitty’s voice cleared the gas pedal induced engine sounds. In a monotone suggestive of tolerant tedium he
said; “Sedentary mice flammed the focal entry flap to the place the twelve partitioned proditious enormity resided. In nostalgic desperation, the bio of Metal Man peeped its square face toward the six. Not quite, but a start. No new land provides no new respite for the children of the elk. Nor the children of the corn. Nor the children of the spook. Nor the children. It is complete; save the few. They have taken their silence away. Away at last, the folden arms are left, not out of their unchosen choice, but out of innafs long ago planted in the time of the selective giants. They have painted demonic pictures on the fertile green and have made them abundant in their hiding places. This offering in my hands, my pockets, and my nutbean-mound is not the first; yet it is the last gift from the many-named one. The delta it invokes and at the same time dishonors is a coolybrish negroid meeting of the true Tribes. In the least of winds, the waves come in in bold white caps which kiss the shore, then disappear. How much more will be seen in the great wind to come?”
Now that I could no longer see our tail, I was feeling much better Pretending that was a question, I non-answered it by saying; “You Navajos still do a lot of mushrooms? No offense intended, but it does sound like it has been cut with speed.”
“Speed. ....... Speed? ....... Einstein for you. ......
Relativity? ......... Fine, insofar as it goes. Relative to what? A constant. A stillness. Something which doesn’t evolve.
Something which remains the same. Where are such things? In the mans’ breechcloth? For shebonas in the moment of your jingle dress? Metaphor intended. Faith leaped. Truth. Biased. Any other kind available for sale? Conveniently answers its own question.
Which was? Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight? Shaboom. Shaboom?”
“Shaboom. Make the next left, chief.”
After a left and a bit of slurred indecipherables, Bitty was again caught midstream. With a tone indicative of resilience or a tone indicative of a practical acquiescence, he said; “Blue is a color which always was and which always will be. Much like yellow, it is difficult to pinpoint, and therefore even more difficult to draw inferences from. Dangerous. Few are skilled in the proper use of a prism. In the days of Mesa Coyote and his lost tribe, it was the rule that pathos equaled jest.
Brisfallus, brisfallus, you see. It was made two. Look! It’s obvious. To crave one is to crave death. To have reasoning for one is to crave death. To be deluded by the racket business of preachership is to crave the flood. To be communal sectares the land. Me and my family can now make the debt gone. Naashgali
Taking It on the Lam