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COLOROW’S GHOST RETURNS

Part II Act I

Reader Synopsis: As our stargazing heroine, Salli Radar, beds down for the night in solidarity with her marmot flock an unexpected visitor barges into her makeshift camp. It is the ghost of Ute Chief, Colorow. Has he come to share with Salli the secrets of immortality or does he just want a hot meal? Everyone knows how tough it is to get a solid meal while on cruise control at six feet under but the chief could have waited for an invitation before jumping on an unsuspecting pot of beans. Either way we pick up the action as Salli sits back and watches Colorow consume a large portion of her leftovers, provisions that were earmarked for her ravaged snapdragon crop.

     Colorow ate and ate. Salli had never seen anyone actually inhale beans before. The desperate consumption, however intense, did not interfere with Chief Colorow’s epistle which he sprayed out to the four corners of the world with his compliments.

     “Good beans,” said the chief.

     “Thanks,” purred Salli, the kind of woman who experienced a great deal of pleasure watching a man eat his dinner.

     Finishing his meal Chief Colorow then gazed up into the sky as if waiting for someone’s supernatural approval before continuing his incantation. He began to chant, then passed gas, then looked Salli squarely between the eyes.

     “I am Chief Colorow of the Ute Nation. I have returned to the scene of the crime to witness white culture run amuck. You have paved the earth and put up lodges built of cardboard and glass. You have broken the spirit of the land so that she is no longer your confidant. Even the animals in the mountains plot against you!”

     “Whoa,” thought Salli. “This guy’s one of those radical tree-huggers or something. Why do I always get hooked up with the crazy ones? Sometimes I wish I was back at the Pahrump Bowl with my darling Mango. He wasn’t real bright but he was mine. Besides, I never really liked fat guys and Mango was built like a starving candlestick.”

     Salli spoke to the chief in conjunction with the soft undertones and gentle breezes of the Western Colorado night.

     “Tell me great chief, what can I expect in the hereafter? Is there such a thing as infinite bliss? Are we reunited with ancestors and loved ones? How’s the food in up in heaven? Are there weigh loss clinics for chubby ghosts?”

     “Those your horses?” asked the chief, choosing not to respond to Salli’s inquiries but rather drifting off into a semi-trance followed by another round of the specter’s allegorical confabulation.

     “I have returned to the scene of the crime not for revenge as that wheel is already in motion,” said Colorow. “I have returned rather to lift the Ute Curse from these valleys and canyons. By doing this I seek to create an environment where free men can take hold of their destiny. They must run the scalawags and carpetbaggers out of this sacred land before they destroy it for all future generations.”

     Salli sat dumbfounded as the chief ranted and raved about men who would sell their soul for gold and still want more.

     “This guy is really out there, she thought to herself. He reminds me of my grandfather when he’d get into the chokeberry brandy and recall the bloody details of the range wars fought against the sheepmen.”

     Salli would sit mesmerized on her grandfather’s mangled knee since there were no other chairs in the cabin and the floor was so cold at night. The knee had met its match in 1889 during a particularly curious binge over in Leadville. It was never clear why George Radar wanted to jump from the brothel’s mahogany bar into a tiny glass of brandy in booth three but one thing was for sure: Once he set his mind to doing something he was going to do it, that is unless he passed out first.

     Salli looked at Colorow who sat cross-legged, contentedly contemplating his loincloth.

     “I must have horses to hunt the buffalo,” he uttered in a groan. “The elders are counting on me to bring home meat for the winter. My horses are all gone. What is a warrior without his mount! Young woman, you must act as my agent! The buffalo are passing through my realm and the old ones are hungry.”

     What could she do. This guy sounded desperate. Salli had always fallen for pathetic, dysfunctional male types and she could feel the emotional merry-go-round beginning to churn, only this time she was falling for a fat, horseless ghost who was probably a slob as well, and prone to unannounced fits of hysteria.

     “I know where we can get you a horse but we must be quiet.” whispered Salli sliding closer to Chief Colorow who retreated to the other side of the fire. Do you have a color preference? I think white is nice, before six but maybe something in a palomino or a paint just so long as it doesn’t clash with your war bonnet…”

     It was at that moment that Salli experienced the finest of hallucinations as she looked up and saw Colorow perched atop a massive black stallion, his lance by his side. He skipped across the sky and was gone, presumably in pursuit of the illusive buffalo. Although he hollered no adieu Salli knew he would return to continue his quest.

     “This is too much,” sighed Salli, “but I’d better catch a little sleep while he’s out. Tomorrow’s another day and my snapdragons need a little attention.”

– Sterling Bidet and Gabby Haze

Colorow’s Ghost

Part I Act 2

(READER SYNOPSIS: In our last episode we met Salli Radar, a former nuclear physicist who walked off her job at a Nevada Test Site, dropped out of high society and moved back to Western Colorado to find herself. Spending an idyllic summer cultivating hybrid snapdragons and tending the family’s burgeoning marmot flock on her grandfather’s Dallas Divide ranchette, Salli knew bigger and better things were in store for her just down the next dirt road. The first act crash landed as Salli bursts forth with a Western rendition of “The Sound of Music”, waking the majority of marmots from a lengthy siesta and setting local heifers on a collision course with E minor. We pick up the action as Salli prepares to bed down for the night.)

