A Hunter's Moon

Manny Betts kicked back inside of the beer-tent of the mad caravans of those whom he considered to be fellow drifters. There was quite a bit of road between a biker and a carny, yet a cabal of something nearer to like a kinship existed as they both lived more like one another than they had in common with the rubes. The Motorcity Devils rarely missed one that would pass close enough to make the ride, and more than a few that they would travel to if the allure met the mettle. Devils, Tramps & Freaks was the official name of the club, which only those who were in it actually knew. The Night Jubilee was a bird of a different sort of plume; as it only came around once a year, never in the same place twice, and the only way to know where it may pop up on any given year was by word of mouth.

It was a weekend for the wicked, and the beer-tent was the place that you went to kick up your boots after a bit too much, too hard, too fast kept coming in at you. The MDTF wasn't shit here, anymore than a man could make of his own breed leastwise. Back in  Northern Michigan was another story, which was a long fucking way from where they had run to and met up with the craziest show on earth. It was kind of like a free for all, and save for the pit there was no real violence between the breeds. Lanny had spent most of the night tearing some young ass up, with a bit of this and that to keep the mood rolling along in between. Inside of the tent was some joker on the stage wearing an old preacher's cap, tapping the grain of an old six string box into something from somewhere truly beautiful.

"Yo, ya old fuck. Is it nap time already?"

"Jus' awaiting on my second wind Li'l Brother," Manny didn't even have to open his eyes to recognize the grit and swing of Hellbent. Fitting more into the freak category the club's tags, George "HB" Connant, aka Big Connie was like a man mountain, and only one of the truly fucked up individuals that the MDTF had imported from Texas. Manny's thin, short line of compassion usually kicked up whenever he had noticed some wee-bit of a lass that had managed to catch Hellbent's eye would be led away like some another human sacrifice. Manny was all about fun, but ol' boy HB worked on a whole other definition of what all or little it took to make a good time. He didn't believe that he was whuppin' on them, but they definitely took plenty of time coming back around once they had met that monster sonsabitch up close and personal. Still a little better than the come what mays of some poor pecker-toting bastich than ran into the whats and whys he was settled in cozily amongst the Freaks-- and that rainbow mohawk had less than nothing to do with any of that. It was a practical talent in some of their cash-line pursuits to be able to revert some poor mother fucker back to a puddle of loosely strewn DNA. The crazy sonsabitch would likely snort up the mess, if he thought you still had enough drugs in your system to make it worth looking for a straw.

Manny lay back into the green of Devil territory. Aside from having committed the time to the cause, Manny had a head for finance that worked from those several different wells. Some were year-round everyday money making hustles that ranged from various legal standpoints. Others, like a farmer would rotate his crops, were whatever may come along once the heat started coming in a bit too close. It was something like an unspoken deal between them and keeping their names off of the Mecosta County shit-list by keeping all of the hard-line riff-raff from making a little too much mayhem among the more honorable and respectable brands of we the peoples. Sometimes, for some reason, that plan didn't always keep skipping merrily along hand in hand, which usually led to someone heading up towards the county bricks.

Defiance may be a somewhat uniquely American virtue, which was where a pretty good idea go dumped into some high-brow goo-slop jingo-tastically engineered horse shit. So while the great warm and fuzzy people zigged for soaking up into the goo, others like Manny zagged into the big ol' open territory of fuck you land. Manny had a low bullshit tolerance. He blamed it on too many of years of Catholic School, and he had a serious case of the holy shit flashbacks. Okay well, Sister Matilda was kind of the shit, as she was mean old bitch that, entirely inadvertently, had led to Manny being the seriously fucked up individual that he was today.

"You sleeping Grandpa?"

"Yes, and I keep having the same fucking nightmare about some dipshit pissing on my leg. If it were real, I'd be sorely tempted to shoot the mother fucker in the head. But since I am merely dreaming," Manny opened an eye toward Hellbent, long enough to see him flip Manny off as he left back outside into the dark around the tent.  

It was about that time that the words came back to him from the wayward pulpit of the preacher man slipping dusty fingers against some fresh brass strapped into some long ago wood, slipping like a noose and taking his head for a ride down a long river of memories.

"Woke up this morning, with my head in my hand
Come on children, come on"...

'Welcome back Baby-boy,' the voice turned around in his head as he could see the shit and shingle shack where his Mama had kept all of her dreams holed-up like some old gangster hideout; as her days just sort of came and went on back to some place that never truly existed. Oh sure, it was real enough to her, and for what she was both willing and wanting to believe for a time that she could keep it all sacred.

"The snow was falling all over the land
Come on children, come on."

One seriously lethal delusion that one should never keep is that bikers and hippies were the same breed. Don't let the long hair, dope, and the casual disregard of whatever the fuck society thought might be right or wrong. Manny had a warm spot for hippies, similar to the Devil's special place in his heart for sinners. Most of that came about from living with the train-wreck that the blow-jobs for butterflies crackers had left behind.  

