wildcard

wolf, aloneliness, unreflecting boots

(author's note - my formatting is for speech in italics, but it did not come through. Speech is mostly marked by a dash, however.)


RJ Sublime rode into the high desert of Mexico on horseback. Into the mountain desert.

-And the Gambler will slip into the ever changing desert, seeking the wolf.

He thought of the line from a poem he had read the day before the General contacted him, to send him to the desert, looking for LuvRay.

He had found the line of poetry at a bar when he picked up a cocktail napkin. It was written on the napkin with a caricature of him drawn underneath. He memorized it, but didn’t keep the napkin.

Legend had it that LuvRay Chose had been raised by wolves. Then, later, by Indians. But nobody really knew. Or if they did, they weren’t telling Sublime.
His Spanish was rusty, but serviceable. He brushed up on the plane ride. Managed to buy a horse and supplies. Water jugs. A tent. The usual things.

He spent a week talking to people, collecting pieces of the legend. A man, raised by wolves and Indians, who lived alone in the desert. The people were afraid of him, thought he was a demon or a spirit or something different. They called him il cabrenezo. The cursed wanderer. One after another, they pointed in the same direction, into the hills.

He rode into the hills for four days, just riding around, looking, with no idea how to find LuvRay. He enjoyed it, but it was wild and he slept with a pistol under his blanket.

He woke up, the fifth morning, saw a wolf looking at him from a few feet away. He reached down slowly, pulled out the pistol. He fired, into the air. The wolf turned and ran away.

-Good, said a voice behind him. You wanted not to kill it. I want you live.

Sublime sat up quickly, turned to look. A man sat there, black hair and eyes, lean face. He wore leather clothes, like a modern Indian. He sat on a rock, looking calmly at Sublime. Who are you?

-RJ Sublime. Are you LuvRay Chose?

-Shoze is my name sound. Yes, I am. Why are you here?

-I’m looking for you.

LuvRay nodded. I expected. I dreamed. What is your want with me?

-I want you to go to France, to find somebody. Her name is Martha. I have passports, documents, money and credit cards. A flight is booked, train tickets.

LuvRay didn’t answer. He just walked away. Sublime spent two more days there, waiting. He rode around, looking for LuvRay, but knew he would not find the man. He could only wait for LuvRay to contact him. He started a fire two nights later to cook. He decided to leave in the morning. LuvRay had made up his mind apparently. He wouldn’t go.

When Sublime returned to the fire, LuvRay was stirring the pot. He turned to look at Sublime, opened his hand and dropped some things into the chili.

-I go with you, RJ Sublime, if you go with me and meet spirits.

Sublime walked over to his horse, took out his Swiss Army knife. Sounds like a good deal to me. He looked at the wrinkled nubs in the chili, stirred them in. Peyote? He cut up an onion, dumped it in as well.

-No. Different. Only the Indians know of this. It makes vision.

An hour after they ate the chili, RJ handed LuvRay the bottle of Mescal he had bought in the last town. He was feeling the onset of the cactus buds. LuvRay sipped a tiny amount, handed it back.

-You bring me death.

-What? Sublime was looking at the stars and they were looking back. I don’t operate that way.

- The ghosts of the desert show me my death. They say it now. You arrive bring it on your horse.

Sublime sat up.
-I don’t usually kill people, LuvRay. Why would I kill you?

-I not say you kill me.

-OK. What did the ghosts show you?

-Only what I say. No more. He looked at Sublime. When animals die, they do not bury. They walk away. I seed many wolf die. Elders. All of my wolf are dead. From when I was cub. All.

-What about the wolf I saw tonight? What’s his name?

-She. No name. Wolf has no name. Only man has name. Her pack sent her away. Alone. I took her. And now I leave her alone again.

As the buds and the Mescal combined, Sublime gradually lost touch with reality. He started to float in space, to lose track of everything. He saw faces, the cactus and plants began to talk and move about, each movement a symbol of unnamable fears.

-No, said LuvRay. Not this way.
LuvRay told him how to take the intensity and bring it to his body. To not get lost in the mind. How to open it out.

-Lay back, speak to stars, then speak to ground and plants and animals. It is good way for you.

So he did. And the stars sang, in a language out of the knowledge of man which he did not know, but understood. The stars held him, hovering in an embrace beyond time, in a wordless space where nothing needed to be true.

Hours later, LuvRay stood above him.

-Now we speak to fire. You learn fire.
He watched LuvRay reach into the fire, grab a burning ember and hold it in his hand, unharmed. LuvRay smiled at him, handed him the ember. He dropped it, looked at the blister on his palm, looked back at LuvRay. He stood and began walking away, turned his head and motioned for Sublime to follow him.

They walked away from the fire, into the desert. The fire dwindled away and disappeared. Sublime no longer knew how to get back to the campsite. LuvRay cut limbs off a cactus, sliced it up and they ate it. They walked more, sometimes walking backwards or sideways, laughing like children.

