To be honest, the Sunny Daze Traveling Circus was no more
than a mud show.
So that’s how it started. Local boy meets foreign girl on the vast, mainly empty Navajo reservation in Northern Arizona on a cold clear day.
Carl grinned and his gold front tooth pulsed like a firefly in the streetlight. His whole body was vibrating, a human tuning fork, high on something as usual.
It was a contraption that started at her elbow and ended in two curved metal pincers that opened up to accept my hand.
The Gulf Coast beach was deserted, not a person, not a bird, not a sound.
Her scent washed over me as she got to her feet. Not pears exactly, but pear blossoms.
The pay phone at 14th street and 1st Avenue, south east corner is ringing. I pick it up.
Driving home that day through heavy fog near Ravenna with the package on the seat next to me, I nearly threw it out the window twice.
Big Bill Dean, the manager of Dot’s Bar and Dance next to the A-OK Motel in Fordyce, Arkansas was not too pleased with the band he’d hired that night.
Harry looked beyond the girl but saw nothing, no fire or smoke, only darkness and freezing rain.