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The Adventures of the Delusional Cowboy
By
Jon Alan Carroll
Mal parked the van in front of Link's dump apartment on Natoma.
Link popped open the rear door and pushed in a box of CDs. "My face is my fortune," he said, "lend me a dollar."
Mal didn't laugh. He wasn't in the mood.
It was a dark day in history. The radio said that 5,000 people had died somewhere for some reason, and Mal and Link were packing the van and driving to Bakersfield.
Their van was an econoline living-dead junkyard special, covered in dents and primer and red house paint. Half the windows had been smashed in and replaced with cardboard; one headlight pointed to the stars.
Mal and Link grunted and strained and crammed all the equipment into the van. They went by the Superette and picked up some twelve-packs and got on the Bridge.
Traffic was the usual boring nightmare, filled with dead stops and stalls and multiple accidents. It took two hours to get to I-5.
Mal said he got another Happy Birthday card from Mad-Dad and reached down and pulled it out of his bag.
He read the card to Link. Fresh from the madhouse gift shop, the card was smeared with chaotic stickpen scribbles about newspaper lies and delusional cowboys and ETOs and radioactive fingerprints and asymptomatic dear-abbyism and give me puberty or give me death.
This was his third birthday card from Mad-Dad and Mal's birthday was four months away.
Mal stared out the window and cracked open another beer. I-5 was so flat you could see for miles, even if you didn't want to. Last month, he'd tried getting the half-famous manager Marvin E to book their tour.
Marvin E's assistant told him that Marvin was in Europe and asked if he wanted to hold until Marvin got back.
So Mal booked Rat-Land in Bakersfield and Link booked the Riot in Tucson. This would be the extent of their world tour.
Link pulled over on some off-ramp with the same Arby's and Denny's and Gulf stations as every other damn off-ramp. Zombie van overheated, so they had to pull over every 250 miles and let it cool down.
Mal got out of the van and checked the leaky, bald-o tires. He stared at the big fat nothing of freeway-mall America and wondered why people didn't stay drunk continuously or kill themselves by the millions.
They started up again after the van had cooled down.
"No label, no money," Mal said. "No sane person would live like this."
"Sanity's not for everyone," Link said, passing a big-rig and a couple of minivans. "You're a real bag of sunshine today, Lord Byron."
Link pulled a large blunt out of his pocket. They smoked it and Mal felt the brain-pressure floating away.
Twissleman Road, Lost Hills, Wasco, Highway 99, Exit Only, Pleasant Valley Prison, it all blurred together when Mal was on the road.
The famous I-5 cow factory came into view and the land was pockmarked with cows and bulls and cowboys riding around in jeeps. The air filled with the natural result of the cruel Valley sun beating down on 250 metric tons of cow flop.
"Look, Ma, delusional cowboys," Link said. "Git along, little gyrosquirrels."
Mal half-laughed and shook his head.
They got off on Buck Owens Boulevard and searched around for 1019 Haggard Street. Half the other drivers were wearing cowboy hats.
Their destination was a giant metal shed dumped in the middle of a lot filled with scrub and random trash. Rat-Land's walls were decorated with boot prints and stray bullet holes.
Dust scattered everywhere as Matthew T pulled up in his father's F-150 Lariat pickup.
Matthew was a shortish burner kid, born into exile in a rough little cowtown. He stared at his PF Flyers as he spoke.
"Hey, guys," Matthew said. "Nice van."
Matthew unbolted and opened the backstage door.
"Uh, this guy, Paul Caldwaller, wants to interview you after the show," Matthew said to Link. "Calls himself, uh, the Pop Culture Warrior."
"That worthless fuck," Link said. "If he talks to me, I'll kick him into the cheap seats."
They unloaded the van for the sound check. Mal always hated the heat and Bakersfield was brutal, with no clouds and just enough breeze to send hot dust drifting everywhere.
They sweated and cursed like sailors in a Roman oar-boat. In a few minutes, Mal's heat-headache had ratcheted up to a real skullbuster.
Once all the heavy lifting was done, the Two Mikes showed up in their decrepit Toyota, a vehicle that dated back to the Blue Oyster Cult Era.
There were about 250 kids in the big shed that night and the performance went all right, pretty good. The kids clapped and cheered for Coroner's Daydream and knew all the words to Money and Lies.
The band kept their sound as tight and hard and grim as life itself, just the way they liked it.
They finished with three new songs, One Less Asshole, Tilting at Windbags, and Teach a Man to Fist, none of which would ever be released.
After the show, Mal drank a few beers and sold CDs out of the back of the van. He took the $800 Matthew gave him and gave half to the two Mikes.
Link switched over to whiskey and pills and tore off with Matthew to buy booze and shoot holes in road signs, or some such stupid cowboy crap.