They came to a cave and sat inside.

-My home. No other man seed it. You are first. LuvRay looked back out to the desert. And last.
A wolf walked up.

-Is that the same wolf? Sublime asked LuvRay.
But LuvRay was gone. Afraid, he turned to the wolf, who lay down, staring at him. He lay down, looking it in the eyes. They lay like that for a long time, neither moving. He just looked into the eyes of the wolf.

-Run. Sublime jumped up. The wolf had said it. Run. Run with me.

And he did. He ran. He found the freedom of the desert, running with a wolf. He ran in the bright night, blessed by ghosts to fly over rocks and holes. The wolf loped at his side, eager to run with a new friend. The still, cool air took them together, turning into a breeze as they moved, luring the wolf and the man to a communion before such things as wolves and men found themselves apart.

His mind was pushed into a boundary past the sky, buried deep in the cool earth. Nothing and no one owned them, and they were nothing at all. Just animals in the wild, happy and free. They ran, unencumbered by the pretension of humanity.

They stopped, rolled together, played together.
Then they ran some more.

They arrived at the campsite as the sun rose. LuvRay was not there.





Karl had disappeared. Martha could not find him. She had kept track, through an intermediary, as he grew, became a man, went to college in Lyons. Now he was gone without a trace. She had to find him. She didn’t cultivate many sources, and dropped them after a few meetings. She kept meetings years apart, as well. She had a few contacts she had only used once. Valuable, and they had no idea who she was.

She burned them all up looking for Karl. Nothing.
She sat on the bed and read the poem Seeker had given her years ago, just before she left Karl. For the thousandth time she read it.


aloneliness

one will come who has been stripped of everything
the darkly favored will find her way home
the deeply named who can gather love the furthest
who will harvest herself into horror
for the sake of another
we want nothing in this world
but to be a part of it
but a part of us would claim her as our own
we will find you when your hour is darkest
bring you home before our dying hour
when all that we see of what lives
will breathe in sharply
in fear
not knowing you are there

you may call her the deeply named
what part does she play as the drama unfolds
Our hidden, beautiful best
our jewel without a flaw

a diamond appeared which needed no cut, perfect already
a special treasure found in fields of hate
we cannot hope but you find us alive
we have been put to this, you and I
to, desolate and vain, wander through parched lands
longing for each other
for as you remain hidden from all
so, i have chosen to not find you
i honor your wish

deeply named, darkly favored
what do these, your names, mean to you
have you hidden yourself so thorough
that you do not see the image
you reflect into the world
do the rays coming from the prism
through which your sun shines
flee from their source
and outstrip your vision

is your shadow invisible to yourself
like you, like all
no one sees the changing perceptions of our fellows
as they cast their eye upon us
no one can know what another sees in themselves

i desire to protect you
to cup you in my hand and bring you home
a new light for all of our worlds
a flower that may never die


She laid the message down.
The telephone rang. One of her contacts. He had a name for her: RJ Sublime.






The Sergeant looked down at his black boots. He loved his boots. Danner boots, the boot of choice for outdoor professionals of all sorts. His philosophy was that durable, dependable, waterproof footwear would get one through all sorts of troublesome situations. You cannot make the world conform to your plans and schemes, but with the right boots you can kick the merde out of any nasty surprises. And he was about to do that to one wolf and Indian raised no nation wildman.

Not that the Sergeant had any particular problem with Luvray Chose. Far from it. He respected and genuinely liked Luvray, at least by reputation. He admired the man. Luvray seemed happy when things got tough. He seemed to like sleeping in the dirt and the cold. He was no stranger to battle, either.

The Sergeant was not going to fight Luvray for personal reasons at all. In fact, he never seemed to do anything for personal reasons. He just followed orders. He liked it. A woman once asked why he was like that and he had no answer. Probably my years of training, he had replied. But that was not it. The Sergeant had actually been genetically encoded to derive deep satisfaction from taking orders in an appropriate chain of command.

He was a tactician to the bone, able to carry out any order below the level of overtake that country or formulate policy for such and such a situation. He would be lost in diplomatic terrain and if the General had, as some sort of joke, ordered him to go to a party and make friends or get a date, he might have clarified parameters. What sort of friends, SIR? He felt the urge to snap out the word sir if he did not comprehend the orders he were given, as if the loudness of the word could somehow rearrange the sentence into a more comprehensible arrangement.

But these were orders that made sense, orders that he liked. He had also been genetically encoded to enjoy fighting, and obviously, to excel at it. His pain tolerance bested an elephant’s. He was a laboratory of humanimal bioengineering designed for a single purpose: to carry out with no question and no concern the orders of his commander, in this case, the General, also a bio-engineered being. They were called biopids, rhyming with myopic.

