INTO THE DRAGON'S LAIR
©2013
One of the hardest parts of looking in the mirror is facing the truths that stare back at you. It's easy to overlook the wrinkles and graying hair and lie to yourself that you still look twenty. It's far easier to deny what you see and pat yourself on the back and wink, give yourself a thumbs-up and make goofy clicking noises with your tongue in a Fonzie sort of way (
Heeeeeeyyy!)
The truth can be ugly.
But truth, ugly as it may be, is all part of this paradigm shift I was talking about; and we have to be honest with ourselves about things.
I'm being honest about the car...I've realized that if I don't start kickin' some ***, that I will never finish it. Adjustments made, ***-kickin' in progress. But as much progress as I've made on the interior, I need to be honest with myself. I've been avoiding the dragon...
The underside of the car.
Now, I've mentioned the progress I made before I quit working on it; good progress;
great progress! In fact, The Duke sits Rust Reformer'd all the way back to the rear wheel wells. And that's where I stopped. That's where the rust gets heavy, flaky, dirty and mingled with haphazard undercoating. A real mess. My dragon.
And looking into that mirror, I see that this is a mental stumbling block; a barrier. And I need to get past it.
True confessions; I've been avoiding this for years. So, I clear out everything under and behind The Duke, roll out the two-ton jack sporting the 3.91 differential complete with leaf springs and shackles on it from under the car and roll underneath on my creeper armed with a drill and wire wheel, trouble light, scraper and wire brush, and gaze up at the dragon...
Son of a *****! That is one Ugly Mother! I was really hoping my imagination had blown things out of proportion; made it worse than it really was, but...nope. Heavy scale, dirt, and tar undercoating. And the only way to get at it was to, well...
I took a deep breath and jabbed my blade into the sleeping dragon, up to the hilt and as hard as I could muster the strength for.
Red Rain is coming down, Red Rain // Red Rain is pouring down, pouring down all over me Peter Gabriel,
Red Rain
Well, it
felt like red rain, anyway, pouring down all over me; into my hair, face eyes, ears
...ears, for cryin' out loud! In a few minutes I was covered with a fine mist of the stuff, grinding away at the worst of it with the wire wheel, my work area looking like a Martian sandstorm. Fortunately, I had my ceiling-hung fan on HI and the garage door cracked; a lot of the dust was being pushed and/or sucked out the door. Over the next few days of this mistreatment, however, I notice a fine red film over everything in the garage, including the bikes, workbench, shelving and my tools. Damn. My fears are not ungrounded; this job is a freakin' mess and a bloody nightmare. Once I hit the area behind the rear seat, it really starts to suck, in a major way. There are so many goofy little brackets, gussets, sharp corners, etc that it makes getting in there with a wire wheel difficult, and in many places impossible. What it needs is sandblasting. And that ain't gonna happen. Even if I had the equipment there is no way in hell I would spray that nasty **** all over my garage, no way. So I have to continue to use the wire wheel, wire brush and sandpaper and hope for the best and hope Rust Reformer really does what it claims to do.
***
After two weeks in the Dragon's Lair, we are both bloodied and battle-weary. It's hard to tell who is winning; who is losing. Every evening, save but a few, I don the armor and board my ship for the Land Down Under. And I wallow in the Red Rain until it's late and I reluctantly sweep up, move my displaced differential, stack o' tires, lawn mower and Nighthawk back inside, switch off the radio and lights and lock 'er down. Measuring my progress in square feet is depressing; it's not a large area, relatively speaking, but it takes such a concentrated effort to get it clean enough for my satisfaction. I'm not happy just knocking off the loose scale; I want the rust polished and burnished as much as I can. How can Rust Reformer, or anything layered on top of it work, if you don't have a fairly clean base to apply it to? (despite what the can says about brush off loose flaky rust and apply) I have my doubts… maybe I'm over-thinking the situation. But it seems fairly logical to me.
Last night I rolled out from the Land Down Under, the Dragon's Lair, weary, disheveled and bloodied from another tumultuous skirmish with the Evil Red Dust. I opened the garage door all the way and swept the nasty orange powder out from under the Duster (maybe I should call it a Rust-er). I had leaned down under the right rear wheel well to gather up my WMD's (Weapons of Mass De-rust-tion) and the scraper caught on the fender well flare and clattered clumsily to the concrete.
Dammit! I scowled at the car in front of me and grumbled: Pick that up, damn you!
YOU, Valance. YOU pick it up.
Startled, I jerked my head back and banged the back of my skull into the fender flare and dropped the rest of my WMD's in the process.
DAMMIT, Duke! Don'cha know not to sneak up on a man like that?!!!
He laughed that growly laugh that only the Duke can laugh;
Haw, haw haw!
WELL, HELLO, Cappy! Growing jumpy in your old age, are ya?
I ain't jumpy, Duke. Ya scared the hell outta me is all. A man oughta learn to knock! And don't call me Cappy. I hate that!
He perched his hat back on his head a ways and opened his eyes wide; another trademark Duke look,and his voice softened;
A man shouldn't have to knock to enter his own house, Cappy.
Damn it! You're right, Duke. You were here first.
He stuck his hands in his back pockets and leaned back, then nodded at the motorcycles on the other half of the garage.
It's been a while, Cappy. But I see you've been busy; real busy.
Aw, c'mon, Duke. Them's my horses. Iron Horses. My remuda. War Ponies.
He snorted.
Haw; more like buffalo.
From beneath his cover, B.Rex growled a low, gutteral growl, lion-like, although muffled.
Easy, Duke. They're good horses. The big one; He's fast as lightning and strong as a Clydesdale.
