Creative Writing

[whiskeypriest]

Stearns approached.  His hair was parted from behind, his necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin.  He gave his coat to Soames, who snickered as he held it.

[barton]

[I'm snickering, as I read this...]

Stearns eyed the offered peach but didn't reach for the peach.  Into the resulting conversational breach, he said,  "Do you know the land," he asked, "where the lemon trees grow?"  Kennst du das Land wo die Zitrohnen blumen? 

Soames squinted into the distance and started to spit, then restrained himself and chewed his Nicorette more vigorously.  "I don't know, mister.  Somewhere out around Indio, I'm thinking."

"Maybe farther west," said Dover, rubbing his crooked jaw.  "Possibly in Orange County.  I reckon they got one form of citrus, they might have another."

"Well, I hope so," said Stearns, a bit crossly.  "I'm not going to make it without a gin and tonic, and only barbarians would leave out the lemon twist." 

[barton]

[ever hear of a thing called a "paragraph" ? ]

[whiskeypriest]

Hey Soames spat over at Dover have you noticed that one member of our posse this this appaloosa fellers posts never seem to follow the thread of the narrative.  It's almost like they are whats the word I am looking for.  Not word phrase.

Non sequi....

Dover and Soames stared each other in the eye longingly.  Hey Dover moaned what do we know about this appaloosa feller.

[appaloosabeach]

Soames and Dover were friends of mine when I first got on this train, we was playing cards, trading tobacco, telling lies. The whiskey was like waterered down piss, only darker. We was in a passenger car, one up from the goddamn noisy cow car, we were sharing a double bench, the car was a sideways rocky, rumbly, shakey, hard to sleep bastard, full of outlaws and chickens and crazy Shoshone women, gathered in the back, singing to high heavan about a ghost rider setting the peaceful people free. Shoshones aren't the least bit peaceful. When the train stopped in Wichita, I stepped off, waited for them crazy squaws, shot all three, point blank. The mayor, least he said he was the mayor, bought me a drink, the only preacher in town said "praise the Lord," then took a double shot of the two day old home brew I was drinking, Soames and Dover stayed on the train, watched out the little window, couple of buffalo killing cowards. The mayor gave me a horse, I traded one of the squaws shirts for a saddle, now I'm headed west, if this train stops in Denver I'm gonnna gut shoot both of them.  Soames and Dover, sounds like a dry goods store.

[barton]

"I can't never nonsequit you," whispered Soames, hoarsely.

"I'd sure miss yore double-negatives," sighed Dover.  "Anyway, I heard tell that this Appa fella done shot them Shoshone squaws who was always riding the Wichita train and singing for their dinner.   I know they weren't the Andrews Sisters, but a man who'd kill so easy, a man who can drop in a lump of extraneous exposition so easily, could just be our NonSekkie Killer."

"Well, I reckon that we just let him keep flappin' his jaws and spittin' out irrelevancies and he shouldn't be too hard to track down," said Soames. 

"Don't forget we need to stop and get some gin," said Stearns, wiping his lips, as a pair of women walked past, talking of Michaelangelo.

[appaloosabeach]

A hundred or so miles and three thousand feet below Denver, appyloosa's horse spooked by a rattlesnake, galloped and then jumped into a bottomless canyon. On the way down Appy noticed the bright blue sky, the gnarly canyon walls, the screech of a gray jay,  tried to get his left foot out of a twisted stirrup, the twelve hundred pound horse landed square on top of his liver, spleen, kidneys, heart, lungs and balls, killed him dead. Hikers found his body thirty-one years later, pulled saddle bags out from under the horse skeleton, started reading the diary. Appy kept a written account, he always wanted to be a private detective.

[appaloosabeach]

page one, dear diary, 'I always wear white socks, even to weddings and funerals, even my own.'

[desdemona222b]

"I can't never nonsequit you," whispered Soames, hoarsely.

"I'd sure miss yore double-negatives," sighed Dover.  "Anyway, I heard tell that this Appa fella done shot them Shoshone squaws who was always riding the Wichita train and singing for their dinner.   I know they weren't the Andrews Sisters, but a man who'd kill so easy, a man who can drop in a lump of extraneous exposition so easily, could just be our NonSekkie Killer."

"Well, I reckon that we just let him keep flappin' his jaws and spittin' out irrelevancies and he shouldn't be too hard to track down," said Soames. 

"Don't forget we need to stop and get some gin," said Stearns, wiping his lips, as a pair of women walked past, talking of Michaelangelo.

"Oh yay-us, honey.  When I was in Europe, I saw ALL of Michaelangelo's paintings," said Ima Teabagger.

"Oh really?" queried Lee Ann, her naive niece.  "In the Louvre, I presume?"

Ima nodded vigorously.  "Yeah, and at the Tate."

Lee Ann sighed.  "I hear they have a lot of excellent Rodin paintings there, too.  How I wish I could be exposed to culture, like you Aunt Ima."

[desdemona222b]

"Well, well.  We got some high-class women somehow wandered by here in the wilderness," muttered Soames.  "Wonder how did they get here, anyways?"

[barton]

"20 mule team, pulling Borax, I reckon," said Walter Brennan.  "They likes to jump up on the borax and mold their fannies into it."

[appaloosabeach]

"Walter Brennan?" Appyloosa rolled over twice in his grave, not really a grave, his body pinned under a horse carcass, tired of maggots and rats, probably wanted to move a bit anyways. Ronnie Reagan rolled over a couple of times too, trying to remember the old Ranger's name, the clippity-clop theme song, welcome to Death Valley, the spot we all be traveling to. Walter Brennan's first wife owed Appyloosa sixty bucks, she bought a car and quickly left town, it's all written down on page 321 in his diary. The diary those damn hippie hikers found.

[Beppo]

which was a stream of a kind of consciousness: "Bah fucking bah," it said, "Jesus was the biggest fucking lie, that God's ememies ever did create, bah comm-fucking-union bah, slice that fucking bread," it said, "gesticulating upon that damn fucking beard, bring dead fucking death upon innocent god-loving priest...

[appaloosabeach]

Normaly, speeches and things didn't fly over Appyloosa's head, however, buried under a horse, unofficially dead, Beppo's bath tub stuff left him somewhat confused. Where's Soames when you need a no brain, knee jerk reply? At the Nipples R Us strip club, welcome to Barstow, lap dancing capital of the California desert.

[barton]

Twenty miles out of Barstow, the drugs had begun to take effect.  Thomas Stearns had paused long enough in the land of the lemon trees to obtain the wherewithal for many many gin and tonics (or were they "gins and tonic" ?  or "gins and tonics" ?), and fortified himself against the less-than-lush landscape of the American Southwest.   A lap dance in Barstow had also calmed his nerves and drained a small pimple that had been threatening on his noble and poetic brow, though none of the women had spoken of Michaelangelo (and it was the men who came and went).  Soames, following his own regimen of "left-handed cigarets," had managed to limber up his mind and prepare himself for what he hoped would be an informative interview with Trickster, the coyote spirit of the desert, to further their search for the NonSequitur Killer.

As they passed around the southern rim of Death Valley....