That's what friends are for

Fiction

The magazine I hurriedly grabbed at the airport newsstand turned out to be a car magazine. I barely made it in time to board my flight. I really don’t care about cars anymore. There was a time back in the 50’s and 60’s when I could identify and name every car on the road by year, make, and model. All I ask now is that my car takes me where I want to go.

The magazine had a roundup of the year’s most wonderful cars. Big whoop. To me there wasn’t much difference among them. In fact, the metallic paint and the sloping contours made them look like they had been made of Jell-0 poured into slightly different molds. I poked one of the pictures to see if it would jiggle.

In the back pages there were ads for vintage car parts. Either somebody had parts or somebody needed them. One of the ads had a fuzzy picture of a 1957 Chevy like the one my Dad owned decades ago. He bought it new and kept it until the 62’s came out; another classic design.

I was 15 years old, soon to be 16 in 1960. I couldn’t wait to drive Dad’s ’57 Chevy. I knew all about the 283 V8 under the hood and had planned how I was going to take it out on Route 86 and floor the gas pedal. Route 86 between the railroad crossing and Parker’s Dairy was always deserted. Deputy Sheriff Mike never patrolled there mainly because he was always on the other side of the county driving by Ellen’s Café where Cherry worked as a waitress. She wouldn’t give him the time of day but he kept trying, even knowing that Cherry was Biggers’ girl.

His full name was Chuck Biggers but plain Biggers seemed to fit him best. Even as corn fed Iowa boys go he was impressively sized; about six foot four, 220. Deputy Mike was about the same size but he had a two pound weight advantage in the form of a .38 caliber Police Special. Quiet wagering among the townspeople about which of them would win a fistfight had them dead even.

For all that, Cherry pretended not to notice Deputy Mike unless she was with Biggers. She’d give Mike an encouraging glance or two but no more than that. It was just enough to keep him guessing and hoping, and as long as she didn’t marry Biggers, there was hope; and she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to settle down just then.

It’s a truism that there are no secrets and lots of gossip in small towns. No internet, no TV, and nothing but farm reports or religious programming on the radio, tends to give rise to gossip and to everybody watching everybody else. It wasn’t a secret that the butcher at Wilkins’ Market took his thumb off the scale whenever Mrs. Miller went shopping for ground beef. That’s all anybody really knew but it generated hours of gossip about whether or not Mr. & Mrs. Miller were getting along; he’s 10 years older than she is, don’t you know.

The Cherry-Biggers-Mike triangle was always near the top of on-going hot topics. But right now, the hottest one involved Cindy Owens and her cousin Jimmy Stephens. Cindy’s parents had sent her to the Stephens farm to help out in the kitchen while Mrs. Stephens recovered from back surgery. As you might expect, Jimmy and Cindy’s hormones go the best of them and they proceeded to learn the mechanics if not the consequences of human reproduction. Luckily, she didn’t get pregnant but she was deeply smitten by thoughts of love, marriage, children, and flowers in her garden, so much so that after Sunday Services she asked the Pastor if it was ok to marry your cousin. Two days later Cindy was on her way back her folks while Jimmy basked in the approval of his friends, none of whom had so much as kissed a girl yet.

I wasn’t thinking about girls so much, well, not all the time anyway. More than anything, I wanted to drive my father’s 57 by myself.

When I was growing up you could legally drive alone when you became 16 so I was looking forward to being legal next Saturday. I was up at 5:00 AM, got myself ready and made just enough noise to wake my mom and dad. They knew what turning 16 meant to me so they got up earlier than they wanted. It seemed like it took Mom at least 365 days to make breakfast and Dad another week to eat it, but at last it was done. I asked Dad for the keys.

“Now, Son, driving is a big responsibility. You have to be a good citizen and obey the rules of the road all the time, especially the speed limits. I don’t have to tell you how many of my friends and relatives have been in accidents because of speeding.”

But of course, he did tell me about them. All of them.

“So, are you ready to go?” he asked. Boy, was I! What I didn’t expect was that Dad was going to come with me on my first ‘solo’ drive.

