The Nathren Disturbance

There was a lot of traveling in various forms.  Planes, Trains, etc.  I think we were following some guy who seemed to be whimsically changing modes of transportation, and direction, and we were just following him.  He was a man in his 60’s. Long grey ponytail. A horseshoe mustache.

We were at a gas station, he jumped into a red muscle car, with a school bus painted like a hippie bus, following him.  I said to the people around me, “Now he is just fucking with us!”.  We followed.

We were in the high desert, like Texas, or New Mexico.  We landed in a small town.  The bus was parked a mile or two down the road.  I was in some kind of road house museum.  My wife was there.  She was a little overweight, not unattractively so.  She had a blonde bop haircut with bangs.

There was a memorial in the middle.  A glass case with crosses, and cut flowers, and flags.  It was like somebody picked up 6 foot square of a cemetery, put it up on a pedestal, surrounded it in a glass case, shaped like the Lincoln Memorial.  I tried to draw my wife to it.  She was trying to guess how many people died from a distance.  I said, “The only way to know, is to count the crosses.”  I walked up to it.  Counted 6 or 7.  My wife didn’t come with me.  She moved into another room of the museum.  

There were ancient artifacts, stone medallions, carved with designs.  The designs weren’t anything in particular.  They didn’t look like symbols or writing, just designs.  Kind of like Celtic Knots, but with much more of a Hopi sensibilities.  My wife moved into yet another room.  I lost her.

I knew the bus was leaving in about an hour.  It was parked about a mile away.  I went into a room with lounge chairs, and a small refrigerator, which I opened and grabbed a beer from a six pack, I bought earlier.  There were two left.  I knew I had to leave them.

I asked somebody if they knew where my wife was.  I thought I understood she was with some other guy (maybe even the leader), and on her way back to the bus.  I popped open the beer, and started walking.  I heard my wife yelling to catch up from behind.  She caught up, and we walked together.

We got to the bus.  A biker gang of some sort was waiting for us.  The head guy, kind of an evil version of our leader.  It is possible it was him, and was showing his true character.  I will need your keys and your radio.  I knew I had no choice but to comply.  I am not sure what the keys were to.  I knew it was the bigger deal in long run, but the radio bothered me.  I wondered what I was going to do on the long ride home.  I walked to the back of the bus.  My wife and I sat in the seats at the very back, facing forward.  There was about 4 or 5 people sitting next to us, in the seats facing the sides of the bus.

A thuggish woman boarded the bus, and walked up to us. She was stocky, long brown hair in a simple pony tail.  She looked hard.

She said, “I thought you’d like something to entertain yourself,” she said, referring to her taking my radio.  She handed me a speak-and-spell, to mock me.  I knocked it out of her hand.  Then she threw her hands wildly, pissed at me, but she lashed out randomly, yelling.  She smacked a woman sitting next to me.  She hit her really hard.  She was bleeding from the nose and lips.  She stood up.  She had a similar build as the antagonist, but she was much softer in the face. I stood up, “What the fuck!”, I said, surprised that she would hit some random person.  

I threatened to call the cops.  She said, “yes, let’s call the cops”.  I realised that she would turn it against us.  Perhaps she even had the cops in her back pocket, and that the victim girl could end up going to jail instead of the antagonist.  Then I pulled out an iPad.  “I recorded the whole thing”, I said waving the iPad.  This was a bluff.  I hadn’t.  I was now just trying to avoid her calling the cops.  Suddenly, her look changed to worry.  She bought the bluff, and walked away.
 

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