Excerpted from The Winged Leopard in a Foreign Land by Stevie Burns “Hi there, Hashi. Did you miss me?” HM stood before Ichiro now, wearing a grey suit and black trench coat. “I think you have something that belongs to me.” Ichiro didn’t know what the man could have meant. “I don’t have anything of yours, I took nothing from you. Except the champagne.” HM grinned. “Yes, the champagne. That you can keep. But there was one thing that I gave you, just something on loan, really. And I want it back.” Again, the yellow smile. “Haven’t you felt as if maybe, something was eating at you? Isn’t there something bothering you, itching to get out?” The gaps between his teeth were black and vacuous, as if there was no end to the back of his mouth. His mouth. That’s when Ichiro realized what was different about HM, why it was he looked changed. His moustache, the caterpillar moustache, he had shaved it off. “Ah, I see the truth is starting to dawn,” smiled HM. “I miss the little tickle over my lip, if you get my drift.” He raised his arms and revealed long feathers. He flapped them twice and as his feet lifted off the ground, they became talons. The combed back hair seemed to mould itself onto his head, shifting and melding until a lumpy hairless head was revealed. The vulture. Before Ichiro could move, before he could think what to do, the vulture was upon him, stabbing, pecking and tearing away at him with his thick, heavy sharp beak, scratching viciously with his thick talons, easily ripping through fabric and skin. Ichiro screamed, rolling onto his back in agony, trying to fight sharp ripping and stabbing tools, distracted and confused by the flapping, bobbing movement of uneven feathers. He wished the ground could shift underneath his body, let him just sink away, and disappear right into the earth. He heard another sound, a man’s yell. He looked up and behind him, and saw legs running. Two legs. A man with chaps was running to help him. He wore boots. Whap! A cowboy boot kicked the vulture. Whop! Ichiro heard more than saw another boot connect, kick the beast. The vulture screeched hideously, “Kyaa!” Ichiro glimpsed the flash of a broad knife shining in the sun. There was silence, the wind. Ichiro squinted into the desert sun, trying to lift his head. His chest hurt, and he knew he was bleeding. The face of a man blocked out the sun’s intensity. The man asked, “Are you alright?” Ichiro knew the face. It was the face in his daydream, the face that came to him in a haze of peyote. It was the cowboy. Ichiro closed his eyes, and allowed himself to be unconscious. He was sitting on a tatami mat facing north in a beautiful tearoom with softly lit shoji screens, and the cowboy was his guest, sitting on another tatami mat, and facing south. They would represent the Yin and Yang, and share the ritual Japanese tea, and then-. Ichiro opened his eyes to the robust smell of cherry pipe tobacco and the crackle of a modest campfire. He could hardly register what he saw sitting before him, his head was so battered and his eyes so resistant to focus. It was the cowboy, smoking a pipe. He sat on his saddle wearing his chaps over a pair of worn jeans, and big boots. A white t-shirt stretched over his muscled chest in a warm and inviting hug. Ichiro sat up, and the immense pain in his chest was debilitating. He stiffened with a groan, tried to relax his muscles again, and used his hands to push himself up into a seated position. He folded his legs in and assessed his situation. It was just he and the cowboy, a horse, a fire, and his wounds had been cleaned, treated, and then bandaged. “What did you use to clean the wounds?” “Peyote.” The cowboy puffed his pipe. “Oh, uh. Peyote is also medicinal then?” The cowboy closed his eyes, and it was answer enough. “Thank you for everything,” muttered Ichiro. The cowboy nodded, and it was understood that no further acknowledgement would be necessary. Honour was what a man like the cowboy simply had. He didn’t require thanks for being who he was. He sat and squinted into the fire. “How did you-? I mean, how did you come to be right there, right when I needed you? Were you following me? Who are you?” The cowboy puffed on his pipe, and stopped to consider the man sitting opposite the fire from him. “Does it matter?” Ichiro was silenced, stilled, and a little stunned at this question. He wasn’t sure what mattered, but he did know that he wanted to know something more about the man who saved his life. So he answered, “You saved my life.” The cowboy grinned, and replied, “What else would I have done? Let the damn bird shred your chest open?” He shook his head in a silent chuckle. “That’s no way to treat a fellow.” He puffed on his pipe, and added, “Smoke?” Ichiro shook his head. The peyote sauna still affected him a little. He saw colours in the objects around him that could not possibly be real. The fire was lavender, orange and green. The cowboy’s hat seemed to glow red. Then he realized he had inhaled a great deal of peyote, enough to stay in his system for several days, and his wounds had been additionally treated with peyote. Could I overdose from peyote? “I took a peyote sauna last night. Should I worry? With my wounds, I mean…” The cowboy looked at Ichiro straight in the eye. “Did you enjoy it?” Ichiro considered, and nodded his head. “Then you don’t need to worry.” Ichiro touched the bandages on his chest, and picked at it, tentatively. “Don’t mess with it,” ordered the cowboy. He started to tap the spent tobacco out of his pipe and into the fire. “You hungry?” Ichiro shook his head. “Well, you’re going to eat anyway.” He grabbed for a skillet that was sitting atop the log. There was a fork resting on the lip, obviously the cowboy had used it earlier. “Take it,” he said, offering it to his patient. Ichiro took the skillet and fork, and asked, “What is it?” Some kind of brown food that Ichiro could not identify was cooked and mushy looking. It smelled good, though. “Food.” And with that, the cowboy slid down the log so that he sat on the ground, pulled his cowboy hat down over his eyes, and leaned back against the log. “’Night,” he said. In the stillness, Ichiro sat under the stars with a skillet of brown food and the sounds of crickets as a serenade. “Good-night,” replied Ichiro. He looked at the cowboy and down at his skillet of food, then at the cowboy again. He didn’t even know his name. “What is your name?” “Jim.” He pushed his hat up his forehead enough to peek out from under the rim, and said, “You’re the winged leopard from Japan, I know.” He closed his eyes again, and fell asleep under his hat. © 2006 Stevie Burns |
