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August 24 - Nov 9
23 August 2004 7:30pm
I took out and looked at my old high school yearbook the other day. I remembered my classes, my teachers, and, most of all, my friends. Frankly, I had a large group of friends, most of us fractured into smaller groups, especially as we got older, but most of us still did things together. Like the first time we all got drunk. And the last time we all got drunk together. Those of us that participated in both nights were soon lost to each other. Of the original five guys, I do not see any of them any more, either from death or just time. Years may have past, but I remember both those nights as some of the best of high school, if not the best of my life.
The First Time, part one: Introductions.
We sat in Miss Morgan's tenth grade English Class, the only class we all shared. We were the original five, known to each other since elementry school and before. There was Twitch, who I met in 4 year old kindergarden when he stole my legos and I hit him in the head with one. We called him Twitch because of a nervous habit he had to always keep moving. We would be watching a movie and the boy would be shifting his feet around, reaching for the food bowl, playing with knives, anything. There was a small incedent where we threatened to nail his feet to the coffee table once.
The second was Faces. Faces was your average band geek. We found him in the band room with a knockoff stratocaster trying to play a segment of smells like teen spirit by nirvana. He was so called Faces for his ability to change his face at will, mimicing many celebrities. Also we found out he had a really small tounge, so small that he could not reach it out of his mouth, no matter how wide he opened it. Weird.
24 August 2004, 3:53pm
Stinky. Lord, one of our leaders, had the first punk haircut and alternative music and smelled like a rotten egg stuffed in a skunk's butt. The nickname is therefore self-explanitory. At one time we made him a necklace, a tube of deoderant on a string. He wore it for three months... the necklace, not the deoderant. Somehow he was the one with the constant girlfriends. Most of this was his idea.
Krusty, so named because he looked kinda like the clown on the Simpsons. A bohemoth of a boy, he was always large and definately one of the leaders. His charisma was almost as legendary as his sense of humor. He could tell you anything and you would believe it, follow it and then turn around and laugh at you for doing so. He was about two years older than the rest of us, held back for some reason or another, mostly laziness.
And there was me, Lurch. I got the nickname because I was tall and quiet. At the time I was practicing a stoic philosophy, no real emotion. We had learned about it in english and I thought it was cool. I think I met everyone in the group at different times. Twitch and I had been friends since we were little. He introduced me to Stinky. With Stinky came Krusty. And we all kinda found Faces in that band hall, sixth grade year, banging away at that poor guitar the song we thought at the time was the pinacle of rock history. Later, music is what held us together, progressing through punk and other underground types of music. Music and a type of feeling that we were different, even though now I know that we were the same as the other kids, just a little more vocal about our differences. Then, we discovered alcohol, and could not care what the other kids thought.
August 28, 2004 1:00pm
So, the day started out much like most of my high school adventures, we skipped out of school early. To say we just left is an understatement though. After a carefully orchestrated sychronizing of watches, we all stood up and walked out of the room at the same time. The class was the last teacher of the day and the teacher, Mr. Just-Let-Me-Get-To-Three-O'clock-Without-Killing-Any-One-of-You, or Mr. Bob, could have cared less, as long as we did not wake him up. We walked straight out to the parking lot, or the side of the street where you could park and not be noticed leaving a full hour early, and hopped in my 1983 Oldsmobile, Gray Lady. The car was noticebly not gray anymore, covered in black watermarks and odd patches of rust, but ran well. Still runs to this day, in fact. Lady, to say it simply, was a tank. She fit the entire group comfortably, as well as commanded the attention of anyone crossing her path. I once raised the bumper of her a full half inch by ramming a telephone pole going twenty miles per hour.
We took off to the Pizza Hut where several of the other kids who went AWOL were likely to be. Upon arriveing, we noticed Lunchbox's truck. Lunchbox is in the grade above us, a devote follower of the republican church and destined one day to have a job where he fires people around the clock. In buisness classes he was known to make up little jingles about taking the jobs of others. One went something like,
"Well I fired me one
I fired me two
I'll go home tonight
And have me a brew
Then I'll come back to work
The very next day
And if you piss me off
Your job goes away
La de de da, de da, da da daaaaa."
