Atman meets franksolich (story now complete)

[franksolich]

introduction: Atman meets franksolich is payback to the Atman primitive on Skins’s island, for so rudely calling me out from Skins’s island last week when I was busy with something far more important than the richboy Atman.

The deal with shout-outs is that common courtesy and good manners demand that one respond to them, no matter how great the inconvenience it imposes upon one, and franksolich has no intention of being caught with his pants down not practicing common courtesy and good manners.

That was lousy timing, really lousy timing, on Atman’s part, and irked me to no end.

If the washed-up pretty boy wanted franksolich’s attention, well, he got franksolich’s attention.

I dunno if he’ll like this story or not, but that’s the spoiled brat’s problem, not mine.

Atman meets franksolich is a work of fiction, with some real-life descriptions slipped therein, observations of franksolich’s character and personality by others in real life.  I don’t know if I really am that way, but it’s an accurate description of my reputation.  Sometimes popular reputation and reality are one and the same thing, sometimes not.  I dunno what the case is here.

Atman and franksolich of course have never met in real life, but this is probably a pretty good picture of what’d happen if we did; it’d be something like what follows.

The whole story’s done, and all ready for launching—it’s not quite as long as the old “Mrs. Alfred Packer” tales—but it’s being released only in parts, at random unannounced times, so as to keep the gimme-gimme-gimme-gimme-right-now Atman on the edge of his seat.

And now begins the dolorous tale…..

[franksolich]

Atman meets franksolich.  The stranger drove into northern Nebraska from Iowa and headed west for a couple of hours, before he decided it was a good idea to stop somewhere to get the lay of the land.  He was now halfway across the country, but the last few days, he’d gone through Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa in a mindless tupor, not paying attention.

However, the clean fresh always-changing air of this seventh state seemed to clear his cerebral-cells, making him amenable to sitting back, relaxing, and getting mellow for a bit, as he was tired.

The stranger had just gone through a whole world of woes back home.

He came to a small town out in the middle of nowhere, population 854, the biggest place for miles around according to the road-map.  He had already gone through towns of 225 or 210 or 119 or 57 or 8 inhabitants, spaced about twenty miles apart, and this one looked as if it had all the amenities of life as he’d known it back in the crowded congested east; a grocery store, a gasoline station, a hardware store, a post office, a convenience store, a telephone company, an enormous football stadium, a well-kept baseball field, two banks, nine churches, nine bars, an egg hatchery, a seamstressery, a gunnery, and a blacksmithery.

Everything one wanted, could be found here.

Excepting two of them; he was mystified by the lack of a restaurant, or more importantly, a motel.

Spotting a bar that looked likely to serve food, he parked and went inside.

The bar was crowded, it being early evening, but he spied an empty barstool next to a cowboy, a shorter wiry blond in his late 30s, who looked friendly enough.  The stranger sat down and asked for a menu; the waitress told him the list of cuisinery was chalked on the board behind him.

Most of the customers were dining upon steaks or hamburgers, but he ordered ichijū-sansai, along with a side of tsukemono, and a larger side of hatsu-gatsuo, which the waitress brought him in short order.

The cowboy next to him looked the stranger up-and-down; he had some qualities of a fairy, but not enough to make him a real one, and so the cowboy relaxed.  Probably just a soft effete rich doofus from the east—his motor vehicle parked outside had been noticed, along with the Connecticut license-plates and the surfboard tied to the roof.

“You’re road-worn, stranger,” the cowboy said; “you’re stopping here for the night?”

“I don’t know; I have no idea what’s beyond here,” the stranger said; “I’m headed out to California.

“You see, I’m a professional free-lance artist, a caricaturist, and…..” after which he continued on with his tale, which need not detain the reader more than this.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the cowboy said when the stranger was finished; “you were spoiled rotten as a kid, every whim catered to, and you signed up for the ‘Great Artists’ School’ advertised in comics-books and on match-book covers, found a woman with money to support you, withdrew and squandered all your trust-funds, got fired from your job, and your wife got tired of carrying your lazy ass, and threw you out.

