Lohbado becomes a hero

Lohbado sat at a small table by the wall in the Hotdog Palace Restaurant and ordered a hot dog, all dressed, from a man standing in the aisle. That was a big mistake, with fiery consequences.

Jack Graves

 

Marvin managed a funeral home. Jack dug graves. Sometimes Jack jerked coffins around. Marvin told Jack off.

“You know what happened to Jenkins, the guy who stole gold fillings from corpse teeth,” warned Marvin, “You better be careful, or you’re liable to end up locked away in a different kind of hole.”

Seagulls behind the restaurants

Seagulls at the corner, behind the strip of restaurants, food scraps, hundred of gulls screaming, whirling around in the air, gliding down, pouncing on pieces of meat. It looked like a bag of rotten chicken had spilled out the back of a truck on to the pavement of the lot. The seagulls loved it.

to get it right

When Lohbado got back to Yamaville, after six years in the Dome, he had no desire to make a splash. He’d already rocked the boat, pushed the wrong buttons, opened a can of worms, whipped up a storm and stepped into a bees nest. Stung and expelled from the hive, his only ambition was to relax and record sporadic messages and diagrams from the Great Nomroh.

During the first year of change, Lohbado wandered across the Plains of Radiation in search of a place to settle down. He stayed with whoever invited him in, or else at hotels and motels. Sometimes a person picked him up as he walked along the highway. He had to be careful to avoid sexual predators, who would hop anything that moved, no matter how young or old, no matter whether male, female, cat or dog. Usually loneliness caused a person to stop. They could tell at a glance that Lohbado was calm and didn’t smell too strong. His warm and friendly voice put the motorist at ease.