Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club Club.
Speaker 3: Club book Club, book Club, ooblis oohuber ellis in the
Speaker 3: book Club.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club, the
Speaker 2: only book club where you don't have to do the
Speaker 2: reading because I do it for you. And we're going
Speaker 2: back to an older format. We're going back to the
Speaker 2: way the book club started, which is me reading a
Speaker 2: book I wrote to Robert.
Speaker 3: Hi, Robert. We are returning to tradition.
Speaker 2: That's right. Specifically, when the book club started, I read
Speaker 2: a book called The Lamble Slaughter of the Lion, And
Speaker 2: you can go back and listen to it if you'd like,
Speaker 2: And you might want to before you listen to this,
Speaker 2: but also you might have a different brain where you
Speaker 2: can just jump into the sequel, in which case that's
Speaker 2: great because the third book is finally going to come
Speaker 2: out in this series, and so I thought, why not
Speaker 2: read you all second one for free?
Speaker 3: Excellent.
Speaker 2: So the first book, The Lama Thought of the Lion,
Speaker 2: had Danielle Kane and a bunch of her friends dealing
Speaker 2: with a demon in a squatted town and then they're
Speaker 2: on the run and then they're like, let's be the
Speaker 2: punk rock Scooby Doo people. And that's my summation of it.
Speaker 2: Robert M. I was going to pretend like you haven't
Speaker 2: read this book, but I think you've read this book.
Speaker 3: Yes I have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but now you get to hear it, so I
Speaker 2: guess I'll just start it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I've loved the Danielle Kine series, so
Speaker 3: excited to be rereading Slash, listening to the second novella
Speaker 3: in it really just waiting for you to get the
Speaker 3: third one out.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's being kickstarted right now.
Speaker 3: Slightly harassing you over that. Good. Yeah, get in there
Speaker 3: and donate, you motherfuckers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, the barrow will send what it may.
Speaker 2: This was published by tour dot Com the number of
Speaker 2: years ago, twenty eighteen. I don't know. You think I
Speaker 2: would know, But that's not the part of the document
Speaker 2: I have opened right now, Chapter one. The towering bursts
Speaker 2: of flame that staggered their way across the empty black
Speaker 2: horizon weren't helping my mood. I'd been dozing in the
Speaker 2: back seat of the car, my head against Bryn's shoulder,
Speaker 2: but the staccato, silent bursts were too eerie to sleep through.
Speaker 2: Where the hell are we? I asked outside as far
Speaker 2: as I could see were featureless planes, no stars in
Speaker 2: the sky, just blackness, blackness, and fire. Hell's about the
Speaker 2: word for it, Brynn said. She was gazing out the window,
Speaker 2: her face lit a little by the interior lights of
Speaker 2: the car, and a lot by the occasional streaks of
Speaker 2: fire outside. A single thick black tattoo line cut its
Speaker 2: way down her face from her short bangs to the
Speaker 2: bridge of her nose, and her face was severe, even
Speaker 2: more severe than usual. Or maybe I was just drowsy.
Speaker 2: The rest of the passengers were silent, and we tore
Speaker 2: down the road through all that darkness. It was gas flaring.
Speaker 2: As I woke up more properly, I remembered, must be
Speaker 2: in North Dakota, somewhere. Excess natural gas production beyond what
Speaker 2: they've got the infrastructure for gets burned off. I'd never
Speaker 2: seen it with my own eyes, those flames that stood
Speaker 2: in monument to the wastefulness of civilization. My left shoulder
Speaker 2: ached were thread, regular sewing thread held together a crowbar wound.
Speaker 2: My right hand was sore still and modeled with supernatural
Speaker 2: gray where an undead goat had bitten it. Behind us,
Speaker 2: a thousand miles of Highway. Ago was nothing, dead bodies
Speaker 2: and probably some investigators who wanted explanations. We couldn't really
Speaker 2: give a demon killed those police officers, sir, It wasn't us.
