1
Deep in the heart of Missouri a highway snakes its way into dense forest winding through the fingery lakes of the Ozarks past the bubbling streams and rocky crags, the open plains rowed with crops, cows and combines, past Jerry's Auto Body, the field of wildflowers that separates the gas-station-fried-chicken-place and that old diner that got converted into a coffee shop and then failed when Barbara started having an affair with her landlord, past the fireworks stand and XXX adult truck stop to a QuikTrip on the east side of the road. In that QuikTrip, to the right of the hotdog and taquito rollers, through the aisles of Twix, Twizzlers and Takis, over the nondescript 1' x 1' beige tiles, behind the pristine sheen of a ruby red countertop stands a man in a polo shirt, khaki pants, long white hair that swoops to his shoulders. He pulls a carton of Kools from the crisp folds of the cardboard as the mechanical doors slide open as his first customer of the day enters.
The old man rises, turns to face him, the sun hitting his black lacquered nametag that reads, "Lao Tzu". Lao Tzu! Taoist leader. Knower of the Way. Master of meditation. He stands at the ready, deep in thought, eyes closed, connected to the fourteen planes of reality. He raises his hand to his temple and a gold dragon encircles his aura as a thousand points of light beam from his head. The dragon, its mouth agape, eyes transfixed, spins in circles before shattering into a starry shimmer of infinite complexity. As it fades, he bows and in a soft steady voice asks, "What do you seek, young one?"
The man looks up from his phone, wipes his hand on his t-shirt. A bright green race car is splashed across his chest, the flames from the engine roar to his neck as he pulls his cargo shorts down releasing the wedgie that’s slowly crept up over the last six hours.
“Bathroom?”
Lao Tzu looks in the direction the finger is pointing then back to the man who is instantly made uncomfortable by the prolonged eye contact.
“To find the bathroom one must ask, ‘does relieving my bladder relieve me of my burden? Does it mend the pain I feel in the realization of my own death?’ To find the bathroom is not a question, but rather an answer which repeats itself over and over, not in your mind, but in mind, collectively, as a thinking breathing thing that longs for release.”
The man puts his phone in his pocket and looks around for a manager as Lao Tzu peers into his three souls and seven spirits.
“Go then,” he says picking up another carton of Kools. “It’s in the back.”
The man disappears as another enters and places $40 on the counter.
“Forty on pump two.”
Lao Tzu, in his infinite wisdom, finishes stocking the cigarette display. He picks up the empty box and puts it in the recycling bin.
“That which you hear is already heard. That which you know is already known. That which you seek is already found for it has always existed and never existed and will be forgotten the moment you remember it.”
The customer taps the money on the counter with his finger.
“I've been driving with my pregnant wife and two-year-old and I haven't had a cigarette since we got out of Memphis so I don't know what your problem is but I want $40 on pump 2.”
A wrinkled dress shirt is hastily tucked into a brand-new pair of Wranglers. His turnip-shaped head has a tight red face that’s squeezed on top by an ill-fitting cowboy hat. He continues to tap the money on the counter, eyebrows raised as Lao Tzu leans forward.
“When gas is what we seek we think only of gas and do not see our own face in the reflection of time.”
“I'm seeking gas! That’s what I’m here for. To seek gas!” He sticks his hands in his pockets and walks away muttering as Lao Tzu picks up the money and masterfully enters the numbers in the cash register. The immortal one places the two twenties in the correct slot then stands at the ready. Through the plate glass doors, he watches a woman stumble out of the passenger side of a 1997 SS Super Sport with spiny wheels and a sticker of Calvin peeing on a Ford symbol. His eyes narrow to a squint as she enters. A pink tube top and acid-washed jeans, hair pulled back in a ponytail. She puts her cigarette out on the side of the building before coming inside.
“Need a lottery ticket.”
Lao Tzu stays silent then places his hands on the counter.
“Your fortune is not ahead of you or behind but before your very eyes.”
The woman wipes her nose with her arm and pulls out her wallet.
