The world was ruined long before I got here. Everything known had become unknown. Maps no longer worked or made any sense, GPS… all but useless. And history… well, history had long gone past, fiction now, stories of old, of how the world had changed in a day, in an hour, between one minute and the next. Places where nothing existed before, now entire landscapes had spread, like a blight or cancer. Truth be told, the world had grown by leaps and bounds, mountains, plains, forests, all appearing almost overnight- and in their wake, madness- my only luck was being born a quarter of a century after the fact…

  But it was long ago and it was far away, oh God it seems so very far, and if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car…

  (1993) Album notes for Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell by Meat Loaf [booklet]. Virgin (CDV2710 - 7243 8 39067 27)

  It was obvious from the stench that the animal had been dead for at least a week, distended abdomen, matted brown fur, riotous feeding frenzy of flies playing tickle and tease with the foxtail lining the ditch.

  In the end he chose to steer clear.

  High overhead the sun, like a hammer, beat down upon the highway, the countryside, life in general. It had been ninety degrees plus for more than a month now, and it looked like today would be more of the same. There was no breeze to speak of, only cloudless sky- as he expected. Over his shoulder, dual strips of asphalt bled off into the distance, motionless except for the expected watery haze. Before him lay much of the same, which is why he had taken the off-ramp in the first place, he needed to find someplace else, someplace different, than where he had been before.

  With his world on his shoulder and what remained at his back, he continued to shuffle west, one dusty footstep after another.

  ‘No one ever said it was going to be easy, or this hot.’ But what could he really do about it other than complain. “I guess I could always break into some sort of rain dance…?” He began. But one look at the sky said no, deadpan and steel blue with not a cloud in sight.

  It would take a hell of a lot more than a rain dance to break the current drought. It would take a miracle.

  Having reached the top of the off ramp it was time to make a decision. He could cross the road before him and return to the highway below, in essence continuing his previous journey into the sun, which, at the moment was the direction his shadow seemed to be leaning towards- hang a right and head towards more of the same low rolling hills he had previously traversed, or veer left towards the town of Summersville, whose sign said six hundred plus souls.

  Despite the promise of his water running out, judging from the hollow slosh hanging from his left shoulder, the last thing he needed was to run into people. He remembered what happened the last time that occurred, ‘bad days’ as he put it, ‘bad days ending in gunfire.’

  And he really didn’t need any more gunfire.

  “Looks like I’ll be taking a right after all.” He said.

  An hour later found the highway all but swallowed up in the hills he had just entered. In an effort to escape the heat his shadow had all but fled, the sun now stood high overhead. He had stopped only once, long enough for him to take a sip of water brush the hair from his eyes and shift the pack on his back. His tee-shirt, weathered and worn thin on the shoulders, continued its pattern of sticking, un-sticking, sticking to his back. It was a little warm to be wearing blue jeans as well, though at the moment he was wearing his Sunday best, holey. Soon he would have to stop and change back into the only pair of shorts he still owned.

  Whether blistering hot or chilly as all get out, this part of the country couldn’t quite seem to make up its mind- and the further west he traversed, the worse this condition became.

  He had been born in Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, to a good solid family. His father, though strict at times, had taught him everything he would ever need to know on how to survive and become a man. His mother had taught him all the finer things in life, such as what herbs to pick to flavor a soup just right, or how to care for his wounds, and to enjoy some of the simpler things… how shadows grew long in fall, or how a particular beam of sunlight would break free from the clouds and hi-light a particular patch of ground in the distance, (such as after a gentle spring rain.) Or how the clouds seemed to roll and roil just before a summer’s storm, building white upon white, higher and higher until swollen with violence they would suddenly let loose what had built them in the first place.

  The silence in the fields around him momentarily drew his attention elsewhere, until he realized that they were the same as all the other fields he had passed, non-descript, knee high in weeds and rolling green.

  A single speck trolling the sky caused him to absentmindedly reach for his journal. He had a habit of chronicling his journey, had been since the beginning. He often found comfort in the art of sketching what he saw, nothing grand or all that inspiring, but like his mom, he found joy in the simple things. Once he discovered a wild flower, white petal, green leaves, struggling against the elements, eking out its existence between the cracks of an asphalt highway. Another time it had been a weathered and oddly tilted fence post. The fence itself had long ago vanished, having returned to rust and dust, but in mute testimony the post had remained, another bent and aged squatter wandering the greater plains.

  Much like himself at times-

  According to his latest figures he had covered almost thirty miles since this morning. Not bad considering that his feet ached, his back ached, his shoulders ached, in fact, it would be a whole lot easier if he were to list what didn’t ache at the moment, rather then what did.

  The sun was a good three fingers from the horizon when he came across the next mile marker, a reflective green and white rectangle approximately twelve inches long and half as wide. The sign was attached to a galvanized metal pole and held approximately five feet off the ground by two galvanized bolts; it read:

  ‘Miles 244’.