Lunchbox was not a very talented songwriter, but what he lacked in singing voice, he made up for with patience and the gift of gab. These two factors were very important when one has a friendship with Seamus, who we noticed was with Lunchbox as we walked into the Pizza Hut. As anyone who has read the previous entry, Seamus is a loud man with a pension for kilts and a hate for clowns. A truly interesting individual and my roomate as I write this. We walked to the corner booth and took a seat. "Now that is just the kind of thinking that will allow you not to progress in this society, my dear Seamus," Lunchbox was saying, "If you keep up with the attitude that all life is for the poor masses that continually feed from the system, then---"
Seamus slammed the hilt of a big folding knife down on the table, unfolded it, and pointed it at Lunchbox, "Look, stop it, or I'll kill you, I'll bury you, I can do it, I have a shovel and a couple of hefty bags!" He roared. He then started using the big hunting knife to cut his pizza, eating it in big chunks. Then entire restaurant had gone quiet. We had stopped dead in our tracks.
After a few moments, Seamus noticed us and with a mouth full of pizza he called for us to come over, spraying Lunchbox with crumbs and sauce. He was waving his knife around in a more erratic fashion than usual, and had a particular gleam of mania in his eye that I could see as we go closer. Stinky, ever the cordial peace maker, shook hands with Lunchbox and almost with Seamus but thought the better after Seamus offered the knife blade to his open palm. Faces tried to hide behind Krusty's expanse, but Krusty had found the leftovers of someone who had just stood up and was helping himself. Twitch sat down at a nearby table and started drumming his fingers. I stood, taking in this scenery with my eyes wide open and a smile. These were my friends... God help me...
August 30, 2004 2:32pm
Now, as it happened, Seamus had decided not to even go to school today, and had taken a mood enhancing chemical that was enhancing him in all the wrong directions. He was quickly devouring pizza and shoving empty plates into Faces lap, who would then replenish the plates. I think Seamus ate up to six pizzas and stopped to take a breath only once. And what a breath it was.
Stinky and Lunchbox had gone off to gather together some alcohol. Earlier in the week the five youngest of us had decided that tonight we would get drunk. Stinky knew that Lunchbox had a fake id, and we all had known him in one way or another. What we had not known was that while the two of them were off , we would have to babysit a very wacked out Seamus. As already stated, Seamus had taken Faces as his pizza delivery boy, and as that was all he wanted, we were set. Krusty went to look at the jukebox, yelling back occasionally things like, "Holy shit, they got Thriller! Nobody's Got Thriller," and equally sarcastic, "Hey, Twitch, they got your favorite!! The New Kids!! Who was your favorite? Joe? Huh? No.. no... Donny! You like the tough ones, right, Twitch?" He then would start dancing to whatever song he was making fun of, yelling out the tune. Then the children showed up.
It was innocent. They looked so sweet in their little hats. Seamus took one look and a cold fury crossed his face. As they all sat down, the chatter cascaded over the room, the sounds of laughter...and a deep grumble from our table. Twitch and I ran to the jukebox to fill Krusty in. Faces sat for a few horrified minutes before heading to the buffett. Seamus started to shake.
August 31, 2004 1:51pm
One child ran towards past Seamus's table. The quick and beady eyes hounded the small child, and Seamus waited for the child to return. Meanwhile, Krusty and I walked to the table, staying out of arms reach.
"Um, Seamus?," Krusty asked, "Hey, cap'n, why don't we go out and have a smoke? Huh?"
"Yeah," I said, "Let's go outside, for some fresh air, and a smoke. Krust here will even give you one."
Krusty looked at me in some disgust, mostly because he had had to con his grandfather into buying them for him and because I did not even smoke at the time. I just smiled and motioned my head at Seamus, whose gaze had drifted away from the children for a moment.
"No thanks," he said, "I got my own right here."
With that he pulled out a pack of Camel Wide Filters and a chrome Zippo lighter with a shamrock on it. He pulled out one cigarette, slipped it in his mouth, and lit it. As he did these motions with quick, practiced ease, the small child came darting between Krusty and I and Seamus. Seamus's arm darted out and grabbed the young boy by the shirt and pulled him close.