Speaker 2: They probably shouldn't have pulled out guns around a blood
Speaker 2: red at three antler deer with obvious supernatural agility, So
Speaker 2: whose fault was it? Really? No one would believe us
Speaker 2: A week ago. I wouldn't have believed us. We couldn't
Speaker 2: go back ahead of us. There was also nothing. We
Speaker 2: had a sort of scattershot map of towns with friends
Speaker 2: who might shelter us, of places that might have books
Speaker 2: or witches who could teach us. Doomsday was convinced that
Speaker 2: if we could make it to the Washington coast, we'd
Speaker 2: eventually find people who could get us on a boat
Speaker 2: to the islands off the coast of Canada. Vulture had
Speaker 2: a Google map populated with disappearances and strange phenomenon we
Speaker 2: might look into. But none of us had anything concrete,
Speaker 2: no real plans, only chaos. This is how we're meant
Speaker 2: to live. Thursday drove for sixteen hours straight, his fists
Speaker 2: gripping the wheel At ten and two, no music on
Speaker 2: the stee but the ethereal washed out voices of AM
Speaker 2: radio preachers were on. Sometimes. I think they were telling
Speaker 2: us that we were going to hell. I always assumed
Speaker 2: that voices like those are telling me that we left
Speaker 2: the fields of fire behind. Just as the sun edged
Speaker 2: over the horizon behind us, Thursday pulled into a rest area,
Speaker 2: quote to watch dawn, maybe eat something. But once the
Speaker 2: engine was off, he didn't even make it out of
Speaker 2: the driver's seat before he fell asleep. The rest of
Speaker 2: us better rested, leaned against the car in the chilly
Speaker 2: morning air, and watched that sunrise. If you stay up
Speaker 2: all night, you owe it to yourself to watch sunrise.
Speaker 2: Every time Vulture passed around a tiny bottle of orange
Speaker 2: juice he produced from somewhere, maybe his hoodie pocket, because
Speaker 2: those blue jeans short shorts sure didn't have serious pockets
Speaker 2: on them. He would have made a good stage magician.
Speaker 2: He had the right kind of charm, and all his
Speaker 2: motions were fluid, almost hypnotizing. He smiled easily, and even
Speaker 2: though his smile rarely looked genuine, when he smiled, you
Speaker 2: found yourself smiling too. Is this going to work out?
Speaker 2: Brynn asked, breaking hours of silence. She was sitting on
Speaker 2: top of the spray painted red old Honda Civic hatchback,
Speaker 2: her steel toed boots hanging down over the side. She
Speaker 2: ripped at a pomegranate, casting its pulp onto the pavement.
Speaker 2: Her arms were bare to the shoulder. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: she owned any T shirts that still had their sleeves
Speaker 2: on a long enough timeline, Doomsday said, no, but it'll
Speaker 2: work out today. Even if she was only just now
Speaker 2: learning to weave words into ritual magic, Doomsday had a
Speaker 2: way of warping the world around her when she spoke.
Speaker 2: What's more important, I asked, laying Low or our new career?
Speaker 2: It was idle curiosity, nothing more. What mattered was our motion,
Speaker 2: not our purpose. Low Doomsday said, find some demons, Vulture said.
Speaker 2: At the same time, they looked at one another. They'd
Speaker 2: known one another for how long years? I'd not known
Speaker 2: them even a week? But do you know what I
Speaker 2: did know?
Speaker 3: Robert Evans that products and services also. I was trying
Speaker 3: to think of something to say along the lines of
Speaker 3: all of the gas burning off that you see when
Speaker 3: you drive across certain parts of the rule. But anyway,
Speaker 3: the oil and gas industry sponsor, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't have anything for you.
Speaker 1: Well, here's whatever sponsors us.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 3: Could we be sponsored by like the kind of spirit
Speaker 3: of vengeance as embodied by wildlife Margaret? Could that be
Speaker 3: our sponsor? Do they have money?
Speaker 2: So? I, well, okay, they could if they do some vengeance.
Speaker 3: First, I'll have Sophie send an email.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the easiest way to reach the spirit of vengeance.
Speaker 2: Somebody just drop it off to an elk. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what would happened if you asked for
Speaker 2: a sponsorship and put it on a piece of paper
Speaker 2: and put it on an elk's antlers. Your life would be.