Victoria Betts had bought it all, and let it be until it began to bleed into her skull that they were all just as fucking full of shit as the sweet-talk of a true-love pimp. Oh sure, just like his mother, there were just enough true believers to keep it moving. Yeah baby, let us all be free-- you first, bend over as the guru enlightens you as to what is really going on.

"I don't know what you've been told,
Come on children, come on."

He could have hardly given a damn about the free body rides so much as he broken heart. A strained business sense was all that had kept the last one that he had come across from a bit of his own fine-tuning, welcome back to the real world bitch therapy. That wasn't to say that he walked out of their den of iniquity unscathed. Safe to say, he wouldn't be coming back soon. Or even better yet, maybe never.

Manny had set her up in her own little rock and candle shop, and you could have knocked him over with a fucking feather when people started coming in to buy...FUCKING ROCKS! What the fuck... which was fine, he supposed, as it kept her happy for a while. Until the cancer got in her. Her own remedy of crystals and candles wasn't really cutting it, and trying to get her to go and see a real doctor was something alike trying to get her to stick her head on a chopping block.

"They want to fill your body with their poisons Baby-boy, where even if you survive, part of you is still dead or dying inside."

Yeah, Mama would have drank the Koolaid. But he did love her, crazy or not. There was one thing that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that she had did the best that she could by him, so taking care of her later came pretty natural. Some of the shit that she would come up with was kind of cool. Still a bunch of psycho bullshit, but some of those things might have been alright--true or not.

"The streets of Heaven have all been sold,
Come on children, come on."

One of the things that she had told him about was a hunter's moon. Manny didn't even really believe in the god that he grew up with, let alone some BCE recycle. That wasn't to suggest that he didn't believe in anything, but the whole idea of the snuggly-bunny in the sky didn't seem to be playing out. The give-a-shit-god religions were falling down like the big bad golly-woggle bird got spent for looking down upon mankind, and thinking that they were probably pretty fucked up--let alone take a knee.

"Come on children, all come home
Jesus going to make you well"

His mother played this song until the cassette wore through and broke. She had not completely given up on her Roman Catholic upbringing. Her own mother had kind of used her as a whipping post. In her attempts to beat the devil out of her, she had kind of let her out left her stranded in a world that was changing a little too rapidly. Grandma Betts was kind of like Manny's Sister Matilda. Convinced that you must certainly be doing something wrong, his Grandma's battle with the Devil took some of the hide off his mother's ass. Manny had grown away from most of all that, save to wonder that maybe his pre-hippified Mother was not doing so well long before butterfly people had fucked up her head with some warm jizz about what humanity is really supposed to be about.

If the terms mad dog mother fuckers never left your lips, you were likely full of shit. That human beings had created several forms of civilizations did not even remotely suggest that all the mother fuckers had been tamed. Manny didn't particularly mind being one of the throw backs, as the goo hustlers were cashing in on the undying need to believe that humanity was so damn special. Manny preferred to remain among the senseless creatures, no matter if it was a jungle of concrete and steam, or leaves and trees. He wasn't about to start grazing on grasses and twigs to tick a few more days off of the calendar. Most of his evil ways seemed like pretty decent reasons to drag his ass out of bed every day, whenever that may happen...

"Come on children, come on home
come to where a man can dwell."

Give him a hunter's moon to run the night, among the other carnivores and prey-- and whatever happened next was nobody's guess really.

..."Come on children, what's it worth
come on children, come on"

"Hey Mr. Man, what you doing in here by yourself?" Cass, ala Cassandra's voice purred as he felt the bench seat slightly bow underneath him. He knew he must have fallen asleep, or passed out, if only for a moment, from the missed beats in the song lyrics.

"Restoring my go-juice," he said as he grabbed his beer mug from the table. "I was running a couple quarts low."

"Been having too much fun?" She smirked, her long auburn hair trimmed in around her fair features.

... "To make a heaven out of this earth,
come on children, come on"

"Not yet, got any bad suggestions?" Manny asked as he lowered the then empty mug to the table.

"There's so much to do and see here, it'd be a wonder if you'd want to spend any of your Jubilee time with me. You can see me any day." Cass said as she refilled his mug, and then one for herself.

"Not my first time here, nor there neither." He said, and shrugged. "Maybe I'm feeling a bit winsome."

"Is that another word for horny?"

"I can never really say what might inspire me, but I am fairly certain I seen a little piddle crick out back behind the tent. Nothing like we grow 'em back home, but I am fairly certain that I could get these old boots off and get my feet wet."

"Rivers make you horny?" Cass smirked as she slid back off of the bench while Manny waited for her to get out from behind the table.

"I'm thinking you might be trying to take some advantage here girl," Manny said, holding up his beer mug as if to suggest that she was trying to get him all liquored up before taking him out into the dark unknown.

"I can never really say what might inspire me." She grinned as he propped his arm in around her, as they left the tent.

Uley