| OCR Text |
Show THE ZEPHYR/FEBRUARY-MARCH 2004 With all the shimmying and shaking going on, the back gate fell open and a pile of junk fell out onto the road. Comin’ down the grade to the highway, the park ranger cop-car stopped dead behind us with two flat tires. 'Whatcha been keepin’ in the flatbed, Ed?" I asked. MARK AUSTIN ‘Oh, just a bunch of old junk. Might be some coffee cans full of rusty nails, I s'pose.' He flashed me that broad wicked coyote-breath grin of his and just kept a-drivin’. We pulled off the road at dawn and bumped and rattled our way into the pygmy forest away from the highway. The dawn was one of them Utah spectaculars, every color of the rainbow sweepin’ ‘cross the sky, full moon setting in the west and a light breeze whisperin’ through the sweet smellin’ sage. We laid down to sleep on the sand; all of Ed's camping gear lost on the Arches incline. The fresh air must have done us good, ‘cause we didn't appear to have no hangovers at all when we woke up that afternoon. ye ‘How much cash you packin'’, Sam?,' he asked me. ‘I got a few bucks,” says I. ‘All-right, then, let's go to Vegas,’ says Ed. "Vegas? You're not exactly the Vegas type, Ed. What the hell you want in Vegas?’ He winked and said, 'I know a few gals that might just want to get lucky, Sam!’ That was all I needed to hear. We drove through: the night and arrived beneath Fremont Street's glowing neon round about midnight. Ed had me worked up into a fever by this time. You can imagine how many ladies I was seeing out at the old miner's shack near the Big Indian. Ed painted a picture of these sweet little Mormon gals from Squirrelbush, Utah, that done come up to Vegas and embraced the high life. They met him at some book readin’ in Flag and they think he's some kind of famous cowboy poet. They've invited him to Vegas for a good time even though they know he hates the place and would take Del Webb swimmin’ in Lake Mead with cement = I'm a free speech, sunbather/alien/artisan so | support the return of THE LAME ALIEN SWIMSUIT ISSUE! overshoes if he had half the chance. Danette, Daniela and Danny Sue are all waiting tables in the Golden Clodhopper Casino. ‘I'm tellin’ ya, Sam, they can't wait to see us", he says. No sooner do we pull up to the Clodhopper when that jalopy truck backfires twice and clouds of thick oily smoke belch like Old Faithful from both ends. Ed chuckles, ‘Well, Sam, it only cost me thirty-five bucks and I wrote a bad check for it anyway. It's yours if you want it.’ He hitches up his filthy jeans and walks into the casino and that was the last time I ever saw the dad-gummed bastard." “You mean you never saw him again? What happened?" "T'll be dad-blamed if I know. I looked all over for him, but never found him nor those girls he was going on about. I tried to track him down some years later, but the trailer at Coyote Breath had been shot up and tipped over. Then I started hearin’ 'bout how he was some sort of environmental hero and I figured he didn't want nuthin’ to do with his old pal, Man Who Would Make ON MUON CUSTOM FURNITURE ACID-ETCHED DOORS PO BOX 1375 BOULDER. UTAH 84716 435.335.7379 eco®color-country.net Eustace Sam." "But Sam," I said, handing him a fresh stout, "what the hell! That doesn't sound like Ed Abbey to me. He wouldn't turn his back on an old drinking buddy, would he? You never hooked up with Ed after that? What did you do with the truck?" Sam pawed in the sand with his feet, turned to gaze at the starry starry night above, hawked up a huge loogie and spit it right into the campfire. "That dad-gummed truck was as ornery as old Cactus Juice himself. I took my last five dollars and had it towed to a shop where they said it needed a new engine. Well, the hell with that.” Sam took another solid slug from the fresh stout and pointed a shaky grizzled digit at me. "I'll tell you straight, buddy, I did see Ed Abbey one more time after that. I went to see Mister Professor Sagebrush Gonzo readin’ from one of his high-toned intellectual books at Salt Lake and he didn't even remember me. Musta had his brain re-wired by too much beer and seegars. I just gave up on him after that." "Good Lord, Sam," I says, “that's asad tale. You got any more beer in the cooler?" It's been some years since I sat around the campfire trying to make sense of Eustace's stories. Some of themI figure are as true and on the level as a good home's foundation. But then, there are the others. They're all a little wiggly, recalled out of a dusty haze of beer fueled shenanigans. ButI never questioned Sam's veracity. To me, he was the old West, my last connection to a world slipping away slowly and surely. Sam was the freedom of the open road, the promise of two-lane highway hitting the horizon, the crisp tang of sagebrush mornings in the middle of absolute nowhere, the dusty quiet of sleepy hot slick-rock afternoons and the silence of a million stars shining over the Colorado plateau. Yes indeed, I knew Eustace Clemens. SHOW A LITTLE BACKBONE For $99.99/year, you can put your face on this page. Send a photo & the Big Bucks to The Zephyr &join the Crowd LITTLE WEASEL ADS, INC. PRESENTS: THE DESERT RAT COMMANDO IF YOU DON'T MIND, I'LL LET ABBEY SPEAK FOR ME THIS TIME: He was no Ed Abbey, but that didn't matter to me. Eustace was all I ever needed. "The most striking thing about the rich is the gracious democracy of their manners--and the crude vulgarity of their way of life." POINTBLANK SUBMISSIONG& Submissions to The Zephyr may be on any topic even remotely relevant to its readers. They must be between 500 and 1000 words. Authors of essays printed in this publication receive a five year subscription and our gratitude. WHIPPLE i look more like Ben Franklin than an ALIEN. PLUMBING & HEATING “Qerving Moab & Monticello since 1980" BR ING BACK PLUMBING HEATING YARD IRRIGATION SYSTEMS Fresh Juices Smoothies Wrap Sandwiches Organic Espresso 20S. Main 435.259.6997 587.2864 259.8503 THE ALIENS! C PAGES x = Prams ae a —S pe ALIENS 775 be ae a pony tal ve in Monticello. makes ME an alien, |__ |
