Beasts and Violins

Captain Fidalgo

26 Captain Fidalgo I’m pissing outside the gate again, aiming at the bases of nettles where they lean on red brick ballasts at the property’s edge. Only two horses and one molting mule are around to watch, the horses sinking bit by bit into pasture soil, the mule mostly scaled now, dermal, like a diseased, wingless griffin shaking tufts off into breeze. Past the gate, the road runs in reverse up the hill. It heads toward a large house with steel hawk statues on each stump throughout the exactly trimmed lawn. It all cost money, and I know the owner has it. I see the invoices when I bring his parts, aluminum plates to replace glass windows on planes. Fuselages made lighter, requiring less fuel to fly, but now lacking any passenger views. Still, the plugs sell. Anyway, I piss outside this man’s gate each time I drive to his island, though he isn’t such a bad man. He’s English, helps me unload, and even allows his show-quality retriever to wander through overgrowth the mule hasn’t eaten. But I don’t trust his dual fortress. This island outpost complete with compound. Or that when I piss on the nettle stems where they lean against the red brick ballasts 27 of the gate, I can’t see the mansion between the trees. If I could, I wouldn’t piss here. I’d have to ask to use his toilet, and he might even let me, as long as I would remove my boots first. Still, I can’t put faith in a man who conceives of a cost-effective way to get airlines to block over cabin windows. Hell, I don’t trust his mule. Its fat grows in cylinders along its haunches and neck, like a tumor of worm with several bodies but a single head too tangled to find. ...