"You know what you have in store for you?" Seamus whispered, spraying pieces of pizza on the child, "Answer, you little brat."
The shaking child, caught in the haze of cigarette smoke as much as the meaty grasp, manged to shift his head left and then right in a blur. The movement had been so quick that a small bit of sausage had flown from the bridge of his nose. It was like seeing a bear grab hold of a rabbit and instead of just swiping a paw and decapitating the poor animal, the bear was trying to talk the rabbit to death. Immediately cruel yet facinating, like the Discovery channel covering shark attacks.
"Then why did you come here?" Seamus asked, "What are you trying to do to me?"
The child seemed genuinely on the verge of panic, and I began looking around for parents. There seemed to be no authority figures around to stop this, to change the channel away from the horror fest that loomed in front of us. We hooked our eyes to this spectacle and did not let go.
"J-J-J-Jacob had a-a-a...."
"Com'on," Seamus said, shaking him.
"Jacob had a b-birthday, and I came and I-I gave him a twuck," the kid almost smiled at himself, then Seamus took a long drag of cigarette and puffed it into the child's face.
"You gave him a truck, huh? What do you think? That he will be your friend now, that twenty years from now he won't think twice about having sex with your sister, that ten years from now he won't want to do you?! That he will love you because of a TWUCK! He won't remember, He won't care about---"
"Seamus, dammit, son!... put the kid down," Lunchbox said. Seamus swivelled his head, as suprised as we were to see Lunchbox, with all his girth, had come upon us in Seamus's moment of insanity. Hell, we were all damn glad he did, though. The feeling came with the smile that spread over Seamus's face.
"Why, hello, Lunch... where you been?" he said.
"You know where I've been and you know you should not be smoking in here and you know you should not be holding small children hostage. Now put him down and let's go drink some beer, boy."
With this, Seamus's entire demeanor changed. He let go of the boy, brushing little pieces of pizza off his shirt and face, managing to rub stains into the boy's shirt and hair. It was kinda touching. From bear to, well, retarded bear. Seamus even offered the kid a cigarette. To his credit the kid refused, and then more to his credit, he ran away.
September 3, 2004
We left the Pizza Hut in a hurry, Lunchbox near pulling Seamus. We then followed Lunchbox's truck to a deserted area just past Main Street. There in the dirty alley, we pulled the case of beer we were going to drink out of his truck bed and dumped it ceremoniously into a cooler in the back of the Gray Lady and dumped ice over it. All during this I was looking over our shoulder, waiting for the cops to come at us like in those old dirty Harry movies.
September 7, 2004
At my mere thought of guns, Seamus had pulled a pellet rifle out of the back of the truck cab and was firing at anything and everything not moving. Thinking back on it, anything and everything probably was moving for him and he was just trying to kill the world. That would also explain the stream of profanities issueing from his mouth and the words "die" and "jumping bricks of mud" and "running buildings". Now, as long as he was shooting at the fairly stable structures, we where okay because the ricochet was no problem from a pellet gun and their was virtually no noise... but then Seamus turned his sights to more breakable efforts.
His first would-b target was the streetlight. Now, from his point of view he was a honed, fully trained military sniper capable of dropping a flea from five hundred feet. From our PoV, he was a drooling, half crazed teenager covered in pizza sauce holding an air rifle. The street light remains illuminating that alley to this day.
In search of bigger game, our friend turned his sights to the truck, which was quickly vetoed by Lunchbox on the grounds that "hell no, unless you want to crawl home after I run you over" was a condition that Seamus would find himself in. Then he saw the motherload.
Now, the town I grew up in is rather small and when the Wal-mart came it killed most of the downtown business. After several years of the shops standing empty and haunted, crime kept away only because the police station was right in the center, the town fathers decided to bring back downtown. They cleaned the streets, put new faces on the buildings, and did an overall makeover. One such place to not really made over was the downtown bank. The bank is an anceint structure set in stone right smack in the middle of the largest block of Main St. The bank, with its tall, gray, roman colomns on the outside and plush carpet and velvet ropes on the inside, held a place for buisness staying power in downtown. Such a place for so much mischief from a crazy boy with an air rifle.
