mary jo, part 2

to begin at the beginning, click here

by jesse s mitchell illustrated by rhoda penmarq She couldn’t smell it but she knew the air outside was beautiful, a smoky cedar scented air. Crisp and lingering like bad dreams, the free air outside the door haunted and taunted her…haunted and taunted…she liked the sound of those words together and she repeated them over and over in her mind. She breathed in deep. She breathed in deep but only got the air of cloistered indoors, dust, dying skin cells, stale bits of vague memories of percolating coffee… exquisite things out the door, making the diaphragm in her belly twitch…precious air outside the clunky-never-opening heavy glass door, haunted and taunted her…haunted and taunted. The radio bored her. She could almost feel the tears in her eyes, more and more with each and every passing song…all the same. The crackle, the hum, the hiss, not even a spark of originality in the random imperfection of duct taped together, out of fashion technology. A wounded Sioux warrior slumped half-hearted on the back of a grimy bay horse on the far edge of the front desk counter. She knew the feeling, the awful feeling. The eyes along the walls peered into her…she could take no more. Her legs aching. Her feet numb. She might atrophy away…atrophy and fade into nothing…into nothing like a ghost…a ghost…and then all she could ever do…all she could ever do would be haunt..haunt and taunt. She took a cigarette out of the half-crushed red soft pack in her front jean pocket. She was not allowed to smoke at work but she didn’t care…her boss never ever showed his precious face down here at this dive. She lit the cigarette and watched as the end glowed red…red and yellow and orange. She watched as the fire slowly moved down the paper shaft, consuming chunks of stringy tobacco and tar stained paper…eating it all up whole…spitting out wasted wisps of smoke. She ashed the cigarette in the floor and rubbed it in the carpet gently. The ghost picture eyes have burned holes in her, like cigarette burns…like at the end of a reel of film…time to change reels. Mary Jo slid out of the chair and walked behind the counter with the butt clinched in her teeth, both hands free. She rifled through the drawers, found the keys to the car, stopped a minute, looked around, keys jingling as she swung them around her finger. Opened the drawer back up and pulled out the metal box close to the back. Locked. The poor injured Dakota tribesman would have one last adventure. She lifted the statue up and slammed it down on the lock of the box. The statue burst into a thousand pieces, she jumped back surprised, flickered her cigarette, laughed. It worked, the box was split wide open. She grabbed all the money and stuffed it in her pocket. Walked out the door. Tossed the cigarette down. Stepped on it. Got into the car. Let it roar to a start. Pressed her foot all the way down on the pedal, and listened to it growl, throwing chunks of asphalt and gravel high in the air like the blast of fireworks, mortar blasts, dying explosions, and drove like a fiend, swerving down the highway…going west.

