Category: Tall Tales
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Big Men (X)
<= One day, as we’re baking in our cells, Silvio does the unexpected and asks me a question. “Why were you going to Esmeralda?” I am laying on my back in the corner of the cell that doesn’t have a sun beam blasting through it. The floor is cooler but not by much. After the […]
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Big Men (8)
<= I had spoken with command in my voice to a Senor of a noble house. Me, a potter’s son. People have been whipped and jailed for less, but there I was doing exactly that. Somehow I have the audacity to continue, my mouth running before I have a chance to stop it. “These […]
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Big Men (7)
<= “Mizumaru, no!” the woman screams. “Men, take him down,” Zapata commands. “Papi!” the girl with the golden eyes screams. I watch the scene unfold as if I am many legs away, but it is right in front of me. I watch a man furious enough to silence the whispers of death in his […]
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Big Men (6)
<= My eyes are open, have been for some time, but only now do I realize that I am awake. Men, women, familias are snoring all around me. I make my way outside. It is dark, but the moon is out and it is full and I can see enough to navigate to the […]
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Big Men (V)
<= While we wait for the crowd to thread through intersecting roads, I see a man sitting on a rug threatening to eat a glass bulb. It is a curious sight and I stare more than I intend to. After a minute of this he actually does eat the glass and falls over dead, much to […]
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Big Men (4)
<= It takes over two months to get to Sanhles. Our journey is punishing; over land, through desert, round the Gulf of Meycali past the fishing towns, avoiding the ruins of San Dieghuana. One of Silvio’s three pack yamas dies and so I am made to carry some of his spoils. If I missed […]
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Big Men (3)
<= “I have no weapon,” I say, kicking myself when I realize I shouldn’t have said that. He has what looks like a hunting bow, turned on its side with a rifle butt stuck on the end. And I have nothing. “I can see that,” the man says. “What are you doing out here?” […]
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Big Men (2)
<= The denial is first. I can’t possibly be lost. This has to be a dream. Just over that hill is a camp, a road, a caravan train. Something. Anything. Instead there is more desert. More dunes. Not a soul to be seen no matter where I look. I am angry now. Those traitorous, […]
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Big Men (1)
Do you want to hear a story? Then come, sit, make yourself warm and I will tell you the one I know best. Sear Rodrigo called for me in the night as he lay on his deathbed. He was a traveling hermit, old and wizened, who told wonderful stories about people, places and events that happened […]
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Not Your Granddaddy’s Tall Tales: Davy Crockett
I love Tall Tales. They’re like the comic books that people told to each other around the campfire when they got tired of listening to that one ghost story about an undead revenant that haunted a campfire just like this one you guys. But unlike other Tall Tales, this one was based on an actual […]
The Wormhole Less Traveled 