45s on 33 – #74: “En Una Cajita de Oro”

I guess up to this point, I had assumed hearing the music from the jukebox in my field was a localized incident, specific to me having placed an old likely enchanted jukebox and poking the cord into some red maple base dirt. Thus, I also assumed what got called Space Espanol was also localized in the same ways. As me and Rey-Rey and Railroad Time and the runaways were chilling in the tunnel though, suddenly the echoed screwed sounds of fresh Space Espanol started to fill the upper areas of dark caverns like a giant speaker cabinet. And it grew louder, but not overbearing, a consuming sound which somehow didn’t steal your ear focus, like sunspots or solar flares for your hearing.

Before Rey-Rey or I could really mention it, as it took us by surprise, we not being acclimated to daily life inside the time tunnels, Railroad Time hollered, “Hey Woodie, how we doin’ on stores? We lookin’ good?”

Woodie yelled from the inkiness, “Yeah, we prolly good for ‘nother month. We don’t need to make no run right now.”

“Good,” Railroad Time yelled back through the cough syrupped sounds. Then at normal voice level so that only Rey-Rey and me and a couple of closest (physically speaking, not emotionally) runaways could hear, “I ain’t feel like goin’ out right now, anyways.”

I had wondered about how they survived in the tunnels all this time (albeit technically not “time” in the way we know time, but they still had to eat and shit, right?), so I asked, “Where do y’all get food?”

Railroad Time monologued, “From town outside one of the tunnels, in Dillwyn from some point, probably ahead of your time from the looks of you. That’s why I had asked Woodie, because we go when the Space Espanol plays.”

“Wait, you call it Space Espanol? You know about that?”

“Well yeah. That’s when we can go outside the tunnels without hassle because time is recalibrating itself. Everything’s movin’ kinda sideways, so the people in the town don’t got time to really figure out what we’re up to or who we are because time’s skippin’ in that moment anyways.”

I was confused as fuck, by lots of what had been going on yes, but also by multiple points of that last statement by Railroad Time. “’Time is recalibrating’? What does that mean?”

“Well, you know all these tunnels goes out to different places in time? All the shit people do out there in those times gotta connect to all the other times sometimes, or else you get too many glitches in all the different times. That’s when all the shit that don’t match up across times matches itself back up, recalibrates, fixes as much broken shit as it needs to to keep running along.”

“Doesn’t it break things too? I mean all those exits are tied to set times?”

“Well yeah, some shit gets broke, but some shit gonna get broke either way. Shit breaks. Don’t matter which time you go out into, some shit gonna break. That’s life.”

I still didn’t understand why they went out during these moments. “Why does it recalibrating matter for you going out? And what does the Space Espanol playing have to do with it?”

“We learned way back,” (note that he didn’t say ‘a long time ago’ – I found that intriguing), “that when the Space Espanol rocked, that’s when time outside the tunnels was fixin’ itself. Then we learned that was the best time to go get all the things we needed, usually just Woodie, a couple extra hands from his crew, and I’d wolf it up to put the fear in all them people outside.”

“’Wolf it up’?” Rey-Rey asked. (Finally, fucking Rey-Rey asked a question. He’s always just sitting around zoning out. I have to admit, even in other realms where space-time continuum is unfamiliar to me, stoners sometimes suck.)

“Yeah man, I’d wolf it up, meaning I’d shift into wolf form. I thought I told y’all I could do that? We go out into town, it being a future town of some kind, with three or four old scary ass looking runaways slaves and a motherfuckin’ wolf, all while time is skippin’ a beat sideways? Them folks ain’t got a chance to even think about stoppin’ us before we done loaded up a wagon full of goods. It’s like a gold box outside the tunnels when the Space Espanol plays… just turn into a wolf real quick-like, hit out real quick-like, and by the time the music done stopped, we already back in the tunnels, sittin’ fed and proper for the next couple months.”

I waited, hoping Rey-Rey would ask another question, because I really wanted to know more about Railroad Time shape-shifting into a wolf, but all that came out of the darkness from Rey-Rey’s side was his stoner voice going, “Wow. That’s fuckin crazy, man.”