Speaker 3: In Nobody knows. Nobody knows. And elks seem pretty chill.
Speaker 3: That's what they're always seemed like, mega fauna, terrifying, mega fauna.
Speaker 2: I secretly don't believe in moose.
Speaker 3: No, no, not real. Yeah, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Real conspiracy, no Canadian neighbors. Yeah, but elks, elks are real.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, what is reel and deeply off putting. Our camels
Speaker 3: were like you see camels in movies and like, you know,
Speaker 3: camels are a thing. When you first run into a
Speaker 3: real ass camel, it's like, what the fuck? That's like
Speaker 3: a death the size of an elephant, Like, what the fuck?
Speaker 3: This is what people were right, of course, these things
Speaker 3: like you couldn't fight these things on horseback, like no
Speaker 3: horse would ever get close to a camel.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, all right, that's the story. Yeah, find
Speaker 2: some demons. While laying low, Vulture said it was his
Speaker 2: way of conceding, the more we know about magic, the
Speaker 2: more equipped will be to handle whatever comes at us.
Speaker 2: Doomsday said, so both. I asked, how the hell will
Speaker 2: we do both magic, Vulture said, grinning. Brynn, probably delirious,
Speaker 2: laughed with her whole body, her heels banging against the
Speaker 2: window glass. Shut the fuck up, Thursday mumbled from inside
Speaker 2: the car. At least that's what I think he said.
Speaker 2: It's what I would have said. Thursday would have driven
Speaker 2: the whole way if we'd have let him, but his
Speaker 2: protestations were scarcely audible. As we helped him up into
Speaker 2: the back seat, I took his place behind the wheel,
Speaker 2: Brynn took shotgun, and we ran away from the encroaching day.
Speaker 2: I've spent most of my life in the flyover States,
Speaker 2: and their beauty is largely unmatched throughout the rest of
Speaker 2: the country, but sometimes the endless expanse is too endless.
Speaker 2: I spent the full day driving. Vulture was nocturnal by choice,
Speaker 2: and he snorted softly with his face against the glass.
Speaker 2: Thursday was wiped out. Doomsday was wanted for murder more
Speaker 2: actively than the rest of us, and wasn't excited about
Speaker 2: the being the one who would get id'ed if we
Speaker 2: were pulled over. Brynn could have taken a turn, I'm
Speaker 2: sure of it, but I didn't want her to. She
Speaker 2: looked happy sitting there in the passenger seat. She put
Speaker 2: her hand on my arm and left it there for
Speaker 2: a long time, and that settled that I wanted to
Speaker 2: be the driver I drove all day. I used to
Speaker 2: think I was going to end up a trucker. When
Speaker 2: I first started hitch hiking ten years back, i'd been
Speaker 2: eighteen and fallen in love with basically every lady trucker
Speaker 2: i'd met. Even when that thing happened when I was nineteen,
Speaker 2: I had to stab a man trucker in the hand.
Speaker 2: Even after that, I had assumed i'd wind up a trucker.
Speaker 2: Open Roads, Solitude, books on tape, decent pay who wouldn't
Speaker 2: want to be a trucker. By the time I was
Speaker 2: old enough for the job, I didn't want it, mostly
Speaker 2: because I didn't want any job. I found my niche
Speaker 2: as a wanderer, and driving on some company schedule just
Speaker 2: wasn't going to suit me. Still, I was pretty sure
Speaker 2: I was one hell of a long haul driver. We
Speaker 2: crossed into Montana and I kept driving. Glacier National Park
Speaker 2: is probably the single most beautiful place in the country,
Speaker 2: and I figured we'd get to sleep there, blend in
Speaker 2: with a tourists at some campground if I just kept
Speaker 2: at it. We made it halfway across the state. I
Speaker 2: was on a side highway, avoiding the interstate because the
Speaker 2: occasional small town speed trap seemed like a better bet
Speaker 2: than the highway patrol who might have an all points
Speaker 2: to look for us. Some British man was narrating a
Speaker 2: fantasy book at us from the stereo vultures doing, and
Speaker 2: the sun was just starting to get low. Brinn was asleep,
Speaker 2: Everyone in the back seat was quiet, hadn't said a
Speaker 2: word in an hour. The sun was just starting to
Speaker 2: look a little low on the horizon. I nodded off.
