Except I don't know what I am running from

I buy a sub-machine gun in the same way that Llewelyn Moss did in No Country For Old Men. Except I don't know what I am running from.

I don't remember much of what happened that night. I run out of bullets, I think, and am trying to come up with other ammo. Powder wrapped in paper didn't work. I don't even know what else to try, and when I open the thing up it has turned into a double barrel shotgun. Dirt or mud or dust or rusty resin creep out where the shot ought to have been thrust inward.

I have visitors at home in Austin. We're in my bedroom. They're younger. Maybe much younger. This is probably when I'm coming up with new ammo ideas. I talk to the father of one of them. He reminds me of Hank Hill and tells me all about guns and ammunition. I mention my powder-paper idea and remind him I know how they did it back during the Civil War and that my way was not at all how. He was neither impressed nor not so.

I am a rebel like Carlos. I kill all sorts of fascists with my sub-machine gun. Sometimes it is a straight up machine gun.

Another night at the rec

I leave my table of friends and approach the bar at Roger's Rec to pay my tab. No, I didn't order this or this or this.

Someone is going to pay for this.

I decide to stick around until the whole mess is sorted out, which means hanging out around the hacienda that comes out after the Rec shuts down. Pony rides under the gazebo and moonlight on spring-green grass. I spend the night in a van.

The next morning I approach the bar again. Everyone recognizes me as that guy who didn't pay his tab. Look, there was a bunch of shit on there I didn't ask for and I'm not going to pay for it.

Well, you cost us thousands of dollars by waiting until now to tell us that.

I apologize very sincerely: I didn't know it was so important to you.

This sounds kind of snarky, but whether they notice they make no mention. I pay my tab and suppose it is settled.

A pair or no?

I wake up to too much sun in the living room of the Blue House on a larger-than-life bed to a view of the larger-than-life television.

I cannot find my brown pants anywhere and I probably need them for something important. There is a pair of nail clippers in the khakis that I wear and I wonder now whether the clippers are actually a pair.

Albuquerque

Beth and a few others I do not know take me in her car to a sort of office supply store within Fiesta Square in Fayetteville. It turns out we have gone there to feast on Mexican food. The feast is spread out near the front of the store, entrance in view, near the checkout counter. These people I am with explain what all the food is as if I have never eaten something similar, showing me the enchiladas, the cookies, the cake and the different kinds of wine, which jugs in the foyer hold - vino tinto and vino loco. I explain that my Spanish professor, Sergio Villalobos once told us, his class, that white wine is so called because it makes one want to fight.

I ask what kind of meat is in the enchilada in a brown tortilla and covered in a dark green sauce. Beth explains what an enchilada is, and when I clarify that I am interested in the meat only, she says, "Chicken. It's called pollo."

I go up to the front of the store to pay, and a woman who knows my name, and Beth's too, is at the counter to check me out. I don't catch her name, but I think she must know me having been a lunchlady in my elementary school days. I owe three dollars. I start to pull out my debit card, but then realize I may have enough cash to pay that way. It turns out I have two dollars and one Turkish lira. Before anyone even knows this the woman behind me in line says something to the lunchlady about Turkey and I say, "Well what do you know. I have a Turkish bank note here," but they are far less than impressed.

One of Beth's friends is looking for her backpack, asks if I have seen it. I say, "No, I don't know where it is," as I walk towards the dining tables and show her to what she has been seeking.

I exit the store alone and find myself feeling like I am in Austin. Before, I was worried about wearing shorts, thinking I would get too cold (Beth made fun of me for that), but it is comfortably warm outside and other people (it's quite crowded) are wearing shorts and short sleeved shirts too. I weave my way through the crowd towards Beth's car, still all alone. I have to do a kind of dance to make my way there, maneuvering in and out and through people who do not seem interested that I am trying or having to do so. When I make it at last to Beth's car, I think I am the last one to have returned, as the front and back seats are full with me inside, but another friend comes sauntering towards the car and I think "Oh no, I'll be squished," but somehow when he gets in I have avoided such a fate.

I sing to Beth, "Oh no, okay," with the melody of Eliott Smith's "Oh well, okay." Beth asks if I have heard "Albuquerque."

