The two men dripped sweat after the short chase. They sat in the broiling patrol car, hot and miserable, in the mid-day heat. Officer Barrett wrote in his log.
The prisoner looked up and smiled. “Hey hombre, they say if you breathe in the smoke of the burning Deppea splenden plant, you will come face to face with the demons that hold you back. They are hidden in a world of shadows, far away from the life you truly should be living. You know what I’m talking about?”
Officer Barrett kept writing in his book and didn’t look up.
“You know, that gentle nibble, the irritation gnawing at you until it bites at your soul?”
Officer Barrett wiped sweat from his brow with a white handkerchief, and glanced in the rear mirror at his prisoner. Another nut case, he thought. Why do I have to be out here sweating my ass off for some crazy ass just because he doesn’t know enough to stay out of the midday heat?
He looked at his prisoner in the rear view. A dirty, smelly, short, wearing torn clothes, a week old beard. He didn’t have any stuff on him. No contraband, no pills no weed. No easy way to make a few extra bucks selling it on the market. How else was he going to afford that new pickup truck?
“You got illegal plants, Golton?” Barrett asked.
“Illegal? That plant? No. Extinct in the wild, very endangered world wide.”
“Extinct huh?”
“The smoke sets you on a journey you wouldn’t believe.”
“I know you don’t have anything on you, unless it crawled out your ass. And I ain’t going there.”
“I know where to get it. Close by.”
“I don’t smoke amigo. But you keep talking, I’ll book you on more than just being a public nuisance, spend more time in lock up. Understand?”
“I can get it for you now. You see what it can do.”
He squinted into the rearview. “I can see it does wonders.” Barrett chuckled as he wrote in his log.
“You see what I mean? I have an offer for you that could change your life and all you do is write in your little police book. Why don’t you look around, Hombre? People are living other people’s lives.”
Barrett put the logbook down, glanced in the side-view mirror for oncoming traffic, and then merged the patrol car onto the single lane highway.
Golton made a clucking sound with his tongue and rested his head against the back door. The desert heat penetrated the car and washed over the men in rippling waves.
“Hey Hombre, how about turning up the air in this bucket?”
“Don’t worry about it, we’ll be at headquarters in fifteen minutes.”
“You telling me you don’t have air?”
Barrett said nothing. Golton kicked the seat and slumped down.
“You kick that seat again and I’ll close your window.”
The two men stared at each other in the mirror.
Golton broke eye contact and hummed quietly the Spanish song, De Colores as he turned away and looked out the window. Distant, low mountain tops gleamed in the desert sun. Sequoia cacti dotted the sparse landscape. The occasional tumble weed blew across the road. Heat waves blurred the horizon.
“I see a few lonely plants out there, Hombre. But none like the Deppea. She has the most beautiful flowers of any plant, more beautiful than the cactus flower. It’s purple. A deep, deep purple like you’ve never seen. I can take you to it.”
Barrett smiled into the mirror.
Golton frowned. “Hey, these cuffs are hurting my wrists. Why don’t you fix them at the next stop?”
“Next stop for you is the jail.”
“Before that, I have to pee.”
Barrett started to roll up the rear window.
“No, no! Please the air is all I need!”
The rear windows came back down and Barrett smiled into the rear view mirror.
“You piss in this car and you’ll be cleaning it up.”
Golton Nodded. “You have a heart, Amigo.”
They sat in silence for a mile or so. Golton coughed and sighed, then said, “The first time I tried the plant, it was such a beautiful day. We were at my Cousin Celia’s house, in the back yard. Under some trees there. She pulled out this small piece of the dried Deppea. The air was thin and dry too, that day. Some clouds were trying to roll in from the foothills, but the sun was keeping them away. Celia, she lit this little weed and pulled a shawl over us to breath in the smoke. I coughed and choked, Amigo. Oh, man my throat closed up and I could hardly breathe. That was when I saw her. She came to me under that tree. She appeared to me first from a silver cloud and took the shape of a beautiful woman with long flowing gowns. She had flowers in her hair. I said to her, where do you come from? And do you know, she looked right at me with those stabbing eyes! Her eyes sparkled like little silver sparks from a blade, like tiny bits of sun. I have always been with you, she says. Then she spread her wings and covered me, took me in her arms and…”
Barrett looked at Golton in the rear view mirror. “She took you for a ride, huh?”