part 3

ween

the haunted house... continued

to begin at the beginning, click here

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

vi she placed an empty plate in front of each of the portraits and one beside the suitcases in the middle of the hall for the two cats who were now sharpening their nails on the inner lining of the suitcases she decided not to disturb them whatever they did let's not listen to others this time, she whispered to herself as she climbed the stairs her soaked dress trailing behind her vii when she opened the door of the bedroom she was embraced by a gush of cold wind the window had been left open long enough to let a walnut tree spread out its branches into the room covering almost half of the bed the floor was carpeted with dead decaying leaves and broken twigs soon they were fed into the fireplace now a fire-breathing dragon battling with the cold air warming up the room so pleasantly the tree began to bud out she stood in front of the dusty mirror taking off her rain-soaked dress revealing her body densely covered with wounds old and new infected and gangrenous bleeding or healing she decided not to hide them anymore she lay down on the bed close to the budding tree let's not listen to others this time, she whispered to herself as she closed her eyes and fell asleep viii it was high noon when she woke up the buds on the walnut tree had grown into large green leaves she sat there watching them for a long while examinig the course of the veins in each leaf she smelled and caressed them then picked forty of them carefully piling them on top of one another she found a white robe in the closet put the leaves in one of its pockets and wore it then she went to the window and watched the world through the walnut branches and leaves she kissed the tree warmly and left the room while she was ascending the creaking spiral staircase to the attic she could hear the cats fighting in a dark corner of the attic she found an old writing desk invaded by spiders and dust she decided not to be a hero fighting a formidable foe she took back the writing desk in a bloodless battle very gently she swept all the dust and spiders into an empty box putting it away in the dark corner she pushed the desk into the column of light streaming down through the round attic window in its drawer she found a quill pen but no ink she spread out the leaves on the writing desk and held the quill pen in her excited hand after a long ponderous pause she started writing on the leaves dipping the quill in the blood oozing from her open wounds before writing each word let's not listen to others this time, she whispered to herself ix when she finished writing on the last leaf she looked up the spiders had been busy weaving webs all over the ceiling, walls and a few things stored there connecting all of them together she returned the quill pen to its place in the drawer of the writing desk collected the leaves and put them carefully in her pocket the column of light was traveling to some other spot leaving the desk in the dark she crawled out of the attic trying not to disturb the spiders and their webs when she was descending the stairs, she could see the cats in the suitcases in the middle of the hall licking their wounds she approached them very quietly smiling she sat by the suitcases and held the plate she'd left there for the cats in her hands she stared at the cats for a long time her eyelids dropping slowly she was walking on the plate the plate was in her hands empty she was in a restaurant on the plate the plate was in her hands empty the waiter brought her meal in a large lidded plate and put it on the table the table was on the plate the plate was in her hands empty she removed the lid there was a big roasted chicken on the plate steaming she inhaled the delicious smell and opened her eyes the plate was still in her hands heavy with a roasted chicken steaming she decided not to eat any of it thinking she had no right to eat the cats' share she got up and thoughtfully took the leaves out of the pocket of her blood-stained white robe the cats were devouring the chicken now so merrily she kneeled in front of the first portrait searched the pack of the leaves deliberately selected one leaf and put it on the plate in front of the portrait let's not listen to others this time, she whispered to herself as she looked into the kind eyes of the portrait x love is a wound: the child fell in love with the kind eyes flowing in her mouth the first leaf was gone with the river the plate was empty again the cats were chasing each other