Speaker 2: I came too halfway into the oncoming lane and corrected.
Speaker 2: There was no traffic to run into, just an endless
Speaker 2: stretch of Montana Highway. I slapped myself it's usually good
Speaker 2: for about ten minutes or so, and made a mental
Speaker 2: note to pull off at the next exit. Switched drivers,
Speaker 2: I naded off again. I had never crashed a car
Speaker 2: in my life. When I came to, probably a half
Speaker 2: second later, I was in the wrong lane again, fully
Speaker 2: this time startled. I corrected fast and saw myself headed
Speaker 2: real quick toward running off the right side of the road,
Speaker 2: so I corrected again. Still wasn't thinking way too fast.
Speaker 2: The car went up on two wheels and my vision
Speaker 2: got choppy. Blackness, the sunset streaming through the window, with
Speaker 2: the road where the sky should be blackness. Maybe I screamed,
Speaker 2: Maybe somebody else screamed, where's the reset button? Like I
Speaker 2: was a kid again playing Nintendo. Just hit the reset button,
Speaker 2: start over from the last save. No, it's actually happening. Blackness.
Speaker 2: Then it was over. We were twenty feet off the
Speaker 2: left hand side of the road. The car was upright again.
Speaker 2: We'd spun a full three sixty. The windshield was fucked.
Speaker 2: A beautiful spider web of fucked, with trees in the
Speaker 2: distance that I could see through the kaleidoscope of fucked.
Speaker 2: Guess the car didn't have airbags? What year did air
Speaker 2: bags get to be standard? Thursday's voice cut through the
Speaker 2: white noise that I hadn't even noticed. Doomsday. Yeah, Vulture,
Speaker 2: I'm fine, brin alive. I freaked out. I just started
Speaker 2: gasping for air. Danielle, I'd rolled the car. I'd almost
Speaker 2: killed Brynn. Danielle fine, I answered, because I wanted to
Speaker 2: be left alone, and answering seemed like the fastest way
Speaker 2: to accomplish that. I took off my seat belt. Thank fuck.
Speaker 2: We'd all been wearing seat belts, even the people sleeping.
Speaker 2: Even the other people sleeping had been wearing seat belts.
Speaker 2: I opened the door and tried to stand, but my
Speaker 2: legs gave out and I collapsed in on myself. Danielle,
Speaker 2: Brynn said she was next to me, crouching her arm
Speaker 2: around me. I fucked up, I said, fighting for air.
Speaker 2: I don't need anything. I'm the one who I gave
Speaker 2: up trying to talk. I got my head between my
Speaker 2: knees and I wrenched out gasps no tears, though not
Speaker 2: yet Vulter knelt down on the other side of me,
Speaker 2: put his arm around me too. I lifted my head
Speaker 2: up to see him wet blood smeared across his brown skin.
Speaker 2: You're bleeding, said, I'm fine, just cut up my arm
Speaker 2: a little nothing deep. I fell asleep. We're alive. Vulture
Speaker 2: pulled aside the shoulder strap of my tank top. Hey,
Speaker 2: he said, my stitch is held. Got to get this
Speaker 2: thing away from the road before anyone drives by, Thursday said,
Speaker 2: into the trees. Vulture glared at his friend, But Thursday
Speaker 2: was right. We didn't want to deal with cops or
Speaker 2: ambulances or any of that shit. Brinn tried to help
Speaker 2: me up, but I shook her arm off. The only
Speaker 2: thing worse than needing emotional support after what I'd done
Speaker 2: was stubbornly refusing help I so obviously needed, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't help it, which made me resent her support even more.
Speaker 2: Pushing a fucking car though that I could do. Vulture
Speaker 2: and I were tied for being the smallest, but no
Speaker 2: one made any suggestion that I should get back behind
Speaker 2: the wheel. Doomsday got in and steered while the rest
Speaker 2: of us pushed, and we got it into what was
Speaker 2: probably a tree farm. The trees were in those unnaturally
Speaker 2: perfect rows, and I was sure that the car wasn't
Speaker 2: completely hidden, but with any luck, we'd gotten it far
Speaker 2: enough from the road that it looked like it was
Speaker 2: supposed to be there. A few cars went by while
Speaker 2: we were doing it, but none of them slowed down.
