SADDLEBAGS, Trunks, and Tombs

Chapter 8

The Watcher

The article was damn near complete!  I said I was a writer and this is what I do, but Wow!!  The words flowed so flawlessly as if I had lived it myself.  If I hadn’t been the one writing it, I would have been impressed with the author!  I have never finished a feature length article in less than five days, much less under one! 

I worked until the sun went down and put the finishing touches on the article just as the rigatoni I had ordered from the Italian place down the street was delivered to my door.  Normally they won’t deliver alcohol but the owner had sent over a bottle of my favorite red dinner wine to go with my meal.  Being a creature of habit has its privileges!  The aromas that drifted from the brown paper bags was wonderful!  The smell of the red sauce on the pasta and the garlic and butter on the bread had my mouth watering.  My stomach clenched in knowing hunger as I sat in the kitchen and began to tear into the bags sitting on the table.  

Not to long after I had completed my meal, legs stretched and feet crossed under the table, I clasped my hands behind my head and began thinking about the fat check I was about to receive for one day’s worth of work.  I had a couple of finishing touches to add to the end of the article, but other than that, it was already money in the bank!

Reaching for the phone to call Ken, I felt a slight change in the air behind me.  I didn’t want to know what I already knew.  The left side of my brain wasn’t curious at all.  It wanted me to close my eyes and run blindly out of the apartment and never look back!  The left side lost out.  I slowly got up from the table, my glass of wine gripped in my hand, turned and began to walk towards the couch with my eyes fixed on the floor.  I realized I wasn’t ready.  I didn’t really want to see the view in that window disappear into a black, swirling hole.  I have to laugh now for as much as my left brain wanted out, my right brain had me heading to the desk to grab some pencils and paper.  Can you believe it?  I sunk down into the couch, purposefully, took a large gulp of wine and lifted my head and eyes to the pictures forming in front of me.

I waited for the nausea that I had felt last night. It didn’t come.  I realize now that there was nothing that could happen that would cause me to miss one second of the story that had begun to unfold.  The picture cleared into a quiet high noon desert.  I could hear cars in the distance and what I was seeing had the feel of present times.  Again, as I did last night, I looked around and the picture turned to where I looked.  

There were new buildings surrounding older, maybe refurbished, buildings.  I began to write with a quickness as I wanted to describe the buildings but the buildings began to fade as if the little I had seen was enough.  The picture turned me back to the desert.  There on the ground was a body.  Next to the body were some old saddlebags, I think.  I remember seeing them on horses in old west movies. I say I think because these looked terribly worn with holes and the leather was faded.  The scene began to close in around the body. It was as still as death, most dead bodies were though.  

It looked like a man who had been quite tall in his time, maybe even handsome.  The hair was thin but held a brown color to it.  The hat on his chest was most likely black in its day, but it too was well worn and bleached by the sun.   His cheekbones were high and his jaw line straight.  As I was taking in every descriptive aspect of the body it shuddered violently.  It, he had taken a breath!!  He was alive?  The breath was so deep, so dramatic, that I jumped, spilling my wine on my jeans.  I got up quickly and walked backwards to the kitchen to grab a towel so that I wouldn’t miss a second of what was going on.  For some reason my eyes fell and caught sight of the box and the letter lying on the coffee table.

While I patted myself and the couch off, my eyes still glued to the window, the body, the man, no the cowboy (?) sat up and began to look around.  You could see the confusion in his eyes.  He looked down towards his chest and absently fingered the bullet holes in his vest.  He looked towards the buildings in the distance as if he had a brief moment of recognition but wasn’t quite sure of the sight in front of his eyes.  As he continued to look around it seemed as if he suddenly noticed his hands.  If my hands looked like his did I would have stared at them too!  

Within seconds his quick movements had me jumping again.  He leapt to his feet and was staring at his hands with his eyes and mouth opened wide.  As dry and crusty as his face was, I truly believed all of the stretching would cause it to explode into dust.  I wondered what it was about his hands that disturbed him so.  He seemed to stare at them, still open mouthed, for an eternity.  It was then that I realized the scene had changed from high noon to evening for the sun was slowly dropping behind the rocky hills.  

Finally he looked away from his hands and his gaze fell upon the saddlebags that were lying near him.  Again the questioning look upon his face followed by the exclamation of remembrance.  He, by this time, had bent over to pick up the bags with a look of what appeared to be anger. In the distance, to his immediate northwest, a column of light appeared.  To me, it looked as if Capt. Kirk from the Starship Enterprise was preparing to beam down.  Yeah, I laughed at the thought.  I couldn’t help it!  Funny, though, we seemed to notice the light at the same time.  He picked up the saddlebags, tossed them over his ragged shoulders and slowly began to walk towards the light.  The screen, I mean, my window, faded to black and slowly the lights on the Willamette began to dance.