What a Fool Believes

10

You can’t do a countdown anywhere.  I was in the supermarket and I tried a countdown that would finish when I reached the checkout.  The people pushing their carts around me looked at me funny and then slowly backed off.  It snowballed from there.  Before I even got to the frozen foods, a few cops came with the store manager to escort me out.  The other customers thought I might have a bomb or something.  That’s why you can’t do a countdown anywhere.  It freaks people out.

9

I used to work for NASA.  I was the countdown guy.  Every launch for the past twenty years, I counted down from ten to blast off.  But now they’re done with the shuttles so now they’re done with me.  People don’t care about space anymore, they tell me.  I don’t buy it.  We’re like a speck of dust in the Universe.  No, a speck of dust on a speck of dust.  Nobody wants to crawl out of the corner and check out the rest of the room anymore?  Come on.  There could be a bar and a hot tub out there.

8

I’m living off a severance package.  It ain’t much but I’ll get by for awhile.  That ain’t the problem.  The problem is, when a man’s been counting down from ten for twenty years, it’s hard for him to stop.

7

My ex-wife was pleased when she found out I got let go.  We divorced five years ago.  She says it was because of the countdowns.  The longer I did the job the more the job became my life.  She said I was counting down at dinner, counting down in the car, counting down when we made love, counting down in my sleep.  I don’t buy that.  Sure, I practiced around the house from time-to-time, but really she just wanted a different life than the one she had with me.  Anyway, she figured getting canned would stop the countdowns.  Not that she was around or would be around to care anymore.

6

You can do a countdown on New Year’s.  No one’ll get freaked out about that.  They’ll be drunk and counting right along with you.  But that’s one day a year.

5

I was up late one night.  My schedule’s all outta whack now that I don’t need to get up at any particular time.  This movie Wayne’s World was on.  I caught the part where one of his buddies was working behind the camera and he was counting down.  It was only from five and he didn’t get to say the last couple out loud, but it was something.

4

The next morning, I showered and put on my countdown suit.  I hadn’t slept a wink after seeing the scene in Wayne’s World.  The plan was to go to the news stations and get a job counting down behind the camera.  I had experience and I’d do it for next to nothing.

3

I walked out of the last news station in the area with my head down.  None of them needed a countdown guy.  I got in my car and tried not to lose it.  Maybe I’ll go have a drink in ten…nine…, I said to myself.  I started the car and something amazing happened—and this is from a guy who’s seen every space shuttle launch for the past twenty years.  A woman on the radio was counting down with me.  “He picks me up at 8 / Make me feel so lucky 7 / He kiss me in his 6” and all the way down to one.  I could’ve cried.

2

The song was called “Countdown”.  It was by a real beauty by the name of Beyoncé.  I looked up everything I could about her on the computer and found her management company.  I gave them a call and said, How would you like NASA’s countdown guy to do the countdowns for Beyoncé’s live shows?  I don’t know where I summoned the courage for that.  After I said it I saw the supermarket scene all over again.  In the silence coming through the phone I figured I’d freaked them out.

1

But by God, it worked!  I found out that Beyoncé—being from Houston and all—is a big fan of NASA.  She even knew my name!  After the call I was on the next flight to New York to start rehearsing for the tour.  I was gonna be on stage every night doing the countdown for “Countdown”!  I thought about calling my ex-wife from the airport but I counted down from ten and thought, Aw, the hell with that.  Blast off!

Rainbow: “Man on the Silver Mountain”

In the Joshua Tree National Park, twisting through mountain, is a trail to a place called Barker Dam.  A little over a month ago, as the sun reddened the sky above me, I headed down this trail, between golden boulders and around the purple barbs of cacti, spiraling deeper and deeper, until the mountain opened up to reveal an oasis.  Surrounded by bushes of cobalt-colored flowers was a shallow, mossy-green pond.  In the shade of a grey tree that sprung out of the center of the pond floated a pair of ducks.  After seeing nothing but rock and sand and scuttering brown lizards for miles and miles, which was completely new and absolutely stunning, this sight somehow managed to be even more strange to me than the slab of stone shaped like a skull that I’d seen earlier. 

I decided to climb up and get a better view.  As I looked at the scene from a hundred feet up I said, “This must be what it was like for Ronnie James Dio.  Like the ‘Man on the Sil—’”  But before I could finish, a bolt of electric-orange, which seemed to have been fired from the sun like a solar flare, landed on a natural pillar about twenty-five feet to the left of me.  The orange orb, about ten feet in diameter, hovered atop the pillar for a moment before it changed to a silvery, transparent color.  Through it I saw a man.  But not just any man.  Inside the silvery orb was Ronnie James Dio.  I was nearly knocked on my ass by this vision but his eyes, which pierced my very soul, gave me strength.  With his signature Double Devil Horns gesture, he roared, “No, this is what it feels like to be Ronnie James Dio,” and from his fingertips shot violet waves and on those waves rode the music for “Man on the Silver Mountain”.  Right on time, Dio opened his mouth and sang along, changing the day into night.  

Four and a half minutes later, the song was over and the desert was quiet once again.  Dio gave me the Horns one last time before the orb went orange and shot back into the starry sky.  I climbed down the rocks thinking I should question what I’d just seen.  But I couldn’t.  It was real, it was heavy and it was Metal.