“The only usable skill you ever learned was as a forklift driver in a camera factory, and those jobs are scarce in this 0bamaconomy, especially for some guy your age.

“You’re nearly 53, already all washed up and too tired to start all over.

“So you’re headed out to southern California, to live on the beach and surf your life away.”

The stranger bristled at this.

“Don’t worry about it,” the cowboy reassured him; “we’re not big-city rubes and hicks and yahoos out here; we know what’s going on. 

“Nobody’s perfect.  Here, let me buy you a beer.”

to be continued

[obumazombie]

I always wondered what happened to those scholarships given to the artists that drew the best imitation of the "draw this" art in the periodicals of the time.

[GOBUCKS]

Sooner or later, he's gonna blow up.

[DumbAss Tanker]

I always wondered what happened to those scholarships given to the artists that drew the best imitation of the "draw this" art in the periodicals of the time.

He isn't in their league.  The buffoon cuts and pastes old public domain clipart to produce a primitive (What else?), simple to a fault, and unfunny sort of comic strip, and then gets huffy about his 'creative rights' in his 'intellectual property' if anyone puts one of the sad little things up on the internet.

[franksolich]

He isn't in their league.  The buffoon cuts and pastes old public domain clipart to produce a primitive (What else?), simple to a fault, and unfunny sort of comic strip, and then gets huffy about his 'creative rights' in his 'intellectual property' if anyone puts one of the sad little things up on the internet.

Uh, in all fairness to my evil twin Atman, that's not him.

You're thinking of Fat Che's little brother, he of the expanded rectal aperture.

Atman's a sort of caricaturist, and by strangest of coincidences, there is a framed chalk caricature of franksolich as a prisoner in the gulag, during my time in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, hanging on the wall above the computer here, that could very well have been drawn by Atman, the style being eerily similar.

I would've posted it here a very long time ago, even used it as an avatar, excepting the damned thing's so large it can't be scanned.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Ah, my apologies, your monickers for the idiots' own monickers throw me off at times.

[franksolich]

Ah, my apologies, your monickers for the idiots' own monickers throw me off at times.

Sorry about that, sir, but it can't be helped.

Some of the official primitive screen-names are so stupid one hesitates to use them, and re-baptizes them something more appropriate.

"Atman" as a screen-name I guess is okay, though; it's a brand-name of women's lingerie touted by Richard Russell or Bill Simmons or somesuch; some obscure television personality.

I'm desisting from using "Pedro Picasso" because probably more people when using the nadin-machine, look up "Atman" rather than the name I gave him.

[franksolich]

continued

As the cowboy commiserated with the stranger, the stranger got around to mentioning that he thought he’d seek lodging for the night, and what was available out here?

“Oh, man,” the cowboy replied; “there’s some problems.

“You could go west of here, and maybe by the time the sun’s up, near Merriman or something, you’ll find a motel.  It’ll be first-rate, five-star, top-notch, and all that, but with Regency Park opulence and luxury, you got Regency Park prices.

“There’s a few mom-and-pop operations between here and out there, places from the 1920s that were miniature separated cabins, but now’s their busy season, and they got no room.  They’re full up with construction workers who rent by the month, and made their reservations last year.

“They’re nice places, neat and clean and all that, and the food can’t be beat, but you got no more chance of finding one with a vacant room than nadin does of marrying Prince Harry.”

Hmmmm, the stranger said.  “But where do people stay when they’re up here?”

“A motel would go broke around here,” the cowboy explained, “because there’s no call for one.

“For baptisms, weddings, funerals, family reunions, high-school class reunions, during blizzards and other sorts of disasters, hunting seasons, harvest time, people not from here just stay with other people, usually family and friends.

“We’ve got big houses here, plenty of room even for strangers, and it’s an insult to us if somebody doesn’t want to stay with us.

“There’s plenty of places to camp, and some privately-owned hunters’ cabins, and the weather’s fine right now, but you don’t look as if you’re tough enough to survive the outdoor life.”

The cowboy suddenly thought of something else.

