Rafe and Slim

“What in the Hell was that?” Slim about broke his neck looking out the sliding back window of the Chevy pickup.
“I don’t know, but the truck just died,” Rafe said as he reached for the ignition, turning the key and cranking the engine as they coasted down the gravel road. The old brown Chevy came to rest at the bottom of the hill and would not start again.
“Time for a cold Mickey’s.” Slim reached into the cooler in the back of the pickup.
“Don’t you ever think about anything other than that junk you call beer? Rafe slapped the dust off of his dungarees with his black cowboy hat.
“Yeah, sex. It’s kind of like you and that stupid black cowboy hat.” Slim twisted the gold cap off of the green beer bottle and walked around to the ditch side of the truck.. He had developed his own way of screwing off the cap in one twist. It took some doing and he probably ran the risk of developing cumulative trauma syndrome in his right wrist from the torturous movement that was required for this removal. Slim had purposely moved to the off side of the truck away from Rafe because he knew what was coming. Sure enough Rafe had picked up a rock and winged it toward Slim, because like Rafe always said, “You can talk about me but don’t talk about my cowboy hat.” Slim dodged the missile and flipped Rafe off.
The black cowboy hat was special. Rafe had gotten it from none other than Bob Dylan at a concert at Lake Tahoe, California in 2001. Dylan took off the hat at the end of the encore performance of All Along The Watchtower and flung it into the crowd. The hat, black with sliver conches braided in leather spun through the air and was tipped by a fan in front of Rafe who had jumped up trying to grab it. It flipped over several times and landed right on Rafe’s head. He wasn’t even looking at the time. He was watching Slim pull another Mickey’s Big Mouth out from under his vest and was just about to slap him up side of the head. In fact, Rafe didn’t even know the hat was on his head until someone took a swipe at it. That was a big mistake. Rafe’s left arm shot out at the incoming hand, striking it right above the wrist. Slim saw what was going on and heard the bone crack. Then he knew they had problems. Rafe started quoting poetry from Lord Byron. Slim knew then that Rafe was out in whatever zone he went to when he went on the offensive instead of the defensive. The way he put it was that it felt like people were violating his fifteen feet of personal space. Then he would start reciting lines from Lord Byron and the shit would hit the fan. There were security guards and people flying everywhere trying to get away from Rafe, the big man who had cleared a wide swath in the crowd at Harrah’s Casino on the very stage where Elvis had made his comeback. When it was all over, Rafe and Slim were headed out the back door, miraculously unscathed and free of the melee that was still going on. They duffed behind the tour buses and almost ran right over Dylan himself. “Thanks for the hat, Bob, Rafe Garcia’s the name.” Dylan got out of the way as the two ran past, plastering himself against the side of the bus. “Don’t mention it boys,” he said as he got on the bus headed for another joint. Rafe had vowed to wear the hat from that time on, but only on trips where something equally as cosmic was going to happen.
This could indeed be the cosmic event of his life that was taking place on the little dirt road outside of Jetmore, Kansas. And here the two of them were with the same black cowboy hat and a green bottle of beer. Not like it was déjà vu or anything of that sort, but the two of them knew something was about to happen. The high pitched whine they heard from behind them caught their attention as they looked at each other and then had just enough time and presence of mind to jump into the road ditch. A lone cock pheasant flushed out of the ditch as they flattened down just like they did when the F-5 tornado hit several years back. Rafe looked up and saw the pheasant disintegrate into nothing. He felt the hair stand up on his arms, not from fright but from what seemed to be a magnetic pull on his entire body. He looked up the ditch and could see that Slim was already levitating above the ditch and was being stood upright a little at a time. Slim had an odd look on his face and was trying to raise the green beer bottle to his lips. Rafe saw what looked like a small white star attach itself to Slim’s arm and prevent him from moving it any closer to his mouth. Was Slim going to be disintegrated like the pheasant? Rafe wasted little time. He jammed the black cowboy hat down on his head and began reciting his favorite Lord Byron poem:

“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!"

From: The Destruction of Sennacherib
Lord George Gordon Byron

On his own, Rafe Garcia rose up out of the ditch and, faced in the direction of the light and sound that engulfed the two Kansas men, walked steadily toward he knew not what. What he did know was that what he and Slim were experiencing at that moment would propel them and the rest of the world into a new era.