El Tiempo rides at dusk
The silver of the moon glows like spurs eased against the flank of a horse… well, actually it’s a 60-watt LED bulb from Lowe’s, but it sheds its light on the empty street (my kitchen).
“You been terrorizing this town for too long, friend,” I say as I spin my weapon in my hand. My spurs clang with the rhythm of a heartbeat (they’re knock-off Crocs from Target, and I’m shuffling).
I hear a buzz. He’s close, and he can’t sleep neither.
I look up at the moon (the LED Lowe’s bulb) and muse. “Death comes for us all. It stalks us, friend.” I pick at my teeth with a toothpick—chia seeds from my smoothie. “Comes for us all, friend.”
I can hear him buzzing around the corner. My daughter left a chunk of banana up on the mesa—which is the Spanish word for table, and fitting because it really is a table.
I see him. His amber eyes are smaller than the head of a nail, but I bet I’m reflected in them. If he had a brain, he’d know that I am his enemy, that every desperado has his federale. But better words for the dark shape on his horizon are El Tiempo or La Muerte. It comes for us all, friend.
But he doesn’t have a brain. He is a fly.
I take a swipe at him with the swatter, but he’s airborne.
“He’s fast,” I say.
“No matter.” I follow him to the living room, walking, my Crocs shuffling to a dirge.
I hear my wife yell. She’s trying to cross-stitch. He knows I took a swipe at him, so he’s after my family.
“I’m so tired of these stupid flies!” my wife says.
“How many times does a dog have to bite before you put him down?” I say.
“What?”
“Death comes for us all, friend,” I say, smacking the fly swatter on my hand.
“You’re weird,” my wife says and takes her cross-stitching to the bedroom.
Now it’s just me and him.
I can see him. He’s buzzing the only light on in the room. There used to be so many flies around this lampshade, they treated it like a cantina. But tonight he’s finding the place boarded up. Ain’t no more customers in this watering hole. They’re buried up on old Boot Hill… or flicked off the fly swatter onto the grass on my patio by the hydrangeas.
He’s not moving. He’s taunting me … or flies only have 3-second memories and he has no clue what is happening.
He thinks he’s faster than me because he bested me once.
“It comes for us all, friend,” I say again.
“Stop saying that,” I hear from the bedroom.
I see it in his eyes. He’s about to pull—zoom off—maybe make a break for the Lowe’s bulb in the kitchen, which is leaking a crevice of light like a cracked door into a jail cell.
I let out my breath and imagine a spring storm rolling across the Konza Prairie in the Flint Hills of Kansas. I see the tallgrass giving and taking with the wind like the Lord himself, according to Job. I see a lone elm girding itself against the dark gray sky. And I see the storm.
And the lightning—FLASH.
The sound of the fly swatter echoes through the whole town.
The desperado is dead.
“Comes for us all,” I say and turn my ears to the bedroom for a reply from my wife.
Instead, she yells.
There’s another fly in the master bath.
The sound of my spurs (Crocs) jangles down the hall.
Heads up, friends—this is the last week my column is free.
Starting next week, these stories will be for paid subscribers only. If you’ve been reading along and enjoying them, I’d love to invite you to stick around.
Here’s an offer for a paid subscription for $25 a year—about two bucks a month—and it helps me keep writing, keep building, and keep the Lowe’s light bulbs on.
Thanks for reading, for sharing, and for cheering me on. It means more than you know.
—Sam
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Hilarious!