And I have a strong urge to fly, run away and never come back, explode, and we didn’t miss a thing and we saw it all and I couldn’t sleep a wink last night 40 days and 40 nights heard you had a secret life and I’ve never been in a field I couldn’t see the end of. You look really nice today.
What day is it?
And you say to me and you say to me and you say to me, she says, yippie yahoo, smoke em if ya got em, ten thousand fireworks over my head, we shoot out every star, yippie yahoo Great God Almighty!
Smashing back glass in the parking lot, leave that one with the Harley sticker.
Every kid is out in the yard. They’re poking dead soldiers with sticks. Everyone has enough to eat. And for the price of 500 American dollars, well shit, you can buy a lot of beer with 500 American dollars.
It’s New Year's Day in America, would you believe it!
In his private dojo, Eagleman intercepts a psychic transmission from two hundred years ago. The last conversation between Custer and Sitting Bull. The battlefield spreads across gym mats, Sitting Bull walks through the bead doorway and sees before him, leaning back in a lawn chair with a beer in his hand, the ghost of the General.
“I know now,” says the General, “that I’ve known you before. We were brothers once and we will be brothers again, and know that you and I are more than men as man knows man. Man is an angry wolf, stalking his prey from the beginning of time to the end of all times. Be relieved of your burden, for this was just the opening in a play yet to be acted. We played but one small part, we have done as we were told.”
The Chief looks to Custer, he looks nothing like the General lying dead on the battlefield, in the dojo, but still the Chief understands it to be him.
“Neither you nor I nor the Great Spirit Himself can stop the bloodshed that will follow. Be with your people, for they need you now more than ever. Know in your heart that I speak the truth, for I love you as my brother.”
The Chief nods. Custer drains his beer, folds his chair, and fades away. Sitting Bull pulls from his pocket the silk handkerchief Custer once presented him and covers the dead General’s face, then walks out the way he came.
The vision is over. Eagleman does not know what to do with what he has seen so he writes it down in his notebook and goes back to practicing his gun karate.
Across the world, there’s sightings off the coast of Kuwait, up there in the dark, hovering above the bright blue sea. They came to the Arab lands first. Eyes in the sky agents on the ground, the sand shines all hours, and at night radioactive spiders glow in the dark. Nondescript men in black suits and dark sunglasses stand next to Arab Commandos.
And then, as quick as they came, they left.
And it’s Midnight in America. They’ve come from miles and miles of killing fields. There’s nothing much to see except the stars, they’re all out tonight but there’s never time to look at them on the highway, hotel to hotel, gas station to station.
The wagon drives for too long tonight. On and off on and off ramps for the past hour, empty small towns and no vacancies. In every room, a group of people older than kids but not quite adults watching TV with the doors open, running up and down the halls, inviting their friends from different floors, in and out, watching movies in this room, drinking beer in that room, and a group in pajamas shuffles down to the hotel arcade, and a crowd wearing nothing but underwear jumps into the pool. It’s a hot night and the lights are on; in the pool, the rooms, in flashlights playing tag in the parking lot.
And I see you there, running around playing tag, in the arcade with the shy kids, I see you in flashlight before my eyes correct it, jumping into that pool in underwear already slipping off wearing that goofy smile you carry around in your pocket.
It’s a month past an endless summer.
“I’m sorry sir, I just phoned ahead to the next town over. No vacancies there either.”
“Well, thanks for trying,” he says but he doesn’t really feel like stopping anyway. The air’s full tonight and he wants to keep going.
Everybody’s headed out West since the news broke. The big one finally hit California, the San Andreas fault split wide open and deep in that pit for the first time in a thousand years a giant metal head with flashing eyes is unearthed. Everyone wants to meet the giant metal man, everyone wants to say hello.
And we sat down on this bed, and he said “Christ, what the hell do you think this place is?” You know? He just couldn’t believe it, and I said “I don’t know but it sure is something different.”
