[AA] An Entity Unmatched: Escape from Reynosa

Guys, I promise, we're almost to Savannah. Here is another chapter, we're at more than 10 at this point, and totally out of chronological order. But so it is. Here's where we left off: https://www.reddit.com/r/shortstories/comments/1ubx37z/aa_an_entity_unmatched_at_dawn_and_dusk/

And here's the latest…

Tony Aldy lapped his empty plate in anticipation. He was frailed, corporately starved, gray whisks of hair frayed out, irises crazed, a belly full of benzodiazepines.

Truth be told, those first weeks in prison were tough for Tony. Without his usual menu of narcotics, his stomach swirled into a knot as painful constipation overtook his daily experience. Aldy's intestines finally untwined after he chainsmoked a pack of Chesterfields one afternoon; and that night, he began to waste out sludge from atop the stainless steel toilet of his co-private quarters. During one particularly painful round of defecation, Aldy nearly burst a vein on his glistening purple forhead, grunting like an offensive line coach as he kept all of cell block C awake.

By the time his detoxification was over, Aldy felt great and even decided to undergo his first, and very successful, colonoscopy. Once his operation was complete, a loopy Tony was wheeled out to the cafeteria for a three-course meal of spinach-artichoke dip, cheese nips, and black coffee — his first taste of food in 14 days.

George Cooper really propped Aldy up during this trying time. He'd whack Tony's back during violent vomiting sessions and would cradle his limp form after unsuccessful attempts to unclog himself. George was even right there to feed Aldy his nips and dip when he sauntered out of the medical wing. "Is that the second tower? Oh no, it's Tony Aldy!" Cooper called out as he flew a cheese nip into his commanding officer's swampy mouth.

Their bond grew stronger as the bullying from other inmates only ramped up. You think a bunch of hardened, maximum security criminals were going to take it easy on a couple of chumps just because one was meek and the other was suffering from crippling withdrawal? Heck no. Those weeks were definitely the worst for the boys — starved, sodomized, chemically unstable and such.

"I know it's been a rough go, man," George told Tony one afternoon, while they huddled in the corner of the basketball courts. Aldy shrugged and nodded off the idea of any recent personal setbacks. "But I am always going to be right here by your side," Cooper added from inside Tony's personal space bubble.

Aldy hid his tears beneath a pair of sunglasses and stonewalled George's bromantic advance with a question about tennis: "Did you see who won the French Open yesterday? It's just so hard to stream the matches out here."

"Zverev got another," Cooper supplied as his face grew forlorn, entirely unnoticed by our man Aldy, who was as deep in personal turmoil and rhetorical pondering. During this inactive period, Tony had embarked on his own psychoanalysis of the prose within Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, using the original script's classic Koine Greek, which he had dedicated to learning in the days since the two men were incarcerated. He had another hobby in between his week-long spells of reading and silent reflection.

By day, Aldy would shuffle his way along the prison walls as he picked sagebrush and collected twigs — so that, by night, he could cobble up a small collection of campflames and dispense a burnt-sage scent upon the prisoners' noses whilst whispering the wretched tales of his nationwide escapades with his dear friend George, hoping to re-light the fire of inspiration within his fellow inmates so they, too, could dream of better days outside the chain-link apron that kept them tethered, not quite to America's basement, but to its kitchen, as unwilling participants in an ugly sausage production for the benefit of the few and at the cost of the many.

…

You know, it was memories like those and the translated works of Fyodor Dostoevsky that got George Cooper through several lonely weeks after Aldy had broken out and vanished like a flatulence in the wind. Little did he know there was an armada on its way up the Big Sioux River to spring him from imprisonment at any necessary cost.

…

Captain Timothy Olyphant banked his longboat starboard and splashed a tidal wake onto the small South Dakota town of Canton to his left, just riverside off the Big Sioux. Waves waterlogged the whole quaint little square. Dozens of cars, bicycles and many one-story houses were totally submerged. "Whoops," Olyphant admitted as he steered back toward the center of the river.

"Hey now, we gotta go back and make sure that town is alright," another member of his crew piped up to say as everyone looked, not at Olyphant, but toward the true decision-maker of the ship: Tony Aldy.

"Onward," Aldy snarled aloud, not breaking his forward stare for a moment. "Cooper's fate outweighs that of a thousand midwestern towns," he formulated. "Press on with full prejudice, Big O," he instructed Olyphant.