diary of a heretic, chapters 23, 24 and 25

to begin at the beginning, click here

by kathleen maher

pictures by rhoda penmarq

23) Choosing My Demons Before he went to bed tonight, in the robe, rotating the twin sets of iron balls, Carlos placed his lips and tongue against the nape of my neck. I jumped in alarm and my hand flew up, covering the computer screen. Laughing, he put set his twin sets of iron balls in their little nests inside their little embroidered boxes. Poking me under my chin, he said, “Hey, what do you think? I don’t respect your privacy?” I did not look up. Being around him all the time has become really exhausting. Especially since, since he’s come back, I don’t know why, but I can not sleep. “Start thinking of your Life and Times, in terms of a ‘Millennial Doctrine.’ ” “What?” “And remember, Malcolm, choose your demons carefully.” “Doctrine? Demons? Since when?” “Your big sin, silly. The thing you and your followers can never get away from. Will it be sex? Food?” And he patted the cushion of fat that’s been forming over my belt. For ever since Carlos’s return I’ve been nervously, guiltily stuffing my face. 24) Carlos at Work I really can not sleep at all. Sometimes after midnight, Carlos brings out this great platter of meat loaf and freshly mashed potatoes, a bowl of creamed spinach, and a basket of warm rolls, and butter. He hands me a frosted stein of Heinekens. And sets on the table a deep-dish apple pie with a huge, heavy wedge of extra sharp Cheddar. Then he totters off to the couch where he instantly sinks into deep and enviable sleep. 25) Seduced All this week and last, the fillings were cherry or strawberry or raspberry. Almost everything’s heart-shaped, even the bread. And, I’ve done all the things I always do the first half of February—dug out the Valentine paraphernalia, tacked up sprays of ribbon and lace and cardboard cupids. But somehow I failed to connect the concept with the day. As if not me but some zombie were setting out the paper hearts. Weird what fear will do. I think it’s fear: In my heart of hearts I always thought if I got to this point, my personal answer for why I was born would appear in front of me, or rise up from my inner being. If nothing else, I recognize it as handwriting on the wall. I remember making up fliers with Maggie, quibbling over the layout, the typeface, all conceivable nuances—but the date. (“New Forms” was what we decided on. Open, vague. “Everybody Welcome!”) And even our quibbling appears in my mind as a brief, jumpy scene of my arms flailing, Maggie elaborately sighing. This morning, it finally hit me—February 14th! How stupid could I be? Carlos had the music on. He had the iron balls going. I was struggling to button my jeans. Only a couple of weeks ago, remember, I’d happily made it into a pair that had been too tight for years. But since then, I haven’t stopped eating. And Carlos, who’s always thrown a fit if I ever even looked like I wanted to taste anything, has been foisting food on me: tarts, cakes, pastries stuffed with fabulously sick, rich fillings, and double fudge brownie topped with whipped cream by day; and his sumptuous, native cooking, guacamoles and fresh beef tacos, spicy burritos and enchiladas smothered in silken white cheese at night. So, I sucked in hard, once, twice, and then, my sorry effort with the metal button a constrained success, I broke into a revelatory sweat. I huffed and puffed, my scalp tingled and I realized: The upcoming New C. of C. was scheduled for Valentines Day!  “Let me get this straight,” Carlos said. “You think people who come to the meetings are going to say, ‘Holy crap! I can’t go out tonight; it’s Valentine’s Day!’?” “And you think it won’t affect business if we’ve got a bunch of misfits sitting around talking about whether a personal relationship with God is possible?” Carlos tossed his waist-length hair behind him. He circled the room on the balls of his feet. And as usual, the sight of his powerful calves and ankles in motion made me pant. The evil, alluring Carlos, a beatific grin on his face, set his twin sets of iron balls in their nests. Still grinning, he swayed on those wondrous feet as the raggedy terry cloth robe my mother gave me ten Christmases ago began to slip off his skinny Mexican shoulders, the frayed tie having come loose from his twenty-six inch waist. Circling silently behind me, he rose on his toes and pressed his hands on my shoulders. Then I felt his brindled hair on my cheek, grazing my ear and then (God Help Me) the pouch of new flesh at my neck. Jostling me, he said, “Come on, Malcolm. Forget the stupid store.” His hands moved along my back and I bit the inside of my cheek. “Forget the fucking store!” Carlos dug at the area where my legs join my trunk. “We are about to embark,” he said, “on a totally new, life-everlasting kind of venture. All that matters from now on, Malcolm, are endeavors of the soul.” “Yes.” I held my breath. The robe shifted and swayed behind me as Carlo’s sinewy body shifted and swayed behind me. He ran his hands