by  Mack McColl

To Rest and Reincarnate  

PREVIEW EARLY CHAPTERS

MACK MCCOLL OWNS ALL RIGHTS

Chapter One


Diablo Dybbuk lives behind camouflage in a shroud of mystery, wild and free to make criminal moves, and engage himself in a world of illegal, immoral and intentionally odious behavior. Evil is everywhere and Diablo is part of it. He heard something about 10 Commandments, for instance. Whatever those are, he's for breaking them. He is in pursuit of perversity and tireless about it. He doesn't get bored, dismayed, or confused. He lives a life of criminal acts (mostly trivial), and dedicates his life to one intense lust. It lies at the centre of his compulsions, a pulsating source of pain. He cannot resist talking about her. She is irresistible to his dark, hollow, empty (probably defective) heart.

To keep moving forward, an inclination of modern times, also, something sharks do, Diablo goes from drug store to drug store, picking up prescriptions and selling the addictive stuff to keep himself slip-sliding on a patch of winter ice, spring ice or early autumn ice. He survives pill-to-pill by travelling province-to-province, city-to-city, month-to-month, picking up prescription drugs, welfare cheques, and shady women along the way. He doesn't addict people to narcotics intentionally. But he would if he had to. The drugs do the talking. This he learned from Ronny the world traveller.

Diablo takes shelter in Moosimin, Saskatchewan, on occasion. It's where he was born. It is a flat, dry, windswept town on the prairie,1,500 dusty heads beside the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border, a bus depot, and a room at fake uncle Ronnie's little shack, which is considered a permanent address by the social services department of the flat province. Munchausen mom was long gone. He didn't know anything about her. Never knew. She managed to remain invisible to Diablo his entire life. If she was sitting in front of him, he would not know it.

One of Munchausen mom's ex's showed a form of tolerance to Diablo. Ronnie the world traveller was a rare and demented person. Ronnie was a malignant life form in his way, but prone to fitting people carefully into his surroundings. Ronnie showed Diablo how to drive a car. Ronnie showed Diablo how to get a narcotics prescription. Ronnie had the largest collection of porn mags Diablo (or possibly anybody) had ever seen. One entire wall of a shed behind the shack was stacked to the ceiling with porn mags. This is interesting. This is thousands upon thousands of porn mags, Penthouse, Playboy, you name it, all the rest, various presentations of smut going back to the beginnings of smut, Diablo surmised.

Ronnie spent hours out back in the shed engrossed in his magazines. He would reach in randomly and pull something out. "You know how people say, 'I buy them for the articles,'" he told Diablo, one afternoon, finally, through a haze of cigarette and weed smoke, "'Not me. I don't say it. Never said it in my life." Ronnie confessed he didn't buy the magazines for the articles because Ronnie didn't read, because Ronnie had dyslexia so severe he could not sign his name. He dropped out in grade 8 at the insistence of teachers and administrators. They told him they were tired of preventing his efforts to burn down the school. "It's amazing how useful it is in the medical and financial system when you can't sign your name and you have a doctor's note to say you need to leave an X for a signature," and not a very good X. Like, That's an X? Ronnie was dyslexic. Ronnie looked at the pictures, and consented to a lot of fine print nobody was prepared to read out loud at prescription counters.

An obsession with pornography might be a reasonable response by a definitive half-wit to the issue of illiteracy. Another thing about Ronnie was that he didn't function on alcohol in any way shape or form, thus a life-time ban from driving (legally and rigorously enforced, he bragged). Instead he's a middle-aged handicapped moron with a gigantic morphine monkey on his back. On the other hand, Ronnie could tell you to the penny how many rubber cheques he bounced across North America with a doctor's permission. And how many, “rooves,” he had to fall off to hit the jackpot. Ronnie knew things like how many cop informants it takes to run a RCMP detachment.

When Diablo was cut loose from foster care, he gravitated down Highway 16 from Saskatoon to Moosomin to visit the last house he occupied with Munchhausen mom. She and Ronnie had been living in the small house on a dusty corner lot when Diablo left, and Ronnie lived there still, but Munchausen mom was gone. "Your mother? I don't know, and every day I thank god I don't. She was the most bitter, vengeful, hateful monster I ever met. . . “

Diablo held up a hand, but Ronnie ignored it, and continued, “She hated your guts. Just like everybody else.”

“You're preaching to the lead singer in the choir, fake uncle Ronnie.”

“Don't call me that. I am not your fake uncle. They put her in a straight-jacket with a hood on her head, and I never saw her again."

"Yeah well neither did I."

“You count yourself lucky,” he ordered, “I am so fucking sorry I ever met her,” he continued, “She is the most evil cunt to ever darken any door.”

So many people, always the same story, “She makes you look like a fucking saint.” Gotta give her credit for something.

Diablo harboured no delusions. First of all, he knew everybody hated him. He is ready to live with it and agree openly. It was his cross to bear. Everybody had a mother. His happened to be the same as the Devil's. Diablo heard her say she was an 'old soul' to more than a few buckaroos on various benders over the years while he endured an early childhood smear of hospitalizations and surgeries.

He had seen her in action up close for 14 years by and large being stuck there to witness a multitude of personality deviations (also known as a 'Legion'). It's possible she had been around a few thousand years. Even so, he never learned a single thing about her. She might have been Hungarian. No evidence pointed to anything but crazy, and possibly flexible.

Ronnie let him occupy the shack in Moosomin for a while. "I do not dislike you," Ronnie told him, holding a strangely neutral position relative to virtually everybody else. Diablo was informed about the world in which Ronnie once travelled. Ronnie bragged about being physically fit through most of his life, 5 foot 9 inches tall (one inch taller than Diablo), holding steady at 165 lbs. (20 lbs heavier than Diablo), dirty blond hair sometimes long with a permanent hairline. (Diablo's hair was a rusty frock of tightly matted curls low on his forehead to obscure his sharper features.) Ronnie scored weed for Paul McCartney one time in Amsterdam, he said. There would be no way to disprove this. It's an odd thing to lie about. This was the single moment in his history that made Ronnie seem like a world traveller.

Ronnie was a roofer on the prairie until he fell of one of the. . . , “ -- rooves,” (perhaps archaic, and not the only archaic thing about Ronnie). He became a permanent ward of the medical system in the flat province (even though he continued, “. . .rooving,” around Southern Saskatchewan). The sum total of Ronnie's wit could be found in one sentence, “Feb-uary is Lib-ary month.”

Diablo looked at Ronnie as a caricature of sloth, not simply lazy, but too lazy to bother to think, which had made him a foil for Diablo's seriously deranged, outrageously psychopathic, and eternally opportunistic mother.