Tony applied a vintage baby blue Montreal Expos baseball cap to his bald head and adorned a pair of pit vipers over sleepless eyes as he stared straight up the Big Sioux River, one foot perched at the mast of their crescent-shaped wooden cruiser, knee surging out like a main sail, while a dozen deck hands powered them by paddle. Conversational buzz turned to jolly chanting as a welcome sight came to view…

The South Dakota State Penitentiary, home to George Cooper and a few hundred more of America's sickest and least desirable. "Didn't miss her for a day," Aldy said once finally laying eyes upon his old house of horrors. Olyphant pulled the longboat up portside and let Aldy off next to an electrical tower along some banks just about 50 metres from the outermost rung of prison fencing.

"It's always a pleasure, Big O," Aldy bid to his dear friend, who blew a foghorn and disappeared into the mystic.

Tony actually walked straight through the front door of the prison without a soul detecting his identity. This baggy-eyed hunk of meat may have been a former customer 'round here, but Aldy was sunburnt to hell, peeling all over his bald head, horseshoe haircut much less kempt than when he'd been making buddy-buddy with the in-house barber; his lips were chapped into blisters, his gut had grown thanks to an exclusive fast food diet post-escape, and he had paid to have several facial moles removed with a significant chunk of his $200,000 winnings from the charity golf scramble.

An attractive young receptionist questioned his motive for visitation and Aldy demanded counsel with "my dear colleague, George Cooper." He was informed that "Oh, George is out on duty for the day!"

Tony laughed and then followed up, "Duty? What duty?"

"It looks like he is supervising the renovations over at the Saint Joseph's Cathedral for today. I can give you the address," the girl said. Upon completion of the trek, only a few blocks total, he spread his vision upon the romantic ideal of a blue-collar worker in the 21st century.

On a humid, drizzly mid-morning, a black Ford F750 with tinted glass halted aside the taped-off driveway of the biggest church in Sioux Falls, and none other than George Cooper bumbled out. Aldy's compatriot lifted a construction hat from his head and plodded toward his domain as foreman. Vapor billowed out of his curt brown locks. Velcro cracked like a whip as he tore apart two sides of a highlighter vest, letting his natural sweater beneath it breathe in the thick summer air. Tony Aldy was almost attracted as he stared through binoculars from the thornbushes some sixty meters away. Aldy tossed the looking device aside and emerged from the landscaping with a trot toward Cooper, serenading the property in operatic cries.

"When will you realizeee," Aldy cried, catching George's terrified attention. "Savannah waits… for youuuuuu."

"Hold on there, pal," Cooper declared, pointing a finger at Aldy rather menacingly. "I'm not fuckin' leavin," he barked. "Not fuckin' leavin' — not doin' it!" He was resolute in his refusal to rejoin Tony's trip of horrors.

Cooper was in much better shape than he was five months ago as a heroin junkie, but he was still no match for a retired basketball phenom. Aldy wore his best friend down. When he saw a chance to force a submission, he took it. Cooper gasped for air after a forceful People's Elbow from Tony, leaving his mouth agape just enough for Aldy to stuff his arm down George's throat, into his upper body, where he grabbed the man's heart and threatened to crush it if George did not surrender immediately and agree to rejoin their mission toward Savannah. Cooper tapped at Aldy's outer thigh and was thrust back onto the grass, where he spat and puked and then wiped a film of sweat from his forehead along with his remaining dignity, right in front of the onlooking crew. They appointed an incompetent new foreman the next day and the church soon fell into vandalised ruin as the project was eventually abandoned, all while Aldy packed the dutiful George into their Winnebago and took off, which was still back at the state prison's long term parking lot.

Exhausted after a brutal day of laying sheetrock, George was ready for sleep and crawled back toward the pullout, flipped it out, and sprawled his form from frame to frame. Carved wooden from months of handtrade, Cooper's body melted into the mattress, which itself was sparse and uneven, several springs mixed in with tufts of cotton. Blood began to flow back into places long neglected as Cooper felt rejuvenated in a natural, cerebral way, awakened 100 times stronger than Old Mel's stoutest cup of coffee back at the prison. He was placid in place, stoned on febreeze, lungs full of rusty, but free, gulps of American air.

Without anyone to monitor him, Aldy hopped on the expressway and accidentally fell asleep at the wheel. After all, his day, too, was quite long and exhausting. He hadn't nabbed a wink of shut-eye since leaving Sioux City and he was now running on about 40+ hours of straight action. They woke up in Reynosa, a Mexican city on the Texas border.

