Quicksilver

Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

I had another dream about the fires, last Wednesday night, when we had some really weird weather in the greater Los Angeles area. Where we live there was hardly a hint of the storm that hit Compton and Watts�no hail here, and little rain, despite a wickedly ominous sky. I've heard of tornado weather when the sky seems to be green�at dusk on Wednesday, a sickly orange pall fell over our world. Entirely different from the orange glow that lit the sky above the wildfires, but a little of the grit-teeth tension of that weekend came back to me.

Fire itself didn't make an appearance in my dream, and taking advantage of the mercifully evanescent nature of dreams, I've let the details fade from my memory. But one of the images is indelible, because it's a fragment of my memories. Driving towards the orange glow, driving towards the fire, on the side of the road that's completely empty of traffic, while the other lane is a bumper-to-bumper line of cars, coming towards me and past me, fleeing to the safety behind me. And I'm the only damn fool on the wrong side of the road going the wrong way. Except for the fire trucks that overtake me silently�they don't have to use their sirens, because I'm looking for them, I know they're coming. I see them long before they're upon me and I pull off the road to let them pass, suddenly thunderous as they speed by. And then I pull back onto the road and follow, hauling my empty horse trailer, a map and scribbled directions on the seat beside me. The directions include roads not on my map and I'm hoping, praying, the directions are complete, and don't guide me onto unpaved roads. I do not want to be hauling a 24-foot trailer packed with five or six horses down a rutted dirt road.

Truck driving is not one of my natural talents, and it wasn't easy for me to learn to be good enough at it to make a living. I learned at a time in my life when I thought I had no other options that weren't shit. I was working for a great fellow named Henry as a horse handler on his trucks, but it was temp work and what he really needed was another driver. He could get drivers, that was no problem. Getting drivers who truly liked working with horses was his problem. Henry took me on as a student driver and helped me get my Class A commercial driver's license. I don't know if you can understand what an amazing thing that was, hiring an unexperienced 21-year-old convicted felon to drive his trucks. The man saved my life, plain and simple. I wish his largesse had not been trammeled by others, but no good deed ever goes unpunished. His insurance company freaked out, they refused to insure any truck I drove. Henry hammered out a deal with them, which basically promised I wouldn't drive out of the state and I wouldn't drive cargoes (horses) that exceeded a certain dollar amount. This restricted me to smaller, less lucrative jobs, and I think the insurance company was hoping I'd quit, but I wasn't gonna quit until I gave Henry a good return on his investment in me. And fuck, it didn't matter anyway. The drivers with seniority were given the best jobs, they were all better drivers than me*, and honestly, I didn't want the long-haul jobs, and I didn't want to drive the eighteen-wheelers.

Henry is the one who sent all the evacuating horsepeople to me. I hadn't moved a horse since June when I drove a cowboy and his two ponies to a rodeo�he was healing a busted collarbone and his sponsor didn't want him driving the 450-mile round trip. I briefly wondered why driving was bad for his collarbone, but it was okay to rope an eighty-pound calf, leap off a horse, throw the aforementioned eighty-pound calf to the ground and tie up two or three of its feet, in 6.89 seconds. But cowboys have their own peculiar logic, especially rodeo cowboys. He was a real sweetie, a cornflakes-fed All-American beauty. And he was curious. My kind of curious. Mmm. I'm smiling at the memory.

But as I was saying, I hadn't moved a horse since June, and I was thinking I should probably close that department of 'Zaziel Enterprises. Then Henry called me and asked if I could squeeze in a run from Santa Anita to Santa Ynez. Race horses�a filly going home with a cannon bone fracture, and on the way back, I would pick up two colts in Thousand Oaks. A good gig. I would be driving one of Henry's rigs, so that was no problem. (On my own jobs, since I move horses only infrequently, I rent horse trailers from Jer's father, unless a client wants me to use their own trailer, although I have refused jobs because I didn't trust the condition of an owner's trailer.) Grooms came with the horses (which is not SOP) and that made my job easier. Nice girls, both of them. The one who was handling the fractured filly was an artist, and I had a lively chat with her about art and the natural beauty of the Santa Ynez area. The gal with the two colts gave me a recipe for flourless corn fritters.

As we were unloading the colts at Santa Anita, I met their trainer, who took me 'round to see the horses he was running in the Breeders' Cup races on Saturday. None of them won, but they sure looked like winners. Racing thoroughbreds are beautiful creatures, with a cruel beauty like that of supermodels, with the same leggy, stalking stride. But the horses have an even shorter and younger career than models. A thoroughbred is a teenager through most of its racing career, running on long, thin, impractical legs. I have a sickening memory of the Breeder's Cup�I was watching it on TV years ago when a horse broke a foreleg during one of the races�the grotesque image of the horse running, riderless, on three legs, with the fourth waving wildly like an empty sock with a tennis ball in its toe. When we were kids we used to put a tennis ball in the toe of a long sock, black knee-high socks were preferred. It had to be a dark sock, dark socks worked best for some reason. On summer nights, under a streetlight, we'd whirl these socks above our heads and fling them as high as we could. This activity would bring bats to us, to where we could see them, swiftly flickering through the light and back into the dark. Our theory was the bats' radar saw the socks as other bats, and they came to see if the other bats had found some good eats. Thus we entertained ourselves for hours. We were children of simple folk.

~

* And shit, they never let me forget it. No friends, no respect among that bunch. They were pissed that Henry had hired an ex-con. They let me know, in no uncertain terms and with much profanity, that I was single-handedly dragging the reputation of Henry's company through a damn shitty mire. A top-notch, reputable trucking company does not hire a person with a felony on his record�hell, most trucking companies won't hire anyone with any kind of a criminal record, even though federal safety regulations are only concerned with prior convictions of crimes involving the use of a commercial vehicle, or driving under the influence. Thank god, Henry has a much more amiable group working for him now. Among them is my partner in the mostly-defunct 'Zaziel's Quicksilver Delivery Service, who tired of the giddy and glamorous life of the self-employed, and decided it was time for him to grow up and get a real job.

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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