Atu (1)
Rube

 


   Night has fallen onto the prairie and the cows are restless. Dwarfed by it all, the five of us, Carl, Bill, Gabby, Harlan and I sit here in silence camped up by the fire somewhere near the middle of the giant herd. I can tell that we all feel the subtle strains of fear pulsing outward from the centre in waves, their uneasy mooing, calling out to each other blindly for reassurance in the deep black moonless night. We listen to them call and answer each other from miles off at the other end of the immense Bovine congregation right to just a few feet away from where we are, while we sit in a circle and cook up the roots to eat. We have been following the herd around the plains for months and are all desperately hoping that their seemingly never-ending trek will lead us somewhere with some real food and water � we need to eat something substantial but those bastards just keep on gorging themselves on grass and wandering around in what almost appears to be an aimless fashion. We are hungry, exhausted and group morale is flagging.
   
   One night a few weeks ago when the herd had settled down to sleep the five of us were sitting around the fire eating roasted Datura root, in a roundabout fashion Carl started to talk and inferred with a couple of comments and remarks his doubt that the cows knew where they were going at all, and after a while of listening to it and with a slow rage coming to the boil I just snapped: I stood up in a shot, flung my copy of the I Ch�ing in his face and wailed down on him with a flurry of fists. When he was curled up and covering his head with his hands to block the blows and I paused to shout down at him: �Fuck it Carl, we�re Cow-Boys, Goddam it! This is what we do!� I looked around and everyone seemed really upset that I was going back on my word and giving Carl a good beating again but he is such a wet blanket.

   The one most memorable example of Carl�s lack of team-spirit is the time when Cody got hit by the Yellow fever � it was Carl who was the first to object to my idea that we might have to eat the body. Carl said he wouldn�t do it because he thought the fever might be catching and I told him that shit, that�s not how it works � you don�t catch it from eating it � I told him about the time I met some guy at a bus-stop who kept on telling me that if you�ve eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms a couple of times the fungus eats into your face � I can see you�ve done �em, just look at your face he was saying to me which was total bullshit, he was saying that to everybody anyways � or the time Gabby babbled on about farts being molecules of faecal matter that travel on the air just because someone farted and her mouth was open and she was worried that she got some in her mouth and I had to explain to her that what she was smelling was Methane, not microscopic particles of shit travelling in the air � I had to explain that to her for something like three hours until she believed me � anyway Carl got his way and we didn�t eat Cody in the end, we just left him in a ditch which was a damned waste if you ask me but we had to follow the herd anyways because they had started moving again and besides that we didn�t really have the time to cut him up. Also at that point technically he wasn�t dead; so it became a moral issue that would be debated and extrapolated upon ad infinitum by Carl and Harlan which I chose to avoid.
 
   So that night last week, or it could have been sooner, I don�t know � I was standing over Carl pointing down into his face giving him a real earful saying �You know just like me that you couldn�t do a 9-5 job like everybody else cos� we got cows in our blood; you and I and Harlan, Bill and Gabby � and we all hear them except Bill and although a lot of the time they aren�t really speaking about anything relevant per se � we can still hear them, which is a damn sight more than any other fucker out there in the rat-race!� That shut the ignoble prick up; he got up sheepishly while avoiding my piercing gaze, wiped the dirt off his pants, rubbed his face and spat into the fire muttering something about how �Gary never treated him that way� but I cut him short saying that �Gary�s dead now and besides we all get our orders from the herd anyways.� And that shut him up again real nice.

   But tonight is strange. No stars, no moon. Carl isn�t talking, so no fighting. We can tell that the herd sense the approaching storm. We saw the clouds earlier in the day and we felt the wind. In addition to that, they were talking on weather-related issues but there was something about the way they are being so fucking ambiguous about it makes me think that there is more to it than just a simple storm. To be honest I have been gripped by a feeling of dread all day and although I never mentioned a thing to the others it has crossed my mind that this could be the big one.
   