Ronnie dropped consonants. Munchausen mom whistled through broken teeth. She said Ronnie could take a joke because Ronnie was a joke, she said. A three-year relationship for Munchausen mom was the record. Diablo was absolutely certain Ronnie wasn't his father. Their history wasn't that long. Besides, she didn't need men. She used drugs and alcohol and sex to conjure tornadoes of chaos. She didn't need drugs and alcohol and sex. She needed people to be on drugs and alcohol and sex so she could treat them sadistically, and murder without suspicion.

Diablo had seen her knock off a couple of boyfriends, and this witness had left him with a certain prudence regarding drugs and alcohol. The unspoken truth about Munchausen mom's disappearance was a life sentence she now served for multiple murders never proved. Ronnie said they put her in a nut ward with a bit between her teeth. “It was her, or me. She lost.” Ronnie credits his survival to a freakish high tolerance for drugs and poison.

Eventually Ronnie introduced Diablo to one of his old partners in crime, a businessman named Foster who owned a car lot in the northeast corner of the city of Regina. Foster was a typical used car salesman. He was ready, willing and able to smile in your face while he fleeced you. The more he smiled, the more wool you're going to lose.

Presently Diablo was on the way to the city of Regina where he stayed at the historic LaSalle Hotel (and blind pig). The historic property downtown on Hamilton Street was a habit of reasonable comfort (sagging bed springs, no terrible odors) for a bargain basement price. Diablo often repeats the phrase 'Historic Property' around the owner because it drives Roger Dubois a little crazy. The provincial restrictions around building preservation in Regina put Roger on the fast track to insolvency, he complains, profusely, with no justification, since Roger bought the building under those restrictions, and Diablo finds this amusing. Diablo works hard to keep the disgruntled owner of the historic property slammed on morphine. One of the owner's daughters' changes Diablo's sheets once a week. After a while he is going to ask her to do his laundry. And he would give her a tip. Don't buy historic property. 

Diablo's main vocation for survival is to obtain prescription drugs and sell bennies and narcotics on the street. Regina is a small city of 167,000 souls (including those possessed, sold, and under attack by the intensive demonic forces at play in this particular principality. This was the way he saw things.) Diablo required a larger area of operation and Ronnie suggested going inter-provincial. "You look sick enough to have a thousand doctors chase you with prescription pads. Too bad your brain isn't as big as your ears. You need to think bigger. You need to know what they want." What they want are patients who take drugs. Diablo happens to look like somebody who needs a lot of drugs and is avidly interested in taking them.

Selling prescription drugs keeps Diablo off the radar of street drug dealers and their issues selling cocaine and marijuana, and other drugs like heroin and LSD, and the guns and collectives and insatiable addictions and those complications. Ronnie told him prescription drugs keep you off the cops' radar, too, because cops don't regard pills as illicit generally, within reason. (Filling the backseat of a AMC Gremlin with pills from a drugstore break and enter, well, Ronnie did time for that one.) Doctors don't worry about pills being addictive. Ronnie has a few cop customers for his own stash of 482 pills a month of morphine sulphate at $20 per pill. Ronnie ends up downing the profit.

Ronnie has become an addict. Diablo shook his head when he heard the routine around defecation. Ronnie is free to roam the ether and atmosphere for four days, at which time he has to come down and face the toilet like a man. This is more amazing when you consider Ronnie's appetite. He's a regular at a local fish and chips shoppe's Tuesday night all-you-can-eat. Granted he doesn't eat the batter, but easily 10 pieces of cod slide down his gullet like a seal or a sea lion or a seagull, maybe enough to feed all three.

Another piece of cop wisdom from Ronnie: a driver in the right-hand lane of traffic is ignored at all times of day or night. Ronnie lost his driver's license permanently and would never see it again, and this was for a specific reason. Ronnie was as bad at driving as he was at reading, and who knows, maybe for the same reason. But he was correct about driving in the right lane. Cops drive by like you aren't even there. You could have a hostage in the backseat tied up and gagged, flailing at the window, cops wouldn't bother to look.

The truth of the matter was Ronnie used Diablo as a chauffeur for several months until Diablo shuffled away to greener pastures with a fresh driver's license. You cannot say greener pastures out loud in Saskatchewan without raising laughs the size of dirt clouds. As if there could be any greener pastures than Saskatchewan. Ronnie allows him to continue collecting welfare cheques at the Moosimin address. It's not like a social worker wanders out to the Manitoba border to check on the whereabouts of the much younger son of the mother of Satan.

In his daily endeavours, Diablo acquires Quaaludes, 100mg morphine, Valium, and speed, anywhere from Saskatoon to Toronto, and lately Talwin and Ritalin in Winnipeg. Endless comings and goings at odd hours on highway buses crossing the endless expanse of Canada leaves him feeling delightfully disoriented. He lives with a master plan, of course, which comes from a strategic mind developed out of an urgent need for survival, and the chase of an elusive object, and Diablo reads. He reads how to cheat. He cheats four provincial governments and countless social workers out of cheques. He cheats countless doctors out of drugs. He is extraordinarily fit for faking disability, and switching identities.

Gifts from Munchausen mom were a legacy of permanently disabling conditions, double-joints, knobby knees, big ears, a long nose, plus FASD and drug related congenital damage, and the disorders keep on giving, in cash, to spend on hookers, travel, and a carefree existence. He has several crash pads across the country. He is overdue to visit his Toronto "address," which is a bivouac with Tony. This is located blocks from The Brass Rail on Yonge Street, Diablo's all-time favourite peeler bar.

There are no strip clubs in Manitoba or Saskatchewan. There are strip clubs in Alberta, but Diablo isn't connected in Alberta. There are strip clubs in Montreal. He watched a superbly stacked blonde on St. Catherine's Street dance it up to Funky Town. Diablo's interest in Montreal is strictly to pick up two-year-old Cadillacs and Oldsmobile 98s and deliver them to Regina. Diablo doesn't run a welfare scam in Quebec. Too much hassle about speaking French and explaining where you came from. “I came from my mother and it wasn't pretty.”

* * *

HELLO My Name, Is: Tiny (name-tag on his chest) is a Jamaican who lives in Toronto in a dirty yellow bathrobe and a belt with a large hunting knife stuck in it, and it was an unsightly bathrobe but at least it wasn't pink. Meeting Tony was 'Luck of the Draw' when Diablo fell off a Greyhound Bus five days (and 50, 10mg Valium pills) after leaving Regina, he thinks, with a night spent in Winnipeg and a night in Thunder Bay, he thinks (maybe yes maybe no on Thunder Bay). During the period in reflection, he cannot say for certain the month, and, don't forget, memories fade or completely disappear, there was a sign in front of a monstrous looking red brick building in St. James district next to downtown Toronto's acclaimed Yonge Street, longest street in Canada.

