The Prisoner of Vandam Street by Kinky Friedman

Author:Kinky Friedman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-02-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

They say an apple a day keeps a doctor away. Sometimes in life, however, it takes a little bit more than that. I was well enough to realize that leaving the loft would be against the doctor's orders and would further exacerbate my condition, not to mention my relationship with officious bastards like Ratso, McGovern, Brennan, and Piers Akerman. Nevertheless, I was sick enough to instinctively recognize when another soul was in trouble like myself. The girl on the street was obviously not running to catch a bus. She was clearly, to my mind, running for her very life.

I rummaged through the closet, found my old brightly colored Indian jacket and my cowboy hat and boots. The cat stared at me rather quizzically as I hurriedly put on these disparate articles. It was an ensemble that the cat evidently did not appreciate, for she gave a slight, dismissive mew of distaste and walked off in the direction of Ratso's backpack, which, for all practical purposes, had become her happy dumping ground. Cats, as a rule, do not like cowboys. They do, however, heavily empathize with Indians. I've often said, in fact, that all cats are Indians and all dogs are cowboys. Whenever I say this, people usually look at me like I've got a nail in my head. People don't often have big spirits, but most cowboys, Indians, dogs, and cats do. Jerry Lewis, small spirit; Dean Martin, big spirit. The smallest spirits of all, of course, belong to the throngs of German tourists who congregate around American Indian reservations, possibly attempting to heal their psychic wound and suck out the soul they don't inherently possess. If they really knew anything about Indians they'd no doubt realize that Indians do not believe much in ownership or possession. Indians, for instance, do not believe you can own land, or a river, or a dog, or a horse. The only things Indians truly believe you can own are casinos.

You might think that all the above is a fairly involved and convoluted thought process for one to be going through while attempting to get dressed quickly in order to attempt the rescue of a damsel in distress. You'd be wrong again. The busier one is, the busier is one's mind. And though one's movements may be frantic, one's mind may sail true as an arrow. And the unaimed arrow never misses. Especially when it's flying through one's brain at one hundred miles an hour and one has malaria. Too many ones, innit? "You" is better than "one," innit? Let's all go back to you. It's all about you anyway, innit? It's never about me. It's always about you. And at least I realized that I was crazy.

To stand at a window dressed in an Indian jacket and a cowboy hat was crazy. To see a lighted apartment across the street and believe some form of evil was emanating from the place was crazy. To grab a cigar out of Sherlock Holmes's head was crazy.

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