“No man, she made me see. I saw my life the way it should have been instead of the way it is now. I was a different person. I was me, but a better me.”
Barrett pulled his aviator glasses down his nose and glanced at Golton. “You weren’t a screw-up anymore? Good dream. Too bad you can’t live it, huh? Live in a dream.”
Golton looked away in dismay. “Most drug trips just kill a few thousand brain cells, yeah? You wouldn’t understand even if I told you the story. You’d just laugh. People like you always laugh at things.”
“At drug addicts? Nah, I’m not laughing at you Golton, I’m laughing with you.”
Golton began to cough. He gagged and choked and tried to catch his breath.
“What are you doing back there?” said Barrett. He pulled off to the side of the road and got out of the patrol car. Opening the back seat door, he leaned in to see to Golton. “You pull anything and I’ll -”
The spray hit him squarely in the face. Barrett shot up straight and put his fingers to his nose and mouth. A fine, dark purple power covered his fingers. The earth began to spin. Round and round it went until he could no longer hold on, until he staggered back and fell to his knees. His eyes crossed and his eyelids closed.
“I forgot to tell you, Amigo, it comes in powdered form, too,” Golton laughed.
Barrett was rigid on the ground. His body convulsed once, and then went limp.
“Oh, shit, Amigo. Don’t die on me. I still have to get you off the road.” Golton dragged Barrett around the back side of the cruiser and lay him face down in the dirt. He removed the keys to the cuffs and unlocked them from his wrists. “These cuffs hurt, amigo.”
Golton went through the deputy’s pockets and found cigarettes and matches and lit one. In the front seat he found a bottle of water and drank it down. Water droplets tickled his nose and he rubbed his fingers under his nose and wiped. When he pulled his fingers back he saw they were purple. “No!” he said out loud and looked in the rear view mirror. The purple was in his nostrils and on his fingers. “Shit, shit!” Golton wiped his face on the deputy’s shirt. He found Barrett’s hanky and used it in each nostril, but it was too late. All he could do now was wait.
Golton sat on the front seat with the door open and stared across the vast emptiness of the desert plane.
A small dark cloud lingered in the distance. Soon the cloud was rising up. And he could see her coming. On a silver galloping horse-cloud she rode. Her teeth were bright white and clenched, her hair flowed back furiously in the wind. In an instant she was there. Her wind steed was screaming. Dust flew up into his face. She sat on the thundering horse cloud as it reared up before him. Her shadow cast him into darkness and the wind blinded him with sand.
“Have mercy!” he pleaded.
She leaned forward on the swirling horse-cloud and spread her wings.
“Forgive me mother! I am a wicked man! Please. I know I’ve not done what I am supposed to do. I’ve failed you! Please!”
Her voice rang out. It tugged on him like an electrical current. It yanked and pulled his flesh, yet was smooth and comforting to his soul. A voice, other worldly in gravity and charm, grounded him, pinned him to the floor of the Mother Earth and opened him like a frog on a dissection table.
“You are. No more, no less than eternal truth has created.” she said.
She picked him up in her arms and carried him far across the desert to a small oasis covered in olive trees. There she gently placed him by the water. When he turned to her she melted away into the sand and with her, the light of the day was gone.
He was alone in the heavy, clawing darkness until a distant light appeared. It came close and was carried by a beautiful dark haired girl. She sat down next to Golton and looked into his eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She smiled a perfectly white smile and offered him a cup. “Drink. It is what you have made.” He tasted what was in the cup and knew it to be his life, and he spit it out. Bitterness crept inside him and he felt cramps in his stomach.
