Doug Donnan
Executive Editor/OMNI-GENRE+MAGAZINE!
by
Doug Donnan
'Old Paint'
I'm a-leavin'
Cheyenne, I'm off for Montan',
Good-bye, Old
Paint, I'm a-leavin' Cheyenne.
[ Circa 2021 ]
“I certainly don’t mean to be rude Mrs.
Gomez, but if you’re so all fired up to know,” I began rather brusquely as I carefully leaned
against the points and placesof the white-washed picket fence that separated our two
northern Florida pastel-salmon clapboard houses, “I’ll just go ahead and shoot
from the hip…if you’l lpardon my bluntness. It’s, basically, because I don’t
care for the way they look, act or even smell if you want to know the God’s honest truth!
My wife and I have decided to turn our little beach-side bungalow over to
the folks at Pelican Paradise Properties Real Estate. We're putting it up for
sale."I leaned in a tad closer to her as she stood there
holding her sad, serpentine andspitting garden hose. “We’re headin’ out west to Big Sky…
that’s the state of Montana don’t you know. Seems that the grand kids have
found me and the missus a little log and pole-porch cabin out by one of those new
government sanctioned hydroponic Fish and Fowl Food Stamp Farm-Lakes. They say
it can get mighty peaceful out around there… not too long after that ol’
sun goes down. The boy says that there ain’t too many of them out that
way in the mountains and such. None of their kind snoopin’ and a smilin’ around into
everybody’s personal ways and means…do you comprende that Mrs. Gomez?”
Beneath the sad pomp and circumstance of her Dollar Store
straw gardener’s hather odd, slit-like lips had formed a perfect circle not
unlike that of the invitingentrance to some dangling and completely vacant backyard
birdhouse.
“Oh…si senor Donnan,” she replied with more of a party-favor-popping sound thananything else. “Yo creo que entiendo, pero…that is, I think I understand but—” shehesitated with a little wiggly-whip of the spasmodically spewing green garden hose.
“But… que?” I asked rather rudely again as I retreated a few steps back into my sadlittle scrub sand and sea oat patch of Pensacola paradise.
“They are but simple automata taxpayers…American citizens just like you and me.You refer to them using the ‘R’ word…robots behind their backs. But—“But, but, but!” I all but shouted at her with my palms thrown out wide as if testingfor some impending rain storm. “I don’t have to stand here and waste my time trying to explain to someone like you why it is that we…I do this or that. I’m entitled to my
opinion. It’s in the damn Constitution. Even you should know that by now SenoraGomez.”
The diminutive Latin gardener was noticeably appalled after my thoughtless littletirade . “You have an evilness about you…a cruel and heartless side Senor Donnan.I thought that I liked you and trusted you, pero now… now I have only pity por ustedes.” She turned away from me with a few disappointed straw hat shakes andambled away for the rear of her little bungalow, apparently, now having lost any interest in her watering chores.
"You? You have pity for me?" I called after her in rebuttal. "Well, if that don't beatall. I'll give you a little history lesson some day before we leave this place Mrs.Gomez. I guess you don't choose to recall that it was not so long ago that yourkind had very similar problems...problems not unlike those of our new robotic...Americanized friends. You offer me your pathetic pity. That's a laugh if I ever heard one. You Mexi--"
I interrupted myself and slightly cocked my head to one side as might some befuddleddomestic puppy. There was something odd, maybe the right word is 'peculiar' aboutthe old woman's gait. She had a very slight, but noticeable limp. This ambulatory hitchor mechanized irregularity I can only describe as hydraulic! As she disappeared around and about into the back yard of her little pink house, her garden hose in tow, I drew in a spasmodic breath of salty Panhandle air. My eyes raised in shock as I put two and two together. My little redoubtable and righteous neighbor was, in fact, one of... them!
_____ The End _____
“Oh…si senor Donnan,” she replied with more of a party-favor-popping sound thananything else. “Yo creo que entiendo, pero…that is, I think I understand but—” shehesitated with a little wiggly-whip of the spasmodically spewing green garden hose.
“But… que?” I asked rather rudely again as I retreated a few steps back into my sadlittle scrub sand and sea oat patch of Pensacola paradise.
“They are but simple automata taxpayers…American citizens just like you and me.You refer to them using the ‘R’ word…robots behind their backs. But—“But, but, but!” I all but shouted at her with my palms thrown out wide as if testingfor some impending rain storm. “I don’t have to stand here and waste my time trying to explain to someone like you why it is that we…I do this or that. I’m entitled to my
opinion. It’s in the damn Constitution. Even you should know that by now SenoraGomez.”
The diminutive Latin gardener was noticeably appalled after my thoughtless littletirade . “You have an evilness about you…a cruel and heartless side Senor Donnan.I thought that I liked you and trusted you, pero now… now I have only pity por ustedes.” She turned away from me with a few disappointed straw hat shakes andambled away for the rear of her little bungalow, apparently, now having lost any interest in her watering chores.
"You? You have pity for me?" I called after her in rebuttal. "Well, if that don't beatall. I'll give you a little history lesson some day before we leave this place Mrs.Gomez. I guess you don't choose to recall that it was not so long ago that yourkind had very similar problems...problems not unlike those of our new robotic...Americanized friends. You offer me your pathetic pity. That's a laugh if I ever heard one. You Mexi--"
I interrupted myself and slightly cocked my head to one side as might some befuddleddomestic puppy. There was something odd, maybe the right word is 'peculiar' aboutthe old woman's gait. She had a very slight, but noticeable limp. This ambulatory hitchor mechanized irregularity I can only describe as hydraulic! As she disappeared around and about into the back yard of her little pink house, her garden hose in tow, I drew in a spasmodic breath of salty Panhandle air. My eyes raised in shock as I put two and two together. My little redoubtable and righteous neighbor was, in fact, one of... them!
_____ The End _____
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