Although a comfortable house beckoned, a rough and ready herdsman often took to sleeping on the ground. It was no less than a show of solidarity with the livestock. Salli was no different. As she tried to fall asleep gazing at Jupiter and the headlights from the tourists down on Highway 62 she thought long and hard about her recent work in the nuclear industry and back in Los Alamos, New Mexico where she had designed and assembled weapons capable of destroying Las Vegas or  Grand Junction.

The wind kicked up sending an eerie message that winter would be making a house call in about October.

“This is already July,” whispered Salli to herself amid cricket chirps and coyote calls, “I’d better get my nuts in.”

As Salli lay in her goose down sleeping bag, purchased from from a designer outdoor boutique while she still had a fat check coming in, she thought of her fly boy, Mango, who had only last month run off with a bowl of wax fruit leaving her with little roughage and a broken heart.

“That bastard,” she thought, remembering feverish nights in the moonlight on Paiute Mesa and sizzling days with her security clearance and the man she loved in the radiant yet hazy Nevada sunshine. “I miss him so.”

As Salli drifted off to sleep to the rhythm of the vigilant whistle pigs and the swayback skunk cabbage she felt the strange sensation that her camp was being observed from above. Each time she popped her eyes open she saw nothing, but a heavy odor filled the air. It was then that she heard the chanting and the sound of distant tom-toms. The drums got louder as the moon came up for another rousing Charleston with a lingering wallflower star.

“What can this be?” she thought, now frightened by all the recalcitrant racket and the rancorous, pervasive musty smell in the air. “I must be losing my marbles. I shouldn’t be surprised. It happens to a lot of us retired atom splitters.”

Rolling over in an attempt to find a soft spot on the planet, Salli fell back to sleep. The random snoring that had driven poor Mango away now attracted something more wild than Paiute Mesa, something more intoxicating than league night at the Pahrump Bowl. What was out there hovering over the marmot herd anyway?

It was then that Salli awoke, sitting straight up in her sleeping bag. A dark, misty figure meandered its way toward her expired campfire. His glorious war bonnet and taut hunting bow seemed in conflict with his preposterous tie-dyed headband and a badly faded synthetic “Indian” blanket, the kind sold in every border town showroom from Tijuana to Ushuaia. He spoke in quiet, drifting tones as if not to needlessly alarm the snoozing snapdragons.

“I am the great chief Colorow, leader of the proud Utes!” said the spooky warrior. “I have returned to the land of my ancestors!”

“Whoa!” gulped Salli. “How did this guy get in here!”

“I am the great Chief Colorow!” the specter now bellowed. “I come for horses with which to hunt the buffalo!”

Salli sat anxiously as the warrior searched the horizon for the spoils of his intended coup. She had digested all the data on UFOs while working for the government but even the classified variety had never alluded to anything like this Colorow character. This was a completely new ball game.

Had this Pale Horse chief returned to his previous haunt to communicate an eternal message to humanity? Would she share the agonizing particulars of the demise of his people? Why did he choose Salli when there were millions of other more suitable humans crammed onto the planet? Would the Dodgers win the pennant?

George Radar, Salli’s grandfather had mentioned a sacred Indian burial ground somewhere to the west of the family dump on Cottonwood Creek. Had someone left the gate open or had this chubby apparition wrapped in a blanket returned from the ages set on some callous revenge? Had he really chosen her as his medium to communicate sacred and primitive thought to the 21st Century? This was almost Biblical!

“I’ve always had a warm place in my heart for the Utes even though my ancestors stole their land, drove them out of the country and used them for target practice,” mewled Salli. “I just love Hopi pottery and trips to Mesa Verde.”

Salli quickly determined that if this Colorow had intended her harm he would have already drawn his tomahawk and taken her hair. She further surmised that he was here on a holy mission and would communicate his feelings to her when the time was right. In the interim, she would just sit tight and wait for his astounding revelation. What an impact this would have on the humanity! Would humankind rethink his calamitous rendezvous with ultimate destruction? What new philosophies would emerge? Could this elusive chief snatch 21st Century Homo Sapiens from the jaws of ecological extinction?

Of course, her newfound celebrity status would not emerge without some sacrifices. There would be the loss of privacy, as government heads all over the world would place incredible demands on her time. There would be the endless interviews by reporters and of course the abrasive talk show circuit. She would need a new wardrobe. Would Mango see her on TV? Salli whirled out of her trance as Colorow cleared his throat as if to speak.

“Here it is,” ducked Salli expecting the infinite truth from the happy hunting ground to fill the nearby canyons. “I am all ears, oh great warrior!”

“What’s for dinner, toots?” asked Colorow.

TO BE CONTINUED