Wildcatters Strike Literary Gusher
Wellington Shale Formation: When last we saw young Tuffy Tuffington he was scraping the hardpan with a greasy spoon. Unable to file his story Tuffy did what any intrepid writer would do: he dug a hole for himself. Yes, not even the use of a reflexive pronoun, certainly a weakness of Tuffy’s, could prevent what happened next. Sometimes missing a deadline is a prelude to enormous scientific progress although most of the time one has nothing to do with the other. On that cautionary note we continue with our saga Tuffy in the Desert.
As Tuffy digs he notices that the soil is darkening, bubbling, spitting. He’s found a gerund deposit a few feet down. Not a wildcatter by trade Tuffy digs deeper striking an entire strata of what appears to be Cormac McCarthyite, a rare earth mineral so precious that some reviewers and critics want us to drill in the Outer Continental Shelf but mean green liberals won’t let us!
Tuffy Rents a Drill Rig: This is a long interlude wherein our hero encounters T. Boone Pickens in a peyote induced nightmare that should result in a three book deal if Tuffy can remember his memoir. Take notes, Tuffy! We cry from the balcony.
The Prose Begins to Flow: after injecting hot air and boiling water into the hole, the wildcatters strike a McCarthyite gusher and the prose begins to flow, the road becomes a menacing wasteland where only the strong survive. In a land of dessicated pickup trucks and peeling paint we sense that a great calamity has befallen the people, and Tuffy must chronicle their demise or be laid off.
Capping the Wellhead: what appears to be an armadillo is a laptop computer with wifi and hifi and a carapace so thick even airport security cannot destroy it. Tuffy’s fingers are on the keyboard, the ground trembles as the precious stuff hurtles skyward in an eruption rivaling Krakatoa.
Tuffy has broken through.
Tags: Driiling Mud, Hallucinations, The Road