C. McCarthy
Author
A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Four stars

The girl and the boy wait in line sharing no words between them. She wears the patchwork uniform of a young Bohemian. Tights quaintly shredded.  Faded garments a manufactured history of a life she hasn’t led. Eyes dulled by ceaseless days of studied indolence.

The boy distractedly polishing a computer mobile phone with a scarf patterned by the long forgotten runes of an indigenous culture. His hands as soft as a baby’s.

The girl nudges the boy. Look, she says.

They both look down the street. Shimmering in the heat waves, the unspeakably alien image of a solitary rider on a horse. Coming their way at a funeral pace.

The lady in the food truck is saying something to the couple but they can’t stop looking down the street.  The girl, taken by a sudden and ancient panic, grabs for the boy’s hand. Finding no succor in his chalky grip, her hands move to her neck.

Horse and rider are now less than a block away. The roan Appaloosa gamely walking down the center line. Cars yielding with silent deference.

The rider tugs the reins and the horse veers toward the couple. The girl looks up at the figure on the horse and sees a man of indistinct but advanced years. Skin nearly indistinguishable from his faded and sun parched leathers. A well-used rifle in a holster along the saddle. A silver and glass locket at his neck. Inside, a lock of hair.

The horse comes to a stop inches from the girl’s face. Steamy equine breath envelopes her. A smell not known to her people since the time of her great grandparents. She reaches for the horse, tentatively, feeling underneath its hide a terrifying aliveness.  She begins to weep. It is an inconsolable wail born from the deep rage of years lost and wasted. The boy watches helplessly and makes no move toward her.

The rider leans down from the saddle, his orchestra of leathers creaking in protest. He extends a scarred hand to the girl. Come on now, he says.

The girl reaches for the rider, knowing the sinews that guide her hand are not her own.

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C. McCarthy
Author
A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Two stars

Karl nodded toward the untouched mason jar of wine.
You best drink up son, he said.
The young drifter looked away. I can’t.
Yeah you can. Go on.

The boy went silent once more, turning to the window, to the city street wet with night fog. Somewhere, a train whistling.

Karl joylessly toyed with a wet book of matches. Around him, a humming riot of moneyed bohemians. Chasing sex and possibility, heedless of death’s proximity. They sat there for a while. Well I can’t fix this one, he said.
I know, the boy said, looking down at his hands. Blood under the fingernails.
What are you fixin to do.
I don’t know. The boy rubbed his hands together, in spite of the bar’s hothouse warmth.
They wont stop hunting you. After what you did.
Yeah I know. The boy put on his sweat-stained ball cap and walked out the door without looking back.

Karl watched the boy go. A pulsing pain in his gut. He watched the doomed boy fade into the smokey mist. Reached for the mason jar of California red. Drank it in one go. Goddamnit, he said. He stood up slowly, tired limbs protesting. He squared his hat. On his right hip, the Colt. Something he never got used to. The heaviness of the thing.

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C. McCarthy
Author
A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Two stars

Jeans encrusted with a man’s salt, a deposit left by a sea of sweat. Jeans soaked through with the steaming birth water of a newborn foal. Jeans polished white by saddle leather. Jeans awash in glacial melt, dead weight on a drowned miner. Jeans worn by Mexicans, Texans, Christians and Heathens

Jeans on boys who wish they were men. Jeans on boys becoming men. Jeans on dead men in a blustery street.

Jeans on pretenders, charlatans, dilettantes. Jeans on false gods and false cowboys. Jeans powdered by cocaine. Men wearing lady jeans, crushing genitals atrophied by a life of indifference.

A storied denim river once glacial blue now polluted and languid.

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Veet: What will you do with smoothness that lasts?