Well, hell. He said to drive to the school. It was a 10 minute trip that we did in half an hour, stopping at every stop sign, looking this way and that; gliding to a stop at the next one, watch your speed. Is there anybody behind you? You’re too close to the car in front. Slow down.

My dream of roaring down Route 86, doing 60 with the windows open and the radio blasting Chuck Berry or Elvis evaporated. I hoped none of my friends would see me crawling by like old Mr. Newman. The man had to be at least 137 years old; driving so slowly, all over the left and right lanes, or stopping at a red light, sometimes falling asleep before it turned green. If you saw his 1950 Plymouth coming at you it was best to slow down until he went by. There was no way to know where he was going next. The old Plymouth didn’t have turn signals but if it did, the left one would probably be blinking all the time. Sometimes Deputy Mike would follow him to make sure he got home alright.

I thought my Dad would let me take the Chevy for a spin once in a while but he had other ideas. The only time I got to drive was to run errands for him or my Mother. Go to the store; get a pound of chuck; to the stationary shop for a ream of foolscap for my Dad.

The single good thing was that the girls saw me driving a car by myself. One time I saw some girls outside the Rexall Drugs when I drove up to get some headache pills for Mom. Janice, Penny, and Erin were standing next to their bikes, drinking Cokes.

Janice, flipping her hair, “Ooooh, can I ride with you?”

Penny, “No, me first.” Erin just looked at me and the car.

They were all 16 and weren’t allowed to date or slow dance yet so it was just a tease but maybe a promise of things to come. We would all be 17 soon.

“Sorry, but I gotta get back home right away with my Mom’s pills. She’s in a lot of pain.”

Driving back I was thinking about the girls. Which one? Why not all of them? Drive a 57 Chevy and own the world!

Three more weeks passed before Dad finally lifted my servitude and said I could use the Chevy on my own. I don’t know how he decided it was time to let me fly but he did and that’s all that mattered. He still admonished me to drive like a decent man should – or else. When my Dad said “or else”, it meant that consequences would be swift and dire.

At first I was happy to drive here and there just to be behind the wheel of the Chevy. I wasn’t allowed to have any passengers even though my buddies begged and begged. “Or else” kept me in line until one day I was cruising on Route 9. I checked my speed; it was ok, no traffic, front or back. I looked down the road and there was Route 86 just begging for a 57 Chevy 283 to rip it up.

I made the turn to Route 86 and drove a quarter mile north and stopped. The 86 was a straightaway for at least 20 miles and hardly ever had any traffic. Irresistible. I floored the gas pedal and all 176 horses under the hood took off at once. The sudden start pushed me back against the seat and the white stripes on the road became a single line for about 30 seconds. At second 31 I heard Deputy Mike’s siren whining and saw his cruiser in the rearview mirror, closing fast.

Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit!! He never patrols here! When Dad hears about this I’ll never see daylight again.

“You’re Don’s boy, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“I thought so. I’m thinking your daddy doesn’t know what you’re doing out here on the 86 and I’ve gotta a pretty good idea that he won’t be too happy to know it.”

The weight of my misery was crushing. I still had my hands on the wheel but my head was down on my chest, tears rolling down my cheeks. It was over. No more Chevy. No more girls. I’ll probably have to take my mother to the Junior Prom with her driving.

Deputy Mike took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. He stood up and rested his arm on the roof of the car. When I looked up I saw that he was looking away to the corn fields. In a couple of months it would be harvest time and those corn stalks, eight feet high by then, would come down.

He started talking but he sounded like he was talking to himself.

“When I graduated from Wilson High I couldn’t wait to get out of here and see the world. I had a wild hair you wouldn’t believe. Well, I went to LA a week after I got my diploma. It near killed me. I spent 2 ½ months there and never found a friend. Only people look you in the eye are up to no good. So I came back to my friends, the people of the land. Buddy boy, I learned that you have to have friends to get along in this world whether it’s here or in New York, LA, anywhere.”

I was thinking the Deputy was drunk or something but I had enough sense to keep quiet.

“Your daddy, Don, is a good friend but even good friends can have a falling out over their kids. No telling how Don will react when I call him to tell him I caught you going like a bat outa hell on the 86. He might take it right and slap you silly, or he could take it wrong and make it my fault in his mind.

