Demon Box

He used to do reckless things—not thoughtless or careless: reckless—like to toss me an open bottle of beer when I was down in the utility room, hot with cleaning. What could it hurt? If I dropped it there was no big loss. But if I caught it? I had more than just a bottle of beer. Why did he stop being reckless and become careless? What was it caught his attention and stiffened him into a doll? What broke all that equipment?—is what the Tranny Man’s wife is thinking on her way to the American Consulate in Guadalajara to try to cash a check.

Last Shot of Tranny Man

They wouldn’t let me on the plane with the ticking five-gallon can of jumping beans. I had to take the bus. At the Pemex station outside Tepic I saw the Tranny Man’s Polaro and his trailer. He was letting old Chief squat in the ditch behind the station. Yeah, he was heading back. To the good old U.S. of A.

“You know what I think I’m gonna do, Red? I think I’m gonna cross at Tijuana this time, maybe have a little fun.”

Winking more odd-eyed than ever. How was his car? Purring right along. Heard from his wife? Not a peep. How had he liked his stay in picturesque Puerto Sancto?

“Oh, it was okay I guess, but—” He throws his arm across my shoulders, pulling me close to share his most secret opinion: “—if Disney’d designed it there’d of been monkeys.”

Abdul & Ebenezer

Listen to that bark and beller out there.

Something extraordinary to raise such a brouhaha, to get me walking this far this late into the pasture this damp with dew… They’ve quitted, quieted. But it isn’t done they’re just listening, there’s something—mygod it’s Stewart fighting something right here! Yee! Gittum Stewart, gittum! Yee! Get outta here you phantom fucker you whatever you—

I can’t tell if it’s a fox, a way-out-of-his-woods wolf or a rabid ‘possum.

Bark bark bark! Bark and beller and pound my heart while every hair for acres around springs to rigid attention. Stewart? Pant pant pant. Good gittin’, Stew Ball. Who was that strange varmit? Your foot okay? Probably a fox, huh, some teenage fox out daring the midnight. Probably the same one that will sometimes slip up outside my cabin window in the hollow squeaking shank of a strung-out night to suddenly squawl me up out of my swivel chair three feet in the air then disappear into the swamp with yips of ornery delight.

Hush, Stewart. Hush. Let things settle down, it’s twelve bells and hell’s fire! What’s that in the moony mist just ahead, that big black clot? It must be Ebenezer, back in that same spot beside the dented irrigation pipe. So, the drama is still running, after all these days. Over a week since that labor in the stickers and longer than that by almost another week since the slaughter, and she’s still by the pipe. Well, it’s a good drama and deserves a long run. Not that it has a nice tight plot, or a parable I can yet coax a clear meaning from, but it’s a drama nevertheless.

It has a valiant hero, and a faithful heroine. Despite the masculine moniker, Ebenezer is a cow. She got her misleading name one communal Christmas before we communers were cognizant of such things as gender in the lesser life forms.

She is one of the original dogies, Ebenezer is, appropriated that first year I was out of jail and California—back in Oregon at old Mt. Nebo farm. Betsy had moved there with the kids while I did my time, and all the old gang had followed. That first giddy year the farm was loaded with lots of loaded people trying to take care of lots of land without much more than optimism and dope to go on. One enthusiastic afternoon we drove the bus to the Creswell livestock auction and bid into our possession eight baby “bummers.” In the cattle game a bummer is a two– or three– or four-day-old calf sold separately because the owner wants to milk the mom instead of raise the calf, and sold cheap because, we found out a few hours after we got our little string home to their straw-filled quarters, they seldom survive.