“Gimme one of those Red Rooster scratchers.”
Lao Tzu leans back and folds his arms.
“The rooster crows in the morning. The cherry blossoms bloom in the spring. And the dew that is on a blade of grass hangs ever so sweetly to the tip of existence.”
The woman offers some help.
“It's on the bottom left there with the little cartoon rooster that's on fire. You see it? Next to the green leprechauns.”
“The fire is not on the rooster. Nor is it anywhere you look. It is always behind you, in the corner of your eye and at the bottom of your ....”
“Is there a problem?" Phil, the assistant manager, smiles at the customer then turns his glare to Lao Tzu.
“I'm just trying to buy a red rooster scratcher.”
The woman holds a crinkled five as some kind of proof.
“Lao, we've talked about this. The woman wants a scratcher. What she doesn't want is a lecture about the eternal nature of being.”
“When one understands one stops....”
“Nope. Don't want to hear it. Tell her how much it costs. Take her money and give her the ticket.”
Lao Tzu folds his hands under his arms and lowers his head. Phil and the customer look to see the scratcher on the counter.
“And...” Phil says making a few notes as he heads back to the office.
“That will be $6.96”
Left alone Lao Tzu picks up the broom and dustpan, starts sweeping then stops, looks around, raises his hands and lets out an ‘Om’. The hot dogs and taquitos glow an auspicious pink before raising from their metal rollers, lifting in the air and spinning in a jumbled mess before forming a Ying Yang, the hot dogs as Yin, the taquitos as Yang. He lowers his hands and the image is broken, the dogs disassemble, each falling back to the rollers below.
He resumes sweeping then stops as a dark shiver descends over his being. The familiar ‘ding’ rings out but he does not turn. Instead he grips the broom tighter, jumps in the air, grabs onto the ceiling fan and spins around. He breaks off the end of the broom, twirls it and sends it flying at the head of the murderous demon monkey that is standing by the door.
Monkey does not move. He simply catches it, breaks it into a million pieces and uses one to clean his teeth then walks over to the magazine rack and picks up a Cosmo, leans against the counter and smiles, starts flipping through the pages. Lao Tzu lands, walks back to his station looking vexingly at the monkey before him.
“Great Sage Equal to Heaven. You shitty little monkey. What are you doing here?”
“Tang Sanzang. The monk. I haven't been able to find him. I went to heaven and asked for you but they said you were banished. Never thought I'd find you here.”
“So you've found me. But leave that poor man alone. What do you want with him anyway?”
“It's been 500 years since I fetched the Buddhist scriptures so that people could cultivate their true form. But what's happened? Nothing. No great change. No shift in consciousness. No one cares about Buddhist scripture anymore. Something is wrong.”
“What do you want me to do about it? Look at these people. No one reads anything here except, 'The Top Ten Reasons Your Partner is Cheating on You' and they only get to number five before they get bored.”
“I don't know,” Monkey says. “Maybe they have it right and we're the ones confused.”
“Either way, it's hopeless. Now shoo you silly monkey before my manager sees you. Oh no. It's too late!”
Lao Tzu tries to act busy grabbing the nearest stack of receipts and shuffling them in no apparent order as his manager returns.
“What's going on here, Lao?”
Monkey frowns and steps forward, puffs out his chest and in his most authoritative voice booms, “I am The Monkey King. Great Sage Equal to Heaven. King of the Mountains of Flower and Fruit. I fetched the Buddhist scriptures with Tang Sanzang, fought countless demons, caused a ruckus in heaven and made the Jade Emperor tremble with my gold-banded cudgel. I'm talking to Lao Tzu, Taoist master and Knower of the Way, the man who created the elixir that gave me eternal life, who stoked the fires that turned my eyes gold with smoke so that I can see through all 14 layers of reality, who wrapped his noose around my neck and helped imprison me at the bottom of a mountain for 500 years. Who are you that you should address us in such an informal way?”
The manager, squeezes his clipboard, puts his hand on his hip, takes a step forward.
