Atu Ep.2 (1)
Rube

 





We rode around for about two weeks after leaving the smoking ruins of Meilen van uberall. There were choices to be made. After a lot of deliberation and at one point a small scuffle over a gun between Gabby and I, (I can’t remember what we were arguing about – it had nothing to do with anything immediate; it was about something completely unrelated, Great Britain and the European Union I think) we decided to start with searching for Pokey’s tribe. That way we could blame someone else a little bit, and take some of the pressure off of ourselves. We were good at that. We followed her growing increasingly fractured hand directions over the flat grassland for days and days. Gabby was getting increasingly frustrated and Pokey’s wrists were getting swollen.

“I think you should just leave her here.” Gabby whispered to me one day when we were alone on our horses and Pokey was in the bushes. “And you could rape her if you wanted, probably.”

“What?”

“Look, I’m just trying to sell you the idea of leaving her here – rape, don’t rape, I don’t care. I didn’t know – Fine, sorry – forget it – forget the rape. The point is why the hell can’t she find them? Is she sub-normal or something?”

“Gabby, they’re nomadic for Christs sake.”

“I don’t care where they’re from Rueben I just want to get home!”

 After explaining to Gabby what ‘nomadic’ meant she calmed down and set about randomly galloping over the grassland for hours on end. The three of us were all quite familiar with the hit-and-miss nature of tracking down a moving group: Gabby and I had been following the Terran Unit for six or seven months and Pokey’s tribe had been on the move long before she was born. It seemed to take forever to find the right people.

   When we did finally manage to locate Pokey’s group and return her safely to her family we discovered that the assemblage of about 60 people were not Native-American as I had assumed but in fact a third-generation traveling Spanish dance company that was lost on tour in the prairie states of Southern America. Not only that but I discovered that almost all of them could speak English.
Pokey’s name as it turned out was Genoveva. I found it difficult to be attracted to her once I knew she came from a country that was in the European Union; I liked her better when I thought she was a disenfranchised native from a Third-world country. In thanks for bringing Genoveva back, her ‘people’ began to entertain us with traditional Spanish folk music, which coincidentally both Gabby and I loathe, preferring banjo or fiddle music with lyrics about Haystacks or other bales of cereal crops. When a man and a woman began to perform a mediocre Muñeira we took it as an omen and elected to leave almost immediately to look for the Terran Unit. Gabby said they made it look sleazy but Gabby is a nymphomaniac and her perception of sexuality in art is abstracted.
   
   It is the second day of the second week. It’s hot and dry and the temperature evaporates our energy like we were shallow pools of dump water in a parking lot. We spot a shady clump of trees and boulders nestled in the neck of a small hill and make our way there to rest our horses. After dismounting we hear movement from a clump of bushes next to where we stand. Curious, we edge closer to inspect the scratching sound. To our surprise and horror, a savage fox leaps out in front of us and freezes in an intimidating posture while growling menacingly. Startled but not yet scared I reach my hand towards it, edging forward curiously, not quite sure what I am doing. This is a mistake: After a few seconds Gabby and I find ourselves set upon by vicious prairie foxes and fighting for our lives trying to kill enough of them to make a jacket, something Gabby really wanted – I only agreed to do it because I still felt bad about the fact that she wasn’t able to afford what she called the ‘good things in life’ which was partly her fault since she had burnt the only town we had come across in over half a year. We very nearly get overwhelmed by the tenacious little bastards because Gabby is being so damned picky as usual:

“Not that one – not that one – there! Him! Yes, him, him, him!” she yells pointing from on top of a rock while I am waist-deep in the fuckers who are as cunning as they are fast – I would like to put in print right now – it feels like the good-looking ones with the nice glossy pelts are just out of range of my spade as if trying to bait me while all the really mangy old ones are always right up there in front tugging at my trouser legs – more than once one of the crafty bastards stands just behind my feet while another more rabid-looking member of the pack advances menacingly from the front – the oldest trick in the book – trying to get me down on the ground where the mass would have then undoubtedly pounced and which have spelled the end for me I’m certain of that but luckily Gabby soon starts to get restless and lowers her standards considerably,

“Aw, fuck it Rueben look if you can’t do it then just get the fat one and a couple of others. Listen I’ll be back in a minute, I just gotta go do something quick-”

   “Jesus Gabby, for all the possible times you could pick to-”

   “I’ll just be a goddamn second Rueben! It’s just all this stress.”

So I swing away at the savage little fur-balls until we manage to collect enough of the dead ones to make the jacket and maybe another small item like a pair of mittens or a fox-fur hat and ride off before they can call any more of their friends into the fray. We travel through marshland, desert and savannah-like plains, through the blistering heat of midday and the windy chill of the night. We pick Datura whenever we can find it but seemed to grow less prevalently in this part of the prairie and so we’re careful not to eat it in the large quantities that we have grown accustomed to.
   
