Locoweed

            On Thursday I did a little more research for my essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I read some more of Gretchen Henderson’s Ugliness: a Cultural History. She’s a very good writer and I like how her epigraph is a quote from Frank Zappa’s “What Is the Ugliest Part of Your Body?”

            I re-read another chapter of Frankenstein. I’ve noted that Victor believes that how people appear on the surface reflects how they are inside.

            I started working on a new poem based on an online argument I had over a year ago with a Nazi who’d been at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. I spent two hours on it but it’ll take another two or more to start pulling it together into a poem.

            At 20:00 I put a potato on the stove to boil and then I headed down to Freshco to buy yogourt and grapes.

            On my way out of the supermarket a cyclist was standing there with his bike and blasting electronic dance music.

            When I got home I had just enough time to heat a chicken leg and some gravy for dinner.

            I watched an episode of Rawhide. The concept of adventures occurring on a trail drive is a lot less formulaic that town based western stories involving lawmen.

            A new and young drover named Roy discovers a dead man hanging by his feet and branded with an “S”. A new and more experienced recruit named Rivera, who is familiar with this particular territory, says that the “S” is the mark of a powerful bandit named Sanchez. The men begin to notice riders all around them. Roy sees Rivera gathering a certain weed near the grave they dug for the hanged man. He takes some himself and asks Rowdy about it. Rowdy says it’s coyote weed and that he shouldn’t be carrying it around because it’s deadly to cows and humans. Roy passes on that warning to Rivera, who explains that he has a wound and he uses a Mexican recipe for a poultice that calls for coyote weed. Rivera secretly ties a bandana to a tree that can be seen from the hills. A little later Roy falls from his horse and twists his ankle. Gil yells at him for not checking his equipment because it was clear that his saddle was not fully secured. It isn’t mentioned but it seems obvious that Rivera sabotaged Roy's saddle. That night lightning is spooking the cattle and so the men have to go out on their horses and calm the herd. Roy is supposed to stay off his feet and just help Wishbone for a couple of days but he disobeys orders and mounts up to go and help calm the cattle. He gets cornered by a panicking section of cows and calls out for help but Gil needs to save the herd. Roy falls from his horse and is trampled to death. For most of the rest of the story Rowdy is pissed off at Gil for caring more about cattle than people. That night after eating Wishbone’s stew, most of the men get seriously sick. Gil recognizes the symptoms as those from coyote weed poisoning. He says everyone has to be searched and then suddenly Rivera says he’s going for water. Gil tells Rowdy to gather everyone’s saddlebags but on a hunch Rowdy follows Rivera ad finds him trying to get away. They have a long fight until Gil arrives. Rivera is tied to a wagon wheel. Sanchez and his men are waiting in the hills for the drovers to drop from the poison so they can sweep in and steal the herd. Wishbone sends Mushy out for the herbs he needs to concoct an antidote. He asks for white horse nettle, silver leaf, nightshade and black henbane. I think most of those are all forms of deadly nightshade.

            All the men are forced to drink the antidote, except that one keeps spitting it out and dies. While the men are recovering Gil insists that the men pretend not to be sick in order to fool Sanchez. Then he tells them all to go and pretend to collapse by the watering hole and to wait until Sanchez and his men are three meters away before they fire. Meanwhile Rivera gets away and Gil goes after him. Sanchez is coming and the men want to help Gil but Rowdy orders them to stay put. They do so and when the shooting begins they have the advantage. When it’s all over they think Gil has died and blame Rowdy for sacrificing him but Gil emerges alive. I guess it's some sort of lesson but I don’t buy that it ties in with the incident of Roy’s death. Rowdy wasn’t just saving the herd but all the men that would have been cut down if they’d gone to save Gil.

I can’t find any reference to coyote weed but it’s probably what is commonly called locoweed, which is also poisonous. There is no antidote for locoweed so it seems that Wishbone’s recipe was fictional.