Speaker 2: What's next, Doomsday asked, getting out? Get the VIN numbers off?
Speaker 2: Thursday said, it's just VIN. Vulture corrected vehicle identification number
Speaker 2: like ATM machine or PIN number or whatever. Fuck off.
Speaker 2: There'll be a plate on the dash. That's easy, I said,
Speaker 2: cutting in, but it'll also be stamped into the frame
Speaker 2: in a few places. We need a pretty serious file
Speaker 2: to get it out, even if we can get all
Speaker 2: the VIN numbers without taking the thing apart. They talked
Speaker 2: it over for a moment. Then Thursday pried the metal
Speaker 2: tag off the dash, while Vulture and Brinn took off
Speaker 2: the plates close enough for government work, I guess me.
Speaker 2: I leaned against the back of the car. I tried
Speaker 2: not to take stock of what condition the car was in,
Speaker 2: but the windows were all busted out and the roof
Speaker 2: was carved in on the back corner. You all right,
Speaker 2: it was Doomsday, probably the least emotional of the five
Speaker 2: of us. Strangely that helped. I put my hand on
Speaker 2: the massive dent on the roof. If we'd landed anywhere else,
Speaker 2: I said, we didn't, Doomsday, pulled out a cigarette, lit
Speaker 2: it and took a drag. You smoke, I asked, not usually?
Speaker 2: She said, use two more. Still keep a pack around,
Speaker 2: but I could use a cigarette. You did almost just
Speaker 2: kill us all. I'm not going to say, don't remind me.
Speaker 2: I probably won't again. You know what you did, and
Speaker 2: you'll mostly get over it, and there isn't one of
Speaker 2: us who's anywhere near as mad at you as you are. Thanks,
Speaker 2: I said, I didn't smoke either, Can I have a cigarette?
Speaker 2: I don't bump cigarettes out to non smokers. It's hard
Speaker 2: to hitchhike with five people under normal circumstances. The thing
Speaker 2: to do would have been to split into two groups,
Speaker 2: but these obviously weren't normal circumstances. To make things even
Speaker 2: more fun, we had to get a ride before the
Speaker 2: cops stopped us and ran our names. None of us
Speaker 2: had any idea if there were warrants out for us yet,
Speaker 2: and none of us wanted to find out the hard way.
Speaker 2: Five people and luggage. Bryn, Vulture, and I all had
Speaker 2: travel packs. The days had decent sized suitcases. All of
Speaker 2: them were covered in glass, and Vulture's yellow pack was
Speaker 2: now replete with bloodstains. All right, Doomsday said, dropping her
Speaker 2: cigarette from her lips, letting it fall to the ground,
Speaker 2: where she stomped it out with a heeled boot. Gather around,
Speaker 2: hold hands, got a ritual for this hitchhiking shit. We
Speaker 2: were still in the woods, hidden from the road. I
Speaker 2: took Vulture's hand and Bryn's hand, and the five of
Speaker 2: us formed a little pentagon. You say what I say,
Speaker 2: Doomsday said, But like in a round, I'll say a line.
Speaker 2: Then Thursday, you say that line while I say the
Speaker 2: next one. Then Bryn, Danielle Vulture, you say the line
Speaker 2: that the person on your left would have said last time.
Speaker 2: After I say the fifth line, It'll all go on
Speaker 2: without me until Vulture says the last line alone. Anyone
Speaker 2: fucks it up, we just have to start over. First
Speaker 2: time I tried this method, I fucked up every line once.
Speaker 2: It's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: Got it, Got it?
Speaker 2: We said back. We began. We ask for good strangers.
Speaker 2: We ask for the barrow to send what it may.