“Room For Rent,” was scrawled in (likely, presumably, almost certainly) blood on a piece of cut-out brown cardboard, nailed to an ancient faux column of no particular design, painted in whitewash. The tacky sign nailed to the non-weight-bearing fake porch-colon was the 'Draw.' The sign was there to attract Diablo, unmistakably.

Diablo rang the doorbell marked 'manager.' It was functional. The manager had been prompt, "Just tell them the manager sent ya." He pointed to his name-tag. Diablo leaned in and squinted a bit, T - I - N - Y? "Tiny, huh? Is that ironic?" About 6 foot 5 inches of solid Jamaican muscle rippled with laughter, "That's an 'O'," he said, glassy dark brown eyes shining crazy and bloodshot. Tony enjoyed the attention of the huge hunting knife planted in his waist belt. The terry cloth robe was tied, by and large, but, thankfully, Tony wore boxers to go with his stocking feet and pearly white teeth.

The hideous brick building was three storeys high, and, turns out, located on the way to the welfare office. So. Convenient. What the hideous building was, is a warehouse. It's a warehouse of people, plywood walls separating several dozen raving lunatics, in the manner of separating but containing dangerous and certifiable psychopaths, sociopaths, deviants, and degenerates. It stunk of despair and vermin. The halls were dim. Stark rooms lined both sides of the south hall, and both sides of the north hall, on three floors. Diablo received a tour within seconds, entering the south hall, Tony the manager lived in the back of the building on the 3rd floor, taking paperwork, and leaving by the north hall. No elevator except for an off-limits freight elevator at the rear, used exclusively by the owner, an old Toronto dowager, according to Tony. Diablo was never bored with the streams of conscience he received from others. It was immediately clear stepping in the place, Tony was the 'Luck,' and manager of a human zoo on three dingy levels, interminable dankness warmed by an old boiler clanging and clunking in the basement, no sentiment like welcome or contentment, enough heat to keep it occupied. It was perfection, wouldn't you say?

Diablo kept things fairly straight in his head. He hadn't been back to Toronto for weeks. The deal with Tony would allow a backlog of three months. After that Tony would keep what he's got and tell welfare to stop the cheques.

Sure ya will, big fella. It wasn't hard to guess St. James has a long history of 'managers' like Tony. This kind of manager can dispose of bodies with the attention of authorities, or without. It is a short distance to Yonge Street and literally a stone's throw from the welfare office, which Diablo never needs to visit again. His arrangement came to this: Diablo needs an address to get welfare which is the ticket to free drugs. Tony read the scam like a book, one he wrote hisself. “I will not be back, Tony, except to collect my half of the $640 cheque. You can rent the room to somebody slightly less crazy than me.” He had seen enough. It's a place you might expect to find Munchausen mom. Tony agreed to the arrangement.

Down the block and across the street, "To qualify for an emergency welfare supplement in the Province of Ontario we have to conduct a home visit.” Diablo handed the social worker the address scrawled on a white cardboard back of a cigarette pack. "Tiny Tony sent me. He recycles a lot of cardboard into literature."

The welfare office person didn't smile. “Yah, we know. We, uh, won't do the required home visits to this address." Diablo recalls twisting on the inside wearing a blank expression, acting fast on his feet, searching for the will to live. This was an unacceptable punch in the gut which he was determined to convey to the office clerk. "It's the only address in St. James we won't visit," she added, casually, feeling safe behind bulletproof glass.

"Well it's the only place," he stammered, "I could find. . , ," or wanted to look.

"Come back in an hour with this form filled in. A cheque will be waiting."

A flabbergasted Diablo smiled, his mood giddy at striking gold. Like, finding a pirate ship loaded with it. Sure you have to fight some of the pirates but this was the day he felt the warm embrace of a concrete jungle called Toronto. No doubt Tony cruised the hallways half-dressed and menacing everything but vermin. He probably did a lot of screaming and yelling, but must be laughing sometimes. Tony sold shitty weed. And he seemed to be an even-tempered psychopath, generally speaking. That is to say, he might be miserable or he might be happy. He managed a building with few if any even-tempered psychopaths. One tour had proven the rules with unbridled screaming and dress optional in the facility, doors open, doors closed, doors slamming. Diablo makes rare visits. No overnights, goes slightly further than by the book of the 'emergency' social workers in St. James.

Diablo makes an effort to live up to his name, but it wasn't work. Being diabolical can be arduous and taxing and challenging, but it is a choice. It was what he wanted to do and he had given this vocation to himself. It was what he needed. It was the only thing he was gonna get. Everybody knows it. It was written in the strange contours of his face.

"Can I see your ID? Uh huh. Well, Darren, we make the cheques out to your building manager." "Tiny." "Tony," fills out in this form. "You bring it back, and we give you the cheque, which you take back to Tony." "Tiny."

She reminded him they do not do 'home' visits to Tony's warehouse. “Yes, ma'am, I had a tour. The place is as scary as it looks.” She finally smiled, “I cannot imagine,” and waved goodbye.

Diablo has no reason to be so defeatist all the time, does he? When does the devil ever lose? He worked things out with social workers, and, ultimately, Tony, doing business at a small table in a kitchen/office, in uniquely (for the building) livable quarters on the third floor, at the back of the building. After he filled out the welfare forms diligently, and took the cheque, and returned Diablo's share with cash in 30 minutes, the test run was complete. Best of all, Tony writes letters to a medical clinic around the corner for 'tenants.' At this moment negotiations were finishing. Tony likes valium and never says no to a mickey of Bacardi rum. Diablo learns Tony goes nutty around rent day, and people who turn their backs on him are betraying him. Diablo doesn't turn his back on Tony. Diablo backs away slowly.

Getting half of a welfare cheque for rent is a dividend. Prescriptions are the core of the business model. He acquires diet pills in Toronto, and a large volume of mild sedatives, mild sleeping pills called Trazzadone, some Mandrax usually prescribed to anxious housewives. Diablo makes runs to Winnipeg for Talwin and Ritalin.

. . .

Besides Tony in Toronto, Ronnie in Moosimin, and the stupefied hotel owner in Regina, Diablo fostered a few other connections. One was a former partner of Ronnie Woods, a guy named Foster who sends guys to pick up cars from Winnipeg or Montreal occasionally, but more often from small towns near the U.S. border in south west Saskatchewan. Foster is a bad ass, but he plays goody two shoes sponsoring victims in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Another connection was an Indian Diablo met on the streets of Regina with the hookers. Virgil wasn't a pimp, per se, but Diablo was known to sell one or two pills on Rose Street, now and again, and Virgil knows this3 in explicit detail. You might even say forensic detail. Which begs the question, what else does Virgil know?

