Pashtun Probs
I Get You, Hoss
I walked in on your plan to raze all the bases. I’m the guy who stopped you, and this sequence of pink Post-It Notes will explain to you. So, get ready.
1.
I was tripping over my feet on some heavy analgesic, searching for a couch. The hallway just went on and on, light and tile, white and white. My girl had gone missing. The third day, now, and her cloying mother claimed she was “on a retreat” but would give me no more details.
2.
I might have drunk up that Dr. Tichenor’s I found on your love seat. Dark gray room with such dim fluorescents. And, there, a doggy quilt. I dropped into it, dropped off to sleep, bottle not open.
3.
Woke to your New Age music on constant repeat, disc skipping on a yodel. I sat up, but heard some scuffling. I hunkered back down, covered my head. The attached kitchenette was the site of the problem. A sudden clatter of knives in the sink. The cussing started with a Brahui accent, but got into some Zabuli bad words.
4.
They left, I climbed out of my hide. I lumbered around and found the coffee pot, rinsed it. There: there was the plan on the place mat, jelly-edged. Just like that, man.
5.
I read the whole white paper, skimmed the schematics. Your plan was so Lex Luthor. I wanted to frame it, point a halogen at it, burn some incense to it. But I recognized the seriousness. Had to get it to brass. Quick I went!
6.
Now you may be in the brig. If it was me deciding, I would have leveraged you backwards into some kind of jirga. Got a well dug, got a school. But you may just be in the brig for a while.
7.
I’m laying on that love seat again, writing these out. Hand aches. Ear aches, too. I grind my teeth.
8.
I called back for my girl again. I knew I had some kind of commendation coming, so I went ahead and told her mother that I was a recognized hero, and that her daughter ought to call me the hell back. But, “She’s on retreat, I told you.” I told her to tell her daughter to get off the yoga mat and pick up the fucking phone. Said I’d be meeting the Vice President next (over please) month.
9.
You will laugh, ha ha, but it worked. She’s been all over the facebooks with me, now, telling me how she’ll make my heroic body feel (once we’re married, of course).
10.
Sucks that you wrote up an evil plan. But you need to know that something good and true came from all the evil, and that whatever happens to you, somebody out there is going to learn from it for the Greater Good and that some little girl might one day won’t get beaten by her old-man husband now. She won’t have to steep his tea for exactly 90 seconds or get (over) scalded. She might have a chance at Real Love. So I get “you” (your self-sabotaging-self that hopes for a Free Country one day, I mean).
11.
I gotta go, but I get you.
~
Woody Evans has written for Juked, Rain Taxi Review, Boing Boing, TRNSFR, Public Scrutiny, 971 Menu, Library Journal, American Libraries, Searcher, Acceler8or, & others. He teaches his boy to dune walk on weekends.