“You know, stranger, it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep on going yet tonight.

“Right in front of you lays your most formidable obstacle to getting west, and it’s best to get through it during the day, never at night.

“Here, you’re on the eastern slope of the Sandhills of Nebraska—Merriman, where dutch508 lives, is on the western slope—and you’re going to have to cross 250 miles of the most daunting, the most fearsome, the most grueling, the most arduous, the most draining, terrain in all of the continent.

“Going through the passes of the Rockies in a raging blizzard or speeding across the deserts of Nevada on a hot day in summer aren’t even child’s play, compared with getting through the Sandhills.

“The Sandhills are about a third of Nebraska, but only a few thousand people live out there, and usually on its fringes, not inside of them.  I have a neighbor however who grew up right in the middle of them.

“It was a good thing the pioneers headed west alongside the Platte River, but the Sandhills are north of that, and nobody at the time knew they were up there.  If they’d run up against the Sandhills, they would’ve turned around and gone back east, and the west would’ve never gotten settled.

“The Sandhills aren’t mountains, being rather rolling hills, and there’s plenty of water out there, but there’s something about the land and the sky that terrifies all but the most extraordinary sorts of people.

“When out in the Sandhills, one finally understands what Eternity, Infinity, God, is.

“The limitless of it all drives people stark raving mad; someone raised in the Sandhills of Nebraska would feel claustrophobic in the ‘Big Sky’ country of Montana, or way out on the moon.

“Of course, it’s only a perception distorted by the way the land and sky are, and the atmospheric and climatic conditions, but still, this feeling of seeing Infinity makes people feel uncomfortable; they don’t like it and want to get out of there as quickly as possible, to some other place where there’s boundaries and limits to what they can see and define.

“And that’s on a nice day in spring.

“A Sandhills storm is a sight to see—that is, unless one’s a native of there, in which case it’s rather ordinary and boring—lightning-bolts running horizontal with the ground a hundred miles away, 350 miles in length as it races across the land, a five-minute rain-shower that unleashes the electrical power of ten million Hiroshimas, the fury of relentless winds.

“Of course, such weather exists everywhere on earth, but in the Sandhills one can see it, grasping how large and terrible the forces of nature are, when compared with all the trite puny combined efforts of mankind to cool, or heat up, or pollute, the world.

“It’s best for you to go through during the day, not at night.

“Nebraskans—city-dwellers, country dwellers—are known, and deservedly so, for being a distinctive, hearty, robust, vigorous, moral and principled sort of people, but even we aren’t nothing, when compared with a Sandhillsian, someone who’s actually stood in the Presence of God, and seen God.”

Just then, someone passed by the cowboy and the stranger, pausing long enough to gently squeeze the cowboy’s upper left arm, silently indicating his presence, and then proceeded without a word on to the back of the bar.

to be continued

[franksolich]

Sooner or later, he's gonna blow up.

No, there's no natural gas stoves in this story.

That's strictly for the stories of the hippywife primitive, Mrs. Alfred Packer.

[franksolich]

continued

“Who was that, a friend of yours?” the stranger asked the cowboy as the sudden apparition melted into the darkness of the room beyond.   
 
“I’m his nearest neighbor,” the cowboy told the stranger, “six miles up the road from him.  We’ve known each other for a long time, even before either of us was up here.  I was born and raised here, and then came back thirteen years ago, and he came here ten, almost eleven, years ago.

“He’s from a good family, a well-known and –respected family—and a large family—but as he was born at the tail-end of it, and late, now he’s the last one left.  He’s got grown-and-married nephews and all that, but in his own family, he’s the last one left.

“He’s originally from deep within the Sandhills.

“People around here think rather highly of him,” the cowboy went on; “he’s the only adult male in the county who doesn’t carry a gun, because he doesn’t need to.  If he got into some sort of trouble, there’d be guns blazing from all directions, to get him out of it.

“Usually other people notice he’s in danger before he does; he usually doesn’t know until it’s over with.

“He doesn’t talk much.  A few times, he’ll open up a little bit, such as when he occasionally tells me about his two years wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants during the early 1990s.