up and down the length of my arms, the flaps of that robe opening away from him. “The time,” he whispered, “is perfect,” and pressed his hand on my painfully constrained penis, which angled huge and hard along my thigh. “The time, the time, the time,” Carlos said, “is now!” His fingertips tapped on the tip and in my extremity, I put myself out of the world. Whatever happened next, I told myself, happened. There was nothing I could do. No move I could make, no sound, no silent wish would change what Carlos had in mind. Quivering and panting, I tried pretending that what we were enacting was nothing more than an intricate kind of handshake. While Carlos kept stroking, kept pressing, kept rubbing, I gathered all my consciousness to keep from moaning. At this point, at this crucial—I beg you, Carlos, please just one more second—he managed to make it both better and worse by moving his hands up and away, his fingers near my chest before mercifully he drew me closer to him. He hugged me from behind. With the robe open, I recognized his tight muscled torso rubbing against me, his hip points jabbing my butt cheeks, squashed down and together by my way too-small jeans. But I was not, was not, was not going to groan and gasp, shiver and come. I refused to think of his nakedness. I suppressed a fantasy involving the terry cloth belt knotted around his wrists, tied up over his head, so he dangled from the ceiling. And I stalwartly resisted the image of myself yanking out his long brown hair, strand by strand, so as to hear him groan. Instead, I imagined freezing to death on a tundra in Alaska. Lost among a sea of glaciers, I considered an arctic wall of cryogenically frozen heads. Hundreds and hundreds of them stored among the ice floes. Superfrozen heads submerged in one endless million-year-old glacier. No good, of course. Carlos’s fingers were gliding along my bigger-fatter-softer-every-day belly. He caressed my padded chest and pressed hard against my back side. He was saying, “You’re ready for this, Malcolm.” And then the act of a virtuoso—his hands swept down and away. “Come on, come on,” he hissed, and my lungs flew open, my eyes rolled in their sockets. “Oh God, Carlos.” I screamed and hopped and then I really gave it up: choking, crying, thrashing. Carlos laughed and reached for me, saying, “Hey easy, baby, easy. Are you all right?” Soon I was in the bathroom, struggling again with the impossibly taut fabric and the metal button, trying now to rip my dampened clothes off. But everything was slippery and it took a while. Eventually I worked it out, forcing the openings apart. I wormed up and out and peeled down the pants, yanking the shrunken T-shirt over my head. From the hamper I pulled out a sweat shirt and pants, which (thank you God), stretched out effortlessly, as much as necessary. When I emerged, Carlos had his hair braided. Dressed in crisp, checked slacks and a pristine white shirt open at his ropey throat, he was already at the stove, making breakfast. “I’m not hungry,” I said. He kept cooking and whistling and after a while, piled a plate with tortillas, chorizo, fried eggs, hash browns and beans. He put the plate in front of me, between already laid out flatware and a cloth napkin. He turned and brought a bottle of my favorite green hot sauce on the table. “I’m not hungry,” I said. He poured two big glasses of orange juice and sat down. He drank his juice but I did not touch mine. He tasted a bit of the chorizo. I tapped my fork. He took another taste and I looked away. The struggle with him, with myself in the bathroom—had left me weak. He gulped juice, chewed sausage, and stared at me. I crossed my arms, lifted my chin and stared back. He dabbed his mouth and rolled a tortilla. As he chewed, I gave in and sipped the fresh orange juice. I drummed my fingers. As Carlos rolled a fragrant floury tortilla around a fried egg and refried beans, doused in green chili sauce, I nibbled at one small fiery bit of the sausage. Without looking at him, I put my fork down. I stood up and walked to the threshold, stopped and sighed. Okay. Carlos wins. I sat back down and ate a spoonful of hot, spicy beans. He was bringing me coffee with cinnamon, heavy with condensed milk, plus extra sugar. I’ve started every day with coffee since I was twelve. So, thanking him, I slurped it down, waited, and slurped down the rest. As he refilled my cup, I closed my eyes, waiting perhaps as long as a minute. But then I sighed and shrugged, venturing another tiny tasted of sausage. At some point, I covered my face with my hands. And then somewhere in here I rocked in my chair. But before I knew it, I’d scarfed down that whole vast Mexican breakfast. Carlos patted my cheeks, which I could tell were red. He said, “You, Malcolm Tully, are going to be truly great at this.” As we turned off the lights and I lumbered ahead of him, grunting down the squeaky stairs, he bent to ruffle the hair on top of my head. “People want this, lover. They want it, need it, and you’re the only one who can give it to them.”

