Cabbage

I find myself in the cabbage, like a thousand times before, searching for the children with fat faces and blue eyes. Perhaps they really are just manufactured, like the kids at school tell me. I prefer to believe that they grow here, possibly in the roots of the Cabbage, and crawl out at night seeking stable and pleasant-natured adoptive families to kill.

The Garden

In the San Joaquin valley of California, back in the early days of Spanish settlement, as Missionaries busied themselves with the souls of native Indians and building fortified townships, there lived in the surrounding hills a very small tribe of Indians called the Ducquah. This tribe always seemed very docile and peaceful, compared to other tribes of the region, but they were at the same time greatly feared by the the Cocopa, the Comeya and the Quigyuma, who never attempted to raid them or engage them in warfare. The reason for this was the Ducquah's powerful medicine, and possession of witchcraft and ancient curses. It was well known that anyone who troubled the Ducquah soon vanished from the face of the earth. Even the Spanish priests for once took heed of strong warnings and spared these Ducquah Medicine Men the usual compulsory knowledge of the Lord.

Over many decades the tribe dwindled until, as Spanish settlement became United States territory, there was only one member of the Ducquah tribe left; an old woman with eyes as cataract as onion bulbs who could still see everything around her with the clarity of a hawk. This old woman was more than 200 years old at that time but carried within her fragile body the accumulated life force of her entire tribe.

She lived in a Pueblo-style hovel dug into a high cliff wall which faced the morning sun, and spent her days caring for her hillside garden which grew more lush and beautiful each year. The garden was her only concern now and she pampered it like an only child. She did the work of 10 men and preserved large portions of her harvests in skins and husks using secret techniques that could keep them fresh a hundred years.
One evening the woman found two white men exploring in her garden and set upon them with the fury of a grizzly bear. She beat them mercilessly with her walking stick until one lay quite dead, and the other one, gasping for breath and whimpering in the dirt, stared up at her with one terrified eye; the other eye already swelling tightly shut. She could now see that they were only youths, perhaps 16 or so, and thought that she had possibly over-reacted.

She dragged the living boy up to her hovel by his hair to nurse his wounds. He spoke a lot of hasty words before passing out; all gibberish to her but she got the gist of it. He was pleading for his life thinking that she intended to stew him up for supper, but she didn't have much taste for human flesh anymore much preferring rabbit or deer meat. She stripped off his clothes and applied poultices to his gashes, thinking he must have been quite a pretty thing before she'd gotten hold of him.

The young man lived for three weeks but in the end her medicine couldn't save him. As his swellings receded and he recovered some of his beauty, the old woman would stroke his soft skin with her bent old fingers and whisper soothing incantations in his ear to lessen the pain. She often examined his body close up, the jet black hair which fell in locks across his eyes, his pink lips as soft and thin as those of a young girl, the small brown circular nipples that capped his chest and the solid structure of his stomach which slowly rose and fell with each breath; even his penis which occasionally became erect in his sleep was of interest to her, although she had no sexual feelings left. It did, however, awakened certain nostalgic memories from a long dead sexual past which hadn't had any reason to resurface in the past hundred years or so.

When she knew for certain he was going to die the old woman cut the boy open and set about stuffing him with fruits and vegetables and vines replacing his vital organs. In the past she had absorbed all the energy of her tribe members, animals she had killed and eaten as they died, and even the plants she ate. Their life force had kept her alive and as strong as an ox for over two centuries; but now she desired a young companion for her old age and this boy would do just fine.

The New Mexicans

In the Jaiehos Valley of central Mexico we chase down dunebuggyists with our rifles and deport them back to the United States. Go home, Gringos! we shake our fists at the internment train as it takes them back to their Starbucks and McDonalds infested country.

Tortillas. Fresh tortillas. That's the stuff of life! Fresh fish and ceviche, pablano peppers and good steaming beans.

We cast our boat into the sea. All the Gringos and Gringas had been captured, and we felt at peace once again. We dove into the water and fucked like dolphins among the seaweed.