Virgil comes to Diablo's room at the LaSalle Hotel on occasion, and, while he doesn't come alone very often, Virgil does the talking. He says he doesn't visit the hotel's slum level tavern nor the demon-rich blood red Rococo Lounge. Too many over-served Indians in one, too many under-served white people in the other. As it turns out, Virgil took to distributing pills to girls for Diablo, a lot of pills, way more pills than he had been selling earlier, so Virgil and his sidekicks were in and out of the rickety elevator like ghosts. They had a new hankering for T's and R's, which came in limited supply. Speed was plentiful (diet pills). Morphine was plentiful. Valium, tons of it.

Diablo presented himself bedraggled and sickly to attract a specific sort of person into his orbit. From this life, a lack of magnetism. On this earth, a short run at kicking up the dust. Diablo didn't know where his personal life-force came from (or went to). Speculating was pointless, to contemplate in polite company, impossible. It's off-putting how offended people get when you gab a little about Satan. Others were too drunk or incapacitated to give a fuck. Diablo's heedless diabolism grew from a power he was granted by Munchhausen mom. The power of dismissal. This came directly from his primary guardian, and since he had no guardian, Diablo was acting strictly from his own diabolical volition, a disposition which had been developing throughout his entire life. He noticed the condition of being guardian-free created a sort of night-vision.

Diablo emerged from childhood with a profound sense of abandonment. He longed for it. This was an incubator for remarkably bad feelings. He made peace with the vacuum but it caused Diablo to act in manipulative ways. One night, growing up, one of Munchausen mom's peculiar ex-boyfriends (in a parade before Ronnie) opened the door of the bedroom shared illicitly with Diablo's budding sister and threw in a paperback which landed on the grim-looking linoleum floor of the stark lit room. He remembered how mind numbing cold it was in the room, as well as the rest of the house, until the arrival of that book. "What am I supposed to do with that? Burn it?"

"You should memorize it first, " fake uncle number 10,000 said, "People should know where the fuck somebody like you is coming from. How you survived that bitch mother of yours is something diabolical," he said, and disappeared for all time shortly thereafter. Diablo's younger sister on the mattress behind him was swaddled in blankets and sniggering at the alarming exchange. All in all she had a good sense of humour. The most dreadful or silly thing could make her laugh. This time it was The Satanic Bible. Sister gave him the name Diablo thereafter.

He and his sister separated during later formative years, by the time he was 14 and she was 11 (and she was a remarkably and perhaps exceedingly developed 11 year old). Once he became an adult, Diablo travelled far and wide mostly by Greyhound and Saskatchewan Transportation Corp, (STC). He was known to ride the rear seat of a Greyhound Bus. He rides STC but those trips are dull. On STC he hooked up with an occasional farmer's daughter once he figured out the stereotype was true. Rides in Saskatchewan are of short duration, for example, leaving no time to get bent or do any drugging of fellow passengers who ride obliviously through several changes in driver. It was Greyhound taking him to exotic locales like Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, and Toronto, and Montreal. He switched to l'autobus for Sherbrooke, and something else for Halifax. Diablo went east for his big adventures.

Now he was shuttling cars for good old boy Foster, sometimes from Montreal, but he was in Regina presently, which is the base of operations. He had taken the literary pimp's advice, modified the beliefs with a true believer's zeal for exploring one's "own nature and instincts." Zeal entitles Diablo to interpret beliefs whatever way suits him, and this book is open to interpretation. He gives copies to people who appear to have unrealized potential to walk sideways, speak extemporaneously, act out a character toward an end suitable to themselves and possibly Diablo, who is ready to take them to the darkest corner of the darkest side in their darkest moment.





Chapter Two

“You know I have never brushed my teeth in my entire life.” Darrell always had something to say. “Can you read? I mean with those glasses?” Rarely was it anything worth hearing, and usually it was obnoxious.

Brian Zeikle had other things to think about. “Yes, that's what the glasses are for, Darrell.” Presently, Brian's catalogue of  “defects of character” came to mind, and these include a few peccadilloes,  Horrific dental habits isn't one of them. In fact, Brian considers himself somewhat of a dental hygienist. His defects of characters are subtle, personal, less offensive-looking and smelling. For example, he pays sneaky visits to independent Chinese grocers with shame-inducing magazine racks tucked in the back. Brian enjoyed reading Hunter S. Thompson in Penthouse and Asa Baber in Playboy. Okay, Maybe not Hunter S. Thompson. Brian didn't read Hunter S Thompson. Nobody reads Hunter S. Thompson. Fucking idiot. Penthouse has lesbians. Asa Baber, in Playboy, on the other hand, is a bold and daring writer.

“I prefer to be called Diablo. I am sure I've mentioned it before.”

Brian has a monthly budget for prostitutes. No shame in that, except shamefully expensive lately because he does it more often since moving to the LaSalle Hotel.

He has a couple of women who might end up fucking him under the right circumstances, Becky, and a fine-looking Native woman who called herself, "Twisted." These trysts happened on a casual basis and involved both parties being three sheets to the wind.

Brian dedicated himself to drinking beer more than anything else. There was no shame in that. At the age of 25 he was supporting himself with average success and proceeding on quick recoveries from small failures. He didn't have much to apologize for, no babies dismissed, no crimes committed. He was mainly on side with the law, besides marijuana, and drunk driving. He figured he might do something with his life someday. He figured equally he would do nothing. Meanwhile, he plays the lottery, especially pull-tabs sold at the Alano Club or Copper Kettle Restaurant (and licensed lounge). They feel charitable, those cards, 25-cents each, 5 for a dollar. The payout is instant and ranges from $5 to $20.

"Spell budget, got any spare cash? This can include deficit spending," his 'travel companion' blurted, in the passenger seat, a rusty-haired rumpled nasty-looking fellow calling himself the ridiculous name of 'Diablo,' who lives off and on in the LaSalle Hotel. “You ain't gonna get rich on pull-tabs. Those things just prove you can addict people to anything, buddy.”

“Name's Brian. Not Buddy. Like yours is Darrell, not Diablo.” 

This Rumpelstiltskinian-wannabe hangs around the Rococo Lounge like a pest, it seems to Brian, and makes casual yet specific demands for rides here and there, based on a purely accidental shared acquaintance with Brian's temporary AA sponsor, Foster M., who works at Advanced Auto Sales in north Regina. Today's imposition was a ride to Moose Jaw in a car owned by Foster which had been loaned to Brian.

