Texas Drawl

One hot Texas afternoon.

A green pin-dot of light flashed in the darkness, a bright Christmas tree green. Pop- gone. Dry thunder at high noon openly interfered with my thoughts as I gazed through an open door onto a burnt sepia Texas landscape. Late afternoon subpoenaed me to a small, chlorine pool.

I sat on the bottom of the deep end listening to water pressure sizzle inside my ears, like medical tests done on me -before I could remember- by a medical research facility in Iowa that could only be reached through an underground tunnel. Neon navy blue streaks swizzled down an invisible screen inside my head. My submerged thoughts imagined an unknown teenage boy whose eyes reflected chronic pain and trouble he couldn’t do anything about. He flinched from a flood of salty perspiration pouring from his burning eyes.

More parched thunder ambled across the sky, the sizzling in my ears continued, drowning out personal thoughts, distracting my mind from my body running out of oxygen. A promise is always coming, but never gives an arrival date -You’ll know it when you see it-  Lone Star incandescence faded car-hoods too-hot-to-touch, propped open to jump lead acid batteries. Alligator cable heads glowed on the posts. Twelve feet down, all I could feel was gradually increasing pressure on my eardrums. 

Watch, wait- a process I was all too familiar with. A young woman with long, fawn-toned hair, wore a white cotton top and Comanche skirt inside a shadow cooled adobe ranch house. Paisley drapes barred sunlight entry and kept room heat satisfied to a minimum. She smiled and let her hair fall in front of her face as she thumbed through an outdated phonebook. Population zero outside.  Abandoned sage and mesquite stretched out, puzzle-linking a local ghost town. Cacti bordering a vanishing point highway melted into waxy green puddles. Rough-feathered gargoyle buzzards relocated to the square adobe’s Spanish tile roof top. A bank of mica-thin clouds appeared like the snap of a magician’s cape. The sun graciously allowed them to linger, even smiled before extinguishing their shimmering vapor like so much photographic flash powder.

The young woman lounged crosswise on a long horn, cowhide chair, her hair dangled near the floor. She used an old landline phone to order Chinese take-out and let perspiration laying on the back of her delicate neck cool her. Ice cubes had almost formed in freezer trays and began to rattle in the fridge like rocks in a cocktail glass. Cold clinking was the only music drifting over the desert as the sun traveled to the next town, the next state and made a hollow promise not to be back for hours. Searing temperatures radiated everywhere from everything, leaving no escape. 

Oxygen leaked from my nose as I imagined Chinese food cooked in desert-fired woks, steam rising from cartons of white fluffy rice and egg foo young…I wondered if rickshaws were still used for delivery. A slate blue sky was slowly being erased to reveal rough streaks of indigo scuffing through from underneath.  A narrow train of popcorn clouds, low on the horizon, scuttled to catch the sunset. The first evening star flashed, a quick, bright Christmas tree green… Evening started to settle in early and the other stars wouldn’t attend for hours… the Milky Way might RSVP… no one could say. 

The promotional bank calendar broke sometime back in April and the seasons refused to change, that was the story anyway. Someone opened a bag of marshmallows outside, the microwave air puffed them caramel brown. The sweet, beguiling scent penetrated the pool surface. I pushed off the bottom of the deep end, and dried my hair as I returned naked to the house. Inside the woman sat cross-legged and naked on a crocheted rug eating chow mien with fluorescent yellow chopsticks. I humored myself, it all could’ve happened this way. 

Author's Note

This piece was worked up from a session of lucid writing. Tuck pointing was done afterward and viola... pulp prose, an acquired taste for most, reviled by the mainstream... me? I had fun writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it. Critiques and comments most welcome.

Reviews

[emmajoy]

'Oxygen leaked from my nose as I imagined Chinese food cooked in desert-fired woks, steam rising from cartons of white fluffy rice and egg foo young…I wondered if rickshaws were still used for delivery. A slate blue sky was slowly being erased to reveal rough streaks of indigo scuffing through from underneath. A narrow train of popcorn clouds, low on the horizon, scuttled to catch the sunset. The first evening star flashed, a quick, bright Christmas tree green… Evening started to settle in early and the other stars wouldn’t attend for hours… the Milky Way might RSVP… no one could say. ' .....

Utter drama played with a great orchestra equal a panorama of words!! You've used the most extraordinarily magnified descriptions, a marriage of surreal crazed abandon yet worded so fabulously, I part smiled, part frowned.. half believing/seeing, part shaking head and muttering, 'No way!' A world that's the feast always wanted!

Brilliant phrases, 'Abandoned sage and mesquite stretched out, puzzle-linking a local ghost town. Cacti bordering a vanishing point highway melted into waxy green puddles. Rough-feathered gargoyle buzzards relocated to the square adobe’s Spanish tile roof top. A bank of mica-thin clouds appeared like the snap of a magician’s cape

[roarke]

I call this "pulp prose" Much is the way I think of seeing/feeling/thinking, and then why not express it in a way that translates the sheer treasure of moments? Life is only special if you look at it that way. Thanks for the read and comments Em.

[M.E.Lyle]

I had fun reading it. The style is refreshing and not so mainstream. I'm a bit odd though.
Most of the time I was wondering,"What the heck were you doing at the bottom of the cement pond?"
I'm sure you told us at some point, I simply missed it.
Thanks for the refreshing reflections of the Texas heat. I live near Dallas, so I know a thing or two about that.

[roarke]

Thanks for the read and comments M.E. well, it's a weird prose thing, he's in the pool because of the heat, and being "different" he doesn't swim but sits on the bottom of the deep end. I hoped that offered a misanthrope kind of impression about the guy. For me, heat and desert would truncate "thought follow-through" I hope this answers some questions the writing didn't.

[M.E.Lyle]

That makes perfect sense. I should have guessed it though.