The usually glaring sun of California beats down especially hard on the Valley, an area stretching down the middle of Northern California. In this valley, heat is magnified intensely, and humidity is low. Which leaves the average human hot and with a dry mouth after only an hour or two of staying outside in the heat.
Why is there no relief, you ask?
The cool, Pacific Ocean air bashes uselessly against the Coastal Range, trying to get some relief to the hapless residents, but failing miserably.
On the other side, the Sierra Nevada Range prevents the hot air from escaping the Valley. See, hot air molecules don't like each other too well, and they try to spread themselves out. And when they can't, they get really mad.
So, with that angry hot air prowling around and no ocean relief coming from the west, the Valley gets pretty miserable.
Right in the middle of this oppressive valley lies Sacramento, the capital of California. Sacramento is known for an abundance of trees, but they offer little respite when it's 108 and there's no wind.
On one of these such days, Dusty was slumped across an old, faded couch that had been sitting on his balcony a little bit too long. He had had a long day at work, his AC wasn't working, and his new issue of The New Yorker hadn't arrived yet.
He was leafing through a yellowed copy of the Sacramento Bee that had been aged by the unrelenting sun, but after flipping through it several times, he became disgusted and dropped it to the floor. He then began absently picking away at the blue-gray paint of the foot-thick balcony walls, but stopped before he did too much damage.
He reached for his glass which was perched precariously on the wall, but he didn't seem to care, and downed the last tepid drop of his seltzer water/mango juice mix. Putting the glass down, he turned his attention to the sycamore tree across the street where a mockingbird was twittering away happily.
As Dusty got hotter, the singing got louder and louder. And Dusty became more and more agitated at the noise. His eyes darted from side to side, looking for some type of high-powered rifle that would appear magically just so he could put away the pesky bird. No such luck, however, and he was forced to get up and go inside to find his South American blow dart gun.
A true relic he had picked up, not in South America, but actually in Central from a street vendor with a lazy eye. The rats in his sleeping quarters there had been bothering him to some degree, and Lazy Eye had thoroughly endorsed it as a short-range and long- range weapon. Dusty had never asked how Lazy Eye had ended up with a South American blow dart gun in the first place, but he figured that it really didn't matter.
He loaded the gun with a stray pencil he had found, and launched it across the street with an explosive, dry breath, intent on missing and scaring rather than killing. Instead of the mockingbird fluttering away in fear, it zoomed straight through Dusty's open window and into his liquor shelf.
Hearing the horrible crash, he rushed in to find the mockingbird inside a bottle of tequila, having smashed through the top portion. He took the bottle into his living room, and carefully extricated the avian, laying it carefully on the surface of the table.
He went quickly into the kitchen to get a dishtowel to dry it off, but when he came back, it was staggering about the room muttering foul curses at various objects. The bird took sight of Dusty and began laughing hysterically, rolling over on its belly and pounding the floor with its wings.
A sour expression blew away the previously astonished arc of Dusty's brow. Nevertheless, his curiosity won over his distaste for the bird's attitude, and he kneeled in for a closer look.
"Get away from me, you perv!" the bird screamed.
Dusty jumped backwards in shock, slamming his head against a dining room chair.
"That was smart," remarked the bird as it pushed itself off of the floor.
Dusty winced as he stood up, and felt for the lump on the back of his head.
"Listen, bird..."
"Nope! Can't make me! I'm gonna get me some more of that al-key-hall." the bird said as it swaggered over to the tequila.
Dusty dove over the coffee table and managed to grab the broken bottle without cutting his hands. "No!"
The bird's face took on an odd, surly complexion as it stated: "Give me the damn bottle, you bastard."
Dusty faked a welcoming smile and said, "There's some Zima in the fridge."
The bird tipped its head back and roared laughter at the suggestion. "Yeah, and afterwards we can have a fat-free cookie. Gimmie a break."
Dusty pondered his situation. Here he was, sitting on his couch, holding a bottle of liquor, being threatened by a crazed mockingbird.
