Visitor

Sam sat on the floor, his head in his hands, his eyes wide as he listened to the crackled voice coming from the speaker. Every day, for most of the day, Sam would sit and listen. It didn’t matter if it were news, sports, weather, comedies, or westerns Sam would listen in rapt attention to the radio. Sam lived in a place his Grandpa called Unincorporated Utopia. He always spat when he said it as if surviving there was some sort of retribution to the rest of the world.

Sam’s momma died sometime ago. Got bit by a rattler and Unincorporated Utopia didn’t have a hospital. Seems Utopia’s got plenty of room for the dead though. Sam’s father was a drifter. He passed through when the booze and women in Wichita dried up. He always came back until it was time to take the full barrels of whiskey back to town. He always made a killing, not much of it ever got back to Utopia.

Grandpa couldn’t remember being a boy so he wasn’t right sure how to train a child to be a man. He had no tolerance for ‘conniption fits’ either. That’s why he was content to let the boy listen to that blasted radio. Damned thing had an antenna the size of an April thunderstorm. If it got turned off boy could Sam howl like one too. God curse the day the world runs out of 01A vacuum tubes to run the thing.

Life was pretty plain, but it seemed to work for them. That was, until a new drifter came through one day. One benefit of Utopia is when someone comes to call, the cloud of dust on the horizon gives you plenty of time. In other places that might’ve meant cleaning up, or preparing some tea. Not for Grandpa. For him it meant time to clean your gun and prepare ammunition. He didn’t care who it was, he wasn’t interested and there was always plenty of room in Utopia for quiet men and asides from that a dead man’s wares were always cheaper.

The wagon was pulled by one ass. It was a pretty sorry ass too. Needed water, maybe food, heck it probably just needed to be put down. The wagon was painted in turquoise and red, blue canopies lined with yellow were tied up along the top. It rattled and creaked as it bumped along the terrain. The thing had more stuff hanging off the sides than Carter had pills.

The person driving it looked like a fruitbat too. Wearing a purple top hat, and a purple suit he sat on the roof of the monstrosity and carried a riding crop like he might use it to suggest a direction to the ass in the distant future. The man was definitely a fruitbat Grandpa decided.

Grandpa retrieved a jug of last year’s whiskey and sat on the porch as a studio audience somewhere gave way to uproarious laughter, “… The pitcher’s name… Tomorrow…. You don’t want to tell me today?...” He settled into his rocker to watch the circus and the fruitbat come in. It would still be another half hour or so. He rocked back and forth in the dust and heat. He spat and glared periodically at the man who seemed to represent all that was wrong in the world riding closer to him in a cloud of rust colored dirt.

“Halllo!!” cried the fruitbat. “Let me introduce myself my good man, my name is Masao Shinnichi Fingall, you Sir, may call me Ichi. I bring you fond wishes and glorious gifts.” Dumb fruitbat didn’t seem to recognize a gun when he saw one.

Ichi jumped off of the cart with a double backflip landing perfectly on the ground in a cloud of dust. Before Grandpa could even resist with a feeble, “Itchy yew lissen heer…” the man had managed to open one side of his wagon to reveal a stage of sorts. The blue and yellow curtains for the stage fell on cue. There was even a back drop painted. “I present to you The Show. Now all you need to do is sit back and enjoy the show.”

Ichi brought a chair around the front of the stage, dusted it off and grabbed Grandpa by the arm, the one without the deathgrip on a 410 sawed off shotgun, and plopped him in the seat. In the very same instant, Ichi appeared onstage, in a new outfit, overalls, much like Grandpa’s.

Ichi drawled out in perfect Utopian stories about wars and oilmen who liked purdy ladies in baths, and men who wrote poetry, plants, and dreams. He had stories recountin’ where the earth come from, and stories of men kissing men, cutting off body parts, and a particularly innerestin’ story of a man stuck to a tree. ‘Sick things really,’ thought Grandpa, ‘An awful load of hooey.’

By now Grandpa was madder n a clobbered pile of faraents. He stood up like a shot and leveled that 410 straight down the stranger’s nose. He turned the color of rhubarb and looked the man square in the face with eyes like coal, “Now you lissen here Itchy, I don’t need yore twisted tales and screwed up stories, this heres a civil place whir we git along jess fine. Yew do have some mighty fine offerin’s tho. ‘Magine I’lll just take em m’self since it don’t seem you’ll be heer long.”

With that, the 410 rung out in the dusk like a crack of a whip from the sky. It echoed off the walls of the sunset and lingered in Utopia. Ichi laid on the ground blood pouring from his mouth. Grandpa walked over to him and looked him in the eye then poked him with the still smoking barrel. In the silence you could hear the wet skin sizzle. Ichi looked up at Grandpa and put his hand on his leg.

“Dear friend,” he began, “…”

Grandpa had turned around to go back for more whiskey when he spotted Sam. Sam had heard the ruckus from the wagon and wandered away from the radio. He was white as a sheet and looked more betrayed than a grown man could ever look. Grandpa looked away and stormed into the house to get the whiskey.

‘Damned stories’, he growled, then spat.