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The Scorpion Hunt

by Roy Smith

Kara sat on an old park bench, halfway up the dune behind the house. The sun was going down behind us and behind a fantastic layering of clouds in such a way that all the colors of our entire environment were changing moment by moment. She dug her bare toes into the sand, leaned forward, stared into the distance, and rocked her head slowly side-to-side as if to gain perspective. “I can’t even tell which things are in front of or behind which other things!” Moody Blues poetry played softly on Fred’s boom box: “…and the browns, reds, and golds of autumn lie in the gutter, dead.”

Kara’s dad held a gin-dripping olive halfway to his mouth, his face in a half smile. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that one, Kara. Which mountains are you looking at?” Fred popped the olive into his mouth. Mmm. Garlic-stuffed.

“Essen Zeit!” Kara’s mom Angela yelled up at us from the back door. Kara yelled back, “But the sun isn’t even down yet!” She pulled her feet out of the sand and snuggled closer to Carson. “She always does that!” Carson’s attention was focused on the subtly changing colors in the landscape. “Mm-hmm.”

The air was shifting back and forth, trying to decide whether or not to become wind.

Leroy finished off another Bud Light and threw his empty can down the dune, toward the house. “I’ll pick ’em all up in the morning.”

“Sure you will.”

Leroy cracked open a fresh Bud. “Scorpion hunt tonight? Go for a new record?”

Fred nodded. “Some of the scorpion lights need new batteries. I’m on it.”

Carson sat up straight. “Scorpion lights?”

“Scorpions glow in ultraviolet. Blacklight. Fred has flashlights.”

Carson raised his eyebrows. “Interesting.”

Angela stepped out from the back door again. “Don’t forget to bring down the radio when you come to dinner … which is getting cold by the way!”

The mountains in the distance had grown almost indistinguishable from the sky behind them. “I guess it’s time.” We gathered everything together and carried our stuff down the dune to the house, stomping sand off our feet at the back door. Mmm! The kitchen smelled wonderful. Leroy grabbed a stack of dishes and dealt them out to places on the table, then silverware and napkins. Angela had arranged a smorgasbord on the kitchen pass-through counter, and we loaded up our plates with savory food.

Kara plopped herself down on the sofa, cross-legged, her plate in her lap. “You wanna play the animal verb game?”

Leroy climbed over the couch, making his way to the table with a full dish of food in his hand. “Okay! You start!”

Fred was already seated and had three or four flashlights halfway disassembled next to his dinner plate, a Zip-Loc bag of batteries and an electronic battery tester at hand. His martini glass had miraculously refilled itself, and it was flashing colored lights. “I’ll go last.”

Carson sat next to Kara, balancing his dinner on his knees. “Animal verb game?”

Kara laughed. “It’s a tradition. We play it all the time out here in the desert! I’ll start: I can’t bear to explain how it works, though.”

Carson slowly nodded. “I guess you’ve outfoxed me this time.” He dipped a wedge of pita bread into some hummus.

Leroy just about snarfed beer through his nose. He started to giggle. He was barely able to say, “Don’t wolf your food.”

Angela shook her head. “Why do you guys keep badgering me?”

Fred said, “Skip me for now. I’m busy.”

Kara was rolling her eyes. “Dad! That’s not very endearing!”

Carson had stopped eating. “Umm. Quit horsing around?”

Leroy lost it. He knocked over his beer and dumped a bowl of salsa onto the table while lunging for napkins to mop up his mess. “Yakety yak!” He could barely speak at this point. “Fred. Please! Yak is a verb! It’s your turn.”

Fred had polished off half his martini as well as one or two of its grand garlic-stuffed olives. He had four fully-assembled ultraviolet flashlights arranged in front of him. “I suggest we scorpion our way out the front door, scorpion around to the back of the house, and then scorpion up the dune to see how many scorpions we can scorpion.”