September 9, 2004 5:23pm
So after cruising his eye over the entire structure of the bank, Seamus locks onto the bank's back door. The back door was a six foot glass figure, with the bank's bright yellow logo embossed on it. It was quite striking compared to the rest of the grey building. And quite a target.
By this time, my little group of five were in the Gray Lady, beer safely deposited in the trunk. We were waiting for Seamus to sight-in his barn door of a target and act. Lunchbox stood beside his truck, patiently waiting for Seamus to get done. Looking back on it, none of us really cared if he hit the door or not. Banks were supposed to be impregnable. I guess we all had the image of the main street bank as a large hulking monstrosity, incabable of harm in any way. As I was soon to learn, this was not the case.
Seamus teetered for a second and rose the airifle in a less than fluid motion to his shoulder. Imagine a three year old lifting a bazooka. He almost fell back and sent one of those little pellets heavenward, but at the right moment he squeazed back on the trigger and... tick. Just a tiny tick. We sat in the car stunned, looking at the small dot at the bottom of the door. Barely a glimmer lost in the falling sunlight. Then a small crack extended out and up. Then another. Then the entire door spiderwebbed upward in a rush. The sound came with such suddenness that we jumped in our seats, the momentum making the joints and shocks groan.
Now, if anyone reading this is ever engaged in such a delemia, if I can empart to you any one piece of advice in such a situation, it is this: Do not do anything. That alley had become a tomb on the midnight of Halloween. No one moved. No one spoke. No one breathed. I would still be sitting there right now if not for my friend Twitch. The man who could not sit still.
"Shit," he muttered... and the door became Niagra, complete with white shower and thunderous boom.
The word for one moment was silence. The word for the next moment was action. Swift and immediate action. The Gray Lady had never moved so fast in all her life. My friends and I prodded her along on shear force of will and she responded with gusto. As we roared out of the alley, tires squealing for the first time ever, we heard Lunchbox trying to corral Seamus back in to the car.
"But, but... did you see that?" Seamus was asking...
"I don't care, give me that gun and let's go. NOW!!!" And with those parting words from Lunchbox, we drove off into the soft, fading sunset to enjoy the night.
October 11, 2004 1:22pm
Krusty's Place
We figured that the best place to do our drinking was a place no one would look for us, mostly deep in the woods. We thought long and hard, but decided on a place out towards Krusty's father's land, where a creek flowed past a nice sandbar near an abandoned rail bridge. The night was clear, a bright moon just rising over the tree tops lighting our way down the dirt road that lead to the bridge.
When we got there, we noticed two cars already parked next to the trail leading to the sandbar. Not being too afraid of a few people out in the woods and walked up to the cars.
"Hey," Krusty said, "This is my dad's car." He pointed to a red rusted buick something or other. The doors were bother different colors than the body of the car and a small hula girl was gently shaking on the dash.
Now, when Krusty identified the car as his father's, a wave of relief and fear passed through our little group. The relief came in the familiarity of the man. He was a rough guy, but very friendly with his son and the rest of us. Most of the people who new him called him Old Man because he was the oldest of their clan and because he had accumulated less jail time and therefore given a title of respectablility. He could stay out of trouble. Out here alone, he was the only parent we could run into out here and not get in trouble. He may even bum a beer off of us. On the other hand, it was widely known that Krusty's daddy's side of the family was known for acquiring money through more risky means. They had all seen some prison time and some had killed out of any and every reason you could think of. They were good people, easy to talk to and loved to tell stories, but you had to pay attention and realize that the family stories they passed down were easily created on any given day. This was the fear, that this night may get a little wilder than we had originally hoped.
We grabbed the cooler and headed down the trail. We walked, stumbling in the dark in the woods before seeing the moonlight reflecting off the white sand and slow moving water. Two figures were silloetted against the scene, passing something back and forth and talking real low.
"Daddy?" The way Krusty said it rhymed with "ready". The figures slumped down, the first reaching his hand out to calm the other, who had gone ridged.
"Yeah, boy," The first figure said, "Just wait right there a second, I'll be right there."
