Deerhoof

Part 3 of 6 by Peter Wild

All of which leads to what can only be described as a pivotal moment – and the pivotal moment is awash with surface detail (like, for one thing, I retrieved my shoe from where it was lodged, in the mud beneath the car alarm car, and it occurred to me, as I crouched and hopped, one hand on the top of the car and one hand jogging the heel to get the damn thing back on my foot, that the car alarm sounded like a Beefheart tune but I couldn’t for the life of me say which one – and then I thought, as I made my way through the car park to the gate, maybe it wasn’t Beefheart maybe it was Daniel Johnston or Pig Destroyer or – hey, maybe it was Deerhoof; like, for another thing, within about ten minutes the rain was falling like rain out of a Kurosawa movie, the rain was Rashomon rain; like, for a third thing, the streets were empty even though it was Friday night, there were no cars, no bikes, no rickshaws, nothing), but the surface detail isn’t what is important. What is important is what was going on beneath the surface. I’m not saying I made a wish and heard thunder rumble and found myself caught in cut-out, a dark shape against the electric sky. All I’m saying is – as I hashed and rehashed the furious five minutes that passed between me slapping that kid upside his head and you driving away – it may be I thought life could only be better if we didn’t argue. I don’t know if there’s somebody up there or somebody down there or somebody some fucking where who was listening. All I know is, by the time I arrived – foot-sore and wet as a dog – back home, the world no longer resembled the world I knew.

6S

Peter Wild, author of Deerhoof, Part 2, makes his online home at peterwild.com. "Deerhoof" is a six-part story, with each part exactly six sentences. Look for Part 4 on Tuesday, March 20th.