THE END

Over Easy

by Roy Smith

Sheila’s cranial pate sloped back from her prominent brow ridge at an obtuse angle. With both hands she lifted the rock a second time to bring it down upon the skull of her victim with measured force. Her eyes were bloodshot with primal rage. The lines of her face were distorted by frustration and purpose. Lice dropped from her hair as she delivered the second blow.

“Alright! Alright already!” Targ grunted, grasping futilely for those animal hides Sheila had pulled off him moments before. He rubbed his head, pushing down the swollen lumps with his stubby fingers. “Just once!” he said, sitting up, shaking off his pleasant dreams, “Just once in my life you could let me sleep in.”

“Get breakfast!” Sheila raised her alarm-clock rock again over her lovely head with a partially toothless grimace. “Get breakfast.”

“Truly, my dear, you have a way with words.” Targ felt nothing but fondness for his hirsute mate. Her feminine, unbathed scent filled their cave, and he shook his head in wonder at his personal good fortune. Their four children lay sprawled here and there beneath blankets and skins, the bones of last night’s dinner sizzled among the embers of yesterday’s fire, and in the distance the guttural caw of a predatory bird cut through the mingled sounds of every other animal’s waking utterance.

Targ squared his shoulders with audible spinal pops, hefted himself to his feet in a crouched posture so as not to injure his head further on the low stone ceiling of their happy home, and grabbed his favorite club on his way out their front door.

A shadow from far overhead flickered through the bushes. Targ shaded his eyes and looked straight up. “That’s right, you vulture,” he said. “I’m on my way up.”

Targ shouldered his club and swaggered through the thorny underbrush on his way to the stream, oblivious to the scrapes and cuts on his legs. He pushed his way through a knot of wild boars that had gathered there to wallow and drink. One of them charged him, but he simply grabbed it by one tusk and slammed it on the ground, winded. It was their usual way of saying “good morning.”

Soaking wet and refreshed, Targ trudged out from the stream and rubbed his hands and feet with sand to get ready for his climb. He shoved his club into the bag slung diagonally across his back and rubbed his arms and legs with red mud, ready to suffer an hour or so of direct sunlight heat.

“This time, no red-skin blisters,” he said aloud, almost like an incantation.

Targ began to climb. The cliff was his enemy and his friend. This morning encounter would try them both and cement their relationship. It would deepen their understanding of one another. Targ maintained a constant conversation with the cliff, his provider and nemesis. One single misunderstanding would leave Targ dead, his family would perish … but the cliff would live on to meet another man like Targ. The cliff had weathered a thousand men like Targ.

But Targ’s fingerprints were leather, his toes found holds no eye could have seen, and he was ready to grip rocks with his teeth if necessary. At times he might have appeared to defy gravity herself, had anyone been watching. Targ finally reached the raptor’s eyrie.

And the Egg.

But the raptor was vigilant, and covetous of her unborn progeny.

Smooth, speckled shell of an enormous egg: filled with nutrition enough to hatch a baby chick larger than any full-grown rooster; filled with nutrition enough to provide breakfast for two adults and four children. A beautiful shell exactly the right size to fit Targ’s shoulder bag.

Targ leaped out onto the lonely cliff prominence; the bird swooped in as it always did. Targ deftly defied it with his club in one hand while somehow scooping the giant egg into his pouch. The defeated avian sent forth its dismal cry that echoed across the valley. Her mate heard it and answered in turn. “Our child! Our child! What a loss! We’ll try again tonight.”

Meanwhile, Targ scrambled down the slope with his fragile package. As soon as he was able, he wrapped it in a cushion of dry grass. To this day, Targ had never cracked an egg before its time. He sloshed through the creek, scraped through the brambles, and humbly presented Sheila with his trophy.

They owned a concave stone, which they heated above a fire every day, and on that rock Targ cracked open that egg, and he and his wife and four children scooped out handfuls of delicious breakfast. Over easy.

Targ leaned back against his cave wall with a satisfied smile on his broad, tan, lumpy face. He picked at his teeth with the quill of a feather that had fallen from the sky. As he began to doze off, he saw his lovely wife drawing near, a rock in her hands.

“Get lunch!” she said. “Get lunch!”

THE END