  Allowing the pack to slide from his back, he gently lowered it to the ground before opening the top straps. Reaching in, he carefully retrieved three objects. The first object was the most important, his father’s sextant, this he kept in its worn and threadbare black padded bag. The second object was equally important but for an entirely different reason, his journal, chronicler of events. The third was a copy of The Farmer’s Almanac, dated 1982.

  Three quarters of the way through the journal was a thin red ribbon. He carefully opened the journal to the day’s entry, hesitated, lifted the ribbon closer to his face, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The faint scent of lilacs remained. Lowering the ribbon, he set the opened journal across his knees and removed the sextant from its padded black bag. With nary a shadow behind him, he raised the sextant, sighted in on the Moon, a silvery smudge barely a fingers length above the horizon, and measured the angle between it and the sun. Locking and rocking the instrument, he made note of the indicated angle in degrees and seconds in the left hand margin of his journal. He then opened the Farmers Almanac to the correct page, cross checked the angle he had just measured to the correct table to find the time in Greenwich Mean, scribbled this figure down and then compared this figure to the watch on his left wrist.

  “Time is still off by more than a minute,” he exclaimed. Something that should have been impossible, considering that his watch was constantly being updated by the atomic clocks buried deep beneath what remained of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington DC1.

  Then again, the world was ruined-

  His next two measurements, which he also jotted down, would indicate his longitude and latitude, his current position in the universe, 38°25'2.08"N by 96°33'25.35"W. Finished, he carefully repacked each item, retightened each strap, and then re-shouldered his pack before continuing north. Nightfall would catch him stretched out in a local grotto, eyes heavy, and with his heels kicked up to a velvety black sky full of unknown constellations spinning high overhead.

  When he was still a child his father would take him out into the great dark night and point his face towards the sky. ‘Do you see that’, he would say?

  Shaking his head ‘no’, ‘See what Daddy?’

  The smell of Old Spice would surround him. Then, with his father’s voice only inches from his ear, ‘See those seven stars right about there?’

  Following his father’s lead, he could see them.

  ‘That’s the Big Dipper, a very important group of stars, son. So important, in fact, that they could save your life one day.’

  ‘But how Daddy…?’ How could pinpoints of light possibly save his life?

  His father had moved on though. ‘See how those three seem to form a handle, while the last four form the dipper portion itself? Now let your eyes follow those last two stars son… the last two stars of the dipper.’

  He was still confused- but did as his father asked.

  ‘Imagine a straight line being drawn across the sky with its beginning, its point of origin in those two stars of the Big Dipper.’

  ‘I can see it Daddy.’

  ‘Good. Following our imaginary line, notice that after only a few degrees, we run into what appears to be a much smaller dipper, one in which the handle seems inverted, as if flipped inside out.’

  ‘Yes-

  ‘That bright star, the one that Big Dipper line points too, that’s Polaris, son, what we call the Northern Star.’ His father, now fallen to one knee, is facing him. ‘If you ever get lost son, if you ever loose your way, just seek out the Northern Star, and it will lead you home.’

  This would be a lesson he would n ever forget.

  Like a mausoleum it rose from the rocky soil, sand blasted, dusty brown, streaked glass, an abandoned, long abandoned, filling station, streaked in ochre blush and bone white. One large garage door remained closed; the other two open, double blotches of black glaring out across the highway and beyond…

  The place reminded him of a dead man dreaming in the noonday sun.

  The large plate glass windows of the front office remained intact, amazingly, streaked in ripples of gold and blue smear… rainbows of refracted and reflected light. No signs hung in the window- at least any that were visible. The front door, situated at an odd angle, hung open, beckoning and forbidding, a yawning threshold to a much darker interior. The stations pumps were long since gone, only twisted remains of rusty pipe poking up through an oval shaped concrete island beneath what used to be a canopied awning, itself now skeletal and torn. All that remained were four large posterns pointing at awkward angles towards the sky. Beneath this lay asphalt, broken and shattered, with tufts of prairie grass waving from in-between. All around, mounds of debris, yellowish stiffened papers, some folded, some burnt.

  The whole thing was pretty much a pop-up picture opened to the American countryside in a book about dirt.

  One hand on the door frame, he cautiously entered the station. His senses were immediately assaulted by the stench of dry rot, disuse and dirt. Yellowed wallpaper, peeling in great curling strips, lay on the worn linoleum floor along with mounds of dried grass clippings, an old bird’s nest of daub and mud and a few tumbles of golden brush. Thumb worn and much fingered phone books lay haphazardly stacked against the far wall. The glass countertop had been replaced with plywood, dust covered and disturbed. The cash register was no where to be seen. Also gone were the days of Wrigley’s gum, paper widgets holding business receipts and the year old calendar opened to December…

  He paused a moment to gather his senses, free his left hand, reach with his right-

  Sudden thunder, thunder, thunder… as the wall next to him hammers twice; sheet rock lifting outward, exploding and disintegrating in a cloud of powder and white dust. Instantly his hearing is gone, lost in the initial explosion, sharp pain then muffled silence. His ability to see clearly, as he drops to the floor, fragments of wall raining down all around him, also broken by three brilliant flashes, three strobes of bright light which seem to reach towards him in an ever expanding roll of brilliance, breaking through the darkened backlit entrance of the back room.