The two of them walked towards the water.
October 12, 2004 5:17pm
We stood, looking to Krusty for sign that all was well. He gave none. In fact, he gave less. The boy became useless, standing there waiting with the rest of us.
Twitch spoke up, "Hey, can't we just go down there and sit with Old Man and the other guy? This sucks."
We shushed him, pushing him to the back of the group where he stood in a sort of pout. The rest of us knew what he was feeling, we all felt like we should be getting on with this buisness of drunkenness as soon as possible, but whatever nefarious plans were happening down at the creekside were enough to give us a moment's hesitation. We heard a shout in the distance and a then quiet. Even the birds and crickets had stopped. Then a sound from the old bridge up and to the right. A deep creaking sound that comes when old wood is twisted by the changing tempatures of a Mississippi nightfall. A shudder went through me as I stood waiting.
Then a shape came into the horizon. Krusty's dad walked over to us and nodded a hello.
"You boys better just come back to the trailer with me," he said, "Not good to be out here too late. Hey, what's in the cooler?"
"Just some beer, daddy," Krusty said, "Who's that?" Krusty motioned over his shoulder as we started making our way down to the cars.
"Oh, just some punk off his rock. The moron thinks I owed him something, only he can't get his mind straight enough to remember what it is. Now let's get back to the trailer before your uncle tears the place apart."
"Who's all out there?" Stinky said. He hung out with Krusty the longest, and therefore knew most of the clan that was not currently incarerated.
"Oh, just some of the boys. Roach, Peanut, Awful, and the kids."
This meant that this would be a more of a social occasion that we had planned. Roach was a tall, slender build of a man that divided his time between the oil rigs that would hire him and the Parchman work farm. Not that he was violent, he just had a penchant for drinking and driving, often at the same time. Roach could also play a mean country guitar, self taught in the ways of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. Peanut was Old Man's other brother, small and tough. He, too, had an unbeatable thirst, but Peanut could control his more erratic behavior by simply falling asleep at a moment's notice. He also had the best sence of humor of the group. His wife, named Awful because of reason's too numerous and explicit to name here, was a great big tyrant of a woman who had bore two children and called it quits after that for good. They lived on what little Peanut recieved from an oil rig accident a few years back and what did not go to clothing and feeding the kids went to booze. Awful did most of the driving and fussing.
Then there were the two children, nicknamed Walnut and Hazelnut. Wal was the boy, small and squat like his dad and the oldest at about thirteen. Hazel took after some long gone pretty member of the family with long wavy blond hair and saphire blue eyes that already had the boys turning at eleven years of age. Both children made good grades at school and were polite and well mannered.
When we got to the trailer, the group was sitting in the front yard in lawn chairs around a blazing bar-b-que. Peanut and Roach were passing a bottle of tequila back and forth while the children and Awful sat to the side enjoying the night breeze. We later learned the airconditioner was out in the trailer, making it an large tin oven. As we drove in, the men stood up and walked around to the driver's side of Old Man's car. We watched them talk a second then came over to greet us. We did not get the beer out of the trunk, for fear we would not be the ones drinking it if we did. Old Man did not mention it. He knew.
Stinky and Roach started talking music, and soon a guitar was brought out. Soon Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" was filling the night air. Twitch and Faces struck up a conversation with Peanut and were soon swapping oneliners and old knock-knock jokes at rapid pace. I saw Krusty go over to Wal and grab something out of his hand.
"What did I tell you about smokin' these things?" Krusty yelled.
"It's okay. Me and dad got an agreement, I can smoke as long as he drinks." He motioned over to where Peanut was taking a long gulp off the tequilia.
"Here," Krusty said, taking a puff off of the cigarette, "Let me show you something."
He lead Wal over to the table where the bar-b-que stuff was and picked up a napkin. Peanut and the rest of us strolled over to the table as well. He put the napkin in front of him and took a large drag off the cigarette and then blew it into the napkin. Where he blew a dark yellow circle appeared.
"Now, look, Wal," Krusty said, shaking the cigarette, "That's only a little of what is going in your lungs. Don't get addicted like the rest of us."
