Calistoga

Cross posted on my Tumblr:

The devil was headed to Calistoga; his mare’s chestnut belly, full with foal, near dragging through the rocks and dirt. Straining under the weight of man and child, she plods slowly, kicking up a veil of dust. The man’s left eye twitches as a fat, summer fly breezes past his crusted eyelashes; it is a queer eye, the color undefinable and always changing, yet it is constant in its coldness. The man’s spurs dig into the mare’s flesh and she brays in pain, but the sound is attenuated by the thick foam around her lips. Had she brayed much louder, the man thinks, I would have cut into her with more than just my spurs.


Live oaks, stout and wide, reach out with many gnarled arms and cast misshapen shadows over golden grasses. The man casts a disinterested glance about with his strange, cruel eyes. Nearby, a beetle scuttles through burrs and weeds, looking for dew to drink. Spittle, brown and grainy with the juice of tobacco leaves, trembles behind the man’s lower lip. Like a tumor, the sluice shifts from side-to-side before it is expelled onto the dry, cracked ground. Swept up in the fluid, the unfortunate beetle’s quest for refreshment concluded.


The beetle’s legs hammer out a startled rhythm. With each successful withdrawal of limb from the gelatinous ooze, another is subsumed beneath. The man carries on, leaving the beetle to struggle as if trapped in quicksand: hopelessly. A mirage on the horizon, both the beetle and the scum will burn off quickly in the Indian Summer heat. Somewhere, a small bird hears the beetle’s helpless flailing: a carrion call on the wind.