  His world becomes one filled with the sharp tang of cordite and gunpowder, smoke, dust and debris.

  His right hand still reaches… before finding and pulling free. Brought to bear, its weight and steel comforting, he instinctively pulls back the hammer, chambers a shell and then brings the working end of lex talionis to bear. The last time he had been in a situation like this was back at the diner, ‘bad day… bad day indeed.’ Three had lost their lives that day, all by his hand and all because of ‘them’. Always, they were ahead of him, while he remained, what he felt to be, three steps behind.

  At least at the diner there had been some warning, notice given, he simply hadn’t wandered in oblivious, not like here, not like now. If it hadn’t been for his reflexes it would have been more then just drywall feeling the brunt, it would have been flesh and bone. Back then his entrance into the diner had been preceded by a sign, a star, seemingly painted by a child’s hand, chalk white, on the steps leading to the entrance.

  Next to the crescent moon he had learned to keep his eyes open for any signs of ‘them.’ Not this time, though, a star painted outside, a crescent moon above the door, no upside down ‘For Sale’ signs propped or hanging in the front window, only ambush and gunfire.

  Strained silence, after images floating, darting… while outside a golden red coyote pauses in mid-stride, seemingly caught halfway between this side of the highway, and the next, head turned towards the station, ears cocked, tail tucked. In the next breath the coyote is gone, vanishing into the afternoon silence and glare.

  The coyote had been at the diner as well, only afterward, not before.

  Rolling to his right will bring him beyond the counter and into that space between it and the wall, directly in front of the backroom door. He feels it is his only chance at surprise, and probably what the other party feels to be his only recourse as well.

  “What the hell.” He mutters.

  A moment before he acts his eyes are drawn to his right hand, to ‘Justice’ tattooed in blue across his knuckles, the crosshairs across the first joint of his index finger, and with his last thought-

  Rolling out he brings up ‘Justice’ to bear, squeezing off two thunderous rounds, leaving afterimages and smoke, he continues through with the motion to bring himself just to the other side of the door frame, out of breath but heartbeat steady. His back pack remains where he last dropped it, just outside the front door in the sunlight.

  More silence. A quick glance assures him that the coyote has not returned after all…

  Only then does he notice the sign, a star, finger smeared in white and ochre on the linoleum floor just inside the threshold where sunlight meets the floor, light trumps shade.

  Behind him agonized silence, countless minutes… brass casings on the floor-

  “Ayin tahat ayin…” Like a mantra he repeats it, as a bead of sweat breaks free from his brow to run down his nose. With his left hand he brushes strands of matted hair from in front of his eyes.

  In the silence that follows there is movement, fugitive, and then stillness-

  He leans to the left- in time to catch her under the chin as she steps forth, with a single shot, a thunderous roar that lifts the top of her skull, showers the ceiling and doorway with brain and splinters of bone, a literal wash of red. Just as quickly he rolls right, sparing himself most of the mess.

  One red tear rolls a course down his cheek.

  He waits… most of the time they hunt in pairs, lie in groups- Not this time though.

  Afterwards… some time later, pack on back, lex talionis re-holstered, he stands above her, hands on his hip. For all she has become and is, she remains but a child, dirt smeared face, vacant eyes, dark stringy hair. Dressed in rags, she has lost a shoe in the struggle afterwards, the struggle to hold onto life as it burbled and gurgled its way past her lips.

  She had been someone’s child once, before the madness in the world claimed her, made her one of ‘them’. Clasped in her left hand, ancient iron, her right hand remained clawed, broken and dirty fingernails, calloused palm, and the word ‘Croatoan’ carved into the skin of her right thumb. Her wrists are chaffed and torn, mute testimony of her bids for freedom, escape she has been granted, justice answered.

  By the way, the hand that holds the gun bears smudges of white and ochre paint; with long fingered smears of paint from her knee to the thigh of her blue jeans.

  ‘Close this time’, he realizes, ‘so very close’. One day, maybe not so close. One day maybe it will be his time to lose a shoe-

  That night, with the stars burning bright, a warmth-less fire flickering between and mid-night shadows closing in, he weeps, not for today, not even for the girl, though he has wept for such before- but for the promise of tomorrow and all the tomorrows to follow.

  ‘Ayin tahat ayin,’ he promises, ‘ayin tahat ayin.’ Justice, be it blind or impartial, will always find a way.

  Copyright 2009 by S.M. Muse

  All Rights Reserved.

  1 Margin of error: +/- .000000001 of a second every four hundred million years.

 

 

  S.M. Muse, Blind Justice

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