DREAM JOURNAL

In a shitty western town, I make friends with a policeman. He is enamored with a married woman. I am enamored with the married woman’s daughter. We spend time commiserating and talking about what it would be like to be with each of our crushes. Later that night, the cop comes to me with three five-gallon paint buckets, the tops sealed. He loads them into the back of my car and asks me to drive them away, along with the grief-stricken woman and daughter. I get in the cop’s car wit the buckets and the women and head south. Along the drive I realize that the husband has not come home that night and that is why they are so upset. I have a hunch that my cop friend has dispatched the man, and that I am transporting the body parts. I drive to the Clark Church, where it is morning, and where there is some giant trade-in/disposal of trinkets and junk. The women disappear, and I’m relieved. I take the buckets and get in line to get rid of the evidence, not sure what else to do. I begin a conversation with the people ahead of me in line, and when I look down, the buckets are gone. I panic, knowing I will now be implicated in the crime if the evidence ends up with the wrong party. I walk around the church building and see my cop friend sitting in an office with 2 other cops, the buckets in their custody. I go in with my hands up, surrendering.

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We end up in a shitty hotel. There are two king sized beds, on each bed 2 of us lie. There are prostitutes in the room with us, ugly, scary women. As well, there are 2 hulking dumb men as bodyguards for the women. All of these people work for the drug kingpin. I sense we are in a boomtown of sorts, a North Dakota town fueled by the fracking/oil business. The ladies rotate around me; I don’t interact with them. I watch the bodyguards and my policeman friend. They are enjoying the attention from the women. Soon enough, the kingpin arrives wearing a shitty gray suit. He is bald but for the sides of his head, five o’clock shadow, nostril hairs, and a neck as thick as an 80 year old pine tree. Huge shoulders. Straight lines, top to bottom. He removes his jacket and requests that everyone take down their pants for an STD check. He wants to ensure that we won’t give the prostitutes any communicable diseases. Everyone is under blankets and bedding. They pull down their pants, their service revolvers sliding down with them, and expose themselves. The 2 bodyguards draw guns. The kingpin gets out a revolver and loads it with four bullets and snaps the drum back into place. He is more concerned with the three cops than with me. I look across the bed and see my paramour, my crush, the daughter of the married woman, in a pink negligee and mouthing something to me. She is one spot away from me, but we will never be together, as the kingpin orders all the women to leave. They are all herded into the bathroom and locked away. The cops get up out of the bed at once to rush the others and are quickly shot dead. The kingpin draws his gun on me, and I see the bullet is at the bottom of the drum. He has two empty chambers before he has a bullet. I rush to the alcove near the door and grab for anything to protect myself. I find a livestock syringe and engage the man. The quarters are close and there is no way for the henchmen to get off a shot without shooting their boss. We lock into a struggle, he with his gun and me with the oversized syringe. I force it into the crown of his head and inject whatever is inside the vial. He loosens his grip on me. I run outside and around the corner of the motel, in full flight. There is a wide shallow river running alongside the road, and a bridge crosses the road to the motel parking lot. I get into the river—it’s 3 feet deep—and I drift and swim with the current, feeling the river rock with my hand and feet. I know I will escape. I will find overhang and brush in which to hide. I am just like John Colter. I know the secrets of the river.