(tbh)

UNTITLED 1

Horace Rampart, a rootin-tootin, big-city-offilliated, slicked-back oilman and father of four looked like Satan in a seersucker suit one sublime Saturday, about 6 PM in the soft, radiant spring, as he stood sordidly, chewing a sandy strip of straw he’d snatched off cement to shit, smiling. He was nursing a Coca-Cola, too, standing outside the establishment he’d bought it.

“What’s a big shot like you got goin’ on in Odessa?” asked a gentle, good-hearted elderly woman, loitering contemporaneously.

“Weh-heh-hell,” he began, “the money’s gotta come from somewhere. One of my wells ain’t too far from here, and it’d be nice to get y’all using what The Good Lord gave ‘ya. Say, young lady, you know what ‘consolidate’ means?

“I reckon I don’t!”

“It means you’ve got a bunch of little things, running around, not too strong individually, incapable of unifying, but trying to act as one. Whatever it is they do, they do a bad job! You consolidate them, organize them, assert control, and that more put-together mass, why, that cohesive whole, it’s gonna be capable of far more than ever before!”

She blinked. “Boy howdy! That makes sense to me, and I’m just some old lady!”

Horace went on, “Now, hear me. The fundamental law of the universe is a little thing called symmetrissicity. Basically every action” - he extends one arm west - “has itself an equal, opposite reaction.” - and the other east. “You follow?”

“Oh, yes.” The woman was aware.

“Now lady, when I say ‘the universe,’ I know that you know that I mean the Divine, with a capital D. Something beyond us. The universe has whims, a personality. She values balance, not order. That’s why she created the end state, the result and opposite of consolidation: entroposcopossicity.”

A small, pot-bellied man named Russ stepped forward. “Like when I leave a cord in my pocket too long, and it gets all tangled up!”

Mr. Rampart, slyly reading the man’s lightly worn nametag, thundered back a response: “Precisely! That’s precisely right, Russ. The good woman in the sky created a beautiful, wholly cohesive mass of things, scientists call ‘em ‘particles,’ and dedicated her subsequent existence to tearing ‘em all to pieces!”

A diminutive, meek child looked up from her cigarette. “The big bang!”

Mr. Rampart nodded enthusiastically to the girl, and gave her a 20$ bill, as a light gesture of philanthropy, rewarding her insight. “Gee-willickers,” she said, stunned. “I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of a bill this big!”

“You keep spouting off science like that, young girl, and you’ll be stacking bills higher than you are.” The girl put it in her pocket, and Mr. Rampart grinned, feeling like Santa Claus. He’d finished his cola by now, and figured he’d said what he needed to say. He bent down into his vintage, authentic Cadillac parked by a pump, and waved his new friends adieu. His car radio dial was busted, as of a day ago, and he couldn’t switch from the raucous, abhorrent surf-rock channel the local college polluted the one airwave he had access to with. He sat in silence. Mr. Rampart was a man’s man: he preferred the classics.