Death rides with franksolich

[franksolich]

This brief snippet of a narrative, Death rides with franksolich, is based partially upon a real-life experience, and the other part on an overactive imagination.  One supposes the reader, unless a primitive, can tell which parts are nonfiction, and which parts are fiction.

Because of its Nebraska theme, or perhaps for some other reason, it’s dedicated to the big guy in Bellevue, Omaha Steve, with the hopes that he enjoys it.

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Death rides with franksolich.  I was getting tired, burned out, from driving for so long, and all alone, when I spotted a figure shuffling alongside the highway.

I don’t take kindly to driving alone, and especially hundreds of miles, because being deaf, the sense of vacancy, of nothingness, as there’s nothing to divert or amuse one—one can’t after all hear the radio or a compact disc—causes one to get spaced out, and even hallucinatory.

Which isn’t good, despite there’s no other traffic, for zipping through the empty Sandhills of Nebraska at 85-105 mph.  I was in a hurry because a friend of mine—our association went way back to elementary school—was dying, and could spring loose of this mortal coil any minute, and I wished to remind him that I loved him.

Not in any sense that gets gay primitives on Skins’s island all agog and gurgling and drooling, but simply in the sense that two males confident in their own masculine identities can remind each other of such a thing without a dirty mind inferring that there’s something there that isn’t there.

As the solitary figure looked pretty old and tired, he presented no peril to me.  I pulled over to the side, opened the front passenger door, beckoning him to get in.  I wasn’t up to chitchattery, as there was no need to talk; the guy was walking west, and thus there was only one possible destination, the town in the center of the Sandhills of Nebraska where I’d spent my childhood and adolescence.

Other than that, there was nothing else, unless he’d planned to walk clear to Wyoming.

I indicated I was deaf, in which case “hearing” demands visual attention, which I couldn’t give because I had to watch the highway ahead.  He nodded, suggesting it was okay, and so I hit the road again.

Some miles down the road, I began noticing a certain odor about him, as if catching a whiff of some lightly-applied cologne; my fellow traveler reeked of putrefying gangrene.  I turned away from the windshield to eyeball him more closely.

“I know you,” I said, startled; “we’ve met before, many times.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You’re not coming to take me, are you?” I asked with some trepidation, to which he shook his head.

“I mean, if you were, there’s no power in the universe that can stop me from being taken away anyway,” I continued, trying to subdue my fear by talking. 

He nodded, indicating 'no.'

“Well then, why are you here?” I asked, but secretly considerably heartened.

Saying nothing, he instead pointed the direction towards town, still some hours away.

“Okay, okay,” I said; “I got it.  But if we don’t get there, or go somewhere else, you’re not getting him, right?”

He shook his head.

I let up my foot on the accelerator, wishing to slow down the car.  The car sped along as it had been doing.  I turned the steering-wheel so as to turn off onto a side-road, taking us another direction.  The car however continued straightaway.

“Whoa, you’re pretty determined,” I said.

He finally spoke, as if from the bottom of a deep sepulcher.

“My duty is inalterable,” he said; “God compels me to go where I go, and it can’t be changed.”

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I slammed on the brakes, as I wished to talk about this.  But the car kept going ahead.

“You know God personally?” I asked.  “I’ve always wanted to meet God, but thus far God’s kept a distance.  It’s very frustrating, because I’m one of the biggest fans, one of the biggest boosters, one of the most enthusiastic supporters, God has.”

“But God is All-Encompassing, Infinite, Eternal, and it is not given that a finite, imperfect entity can understand—much less comprehend—an Infinite, Perfect One,” he replied.

“I know, I know,” I said; “it’s more important that I simply accept God, than try to understand God.

“And to tell you the truth,” I went on, “that’s never been difficult for me to do; God is s-o-o-o-o-o obvious even a blind man can see God.  I dunno why some people, such as the primitives, refuse to acknowledge God; God’s a Fact of Life, and isn’t going away. 

“The primitives don’t have to like God, but they really need to at least accept God, adapt to God, and move on; otherwise they’ll just remain a bunch of wretched miserable hate-filled people.

“Now, people who are indifferent about God, that’s something else.  What I’m talking about here are people who hate God with a near-supernatural passion and vigor.  Indifference is one thing, usually just harmless, but rabid burning hatred is something totally different.

“For me, what’s always been funny is that many people dismiss God for reasons of ‘principle;’ they allege to have given much time and attention to the matter of God, in the end concluding that God doesn’t exist, because one can’t see God, hear God, touch God, measure God, define God.

“Excuses, excuses.

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“You know, when conservativecave first came into being, one of the first members was the nocturnally foul one, ‘NightOwl’ or ‘NiteOwl,’ I forget which.  I might, or might not, be wrong, but I think he later metamorphosized into ‘BuzzClik,’ or the buzzy one, on Skins’s island.

“One time we got into a long discussion in the ‘shout box’ of the site, during which time he admitted he was a lapsed Catholic; didn’t believe in God.

“Curious, I inquired as to why he’d come to such a conclusion, given that evidence of God smothers the universe; one can’t hardly miss it.

“He acted as if making the decision about whether or not God Is had been a long, drawn-out, gut-wrenching process for him, ultimately based upon that one can’t see, hear, touch, measure, define—or smell—God, and so therefore God isn’t.

“Yeah, right.  Like the only reality are those things that the nocturnally foul one could comprehend; if he couldn’t define or understand something, that something didn’t exist.

“One can have trillions upon trillions of cerebral cells on which to see and understand things, but even ‘trillions upon trillions’ is a limited number, a finite number…..and a fallible, finite entity can’t possibly comprehend the Infinite and the Perfect.

“But getting back to the buzzy one’s ‘gut-wrenching’ decision that God doesn’t exist was all bullshit; it’s after all in the nature of primitives to explain a base, selfish, short-sighted act with a noble principle.

“I was familiar with his situation, as I’d observed it many times before, and in fact it almost happened with me.  This ostensibly happened when years ago, the nocturnally foul one had started college and was away from home—out from under the thumb of mom and dad—for the first time in his life.

“He could do whatever he wanted to do.

“And after having gotten totally drunk several Saturday nights in a row, he decided he didn’t want to get up Sunday mornings any more, to go to church. 

“That’s all it was, his real excuse.”

to be continued