He raised his eyebrows.
Is that so? But you could see the glimmer of respect in his eyes.
Been kinda..quiet out here lately, Cappy. I was beginning to wonder if you'd run out on me.
No, Duke, not run out. Just got busy with living; you know how it is. A man gets caught up in work and living and family and such. And don't call me Cappy..you know I hate that.
He managed to both ignore and interrupt me at the same time.
So what sorta clothes are ya planning on dressing me up in, Cappy? Don't tell me any of that sissy foo-foo dandy crap like Monsieur Paul Regret? (the monsieur spoken as he did in "The Comancheros"; Mon-SOO-er)
No, Duke; I always thought you looked pretty good in Winchester Gray. It suits;if you catch my drift...
He fairly beamed at this. Removing his dusty Stetson, he poked his head under the area I was working and softly murmured;
Why, that looks real good, Cappy. Real good. That little filly; that Red Minx; why, she'd real be proud of you, I think.
Without thinking I blurted out, I ain't doin' it for me this time, Duke. Not for me. I'm doin' this one for you.
He seemed noticeably taken aback; and for a second, just a split-second, I thought I saw his eyes getting misty, then he grinned that classic Duke grin.
Well, you keep it up, Cappy, it's looking real good. I'll check back later. See ya, Cappy!
No, wait, Duke! See, I gotta ask ya...Duke? Duke...?
I was alone in the garage, and talking to myself. And I guess I'd been alone the whole damn time. Or was I?
YOU, Valance. YOU pick it up.
I wonder.
***
I peered out into the darkness of the night, blinded by the fluorescents that hung in the garage. I couldn't see a thing, but I swear I heard hoof beats moving away from me, growing faint, and then fading away completely, and then all that was left was the chirping of crickets, and silence. The things I'd moved outside had a layer of dew on them and a fall mist hung in the air. While the temperatures were still warm; no jackets needed yet; there was an autumn smell to the air, a hint of what was yet to come. And standing there in my driveway, alone in the autumn night with the light of a full moon shining through the trees, I thought I heard another sound far off. And moving toward me. It was muffled, unintelligible, but I recognized it nonetheless. And a shiver ran down my spine and I shuddered involuntarily...
You got to hidey-hide // You got to jump and run //You got to hidey-hidey-hide//The old man is down the road. John Fogerty.
The Old Man Down The Road, Centerfield
I believe I've mentioned, a time or two, that I can see Ol' Man Winter ambling down the road. A distant, shambling figure, to be sure, but moving closer nonetheless. He looks quite harmless from a distance; a lonely, doddering figure of a man dragging a heavy suitcase and shuffling in a side-to-side, wobbling gait. Occasionally he will stop; right smack-dab in the middle of that dusty road, set his suitcase down and take a seat on it. Then he'll reach up and pull the tattered fedora from his brow and fan himself, right there in the middle of the damn road, tiny beads of sweat rolling down his leathery, weathered brow; the temperatures can still get pretty warm in mid-day September. The shiny crown of his bald head stands out in almost comic relief against the ring of gray, scraggly hair beneath it. But his toothless grin never fades, and it's not a friendly smile. It matches his eyes; cold, unblinking, reptilian. And those eyes seem to bore a hole right through your skull as he stares, and the toothless idiot-grin never wavers. He will set there for a spell, fanning himself and staring as if in no particular hurry to get anywhere, much less out of the middle of the road. Finally, after a while, he will wearily slap the tattered fedora back on, lurch to his feet lifting the beaten and battered suitcase as if it weighed a ton, and begin trudging once again in my direction. The road is flanked by rows of seemingly endless corn on both sides, once a vibrant green, but now brown and withered; swarms of insects hover above the drooping tassels and the leaves rustle at the slightest hint of a breeze, whispering, murmuring something unintelligible but at the same time, we know what secrets it carries. The grass grows long in the ditches and the frogs trill out their song...reeeEEEEE...and the crickets chirp loudly, as if it were their swan song, like the band on the sinking Titanic playing it's last overture before the icy water rolls over the tops of their Oxfords. And, it is. This may well be the last concert for the crickets as well. The locusts hum loudly, like the buzzing from a shorted out transformer high on a utility pole and grasshoppers leap spastically about to the casual observer, you might not notice the change, but it's there. The squirrels no longer scamper and play, but frantically dash to the base of the oak tree by the side of the road, hurriedly stuff their cheeks with as much payload as they can handle, then madly dash towards some secret cache, only to re-emerge minutes later for another load. The mighty oak itself knows, dropping its mast crop on the ground for the busy squirrels to harvest, its leaves beginning to brown at the tips.
He's a son-of-a-*****, that Ol' Man Winter. You never know what he has in that damned suitcase; snow, ice, power outages, deep-freeze, but it looks heavy, damn heavy. Not so very long ago, scores of buffalo, Tatanka, would freeze to death standing in their tracks on the great plains with no burial shroud other than a cold, white blanket of snow to hide them from the world until the spring thaws, when the buzzards would pick their skeletons clean to bleach in the prairie sun. That was in the suitcase. And ranchers, farmers, sod-busters, children doing chores would get hopelessly lost in a raging blizzard just traveling between the house and the barn...that was in there too. Doctors, hitching up their horse and buggy for a late-night house call would never arrive. In more modern times, automobile radiators would swell and burst, spewing green vomit into the stark white snow beneath, batteries would split down the sides, water pipes would burst. And it's all in that damned suitcase.
And so he ambles on in your direction with that to-and-fro gait, grinning that toothless grin and never blinking those yellow eyes.
Yep, a real son-of-a-*****.
