Yelping with Cormac

Cafe Gratitude

Gourmet Ghetto - Berkeley, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Four stars.

The old man sat there reading the menu with sagely focus. It was the strangest menu he’d ever seen. A waitress festooned in face jewelry and wearing clownish rags appeared at his tableside. When he looked up she was staring at him intently.

What are you grateful for today? she said.

Well mam, I am grateful for many things given my advanced years and predilection for drink and gambling and the like, but if I had to choose well I guess that would have to be my Colt three fifty seven magnum. Lots of fellas using these new semi automatics, but I’d like to see one of them peashooters put a wadcutter through a engine block.

She stood there staring. He coughed loudly and made a sound like he was gargling broken glass. He pulled out his handkerchief and spat in it.

I’d be mighty grateful for some steak and eggs too.

Juicy Couture

Union Square - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Two stars.

The traveler found himself in a gilded and luminescent valley of commerce beset on all sides by baying signage, the air redolent in fine leather and human urine. He turned and saw behind plate glass two mannequins, their alabaster buttocks thrust toward the street, their womanly frames ballooned like some gaia figurine to be worshipped by savages and on them were pajama trousers with the word Juicy luridly stamped across the seat of the pants.  Hellfire and damnation, he said.

Si, said a drifter standing beside him. The traveler had not noticed the drifter’s coming. The man’s streetblackened but noble face and vanquished suitcoat spoke of a past of finer things. The drifter gestured at the trousers in the window. He began speaking in sonorous Spanish.

He told of a world in which no men or women remained but only nymphs anointed in oils and bedecked in shameful rags. Of creatures empty of ambition and godless pursuing only carnal pleasure. That for their sins they were branded with whorish words on the seats of their trousers and while the clothes could be removed the stain of the words would remain forever.

The drifter fell silent. The store’s double doors opened and out strode a pair of young women haughty as Romans, their backsides bearing a one word epitaph for the dreams of those who came before.

Ritual Coffee Roasters

The Mission - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Four stars.

Kent awoke to the dawn skylighting the foothills. The sun’s promise not yet fulfilled.  He got up and walked to the campfire where Davis was brewing a pot of coffee on the coals.

What are you doing, Kent said.

Brewin coffee. What’s it look like.

It looks like you’re overextractin. Give me that.

Kent grabbed the tin and splashed it into the sagebrush.

Goddamnit, Kent, Davis said.  That was nearly done brewin.

Just you wait. I’m about to blow your damn mind. Davis watched as Kent pulled a small white porcelain cone from his saddlebag and laid it on a folded blanket. He refilled the pot from his canteen and set it on the coals. Now we just gotta wait for it to boil, he said.

You’re a crazy sumbitch.

Just you wait.

They sat there waiting. The sun emerged from the foothills. A sanguine ellipsis painting the chaparral in gaudy technicolor.

The water boiled and Kent leaned over and removed the kettle. Then he eased back on his blanket and sat there watching it.

Davis leaned and spat into the coals. Well what are you waitin for? he said.

Waitin for the water to cool down.

We was just waitin for the damn water to heat up.

And now it’s got to cool down till it’s just right.

You’re a fool you know that?

What’s foolish is squanderin the brightness and acidity of these beans. Kent poured water into two enameled cups. He waited a moment and then dumped the water on the parched earth.

Davis sat there watching him. Just make the damn coffee, he said.

I am. Hand me them unbleached filters.

IKEA

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Red Hook - Brooklyn, NY

Three stars

I went to the damndest store I ever saw with my son and my daughter in law shortly after my granddaughter was born. Had to be the biggest furniture store in the world. Showroom floor with these little rooms all done up you could walk through. I felt like I was trespassing. My son and his wife were arguing about I don’t know what so I hung back a bit and before long I lost them. I ended up next to a wall of chairs. Maybe 30 chairs on shelves all lined up. I guess I stood there for a long time just looking at them.

I’ve had to make a lot of tough calls in my life and some of them I still wake up thinking about. But I never waffled and just chose my way and stuck with it. I guess that’s the way I am. But if you’d of asked me to pick a chair I’m not sure I could of.

Doctors told us my daughter in law is depressed on account of the baby but I think it’s cause of the chairs. And ever other damn thing in that store. So many things to decide on and not a one of them matters. Hell, it was enough to give me the depression and I was only in that store for three godforsaken hours.

Self Edge Denim Boutique

Mission - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Three stars

He dodged smoldering barricades as he ran down the boulevard with the ancient Winchester in one hand. Choking ash everywhere and the sky bloodred and roiling and somewhere the sun presiding over the day’s death. His tattered pants soaked through with blood. Three gun shots in steady succession. That was their signal.

He saw an unmolested and padlocked door and ran to it. Smashed the lock from the door with the rifle butt.  Inside, the shambles of a clothing store. His figure skylit against the back wall by the burning city. He said: last chance you idiot. He leaned the Winchester against a smokestained wall and pulled a pristine pair of jeans from the floor. Dropped his bloodstiffened pants and worked his bandaged and taped feet into the jeans. He could not force his feet through the slim pant legs.  He muttered a curse and tore the jeans off. Started rummaging for another pair until he heard two men talking. Boots crunching glass.

He grabbed the Winchester and leveled it at the doorway. Quickly surveyed the shop for another exit. None. A trap. His heartbeat thrummed up into his ears. He edged toward the doorway. The voices were close now, at least three in total.

He crouched there, pantless as a fleeing lover, his future framed in a glowing doorway.

Cheesecake Factory

Galleria/Uptown - Houston, TX

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Three stars

There were a variety of cakes and sweet things there.  The desserts paraded by in their desperate decadence, at once a fading and colorless memory.

