My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
By their fruits
>> Above Kahuku
Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka ran as only a man who's being shot at can run. Desperation gave him after-burners, and he dashed madly through the dark woods from shadow to shadow. Even when he'd heard the sixth bullet fired, heard it whizzing high and wide, he ran with legs aching and lungs burning until he could run no more. Damn fence.
Barbed wire, a strand of electric wire running along the top, and weathered wooden posts. A cattle fence. Indeed, on the other side of the fence was pasture, just a few trees scattered here and there in the moonlight.
Forcing himself to take deep, even breaths, the senator listened to the night, heard nothing. Apparently he'd outrun the overweight Sam.
Still, he moved along the fence line, following it uphill, walking now, sticking to the trees and shadows, pausing every few steps to listen.
At last he rested beneath a guava tree, wishing he hadn't saved Sam's life, wishing he hadn't given Sam the frickin' .357, wishing he hadn't done a lot of stupid stuff recently. A Bible verse popped into his head, "By the fruit of their labor shall you know them." His fruit at the moment was rotting guava surrounding him on the ground.
God, he needed a drink, to quench his thirst as much as to calm his nerves.
What he'd give for a longneck Bud right about now.
The rotting guava gave him an idea. On one of those TV nature shows he'd seen monkeys in Africa getting drunk on fermented bananas. Crawling on hands and knees, he gathered up a pile of guavas that didn't look too bad in the dark.
He took a bite. Ah, piquant bouquet, he thought, mimicking the comments he'd heard at wine tastings, which this Budman endured to gain a few votes and a lot more money. Another bite. A slight hint of putrification. Another bite. Lovely lingering residual sugars.
The senator was working on his 15th guava and still waiting for an alcoholic buzz when he puked, sudden, violent, projectile.
But not as sudden, violent or projectile as the shot that rang out. It came from Sam's general direction, and much closer than he'd imagined Sam could be. The shot was just high.
The senator slithered through the barbed wire and sprinted across the open pasture, silent and spectral as a ghost. He was totally exposed, but if he could get to a small copse of ironwoods, the open pasture could work to his advantage too.
Down the hill, he heard Sam shouting threats in the dark, vowing to kill him if he ever showed his face, heard him moving away.
Exhausted, the senator finally fell asleep on a bed of ironwood needles, not knowing the real hunt would begin tomorrow.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com