“His friends, and what was still then left of his family, thought him utterly mad, and thought for sure he’d take the next plane home.  He left on a Thursday, and I myself thought I’d see him again the following Monday.

“There was a lot of concern about this, but he didn’t pay any attention.  He just went.  He was tired of having such a dull, unexciting life.

“He went there on his own, paying his own way and not ‘sponsored’ by anybody, knowing nothing whatsoever of the lay of the land or its languages, and because he was afraid all the excitement would be over with before he got there, he was in a hurry to get there; he went there before he had much money--$187 in American one-dollar bills, and no way to get any more…..but yet he lasted two months shy of two years.

“He was in the newspapers a lot back then, but unfortunately the excitement was all over with before he got there.  It was kind of like showing up in Berlin in May 1945, too late to see anything.

“He saw the socialist paradises from the bottom up, and obviously it was a rude eye-opener, an abrupt life-changer.

“When he was picked up at the airport after having been there, he weighed 137 pounds and looked like a Russian peasant…..from another century.  The friend who picked him up wanted to take him to the hospital to be looked at, but he insisted he was okay, and just needed some sleep ‘between clean sheets.’  He slept through two and a half days and nights straight, and when he woke up again, he said it was just jet lag.

“As you can guess, he’s 6’3”, and has since fattened up to, oh, about 175 pounds.

“To this day, he won’t even wear a wrist-watch, thinking it an ostentatious decadence in a world where so many have so much less.

“He was never a high-living materialistic money-grubber even before he left here, but after the profound shock of that experience, he’s raised personal spartan austerity to a whole new level.

“Others, like the primitives on Skins’s island, worry they don’t have enough; he worries that he has too much.

“He’s described some of things he saw, but only little parts of them.  As for the whole picture, he just says, ‘some things are so incredible they have to be seen before they can be believed.’

“To this day he says he left there, but he never, really, came back ‘here.’”

to be continued

[Revolution]

continued

“Who was that, a friend of yours?” the stranger asked the cowboy as the sudden apparition melted into the darkness of the room beyond.   
 
“I’m his nearest neighbor,” the cowboy told the stranger, “six miles up the road from him.  We’ve known each other for a long time, even before either of us was up here.  I was born and raised here, and then came back thirteen years ago, and he came here ten, almost eleven, years ago.

“He’s from a good family, a well-known and –respected family—and a large family—but as he was born at the tail-end of it, and late, now he’s the last one left.  He’s got grown-and-married nephews and all that, but in his own family, he’s the last one left.

“He’s originally from deep within the Sandhills.

“People around here think rather highly of him,” the cowboy went on; “he’s the only adult male in the county who doesn’t carry a gun, because he doesn’t need to.  If he got into some sort of trouble, there’d be guns blazing from all directions, to get him out of it.

“Usually other people notice he’s in danger before he does; he usually doesn’t know until it’s over with.

“He doesn’t talk much.  A few times, he’ll open up a little bit, such as when he occasionally tells me about his two years wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants during the early 1990s.

“His friends, and what was still then left of his family, thought him utterly mad, and thought for sure he’d take the next plane home.  He left on a Thursday, and I myself thought I’d see him again the following Monday.

“There was a lot of concern about this, but he didn’t pay any attention.  He just went.  He was tired of having such a dull, unexciting life.

“He went there on his own, paying his own way and not ‘sponsored’ by anybody, knowing nothing whatsoever of the lay of the land or its languages, and because he was afraid all the excitement would be over with before he got there, he was in a hurry to get there; he went there before he had much money--$187 in American one-dollar bills, and no way to get any more…..but yet he lasted two months shy of two years.

“He was in the newspapers a lot back then, but unfortunately the excitement was all over with before he got there.  It was kind of like showing up in Berlin in May 1945, too late to see anything.

“He saw the socialist paradises from the bottom up, and obviously it was a rude eye-opener, an abrupt life-changer.