“My name's Phil. Phil Moss. And I'm the associate manager at the 33rd street midtown QuikTrip. I graduated with a bachelor's degree from Missouri Central State with a major in Business Administration and a minor in pottery, and...and I've been dating the same girl for three years now, which is a personal best for me, and she's really hot, not that that's the only thing I like about her, but, you know, she's the hottest girl I've dated so far, so...that's something.”
Monkey's eyes light up in a fiery gaze that penetrates Phil's being. He grows twice his size as thunderous lighting emanates all around him.
“I am Sun Wukong. Born from a stone egg. By cultivating my spiritual essence I've mastered all 72 transformations. I can leap through the air with my summersault-cloud, pull a needle from my ear, grow it into my gold banded cudgel and smash your head before you take two steps.”
Phil scrunches up his face, puts down his clipboard and crosses his arms, straightens his back from his usual slouching posture and in his most authoritative voice that he learned from his mother says, “Well, all I have to do is pick up this phone and dial the police and then it takes them about 15 to 20 minutes to get here and then once that happens they'll ask you to leave and I'll post a picture of you on that wall,” he says pointing to a small section by the copy machine with two 8 ½ x 11" xeroxed faces held up by scotch tape. Monkey cocks his head and looks at the pictures then back to Phil, “and you won’t be allowed in this QuikTrip or any of in the county. You can still get gas with your rewards card, but you won’t be able to enjoy any of the delicious yet affordable treats inside that QT has become famous for.”
Monkey reaches behind his ear and pulls out a needle which grows as tall as the ten foot marker on the criminal height strip by the entrance. He plants both feet in a wide stance, spins the cudgel around his body, grabs one end with both hands and in a graceful motion brings the full force of it down on Phil's head which instantly explodes, the blood spraying out onto the storefront window while his brains fly across the room and land on the taquito rollers. Monkey rests his staff on his shoulder and turns to Lao Tzu whose moment of shock dissipates into a deep glowering frown.
"Why has The Knower of the Way surrounded himself with these hairy little demons?" Monkey asks smiling.
"Monkey, you idiot. That...that wasn't a demon. That was Phil. You just killed....ah crap...go outside and see if anyone saw you and then come back and help me clean this up."
Monkey can only watch as Lao Tzu, master of meditation, runs to the bathroom grabbing the bleach and lugging it back to the counter where he starts pouring it in the mop bucket.
"If a man is killed and only two people see it but they don't make a sound, did it really happen? The answer is NO! Now get a mop and help before we get into even more trouble."
Monkey doesn't move and looks disapprovingly at Lao Tzu making such a fuss over nothing. "You've become soft in your old age," Monkey says shifting his weight and bringing his cudgel to rest on the tile. "Your eyes must be weak." Monkey flips through the pages of the Cosmo stopping on 'the five things your man wants but is afraid to ask'. "That wasn't a man I just killed. It was a demon."
Lao Tzu rolls his eyes, bends over and wheels the yellow mop bucket and his as-you-will mop over to the body splayed on the ground. He dips it in the bleach and starts smearing the blood across the beige 1 x 1's, sloshing it back in the bucket and cursing under his breath. "There are no more demons you stupid monkey. You killed them all, remember?" But just as these words leave his lips, just as his mop sloshes back in the bucket turning the water a beautifully muted pink, Phil's body starts to vibrate. Lao Tzu takes two steps back watching it shake on the floor, the appendages flopping violently as a snake demon pushes its way out of the bloody gape in the neck.