“Do you not like it?” she asked.
“It’s bitter. I made this?”
She smiled and took off her clothes and stood naked before him.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
She turned and walked into the water and disappeared beneath the black surface.
“Wait. Come back,” he yelled.
He knew in his heart she wouldn’t be back. He knew he was all alone. His whole life was spent alone. And he felt the stillness of this. Then he felt something very hard come to him. Not on his body, but in his mind. It was hard and final and useless, and he knew it was death that he felt. Death, like the sand under his feet, was all around him and made up everything he saw. For the earth and death were the same and made of the same things. All things were living and dead at the same time.
Golton hunched down at the edge of the water and heard whispers. Voices from everyplace and no place. Pieces of words that filled his heart with heaviness. The whispers of what he could have done with his life, whisperings that meant nothing and everything. Empty and meaningless words pinched and bit at his arms and face. Echoes of choices made or ignored long ago. Regrets filled his heart and came out of his mouth, like vomit, black and hot. He knelt down and sobbed them onto the ground. Regrets flowed from his eyes as he moaned and cried.
The sound to his left was love lost. The sound to his right was a wrong that could have been righted. The wind gently blew sand toward him, and in those grains, he knew, were the thousands of lost hours he’d spent doing nothing, being nothing, thinking nothing. Wanting only for pleasure, for food and drink. Golton wished to all the knowing grains of sand that he could have those wasted moments back. That he could make something of his life, if only he could have one last chance. “Please, let me have one more try!” he cried. He closed his eyes and held himself against the fury. Then all was still, and black. He grew instantly tired and fell asleep.
Golton awoke to a thundering voice. “Get out!” Officer Barrett pulled Golton from the car and steadied himself as they walked into the police station. He strained to open his eyes. They stung and itched as he tried to concentrate on his official tasks.
“I don’t know what stunt you pulled on me, Golton. But you’re screwed. Assault on an officer!”
“Hey, Amigo. I’m glad to see you’re all right. You went out like a light. I thought maybe you had a bad accident or something.” Golton said, as they made their way to the processing room. Barrett sat Golton on a metal chair and cuffed his hands to the table.
“Hey, Amigo. Have I told you about the deppea, the lady in the wind? She comes to me and tells me when things are going to happen.
“Yeah? Did she tell you you’re gonna spend forever in lock up?” Barrett said, as he filled out a form.
Another voice charged the air. “Barrett, what the hell happened to you?”
A large man stood by the desk.
“Nothing, Sarg. I got the wind knocked out of me. Damn little prick hit me with some kind of spray.”
“She tells me many things, Amigo.”
“Clean up your face.” Sarg snickered and walked away.
Golton looked intently at Barrett, his face as close as he could get, an expectant smile on his face.
Barret did a double take at the toothy, rotten smile aimed at him. “What are you looking at?”
“Did you not see her, amigo? Did you not see the lady of the desert?”
“I don’t know what you’re a talking about.”
“The deppea! It brings her.”
“I didn’t see anything, now shut up.”
“Wait, are you telling me you didn’t feel the regret, see the things you should have done? The waste of your life?”
Barrett looked squarely at his prisoner. “I don’t waste my time, Golton. I’m doing exactly what I‘ve always wanted to do.”
“But your path. The wrong path! Didn’t you see the mistakes in your life? A way change things? Beg for mercy?”
Barrett laughed as he unlocked the cuffs and led Golton to the holding cell.
“Didn’t you want to have another life, be something else?”
Barrett said, “I’m a cop. Nothing better than being a cop. Now shut up.”
Golton sat in his cell and wondered what had happened to Barret, why he didn’t feel the same way as he. Then he thought of food. “Hey, what time do we eat?”
THE END
The Lucid Spider 