mary jo

by jesse s mitchell illustrated by rhoda penmarq Mary Jo knew exactly where in town was best for running through the razor wire. Where the fence was weakest, where nobody ever looked, where a person could get under the neon lights, slip out and get free. She knew all the darkest spots and the weakest ones too. She sat still in the big tan fake leather chair from behind the front desk. She had moved to next to the dirty window and chewed the end of a pencil. She kicked her feet. All along the walls, there were black and white photographs that stared down, lines and lines of them, quiet and motionless, as grim motionless as the dead and dying dust flying in the desert air. The air stinks. Everything always smells burnt, all burnt up and nothing but ash. The pictures stared down at her every move…and she watched back. She is locked looking right in the shades of grey somewhere near the natural location of an eye…eyeish areas of all these frozen ghosts…oh, the staring pictures. Well tonight, she was staring back. Eye to eye locked together, tunnel tunnel, center-to-center, eye to eye. The silver car parked out front was not hers. It was not hers but she did have the keys…well, at least she knew where they were and she could easily get to them. They were as good as hers…anytime she felt like making them hers, really… and she was definitely thinking of making that exact thing a reality. Just steal the son of a bitch. Why not? Fuck this hellhole. Who would know? She could just get the keys, start the car, drive the fuck away…dum dum dum dum…boom…never look back. Right through the fence…rocket. The silver car out front was not her car. It belonged to her friend, Fiona…friends, Fiona and Alex…it was their car. They had left the car with Mary Jo earlier in the evening. They left it with her so she could watch it as she worked her shift as the night clerk at the only motel in town. And on occasion, she looked out the window and noticed it was still there and then back at her staring match. She thought it was creepy enough that the owner of the motel insisted on all the weird southwestern desert motif…the town (and motel by default) was in fact located in western Minnesota…but the decorations were only off-putting, only strange…merely quirky… the real trouble was the collection of very old sepia and black and white pictures of apparently completely infamous, uninfluenced people. All of them so gaunt and sad…like each on of them dying of the worst disease…skeletal. Skull and bones. Victims of poisonings and syphilis and profound clinical boredom. Always looking down. The staring grey eyeballs. Wow. She looked out the window. The car was still there…still fine…and she thought her friends worried too damned much. A large chunk of the pencil eraser broke free from her incessant gnawing. She coughed and sputtered and almost choked…perhaps to death or worse…but in the end pulled through and spit the slimy lump of pink goo into her hand, made a face of shock and shook the whole load onto the ugly carpet and rubbed the spot dry with her black boot. Doc Martins. Bouncing soles. She thought about stealing her friends’ car again. She looked at it, new, clean, shiny, and decided it was not the sort of car she would like to steal. She had principles. So nauseas, she hated the dim yellow neon lights that flooded the motel’s every crevice and corner with a sick yellow incandescent glow. They made her so nauseas. There was not much that Mary Jo found acceptable about the motel, the town, strangers, things, or work in general. Almost all of that stuff made her feel rather ill almost all of the time. But if Mary Jo were to steal a car, it would not be that brand new shiny vaguely citrus fruit shaped turd out front. It would be something with some class.

part 2

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 48: Who are you?

(a rare photo of Dick Ridpath, c. 1969)


September, 1969, and good old boy Big Jake Johnstone has decided to throw a good old-fashioned barbecue at his ranch, in the vain hope that someone, somebody, will not think him the pathetic phony cowardly blowhard he is.

On hand this evening, besides good old Jake himself:

Harvey: the young returning soldier.

Dick and Daphne Ridpath (AKA “Smith”): that mysterious and glamorous couple.

Hans Grupler and his companion “Marlene” (probably not her real name, no one knows her real name): international assassins and all-round ne’er-do-wells.

Derek Squitters: dissolute Cockney rock star, in the area to study Native American religious practices.

Doc Goldwasser: the town general practitioner; addicted to morphine as the result of a war wound.

Hope Johnstone: Big Jake’s lovely but mentally unstable daughter.

Mr. Philips and Mr. Adams: supposedly geologists working for the government.