"Un tequila, mi amigo!" Tony Aldy bombed out as he flung a pair of batwing-style double doors wide open and charged toward the last open bar seat in the dingy border-town dive. His arrival was followed by that of a shot of añejo, a strip of salt, and one half-lime. Tony puckered once and blew out a salt-soaked kiss of de-sobrietization. "O' capitan, mi capitan," he added in a salute as the bewildered crowd watched this crazed cracker raise his glass and shoot that liqour. Light green rivers ran anew, fresh fruit juices coursing a cold current down the broad side of an overheating baboon. Drunken and delirious after nearly 17 days off the sauce, Tony began to engage the crowd, starting with George Cooper, "My name's Marvin, and I'm-a starvin'" he updated Cooper and snatched the menu up. "I need a god damned waitress right now!" he screamed to the barroom.

Aldy stared down the approaching staffer who was shaking as she asked for their order: "Ya-yes sir, uh-um-what can I getya?" Tony hardly waited for her to stop talking before attacking her ears with information.

"We'll take two sets of the BOGO Jumbo Strawberry Margaritas, then eleven beef tongue tacos, how about four crab-meat enchiladas as well, and definitely two orders of magic mushroom croquettes." Sweating as she stroked her pen swiftly to keep the beat of Tony's order, one big bead drooped from her forehead and splattered onto her notepad, washing out the details of Aldy's upcoming feast. Aldy's empty shot glass came flying off the table just after he had slammed his fists into it.

"Useless homosapien!" he accused the poor woman, then rising to storm out of the scene. George Cooper attempted to console and hit on her at the same time.

In the back, Aldy shoved the kitchen door straight open and marched toward the small latino man with the biggest, poofiest white chef's hat in the whole room. "How many times must we say… the wait staff is not allowed in the back of the kitchen!" the little meister spouted in spanish as Aldy just grabbed his hat and pulled it all the way over the man's face. Everyone had halted to watch Aldy grab the head chef's neck and force his peanut skull into a stockpot of boiling mole sauce. A pretty frightening scream ensued but so did a few cheers. Aldy quickly took him out and thought to himself, Yikes! I really didn't realize that was so hot!

With their leader's face now burned a very dark brown, the whole kitchen hardly bristled whilst staring at Aldy, who held the head chef's crumpled form to the air for all to see as he repeated, verbatim, the exact order he gave the waitress a few minutes ago.

"I better see some five-star dishes of piping hot authenticity rolling toward our table within the next 500 seconds," Aldy noted with his sausagy index finger raised to the ceiling tiles. He dropped the chef's unconscious form to the ground and walked out without raising any more commotion, leaving nothing but silent hardworkers behind.

Tony rejoined George at the table and reported, "I think we're about to eat like royalty." He fastened a bib and allowed one string of drool to yo-yo from his mouth in preparation, giving George time to complain about another blown chance with some broad who didn't want to sleep with him, so forth. Soon enough, the croquettes arrived.

By sunfall, Tony was making conversation with Moctezuma.

He and George slugged their way toward the restaurant's front bar and happened to saddle up next to the smell of pig sacrifice. The Aztec emperor's curly, blood-cured hair provided a foul odor but a whole lot of aura; his large, dark eyes lacked a center, and his words barely connected to modern language. But, by God, this king made one decree: "Sigue a los cahuayos."

Aldy stared into the abyss of Moctezuma's irises as he swallowed down one more sip of oversugared margarita and then turned to tell George Cooper to have a swell night. He stuck him with the bill and exited stage right, into a back alley, then out to the slumstreets of Reynosa.

Mexican nights were slightly cooler than the daytime but still came on like an oven, muggy darkness cooking up plenty of heat between rival cartels in each corner of the inner city, evidenced by gunpowder sprouting across the sky like a Fourth of July firework show.

"Damn, in America, at least they keep that shit in the South or West side of the city," Aldy joked with an uber driver who had a remote-controlled uzi gun with a full spin radius attached to his front hood. "It's like those old Kurt Russell movies out here," Aldy further observed. "Escape From Reynosa."

The driver dumped Aldy next to some sort of El Rancho and he staggered toward a creaking front gate beneath a sandy wind that was topping off a desert cliff on the city outskirts. Some stars had shimmered back into view and the bustle of the big city gave way to a calm midnight quietness which encased the drumbeat of violence 'neath the plateaus along the outer ridge.

