The Continuing Saga of:
”ICICLE BILL and Tommy Two-Head”

Chapter Nine: Bumperjacked Back to Vulture Flats

     Bumperjack crawled off his bike with deliberate leisure. He bent over and examined the Lincoln’s tire tracks in the sand then looked up at me with a menacing and sinister sneer. His midget girlfriend was leaning back on the bike seat, lounging like some miniature super-model at a photo shoot. She seemed completely disinterested. Joe wasn’t much for small talk, ”Where is he?”

     I quickly assessed the situation and realized I had only two ways out. One: If a massive earthquake suddenly opened up the earth directly beneath my feet, or Two: A meteor strike. I replied, perhaps a bit too casually, ”Where’s who?” I don’t know if you’ve ever actually witnessed a meteor crash, but I’m fairly certain if it landed spot-on to the middle of your head it would feel exactly the way it did when Joe clubbed me with that bumper jack of his. When I woke up we were back at Vulture Flats and this time I was the one tied to the tree. My head was throbbing, one eye was swollen shut or possibly missing and any hopes or dreams or plans for a future were most likely lost and futile and as dead as Gangster G, whose fresh grave was not ten feet off to my left. Chances are, I’m about to join him. Joe’s gang was looting the car trunk supplies as he supervised. Molly was sitting on a cooler, off to my right. She really is a looker alright, Tom wasn’t lying about that.

     Hearing Tom describe her was one thing, but seeing her in person and up close was another thing altogether. With my one good eye I could see that she wasn’t actually a midget, just really tiny and elegant with a delicate beauty. She sensed my staring and approached. She stood over me blocking the sun, a porcelain doll of blood and flesh. A swift breeze of dazzling light fell across the desert floor blowing away dust and debris and my last shred of good senses. The ones that keep you grounded and safe in dangerous times. An unexpected and unwanted surge of excitement clotted my throat. One look in her eyes and I immediately understood that many men, dozens, perhaps hundreds would toss away a lifetime of happiness for one night of her attentions. A passion as white hot as hell’s fire lit her eyes, tempered by a loveliness as fragile as Spring morning dew and as deadly as a cobra bite.

     What I felt inside, I fought. The kind of battle one knows is lost going in. A fight not born of anything so noble as bravery, quite the contrary, it was fear. Gut-wrenching, soul-shaking cowardice. An innate knowing that to allow oneself to fall that deeply and completely would be to sentence oneself to a lifetime of anguish and unrelenting torment and pain. I didn’t know just how much of my soul remained, I felt I’d somehow bargained a good chunk of it away, especially in the past few days, but I knew I couldn’t afford to spend what was left of it here. Like a desperate man zealously clinging to his last shred of sanity, I knew I was in serious peril and hopelessly overmatched. Inside that tiny Venus lived something that was dangerous and irresistible and gigantic . The power she had at her disposal radiated from her pores like scent from violets, incomparable beauty and desirability and allure that could crush it’s prey as sure as a volcano melts ice.

     Only a shadow of a hint of compassion, or pity, made Molly look away momentarily and allow the emotional storm to pass. I wondered if she could turn it on and off. The feeling in my throat was like a boa constrictor wrapped around my neck.

     ”You want water?” Naturally, her voice was as sweet as pure honey.

     “Thanks.” I managed to rasp out the response. As she poured a drink into my parched mouth, her nearness was electric and beyond unsettling, I tried to not let on, I needed to think. What was it the Indian had said? All things for a reason, everything related? I was getting nothing. Joe had probably sent Molly over here to get me to talk. In that case, maybe befriending my captors wasn’t such a terrible idea, what else did I have?

     ”He sent you over here to get me to talk?” Molly was as cool as popsicle drippings, she carefully pulled a loose strand of flowing hair from her face. ”If you tell him where he is, he’ll let you go.”

     ”I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. True, I happened on him here and did the untying , but I don’t know where he is now, we went our separate ways.” I wasn’t lying, much, I honestly didn’t know where Tom was. I sort of wondered myself. How anyone could disappear that fast (when the biker gang rolled up) I have no clue.

     ”Did he tell you why he was tied up?”

     ”Yeah, he ran it down to me.”

     ”He told you about me?”

     ”Yeah. But I have to be honest, I thought he was exaggerating, about your looks and powers and all that. You know the way guys are smitten with a girl and they tend to build em up to something they’re not. In your case, it’s all true. You really are beyond gorgeous and you really do have those powers. Is all that other stuff true as well? I mean about the Gypsy mother and the potions and spells and all that?”

     Molly was looking deeply at me now. The steady, dangerous eyes watching interestedly. She held the gaze a bit too long and I realized that her thoughts were so intricate that she no longer saw me sitting directly in front of her. Although her attention seemed focused on my question, her mind was miles away. Lost in some trance of remembrance. I could only imagine the exotic memories Molly must have, of carefree summer nights traveling from town to town with a fortune-teller mom. Accordion music and open fires filling the senses, surrounding by attentive friends and extended family. The most creative and bohemian of surroundings, the careful, watchful eye of an ever powerful mother figure. A closeness bonded of misfortune and circumstances. Now, a life of riding in the open wind on the back of a motorcycle and hanging in strip bars. I wondered if this magnificent creature had bigger dreams. She hadn’t answered my first question, I tried another.

     “Why you with him?” Molly seemed startled back to the present by the question. She had all the cards here. She was obviously used to being in charge and control. Yet, curiously she considered an answer. Sometimes it’s easier to open up to strangers, especially when you’re likely never to see them again (as in the case of the near dead...meaning me).

     ”He protects me, if he wasn’t there, they’d be all over me.”

     ”They?”

     ”Everybody. Every guy, every girl. Beauty isn’t always a blessing, it has it’s drawbacks.”

     ”You prefer the alternative?”

     ”Probably not. But they don’t really want me, they want the image... their idea of what’s desirable to them. People have insatiable urges, they think somehow by possessing something or someone that’s their ideal of ultimate beauty, that will fill that hole that’s inside them. Like little kids in a candy store. You let them run loose in there and they’ll make themselves sick, but they always want more. You can’t ever fill the hole because it’s an illusion.”

     I was thinking that not only is she beautiful, but also vulnerable and self-aware. That was the essence of her attraction, it wasn’t all just the outside, there was a whole lot going on inside as well.

     ”With all that power that you possess Molly, don’t you ever consider that you have a responsibility? I mean, the men that you attract, do you understand how you might affect their lives?”

     She shook her head as if the question was too much to consider. ”I don’t know, I don’t know about any of that. I’m still young, I have a lot to learn.” In her answer there was a simple wisdom. How many young people understand that basic premise.

     ”What about Tom? Don’t you see what happened to him? Your boyfriend was going to kill him. He left him to die out here for Christ sakes.”

     Molly was steady and calm again. She always seemed to think before answering. Her response was controlled and even. ”Who’s idea do you think it was to come back here?”

     That sort of threw me. Now I understood that Bumperjack Joe would’ve just left Tom out here to the elements to die. I imagined Tom, or anyone tied up to the tree, waiting to die of thirst or eaten alive by the desert critters, buzzards, snakes. Even in a hundred plus heat I shivered.

     ”I made him come back Estrano.”

     The use of that name made my head jerk up. ”Estrano? Only one other person ever called me that.” Molly and I looked at one another inquisitively.