Long Rifle was suddenly awake, without cracking his eyelids or even twitching his nose where the one, long, thick, nose hair – bastard! – tickled the outside of his left nostril. Where the hell was he? Who was he? Was Magua near? Behind the placid, snuffling somnolence of his features, his soul scrabbled like a cornered weasel. Who was it who was always comparing him to a cornered weasel? Mama? Papa? He couldn't remember!
His mind screamed, Che’ Sah! What the fuck does that mean? Why did his leg lash out like that? And who had implanted the microfilm, passports, gold coins, suicide tablets and Mileage Plus Platinum MasterCard under the skin of his lower belly? Who was he anyhow?
Long Rifle almost opened one eye then, just the teeniest, tiniest, itty-bittiest little bit to peep out, but then stopped – he had gleefully slaughtered dozens of men, women, children and household pets who had made the same mistake.
So, like the spider listening to the singing web, he mentally probed his unknown environment. Was that a fat, meatloafy shit-fly or the peckish chickadee tickling the silky strands? To elucidate the subtlety of this elegant metaphor: shit-fly = good (food, agreeable company, something one could lay eggs inside), and chickadee = bad (predator, overweening guest, Magua). I know it sounds contrarian, but remember this is from the spider’s point of view.
“Go in peace, Long Rifle,” the old, wise Huron chief had said, before having the English Major burned alive for the tribe’s mild entertainment on Indigenous Peoples Day. But Magua didn’t want peace; Magua wanted to eat the wet, beating heart of the white-man; Magua couldn’t get over certain incidents from his childhood. Magua was a bad aboriginal; he didn’t walk with the Lord.
Long Rifle exploded out of bed like Steven Seagal. If Magua had been near, a Manichean battle between good and evil would have been unavoidable. But, hello! No Magua today. “Damn! I’m losing it,” he muttered. And, "Oh yeah, I remember who I am now."
Jeez, maybe the time had finally come to call Control, the pockmarked Mr. Guapo. Retire to a simple peasant’s life in Andalusia: the whitewashed hut in the sun, a donkey, bocce ball with the old men in the village, strong red wine and crusty bread hot from Anna’s oven. (Anna, oh Anna!) After a long career of assassination and subversion, a veritable legend in his own time, Mr. G would throw a friendly arm over his shoulder, “God knows, you deserve it, LR. Not many of us left anymore from the head-taking days in Quang Ding Province, eh amigo? Good memories. Well, take care of yourself, compadre, we’ll miss you.”
Then, for reasons no audience could ever quite fathom, the corpulent aardvark would send dozens of expressionless hit men after him, in sunglasses, on motorcycles, with silenced guns and syringes full of madness. They’d find the donkey and make it talk. Sick of killing, Long Rifle would have to kill, kill and then kill some more--with a pencil, an ATM receipt, a forklift, even with his foam earplugs! He’d jump out of exploding windows, make love to young, sinuous European girls in grubby, backstreet pensions, and drive little cars at fantastic speeds down narrow cobbled alleys. Finally, he’d watch the dying spark in Guapo’s porcine eyes as LR gutted him like an trout as he swung dangling from the helicopter strut – only to realize that his beloved Anna (Oh Anna!) and the monstrous Guapo were one and the same.
Long Rifle yawned, stretched and dug absentmindedly at his shorts. Christ, it was all so predictable.
Except for Magua! Magua wouldn’t respect his tea-and-doilies retirement, wouldn’t give two greasy pesetas for Anna’s hot crusty loaves or Guapo’s pretty boy degenerates. It would never end for Magua! You might ask why. Fair enough, hmmm, let’s see: ok … yes! Because Magua was Long Rifle’s evil twin brother!
To be continued
By Henry E. Panky
Doing It For The Little People
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