ABDUXION

My last marriage was a 3-way relationship.  My husband brought his best buddy, mentor and solace with him.  This guy was no particular friend of mine, but I saw the benefits my husband gained from his presence, and could find nothing that suited as well.  Maybe you’ve run into him yourself– a Mr. Jack Daniels?  My husband also considered him a form of high-octane fuel, who would allow him to work unceasingly for days at a time at his beloved obsessive profession, fine woodworking.

One year of a sudden, Mr. Daniels no longer was of service.  He left.  And in his wake, left untied threads, unsorted closets, and scars from some degree of physical abuse. The most disconcerting were various aspects of my husband that had perforce been shielded from the light of day for some decades.  In face of this we decided it wisest to take some space– how about the desert for space?  and perfect for the metaphysical geologist R had become on the side, memorizing the periodic table and starting a nice collexion of mineral specimens.

R had a blind Ford van, brand new since shortly before we’d met.  With time he had built it into a self-contained Traveling Shell.  I’d joke that if the world came to an end, he could orbit indefinitely with just the addition of some oxygen tanks… So with the other member of his support team Ichamani, a fawning longhaired German Shepherd,  and some survey maps of various abandoned mines, he left too.

I got occasional fonecalls from here & there in a vast and sparsely occupied American SouthWest.

He’d spent time with an elderly pair of rockhounds, Rattlesnake Jack & wife.  The ol’ guy had gone outside and put a bullet in his head to end his extreme discomfort from various ailments.

He met a gay pair with a geode mine on the Mexican border, which they visited  with semi-auto’s in hand.  One had written THE authoritative text on the formation of geodes and was courted heavily by German geologists as result.  The 3 of them were planning to head for Colorado at the behest of the head of Mines in the U.S.– teenagers were damaging themselves falling into abandoned mines, their parents were suing the government, who in response was having the mines capped with concrete, a shortsighted and rotten solution.  Help was needed at the national conference to head this off  (alas, one of the partners took seriously ill, & R did not have the experience/knowledge to attend alone).

He spent the night in the yard of  a woman who lived in a neighborhood of shacks on the outskirts of a city, using 1 or 2 gallons of water a day– she insisted he park where he would be relatively safer from potshotters shooting up his van in the wee small ones.

He spent an afternoon sitting on a curb by the highway with the local sheriff– one of many who stopped him.  (After they got over the long hair, they were all relieved to hear he was packing– dangerous territory that close to Mexico.)  He sharpened the sheriff’s knife while the sheriff told him of large encampments out in the desert of foreign soldiers who did not speak a word of English, there for the potential crowd control of Americans, as our own troops would not fire upon fellow citizens.

He found a large serpentine rock full of crystal vugs,  studded with fool’s gold & guarded by a sleepy rattlesnake.  Breaking the rock into smaller pieces he carried it to the van while the rattlesnake watched.  Pieces of that still hang around the place…

His tiny notebook of pencilled notations bears witness to one adventure after another, on a near-daily basis.

A couple months into the trip, at a restaurant in Corona NM was posted on the wall a listing of remote campsites in the vicinity.  He picked one and headed out.  The road was steep & rough, at times giving question to making it back out again, and it ended near the peak of ______ Mtn at a camp apparently frequented by hunters from the look of moose bones scattered widely around.  Since it was too high for cactus & therefore thorn-free for dog feet, Ichamani happily wandered about collecting  the best of the bones.

On toward sunset a Volkswagen bus labored into camp. The couple within, although dressed in city clothes, professed to be looking for primitive camping that night, but refused R’s invitation saying there were other sites they could use and not disturb his solitude.  They proceeded to stay a while, adroitly questioning him in an odd sort of way, like census takers or interviewers he said later.  We still wonder what they were about….

After they left he and Ichamani curled up to sleep in the van, only to be disturbed by a terrific engine racket some hours later.  R’s first thought was that it was the refrigeration unit on an 18-wheeler– until he remembered the condition of the road on the way up!  A brilliant light was burning in through the windshield.  Suddenly there was a loud whooshing, and the light rapidly faded away.  R’s hand was halfway to the pistol under his pillow, and the dog had jumped on top of him in fright when another light flashed from the other side of the van– there had been 2 vehicles!  He grabbed Ichamani and then suddenly became frozen, unable to move.  The ceiling of the van began to shimmer, turned transparent and disappeared as he and the dog rose in the air and were drawn through.  He remembered thinking ‘This could not be good for my body!’

R came to some hours later, back on the bed.  Ichamani was lying unconscious trembling on the floor of the van.

After a sleepless night he drove down the mountain at first light.

I got a fonecall from the next town–” HEADING HOME! I think I was abducted–”

At home:  R was in denial.  He’d mention some aspect of the experience, then say it hadn’t really happened.  He started packing again, and sleeping with a gun nearby for the first time since we left East LA.  Various spears & clubs appeared discreetly stationed by various gates around the property.  We discovered on his left shin a new small lump that slid away when touched.

This went on for some 6 months, until he remembered that as a small child he’d come downstairs in the middle of the night and become immobilized by little grey men under the dining room table.  I’m all like, HONEY!  you HAFTA go see Hazel!

She’s a local massage therapist who was frequently abducted as a child– could always tell ‘they’ were nearby because she found herself going around the house locking doors and windows.  It did no good, as they’d haul her off anyways– and tell her, ‘Now, get back in your body!  You agreed to this, remember?’

R came back after a 3 1/2 hour appointment, aglow and excited.  He had recalled the whole experience.

He’d been taken up into a huge mother ship, to a roomful of examining tables upon which were a large variety of beings.  Two short individuals were in charge of him.  They had the standard ET almond face, a tiny slit of a mouth, inconsequential nose but instead of the large black eyes we see in many renditions, just little dotty eyes.  Between the two flowed a constant soft jabbery & unintelligible conversation.  They gave him an injection in the finger he’d damaged with a tablesaw, and then he was led to an office where a lizard in a highly decorated military uniform waited.

The officer scolded him for bringing the dog along, and for ‘damaging his vehicle’.  He was commended for taking good care of me & told that of the 2 of us, I was the important one even though I was not under their ‘jurisdiction’, but under another group.  (I must admit to having some trouble with this information.)

So there we were.

From that time ’til some 8 years hence, R had NO TROUBLES with his kidneys.  When his doctor heard about this several years ago, she actually suggested he go back down to the mountain… an idea R did not comfortably entertain!  There is great fear & anxiety tied in with this sort of experience.

Since R passed, I have often wondered about that small lump on his shin.  Had I remembered it at the time, would I have had the gall to ‘harvest’ it before his body went off to the crematorium?  (sorry if that sounds cold or weird.  I regularly sewed this man back together after small construxion accidents– better ‘n coming up with $100/stitch,  that  being my major skill set & all… & he would not be using that body any more.)

The world is a larger and wierder place than those in charge are willing to let on.