Monotony Butte

A story of a person feeling ennui on the Great Plains.

The sun came over the eastern horizon, blazing its eternal glory across the vast expanse of verdant prairie grass and jaundiced canola buds. For him, for this lost soul, it was just another experience to behold. It wasn't anything brand new at all. It was just another set of sensory perceptions in another season of chisel plowing, of spraying Roundup, of driving thirty miles per hour in a zone that normally ran at sixty-five. He despised that evil routine, that customary practice of plowing, planting, spraying, and harvesting. Over and over, like a machine in perpetual motion, the grind was the same set of predictable events and it was sickening to put it simply.

It was homegrown monotony.

He hummed the bars as the words of Jim Morrison droned into his ears. Spring may have sprouted into summer and the sun may have brought nature from its seasonal sleep, but it was only cold comfort. He was listless and lifeless, without dreams and cares. The evening light, the clean and flowery air, and the view of the beautiful surroundings, did nothing to ease the seething, it just egged it on. He took another pull from his brown bottle of Pabst and took another drag from his Marlboro Red. These common relaxants did little to unwind this tightened soul stricken with a rich and dualistic wanderlust.

Rich in wanting it is so bad and rich in expenses and time.

He reached into the open window of his dusty Chevy Lumina and pressed the button on his white-trash CD system, which was a portable CD player plugged into the cigarette lighter. The vocal stylings of Hank Williams, Jr. came on proclaiming that all country folk could survive. He huffed with derision and pressed the button once more and on came the vocal stylings of Shaun Morgan. He pulled himself from the car and the haze around him bounced somewhat.

"My world is the same. It's just tedium," he mumbled through the drunken cloud.

"My world is gray. Color means nothing anymore," he mumbled further.

Feeling drunker than the proverbial skunk or sauger fish, he stumbled forth as he wandered toward the edge. From his eyes, he stumbled onto the concrete under his feet. His reactions were off and he landed so his hand was beneath his left side. Two hundred pounds and change would set him back even further from satiating his wanderlust. He spat blood from his mouth and gripped his hand which was afflicted with fierce pain.

Below him were the broken, corroded remnants of electrical appliances and motorized vehicles that made the historical hardships of agrarianism go by the wayside. These cold, metallic, enervated reminders of times past sank his soul further into the eternal, perpetual depression.

"I am going to die here, for worse or for far worse," he said to himself.

His philosophy: if you're stricken with pain, you medicate yourself until it recedes.

He chugged the rest of the bottle, stared over the cliff at the leftovers of waste and disregard below, and huffed irreverently. With his good hand, he chucked that empty bottle as far as he could, while praying that he had a .38 special in his crippled claw. To spite the pain, the bottle would be shot to pieces first and his head would be shot to pieces afterward.

Such is life when that almost demonic depression is your eternal companion.

Around this apex, this sore thumb of eroded stone was prairie short grass and flowing, fruitful fields of jealous durum, jaundiced canola, and dejected flax. The further reaches consisted of sprawling, rolling hills and tall, windswept buttes to the west and a level tabletop of scant trees and crop-sprayers in the east. In the direction of the eventual rising Polaris, the sounds of a ramshackle juke joint at the intersection of two prime-numbered state highways floated into his ears, almost like the nose-hair blazing scent of burnt garbage would on a very hot, slightly breezy day in deep summer. It happened to be $5 poker, $3 pitcher, and $1.50 taps night.

In his mind, he ran over the trash hand that the spirit of life had dealt him:

• Card #1: He was born into a neglectful and abusive family.
  
• Card #2: He was oldest child, the test subject of several kinds of sadistic restraint.
  
• Card #3: His younger sister was addicted to crystal meth.
  
• Card #4: His younger brother was a drunk that abused his wife and kids.
  
• Card #5: He wasn't born with the wisdom or smarts to be the proper keeper.

 

He stared over the edge, and the loose ends in the metallic necropolis glared back at him.

 

The cycle of life: birth, life and death.

