Onion Songs

THE RIFLEMAN, THE CANCEROUS COW, AND THE SWEDISH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, A Western

Lucas McCane, formerly known as The Rifleman, had put away his famous weapon with the enlarged firing ring, and moved to North Carolina so that his son Mark might grow up among deciduous trees and shrubbery.

“This will all be yours someday,” he told him. “This wooded area here, this lake I’ve recently dammed and drained for cropland (at great physical cost to myself, by the way), and there’s a nice little fast food franchise down there by the creek where members of your peer group eat hamburgers, shakes, and fries, and converse on various age-appropriate subject matters. It’s taken me most of my life, made me old before my time, not to mention quite impotent, but I was glad to do it for my eventual posterity, please don’t mention it.”

One day Mark and his father were walking through the wooded area, Lucas talking on in this manner, Mark listening, when they came upon a level clearing covered with a thin film of oil. “This bog has been here for millions of years, Mark, consisting of various animal and vegetative matter pressurized underground, then later exposed for our current viewing, but nevertheless, this too will all be yours when I go to meet that Great Ranch-hand in the sky,” Lucas went on and on.

Suddenly a large black cow with a cancer on his head stumbled out of the underbrush. And before Lucas could point out that that too would someday belong to his son, Mark spoke up for the first time in some while, saying, “Pa, what’s that?”

“That, son, is a large black cow with a cancer on his head. Notice how he eats large stumps and other useless vegetative matter around this here bog. A cow with a cancer on his head must be pretty clever to survive out here in the wilds of North Carolina.”

It suddenly became apparent to Lucas and his son that the cancerous cow was lapping up great swatches of the oil with an enormous, rubbery, gray and white tongue. And gradually revealed by these great swipes of the tongue was a smooth, hardwood floor. “No doubt created through the troddings of extinct land reptiles on the decomposing animal and vegetative matter, compressing these into this smooth dancefloor-like surface we see here before us,” Lucas speculated, “…though I have to admit this is somewhat unusual for North Carolina.”

During this speech the cow had completed his vacuuming, and a perfectly square, glistening orange hardwood plain, two hundred feet on a side, was revealed, bordered on all sides by rotting stumps and blackened underbrush. Lucas strode to the middle of this floor. “This, son…”

“…will someday all be mine,” Mark interjected.

Lucas painted an elaborate image of the mansion they would someday build using the floor as base. A wide portico all around, several entranceways, an immense expanse of glass, and several vistas of awe-inspiring aspect. Lucas counted some of these off on his fingertips: the curtain of gigantic pine, the plateau gauzed in grays and purples, the broad grassy slope flowered yellow, red, and blue, and… what was this?

Mark had run past the tall marble columns, the coved ceilings, the exotic tapestries of the home place, and was climbing the fan-like marble staircase of this last unexpected vista, The Swedish Memorial Hospital.

Lucas stared slack-jawed at the ruin. The Swedish Memorial Hospital was a five-level complex, each level built on the ruins of the former. Castle turrets meshed with steel framing and glass walls, stucco and wood. The several hundred yards of skylight had been shattered. Six brightly painted hot air balloons and two large dirigibles hung torn and abandoned from spires and eaves. Vines and weeds crept up between cracks and holes in the concrete. He could just make out the scarlet thread remnants of the banners. On the plain behind the hospital he could see the ashen wrecks of dozens of flying fortresses, once used to transport the wounded from all parts of the globe.

Mark was halfway up the stairs when Lucas snapped out of his reverie, panicked, and raced screaming after him.

But too late… the Rifleman could see already that he would fail. Already the young men in their red pageboy costumes were trumpeting at the top of the staircase. Already spiders, lizards, and snails were creeping out of the ruined masonry. Somewhere bands were playing, women dancing in their fine robes, great stallions pawing the pebbles atop the stone walls. Already The Pilot, that career intruder, was standing haughtily next to his gigantic saddled alligator, whistling, and cheering Mark on to the top of his stairs, into The Pilot’s waiting arms.

And already The Rifleman knew his son would soon leave North Carolina, would never till the family lands, own the cancerous cow, or build the family mansion of many vistas on the primeval hardwood floor.

The Rifleman, formerly known as Lucas McCane, collapsed at the Swedish Memorial Hospital staircase, and wept bitterly over this failure of his imagination.