Speaker 2: We ask that ill eyes pass us over. We ask
Speaker 2: for the dead to guard us. We ask that sorrow
Speaker 2: be held at bay. It took us about four rounds
Speaker 2: to get it right. It's hard to listen to what
Speaker 2: someone is saying while you're talking, but not as hard
Speaker 2: as I would have thought. I'm glad I was never
Speaker 2: the one to fuck up. I don't know how well
Speaker 2: I could have handled any more failure. I felt the
Speaker 2: energy pass between our hands, a subtle thing, the kind
Speaker 2: of thing I might have felt before i'd seen magic.
Speaker 2: But after Vulture said the last line, a silence fell
Speaker 2: over us, and the wind picked up a gyre, spun
Speaker 2: itself between us, the same direction as our ritual, then
Speaker 2: spun outward through the trees. Then that's silence, So I asked,
Speaker 2: at last, the fuck did we just do? It's nothing,
Speaker 2: Doomsday said, just a spell for good luck with strangers,
Speaker 2: keeping people would hurt us away, and all that shit
Speaker 2: about the barrow and the dead. I don't know the
Speaker 2: spell too well. I think Barrow is the name of
Speaker 2: the endless spirit it appeals to. He's a death spirit,
Speaker 2: I guess, But that's not what the ritual is about yeah, great,
Speaker 2: what could go wrong? Well, Robert, I'll tell you what
Speaker 2: couldn't go wrong.
Speaker 3: Products and services that support this podcast, one of which
Speaker 3: is the seat belt, which, Margaret, because you brought that up,
Speaker 3: I had to look it up.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: Shockingly, seat belt or air bags sorry, airbags had not
Speaker 3: become mandatory until nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 3: I am really took this a while on that one.
Speaker 2: I mean, this scene of flipping the car is based
Speaker 2: on when I flipped a station wagon when I was seventeen.
Speaker 3: I was guessing that a lot of this whole road
Speaker 3: ship part was very very much based on.
Speaker 2: Your Yeah, totally, and it was definitely like a nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four to escort station wagon. It definitely did not
Speaker 2: have airbags, and I was completely unharmed. And if I
Speaker 2: hadn't been wearing a seat belt, I would probably be dead.
Speaker 2: So seat belts, air bags and whatever else wear ads are.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: An suv picked us up not ten minutes after we'd
Speaker 2: been waiting for those keeping score at home. Neither being
Speaker 2: picked up by an suv nor so quickly is common.
Speaker 2: I mean both have happened to me before, but usually
Speaker 2: not while hitching it with five people, two of them
Speaker 2: being people of color and men besides Oh and Brinn
Speaker 2: had that face tattoo, and Doomsday was a bonafide cop
Speaker 2: killing husband killing murderer. I actually can't blame anyone who
Speaker 2: drove past the five of us, though, no matter what
Speaker 2: their car, no one wants to be outnumbered by strangers
Speaker 2: in their own vehicle. It takes a certain kind of person,
Speaker 2: one with bravery and a belief in doing right by people,
Speaker 2: to pick up a crew like us. It takes a
Speaker 2: person like Gertrude Miller. It turns out, where are you headed?
Speaker 2: She asked, after the four of us got in the
Speaker 2: back and I climbed in shotgun. I had been designated
Speaker 2: driver dealer with her by a rather hasty consensus decision,
Speaker 2: with the caveat that Thursday would be ready to step
Speaker 2: in if the driver was a creep or just a
Speaker 2: bro looking to brow down. Gertrude Miller wasn't either of
Speaker 2: those things. She was a white woman, probably fifty, with
Speaker 2: a vacant look in her eyes and a cold, but
Speaker 2: somehow genuine smile on her face. She had that tired
Speaker 2: look of a woman who done service class work. Her
Speaker 2: entire life and the self confidence of the same. Out
Speaker 2: to Glacier. I said, you, it's good practice to ask
Speaker 2: where a ride is going, Probably more important when you've
Speaker 2: got reason to be skeptical, like when I'm hitching alone
Speaker 2: and a man picks me up. If they can't give
Speaker 2: me a clear answer, I don't get in their car. Pendleton,
Speaker 2: She said, that'll get you close to Glacier, but I'm
Speaker 2: afraid the sun will be down before we get there.