Maybe he was just really trashed and couldn't remember when and how he achieved that state of being. That would explain everything.
"But what do I do about the bird?" he said aloud, and it quickly replied: "You're going to give the bird that bottle. That's what you're going to do."
What's the harm? thought Dusty. It's only my drunken imagination. He handed over the bottle. "Here you go, little friend." Sarcastically he added: "Do you have a name?"
The bird stared at him through narrowed eyes. "Of course! What animal in the wild doesn't?" It rolled its eyes and took a drink from the bottle. Suddenly, it ruffled its feathers and yelled "Yowee!"
"Then we should name you," Dusty said, ignoring the avian's exclamation. He scanned the liquor shelf in search of an appropriate name for the inebriated bird. "How 'bout Jose?"
It had drunk about a fourth of the liquid while Dusty had been talking. It looked up, tilted its head to one side and replied, "Whatever." It continued drinking with no further discourse.
After a few minutes of silence, "Jose it is then." Dusty confirmed. He stood up and walked over to his stack of magazines. In transit, he realized he didn't really feel drunk, aside from a slight headache. He came up with another answer for that. Perhaps he had gotten thrashed, fell asleep, and this was all a dream.
At that thought, he began skipping around the room, and finally made it over to the periodicals.
Jose looked up from his bottle and eyed Dusty suspiciously. "What ever it is you're on, boy, cut back on the dosage."
Dusty giggled. "When I wake up, you'll be gone!" He blindly grabbed for a magazine, blindly flipped through it, and blindly put it back. Then he skipped back over the couch.
"You're freakin' me out, man." Jose remarked. The bird had polished off the entire bottle.
Dusty's jaw dropped. "You sure know how to hold your liquor." He recovered.
"Yes I do. Hand me that Guinness, would ya, Sparky?"
Now, dream or not, Dusty wasn't about to let this freeloader into his precious Guinness supply. "I don't think so," he replied slowly, grabbing the bottle.
"Gimmie..." Jose stepped closer.
"No! How about some Jack Daniels?!"
"I want Guinness!" The bird shouted. He then glanced out the window. "Nevermind..." And with that, he flew off.
Dusty slumped into the couch, still holding the Guinness. "Okay...now that it's gone, I'll wake up any minute now.
He waited.
"Any minute now..."
He waited a little while longer, and then pinched himself. A look of horror washed over his face, just as an explosion was heard down the street. He rushed to the window and craned his neck to see a diesel tanker jackknifed across the avenue, leaking gas everywhere. The mockingbird hovered overhead, screaming obscenities at the driver.
Dusty came to one horrible realization.
He was standing on the broken tequila bottle.
But, other than that, the entire affair hadn't been a dream! Now a drunken mockingbird was roaming through the streets on a destructive rampage.
After bandaging his foot, he set to the task of finding a way to halt the bird. An idea came to him, and he quickly brewed a pot of coffee.
After doing so, he put on his sneakers and ran down the street with it, going right past the overturned tanker. Firefighters had set up barriers on either side of the spill to prevent leakage into people's lawns, and Dusty flew safely by on the sidewalk.
A car alarm went off, followed by a woman's screams, so he followed that noise past the actual incident to a seedy-looking bar.
Inside the bar, Dusty found Jose trying to swindle a beer off of a bewildered bartender on credit.
"I'm tellin' ya, I'm good for it." The bird was explaining.
Dusty crept up behind Jose, and drenched the bird with the black coffee. He figured that if the bird went crazy from getting drunk, that getting it sober would reverse the effect.
It did.
The bird sat there, sopping wet, the intelligence vanished from its brown eyes. However you describe intelligence.
Dusty almost felt sorry for doing that now, as he knew he had just caged this bird's fire, perhaps forever. But the remorse was ended abruptly when the bird took a crap on his new sneakers, and he pitched it outside, never to see it or hear it again.
He gave the bartender a twenty for his troubles, and set off back home. The sun was setting, and Dusty could hear the faint melody of a nightingale.