Chad and Phyllis Baxter: a "nice" young couple, ostensibly on vacation.

Various Lords, Ladies, and Attendants.

(Go here for the previous chapter; the idly curious may go here to return to the beginning of our Jackie Collins Award-winning serialization of Larry Winchester's A Town Called Disdain.)

Daphne hadn’t come down yet. Dick got a bottle of Heineken out of an old bathtub filled with beer and ice and stood drinking and looking around.

He wore his one good dark grey suit from Hawkes of Saville Row. Desert boots, from Abercrombie. An embroidered Mexican shirt he had bought in Hong Kong. An ascot which was actually a golden silk scarf of Daphne’s.

The sky had cleared, the stars were out, and the air was redolent of burning mesquite and scorched beef and searing barbecue sauce.

Picnic tables were loaded up with bowls of potato salad and baskets of steaming rolls and biscuits and tortillas covered with checked cloths, big painted wooden bowls of rutabaga salad, plates of hominy cakes and collards and tuna-stuffed baked potatoes and bowls of black beans-and-dirty rice and great stacks of corn roasted in the husk.

It all made Dick’s mouth water but he felt there was some business he should attend to before chowing down...

Big Jake was taking some new young couple around. They seemed familiar in a vague way, but Dick figured that was probably only because they looked like a million other boring young couples of the sort he had spent his life avoiding like the plague. Or so he hoped.

Hans and Marlene were shaking hands with the young couple and chatting amiably, Hans in a houndstooth hunting jacket and matching cape, Marlene in a minidress made of what looked like Klee-influenced shower-curtain material, slightly translucent so that you could see her black bikini underwear. Hans wore a tweed alpine hat with a dashing peacock feather. Marlene wore a plastic pillbox hat decorated with small rubber poppies.

The Englishman Squitters, sombreroed and ponchoed and black-PVC-trousered, stood staring at the mariachi band, holding a glass of yellow tequila in his one hand and a bottle of Michelob in the other.

The drunken guitarist sang a sad and beautiful song:

Donde ira, veloz y fatigada
la golondrina que de aqui se va
a donde ira?

Dr. Goldwasser sat at a table smoking a cigarette and staring at the ground.

Hope stood quietly near the fire, gnawing a bone and staring at the flames, wearing a long gauzy flowery dress with a black silk mantilla over her shoulders.

Harvey was squatting with another young fellow among a group of other ranch-hand types off to one side, just on the edge of the wavering light from colored paper lanterns hung from clotheslines strung from the house to a few scraggly pinyon trees and scrub oaks.

Dick raised his bottle to Harvey, and Harvey raised his in return.

Lots of other people about, the local gentry Dick supposed, or what passed for the local gentry.

And there stood the Messers. Philips and Adams, in their little windbreakers, holding bottles of TaB, watching.

Dick finished his beer, put the empty into a cardboard beer box on the ground, and then reached into the ice-tub and got out a fresh one. He popped the top off with the bottle opener that had a handle made from a bull’s horn, laid the opener back onto the table, and walked over to Philips and Adams.

They were clean-cut wiry young fellows. One was blond, the other one had dark hair.

“Hi,” said Dick.

“Hello,” said the dark-haired one. Dick was pretty sure this was Philips.

“Hi,” said Adams.

Philips took a nervous pull on his bottle of TaB. He had horn-rimmed glasses and a tanning-cream complexion. His face and head reminded Dick of a hostile wet seal.

“You gotta try some of that barbecue, Mr. uh Smith,” said Adams. “It’s terrific.”

“Oh, I will. But first, I’m afraid I’ve got another sort of bone to pick with you fellas.”

“Us?” said Philips.

Dick said nothing for a moment. The other one, Adams, held onto a stiff smile. He had a bulbous forehead and the sort of curly blond hair that means the boyishly good looking guy of twenty-eight will be stone bald at thirty-eight. A pug-nosed, bright-eyed, healthily sunburnt, shining-toothed eager-beaver of a professional regular guy.