   Although there is absolutely no scientific evidence to back it up, there is a well-known rumour amongst cow-boys that once every few years out here on the plains there comes a storm of such magnitude and force � truly Mother Nature in all her menstrual mad raging glory � an event so terrible and awesome that it confounds the minds of men and drives them completely mad to witness first-hand such a wonder of destruction and chaos like as if God himself was rubbing one out down on earth and this event has come to be known as �The Big One�, an event that I had come to learn of through my psychic connection with the alpha-mediums of the herd and this very same knowledge, the innate awareness of arguably the most terrifying and brutal event that occurs on this planet of our that is indelibly imprinted on every cow in the Alpha Terran Unit�s instinctual memory just like ancient migration routes are imprinted on the psyche of that other highly psychic animal the wild Kangaroo: It is such an enormously influential event in the evolution of the cow species that every one of them possess a shockingly accurate awareness of the time of its impending arrival, an instinct passed down hereditarily to every cow the whole world round � even the non-psychic domestic variety that are farmed and sometimes taught to perform tricks in travelling circuses who always make me remember my days in the abattoir in Pasadena that now feel like moments from another lifetime or like they were vague memories of a story from some picture-book that I had read when I was a child: that is when I first noticed that, as calm as they appear cows always seem to have a look of abject horror in their bulging eyes and I soon got to wondering why these apparently quite aloof and self-involved creatures had a tendency to jolt and scatter at even the most feeble of hand-claps and shudder and hiss at even the most flippant of gestures � well to any person who like me was kept up nights obsessing and fantasizing about cows can say that knowing what I know now, even though I wish it were not true and that I would be made the happiest man in the world to say that I was in fact a bare-faced liar and that God willing and also by the grace of nature herself that if I ever get back to civilization I would be able to tell those folk who I knew back then and who like me, craved to unravel the mystery of these elusive and � I am the first to admit quite seductive � creatures and find out exactly what it is that makes the Bovidae family � who actually seem quite obnoxious until you really get to know them � get all worked up by even the most littlest of things is the fact that all cows; be they civilized or running free in the wild; Jersey milk-cows, American Longhorn Bull-cows, Eritrean burrowing mole-cows or Antarctic snow-cows are all on constant guard, awaiting the recurrence of that belief-defying event that only the Bovine consciousness � inarguably the most docile and trusting mind of all living creatures due to its unique mix of confused tenacity, inherent Taoist sensibility, stupidity and the tendency to forget what it was doing just a moment ago that makes them the only living animal in the whole history of living animals ever to exist on this planet which has the ability to witness without permanently losing all capacity for rational thought or falling dead right there on the spot that huge mother of all massive mind-blowing cluster-fucks of a storm � the very one that was bearing down on us right now: The Big One.

   I wake up in the morning to a hot sun and bright blue sky. We saddle up to follow the cows that are moving South West: they had decided earlier in the day to cross a prohibitive desert-like flat land, a sprawling eternity of desolate hard-cracked earth the colour of autumn wheat on which the thousands of hooves make a constant rumbling against the hot stagnant air. It is a sound so viscerally overwhelming that I squeeze my eyes closed and hold my head in my hands involuntarily imagining that I am on the precipice of a giant boiling waterfall � the kind of sound that you can feel right down from your groin that works skyward through your body playing every one of your chakras on the way up like you were a rainbow-colored xylophone and then bursts out of the top of your head with a dizzying euphoric reverberation shaking all sense and sight and every memory you ever had out with it and scattering them out into the ether, dissolving, melting, shattering and only the most persistent ones managing to escape the reckoning by crawling under a rock or bush to hide and die slowly in the shade. I cast my eye out to the right so I can absorb panoramically the full breadth of the cream-colored herd moving across the plain and take in the sheer enormity of them as they move across the barren earth. � there are over Nine Hundred members for sure.
I become aware of a fast tattoo of lighter hooves from behind me and all at once Harlan rides up on my left and slows his horse to my pace with a tug of the reigns.

�Whoa boy,� He says. The sun makes him wince so as he turns to talk to me he has to shade his eyes with his free hand.
   �Gabby�s gone lookin� for a Post Office. Says she gotta send a letter to a tenant down there who�s behind in his payments. She said South Dakota or somethin�.�

�What?� I had no idea what Harlan was talking about.
   
�Mowbridge South Dakota.� Harlan turns away briefly because facing the sun is making his eyes sting and water.
  
 �You say she�s gone to look for a Post-Office?! To send a Goddamn letter?!�

   �Yep. I thought I�d just letcha know.�

   �Jesus, Harlan! That stupid b- there�s no goddamned Post-Office anywhere for miles! We haven�t been
    near a town for months!� What the hell was Gabby thinking of? But disturbing as it is to admit, this kind of problem and confusion has become commonplace for us the whole trip so far.

