Wanted Dead Or Not Breathing

[Robert Crisman]

So we ate and then splashed around in the pool like four-year-old kids and then slept, and the laudanum indeed kept the devils away, and when we woke up around noon after five or so hours of sleep, I felt as fresh as spring and ready to take on the world.

We tarried awhile over breakfast, again Dinty Moore, this time just something to fill up the gut, and then around one Godfrey came in, and we tried to feed him but he smiled and said no, though the coffee we had on the hot plate smelled great, so I poured him a cup and he sat back, sipped it, inquired of our dreams, and then gave us the news of big doings in town.

Techtuachitlan, to put it succintly, was in the proverbial uproar: Jordain Matz, the head of Looss Farms, had come down from his mansion up there on the highest of hills above town the first thing that morning; one of his sons had ordered some flesh that was due when the Darya hit port, but the captain never delivered, so the son went ahead and got stinking drunk, then woke up and told daddy this morning, and daddy came down to see why no flesh and got to the docks, and no Darya either, and he just went out of his rabbit-ass mind.

And when Jardain Matz calls the cops he gets action: every cop in the world came running, and old Matz is screaming and frothing and jumping around, and he wants the fuckers who did this, their ass on his wall but first whips and castration, so get busy you fuckers and bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia and--the guy was rat rabies and Bozo the Clown all rolled into one squalid lump and, Jesus Christ--what a circus!

And the cops did get busy: they scoured the dives and the alleys and every last rathole, in widening circles out from the wharves, and they went through the whole fucking town, and they'd commandeered this old warehouse, and soon the place was full up, with all the usual suspects and then some, and they really brought out the thumbscrews for this one, and they're tossing people into the river, the ones that died under third degree lights, and it looks like the floor just got painted or something, arterial red to match that new lipstick I saw your wife wearing, and--it was slaughterhouse blues, mes amigos, and it looked like it was going to go on forever plus six fucking months, just by way of no harm.

Then someone comes in; they found the spot where the Good Ship Lollipop went down, the part that didn't go over the moon, and by this time they've got a couple of shadowy fuckers who say they saw the captain bop off the ship with these two prepubescents in tow, and then came the shotguns, and then after that the captain came back with these four heavies sans girls, and the heavies shoved the captain aboard, and one of 'em looked like this guy who used to tend bar at the Del-Ray Saloon a couple months back, i.e., me, and, long story short, they now had my face plastered all over town: Wanted Dead, and ain't that about a hoot-and-a-half?

[Sandra Davies]

What an exhausting, action-packed glut of words you've packed in here - "hoot-and-a-half" indeed.

[Angela]

Yes, hoot-ful plus some, like you said.  Liked the expert way you let the cops go wild in that fifth sentence - would have taken me six sixes to cover as much territory, yet you pump it full of action and run it close to the bone at the same time.  Great.