Dick reached out and touched the hard place under the arm of Philips's windbreaker where his pistol was, and Philips flinched backwards.

Dick looked from one to the other, smiling.

Philips and Adams were not smiling.

Dick pointed a finger at Adams.

“You were trying to get into my room. Why?”

“It -- was a mistake -- I thought it was our --”

“Uh-huh. What are you guys? CIA? FBI? Something else? Something I’m not supposed to know about?”

Philips and Adams looked at each other, but neither said anything.

“Okay,” said Dick, “be like that. But listen. I’m an American citizen and a retired naval officer. I’ve done my bit for this country and now I just want to be left alone. You dig? Whatever you’re sniffing for, forget it. My life and my current interests have nothing to do with you.”

“Sir --” said Philips.

“Yeah,” said Dick.

“May I ask you -- just who are you, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who are you?”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s why he asked,” said Adams. “We gather that your name is not really Smith.”

Dick took a drink of beer.

“Christ,” he said. “You guys really don’t know. I hope to hell you’re not Q Section.”

“Q Section?” said Adams.

“What’s Q Section,” asked Philips.

“Oh, nothing,” said Dick. “So why are you here? Is it Big Jake, or is it --”

He was going to say Grupler and Marlene, but quickly cut himself off.

“Why should we be here?” asked Philips.

“Oh, forget it,” said Dick. He looked at them. “CIA, right? You don’t quite have that official J. Edgar poker-up-the-ass demeanor. Plus this --” He pulled open the top part of Adams’s windbreaker, revealing the holstered handgun under his arm. “That’s what -- a Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter? J. Edgar would never let a common agent carry a cool gun like that.” He closed the jacket. “So you’re CIA, right?”

“Wise guy,” said Adams.

“Yeah,” said Dick. “Oh, and you,” he said to Philips. “I’d like my radio back, please.”

“What radio,” said Philips.

“The one with the bullet-hole through it that’s in your right hip pocket.”

“It’s mine,” said Philips.

“No,” said Dick. “That radio happens to belong to my wife. She’s very attached to it. Had it since college. Unfortunately she had a fit of pique and tossed it out the window. Now I would like it back.”

The radio began to speak, somewhat muffled by the cloth of Philips’s jacket.

“What the fuck is that?” said Adams.

“I don’t know,” said Philips.

He took out the shot transistor radio and stared at it.

It was speaking in that odd metallic Australo-Basque dialect again.

“What the fuck,” said Philips.

Dick reached out and took the radio from Philips’s hand and Philips let him take it.

Dick looked at the radio and then at Philips and Adams.

“It’s a damn good radio. Works even with a bullet hole through it.”

“Wh-what is that language?” stammered Adams.

“You don’t know?”

“No, he doesn’t fucking know,” said Philips. “What is it?”

“Aztec,” said Dick. “It’s picking up an Aztec station from south of the border.”

“Aztec?” said Adams.

“No one fucking speaks Aztec,” said Philips.

“You’re so ignorant,” said Dick.

The voice stopped.

Dick put the radio in his left side jacket pocket. His little .38 was in the reinforced right pocket.

“Well, he said, smiling, “I’m gonna try some of that barbecue! See you guys later.”

He headed off toward the the fire and that slowly rotating side of beef.

(Relentlessly continued here. Coming soon from Ha! Karate Multimedia: Lipstick and Tears, Vol. 1, a boxed DVD set of Larry Winchester’s so-called “Women’s Picture” period, comprising Possibly Not {Susan Hayward, Dan Duryea; 1949}, No Tears For Tomorrow {Gloria Grahame, Rory Calhoun; 1949}, My Husband’s Brother {Bette Davis, Paul Henreid; 1950}, and the long-lost Two Nights in a Desperate Town {Marion Davies, Steve Cochran; 1950}.)