Except Chaos

Fear is an interesting emotion. It's everywhere these days. Turn on the news and it's terror this and killing that. With the falling dollar and runaway trains and stormwater management and Hillary Clinton it seems everyone has something to be scared of.

Not me. I respect the legacy of FDR and the New Deal. The only time I feel even an inkling of fear is when I dream about raccoons. Those fuckers are nasty and spread disease. But then I'm unconscious so I don't think it counts.

Well, I used to be scared of sharks but now I know dolphins will protect me.

The other day I was riding my bike and some unknown in a white Mercedes SUV swerved at me for no apparent reason. In that split second my emotions were racing from vulnerability to anger to acceptance to pity to yearning and back again. But the one thing I didn't feel was fear.

As a guide I always try to remember this anecdote from the late great American Patriot Hunter S. Thompson.

Fear? I know not fear. There are only moments of confusion. Some of them are deeply stamped on my memory and a few will haunt me forever.

One of my ugliest and most confused moments, I think, was when I was driving a junk Cadillac down the Coast Highway to Big Sur and a large mountain lion jumped into the moving car.

I had stopped for a moment beside the road to put out a newspaper fire in the backseat when this huge cat either jumped or fell off a cliff and landed on its back in the gravel right beside me. I was leaning over the side and pouring beer on the fire when it happened.

It was late in the day and I was alone. When the beast his the ground I had a moment of total confusion. And so did the lion. The I jumped back in the car and took off down the hill in low gear, thinking to escape certain death or at least mutilation.
The beast had tried to pounce on me from above, but missed. ... And now, as I shifted the junker into second, I heard a terrible snarling and realized that the cat was running right behind me and gaining ... (I was, in fact, Terrified at that moment.) ...And I think I must have gone temporarily insane when the goddamn thing came up beside me and jumped right into the car through the passenger-side window like a bomb.

It bounced against the dashboard and somehow turned the radio volume all the way up. Then it clawed me badly on my arm and one leg. That is why I shudder every time I hear a Chuck Berry tune.

I can still smell the beast. I heard myself screaming as I tried to steer. The blood was all over the seat. The music was deafening and the cat was still snarling and clawing at me. Then it scrambled over the seat and into the back, right into the pile of still-burning newspapers. I heard a screech of pain and saw the cat trying to hurl itself through the back window.

We were still rolling along at about thirty miles per hour when I noticed my ball-peen hammer sticking out of the mangled glove compartment.
I grabbed the hammer with my right hand, steering with my left, and swung it wildly over my shoulder at the mountain lion.

Whack! I felt it hit something that felt vaguely like a carton of eggs, and then there was silence. No resistance in the backseat. Nothing.

I hit the brakes and pulled over. My hand was still on the hammer when I looked back and saw that I had somehow hit the animal squarely on top of its head and driven the iron ball right through its skull and into its brain. It was dead. Hunched on its back and filling the whole rear of the car, which was filling up with blood.

I was no longer confused.