"Moose Jaw is the asshole of the world!" Darrell exclaims. "Regina is 40 miles up it!" They were presently on the Trans Canada Highway returning 'up it' from Moose Jaw.

Brian feels edgy with this connection. Brian smokes Players Filter cigarettes, for example. and Darrell says they taste like shit, and smokes them anyway. “You know du Maurier is top leaf on the tobacco plant.” Brian knew Darrell was watching things such as when Brian tried to pick up drunk women (which is not beneath him). "Why you staying at the LaSalle?" Darrell asked, one evening, as they sat at separate tables in the dark Rococo Lounge. Darrell was somebody who pretended to guzzle drinks while he watched single ladies go past the point of no return in the dark lounge. Sometimes he would point Brian in their direction, which Brian never followed. He was able to manage his own recreational and leisure activities. 

"None of your business. Why do you call yourself the devil?"

"If you must know, my sister gave me the name after I had sex with her. There. I've told you everything you need to know."

Brian does not bully anyone even though he has size and agility. He has been a hefty boy all his life, but he was in good shape. Brian is non-confrontational. He is friendly, and self-conscious about the size of his hands, seeing them on the steering wheel of this crap car. They weren't fighters' hands. But they were strong enough to wring this nasty little fucker's neck, surely, the bastard deserves it.

Brian was aware of his shortcomings, including eyesight. Astigmatism was bad enough to keep him out of certain positions in sports. He would never pass the eye test for a driver's license. The vision is corrected with eyeglasses. And the reason he stayed at the LaSalle is because he can't live at his sister's. She's entered a relationship and the spare room on Angus Street next to downtown Regina is no longer for rent.

Brian avoided discussions about religion. There is a reason. He did not comment on negative topics. In some ways he doesn't fit in. The world is a negative place, it's hard to think positive about life anymore, so, the solution is, stop thinking. For example, now is the time of year when the snow on the side of the highway is slush and ice lies in patches on the fields. It's rebirth and renewal and positive. It smells like something special, it's not completely frozen. Spring is in the air on the prairie. Before long, tumbleweeds would be blowing around this part of Saskatchewan. Instead of positive thoughts, however, Brian sits with a freakishly profound source of negativity who knows no bounds. Brian knew lots of people with non-Christian beliefs. He knew Indians had ceremonies and danced in circles and drummed and it wasn't to please the preachers in Arcola. 

Brian believed Native mysticism is unfettered by reality. What Brian believes doesn't matter. He believes his opinion is worthless, so why share something worthless?

He heard Natives were at one time into shape-shifting. Those days were gone. Brian is reading a book by a spirit-guide named Silver Birch. He is more than reading it. He is trying to make sense of his life with it. It was Silver Birch who told Brian, “What is, is.”

And, to be sure, Brian is going to continue searching for deeper meaning, and leave it at that. No need to overthink everything.

Brian's hometown of Arcola is a sleepy former Scottish settlement in southeastern Saskatchewan and the area includes rattlesnakes, and those Indians sneaking around to join the party. They drift in and out like they own the place, melting away to North Dakota or Montana, in some kind of dodge from school, coming back every summer to  party at the lakes north of Arcola.

Therefore what he was hearing from the passenger side on the bench seat of the white 1965 Pontiac Laurentian (belonging to Foster of Advanced Auto Sales on Regina's north end) was pure aggravation. It was nothing he wanted to hear. In the face of being a self-declared know-it-all (it might be his only flaw knowing it all) Brian didn't want any lessons from Darrell/Diablo.

"I never go west of Moose Jaw," said Darrell, puffing amicably on another one of Brian's 'awful tasting' Players Filter cigarettes, "except when I turn left and go southwest to Shaunavon with our friend Foster and his stepson Randy," Likowsky. "Randy gets his weed from Calgary. It's hydroponic and it's amazing, Randy is one of those guys who knows it's not evil to do what you want and do it your way. Do you know Randy?"

Brian paused for a moment, "Fucking your sister might not be illegal but it probably should be."

While he was not considered intellectual by anyone who knows him, and this includes his extended family, not just Mother, Father, and sister, Brian was considered thoughtful on occasion. "Then again, I am not a lawyer."

"No, you are not. It is illegal. Like cannibalism." 

Wow this guy lives to conjure up the most delightful images. "The only reason I am with you right now is because Randy is out of dope."

There was the presumption of risk involved in running with people like Darrell, and Brian is aware of it, having no criminal record. Darrell claimed to be squeaky clean but this would be a gross interpretation of cleanliness, like, washing your hands with spit or piss. Superior was how the passenger made him feel. Brian felt the same way sitting next to Darrell that alcohol makes him feel, like he was in the midst of his own greatness. 

Brian kept the ride this side of the speed limit, which isn't difficult, since the car is woefully under powered. Brian concentrated on control of the vehicle. He decided without hesitation to smoke a joint. Sitting at the age of 25, Brian explored the possibilities of a higher power. This rusty-haired Leprechaun made him feel the need to search for a higher power.

Brian drove the speed limit on the TransCanada east of Moose Jaw heading back to Regina, a 45-mile drive. They had fresh coffee from 7-11, and smoked (Brian's) cigarettes. The passenger is gazing off into the blue sky and flat fields. The passenger is absorbed with nothing to say while he rolls a joint. "I don't usually chain smoke," he replied, which sounds condescending, "and not because it's bad for you,' which sounds sarcastic.

"Not a chain smoker. That's a relief." He goes by the name Diablo. "And I don't drink a lot of coffee." He likes to talk about Winnipeg. He keeps referring to Winnipeg as Drunktown. He said he makes trips to Drunktown to search for his sister. Brian decided to discourage further conversation from Diablo. Brian didn't know anything about Winnipeg, and he had the common Presbyterian relationship with his sister. She was older, and he respected her.

Brian met Darrell at the LaSalle Hotel in the Rococco Lounge. Roger Dubois owned the hotel and spent most of the day in the restaurant in some kind of daze at the front of the historic property, but he made a point of hiring young, friendly, attractive women for the lounge. One of his daughters put in a shift in the Rococo. Brian and Darrell spent a few evenings competing for the attention of a strawberry blonde bartender/waitress. Mostly Brian faced endless Darrell interjections on making a 'connection.' This was aggravating as fuck while Brian was spending cash and Darrell didn't drink a lot of beer but said he liked the atmosphere of a lounge.