   It�s all the cursed Datura Stramonium that we have to eat � it�s pretty much the only plant that grows here and if you eat enough of it the plant can be quite nutritious but unfortunately as we learned through Bill, who is in a permanent state of usually rather aggressive psychosis without taking any drug (so much so that Datura doesn�t seem to affect him at all) that the plant has enormously powerful hallucinogenic properties on the human mind once ingested due to a high concentration of scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine. Just one example of the troubles for instance was that a week ago Carl became aware that he was being followed by himself. According to Carl, who was born stupid, his other self would �duck and hide out of view� whenever he looked behind himself to confront himself but he would still be able to catch a fleeting glimpse of him before he disappeared, that whole doppelganger riff � eventually I grew tired of the whole thing and told the real Carl that his drug induced toxic-psychotic episode was drawn-out and boring and I shot him in the arm. Almost immediately and to our great relief his other self gave up on the stalking. (I personally can think of nothing worse than having two Carls around) Carl warns us that every other day or so he � the �other� Carl � still pops up for a brief moment occasionally. We kept on eating the Datura because I had expected us to build up some sort of tolerance to it after a while but it�s been six months and our fragile state of mind is only getting more unstable.

   I shake my head and begin scanning the flats for a sign of Gabby. I suddenly feel anxious and insecure, I want to hit someone but Carl is nowhere nearby as far as I can see.
   �She doesn�t even own any property, Harlan!� I say without turning to face him. Harlan begins to get uneasy, fussing with his reigns and looking around. He hates it when I shout at him.
   
�Lissn� a me, she�s lettin it while payin� off the mortgage.�

�Letting it while paying the mortgage.�

�An� if the tenant don�t pay she�s responsible to the bank. Ah don�t know anything about her fa-nancial situation at the moment but it can�t be nothin� but trouble if she had to go so bad.�

I reflected in agreement and with mild distaste how the banks in the North can be so unremittingly demanding �
�That�s why I never got into the buy-to-let game. I knew a guy from a bar I used to go to who would always talk about �acquiring property� and shit like that � like it was a sure thing. It pissed me off the way he used to hammer on about it all the time � I mean, having an asset is fine so long as � �
 I suddenly remember what I am doing. �Shit, Harlan! Gabby!�
   
�Yeaaah � like I wuz sayin�, she was talking about South Da��

�There isn�t any goddamn property! Don�t you get it man � She�s completely lost it and headed god only knows where ��
This is a complete disaster. That idiot Gabby is thinking she is letting property in Mowbridge of all places � that�s impossible, she�s from Michigan for Christ sake� and Harlan is useless, you could tell him anything and he�d believe it.
�Okay, okay which direction did she go?�

�Uh,� Harlan looks around to the left and then to the right. �You know, I made a lot of turns riding
   over here.�

 �Christ.� The sun was really strong. It was coming up close to midday and there wasn�t a damn cloud in sight. Gabby wasn�t safe on her own in this heat and in that state.

   �Never mind. Did she ride through the herd or away from the herd? I�m on this side of the herd and I didn�t see her come this way.�
Harlan stares intently into his thoughts and I can see him stirring his memories from the shambles of his mind. �She went�� He squeezes the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger for what feels like a long while � I clear my throat a couple of times�more time passes, my horse shuffles about on the spot. I peer in and look at him � Harlan doesn�t budge, he just sits there like a statue holding his face. I lean back and out of boredom check the chamber of my gun: I have 5 bullets. If it comes to it, I can shoot Carl 5 times. Suddenly Harlan turns up to us and speaks one word as if he were an oracle:
   �Perpendicular��
   �Perpendicular?� I say, screwing my face a little.
   �Perpendicular.� He nods firmly. �That way.� he gestures to the right without looking away from me.
So without having a clear idea of which direction perpendicular is in relation to myself and with no time to ridicule him I decide to take a risk and just ride my horse in the direction Harlan is pointing. It is about Eleven O�clock in the morning and judging by the position of the sun I estimate that the direction he is pointing is roughly North West.

   Harlan is very much like an extremely tall bearded child � a gentle person who holds some unspoken reserve at some unknown inner boundary, but so passive and peaceful that if someone was to cross that line one would not know it for a long time. You would have had to have known him for a long time to be able to interpret his moods and even then you would only be able to vaguely discern that he was in what appeared to be some sort of �mild sulk�. You would then have to apologize in some round-about way without actually saying the word �sorry� as so not to draw attention to the fact that anything displeased him at all. The very thought of getting angry scared and embarrassed him. I would say that if there were any of us that truly understood the cows it was Harlan; he was sympathetic to a fault and if he didn�t in his countenance resemble a giant bird I would have said he was a cow; the cows �tolerated� Gabby, Carl and myself � our noisy clanking and whirring minds disturbed their Zen-like composure no matter how hard we tried to be inwardly peaceful but Harlan�s thoughts flowed so softly and quietly like a gentle stream that he could walk freely in and amongst them without a single cow so much as flapping an ear.