They had been designed to work with each other.
Although he had no squad, he had issued many commands. He possessed an almost primal ability to force others to obey his commands in violent or deep stress situations. People just instinctually knew that he would find the means to carry the day, and simply did what he said feeling that was the best way to get out alive. Of course, he could read people on the spot, seeing the depth of their ability to take stress, and what they could do.

He considered just dropping in front of Luvray, saying surprise and going at him, but the soldier in him just could not give up the element of surprise in such a stupid and deliberate manner. Surprise, or definite initiative as he called it, was a critical advantage. Never give it away.

He had seen old films where a soldier would yell hey or just scream something unintelligible and then leap. An idiot’s maneuver. As if someone would be more vulnerable after being yelled at than if they suspected nothing at all. He had to force himself to watch such stupidity when he wanted to line up those fools masquerading as soldiers and give them a proper ass-chewing from a Sergeant.

It was something he never actually did because he had no soldiers under his command, but he damn well knew how. He could chew a soldiers ass all the way off his backside if needed. Part of being a Sergeant. And if one of his theoretical men ever announced their presence before attacking, he would. He would chew it off and shove it back up the hole. You should never give up the element of surprise. Just hit someone. And running at them from the front? Hit them from behind. But then he was a soldier, not a movie director and maybe it made for more drama.

He certainly did not plan for any drama in the taking of LuvRay Chose. Still, LuvRay had a hell of a reputation, a mythos, really, and he wanted a real fight with him. Maybe he could have it if the General let the man live.

Commitment, along with surprise, was another critical factor. Know you would complete the mission. Then when the plan didn’t work, you found another way.

He knew the man had keen senses, beyond the ordinary. He would be difficult to surprise, and the Sergeant liked the challenge. The plan was to wait on a bench at the top of the train platform, reading a newspaper. Then, when LuvRay walked past, hit him with a neural stun device while walking toward him. Catch him before he fell and act like a friend helping someone light-headed to their car.

He wasn’t sure why the General wanted him to capture LuvRay. After all, LuvRay was working for them in some way. I wish to meet him, was all the General had said.
No problem. He sat on the bench with his paper, waiting for the wolf.



LuvRay looked out the window of the train as it pulled into the station. Not his element. Too many people. Any people was too many for him. Paris. Way too many people.

He looked at his shoes. Hard soles. He preferred soft soles, moccasins, or no shoes at all. But for some reason he wore hiking shoes. Jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather vest. All natural. LuvRay disliked synthetic fabrics. He disliked spending too much time indoors, as well. The plane ride over had made him almost crazy.

The train stopped. He shouldered a small pack. As he neared the end of the platform, he felt it. A not right-ness. He slipped low, moving behind the crowd by instinct. Saw it. Newspaper. A man reading a newspaper. He broke into a loping run the opposite way.



The Sergeant took off after him, stun gun ready. It was a limited use weapon. He kicked off two shots. Both hit the pack. Great instincts the man had. The next shot dropped someone in the crowd. It was getting too messy. He had to change tactics. He tossed the gun aside, decided to take him by hand.

He dodged between two people, and LuvRay’s pack was flying at his face. He knocked it aside, but it cost him close to a second. LuvRay’s feet could be seen, disappearing between an old woman’s legs, under a bench sandwiched tightly between two kiosks. The Sergeant knew he couldn’t spare the time to go around.

-Bougez vous, he yelled at the people LuvRay had gone under. He ran at the bench. It was back to back with another bench, where people were leaning back, trying to stay away from the man who had suddenly flown from underneath.

The Sergeant thumbed a tiny pellet from his belt. He didn’t want to use tek. He wanted to go combat primitive, perhaps out of respect for LuvRay. But it was creating too much attention. He leapt, low, to place one foot on the back of both benches, then to leverage that into maximum height, or change of direction, depending on whether he could see LuvRay in the crowd or not. He did, and opted for the change in direction toward LuvRay.

He turned it into a dive, intending to land on top of him with an elbow strike to the ear. Severe disorientation if successful, possibly unconsciousness. But it required total commitment to the maneuver. He flipped the pellet, which struck LuvRay on the left buttock and dispelled its charge. His sciatic nerve flared into pain, visible by the jerking response. His left leg should be without motive power.

LuvRay twisted, turning to a fighting crouch as the Sergeant landed. The Sergeant overshot, having expected LuvRay to keep going after the pellet hit him. He landed to LuvRay’s right, forced into a last minute roll, but managed to put a knee strike on LuvRay’s hand, forcing it into his face. The Sergeant rolled through, putting a few feet between the two of them so that LuvRay could not be on him from behind. He was up, in neutral martial arts stance as LuvRay slammed into him. LuvRay bit off the end of his right pinky, just as the Sergeant brought a left elbow strike into an acupressure point behind his ear, knocking him unconscious.

The Sergeant stood. Est-ce que quelqu’un as une serviette? People were mostly fleeing the scene, but a few hardy souls stayed to watch. The French were so polite. Somebody would surely give him a handkerchief to stop the blood.