"Is that an album?" I ask.

Laughing out loud at the basketball game

You are too beautiful to be everywhere, but still you are everywhere. You are right beside me, I vaguely remember, as I am catching the bus at the bottom of the hill near the high school. And I feel your presence especially as I am getting into trouble for laughing out loud at the basketball game, for which you thought I was especially dumb. I try not to speak to you, or look at you for that matter, because you are so beautiful it hurts.

Family matters. It really does.

Mother and I are at Zilker park, watching Frazier and some other guys play some combination sport, which mixes basketball (dribbling), soccer (kicking, heading) and football (endzones, touchdowns). I want to play and think I could fit in, as there are only three or four players at this point, but I have forgotten my athletic shoes. I didn't know there would be a fun game to join when I decided to go to the park. I didn't know friends would be there.

I am not sure which shoes I am wearing, but they are inappropriate, this is certain. Lying in the grass next to me is my older pair of cognac-tinted dress shoes. These will not work. I beg my mother to take me back home to get some appropriate footwear, but she insists on staying. I beg then to take her car, but she will not let me. I berate her as I would have as a teenager. It reminds me of the time we had teriyaki chicken and rice for dinner. She and my father would not let me go to the fair with my girlfriend. I must have stormed upstairs and told them they would be sorry someday.

Like in my adolescent arguments, she does not give in and I berate her further. "You're the one that always tells me if I don't want to be so depressed I ought to start exercising. Now I have the chance and you say no. You don't even care," I scream to her.

She begins to cry and I think I feel sorry.

And then at some point much darker in the day, I look up to find dozens of people playing this sport. I enter the field of play and ask if I can join, explaining that there is an odd number of people on the field and that I know Frazier well, but my audience does not respond with much, and what I do get it cold and despondent.

***

Memphis Pencils play a local version of CMJ in a movie theater. Eric Jensen is the emcee. Yani is in the crowd. I spend time on stage and in the crowd, studying the schedule to find that we are the best act at the festival.

***

I am with Maw Maw and my mother, watching an old film of the two of them and Paw Paw, the grandfather of whom everyone seems to think I am the reincarnation. They all look so young at this enormous banquet celebrating something like a wedding. Maw Maw is on stage, singing a song I think, and looks just like Aunt Sandra. Paw Paw takes his turn and looks just like me. They are so young, all of them.

I am then with Lois at the house on Ascension, in the living room. Upon my request we look at some old photos. At first Mimi just gives me a sheet of white paper with faded, black and white photos of my father as a child. I can barely make them out. Then she hands me a sheet of negatives. I hold it up to the light and can make things out a bit clearer. Each new sheet contains more recent photos. Then comes a book of photos of my father's baseball days. His face in the photo morphs in and out of mine, as if sometimes we are the same person.

***

My mother's side of the family and mine are gathered at my parents' house on Lafayette for Christmas dinner. Paul Rawlings is there too. Things are going well. Cousin Eron plays guitar while Mariana sings the words to some combination of Hank Williams' "There's A Tear In My Beer" and "Hey Good Lookin'." We are all so impressed that this five year old can read, and even more so that she knows the melodies of Hank Williams, her father's namesake.

Soon my father and I get into an argument, the content of which is not clear, the intensity of which is apparent to everyone. There is no dining room table. I take a break from the argument to get a beer from the refrigerator. It's slim pickins, just one bud light on the top shelf, which is for my mother, and some nasty stuff on the bottom. Paul is in the kitchen with me. He seems confused that I'd be drinking at a family gathering. For some reason this is not even acceptable in dreams.

I go back to the living room where my father and I continue our spat. We begin wrestling in a manner which I find no more than playful, but he seems to take it quite seriously, as does the rest of the family. My glasses are broken, probably in the process, and though he has fixed them once before, he says something to the effect of "Well, that's your problem."

"Then I guess I just won't have glasses," I counter.

***

My mother and I are watching a mystery unfold on CBS. We know not what is going on nor whether it is fact or fiction, nor whether it is documentary or dramatization. But we are perceptive enough to see that it is strange.

***