Day Eight

I can't believe that this week has passed so quickly.  With the exception of Friday, I have been collecting signatures on Golden Proxies all week.  Thanks again to those of you who stopped by and shared in our effort.

It is now Sunday morning and the light is just beginning to cast its blue hue over Rancho Murieta.  The coffee pot is making welcome sounds, and Pepper, our cat, is sitting on top of the printer watching my every move.

Rather than droning on about the Proxy effort this morning, I feel a change of pace is in order.  As I mentioned in an earlier BLOG entry, I do a little writing almost every day.  I'm a real lover of short stories and some day, when I grow up, I may learn to master that literary form.  All stories have a beginning, middle, and end.  A successful short story writer uses the "hook" or the opening several paragraphs to grab the reader's attention in such a way that the reader can't put the work down.  Here is an example:

My mouth was dry and as dusty as the streets.  I had been here for a week setting up for the solar eclipse and was not yet accustomed to the heat.  The only thing I was looking for was a cantina that sold ice cold "crevasse."

The Saturday market in the center of the town was laid out like a gigantic carpet of colored fruits and vegetables with a fringe of furniture, firewood, and crafts.  The smells ran the gamut from the subtle fragrance of over-ripe fruit, and sun dried beef, to the clinging smells of freshly singed pinfeathers, animal manure, and the sweat of the unwashed.  People on all sorts of animal-drawn conveyances, astride burrows, and walking were streaming into town.  Only occasionally were there cars on the roads here, mostly tourists or a local politico.

The rusting yellow school bus, long since retired from service north of the border, rattling down the street was a more familiar sight.  Stacked high both inside and out were all sorts of string and rope tied boxes, and luggage of all descriptions.  Flimsy wire chicken carriers were lashed to the top of the bus, with their live cargo, backs to the wind or crammed in the lee for protection.  The luckier chickens rode inside contributing to the din; half Spanish, half chicken speak.  At each window there was a white shirted elbow cocked outside and a tanned face sporting a white hat.  As the bus rattled past, I noticed the elbows were being pulled inside in a sort of ripple fashion starting from the front.  Wild brown eyes stared in the direction that was out of my view.

The street that lay ahead of the bus was narrow and lined with low buildings.  Then in my peripheral vision I caught the source of their wide-eyed terror.  I saw tracks, railroad tracks cutting diagonally across the road, railroad tracks that the front wheels of the bus had just crossed.  A steam locomotive, one of the few still operating in this part of the world, had just crossed into my view as it struck a yellow fender and bore into the engine compartment.  The front of the bus twisted and groaned as it separated along a line through the manually opened front door, and the dashboard.  Like the severed head of a chicken it skidded across the street and came to rest in the window of the town's tobacconist.  Water and hot oil gushed from its insides as the transmission, and drive shaft continued twisting and turning as in a kind of mechanical rigor mortis.

The remainder of the bus continued to move forward like a millipede not yet sensing that a steam-driven preying mantis had devoured its head.  Some appendage two cars behind the locomotive caught the body of the bus and whirled it around and started dragging it in one piece, parallel to the train's on-rush.  Luggage, boxes and chickens flew from its roof like sparks from a fanned campfire.  Inside the bus all eyes were starring out the gaping hole where there once was a windshield.  The bus driver still in his seat, wheel in hand, frantically pumped the non-existent brake pedal, his hat long since blown free and his eyes wide with fear.  Then whatever had been connecting the bus to the train broke free, and the bus dropped to the soft ground along the tracks and like a great shovel scooped rocks and dirt into the front two seats and then came to a halt in a cloud of dust, chickens, string, rope, twisted yellow metal and screaming-sobbing Mexicans. 

The train was down the tracks at least a mile before it could stop.  I was one of the first to arrive.  Though there were lots of cuts and abrasions; miraculously not one soul met his maker that fine sunny Saturday morning.  It was in all this confusion that I first met Carlos and his magic dog, Pepie.

This is where the hook ends.  I have never added another word to this effort and would love to know more about this character.  Do  any  of you Know Carlos?  If so, tell me about him.

John and I will be at Plaza Foods at 10AM today.  Drop by and sign a proxy.