“Right now you’re lookin’ like you need a friend real bad. So listen up! I’m lettin’ you go. Don’s worth more to me as a friend than catchin’ you lettin’ off steam in his car. One thing, though. If I hear a whisper about this from anybody I’ll be on your bumper anytime you get a notion to go anywhere. Now go on home.”

That was lesson enough for me. I became a model driver everywhere I went on an errand or just driving around to the Dairy Queen to meet my friends. Deputy Mike would tip his hat every time our paths crossed.

A week before school started I was at the Rexall picking up Mom’s allergy medicine when I overheard Jack, the pharmacist, telling Janie Jones about Biggers tearing around looking for Cherry. Somebody told him they saw Cherry getting into the Deputy’s car and going off together. Jack allowed that it might be good thing for Biggers and the Deputy to finally settle things once and for all. Janie clucked in agreement already thinking who to tell next.

This wasn’t the first time Biggers and Deputy Mike confrontation stories had circulated. Old story. It was like watching a pair of bulldogs snarling at each other through a hole in the fence. Even if Cherry married one of them the snarling and threats would go on and on.

I headed west on Route 9. A new burger stand had opened just past Route 86 and I hadn’t been there yet. I didn’t make it past the 86. As restricting as Deputy Mike’s warning had been, it wasn’t powerful enough to keep me from wanting to race the Chevy.

This time I was smarter. I drove the speed limit for 10 miles on the 86 looking side to side the whole way to make sure Deputy Mike wasn’t out there hiding in the corn fields. I made a U turn, thinking the coast was clear; I could take the Chevy to at least 75 on the way back. But I caught a flash of sunlight from the left side of the road. Deputy Mike?

I got out of the car and backed up a few feet so I could get a better view. Through the corn stalks I could see that the deputy’s car was parked about 15 yards inside. I thought I heard noises further in so I circled around keeping the noises to my right until I was close enough to see the whole car.

I saw Mike’s gun belt hanging off the side view mirror. On a blanket next to the car, Mike and Cherry were lying down chewing each others faces, or looked like that to me. At first I thought they were fighting. Mike was on top of her and he seemed to be winning.

I said, “Mike?”

Cherry screamed. Mike rolled off Cherry and reached for his gun belt. Cherry stood up and ran to the other side of the car, straightening her clothes as she went.

Deputy Mike didn’t look so powerful now with his pants down around his ankles. He looked like he needed a friend; a friend who could tool down the 86 at 75 miles per hour without a care in the world.
 

Gabriel's Horn

 Fiction

When I heard that Gabriel was coming I just had to be there. It was Gabriel Zambrano, a classmate of mine from high school. If there was prank executed or a teacher flummoxed, Gabriel was in on it as the ringleader or the executioner. He was the innocent, put upon, smartass the teachers loved to hate. They couldn’t discount his brains or his grades but any teacher that had him lived with a bit of dread that he would lay some kind of trap that would ridicule gently but never with malice. Some teachers admired his skills at entrapment, tried mightily to avoid falling for the tricks, but didn’t always succeed.

The news came in a letter inviting me to the 47^th reunion of the class of ’65 from St. Thomas College Prep. The school was run by a religious order who’s charter was the education and development of young men. The tuition was fairly high but the student body had a mix of upper, middle, and lower class students. The tuition and remote location in the outskirts of El Paso kept the enrollment consistently under 400.

I had always declined (read refused) to attend the previous class reunions. Even though I had never attended one, I had some preconceived notions about what happened at those gatherings:

        A bunch of old farts who barely recognize each other try to recapture the camaraderie of the ‘old days’ when things were pure and simple, while at the same time sizing each other up, comparing themselves to the others. Who was up, who was down; who did better than the jocks, or did the jocks who always seemed to have things go their way actually go through life as charmed now as they were then? And what became of the geeks and nerds, the invisible ones who never seemed to do anything but read and become teachers’ pets?