Brian had been staying at the LaSalle for a couple of weeks. Darrell knew Foster for some reason he wouldn't share, probably to do with Randy Likowsky, and Brian had a car in hand that belonged to Foster, and he had a day off, thus, spare time for Darrell, who asked him for a ride to Moose Jaw to scare up this weed. Brian was on work absence from his labourer job. It wasn't serious, he sprained a wrist, so he couldn't carry lumber today. Brian knew Randy Likowsky from construction work, Likowsky had been a glazer at one of the office building job sites Brian worked downtown. A glazer installs windows in high rise buildings. Randy made a lot of money working in Calgary where they had a few more high rise buildings.

The inevitably skanky drug exchange in Moose Jaw proved to be a complete fucking pain in the ass to Brian. They stopped at a house first, and were told to go to a particular bar in downtown Moose Jaw, where Brian heard the infamous history of Al Capone and his tunnels under the city for about the one millionth time. But Darrell said they wouldn't be drinking, and somehow, after nagging delays, Darrell scored his bag of weed. On the return trip, the first thing he did was reach into his parka's right pocket and pull out a pocket book.

"This is for you," he said, and placed a dog-eared black paperback on the bench seat between them in the 1965 Pontiac Laurentian. It was a used car for sale at Foster's Advanced Auto Sales. Brian said he would deliver it for Foster, and deliver it he would.

"Not a big reader? Problem with the eyes?"

"My eyes are perfect."

"It's the Satanic Bible," said the passenger.

"I can read. I don't wish to read anything about Satan, let alone a bible of it." Brian glanced down at the menacing pocket book, barely taking his eyes off the road, but long enough to see the cover was weathered.

"Hardly read it yourself I see."

Darrell should not be overly confident that he won't be standing on the side of the highway. Brian would do it. Especially since it was one of those early spring days to die for when the tail end of a spring wind arrived in Southern Saskatchewan. Brian would be happy to stop and leave this red-haired lout beside the highway in a chinook breeze. He would surely see him a couple hours later in the Rococo Lounge.

The devil worshipper snatched up the book, "I have copies," he sneered, "But if you don't want it. . . "

"I don't. I don't read much and even less about Satan."

"I am sure the glasses work. The book is not what you think. It's about freedom, not about sacrificing virgins on altars and black magic, unless you're into that sort of thing. Mind if I light this?"

The devil worshipper who went by the name Diablo even though his name is 'Darrell' held up a contraband joint rolled haphazardly yet was surely functional. He'd done it before.

"No, I don't mind," and he might even partake, but Brian was not a big weed smoker. His mother once told him if he wants to smoke the marijuana he should go to a country where it's legal.

"There is no such country, Mom."

"Exactly."

Brian never smoked weed at home when he was growing up in Arcola. Now it's the mid-1980s and a lot of people smoked the illegal weed, howbeit, Brian was more of a beer drinker. Any port in a storm when confronted with the unexpected, and Brian decided it was necessary to play possum with this passenger. He imagined rejection of ideas in such a dreadful sounding book would be a sore point, you know, by design. He had seen the small, bony, pigeon-chested fellow flinch defensively and retrieve his property which he was hell bent on giving away. While Brian didn't care about this devil worshipper's feelings, he was non-confrontational at all times, extremely non-confrontational.

By the time he re-assessed the fellow at his side, Brian decided Darrell was deeper into the devil worship than Brian previously understood, and still he was no threat, but more adversarial and odious than previously perceived. He was not really a whole person anyway. He was misshapen, lumpy in odd ways, small-framed with a large head of burnished red hair, and exaggerated facial features. He was certainly the natural born target of any bully in the school yard. Brian had stayed well back at the tavern in Moose Jaw where the thugs sold Diablo his little baggo precious weed. It was now smouldering in the front seat and he took it and drew in a large hit.

Since they had been talking about Foster and his stepson-in-law, Randy Liikowsky, Brian got high and began to cogitate on Randy's father-in-law, who was acting as Brian's temporary sponsor in AA.. Foster would not approve of the weed smoking underway in the Pontiac. Foster was not a big fan of the dope dealing stepson-in-law either, to hear him tell it. Brian had had a few coffee chats with Foster at the Alano Club, and once in a while they attended AA meetings together and obviously they had these intermittent chats at the used car dealership. Foster had lent him this shitbox Pontiac off the back of his used car lot in lieu of cash payment for running a car to Shaunavon last week. Brian would drop this car off at another dealer in Regina at the end of the week.

Foster told tales about his days as an active alcoholic and flim-flam artist who travelled the back roads of the Canadian prairie with a few different partners in crime. He confessed it was one of his defects of character. The friendly, smiling thieves drove day and night and crashed in motels and small town hotels. They drove from town to town in southern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, and all over Alberta.

They stopped in any given town and parked on a dirt lane innocuously around the corner from a general store, and the partner would walk to the store and Foster would follow a few minutes later. The partner would enter and say he's passing through town. He might mention his car is down the road at a gas station getting fixed, or parked at a hotel where he is staying the night. He would begin to meander around when Foster entered the store and the two paid each other no mind. The partner would continue up and down the aisles, mostly near the back, which Foster explained the loitering would be a distraction to any store clerk.

Meanwhile Foster went straight to the front counter, and stood, holding a $20 and began to engage the clerk about things hanging on the wall behind him or displayed in a glass booth beside the counter and cash register. Bottle openers were popular. A pair of sunglasses. A pack of playing cards, "How much are those?" All he would do is point and ask the price, then holding a $50 dollar bill, and would continue asking prices of items surrounding the clerk. He was pointing and waving at random nail clippers, ballpoint pens, and, "I will take Certs Breath Mints,"  finally, sometimes a pack of cigarettes.

The clerk was anxious about the partner roaming back and forth near the fridge pretending to be a shopper engrossed in a task. Then the partner would leave, buying nothing. Every time. Now Foster had the clerk's utmost attention. He stood in front of the clerk changing denominations of the bills, waving hypnotically between his fingers, changing three or four times from one dollar to five dollar to 10 dollar to 20 dollar bill.

 He finished every pantomime waving $20 to pay for a pack of Certs breath mints, and he would flop a one dollar bill on the counter top. Nine times out of ten he received change for $20. "It's easier with Canadian bills because obviously they're a different colour. But US bills have presidents." Foster said rural store clerks had no experience with flim flam artists, aka, quick change artists. He kept the bills and threw the change in the trunk. "There were always a couple hundred bucks in quarters back there. Very incriminating."

On to the next store, the next town. Tavern opens at 11 a.m.. They came to know every road to every town, to every main street, and every escape in the three western provinces of Canada. Brian was informed it was a life in the past, and informed it was impossible to make amends to the people Foster had harmed over the years in this professional criminal activity. He had no idea where the partners were either. "Ronnie was the best, so stupid even stray dogs and cats had pity on him."