“When he was picked up at the airport after having been there, he weighed 137 pounds and looked like a Russian peasant…..from another century.  The friend who picked him up wanted to take him to the hospital to be looked at, but he insisted he was okay, and just needed some sleep ‘between clean sheets.’  He slept through two and a half days and nights straight, and when he woke up again, he said it was just jet lag.

“As you can guess, he’s 6’3”, and has since fattened up to, oh, about 175 pounds.

“To this day, he won’t even wear a wrist-watch, thinking it an ostentatious decadence in a world where so many have so much less.

“He was never a high-living materialistic money-grubber even before he left here, but after the profound shock of that experience, he’s raised personal spartan austerity to a whole new level.

“Others, like the primitives on Skins’s island, worry they don’t have enough; he worries that he has too much.

“He’s described some of things he saw, but only little parts of them.  As for the whole picture, he just says, ‘some things are so incredible they have to be seen before they can be believed.’

“To this day he says he left there, but he never, really, came back ‘here.’”

to be continued

Just reminding myself this is the next part I need to read. Excellent so far, as usual.

[Skul]

A more than adequate description of the sandhills.
Miles and miles of hills with endless grass and sand.
Every now and then, you see and old windmill. Mostly old Aermotors with twenty blades as I recall.
On rare accasions, you might spot one fo those old fifty blade units.
Aermotors were bit robust and finding one still working is a treat.
Turn the car off, and just listen.
The old pump valve at the bottom of the hole, no longer works.
They just spin in circles, going *squeaksqueaksqueak* and produce nothing.
They remind me of DUmpmonkeys. 

[obumazombie]

Knowing and seeing are mutually exclusive, as are seeing and believing, with few exceptions.

[franksolich]

Aermotors were bit robust and finding one still working is a treat.

The old pump valve at the bottom of the hole, no longer works.

They just spin in circles, going *squeaksqueaksqueak* and produce nothing.

They remind me of DUmpmonkeys.

Actually, some of them still do produce, endlessly pumping up water.

The business partner and I were in my old hometown in the Sandhills on May 30, and because it was on our way, we stopped off at an old nearly-abandoned cemetery out in the middle of nowhere, where the parents, two brothers, and two nieces are buried (their choices, I had no say in the matter).

There's a windmill at the top of the hill overlooking the cemetery, and it was ancient when I was young.

I was going to write about this at the time, but was too tied up with OSC.

Anyway, in the cemetery itself, someone had carefully laid out and ploughed a 40' x 40' piece of ground, and was cultivating marijuana there.  It wasn't the wild marijuana ubiquitous to Nebraska; it was some sort of higher grade than that.  Somebody was really taking care of it.

And what a place to put it; nobody goes out there.

It was being watered by four lengths of 60' hose running from the cistern of the windmill at the top of the hill.

Man, I thought that thing was busted when I was a little lad.

Well, the plants looked about ready for harvesting, surely no more than a week from then.  At this sacrilege, I took some sort of long flexible rod (a "leader"--I dunno) used with horses (the business partner's in the horse-breeding business too) and used that thing as a sort of scythe, walking up-and-down the rows, shearing them down.

When I was done, to make the dope utterly unusable, I dumped a gallon and a half of gasoline, a five-gallon container of linseed oil, and a couple of gallons of cheap low-grade horse-fly repellent, that the business partner had in the bed of his pick-up truck.

It was a hot sunny day, and of course everything evaporated.....after being absorbed by the cut-down plants.

And then I pissed on it, to make it even more unsalvageable.

I may have destroyed the Taverner primitive's secret stash, but oh well.

[obumazombie]

^Since the little darlings like to name each variant of weed they produce maybe what you destroyed was sandhillssensimilla.

[franksolich]

continued

The cowboy’s name was called; it was his turn at the pool table.

“Come along,” he told the stranger; “it’s just me, for practice, but if you want to play a game, we can.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather talk to that one guy,” the stranger said.

“But he won’t talk to you,” the cowboy commented; “I’m not saying you are, but you look like a dilletante and somebody who likes to admire himself in the mirror too much, and so he won’t be friendly to you.