We were in this small room, three dollars for the night, and all the walls were shelves of these baby dolls, there had to have been 200 of them. But they were all done up with makeup, had these little wigs and they were all dolled up, haha, nothing crazy, they weren’t in latex but you could tell they were filled out a little, little sequin dresses, I’m not gonna say it was tasteful but it didn’t seem sexual, they were still baby dolls. And I remember sitting down and just looking at them and I was so amused cause the guy running the place was this real gruff looking guy and why was he playing dress up with dolls? And more importantly, why did he put them all in this motel room? But hey, here they were.
And I look over to him and I can tell he’s really bothered. I don’t know why, I don’t know if it was the dolls or something else, it was hard to tell with him, but he was bothered so I asked him “what do you want to do?” And he said “I don’t know.” He just kept looking down at the carpet. “I want to sleep and then get out of here,” so I said “okay” and turned out the lights.
About an hour later he wakes me up, says “I can’t sleep in this place, just too damn weird.” And it’s late and we’re hours away from anywhere, so I hand him the keys and say “you can try and sleep in the car, might be better.” He walks out then comes back in with this bottle of gin and the bat we kept in the trunk, and he’s standing there and he looks real tired and he says “I really can’t sleep at all.”
So, I grab these two glasses from the sink and tell him to pour and we’ll get to work, and that’s what we did. We spent the whole night drinking and smashing these porcelain doll heads, he took the first swing and took out four at once and they just exploded everywhere. And then he started to relax a bit. I picked up this one doll and gave it a good softball toss and he just went WHAM! And it was like a grenade with these shards flying everywhere and we’d have to wash out the glasses every time we poured a drink, and that’s what we did.
And by morning we drank all the gin and he just took that last doll by the legs and smashed it against the nightstand. And we sat down on the bed again and we laughed at this big mess we made.
Then we left.
And I remember, months after the whole ordeal was over I was driving that way again, just me this time, and the place was all boarded up. There was a gas station about 5 miles up the road and I was chatting with the cashier and I asked her what ended up happening to that old motel back there and she looked shocked. She said “motel? There was never a motel back there. Are you talking about the closed-down 24-Hour Museum of Rare and Priceless Porcelain-Head Baby Dolls?”
I’m joking. She didn’t say that. What really happened was I asked her about it and she had this weird kinda frown kinda smile on her face and she said “the man running it just up and left. He left a note. ‘Gone to the city to become a seamstress.’ He had a weird sense of humor, we’re not sure if it was a suicide note. Who knows?”
And what do girls do?
There’s a man in a fast car who’s driven every highway in America and when he gets to one ocean he turns around and heads the other way, but for the first time in a long time he’s headed somewhere in particular. He’s headed out West. It’s late, Midnight in America. He blows past truck stops 160mph and he thinks to himself, what do girls do?
Do they work stable jobs and go out on weekends with all their friends? Walking through town to the train looking so cool like they always do and come home and have something nice for dinner? Do they spend their evenings in their bedrooms wearing socks and sweatpants still wrapped in warm coats lying across their beds hanging out with their friend who brings over a bottle of wine door closed with the lights on, what do they do? Do they watch TV? Do they try on different clothes, spray on perfumes, brush makeup onto each other’s faces and look at themselves in the mirror looking so pretty?
Do they fuck? Secretly, for fun, totally un-seriously? Do girls get together in bedrooms across America smile and say “hey, check this out,” and fuck each other so casually they cum between lines of a poem too pretty for me to understand?
Do girls walk out in the middle of the night on a week night creep around streetlights and slide into back alleys to smoke meth chew barbed wire bubble gum break their noses break into acid lit city basements and pull their lovers hair out during chemsex and do girls bite down on a towel when they shove chunks of broken glass into their perfect thighs and do they lay their heads in each others laps on the long long train rides home reeking of lavender and vomit the most delicate sparkling noses slightly upturned gushing blood all over their dresses the seats all the way down the aisle gushing out the train car door into the black tunnels just like the abandoned ones where the trains don’t come through no more; those are the ones that make for good spots for her and her friends in their fur coats and their good shoes to hang around in shoot heroin and kiss.
