Big Sky Showdown at the Little Pond

Big Sky Showdown at the Little Pond 

She made her way out of the door. She’s got a real, big-time, and completely legit career. I wiped wake-up gunk out of the crevices of the sockets that contained all the regret my liver consumed, over the years, in the retinas of my bleakly disillusioned eyes.

Silence blares like a metal show between the walls of our home. I rip-a-curse of rage at the universe – “damn, my reprobate style!” My peculiar brand of wayward chutzpah. The beats of my heart felt like the leaves outside, decaying on the ground. Fall always makes us realize how far we still have to go, to get back up.

The numbers on the clock read: running behind. Change never comes from the maniacal rush, faster never saved any souls. I staggered out the door, frowzy and draggin’ my spirit. Crisp air hit my nostrils, and the trees breathe purity.

That dilapidated truck always takes a few attempts, but ain’t missed a horizon-line, yet – five turns, and benedictions, and the engine rumbled. Stopped at red-light despair, the cadence of an electric-cowboy tune, combined with the putrid scent of pristine death – a squished cat, all nine lives spent – shoots me to an old scene, like a shotgun to the memory glands.

I’m gettin’ out of an effaced rig – neon turned booger green. The road hits a stop, a dead-end; civilization has run out, there’s no rules, it's all self-reliance for the daring, who keep going.

I yank on my pack-of-a-house, and it’s too heavy for my neophyte alignment of my spine. I’m gone, there’s trail to tromp. The inclines take you by the streams running clean as holy water. Deep into the infinite nowhere...the Mont-ucky wilderness, and the exigencies of lower status on the food chain.

I wanna puke, it’s high elevation and thin oxygen. The view makes the title-worthy grade: Big-Sky country! Every morning, raw with big adventure – hell, you were just happy to zip your skull in the comfort of a sleeping-bag at night, and the body always ached, but it beat the gnaw of predatory jaws.

I almost met my fate in those hallowed woods – damn near shook the maker’s hand, whoopin’ it up, over spectacular wildlands. We had left two axes behind, misery-whipping logs that blocked the path of the trail.

I was alone, retrieved the tools, and U-turned my steps, going back to camp – two hours till sunset. In the desolation of rangy miles of the Bitterroot backcountry, I descended steep dirt, and the trail swooped left, skirting a pond, where jagged peaks took bites like teeth out of the sky.

Up to its chest in the pond was a massive moose, and it cooled itself off, dunking his humongous head and broad paddles in the glacial water. I stopped to marvel at trifle things, that city-slickers don’t even consider.

The quiet hung eerily, the moose splashed carelessly, and I recollected the hunter’s advice, “I ain’t scared of anything, out in dese darn woods – except, of course, for a moose, that is.”

The escape route hooked into a thicket of trees. It was time to make a furtive exit. I took a last-minute glance to scald my brain fibers with a memory. The moose, twenty feet away, glowered intentions of territorial menace into my soul – it was a big sky showdown at the little pond.

Fire Red Leaves Ride the Fall’s Wind

Deep night. Worn wood edges and the ambient glow of soft neon light. Outside the saloon door, flapping like swim fins on your feet, the darkness and sorrow wait for me like failure and tomorrow.

I put it off – snicker-a-huff, to myself, and order another beer, and wash it down with a scoff.

2 AM – it’s gettin’ tight. The bartender asks, “How we doin’? Ya had some b’fore ya got here, eh, you gonna make it home, alright?”

His blurry face in the bleary haze, and I was slippin’ farther down the tube. I felt born to lose, but I could handle these familiar, lone-lopin' streets, full of people with mouths, only good for their own chew.

I had to thank God, for the idea-zang, he shot the man, who built the first cave-like-dive – that guy don’t get enough credit, and he’d be proud that it took off like a viral sensation – stools and the degree of neon that bounces off of decorations from the 80’s, explains the area of town where people drink the fire.

“Totally – long-shots are hard to navigate when you’re wobbly, but goals require discipline...that’s why perseverance is crucial,” I said.

