[UA] Dear Brother

[Bryant Durrell]

Been a while, but I am working diligently to catch up.  This is as
always a somewhat skewed version of our Unknown USA game; it's skewed
once by filtering through Reese's perceptions, and it's skewed again
because I take some liberties with what Reese knows in order to better
capture the occasional flashback and one-on-one play.  But I think the
spirit comes through.

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Dear Brother:

I think I am going to write a letter to Mister Alan Greenspan later on
but I am going to get my thinking clear first.  Writing to my brother is
one thing but I am not sure Mister Greenspan will be as easygoing with
my letters as you are.  He is a very busy man.

I was in Washington, is what made me think of writing to him, but that
is a little later on.  I will start out with what happened after we left
Baton Rouge all full of what Huey Long had told us.  It is maybe not so
much of a story but it did happen so it would not be right not to tell
it.

We drove up the backroads out of Louisana.  The interstates are all
important but we caught a lot of attention down south and sometimes you
don't want to drive along the spotlight.  Sometimes it is better to take
the maze.  There are places down in that state where you drive along
those backroads and the trees hang down over the road and hide the sky
and you are almost in a tunnel and the moon can't see you.  Which is
what I wanted, because of how we'd laid the police on that Miss Selene.
Anyhow it worked and we got out of the state just fine.

I spent a little time talking to that Danny who had said the prophecy
back in Memphis.  Danny Greer, his name is.  I have not talked about him
much but he is fitting in just fine.  He is an older man who was in jail
so you know he knows a little.  Well, apparently he hears voices and he
was in a hospital once for that but he got away.  He met a doctor named
Sam Lully there who told him that the whole world was robots.  I guess
that is what you would want to believe if you wanted to treat people
bad.  There is also some kind of tie between Lully and those I AM people
who keep asking us to buy housewares or whatever it is that they are
selling.

But Danny does have the prophecy gift so maybe this Doctor Lully knew
something.  There was something special about this word "vitriol" which
is not a word I know.  It says something else besides what it means,
like a riddle.  Danny said it speaks of the place inside the earth and a
hidden stone.

Also around this time Angie was doing something she would not talk about
but that Joe of hers interrupted her and wanted her to go to LA to make
a record with him.  She said no and I am real proud of her because it
was temptation.  She also said Ronnie van Sant died at a crossroads and
Ben looked it up and she was right, but that was after we got back
together in Washington.

You are probably getting tired of reading this letter, which is driving
around like a lost tourist, but I have a feeling it is better the more I
write down so that I can be reminded of it later on when it is more
important.

Anyhow, we slept at a motel that night somewhere in North Carolina, and
you will never guess who came to rustle us out of sleep.  Well, it was
that Thankful Priest and Bob Dufour, who I hope you remember as the main
hitting men for Bill Ruby.  Black has not stopped being all twitchy and
he knocked Bob over the balcony.  I think it is fair to say it is lucky
for Thankful and Bob that they were not there to hit us for Ruby.  See,
you do not always have to get me out of trouble.

After a little more fighting we found out they wanted to talk about
something that did not involve Ruby being angry at us so we went off to
eat pancakes.  Even Black was a little calmer after those.  The place we
went said they were the best pancakes but it is just another place that
has never tasted Ma's cooking.

It turned out that one of Ruby's whores and Thankful went and fell in
love or some such nonsense, and he wanted us to go to Dallas Texas to
get her out of the place Ruby put her.  Well, maybe we will and maybe we
will not.  It would not be so bad for Ruby's boys to owe us a favor or
two, and Ruby cannot get more angry at us than he already is.

After that we slept well and woke up and I drove us on to Washington.
It is a city that never gets any better.  On the road that rings it like
a noose we caught a man burning highway flares backward.  He was
lighting burnt out flares and they were getting filled up with whatever
stuff makes flares burn.  I did not think it seemed right so we made him
stop and took his things including the dead porcupine he had.

He also had two flares with other highway names written on them.  He
said something about how the beast of the noose highway was too young
and not ready to harvest.  I think he was doing something to mess with
our roads which did not sit well with me.  Lucky we stopped it.

Then I went to the National Interstate Highway Museum which is just
about the most amazing place in the world.  If I did not have so much to
do and if the federal government did not have me down as a convict I
would get a job there, I swear I would.  The lucky man who works there
told me about a book all about good roads and the first man to drive all
the way across this country and it seemed like there were a million
other things to learn about as well.  I could not get any of the rest of
them to go with me.  Their loss.   I think I will go back tomorrow.

Also you should know that we will be driving down to visit you and Ma
soon.  You will like the rest of the boys.  Tell Ma we're coming, that
will make her happy.  She will get to cook a whole deer.  Better make it
two, I guess everyone besides you and me will be hungry too.  Ha!

Your brother, 
Reese Beulay

-- 
        Bryant Durrell [] http://www.innocence.com/~durrell [] 9/11/2001
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   "Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear."  -- Albert Camus

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