The demon snake grows
wrapping itself down the aisles
its eyes two silver mirrored domes
that can see around corners
its skin like taquito crust
flaky and burnt
falls to the floor
as it squeezes the displays
knocking the Doritos and Taki's
into a messy pile
and the cigarette cartons
so neatly stacked
lay scattered
Lao Tzu Knower of the Way
drops his mop
as the beast opens its mouth
flashing its yellow coned fangs
that are emblazoned in red
with a picture of a man in a triangle
falling down
the black word 'Caution'
written across its tongue
and down its throat
as the demon lets out a cry and
Monkey smiles
knowing the secrets of men
he drops the magazine in the blood
which soaks the pages
and makes the woman on the cover
turn crimson
Monkey leaps to strike with his gold banded cudgel. The snake sensing danger pushes its head into the bathroom whipping its tail around and catching Monkey off guard smashing him through the plate glass window toppling over the bottled water displays and smacking into a white Cutlass that just stopped for gas. The car flies back and lands in the street. The owner, a black man, no shirt with lime green running shorts, holds the gas pump in one hand and his keys in another. "What the fuck!" Monkey jumps up and shoots back inside frantically smashing at the snake's body which explodes in cheesy goo that reformulates and heals itself. The excess cheese congeals around Monkey's cudgel and sucks it down to the floor where it disappears in a sea of cheddar.
Lao Tzu, sensing monkey's distress and finally recovering from the transformation, leaps over to the automotive aisle and in mid-air grabs two bottles of degreaser which he sprays in a magnificent whirling arc that frees Monkey and sends him leaping through the drywall to the bathroom. The giant head of the snake, which takes up the entire room, opens its mouth as Monkey steps inside, pries it open wider, grabs the top fangs and snaps them like dry twigs. The snake screams as Monkey plunges the fangs into its mirrored eyes, cracking and sending the shards to the floor. He grabs the green plastic baby changing station, rips it off the wall and proceeds to beat the monster's head in till the plastic starts to degrade and there's nothing left except a cheesy bloody mess that fills the toilets and the sink and rises as high as the hand dryer before quickly turning to a red mist that disappears along with the screams of the monster.
Monkey climbs back through the hole in the drywall, picks up his cudgel and walks over to the counter.
"The demons are different here," Lao Tzu says picking up his mop and surveying the wreck of the store.
"Everything is different here," Monkey replies.
"I miss the old ways, when the demons dressed in gleaming armor and their silvery beards and red eyes shone in the darkness. When you had to climb a craggy mountain and sit under the moon to see the unnatural mists swallow the landscape."
"No one cares about craggy rocks anymore," Monkey says. "Nothing stays the same I suppose. Not even demons."
"Demons are all the same. They only dress differently."
As Monkey and Lao Tzu talk, a mother and her three kids walk up to the door but it does not open. She looks inside and this is what she sees,
Shelving torn apart
snack food strewn in piles as if
someone had lifted the store
and given it three good shakes
the freezer doors open
ice cream sweating
with blood streaks down the glass
and in the middle of it all
a ferocious looking monkey
with the face of a thunder god
red sash tied around his waist
in tiger print pants
his tail poking through
the hole he cut
all the while
happily chatting
As the woman runs screaming Monkey talks with Lao Tzu, the bitter feelings falling away, for as they say, someone from your past brings a bit of it with them.
"I am not so old and stupid that I'll sit here and complain about how things aren't like they used to be,"
Lao Tzu says sweeping up a bit of Phil's arm and throwing it in the wastebasket.
"Then where is the Tang Sanzang?" Monkey asks.
"I don't know, but I do know that idiot Pig of yours is running some spiritual camp in the hills of West Virginia. He might know something, or at least may know where to find Friar Sand. Now get out of here you shitty monkey and leave me to clean up my mess."
Monkey nods, looks down and picks up a road map, gives Lao a last look before jumping on his summersault-cloud and flying up so high the buildings turn to flat grey squares and the only thing above him is the brilliant blue dome of the sky. He unfolds the map, smooths out the creases with his hand. "I can't believe I'm headed west again," he says then cocks his head, flips the map right side up and laughs, "West Virginia is east. What a strange country." He jumps to his feet and pulls a sleek gold rectangle from his tiger print pants, the screen lights up as he looks through his albums before selecting "AC/DC" then "Highway to Hell". The opening chords blare, the drums kick in, as Monkey shoots off toward the magical land of West Virginia.