RANGO // OӘͶAЯ - Another Outlaw Story [Engl.]

42. Moments of insights

A soft breeze crossed the lonely alleys of the desert and raised itself into the evening sky. The heat of the day calmed down. Stars appeared in the darker parts. Freshness and a slight coldness came in and took the part. The rattlesnake blinked. It was dark night in the desert. Just the moon gave his lights and cast long shadows on earth.
Slowly the snake lifted and crawled its way, without aim, without a plan. He just followed his instinct.
He passed cactuses. Their shadows moved because of the rising moon. But he didn't realize them. They were just decoration in the environment.
He noticed nothing. His glance was empty.
He crossed sand dunes. His sander marks melted like ice through the blurring wind.
All the time he had to think about everything and nothing.
Why had that come? He had been ready to die after a car had hit him. Now he had begun something without to bring it to its end.
Pictures reflected his mind. Voices. Faces. Lights. Shadows. Everything faded away.
He felt like alone in the world. Now he missed the feeling of being home. The room in the town hall where he had spent the nights. The greetings of Mayor's old voice. The smell of Coral's perfume. The sand on his lips through the tunnels. He could still taste it.
His attention woke up. Something had moved in the distance. Lights. He lifted his head, where he could see the red flowing lights of the cars over the road. There where he had met the armadillo.
He closed his eyes and listened to the sound. As if the cars would call to him that he should come.
Inch by inch, he came closer, until one meter apart from the road.
There were more cars on the road than in the noon.
He watched them. Then he curled and stayed there silently. His glance like far away in empty space.
Since he can think, he had always cursed the day, when the life had born him as a snake.
He had lived a life in seclusion.
Months ago, he came to a ranch somewhere in the south. It was similar like Stump's.
When one day changed everything.
A gang of snakes had robbed the farm. They had burned down everything.
He had been in near. He had shot. The noise had lured other farmers from far away. After the battle, the gang was gone. Just one dead victim. The others had fled. But the farmer family and the workers were dead, too. He was ready to testify in court. But nobody believed him. He was found guilty of that crime. Or to be an accomplice of the gang. The snake gang had known as a cruel collection of criminals in the area. But nobody had ever counted or taken a closer look to them, so that he was automatically a part of them for the people.
After the rendition of judgment, he managed to escape. He had had no plan where. But he came here.
But the past will overtake him again and again. Regardless how far he will travel.
There was no way to escape. They will hunt him until the end of his life. The judiciary, now a bounty hunter. No place in the world could hide him.
He lifted his eyes.
There is just one place where nobody could follow him.
Maybe the only way of escape.
He didn't know how long, but sometimes he decided for this last step.
It could be the best. He was old. He had lived the main part of his life.
Slowly, very slowly he neared the edge of the lifeless underground of black top.
He coiled his body more together. He didn't want to feel the same pain as after his first car accident, where a car just drove over a little part of his long body. No. It should happen fast and all and done.
He took off his hat with his gun tail and took the hat brim in his mouth.
He hesitated a while until he'd got the feeling that it was the best moment of his demise.
The banished snake took his last minutes to recall his life for a last time.
Then he waited until the next car was gone. Then he moved. He felt how his belly left the sandy floor and touched the rough tarmac of the deadly road.
In the corner of the eye, he saw the next car coming.
He took his body closer together. The car drove over him. He was too much in the middle of the traffic line. Maybe the next one. He didn't want to see it. His glance kept ahead. Lights shot around and above. The rush of the by human driving machines. Nobody saw him. Nobody cared. Nothing seemed to notice him. Not even the rushing wind around. He was like a nothing.
He stopped in his crawling walking. His belly scales touched sandy, dusty ground.
His eyes wandered down. It wasn't a hole in the street floor. It was the end. The other side.
Was he run over without noticing? Was that the afterlife?
He looked down at himself.
His body was still the same. No scratch, no pain, no scrape.
Another rushing pushing wind blew in his back. The cars continued. The life on the street went on, but the time around seemed to stop.
Death? Where are you?
He couldn't feel his body anymore. His mind went black.
Death. Take my soul.
His nerves went numb. He let fall himself and crashed down.
The noise on the road kept on. The moon shined down to the silence filled site.
Suddenly the ground came to live. Bugs rolled up. They crawled and surrounded the motionless body of the snake. Like something would call them. Gently they took the snake on their backs and transported him far away deeper through the other side of the road.