   In a frantic gallop and flurry of whipping I pass the back end of the herd on my left where the cows are discussing what Canadian Blue tastes like � a favourite permutation on the unceasing theme of grass which can be surprisingly rich as could the consideration of any subject under the mental kaleidoscope of the Bovinae. I ride my horse hard and fast in as much a perpendicular fashion as I can estimate without a compass or sense of direction and soon I see about a kilometre ahead of me rise a short but immediate incline that stretches the whole width the visible horizon making me think that this dead arid flat plain is the floor of a three meter-shallow but unimaginably wide crater. I ride towards the wall, hoping that this is the way that Gabby had come � I reason that since we were under the influence of the same intoxicant we would probably make similar choices.

   She is an attractive woman to be sure but when I first met Gabby I instantly noticed that she was different: Tough. Cowboy though. Most women wear dresses but for practical reasons Gabby dressed like I did: shotgun chaps, a Stetson, leather gloves and the item that was most important to her: her cowboy boots. They were In Gabby�s case the only item she has never replaced for sentimental reasons � and she is a woman who has shot three of her own horses. They were a really cool pair of embroidered, spurred Black-and-Beige leather boots she had tailor-made for her by a Thai shoe-maker in Bangkok while she was working out in in the Far East as a �towel girl� � I don�t know what that means, she didn�t explain it � It was through some agency which sounded seedy to me, she talked very vaguely on how they operated but I got a strong impression that they were not paying taxes. She looked great but was really no reason for her to have dressed like that as she was doing admin work for a landscaping company. Thankfully, although she dressed like a cow-boy she didn�t talk with a faux 19 and early 20th century South American patois � �thassa raaght boss� and �Like a cow-pat on a hot day� � like all other cow-people did at the time, it was so annoying � I don�t know if they still do. Back then her hair smelled nice like all the other women, like shampoo � being a cowboy I don�t pay attention to the details of women�s hair or their features and so on � but her eyes are this colour � a very light translucent green that makes me imagine two round shallow pools with fish swimming in them. She washed regularly back then too, I think she even flossed. But there was something rough and gritty about her. I wouldn�t call it �masculine� � not to her face � I�d say she had a �strong presence� to her face. If I were to be completely honest I wouldn�t talk about it at all to her face, ever. The first conversation I had with was when I met her when I did some sub-contracting work for the landscaping company she was working for.

   Angrily I walked up the pea-shingle pathway under the hot California sun up to the large portable office on the site and noticed that there was a horse strapped up with saddle and reigns standing outside tied to a post. It was an old Brown Abyssinian. Coincidentally I was planning on buying a horse myself soon, to match my outfit and I wondered who this one belonged to. A little less angry and now slightly curious I opened the door, knowing that inside, my boss would be just plain angry.
I opened the door and in the open-plan office I found Tony sat at the desk closest to me on the left who swivelled round when I came in. There was a woman with a cowboy hat on sat at the other desk in the darker far top left of the room. I noticed that she had her boots up on the desk and that the room smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. She didn�t even turn her head to look at me.
�What the hell?� I said to Tony .

�What went wrong? You should have been back seven hour ago!�

�You gave me the wrong damned directions, that�s what�s wrong. Radcliffe wasn�t there. He was calling me on your goddamn smartphone while I was trying to look on the GPS map to find my way on the fucking number 10 highway off Orange freeway, so I got lost and I had to pull off somewhere-�

�The number 10? Where the hell did you go?�
The office phones started ringing. For some reason a few weeks ago Tony had installed a phone on each of the desks and when the office got a call they rang simultaneously. It very was annoying.


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�Well I got onto the wrong damn lane when I got back on the motorway and I ended up east, in San Bernadino.�

�FUCKING SAN BERNADINO?!�

 �That�s why I had to put diesel in � Twenty bucks, here�s the receipt � Tony, who�s horse is that outside and why is it so smoky in here?�

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�I can�t believe you went all the way to san Bernadino, the job was in Gledale � you went 20 miles in the wrong direction!� I looked at him. Tony looked truly agitated; not only angry but particularly on edge. I looked at the woman. I noted her clothing, the hat, the boots. She was picking under her nails with a small knife while smoking a cigarette that hung from her mouth. A bottle of whiskey was on her desk, as well as an ashtray full of cigarette butts.

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�It was a complicated route. Uh, is somebody going to get that?� I pointed at the sound of the phone, turning back to Tony.

�Compli � Christ Rueben it was literally round the corner.� My boss was a fool. His use of language is like that of a teenager. Next he�ll be telling me that it�s �ironic� that they gave me the wrong directions. I sighed:

 

 

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