Speaker 2: That's fine, I said, we'll figure it out from there.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the ride anytime, She said, know why I
Speaker 2: picked you up? Probably Jesus had told her to pick
Speaker 2: us up, or maybe I reminded her of her daughter
Speaker 2: or her granddaughter, or she was worried about me and
Speaker 2: the company.
Speaker 3: I kept.
Speaker 2: Why is that? I asked, God told me too, She said,
Speaker 2: there are some young folks who look just like y'all
Speaker 2: and Pendleton. They run the library ever since the county
Speaker 2: gave up on it, and they still run it for free.
Speaker 2: Never would have thought I'd make friends with someone with
Speaker 2: a face tattoo. No, I didn't, But these kids are
Speaker 2: all right. Figured you'd be all right too. The smile
Speaker 2: dropped off her face for a moment, and she squinted
Speaker 2: at the road ahead. Plus she went on, I've already
Speaker 2: died once, ain't got nothing left of fear. I didn't
Speaker 2: know how to respond to that, so I just waited
Speaker 2: for her to elaborate. She didn't. Instead, she put the
Speaker 2: radio on pop country, filled the car, and we drove
Speaker 2: back off into the sunset. That's the end of chapter
Speaker 2: one and ah soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the way you describe the countryside, like
Speaker 3: it's very It all has the vibe of like four
Speaker 3: in the morning after you've been driving all night, which
Speaker 3: is also the most like occult time of day, Like
Speaker 3: it's the most It's the most I ever believe in magic.
Speaker 3: It's why all the things that are now part of,
Speaker 3: like the horrible fascist movement we live under. It's where
Speaker 3: the beauty. Like there was a time when like you
Speaker 3: could just listen to Coast to Coast AM and a
Speaker 3: man would talk about Bigfoot in the aliens. Yeah, four
Speaker 3: point thirty in the morning as the sun rose over
Speaker 3: the desert, and it was a magical thing to experience. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they've taken that away from us, Margaret.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: It's like, Yeah, what happened to just the person who
Speaker 2: listens to that also has a lot of VHS tapes
Speaker 2: of very strange things in their very cheap apartment they
Speaker 2: share with four people, you know. Yeah, and that is
Speaker 2: a good thing. That's a good kind of person to be.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And I I like the like, I like the altered
Speaker 2: how it's like drugs to just stay up too late,
Speaker 2: and like also just to drive all day, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a nice feeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been too long since I've like lived in
Speaker 3: a car for an extended period of time and that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can really tell in you're writing that you've had
Speaker 3: a lot of your kind of seminal life moments behind
Speaker 3: the wheel of a vehicle and a long, proud highway
Speaker 3: behind you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then also just like getting into the car
Speaker 2: with strangers. I was thinking about this recently. I haven't
Speaker 2: hitchhiked in like twenty years, but I used to do
Speaker 2: it a lot. And then I sometimes I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't know whether I'm not trying to encourage listeners to
Speaker 2: necessarily go hitchhiking, but that's probably just me aging, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of depressing to me the degree
Speaker 3: to which some of these things that were a big
Speaker 3: part of my life are just like not really done anymore.
Speaker 3: Like there's some hitchhiking, but I'm also talking about stuff
Speaker 3: like CouchSurfing, Yeah, getting killed by Airbnb and yeah, like
Speaker 3: that sort of stuff like there used to be. There
Speaker 3: used to be a lot more of. I think wisdom
Speaker 3: is a rule comes from spending a lot of time
Speaker 3: with people you've never met before who have lived completely
Speaker 3: different lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the world is increasingly designed to make sure
Speaker 3: nobody has that experience.
Speaker 2: That is a totally because the people, Yeah, the people
Speaker 2: have picked me up pitch hiking, or the people who's
Speaker 2: like houses I've stayed at, or like the friend of
Speaker 2: a friend of a family who I'm just going to
Speaker 2: go hang out with and like go get a drink
Speaker 2: at a bar with that I don't have anything in
Speaker 2: common with. No, You're right, that is people need that, yep.
Speaker 2: But what also people need to do is wait another
Speaker 2: week for chapter two, right u assholes? Yeah, farewell. If
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Speaker 2: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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