Elephantom
Chicken Broth Paragon
NARRATOR There is white hot vengeance and black pistols, and people who want to murder, fuck and rape this sonuvagun river country to feed their own lies . . . and reporting this kill-war in far south, a real showdown of loathing, is one intrepid man from Glasgow— Scotland, Great fucking Britain— by the name of Käng!
He woke up again sometime during the afternoon, 3:00 PM— the town was called East of Hell by the foreigners and locals, and nothing as far as he was concerned, having come upon this town in a flurry of booze, heat stroke and discount dollar-store sandwiches, a .357 and his C. A. Bulldog to maim witless animals and road-show killers like Manson and Bundy but with a hitchhiker twist to it, and enough bullets to start a goddamn war. East of Hell, that was the town's name, a land in cold-blooded mire and filled with counterculture hate-brood reptiles, east of the river and the trenches of the bourgeoisie deep and the slave holdings of corporate America. War & Peace had nothing against it, paled in front of it, mobbed by pitchforks and crucifixes. The townies there saw two raging groups of hate on two sides separated by the big fence of bogged ceasefire: the Kore Ku Klux Klan, the new age KKK, sons of their fathers, sins of their fathers, come to take their dues; the nouveaux Black Panthers with their Cadillacs and old biker jackets and motorcycles, a product of an incestuous relationship between la révolution and the marxist blacks born from Malcolm speeches and the heart of South Africa by the name of Johannesburg and Apartheid; and the both of them living like the war'd just ended and that thing called law'd yet to come to fruition, revolvers drawn and ropes hand-knotted. The people who didn't care an inch about this pissed War & Peace just stared, as concerned as the never-knowing-better intrepid reporter named Käng. He looked around: there was redstone dirt from the badlands beneath him, blackened leather, an asphalt street, houses, lampposts taller than the buildings, elastic palm trees from the Miami-Dade police department and telegraph wires running down the road and hill slope.He realized he wasn't on the felt seats of the Trabant 601, that swindling car, but on the cold ground— and he could feel the hurt all over his body: his teeth, his throat, ribs, guts, and his wrists. He remembered that one day he spent running down the car pools of Las Vegas chased around by Rudy's hardmen, almost lynched with a roll of tough as hell duct tape and a fountain post founded in Caesar's Palace, the greatest hotel in that district, got a hole punched in his jacket with a pocket knife . . . that was one thing, a hyper reality maybe, nothing even happened. This was reality he was facing now: I know what pain is, fuck. He was having a bad day and he knew it— and because he knew it, a fool, what a fucking fool, it was all the more painful— and he could not feel the cold of his Bulldog anywhere around his body, somewhere in the car probably, next to that sandwich he'd bought from the gas station store— Motley's—, but with the other, the .357 he'd carefully stored in his holster? Likewise carefully removed by the Panthers. What a fucking fool.
As soon as he woke up, the quiet of the late-hour-silenced, though sunny, town was broken by shouts— hoarse, drawn out, rusty like the gristle of earth on his sleeveless Tr. Tucker jacket that was fucked as fast as it was bought. He jerked back and they drew the rope tight around his neck— this was a bad case of Fear Syndrome, hysteria, the nervousness of radical racial undertones and amen to liberty, libertines and liberals except Käng didn't know anything and had nothing do with them, but maybe with the offal lot of those white knight people with their SMGs and dated WWII-era RPGs. He thrashed the ground and hands held him down, propped him still for the tallest of them, a negro, to arm a punch; the fist was lightning to his nerves, connected with his jaw and threw him off, almost, but the hands . . . the hands! He pushed his teeth with his tongue, none broken. An inch more and that would've been the case.
Käng spat out blood. “Why?” he said, tasting the copper in his mouth.
“You're one pert callahan, actor,” his assailant said.
He shook his head. “I'm not.”
The black man— schwarzer rassist— took him by the collars. “Why are you here then?”
“My car broke down.”
“I don't think so, actor. I think you're lying.”
“I'm not.”
He released his grip. “Do I look like I trust you?”
“I don't lie.”
“What makes you think I'm gonna take your word for it, actor?”
“Why?”
The negro eyed two knives at him. “What's your name?”
“Käng. I'm from Glasgow,” he said. “A type of driftwood.”
His brow furrowed. “I bet you know who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Malcolm eleven.”
He squinted. “Wha?”
This was no negro— no thank you godforsaken sirrah—, but a seven feet giant in a diamond-studded leather jacket, huge pockets probably heavy with a serial-filed Beretta and a trench knife, in acid-washed Levi's jeans, in two boots from the surplus store of Sgt. Jackson straight from this black-white inferno called East of Hell. He had an eye for hot vengeance— one eye only, being the left, and the other gone, taken by a I'm uncultured— and it was hotter than the badlands off the precipice and the shallows downstairs of the town . . . and his aim was focused on rest-in-peace Mr. Käng.
“I'm the leader of the Black Panthers, actor, and this is—” he spread his arms around— “this is East of Hell you're in. You know how it works here?”
Käng glared. “I don't.”
“The way of southern justice!” he shouted and gestured at his men. The rope tightened, constricting, and then began to drag him toward the lamppost.
Käng tried to curse but gagged instead. Fuck. He was mighty fucked indeed.
