Long Rifle was suddenly awake, without cracking his eyelids or even twitching his nose where the one, long, thick, nose hair – bastard! – tickled the outside of his left nostril. Where the hell was he? Who was he? Was Magua near? Behind the placid, snuffling somnolence of his features, his soul scrabbled like a cornered weasel. Who was it who was always comparing him to a cornered weasel? Mama? Papa? Granny? For the life of him, he couldn't remember!
His mind screamed, Che’ Sah! What the fuck does that mean? Why did his leg lash out like that? And who had implanted the microfilm, passports, gold coins, suicide tablets and Mileage Plus Platinum MasterCard under the skin of his armpit? Who was he anyhow?
Long Rifle almost opened one eye then, just the teeniest, tiniest, itty-bittiest little bit to peep out, but then stopped – he had gleefully slaughtered dozens of men, women, children and household pets who had made the same mistake.
So, like the spider listening to the singing web, he mentally probed his unknown environment. Was that a plump, meatloafy shit-fly or the peckish chickadee tickling the silky strands? To elucidate the subtlety of this elegant metaphor: shit-fly = good (food, agreeable company, something one could lay eggs inside); chickadee = bad (predator, overweening guest, Magua). I know it sounds contrarian, but remember this is from the spider’s point of view.
“Go in peace, Long Rifle,” the old, wise Huron chief had said, before having the English Major burned alive for the tribe’s mild entertainment. But Magua didn’t want peace; Magua wanted to eat the wet, beating heart of the white-man; Magua couldn’t get over certain incidents from his childhood. Magua was a bad aboriginal, a crazy motherfucker. Magua didn’t walk with the Lord.
Been that way since junior high school really.
Long Rifle exploded out of bed like Jason Bourne, or Steven Seagal before he swelled into an overstuffed bratwurst. If Magua had been near, a Manichean battle between good and evil would have been unavoidable. But, hello! No Magua today. “Damn! I’m losing it,” he muttered. And, "Oh yeah, I remember who I am now."
Jeez, maybe the time had finally come to call Control, the pockmarked Mr. El Guapo. Retire to a simple peasant’s life in Andalusia with his crusty Mohican sidekick, Thuggee: whitewashed hut in the hot sun, a donkey named Magdalena, bocce ball with the elderly Franco-istas in the zocalo, strong red wine and crusty bread hot from Anna’s oven. (Anna, oh Anna! Who never stopped believing in me, even when I couldn't remember who me was.) After Long Rifle's long career of creative assassination -- a legend, a hero to the young 'uns at Langley -- Guapo would throw a friendly arm over his shoulder, “God knows, you deserve it, LR. Not many of us left anymore from the head-taking days in Quang Ding Province, eh amigo? Good memories. Well, take care of yourself, compadre, we’ll miss you.”
Then, for reasons no audience could ever quite fathom, the corpulent aardvark would send dozens of expressionless hit men after him, in sunglasses, on motorcycles, with silenced guns and syringes full of madness. They’d hang Thuggee from his shoetree and kidnap Anna ("Stay alive! I will find you!"). They'd find the donkey and make it talk. Sick of killing, Long Rifle would have to kill, kill and then kill some more--with a pimple-popping tool, a Q-tip, an ATM receipt, his foam earplugs! He’d jump out of exploding windows, make urgent love to young, sinuous European girls in grubby, backstreet pensiones, and drive tiny cars at fantastic speeds down narrow cobbled alleys! Ultimately, Long Rifle would watch the dying spark in Guapo’s piggy eyes while he gutted, cleaned and dressed him like an Alaskan moose as they both swung dangling from the tilting strut of their pilot-less helicopter spinning wildly out of control over Mount Rushmore...Only to realize that his beloved Anna (Oh Anna!) and the monstrous Guapo were one and the same! Noooooooo!
Long Rifle yawned, stretched and dug absentmindedly at his shorts. Christ.
That reminded him of Steve Martin’s epiphany in “Three Amigos’:
“In a way, all of us have an El Guapo to face someday. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo…”
That might be true, he mused.
But hold on! Don't forget Magua! Magua wouldn’t respect his tea-and-doilies retirement, wouldn’t give two greasy pesetas for Anna’s crusty sourdough baguettes or Guapo’s pretty boy degenerates. Magua would wine and dine, sweet talk and seduce his sweet Magdalena just to hurt Long Rifle's feelings!
It would never end for Magua!
You might ask why. Fair enough, hmmm, let’s see, OK, jeez … YES! Because Magua was Long Rifle’s evil, albino, Republican, twin half-brother!
And Mr. Guapo...was his father! Boom boom boom!
To be continued
Henry E. Panky
Private Dick, Secret Agent
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