“And in addition to that, given your former residence, and your hobb—er, professional career, you’re probably a Democrat, and he loathes Democrats.

“Doesn’t even want to breathe the same air they do.”

“Oh now,” the stranger said, “it’s not right to judge people on superficial appearances.

“Where’s this hospitality Nebraska’s famous for?”

“Well, there’s a bigger reason,” the cowboy admitted.

“He’s deaf, stone-deaf, born that way, from birth.  No ears.

“His mother, a nurse, was exposed to some sort of chemical at work, and that’s the way he came out.

“That’s why he wears his hair the way he does, to hide it.

“He wants people to believe he can hear them, but while he’s a good actor, the greatest since Barrymore, the only one who’s being fooled is himself.”

“Oh, that’s very sad,” the stranger said.

“He doesn’t see it that way,” the cowboy replied; “in fact, he considers himself the luckiest person he knows.  All he’s missing is a couple of ears, while other infants born the same way were missing a whole lot more than that.  He considers himself gotten off easy.”

The cowboy put the pool balls into the plastic triangular thing.

“Now wait,” the stranger insisted; “this guy is deaf, and he spent almost two years over there in Russia, all alone?

“How did he get by?”

The cowboy shot the balls.  “By teaching English.”

“No way,” the stranger let out.

“It was the old Soviet Union,” the cowboy explained; “people there were desperate to learn English, so as to join the civilized world.  And so he taught English.

“There’s a whole lot of workers and peasants running around over there, talking English like he does.”

to be continued

[Skul]

^Since the little darlings like to name each variant of weed they produce maybe what you destroyed was sandhillssensimilla.

Or sandhillscenseofsmella.
Stuff probably stunk to high heavens afterwards.

[franksolich]

continued

After hitting the balls around the table for some minutes, the cowboy suggested, “I think I got your problem solved, partner.

“How about you spend the night at his place, and then tomorrow during daylight get through the Sandhills, after which you should pretty much coast all the way to southern California?”

“I’m not comfortable with that idea,” the stranger replied.  "I don’t know him, or this place.”

“Well, you’re out in the middle of nowhere as it is,” the cowboy reminded him; “a few miles further out into the middle of nowhere won’t make any difference, I think.

“Your choices are to head west for hours and hours, and you’ll come to a place with a motel, or the lake’s just a few miles away, and you can sleep under the stars—but as I said, you don’t look like the outdoors type; you’re too soft.

“I think you’d be better off with a roof over your head, on a comfortable bed…..inside.”

“But I don’t know him,” the stranger repeated; “I have no idea who, or what, he is.”

“Who and what he is,” the cowboy replied, almost belligerent in tone, “is a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet.

“He’s kept people overnight and for breakfast too, people in trouble, people stranded, people lost.

“And nobody has to ask him for anything; he instinctively knows what they need, to get them a hundred miles further down the road, or through the next twenty-four hours.

“Women, he treats with the utmost decorum and respect, as it’s not in him to be any way else.

“He’s a little cruder how he treats men though,” the cowboy added, as if trying to decide into which category the stranger fell. 

“Usually he ignores them as if they aren’t even there, and can take care of themselves.”

“Well, your word may be good,” the stranger replied, “but I don’t know.  He’s a stranger to me, and might be weird or something.”

The cowboy pushed his pool-stick too hard, ripping the green felt of the table.

“There’s something you’re not seeing here,” he said to the stranger; “yes, yes, yes, he’s a stranger to you, in a place strange to you.  And you’d be way out in the middle of nowhere.

“However.

“Look at it from his end; he’s deaf.  He has no idea what’s going on unless it’s going on right in front of his face.  You can cleave an axe into the back of his head, and he’d never know it was coming.

“He’s deaf.  He has no idea what’s going on, no defenses against possible hazards and perils.

“You’ve got a cellular telephone that you can use, to summon help if you’re in some sort of trouble.  If he’s in some sort of trouble, he can only hope that random chance and luck brings someone around.