And when they get home at five in the morning looking like ghosts do they hug a stuffed animal and fall asleep in their clothes?
He passes by an overturned car, road flare explodes in the stranded woman’s hand but he’s going too fast to stop even if he wanted to so he just keeps going.
In Georgia, a bandit falls in love with a hitchhiker.
“Where you headed, pretty lady?”
“West.”
“How you gonna get there? Got any cash I can see?”
“No. I’m broke. I just wanna go.”
The bandit looks at the hitchhiker, she’s tall, lanky, her t-shirt fits like a bedsheet he’d like to crawl under.
“I’d like to go too. You mind if I walk with you a while?”
She smiles. “I’d love the company.”
And they walk the highway divide, listening to baseball on the radio.
White brick white wall Great God Almighty. The shadows cast blue, it wasn’t a jail cell but there’s a woman who escaped it and now she roams the Valley looking for something.
There’s a six year old sitting alone outside an elementary school.
“Hey, are you hungry?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
“I got a sandwich in this bag. I can give it to you. But I need something for it.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“That’s okay, you can give me something else.”
“What?”
The woman pulls the sandwich from her bag, neatly wrapped, a contract and a pen. “I want you to put your name on this line, okay? You know how to sign your name?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Just put your name right here and I’ll give you this sandwich.”
“Okay.” And the six year old scribbles her name, not well, she holds the pen in a fist and rips holes through the paper.
“You can read, right?”
“Uh, yeah, both. Kinda. There’s a lot of words I’m still learning. I’m almost done.” She finishes her name, all uppercase. The kid gives her the contract and the woman gives her the sandwich.
“Thanks a bunch,” says the kid.
“Yeah, no problem,” says the woman and she walks away.
“Wait, don’t go. Sit with me.”
The woman’s a half block down, walking fast. She stops to look at the signature, they have the same name, signed with a heart. That was sweet. She shoves it in her bag and walks away faster.
“Eagleman. Eagleman! Wakeup!”
It’s 4AM now. Nobody’s there. Eagleman walks through his dojo, out the front door, sits on the curb and looks up. 4:17AM. Fireworks crack the sky.
And I believe in a better, more loving world.
Everyone came together and dreamed you up, and it was a good dream with all the love in the world, and they made you beautiful, and I love you, and you’re an asshole, I say to her.
It was one of those days that’s nice but ugly. The sky was clear and colorless, the sun was up and dull. Machine gun fire shredded every nearby school hospital and prison. Hellfire soldiers sprinted 80mph snatching everyone off the streets and in front yards over pale fires they skinned cats for fun but it wasn’t even worth watching. Bodies thrown into pits that didn’t seem to bottom but it all just seemed so dull, so boring, the explosions barely registered. Easy to talk over. The weathermen in legions came forward on televisions across America warning of the upcoming Super Apocalypse for about a week and now that it was happening I just couldn’t get into it.
And she and me were walking down the street together and I saw there was no light in her eyes anymore so I said to her “say what you think you have to say” and she said “I don’t know.”
It’s in the past. It was never that serious.
It’s 5:34AM now. Eagleman is still on the sidewalk, watching the fireworks. And I know this is what I get because it’s what I got but can someone tell me if this is what I deserve? And what if we spend all this time heading out West and it turns out the giant robot doesn’t even like us? What if he pulls himself out of the dirt and starts killing everybody?
“Well,” says Eagleman, on the sidewalk, “then we die. That’s pretty straightforward.”
Okay, well, what if we get there and it doesn’t work, and they’ve already started taking it apart and all that’s left is a broken pile?
“Then we missed it,” says Eagleman. “But let me ask you this. What if we get there and he’s very kind? What if we go and say hello and he says hello back? What if we get there and it’s the best thing on earth?”
And there’s a knock on the door that I adore and a smiling face at the window. If I were there I’d let her in and if she were here she wouldn’t have left a note telling me she wasn’t, she’s gone to the play, it’s happening right now, and I’m not there but I’m watching from very very far away.