A Bavarian chocolate cake stood apart, on a simple plate. Like a rancher’s wife it was seasoned by hardships and nature’s brutal arithmetic. Flourless, it awaited a lonely fate.

A Tiramisu teetered like the oldest prostitute in a mining town, reeking of saccharine liqueur. The faint scent of virtue lost amid the hellish musk of ten thousand outrages.

A torte, covered in glistening fruit, a lie as old as memory.  Its flavor joyless, a pyrrhic dessert atop a mountain of meaningless artifice. Hasn’t been real sugar in this torte since before the highway was built here. Since before the first settlers came through with bibles and Henry rifles. The slow mockery of corn syrup.

He reached for the Tiramisu with a hand that had been dried by the sun and wind and bathed in the steaming blood of another human being. All that now was behind him.

Dolores Park

Mission - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM  

Three stars

He sat down next to the others. Studiously ragtag bohemians carefully squandering the waking hours. Pieces of a conversation that when added weighed nothing and meant nothing. He stopped listening and looked east to the valley and saw among the Victorians the wavering image of Ohlone people in a loose band collecting seeds and trapping fish in Mission Creek, babies strapped to tattooed mothers and men naked as Adam heedless of the evening’s coming fog and up the hill sequoias and coast red woods huddled like mourners.  Sea lions on the beaches thick as pavement. In the bay an alien galleon loaded with steel and powder. Sails slack and men streaming into boats, skin oozing a new pestilence, hands holding Spanish blades. The Ohlone watching and having no words for it.

Bombtruck Popsicle Truck

Mission - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM  

Four stars

The girl and the boy wait in line sharing no words between them. She wears the patchwork uniform of a young Bohemian. Tights quaintly shredded.  Faded garments a manufactured history of a life she hasn’t led. Eyes dulled by ceaseless days of studied indolence.

The boy distractedly polishing a computer mobile phone with a scarf patterned by the long forgotten runes of an indigenous culture. His hands as soft as a baby’s.

The girl nudges the boy. Look, she says.

They both look down the street. Shimmering in the heat waves, the unspeakably alien image of a solitary rider on a horse. Coming their way at a funeral pace.

The lady in the food truck is saying something to the couple but they can’t stop looking down the street.  The girl, taken by a sudden and ancient panic, grabs for the boy’s hand. Finding no succor in his chalky grip, her hands move to her neck.

Horse and rider are now less than a block away. The roan Appaloosa gamely walking down the center line. Cars yielding with silent deference.

The rider tugs the reins and the horse veers toward the couple. The girl looks up at the figure on the horse and sees a man of indistinct but advanced years. Skin nearly indistinguishable from his faded and sun parched leathers. A well-used rifle in a holster along the saddle. A silver and glass locket at his neck. Inside, a lock of hair.

The horse comes to a stop inches from the girl’s face. Steamy equine breath envelopes her. A smell not known to her people since the time of her great grandparents. She reaches for the horse, tentatively, feeling underneath its hide a terrifying aliveness.  She begins to weep. It is an inconsolable wail born from the deep rage of years lost and wasted. The boy watches helplessly and makes no move toward her.

The rider leans down from the saddle, his orchestra of leathers creaking in protest. He extends a scarred hand to the girl. Come on now, he says.

The girl reaches for the rider, knowing the sinews that guide her hand are not her own.

Kittery Trading Post

Kittery, ME

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Four stars

It was boots he needed. He surveyed the store looking for a someone who would understand, but knew he would find no kin here. He settled upon a teenaged girl wearing the polo shirt livery of the store. Blemished skin not yet that of a woman. Her hair in a severe pony tale. A twinge in his memory, echoes of loss or love.

Excuse me Miss, he said.

Can I help you, she said. Her eyes not agreeing with her words. He felt more foreign than ever.

I need boots.

You gonna be doing some hiking?

I got some traveling to do.

Oh fun. Her voice without color. She looked over the display of boots, small hand to her chin, the portrait of the thinker. How about these day hikers, she said. She held a pair of indifferently soled boots of Chinese manufacture.

No, just give me the best. I got money.

One of our premium boots.

Where I’m going you can’t just walk into a store, buy another pair.

Well we have a great return policy here.

I ain’t coming back this way.

You can mail them in, people do it all the time.

Darling I wish I could but these are likely the last boots I’ll be buying.

For the first time she scrutinized the Traveler. Her wide eyes considering a world not yet illuminated to her.   Clouds lifting, a vast plain before her. People seem to like these, she said. She lifted an Italian hiking boot from the display and offered it to him. He accepted the offering with the quiet solemnity of a pilgrim. Between them the briefest flash of understanding. Two humans washing down a river. Somewhere ahead a white roar.

Heart Wine Bar

Mission - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | A dusty home at the end of a road, NM

Two stars

Karl nodded toward the untouched mason jar of wine.

You best drink up son, he said.

The young drifter looked away.  I cant.

Yeah you can. Go on.

The boy went silent once more, turning to the window, to the city street wet with night fog.  Somewhere, a train whistling.

Karl joylessly toyed with a wet book of matches. Around him, a humming riot of moneyed bohemians. Chasing sex and possibility, heedless of death’s proximity. They sat there for a while. Well I cant fix this one, he said.

I know, the boy said, looking down at his hands. Blood under the fingernails.

What are you fixin to do.

I dont know. The boy rubbed his hands together, in spite of the bar’s hothouse warmth.

They wont stop hunting you. After what you did.

Yeah I know. The boy put on his sweatstained ball cap and walked out the door without looking back.

Karl watched the boy go. A pulsing pain in his gut. He watched the doomed boy fade into the smokey mist. Reached for the mason jar of California red. Drank it in one go. Goddamnit, he said. He stood up slowly, tired limbs protesting. He squared his hat. On his right hip, the Colt. Something he never got used to. The heaviness of the thing.