Me: A number of things. Primarily, I will use my long lasting smoothness to reduce my drag coefficent when I am moving at high speeds. I’ve calculated that at 100km/h I can reduce my drag coefficent from .49 to .42 thanks to Veet Ready To Use Strips Leg & Body. Additionally I will take advantage of the longevity of my smoothness during my all night porpoise dancing sessions. As you know, porpoises are incredibly, silky smooth. Thus, for a variety of human-porpoise dance styles, involving say, dorsal fin to thigh contact, lusciously smooth legs are a must.

Additionally I expect tertiary benefits at the metaphorical level, e. g., I expect my baby hairless legs to get me out of speeding tickets, awkward dates, and jury duty. Because, quite frankly, my smoothness will transcend my physical being and I’ll be able to silk my way out of life’s tight spots.

Veet, please send me 10,000 of your depilatory wax products so I can be forever freed from the manacles of my manly Irish-Japanese-Wookie legs.

With Kindest Regards,

EDW Lynch

C. McCarthy
Author
A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Three stars

There were a variety of cakes and sweet things there. The desserts paraded by in their desperate decadence, at once a fading and colorless memory.

A Bavarian chocolate cake stood apart, on a simple plate. Like a rancher’s wife it was seasoned by hardships and nature’s brutal arithmetic. Flourless, it awaited a lonely fate.

A Tiramisu teetered like the oldest prostitute in a mining town, reeking of saccharine liqueur. The faint scent of virtue lost amid the hellish musk of ten thousand outrages.

A torte, covered in glistening fruit, a lie as old as memory. Its flavor joyless, a pyrrhic dessert atop a mountain of meaningless artifice. Hasn’t been real sugar in this torte since before the highway was built here. Since before the first settlers came through with bibles and Henry rifles. The slow mockery of corn syrup.

He reached for the Tiramisu with a hand that had been dried by the sun and wind, and bathed in the steaming blood of another human being. All that now was behind him.

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C. McCarthy
Author
A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Two stars

The young cowboy lies in the afternoon sun, gut shot. The bitter tang of cordite and blood mingles in his mouth. In his hand, a pearl handled revolver, still warm. He lies propped against the lone cottonwood. A mile distant, dust trails mark a coming reckoning. Three riders, maybe more.

His eyes shift upward to a circling vulture, a sentinel of inevitability. The blood is almost black. He has another hour at most. The pain comes in waves, lingering like the burn of bad whiskey. One bullet left in the Colt.

Something as yet unheralded has died when a quesadilla comes on a spinach tortilla.

###

Read more from not Cormac McCarthy

Lytro Light Field Camera Allows Focusing After Photo is Taken–this is the future.

Turntable.fm, A Clever Social Music Site Lets Users Play DJ–this may also be the future.

The Problem of Choice, Another Brilliant RSA Animate Lecture–the future may not be so bright.

The Long Now is Building a 10,000 Year Clock in Texas Mountain–This is kind of a big deal. The Long Now Foundation, the future-positive group made up of various luminaries including Sir Brian Eno, is building a clock that will keep time for 10,000 years.

Plus Pool, a Proposal for a Public Pool Floating in a New York City River–A brilliant solution for New York’s sweltering summers. Let’s hope the Kickstarter raises more than 10 grand.

Dear Photograph, Then and Now Photos of Old Snapshots–There’s something wonderfully eery about taking an old snapshot back to its original context and taking a photo of it. Also it’s dammned hard to explain in writing. Go look at it.

My Top Five Icky Yoga Words

1. Sitbones. Noun. The two knobby bits where your legbones meet your buttbone. “Let’s really widen the space between our sitbones.”
2. Sacrum. Noun. A mysterious region somewhere between your butt and lower back. “You can let the strap rest right on your partner’s sacrum.”
3. Hip crease. Noun. The point near the groin where the hip and leg meet. “Remember to externally rotate your leg so you really see your hip crease.”
4. Sensation. Noun. AKA pain. “Notice where you’re feeling the most sensation.”
5. Sidebody. Noun. The portion of the body between the hip and armpit. “Extend that left arm to the ceiling to really get in touch with your sidebody.”