Wal snatched the cigarette back and pointed it at Peanut, "Yeah, well, he's still drinkin', so I'm still smokin'"
Peanut looked at his son and at the napkin. For a moment, he changed a little. Then he broke out in a grin and picked up his own napkin. He took a drink and lifted the napkin to his lips, spraying the liquor through the tissue and out into the night air.
He turned back to the group, showing off his napkin, "Well look, boy, mine's just as clear as can be." We stopped for a moment. A beat of silence so clear it was profound. Then we laughed. We laughed for the rest of the night, until Station showed up.
Now we all remember the neighborhood kid that none of us liked, but we let come around anyway. That kid in the deep woods of East Marion county was Station. He wheeled up at about a half past midnight in his blue sedan and almost ran over the bar-b-que. The music had stopped and Peanut was fast asleep. We were sitting around, still sober, the beer in the trunk iced down and undrunk. The talk had gone to movies and favorite episodes of the Simpsons. When Station came in, everybody groaned. He would probably be loaded on something, either talking a mile a minute and bothering everyone for a light for a cigarette he never smoked (He would just take the lighter if he could) or he would be so zonked you were lucky if he recognized where he was, much less who you were. Roach groaned the loudest and announced he was going to pee. Old Man stood up, saying he would get rid of him.
"Hey, Old Man, let me tell you something, I just gotta tell you something, man it was great, just great and wonderful and hey, guys it didn't see you there well I did, I mean you were there and then the headlights were off and then you weren't and---"
"Stop, you little tweak," Old Man said, raising his hand, "Just stop, go home, and bother whoever is there"
Station seemed to drop in his skin, hurt that Old Man would turn him away. The drug was put on hold and he stood there wounded.
"Well, sorry, I just saw the party and---"
"No party, Station, just my kid and his friends and I am trying to get some time in NOW GO," Old Man was shaking a little now.
"Okay, I just wanted to show you something to buy, man." Station went to his car and pulled out a pistol, small and black. He thrust it out to Old Man. "Go on, Old Man, just squeeze off a few. Fires real nice and legal as pie. Just twenty-five bucks."
"You moron, you know how illegal it is to ride around with a loaded weapon in your car? Get that damn thing and your own dumb-ass self out of my yard before I take that thing from you."
"Okay, but it fires real well," Station got in his car as Old Man walked to him. We were frozen once again. The blue sedan tumbled to life jerking backward out of the drive way. We watched him go with a sigh. Then he started unloading the gun into the treetops, shot after shot. Pop, pop, pop, pop,... They went on forever. We fell to the ground, stomachs flat to the dirt. All of us except Peanut that is. He was fast asleep while Station had come through and jumped to his feet when the shots rang out.
"Holy shit, let's kill that son of a bitch" he shouted. Before anyone could stop him, he ran to his truck and pulled out a rifle. Roach came running out of the house holding two pistols and the two of them began chasing the car down the dirt road. Only, between them they had drunk about a half a gallon of tequila, so they swerved and zigzagged as they ran down the road, sqeezing of shots of their own at the fleeing sedan. I heard one taillight (or was it a windshield?) crack and the shouts grow silent. Old Man just stood up and sighed.
"Well, boys," he said, "I think you might want to go home. I think this night just got really long for me."
We nodded and tripped over each other getting to the car. Krusty said he wanted to stay here tonight, since the holiday weekend had already started we could catch up with him tommorrow or the next day. We promised to find him before we drank his share of the case.
Going home was uneventful, likely because I decided to drive in the opposite direction of the fleeing Station and his drunken two man lynch mob. We promised to meet back the next day at Twitch's land and start fresh.
9 November 2004
[side note: Since I have not written on this story (or anything, for that matter) in over a month, I am discontinuing it. My apologies. I will give a small ending now, to appease those who stuck with me this far. I am going to start another story here soon, but for now here is the ending of "Night of the Boys."}
I got up early the next morning, about noonish, and gathered up Faces and Stinky and went out to Twitches land. There we got drunk and fished, catching only the wind and water and a mighty hangover the next day. Walking back to the car, hands hanging over sunburned shoulders, I told my first story. It ended with a group of friends just having a real good time
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