Continued from previous weeks…
Stubborn, Gary stifles another sob and squeezes his eyes shut again. “The present!” But when he opens his eyes the forest is still there. He buries his face in his hands.
Even Mona’s shoulders sag. She slumps to the ground.
Gary starts to laugh hysterically.
Ritchie throws his hands up. “Hey! We in a past so long ago that even the coastline’s in a different place, and you no longer high on that ‘better than acid’ shit that got us here? Nuthin’ funny ’bout that, White Boy!” Ritchie looks around at the others, trying to conceal it, but he’s starting to shake. He just barely stops himself from reaching for Mona.
Staring at the ground and rocking herself, Mona doesn’t see when both Gary and Ritchie look at her expectantly.
Instead the wino puts a hand on Ritchie’s shoulder. “You look like the night Mona coaxed you into telling her about the Rev…Rev…” Slurring and struggling with the word, the wino trails off for a moment. “Rev…’rend.”
Ritchie shakes the wino’s hand off his shoulder. “You always around to listen in?”
The wino’s thrown off balance, then stumbles around, rambling absently. “Rev…er…end died saving your life, Ritchie,” he says, squinting at the tree he’s talking to instead of Ritchie.
Ritchie smirks at him. “What you goin’ on about now?”
Still confused, the wino turns toward the sound of Ritchie’s voice but seems to be having trouble locating him. “Up in…” The wino wrinkles his brow. “No, that’s not it,” he tells another tree. “No. The town was Ukiah. That…rev’rend’s church had a funny name…”
Ritchie rolls his eyes, then stamps his foot. “Why you still goin’ on about my past…which is now the future? How’s that going to get us back to 1968?”
“Funny name,” muses the wino. “People’s Shrine or Temple or something.”
Ritchie: “Who cares?”
Wino: “One of those weird religions black people get suckered into by white people.” Suddenly focused, the wino manages to locate Ritchie, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. “Is that what bothered you so much, Ritchie? That some white Reverend gave his own life by jumping in front of a car to save you?”
To be continued next week…
