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January 3, 2003 snapped I positioned myself behind the Alhambra's redoubt, a long tile planter's box that runs the length of the front porch.  The entrance is guarded by a brightly-painted yard gnome called "El Gnomo."  He enlisted at Christmas. His cap is red and shaped like a condom with a reservoir tip.  He wears a green suit and a white chin beard, the kind with no mustache.  El Gnomo looks like an Amish rubber. I crouched behind the tile wall and peered through dead plants.  I listened for approaching tormentors, that noisy army of lawyers, fallen children, and time-keepers.  But I heard nothing save the scratchy soft-shoe of a mockingbird picking through the feeder seed.  Or was it the ratchety sounds of old thumbs twiddling? I regained consciousness as medics in white uniforms loaded me into an ambulance bound for a field hospital.  The light around the medics was gauzy and yellow-brown.  I was wounded. El Gnomo looked up from his book and smiled at the sound of my sobbing. "Keep it real," he said.

©  2003 by the beastmaster