1000 Days

Four boys glow on the porch of the mountain cabin. The morning sun tints them in orange. Their denimed legs create infinite shadows down the rippling floorboards. The dew-soaked, bark-stripped, rough-hewed, corner-post Ponderosa steams from the warmth. The west side of the cabin and the unkempt meadow grasses shiver in the shade and the frost. Someone’s written their name with a hot-from-a-pocket index finger in the slick-soft white stuff: “KARL”—with a ‘k’.

All four matriculated from High School. Probably all four in college back home. One of the two in the middle is old enough to drink. Every one of them thinks himself a full-grown man.

Before the day is done they’ll saddle up and kick their heels into Rounder, Rust Bucket, Taint, and Taylor’s Rod. Before the day is done they’ll round up a remuda of nearly a hundred horses and head to the higher Spring pasture. Before the day is done the youngest will be dead and the other three wishing it weren’t so.

When the sun is gone another one will be dead and the other two pleased.

Well, that went dark on me fast. Nice that I don’t make it hard on myself to write. Shouldn’t be too challenging to kill two of them off and leave the other two happy about it in less than a day’s time.

Day 278

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I watched Iron Man again yesterday. Alone because friends were unavailable and I refused to wait—plus, you only have some many opportunities in this household to ditch the kids and go out at all. I’m not a reader of the comic surprisingly, so I know nothing of the canon. While the X-men which I’ve read heavily run into Tony Stark as Iron Man occasionally, the Pepper Pots’ character remains unfamiliar.

On the drive home I began to fictionalize a conversation that might have occurred between an actress similar to Gwenyth Paltrow and her assistant or agent or whomever in deciding to take the roll. Lines and reactions sprang into my head faster then I could store them for later transcription. It felt strangely like I recalled a movie or dreamt while awake.

I doubt I could now string it together coherently, but I’ll try to arrange the exchanges (mostly couplets) in a likely order. Remember I fictionalized, so don’t picture Ms. Paltrow when you read the following—except when it makes sense too.

“Well?”
“It’s an arm-candy.” Karen Person tosses a script over the cream leather couch to the glass coffee table in the center of the room. The slap echoes quickly in the featureless room.
“When did an arm-candy get thirty pages?”
“Still.” Karen flips her fingers through her beaded dreads like she’s biting her thumb in a Shakespeare play. “When did arm-candy look like this?”
“Exotic arm-candy then.”
“They won’t give it to me. I’ll have to audition like everyone else.”

—

“Thirty pages isn’t enough to get me over the title.”
“Sweetie, no one’s getting over the title on this not even Charlie. We can probably get you a ‘with’ or maybe an ‘and’.
“‘With’?”
“Yeah, they pulled one of the Graingers out of mothballs to play the baddy.”
“John or Robert? Has to be John.” Karen walks to the window overlooking everything. “I can see that.”
“Really?”

—

“I won’t get paid full. Hell, I might not even get the bling.”
“It’s not that much work to get paid that much for. I’ve seen the shooting schedule and most of your stuff’s done in a month. Right here in LA. In and out.”
“‘The Unbelievably Good Kisser’ and ‘Trance’. That’s why I won’t even break two figures.”

—

“We’re shooting this all in the States? That’s where the money’s going.”
“Charlie’s in it.”
“He loves Canada. Didn’t he buy a place there back before?”
Rita gives Karen a blank stare then raises an eyebrow like a question. When Karen still doesn’t flip she leads her. “Before….”
“Oh shit that’s right. He can’t even go to Canada?”
“He can’t leave the country at all.”
“I know it’s not our country Rita. But still, Canada?”

—

“It’s an arm-candy.”
“Arm-candy for Charlie Cross. Richard Paquin on as director.”
“Summer, Thanksgiving, or Christmas?”
“Summer I bet. I think they’re looking to spill Trey’s juice.”
“Mmm, Trey. Why can’t I be in a movie with him?”
“You were already.”

—

Anyhow, that’s all I’m going to bother to transcribe. You get the gist. I don’t know that there is as much characterization in there as there is info-dumping. But I guess sometimes you have to do that too.

Word count: 541
Day 236

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Originally here.

I’m really in my office. Thirty-four floors above the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver, Colorado. I feel as if I am in a Polaroid from the 70’s. The blues faded, the reds indistinct, and the blacks turned a sickly green. The “Welcome Back Kotter” t-shirt I’m wearing is an iron-on and the collar isn’t the same color as the shirt. I have on that first round of Nikes: blue with a yellow trademark. For some reason I am on a wall. I’m twelve, but the look on my face is veteran. I’ve been effected by what I’m seeing, but I don’t care.

There is no such photograph.

In the memory that follows I don’t wear those clothes but pretend I do because they are the only ones I can recall from that era.

[a whole buncha stuff here]

From that summer there is a single recording of me. Its corners rounded in the style of the day; it’s format clearly 110. I’m on the back of a motorcycle, t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and a helmet–”Gotta protect your head.”

My boredom drove me to the most dangerous spot I could find. The made-to-look-like-adobe cinder block wall I am sitting atop is too tall to have climbed directly. At first I’d expected my Uncle to return quickly so I just sat on the tailgate and swung my legs. Later I decided he’d be longer. I hopped from the bed of the pick-up to the wall and walked it like a tightrope to the end. Sword-leafed yuccas and some taller but equally daunting plants lined the outside of the wall. If I missed them when I fell, I’d still get a mouthful of sand and a couple of scrapes from something. You can’t fall here in the High Desert and not get at least that.

Probably the adult look on my face comes from staring out at the desert wondering how these people determine which parts are good for putting a house on and which parts aren’t or discerning where the highway we rode in on disappears into the hills and where it goes after that. Puzzles a kid won’t solve quickly. I’m sure my thoughts devolved to something that happened the Saturday before. I awoke early to find my Aunt and Uncle up already–him still up from the night before? His animated conversation and smokey clothes didn’t distract me from the bag of doughnuts nor the pile of unorganized cash on the kitchen counter. He pulled more out of his front pockets while I stood there and added it to the wad of treasure. It was just ones and few quarters.

Here on the wall Tuesday drifts to a close. Maybe Wednesday drifts–in Summer, who knows.

Word count: 286

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