   Today the sky grew dark and thick. First it was sunny and blue - windy as well but now the sky is dark and heavy with massive muscular Grey clouds. Earlier on we watched them rolling up on us like megaliths – in less than an hour they totally engulfed the sky above us and now hang there in a grim silence. We stop our horses and wait in awe, doing nothing. Weirdly my first instinct is that we avoid drawing attention to ourselves in the presence of what seems to be a sentient and malevolent force.
   When the still came, we all felt it: The wind simply dropped and all we could hear was the blades of grass bending under our horses’ hooves and all we could feel was the irregular and accelerating pound of our hearts and all we can think to do is stand here on the blackened plain not speaking. Then it happens: One enormous blinding bolt of lightning strikes the Earth half a kilometre away and our horses jolt fiercely as a deafening clap of thunder cracks through the sky then reverberates around the plains in all directions for what feels like ten full seconds, rattling our bones and sending chills up and down our backs. Immediately an explosion of rain, hail, wind and darkness descend down upon us and I doubt that it will ever stop or even ease up.
   We ride for days in the ice-cold torrent, stopping only when the ball-lightening is exploding dangerously low above us or when the hailstones get too large or – surprisingly often – when we have to cross a huge river that has burst its banks and when we come to one we are never quite sure if it had actually ever been a river at all – the four of us agree that it is likely that it is just another enormous temporary waterway created by the cast-off of the approximately 15 millimetres of rainfall that we are getting per day. Gabby and I take turns choosing who carries the rope to the other side of each frenzied surge whenever we come to one but we both invariably choose Muffy to do it, threatening the horse with all sorts of horrific punishment until he obeys and wades into the deep, freezing and violently fast water – rather begrudgingly I sense – that horse has an attitude – holding the rope gingerly between his teeth and once across wrapping it around a rock or tree at the other end and holding it taught with his mouth – a little trick he learned all by himself because as it had happened a few times already that if the rope on his end came loose we’d make him swim back to our side and do it all over again, all the while Gabby hurling the most obscene abuse I have ever heard at him.
   
   At times Gabby and I can hardly see each other through the downpour and it is impossible to sleep for longer than a few minutes so we are completely exhausted, in a permanent state of shock, nearing the point of starvation and probably suffering from hypothermia but I can’t be sure. One particular night when the storm’s onslaught seemed to be peaking at some merciless zenith the last I remember of Gabby was catching a brief snapshot of her figure slumped forward in her saddle illuminated by a white flash of distant lightning and I was mortified by her appearance – she was stiff and lifeless like a corpse that had been pulled from a lake; her skin was like wax and her dirty blond hair was hanging over her face in wet knotted strings dripping with beads of water and her bruised blue-and-purple lips made her mouth look like an infected wound. The deathly image disappeared back into to the darkness and I was gripped by horror and desperation and mustered up all of my strength to call out her name – I couldn’t lose Gabby here, not like this – “Gabby!”
   Nothing.

“GABBY!” I yelled again. If I lost Gabby I would lose myself. It was bad enough that we had lost Gary.

   Gary.
   The one who started it all. A beautiful black man from Fort Lauderdale who was just naturally born with the gift of communicating with the cows and unlike Harlan the cows would really want to talk back to him. He was the first cow-boy to really start understanding them and who showed us all how to hear them but none of us could do it like he did – I mean really interact with them – I mean, we all get along with the cows as ‘acquaintances’, you know good grass, bad grass – udder stuff, horns, fights. Just cow stuff really but Gary had a far more personal relationship with them. Well they're not the most intellectual of creatures – Another flash of lightning struck...

   Gabby was sitting up in her saddle with some Datura root sticking out of her mouth – she shot an expression of irritation at me and shrugged like I was bothering her and over the completely deafening noise of the storm from three meters away and with her mouth full she yelled :

WHAT

Then it went completely black again and a big icy-cold gust of wind hit us straight on and I pulled my jacket together tightly across my chest and shouted into the darkness:
 
WHAT
 
Another branch of lightening stretched across the sky and I saw Gabby again and she spat some water out of her mouth then cupped it, leaned into my direction and yelled:

WHAT

and I yelled:

NEVER MIND

   I must have finally managed to doze off on my horse for quite a while because when I woke up to my utter astonishment I saw we were on a peaceful green plain and I felt the sun floating in the sky above me and beside me was a sea of familiar creamy-brown flanks and even though I was seeing it with my own eyes it took my mind an inordinately long amount of time to actually register the reality of where I was:
We have found the Terran Unit! Still exhausted I collapse forward and fall back to sleep on my horse with tears of joy in my eyes.
   
