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35 Memory hook

Cop gone, Kindred fifty miles on, roadside, engine blown, car abandoned, walking the center line like it's an open vein, heartland bound.

White vehicle honking, can't squeeze past, edges up until the driver side mirror clips Kindred's swinging right hand, glint of sunglasses.

G-Men from 1945, again? Rubber gloves. Engine leaking dark oily pools. Death rattle after the chase. Kindred looks ahead. His father down.

They had rolled over and slid upside down on the roof. Truck spinning in ever diminishing circles like hands of a Dali clock running down.

Kindred watches himself, age nine, slide out the window. G-Men beating his father with a length of chain. Their car, a true nondescript.

Shotgun on the back seat, pump action, 12 gauge. Taking it out, the long barrel banging against the door frame, glinting hard black steel.

Two heads swinging around, eyes locking on danger, hands reaching for service revolvers, shock of brain pattern recognition. Boy? Boy??

Behind them Kindred sees now what he did not see then, his father throwing something into the desert, sagging back, gurgling wordlessly.

First blast a tight cluster of pellets, hornets from hell, face pulped and head gone at the same time, standing headless corpse, toppling.

Kindred's father rolling over onto his back, blinking like a salmon, mouth bubbling air pockets tinged with pink direct from lungs wheezing.

Kindred, five feet tall, pumped the action, swinging the shotgun and the second cluster missed wide right, rogue pellet eye-centric, zing.

Entering the left eye of G-Man #2, popping it like a party balloon and angry travel through the back of his brain and out, death dealer.

Kindred dragging his father to the government vehicle and getting him into the trunk and slamming it down, turning the ignition, rolling.

90 miles an hour west dead straight along the desert highway, chasing the dying sun. Kindred the Kid twirling the knob, radio up, Sinatra.

Left behind to bake on sand ridged like a serpent's throat, or the carpet in Joy Motel, the Watcher's eyeball, poppin' hot, superglazed.

Two hundred miles of horizon pulled before Kindred the Elder spit the words out. Kindred the Kid kicked the car into a spin, screamed east.

And now, 23 years later, Kindred replays the scene on the reflective lenses of a stranger's sunglasses, knuckles mirror dinged, memoryhook.

Red dot on the horizon growing larger, turbines whine, vehicle from 1945 approaches, fills the moment with raw Detroit metal hurtling east.

Kindred sees himself age nine at the wheel flowing past like a fold in time, water rippling decades unspooling, his father in the backseat.

Timesmack and Kindred confirms these two men here in this white vehicle on this day are the G-Men from 1945 and he needs to kill them again.

Three hours later, light spinning roofly on vehicle lawful, state cops pull over to investigate. Two black uniformed, white car, red dead.

One has an exploded eyeball, the other no head at all. The skinny cop squints sunward, nodding up and down, got a professional job, he says.

Kindred long gone, hitchhiked clear, traveling fast, no baggage but memories light as a sunglassed stranger's last earthly gasp, deadweight.

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