Dirtbags, part 5

[Doktor Howl]

Congress Street

The aging hipster gave a grunt as he collided with Katie.

"HEY! Watch where you're going!"

"You watch where you're going."

"I don't take advice from Food Babe freaks, mister."  Katie was definitely building up to something unpleasant.

"Nothing wrong with Food Babe.  She's got lots of good advice, and she's helping me through things."

"Do tell," I put in.

He looked at me.  "If it's any business of yours, I have advanced intestinal cancer.  I'm trying to purify myself."

"WHAT?"  Katie stared at him.  "You're trying to cure cancer with dietary advice from a blatant fraud like Food Babe?"

"That's not what I said," the hipster said, "It's beyond curing.  I'm just trying to purify my system before I go.  Almost like a religious thing.  Now," he gestured at the sidewalk, "Do you mind?"

Katie stepped aside, and the hipster walked down the street.  Katie looked a little down...Can't say as I blame her, but still; she had no way of knowing.  I grabbed her arm and walked her into the pub on the corner.  It was a sports bar that had long ago stopped trying, and was now a medium-quality watering hole.  We sat down, and I ordered drinks.  I'd already had a few too many, but what the hell?

"This whole fucking town is cursed," Katie said, "Some people say it started with John Baylor, but it goes way farther back than that."

"Wait.  You're a scientist.  You don't believe in curses."

"I do when I'm drunk.  And this is relevant to your story so shut your yap and listen up."

"Okay."  I sipped at my whiskey.

"First people anyone knows about here where the Hohokam.  They were builders, and dug giant canals - that we still use today - from the Colorado River to Tucson.  Pretty soon, some other tribes, the Pima and the Apache, saw what nice land they had developed, and began raiding in an effort to push them off the land."

I knew all of this, but what the hell?  She's a good storyteller.

"Sometime during all of this, the weather had changed in New Mexico, and the Anasazi couldn't grow food to support their rather massive cities.  The last three years there must have looked like something out of a horror movie.  Short story is, we have evidence that they attacked each other at the family level, to eat their victims.  Verrrrry bad medicine.  No Southwestern native American could tolerate that.  The few survivors fled, some elsewhere - which is a whole other story in itself - and some West to the Hohokam.  The Hohokam took them in despite the stigma on them, both because they were famous builders, and because they needed the extra bodies to hold off the encroaching Pima & Apache.

"It didn't help.  The Hohokam were forced into smaller and smaller territory, at a faster rate than before they'd taken in the Anasazi refugees.  There's all kinds of rational explanations for that, but you and I know how useful rationalism is in Tucson or, for that matter, a tribe facing extinction.  Eventually, they built the castle up North at Casa Grande for a last stand, but as far as anyone can tell, the Apache never assaulted the castle.  They just laid sort of a loose siege to it, and waited for the last of the Hohokam to starve to death...Much as the Anasazi had. 

"Now we don't even know the Hohokam's name.  The word is from the O'odham language, and means "all used up, or in a nastier sense, "all consumed".

"Anyway, ever since then, nothing's been right in this area.  Jump forward 410 years, during the American civil war.  John Baylor comes in, and tries to get the Apache to behave.  They aren't having it.  He finally - within a month - gets frustrated enough that he orders a genocide."

I looked up Baylor's command a couple of days later.  It reads "Use all means to persuade the Apaches or any tribe to come in for the purpose of making peace, and when you get them together kill all the grown Indians and take the children prisoners and sell them to defray the expense of killing the adult Indians. Buy whiskey and such other goods as may be necessary for the Indians and I will order vouchers given to cover the amount expended. Leave nothing undone to insure success, and have a sufficient number of men around to allow no Indian to escape."

"Everything since then has followed a pattern.  Massive influx of immigrants - Phoenix and Tucson have two of the highest growth rates in the USA, and have for a long time - followed by horror in just about every form you can think of.  Injured veterans of World War I that had no home of record were sent here to die in the streets.  John Dillinger you know about, etcetera ad nauseum.  Right down to the present day, with some hipster building a religion for himself out of an con woman, so he doesn't feel so bad about the horrible death that's waiting just around the corner from him.

"So you tell me, Dok, you've been here 10 years.  Is this place cursed or not?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but a young man at the next table leaned over and said, "Curses can be beaten with the power of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ.  Do you know the good news?"

Katie snarled and gave him some bad news, right in the face.  I jumped up and put the boot in.  I was pissed.  We're talking about Tucson, and he brings up the God that forgot all about us.  Some do-gooder tried to break it up, and got an elbow in his face for his troubles.  Katie grabbed the interfering bastard by the balls and ran backwards - under the old wisdom that says if you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow - into a crowded table.  Drinks went everywhere, and people stood up and grabbed the guy.  I grabbed Katie by the arm and hauled her out the front door.  Sounds of mayhem increased inside.

Katie lit a cigarette, and we walked calmly down the street.

"So," I said, you said this is all relevant to my situation?"

To be continued.

[LMNO]

Damn.  Cursed, indeed.


In the universe next door, the giant mold spore of Tucson is really glad that Katie and Howl are in this one, because it's sure she'd find some way to locate and grab it's testicles.

[Doktor Howl]

Damn.  Cursed, indeed.


In the universe next door, the giant mold spore of Tucson is really glad that Katie and Howl are in this one, because it's sure she'd find some way to locate and grab it's testicles.

There's way more than that, really.  I truncated it for readability.  I can post a timeline of horror elsewhere.

[LMNO]

"Not-So-Secrets of Tucson".

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Do you have reading recommendations for the horrible history of Tucson?

[Doktor Howl]

Do you have reading recommendations for the horrible history of Tucson?

Not really, but I am sure I can find some.

Thing is, most people who write about Tucson are in Tucson, and most of them are happy to live in dirtbag central and won't say a bad thing about it.

[Eater of Clowns]

The curse is just waiting, throwing warning shots at you all until then.

In a century the foodbabe will be smiling down from statues and they will cleanse themselves beneath her and then comes the curse's time.

[Doktor Howl]

The curse is just waiting, throwing warning shots at you all until then.

In a century the foodbabe will be smiling down from statues and they will cleanse themselves beneath her and then comes the curse's time.

By which you mean cannibalism.

[EK WAFFLR]

I like Katie.

[Junkenstein]

This has shaped up excellently. Feels like a 7 parter? Or Ongoing?

[Doktor Howl]

This has shaped up excellently. Feels like a 7 parter? Or Ongoing?

7-8, depending on how much time I have available.  I find myself in the horrible predicament of having to do a job I am planning on fucking off from, for reasons to ticklish to tell in the amount of time I have while not doing said work.

I need a crowbar.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well that was a reminder for me not to judge because I don't know the backstory. I was all ready for Food Babe Guy to get an ass whoopin too.

[Doktor Howl]

Well that was a reminder for me not to judge because I don't know the backstory. I was all ready for Food Babe Guy to get an ass whoopin too.

I sort of feel cheated.  Like I'd give up what's left of my tiny, ragged soul for that, on the right day.

[hooplala]

Well that was a reminder for me not to judge because I don't know the backstory. I was all ready for Food Babe Guy to get an ass whoopin too.

Nobody comes off looking good when you kick the ass of someone with terminal intestinal cancer.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well that was a reminder for me not to judge because I don't know the backstory. I was all ready for Food Babe Guy to get an ass whoopin too.

Nobody comes off looking good when you kick the ass of someone with terminal intestinal cancer.

So true. So, so true.