   Sometimes people misunderstand the term The Alpha Terran Unit. (Usually Bill) They assume that it refers to the five of us whereas far from human The Terran Unit have existed on the world in some form or another since some unknown time even before the inception of every known animal species in history and have a mysterious link to the unseen forces behind every action and consequence conceivable by any living and ‘dead’ thing on the planet. But they are not the only archetypical key-set of a species whose specific existence and evolution through time is untraceable and well past the reach of modern science and even the conjecture and imagination of the world’s most gifted minds; take for example The Alpha Aqua Unit, a huge congregation of ancient wild Puffins who –

   I am violently woken by the sound of a gunshot going off close to my head POW and have to clutch onto my maddened horse as it kicks and bucks until I manage to grab the reigns and tug forcibly to steady him, “Jesus in hell, Bill!” I clasp my hand over my right ear which was the one that got the most of it and I shout so hard that my face hurts: “You’re a fucking idiot! Don’t do that shit! What the hell is your goddamn problem?!”
   Bill seems un-phased by my anger and doesn’t even have to steady his horse Juno who is used to the sound of gunshot and just lazily re-adjusts herself in her usual half-lidded way while Bill never takes his small blue empty insect eyes off me and then all at once we consolidate into an uncomfortable stillness and he tips his hat up with his gun and looks off to the West.
  
   Bill is quite a large-bellied man in his late 40’s who has jowls and can hardly run anymore but still seems as steady as a rock.

“We was startn’ ta think that yawls weren’t never gonna come back.”

He turns back to me smiling, eyes aglitter with something I can’t read. Bill is the oldest out of our group and by far the most removed from reality. In his life he has been everything from a sweet-sweeper to a fisherman, artist, lawyer, fruit-picker, athlete, poet, politician – even a hair-dresser, but now he is just a gambling trigger-happy alcoholic. He claims to be the happiest he has ever been.
   
“Did I ever tell ya’, Rueben, ‘bout the time I saw Gawd?”

I look at him for a few seconds. He is still completely unreadable. We resume following the herd slowly- they are at the same casually determined pace that they were at when I left them a fortnight ago.
   
“He was standin’ up there on the hill with a big ‘ol white glowin’ white robe that–”
   
“Aw c’mon Bill, shit.” I'm not in the mood for any of Bill’s poorly constructed attempts at allegory, a skill too subtle, a craft that requires more finesse than Bill is capable of.
   
“The idea of God appearing in a human form is absurd – God is like a mathematical equation – If he were to exist, his being would encompasses every creature in this Earth and any unimagined life-form throughout the whole universe, every star and every planet. He would be the architect of forces we haven’t yet begin to imagine – things like black holes into which even light bends and disappears, and simultaneously – I mean only if he were to exist – or whatever – his expression of omnipresence would manifest as cockroaches and supernovas and the minds of bears and water and moths but most importantly us as well, and in that manner he would always be communicating to us – on the dip of a bird’s wings and words that answer themselves because by his own rules, he would encompasses us: See Bill, for him to ‘appear’ as a ‘thing’ to anything as trivial as us would in turn trivialize his very existence! I mean, if he were to exist. Don’t you agree?”

Bill scratches his temple with his gun again and looks down to the ground in careful consideration, his eyes like opaque Crystal Balls with storms spinning in them then continues,
   
“Like I was sayin’.” He rests the gun down on the back of the hand that was holding the reign and looks up to me, “One day Ganesha Chaturthi gone done shined down on me from up there on that hill with them six arms holding some fresh fruit, just flappin’ his elephant ears and-” I rolled my eyes.
   “Oh right – so now you saw a god, not the God..”
   “I saw ‘गणेश’.”
   “Oh that’s cute Bill - real cute. Well just for your information ‘गणेश’ is a demi-god.”
   “That can’t be the same गणेश then.”
   “Wait, गणेश is actually a demi-demi-God.”
   “That can’t be right”
   “Yep, afraid so. Shiva returned home from some war, went looking for Parvati who was in the bath, cut Ganeshies head off then when Parvati came out and saw him dead she got pissed off so Shiva had to send the servants to go off and get a new head but instead they found an elephant, brought it's head back instead. Shiva screwed the Elephant head onto ganesh's body and bang, job done, that's your man. Like I said, a demi-demi god.
   “Well why the gawdammned hell didn’t Shiva just put Ganesh’s own damn head back on then?!” Bill is getting frustrated.

   “That’s not the point Bill – its Hindu Mythology.”

   “Okay, alright then, listen – forget all that Gawd crap,” I shrug in agreement and a cow from the herd moos. Bill continues,

“What I was tryna build up to was that we need money.”
   
“What? Tell me Bill, what in hell possible segue did you have to go from Hindu mythology to money?

   “I was gonna play it by ear.”

   “That’s stupid Bill. The stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

   “Says you, dead broke and eating bushes all day.”

 

 

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Copyright © 2011 Rube
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