There on one flat top, Aldy flipped his gaze from a slow-falling valley back toward the city and attached his focus to the John Ford expanse that sat to the west. A perfect horse split the horizon and shined out to him, framing itself in more light than it deserved at such a late hour. Tony approached the steed and put his snout to hers. Glitzy strokes of spacey acoustic joined a fuzzy bassline and Marc Bolan's voice could faintly be heard from the sky, informing Tony that life truly is a gas.

"Bellweather," Aldy said to the majestic creation as he swayed his hips and eventually swung a leg over her backside to board, zero hesitation either way. The sky they wondered toward had a crisp matte texture on a clear evening, hues of blue swirling together like glasswork, only visible thanks to a cradled sliver of light from a late-month crescent moon.

After five hours trotting across the hardened clay and towering cacti of rural Mexico, notes of orange seeped into the bottom of the vista. Aldy reached the cliff of one huge rockfin and spotted a line of luxury villas that outlined Reynosa like a warning track. A figure covered in dark linens tapped Aldy's shoulder and startled Bellweather. Tony settled her and accepted a note from the man, which instructed him to await at this very spot to meet an old friend. The man vanished. 14 minutes later, United States President Trevor Amback scuttled out of the indigo and showed his aging face to the best man at his second wedding: Tony Aldy.

"What brings you all the way down here, cheapskate?" Aldy cawed at Amback, who was in the second year of his second term of his presidency, though the first had taken place more than a decade earlier, back in the late 2010s, before both he and Aldy were sold into the Trans-Arctic Slave Trade. The President actually had a favor to whisper into Aldy's ear at the promise of, perhaps, "a wish I could grant you."

"Just think about it, home slice," Amback told him as he walked backwards toward the western darkness and then vanished, yes, quite like a ghost. Tony directed Bellweather down, around and off the rockfin, up to the citylimit, past the white-brick suburban architechture and on toward the tin hovels of Reynosa's inner urbana.

…

"What's this doing here!?" George remarked when he met Aldy back at the Winnebago, where Bellweather was tied off. "There there, Bellweather, don't let this big mean man get to you," Aldy said, brushing his cheek on the creature and rubbing his neck into its, which weirded out George even further. "We must have options," Aldy muttered, craning his head back around to the discussion.

"I'm tired of counting on this old piece of junk," Tony added, kicking the Winnebago's bumper out of no reasonable motivation, although dramatic effect generally sufficed for him. "What if they're tracking this trash heap? We could reach the border and face a swarm of police… again!" Aldy argued. Cooper shook his head and broke some news.

"No we won't, dude," Cooper said. Aldy recoiled. George explained that, thanks to his meteoric rise up the corporate pyramid of the prison work-release program and particularly its general contracting corporation — "The cops aren't even on our tail anymore."

Aldy begged his dear friend's pardon.

"I bought out my freedom and went ahead and bought out yours too just yesterday," George revealed, magnanimous as ever. Aldy plugged his ears before anything more unbelievable could emerge from his best buddy's mouth, but the big fella stepped into Aldy's face and screamed: "WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, BABY!"

Their dear friend Dave Ramsey heard that yell all the way from København, in Denmark, where his latest slave contract landed him working in the original Carlsberg Brewery as the night-shift brewmaster. He dialed up Aldy and congratulated him on "the accomplishment of a lifetime." Ramsey was crying over the phone and Aldy himself could feel a wellspring coming on. His chest tightened, his knees buckled, to the ground he went, and down his face, those tears did run.

"George, I knew I was right never to give up on you," Aldy squeaked from one knee, reaching one arm out to pat Coop's back. Cooper wondered if this was the moment to finally escape this toxic bromance. But deep down and all too well, he knows that, ultimately, Aldy's antics are his truest drug.

"Clean waves and clear skies, dude," George said. "Let's surf this bitch down to Savannah."

Cooper helped Aldy up as they brought their right arms together in a Trojan clasp of alliance, also directly mimicking the famously memed shot from John McTiernan's 1987 action film, Predator, starring bazooka-bicep actors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers.

All that remained now was a sprint back into the states, through Texas and straight across the Bible Belt on toward the Atlantic. They loaded up Bellweather in the backseat of the Winnebago, much to George's chagrin, because that horse lapped at his chin all the way to the border.