It’s her big part, she’s Gabriel, giving her speech she volunteered for but she doesn’t like acting or angels and she thinks one word wrong will damn her to hell but, hell, she doesn’t have to think about anything else while she’s obsessing over every word.
“Do
Not
Be
Afraid
Mary
You have
Found
Favor
With
God
You
Will
Conceive
And
Give
Birth
To
A
Son
And
You
Are
To
Call
Him
Jesus
He
Will
Be
Great
And
Will
Be
Called
The
Son
Of
The
Most
High
The
Lord
Will
Give
Him
The
Throne
Of
His
Father
David
And
He
Will
Reign
Over
Jacobs
Decedents
Forever
His
Kingdom
Will
Never
End.”
Every word’s a meltdown that ends with the snap of a rubber band. The few people in the audience don’t care to be there and she does not look beautiful.
She walks behind the curtain and breaks down, she did her job, not well, but exact, and maybe that’s how angels talk, not beautiful but exact.
And I have seen you somewhere before and I will see you somewhere again. I am a stranger to myself but not yet to you. So I will refuse the goodbyes and not bother with hello because I have never forgotten you.
If I were an Indian, I would greatly prefer to cast my lot amongst those of my people adhered to the free open plains, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation. But when the soil which he has claimed and hunted over for so long is demanded from him by this insatiable monster, there is no appealing; he must yield, or, like the Car of Juggernaut, it will roll mercilessly over him, destroying all as it advances. Destiny seems to have willed it; the world applauds. At best the history of our Indian tribes, no matter the standpoint taken in regard, affords a melancholy picture of loss of life.
Garryowen plays stupidly on a child’s piano.
And there’s power lines that stretch the whole country and dotted red radio towers blink at night guiding the way across the heartland express. It’s so dark tonight that everyone has to whisper.
They decided to fire up the old border blasters tonight. XER, the sunshine station between nations, brought back to life full power blasting a million watts across the continent. VX Gas Attack clings to the giant robot’s exterior like static and in a ratty minivan heading west across Appalachia an entire summer shift from Denny’s, four guys with patchy beards and four girls in sweaty tank tops under bright windbreakers, lick as they whisper into each other’s ears while seven different songs play at once. Radio waves singeing the ends of their hair.
And I remember on one of our first nights scribbling ‘kids rule’ across her knuckles, her holding her fists primed to show an old passerby the door to the next world, and I never seen someone look so beautiful walking headfirst into a street sign bashing her forehead against a pole.
And those good old boys know nothing but glory. The night they drove Dixie down, troops received the order to burn all munitions, this included the contents of the Old Richmond Firework and Nuclear Bomb Factory. In a moment of clarity, General Lee realized setting fire to the Old Richmond Firework and Nuclear Bomb Factory would have some serious fallout, and in what is considered his single most heroic act of the entire war, he led a herd of 800 horses out of the doomed city, trampling Yankee, Confederate and homeless alike.
In a wide open field General Lee sat down beside his 800 horses, whispering into their ears calming each one every time a bottle rocket snapped red white and blue, waiting for the bomb to go off but by some miracle the bomb never did go off, maybe on account of the Confederates of Richmond never having that great an understanding of Nuclear Physics.
But he did watch a rocket explode into the Confederate Flag. Lee was saving that one for when he took the White House. “Well,” said the General, “I guess it’s pretty much over. I know when I’m beat… Maybe I’ll fight a couple more battles just for the hell of it…”
And Surfer Joe burst through the door in pure joy, he says to the tall girl with the big hands, “Pick up that guitar you stole from your mama and never put it down cause we’re gettin’ out of this dump, we’re hittin’ the road.”
She’s reading a magazine on the floor, she looks just like Linda McCartney, she stretches one long arm across the room and grabs her guitar, and when she stands it’s like she’s still laying down, “lead the way,” she says. Smiles.
-- Johnny Hollywood is the most successful writer in the world.
