Fistful of Reefer

Fistful of Reefer: scene 70 & 71

Chancho lay down in the mud and lapped water like a dog. After he finished he waited several seconds for his image to reappear as the ripples calmed. Each week that passed left his face more gaunt, his eyes more hollow. He slapped the surface with his hand before sitting back on a flat rock buried in the mud. Somehow his bones felt loose despite his tight, leathery skin.

He wiped water away from his whiskers with the back of his hand. Closing his eyes, he gazed up at the sun. Slowly he rolled to his knees, sinking his hands in the mud as he pushed himself upright. Wiping them on his tattered pants he walked back to the Harley.

The tires were wearing thin, but they would hold a little longer as long as he avoided sharp rocks. For the hundredth time over the last month he thought about the previous owner, wondering how the motorcycle’s fate would have been different had he not stolen it. Covered in dust, it still seemed a dignified machine despite the ignoble heap of items Chancho had lashed to its back fender: an extra gas can, a bedroll, a pot and a coffee kettle among other elements of survival he had collected—traded for with gold coins. A sturdy sombrero, a more practical sort than his last, topped it all off. With a sigh he put the hat back on his head.

Concerned about gas and tired of the vibration, he pushed the bike a mile further down the cattle and game trail he had been following since morning. Finally he reached the designated meeting spot high up on a ridge overlooking the east. A few hours early, he rested his back against the trunk of a mountain cedar and fell asleep.

He dreamt of an oil field belching black smoke and scorched with flame. Derricks consumed to the point of matchsticks snapped and crumbled in the winds created by the hungry tongues of fire. Then the ground shifted. A great earthquake lifted the surface which bulged from the ground, tilting vertically until it unfolded inhuman legs and stood. Great clods of earth fell thunderously from the creature’s back as it unfurled completely, stretching toward the heavens in agony and prayer. In his dream Chancho felt he knew its pain.

Stumbling, exhausted of its soul, the mountainous creature fell back to earth with a force so destructive, so tumultuous, Chancho jerked in his sleep. He clapped the back of his head against the tree, waking himself with a cruel headache. Rubbing the back of his head, he stood and walked to the edge of the cliff. Recognizing the terrain from his dream as the miles of land stretching out in front of him, he suddenly understood the vision as prophecy rather than dream. He shivered from the thought.

As sure as the rinche was coming for him, unstoppable and inexhaustible, a monster even greater than the ranger was coming to consume the land and bleed it dry. Chancho sat, hanging his feet over the edge. He remembered the crowded derricks of Blondie—the place where his former life had come to rest. His troubles still pursued him, but his running neared its end. He would pay in full for his past mistakes.

He pulled the silk bag from his pocket. Soiled and slack, it no longer jingled. Holding the bottom he emptied the last coin into his opened palm. A deep gash across the eagle marked it as the coin he’d lifted from Primitivo’s dead body. With a tight cord binding the coin to the knot in his gut, the solitary presence of it forced him to retch.

More alone then he had ever felt as an orphan, he clutched the last remnant of revolution. The last promise of his dreams glimmered in his calloused and dirty hand. But what had the dreaming gotten him? He stabbed the terrain with dagger eyes, daring it to answer his question.

Nothing. No one. Putting the dream to death had given him purpose. For a month he evaded the ranger, sleeping with wild animals and hiding in holes. Strangers had provided basic necessities in exchange for gold coins from the Mexican revolution, coins pilfered from the arrogant and corrupt. But his strength had slipped away with each coin, and now there was little left. One damn coin.