The True Adventures
Of
Youthly Puresome
FIRST BLOOD
OR
A TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY ALPHA STRIKE
by
Jack Woodul
The very Young and Youthly Puresome was returning through the dim dawn of a Mexican morning, a brick on the accelerator of his VW Beetle, which was chattering along like a sewing machine in heat toward his Inamoratus, afters a summer's abstinence at the dissolute Univerity of Guadalajara. His eyes were glazed over with lack of sleep and pent-up amore. Two hundred miles south of the Border, mesquite bushes and cactus whipped by as the small car hurtled along toward destiny.
Out of the uncertain light in the distance, Puresome saw the outline of the wily Mexican cow emerge from the roadside bushes and climb onto the blacktop. "No sweatski!" he figgered, "I been dodging these critters all summer, and it is a piece of cake." He eased over to the side of the road away from the cow. Off in the distance, the Mexican cow matched his move exactly.
Again, no sweat! Puresome moved back to his original side of the road; the cow again matched him.
At the speed of VW heat, the distance remaining was diminishing quickly, so Puresome was forced to take his foot off the gas and, again, dodge to the other side of the road. Not to be faked out, the cow fixated on his tires and followed him on over.
As time and distance to point of cow impact rapidly diminished, Puresome slammed on the brakes, geared down, and dodged frantically. The cow danced to either side of the road in perfect choreograpy, until, in a squeal of tires and a pall of smoking rubber, Puresome hit the instrument of the AntiChrist smack dead center head on in a tremendous crash! and knocked the animal into the ditch!
Yaaaaa! Puresome jumped out of his beloved machine; the sloped hood between the headlights was perfectly dented with the shape of the animal's ass; there was cow shit on the roof!
Youthly saw red and went totally batshit! He reached under the seat of the car and retrieved the 9mm pistola he had carried all summer to defend himself, located the cow, who was struggling to its feet in the bar ditch, worked the action on the pistola and started to shoot furiously.
He returned to his senses holding a smoking pistola, empty of shells with its action open. The cow was definitely morted with some nine bullet holes in its person. Puresome became aware that this action might not endure him to the locals, and that the owner and his buddies might emerge from the brush waving machetes and screaming bloody murder for a piece of Puresome's worthless, cow-killing, Gringo beautocks!
So he jumped back into the injured VW and tore off into the sunrise. Luckily, he had hit the cow so dead center that the damage did not include the actual steering of the vehicle. When his heart finally stopped pounding some, he remembered the tequila in the trunk, which, even the smallest child knows, is in the pointy part of that car, not the back.
The reason that this might cause some worry was that Puresome had spent most of his remaining pesos on bottles of tequila and packed them loosely in his pile of almost a summer's worth of dirty clothes, figgering that he would leave a couple of bottles visible and declare those to Mr. Customs Man, and hope for the best, relying on the luck of idiots and drunks to see him through. Now, there could be the very distinctive odor of dripping fire water to give him away, and he would be a grape for the minions of the law to pluck, and he would never see Tunita again.
But Grong, the Goat God, who was to befriend Puresome for a lifetime of Happy Hours, took him into his hands this day. Not a drip of cactus juice dropped, because, as it turned out, not a bottle was broken in its careful cradle of dirty skivvy. And, even better, the Volkswagon's hood was jammed shut by the force of impact. He passed through border scrutiny like fat through gooses.
There were lessons here to be learned, but Youthly, being himself, had his eyes fixed on Albuquerque and a rendezvous with sweet, dark-eyed destiny, and heedlessly hurtled north up the interstate highway.
In his smokey, celestial barroom, Grong sighed a massive sigh and marked a "one" on the cocktail napkin with Puresome's name on it. Because he knew with a prescience peculiar to such a deity that there would be lots more marks out there in the misty future, and that he'd have his hairy hands full taking care of the boy.
And, being a god, of course he was right.
Says Puresome
FIRST BLOOD is copyright 1997 by Jack Woodul
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