Brian never used the technique except to prove to himself it works, and soon he was amazed by how fruitful it was, since cashiers fell for it every time. He found himself handing money back to clerks with a rueful smile, wondering it they caught on to what happened. Few ever knew.

The centre of Foster's life of drunken debauchery paid for by crime had been Winnipeg. Brian had never been to Winnipeg even though it wasn't far away. Brian didn't enjoy spontaneous adventures like waking up on strange sofas in strange cities. He didn't think he had a serious problem with alcohol, and he wasn't a thief. AA was keeping him out of jail for drunk driving. Brian's dad had told him Alcoholics Anonymous might come in handy someday.

Chapter Three

When Diablo was in Regina he got his weed from Vampire Joe, usually, but Vampire Joe had a habit of disappearing, over and over again. Diablo didn't know the rules, but Vampire Joe probably turned into a bat and found a dark attic in a barn to hibernate for the winter. Vampire Joe was a by the book kind of devil worshipper, which was okay with Diablo, but it was a different book. Vampire Joe talked a lot about the vampire Lestat, and perhaps he was indeed the vampire Lestat. He talked about an author named Anne Rice. He was, surely, however, a vampire of the usual bloodsucking sort and, equally, there was more than one of those. There were days when Vampire Joe was anemic and days when Vampire Joe was flush faced, like he was bursting. Diablo had no interest in the mechanics of vampire life. But Vampire Joe was one swarthy example, and a decent source of generally passable quality, if overpriced, weed. But you had to catch him.

Diablo had made the rounds and Vampire Joe wasn't found in one of three or four places he might be known to be sitting indoor away from the sunshine on a given sunny Saskatchewan day. First, the shadowy LaSalle Hotel owned by the equally swarthy Roger. It had a long narrow room on the ground floor which was a low-track tavern in the geographic centre of Regina. Vampire Joe would slide in there. Why not? The LaSalle might be a heritage property but Diablo was fairly certain the only heritage was alcoholism and prostitution. This history persisted into the present, and this would be a nature preserve of a guy like Vampire Joe, but not today.

Further evidence of debauchery having truck in the LaSalle was in the restaurant. Provincial government mucky-mucks held regular breakfast seances in the LaSalle's main floor greasy spoon. And these types, political animals from the Saskatchewan legislature, occasionally appeared in the Rococo Lounge situated behind the restaurant in the mid to late afternoon. Diablo was a casual observer. He spent time watching people in every one of the LaSalle facilities. “I haven't seen Joe forever,” said the bartender in the Rococco. The guy driving the car on occasion was holding down an anchor position next to a tap,

Diablo had a hotel room upstairs. Sink in the room, no toilet. A home away from home. But no sign of Vampire Joe. “Why don't you sell it yourself, Darrell?”

“Oh for fuck sake. That would be totally illegal.”

“Yer right. How long would you last in prison?”

One thing about Diablo, he has no interest in doing stretches in prison, and since he didn't have to, he wasn't going to. He didn't do robberies, or break and enters, or thefts in general. He felt like this was an amateur criminal's life. He did systemic medical fraud, because, frankly, how much of a stretch was it? Yes, he abstained from doing most of the drugs he acquired, but technically he could do all of them and do it every day.

The guy who had rejected the book had asked him again where he got the name Diablo. "Satan was taken." It would be pretentious to call himself after his Lord and Master. "I am a lightning bolt falling from heaven just like my lord, but I don't want to take on more responsibility than I can handle, so I am Diablo." Darren was his given name. He used the name rarely, and in variations, to cash a cheque. He wasn't dyslexic but he could be spastic in a heartbeat.

"You know your friend Gordon who runs the disability office down on Albert Street, he says heaven is in those test drives of new cars they're tryin to sell ya that you actually want more than they wanna sell. He calls that heaven." “I have to see Gordon about a cheque.”

Diablo and Brian The Driver shared a few jugs of beer on occasion with Gordon at the Rococo Lounge, at the Sheraton Lounge, at The Embassy Lounge on Albert Street, and at the Copper Kettle, because this was the route for those who were known to make the rounds of a few different drinking establishments in the tiny, myopic, self-centred downtown of Regina.

Diablo was able to twist himself into a writhing ball of disability, which defied description, and these double-jointed maneuvers were perfect for the purpose of hanging around a disability office on Albert Street. It was the disability program manager Gordon who invited Diablo to visit the ground-level office of the South Saskatchewan Independent Living Society, what Gordon calls, ". . . the S-S-I-L-S," one day after sitting on stools at the bar in the Embassy Lounge. “”The Silly's?”

Gordon took him back to the office and pointed to the receptionist, "If you pass her criterion you can have upwards of $600 a month." It was this $600 a month Diablo called rambling around money. It was a permanent side income and a generous sum for acting like a wreck.

June Bug is what he called her, and Diablo wooed June Bug at the Embassy Lounge, a stinking dark hole in the wall at the corner of Albert Street and 13th. He double-jointed his shoulders and hips to the degree that he sharply resembled her, except she crammed herself into an electric wheelchair every morning, and he followed her along Albert Street limping, and gimping in the sunshine (there is an intoxicating amount of sunshine in Regina all year long) and dust to the Embassy Lounge, her wheelchair whirring up ramps and curbs. The handicapped were being accommodated in ways Diablo found irresistible to exploit.

She was buying and she was buying a lot. By the end of one evening when Diablo was breaking character and walking around the room looking normal, she was so smitten that he dropped a copy of The Satanic Bible on her lap and she did not flinch. They went drinking at the Embassy every cheque day from that day forward and Diablo did not once pick up a tab. He made a point of launching into double joint maneuvers at all times. It was a cost of doing business.

Blink once for yes, June Bug. She reminded him of Captain Pike from the pilot episode of the original Star Trek. He loved that episode, the pathos.

Chapter four

Virgil lived to take off his shoes and run across the prairie at night. The Fourman's Indian Reserve was big and quite open, largely without fencing, although saying the land was large (and without a fence) was a statement belonging to a different era of the People and their civilization. Today some land was leased to ranchers. Virgil wasn't the only Cree who liked to get out and sprint across the prairie but he was the only one to do it without shoes as far as he knew. By the time he hit full stride, Virgil leapt onto the galloping stone and instantly he was flying. It was a magical transformation, an experience available on the reserve where no fences prevent you from running unimpeded, and because sometimes he was sprinting around low hills for awhile in search of a lift. By the time he found it he was ready to burst and transform and fly away to meet his connections. The proceeding required a lot of fuel.

Virgil's cousins congregate in Regina where they lived off The Rez on a bunch of streets known as Moccasin Flats, in those pre-war houses where windows rattle and walls shake when you shut the door, and these included Uncle Leven, and Uncle Ambrose, ànd a few cousins living regarding the power of the engine.