“And while he has a couple of inches on you, you’ve got a good 60-70 pounds on him, and he’s not as strong as he looks; in fact, he’s rather frail, and tires easier than he lets on.

“He’s got more reason to be afraid of you, than you of him; he’s at your mercy, not you at his.”

to be continued

[thundley4]

“And nobody has to ask him for anything; he instinctively knows what they need, to get them a hundred miles further down the road, or through the next twenty-four hours.

Is that 24 business hours? 

[franksolich]

continued

The stranger ruminated upon that.

The cowboy reminded him, “Look, if I thought there was something queer or odd about you, I would’ve told you to keep driving through the night, and maybe about the time the sun comes up in the morning, you’ll find a motel.

“But you’re down and out, and harmless, and God compels us to be compassionate to fools.

“It’s a nice place—certainly better than any other free lodgings—clean, spacious, and well-stocked with provisions, modern and up-to-date.  The only thing is there’s no television, radio, or stereo, or any other noise-making apparatus, out there, but I’m sure you can stand that for a night.

“Trust me, he’s got no firearms, no dangerous explosives, no hidden closets full of whips and chains, no drugs, out there.  In fact, there’s hardly anything there, because of his ascetic way of life.  There’s not even a dirty book or magazine sitting around.  It’s sparse, but it’s clean and modern.”

The bartendress announced it was 10:50, ten minutes before closing time.

As the other customers got up and started towards the door, so too did the man in the back arise and walk slowly towards the door.  As he passed the cowboy and the stranger, the cowboy grabbed him by his elbow to stop him, after which they communicated with each other.

It was odd, the stranger thought; they were obviously “speaking” sentences, paragraphs, whole pages, to each other, but the only words actually said where when the man turned around to inspect the stranger, mumbling indifferently, “yeah, sure, no problem,” after which they all left.

They drove down the highway, the neighbor in his pick-up truck, the host in his car, and the stranger in his.

The stranger was impressed by the highway; back home, it would hold four lanes, in some cases five, but out here, it was just two lanes.  And for twelve miles, they passed no other traffic; they had the whole road to themselves.

And then the neighbor blinked his lights “goodbye” and turned north, four miles to home, as the host led the stranger south, two miles to home.

The stranger was also awed by the utter blackness of the night; far away from any urban congestion with artificial light, one could see that there were not just a few, but millions upon millions, of stars up in the sky.  Until now, he’d had no idea there were so many stars.

They came to a rise on a hill, the other side being a sort of large basin, in the middle of which stood a house surrounded by trees.  On the left, about a city-block, a city-block-and-a-half, away, was some sort of mound that in profile looked as if a miniature alpine Jungfrau.

There were lights on inside the house, and four cats stood sentinel at four of the many windows, looking out into the darkness, waiting for someone. 

The host pulled up to the front of a garage—it was a large galvanized steel building, decades newer than the house—and got out of his car, as did the stranger out of his.  “Go on in,” his host told the stranger; “it’s unlocked.”

The stranger balked about something, and it took a while for his host to understand him; his fears that someone during the middle of the night might come and steal his surfboard, strapped to the top of his car, and his surfboard was the most valuable thing he owned.

His host grimaced at him with disgust, but opened the garage door, revealing a clean, spacious interior capable of holding four motor vehicles and other things besides, but which was wholly empty.  After the stranger parked and came back outside, his host pulled down the door.

“It’s got no lock,” his host said; “it never had a lock.  No one’s ever been out here to steal anything anyway.”

After which they trod up the steps of the front porch, into the house.

to be continued

[GOBUCKS]

Still hoping Pedro meets a gruesome end involving multiple gory chunks.

[Skul]

I hope the stranger doesn't see the drawer of knives in the kitchen, before being offered a place to shower.

[thundley4]

Still hoping Pedro meets a gruesome end involving multiple gory chunks.

It would be fine with me if he suffocated in the William River Pitt pig shit.

[franksolich]

Still hoping Pedro meets a gruesome end involving multiple gory chunks.

Well, as mentioned, it's already written, including the ending, but I ain't spilling no beans.

I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not Atman got what he deserved.