Crawlers

She was standing on top of the mountain the flowers were in her hair and the old song from the Mos Eisley brothers on her lips "...when you wish it  , when you dream it ..."

  She was dressed in a long dress good for walking , long and metally looking, dark silver, just sort of looking out at the horizon.

 It was a little past 8 AM ,  she had gone out walking with her guitar on her back and a loaded pistol tucked into her belt. She had a black bookbag on with a bunch of hash in it and a bowl she was planning to sit on the mountain and smoke it out of.

 After she got high and strength would come to her  she wanted to go look around, see if maybe she could get lucky (Jim had told her he had gotten lucky a week ago in the same spot) and find a bunch of  crawlers to blast. She wanted to bring one home to Mister Crow to eat before he died and took off from the world. 

Mister Crow he was from the old days and he had grown up back in those days   eating crawlers of all sorts all the time. Back then everyone knew the crawlers had been everywhere, the world hadnt gone wrong yet,  and you could live in the darkest sunless depths and by God you could feed a family of fourteen three times a day full meals just nothing but crawlers without a single problem at all. Didnt matter who the hell you were back then, it was good times, the Designer had just dropped millions and millions of crawlers from the sky for all the world to feast upon. 

Yes it was good living then, no one was skinny or starving or ever out of fuel... everyone was high all the time and never hungry. Weed, opium, hydro, true red tomatoes, white wine, fat baked bread, crawler after crawler... it was on everybodys plate rich or poor, weak or strong...

Those were the sort of good fuckin days that old Mister Crow had come from and sometimes if his mind was there and he could draw back on the memories of his own existence he sat on the porch with an unloaded  remington shotgun just sitting on his lap telling stories of how good and crunchy and slimey the crawlers of his childhood in Alamogordo used to taste. "You eat dem wit beans and Chinaman sauce you cook them on da skillet wit a bit of tabasco you pour a bit of whiskey or maybe gin on them and mmmm oh girl you wouldnt believe the taste, and I tell ye i tell ye, if the Designer is real then he be eatin this yesum yesum..."

She would sit cross legged like a Boddah worshipper from electrified Tokyo listening to the stories when they came just taking in every detail adoring it. Sometimes Jim would be with her listening too, or little Black Mary, Swannie, Will Lee,  the one armed Chilean, and everyone always loved to listen because the way Crow would describe the crawlers to you, you would feel like you were eating them your own self. He would sit wit no shirt on his old tattooed wrinkled body all tanned and leathered and he would grumble and spit coughing up the stories of the good Alamogordo days... ."when the desert was fackin red and the Sun was still shiny and loving...." 

And so now she just wanted to get lucky like Jim said he had gotten lucky and find some to blast. Back at the house under the sink she had three big bottles of Chinaman sauce and tabasco sauce all stored, never even opened, for the meal, if she could get them. " You know how much Chinaman sauce I will pour all over them god damn do you know Jim, if I get them?" Jim had laughed and kissed her and said he hoped she got them like he had. He had gone out with a Smith and Wesson 45 caliber, a black metal gun,  and blown down almost 10 of them. He had fed them to his little daughters though  and had only eaten the tail of one himself . His daughters were smiling living in dreams lying around on torn up couches under even the heavy cold rains for days afterwards just glazing. "Poppa Jim poppa Jim thank you kindly poppa jim thank you ,we love you kindly, poppa jim poppa jim..." She had listened to them singing songs to Jim. She knew Jim lived for it he didnt care if he ate....   

She didnt have no daughtersr though of course  she didnt have nobody she was alone. So she would just share them with old man  Crow. She imagined that when she cooked them she would close all the windows just leave them open a pinch and she would have Mister Crow sit down behind her on a lawn chair as she cooked and he would get the big mighty whiffs of the crawlers as they burned on the stove and caught flame and fried up nice and bright Martian red. She would pour for him and for herself two big full glasses of nice Tennessee whiskey , real old stuff (of Tennessee whiskey no one was ever out and would not be for a millenium) and that was how they would eat. She would play her guiitar singing Mos Eisley songs, Blind Lemon Jefferson songs, Big Mama Thornton, and Willie McTell songs ... all of which were naturally Mister Jack Crows favorites and all of which she knew by heart - had since she was a baby child. 

After they would be good and drunk and with stomachs so full on fresh crawlers they'd light a bubbler , she'd make it ice fucking cold, and they'd take in big sucks just cruising in their minds looking out the window at the scenery outside , the songs drifting in their heads , whistling... humming. And then maybe 6 or 7 months later when Crow died (becuse she knew it was coming everyone in Alamogordo knew it was coming) she wouldn't feel so bad and she would occasionally see him in dreams and he'd be young again and she'd be happy when she seen him and he'd say "Thank ye Belle , thank you for feedin me dem crawlers before the Designer took me out, thank ye Belle, Bless you Belle, love you Belle..."