Virgil had made a connection at the LaSalle Hotel presently, and it seems this connection lives at this low-flying non-Native downtown hotel and sells pills. Virgil ran for his flight on this moonless night so he would not be detected. Make no mistake about it, Virgil was perfectly aware there was a multitude of laws he was breaking.

Uncle Ambrose occupied a house in Moccasin Flats. He was a block away from 'Leven on the same street. He enjoyed a big payday no fewer than eight Sundays in the summer and fall of the CFL season because Uncle Ambrose transformed his yard from hard-packed dirt and patches of scruffy grass into a high-priced parking lot during home games and playoffs for the Saskatchewan Roughriders Professional Football Club; Virgil didn't think the Roughriders made the playoffs very often, bit of a shame for Uncle Ambrose. Moccasin Flats lies in the shadow of Taylor Field.

Uncle Ambrose was interested in two things, a study of the tyranny of white people. He was also a trusted uncle to young females who would evidently be ready for work on Rose Street by the time they were 12 or 13, and equally inevitably become old women by the age of 18. Uncle Ambrose had a copy of the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on the table in his living room. This room was sparsely furnished. He had his reading chair perched with the back to the kitchen, a reading lamp (always burning) and table. There was a plain dusty sofa on the north wall of the house.

This was an old house built to last with creaking floors and threadbare carpet. Nothing on the walls. Another standing floor lamp and a ceiling light typically burned with a 100 watt bulbs. This room was lit like daylight all through the night. There were no lampshades. Ambrose demanded the brilliance of 100 Watt bulbs. He wore glasses. He had long black hair. He never wore a ponytail. He was relatively short and some people dared to call him chunky. But he was agile and completely at home on a tree branch in the middle of the night. He was a bit of an owl. For instance, he could see through the walls practically. Nothing escaped his vision. Not sow bugs. Not silverfish. And definitely not cockroaches.

Virgil was always in the hood, and frequently dropping by, with his brother Randy, he of the perpetual peaked cap, to see Uncle Ambrose. Randy was the kind of Cree who deported himself in a comely fashion, clean clothes, freshly soaped and showered, hair combed. Randy wasn't a scruffy fellow at all, and you could say he was able to get past a bouncer at a white man's tavern. Why the fuck he would want to was anybody's guess.

Virgil was an entirely other kettle of fish. He would like nothing more than to rip the arm off anybody who looked at him sideways and proceed to beat them to death with it. So he too was white as rice about things as was his brother, just in a different way. Virgil and Randy had another brother who made the rounds with them. When John was here, they were a murder. Brother John was traditional about the way he comported himself. He was the main connection to the engine. He was the engine's best friend. John was the one who kept the motor running. He spoke the language of design. He may not have had a hand in the construction of the engine, for, obviously this was ancient and possibly extraterrestrial apparatus, but John knew about the maintenance, essentially care and feeding, for this was what it took to keep it running.

Virgil adored the way the engine ran. The complexity of a finely tuned engine required maintenance and control and the engine needed fuel. There was one fuel that would do and John was in charge of all these technical matters.

The Cult of the Crow have magical Indigenous tricks of the trade, but theirs was not the only magic in town. Virgil had observed a coven of witches circulating from a lounge slash restaurant on Broad Street.

A troll disguised his bridge as a used car lot located on Toronto Street, just north of Victoria Avenue, in an old neighbourhood on the eastern flank of downtown Regina. The troll disguised himself as a tall person wearing a radiant green fedora, but he was not 6 and a half feet tall. Not by any stretch. The door to the garage was a giveaway, it was 4 feet high. He must be wearing stilts when he's making the rare public appearances on his car lot. There were no functioning automobiles on this car lot. Three rusty 1950s Studebakers sat nose to tail under the rusty stand of car lot signage, an incongruous piece of architecture with wording in never to be lit neon, which said, Winnipeg Motors.

The illusive Vampire Joe, pimp to the stars. Goes without saying.

And, in his travels with a birds eye view, Virgil spotted a fetish idolater strolling through town taking pedestrians and drivers alike by surprise. Virgil called him Voodoo Jay, and the only reason Virgil would keep an eye on Voodoo Jay was because he was there, out-of the blue. If he wasn't out exposing himself on the streets he was probably behind bars in the city cells, or vanished.

The glue that bound this predominantly white people's world together was a thing they called Religion. Uncle Ambrose talked at length about it with Virgil, who could see it came in parcels like catholic and united and Anglican and presbyterian, and baptist, but they pulled on the same chain, destroy the Indigenous world. Uncle Ambrose was explicit about this. They had magic they called a calling. They weren't born to it, they were dragged to it. They dragged more than a few Cree to their calling. None of the cult of the Crow.

Another thing holding this usurper magic together was beer (and alcohol in general). While the magic was swirling round and often entwined, one thing is certain, nobody knew the mystical power of the engine. This was the deepest secret of them all. And nobody dared to speak of it. The engine was a creation of extraordinary power.

It was a stone creation, a peak of stone creations, the very height of stone. It was a machine. To outsiders it might be nothing at all, a pile of rubble. It might be a statue, or, when animated, it might be a short energetic, probably male-identified stone person. The statue had whitish skin of woven glass. Inside the skin, it had been revealed to Virgil, by brother John, the engine had glass tubes like veins and arteries. The statue showed other things to John and John told Virgil and Randy. The statue was carried on polished marble bones and skeleton.

The eyes were black diamonds. It was difficult to look in them. The head was filled with precious stones like jade, and John was told some of the stones had come from far away, and the statue had sound equipment like vocal chords. The statue had a natural intelligence, and said it could orbit the earth when it has enough fuel, but the intelligence is not to be confused with Native Intelligence. It explained to John it is highly advanced at perceiving fear in people, and other energy like deviation or anxiety. John was told this by the statue. Virgil got this second hand.

Other intelligence fled from the statue, and always did, said the statue to John. The power of the statue was the power to transform. To be exact, the statue offered the ability to turn a Cree into a crow. You had to catch it and climb on its back and away you flew. That's what running across the prairie was about. First you had to find it. And to do this, you had to be a great runner to pull it off. When you fly back to the engine you land on its back to transform from a crow to a Cree.

There were variations and perhaps other animals to incarnate with, Virgil didn't know, the statue didn't say. The cult of the crow had preserved itself and was supremely secretive. It was impossible for anybody but a small circle of crows, except an occasional owl, to know anything about the statue. Owls see everything in the dark, even in the blackest dark. And while owls are smart enough, they are prone to wretched excess and annihilation.