Those devices of ease, those labor-saving machinations had been worn to their absolute and fully logical ends. These throwbacks were used, abused, and tossed aside when the next hot, new-fangled pieces of machinery came along. From the perch, he saw a 1944 Massey Ferguson tractor and 1953 Ford pickup, both the tints of advanced rust and wear. Tossed aside to gather dust, neglected to oxidize in the elements, he imagined if those vehicles had been personified, given actual life in some wandering imagination. He huffed and mulled, it was a great place as any to end it all. No more depression, no more hindrance, no more wanderlust.

Above all, there would be no more monotony.

About twelve hundred and fifty feet separated the butte top from the flat ground, and that only accelerated the reluctance gripping strongly onto his constitution. He reached back through the dirty Lumina's window and grabbed a second bottle of liquid courage. He grasped the bottle tightly in his left hand, which sent lava hot pains across his busted bones and nerves. The smell of the amber fluid drifted to his nose and it made his mouth water.

"Give me the courage to set myself free," he yearned to the spirited beverage.

He touched the bottle to his lips as the voice on the white-trash stereo system changed over from Shaun Morgan to Gord Downie. He took a light swig and the sweet encouragement lifted his heart slightly. A nip of beer usually requires a puff of smoke. He took the box of Marlboro Reds from his shirt pocket and halted before he lifted the lid. As if fate was conspiring against his motives, a train whistle from the direction opposing Polaris echoed through the jagged guitar riffs and the noisemakers that jangled from the juke joint.

He lit the smoke and took a long drag. As he vented the carcinogenic mist into the adjacent air, he gazed down at the whistling, clanging snake of diesel engines and grain cars. The sunlight was refracted just enough to flash the color of the engine at him. It was red, red like the North Dakota sunset during the summer, red like the flavor of cancer sticks that smoldered between his pursed lips. Just that one color, just that minute image pained his heart so much. Those little things, those taken-for-granted moments would be dust to the drought-soaked winds.

A new hand of sensory perceptions was dealt into his memory:

• Card #1: Those exquisite field flowers in the middle of July: the cerulean flax blossom, the blonde canola bud, and the amethyst alfalfa bloom.
  
• Card #2: The cottonwood trees shedding their seeds in the last week of June, giving the ground a winter feel in the sultry air.
  
• Card #3: The feel, smell and taste of that first cold Pabst right after the last hard week of planting right as the air temperature breaks the threshold of ninety above.
  
• Card #4: The radiance of the sun as it rose from below the eastern fields and as it set below the hills and buttes in the west.
  
• Card #5: The sound of blazing guitar riffs and blistering vocals as the warm night swaggers toward the next beautiful sunrise.

 

The list grew longer as the words and verses played on in the temperate air adjoining him. This area, this place beyond the hundredth meridian with the jagged buttes, rolling hills, winding rivers, and temperate climate could make the coldest and stoniest of hearts melt and the strongest of wanderlusts subside into occasional pricks.

 

Despite the hand dealt against him: the family obligations, the busted body parts, the financial constrictions, the staunch wanderlust, the cruel depression, and the eternal monotony, the idea of home and the small things kept him going. He glared down at the metallic ruins below his being, and he made his choice.

The cycle of life claimed all the labor-saving machinations below as a victim yet it would not claim him as a victim at this moment in time. He sighed greatly, leaned against the dusty Lumina, and partook in another slow nip of Pabst. Sure, life could be unbearably predictable but it could be far worse. Monotony, wanderlust, and hindrance weren't so bad if he controlled them, instead of the inverse cause and effect. For once, he had a hand that could parade around proudly.

That one thing changed it all for him.

The vocals stylings of Scott Anderson came on and it set his entire being at an ease that he'd never before experienced. The red and orange around the western sun melded perfectly with the pink and purple just above, and an inspiring thought came to mind.

This place wouldn't have the title of Monotony Butte anymore.

It would be dubbed Mount Promise from there on.

Reviews

[TLK]

"It was just another set of sensory perceptions" is a real slice of the monotony-led reductionism. Each movement mechanical, each moment defined. This is what happens when people with even nominal intelligence have to work on a repetitive process. (Damn you, Henry Ford).

I like the entirely mental transformation of the sensations at the end. It makes me wonder how long the experience will last, because the emptiness of the world is so subservient to his emotions. The question is: "what couldn't he see in it?"

[Kenneth The Poet]

Thank you for that.