His eyes looked confused – just what I aimed for. “Of course, blackouts increase difficulty, but, lil secret, between you and me, gals: the stiffer the rip, the mightier the grit, and the louder the hoots can get – we’re alive! So, let's all raise a glass before we die.”

The barman’s glare indicated he concealed a tool to inflict brutality “Oh yeah, buddy, ya boozin’ through a marathon, huh?”

I killed the beer-bottle. Asked for another, “secrets ain’t free,” I murmured. He moved slow, reluctant to replace the Bud-heavy bottle, but he did: drunk wrecks aren’t eloquent, so this drunk is a wreck, but he’s got his spirit in check. I was loose as a goose, but I had control, and it seemed to placate my stool-end hassle.

I didn’t appreciate his pace, so, once he set the bottle down, I paid him and let him have it.

“Perseverance – grit to pursue hopes that you should quit.”

He got ugly – another blue-collar brain, burned and blundered. Stuck in ways that couldn’t learn anymore.

“Whatever, buddy! You got 10 minutes – then you gotta get a move on,” spat the mean & stern side of the booze hoarder.

He returned to his neon routine and the quizzical regulars at the corner end of the bar. He gesticulated that there was a loon on the other end.

I drank swift with the allotted amount of constricted minutes – I didn’t like their smug stares at me, like I was an escaped zoo-creature. “Gutless!” I yelled, “none of ya got the guts to go nuts, and that’s why your faces are ugly cages of lassoed rage!

I despised their smugness that judged my brand of bizarre behavior. I smashed the remainder of my bottles’ guts, the exit near, and obstructively clear. I quick-flipped the bottle, so the drink-hole was down, and hurled it at the liquor brands lined up like a firing line in front of the walled mirror.

It shattered like fire red leaves ride the Fall’s wind.

I can’t say how they reacted. I was out the door in a hot flash of a get-somewhere-else dash. I haven’t been back. I wander the darkness on the flatlands of neon, like the invisibility of glass traps the wayward wiggles of a dazzling fish.

Aftermath

I drove by that hospital that told us we had been pregnant. There was a lot – like the amount of blood in the toilet that would indicate a horrific stab wound.

She cried for days. I was at her side for the entirety of it. Even though, I know, in the depths of my bro-migo skull that my always-be-there loving support couldn’t provide the comfort she needed.

The stoplight turned green, and the troll of flailing road-rage anger, in the car behind me, honked vigorously impatient. Out the window, I threw him a chill-migo hand-shaka, and eased off the line, and forgave him, he didn’t know why my gaze was distracted.

There’s pain that cracks us open, never heals, and we move-on, because that’s all you can ever do, and in retrospect, that’s all you’ve ever done, so that’s all you’ll ever know to do. 

The furious dude behind me took his chance and maneuvered like the swift lane change that won the Indy-500. 

In the rear-view mirror, the hospital got smaller. She got through it, though. She’s tough like a turtle and her aura radiates a shine like the sun. People showed her tremendous care and compassion – I’d never experienced that before.

It was surreal, I’ve never discussed it, and even though I’ll be late gettin’ home for dinner. The burn of a joint, cruisin’ the long way, saves my skull from getting destroyed by the inane occurrences of this world.

The longer you make it down the line of the livin-grind; anything that alleviates the pressure of the universe and diverts any compulsion to drive head-first into on-coming traffic, benefits the longevity of the soul.

Smoke plumes drift out the window in the clear and crisp rise of the moonlight. There’s never really any pure contentment; only brief highs, keepin’ the style smooth, when ridin’ those long downslides, and the ways we get on, through any of it.

Nicholas Viglietti is a writer from Sacramento, CA. After Katrina ravaged the gulf coast, he rebuilt homes there for 2 years. Up in Mon-tucky, he cut trails in the wilderness. He pedaled from Sac-town to S.D. He’s a seventh-life party-hack, attempting to rip chill lines in the madness.