It was past midnight and still hot by the time they repacked the van. Mal sold maybe 14-15 copies of Gyrosquirrels and the Evil Technocratic Overlords to the kids drinking in the dirt parking lot. One kid was playing with a videocam.
Several beers later, Mal leaned on the van with his new girlfriend and squinted through Rat-Land's glaring floodlights.
Deena was an angry-sweet baldhead who'd put an awful lot of thought into her Japanese jeans and combat boots and Throbbing Gristle t-shirt.
He nursed a beer and Deena told him about school and TV and a shitty little life in a shitty little town. In Mal's circle, a crucial part of the after-sex ritual was telling each other how messed up you were.
Mal looked over and watched Link and Matthew get out of the F-150. Link was carrying a bottle of Irish whiskey.
A paunchy guy in a sports coat walked over to Link and pulled out a cassette recorder. Sports Coat said something Mal couldn't hear.
Link dropped his bottle and punched Sports Coat in the face. It was an unpulled punch, fast and professional.
Mal watched as Sports Coat dropped like a bag of bolts into the dusty dust of Bakersfield.
Link kicked Sports Coat in the ribs and launched into a spew about sugar-frosted fakes and teeny tiny typists.
Sports Coat moaned and covered his face with his hands.
Link went on spewing about marketing mullahs and cheesy corporate cornpone culture and speaking truth to shopping and Hummer machismo and nerf hearts and styrofoam souls and Jack Micheline got it right--It's the dead who rule this world.
"Uh, cool," Matthew T said. Sports Coat rolled over and groaned. The kid with the videocam went on recording.
Sports Coat got up, dusted himself off, and said he was calling the police.
Mal sighed and walked over to Link and swatted him on the back of the head.
"Time to leave, genius," Mal said. "I'll drive."
Mal kissed Deena goodbye and drove around looking for the on-ramp.
"You never got how much that cocksucker hates us," Link said. "He called us punk geezers and iTunes rejects and asked how it feels to play for 23 kids with 10 on the guest list."
"I asked you not to beat the critics," Mal said.
"Mal, I ain't going to scuffle and starve and then take grief from every fatfuck with a cassette recorder," Link said. "Three simple words, Spinoza: For-Get-It!"
Mal was going to remind Link that they'd chosen this life, but Link went off about the tricked and how they loved their prison in a prison in a prison and how every joe phlegm homeowner would give up everything he had for a safe place to shop and if the money-slaves ever caught on they'd all walk off the job and everything would fall to shit.
Mal ignored him and found the on-ramp and settled down in the truck lane. By the time Mal looked over, Link was passed out and snoring louder than a fleet of airbuses landing at the main terminal.
Link's face was clenched in his copyright smile-smirk, the one that announced that he'd gone 15 rounds with reality and fought it to a draw.
The highway was empty and the night air was cool.
Unlike most people, Mal knew he'd never understand the world. His songs were nothing more than a little Huh? in the enormous Vortex-Of-Drivel.
The temperature gage looked OK. Mal sped up and took 76-West to 111-West and I-8 East toward Yuma.
They woke up at noon and got out and stretched among all the normals and truckers and citizens at the rest stop.
Link had slept in the front seat where he'd passed out, while Mal had slept in the rear with the gear. He was still hung over from the heat and beer.
There were three messages on Mal's cell. The first was from some guy named Ty Randall at Blacktooth Recordings.
Mal. Two people already sent me the clip, Randall said. It's all over the Internet. Don't worry, everybody hates Caldwaller, he'd have to go to charm school to be an asshole. Link should get a plaque and a $50 gift certificate from the Gap.
Whoever Ty Randall was, he sounded like a man who left a lot of messages.
Did you see the news? What's Link going to do about the warrant? Have him call me immediately.
The second message was from Deena from last night. She was driving to Tucson with her brother and would see him at the Riot.
The third call was from Marie, Mal's girlfriend in Tucson.
Mal and Link had warm beer and stale English muffins for breakfast and got back on the road.
Two hundred miles later, Mal was squatting in a shade-sliver at a Gulf station and trying to figure out why oil was leaking out of the van.
It was a steady drip-drip-drip and the van was almost two quarts low.
Mal's cell buzzed and a voice asked for Link. Mal tossed him the phone and started walking over to the cashier.
"I dunno," Link said. "I hear the food in the Austin jail is pretty bad."
Mal bought ten quarts of oil, the cheap stuff, because they were going to need it. He rubbed his eyes as he walked back to the van. The sun was doing an excellent job of baking his brain into a raisin oatcake.
Mal dug out the funnel and poured a couple of quarts into the engine.
"Mark B offered us four grand to play Austin on Saturday," Link said after a while.
"So maybe we're unhosed for 15, 20 minutes."
Mal grunted and bent over to check the tires. "Hooray," he said.
The oil pond under the van was getting bigger and bigger. The left rear tire was almost flat.
Copyright © 2006 Jon Alan Carroll
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