Gabriel. In the Spring of our Senior year he and I had rigged the Fart Chair in Fr. Banford’s physics class. Actually, all I did was be his lookout while he modified the teacher’s hemorrhoid cushion. Fr. Banford’s battle with his ring of fire was such that he had to stand up and sit down at frequent intervals. After the modification, the pillow would emit a small amount of sulfurous gas every time the he sat down. Thirty minutes into the day’s lesson, the odor was in everyone’s nostrils. When the prank was uncovered, everyone, including the teachers, just “knew” that Gabriel had done it. But it was just a few days before graduation and the principal let it go. Gabriel never owned up to it and I kept that silly secret for 47 years.

Our English teacher, Fr. LeGrand, was fond of vocabulary building. He drilled us every day from his favorite book, “Word Power Made Easy.”

“Polymath,” he said. “Does anybody know what it means? Come, on. It was on the vocabulary list.”

Phil raised his hand and said that a polymath was someone who was highly skilled in many fields.

Fr. LeGrand was thinking of himself when he asked if anyone knew any polymaths. After all, he held PhD’s in English and Mathematics, a Doctorate in Music; and was an accomplished amateur musician, actor and athlete. But all of us turned to look at Gabriel who sat at his desk idly doodling in his notebook.

It was true. Gabriel was good at almost anything he tried. While the rest of us might know our lessons, he knew stuff that wasn’t in the text books. It was as though he could remember everything he ever read or heard about anything.

Yes, it would be good to see Gabriel again and finally, I had to admit to myself that I was curious about some of my ex-classmates. What became of the members of the Blue Rockers band; Alex, Vic, Jer, Bobby, and Sylvia?  I wasn’t that interested in the rest of the 60 or so members of the class. All I had to do to was look at myself in the mirror to see the changes five decades had made in me to imagine what time had done to them – less hair, more fat; less optimism, more wrinkles; less future, more past.

Bobby and Sylvia wouldn’t be there. They didn’t go to our school. Years ago I heard that Bobby was killed in Vietnam so I looked for his name on The Wall. It was there. Sylvia had disappeared when the band broke up; maybe Gabriel would know something. I made a mental note to ask him.

I mailed my RSVP and made reservations to go. My wife couldn’t go because she was in the throes of editing her latest book. She and her agent were down to arguing about commas. It was an old battle between them. The agent said she didn’t use enough commas, but my wife insisted that the number of commas in her work was exactly the number required.

“Commas! Jackson, all you have to know about them is what ONE comma and the Supreme Court did to the 2^nd Amendment. No more commas.” The argument would continue until one or the other capitulated. Then another “problem” would arise and the arguments would begin again. To my eyes, dealing with the editors was harder than writing the books.

When I checked in at the hotel there was a message from Gabriel to meet him in the bar. I left my bags unpacked in my room then went to look for him. He was sitting near the door drinking what looked like a Manhattan. Some things don’t change. That had been his drink since high school. Whenever we went drinking in Juarez he claimed that the night bartender at Curly’s was the only man who knew how to make a Manhattan. I’m sure the bartender was impressed to receive compliments from a 17 year old sophisticate.

“Viejo! How are you, man? If it wasn’t for that Manhattan I wouldn’t recognize you. How did you get so old?”

“Same as you. Went to sleep one day then woke up 50 years later looking like this.”

It was good to see him. I had followed his life on the internet for years. After bumming around for a few years he had landed a job as a trouble shooter and consultant for a top manufacturer of really high end sound equipment. He had a gift for knowing exactly what was wrong with the sound of an amplifier and could describe it to the designers in such a way that they could make the necessary changes to the equipment or the room it was in. Technically, he was ‘on call’ 24/7 and was paid a retainer to carry a beeper should his ears be needed to satisfy an unhappy customer.

With no office and no boss he had time to do what he really loved, play his guitar and compose songs. He was good enough to play with several bands on the East Coast and played a bit of everything. For a while he played string bass for a Bluegrass band. Being Mexican-American, his color stood out among the band members, but he called himself Jay, played the slap bass well enough that he toured with them and another Country band for a four or five years. He made a couple of rock & roll CD’s of his original music and had modest success. Retired now, he lived with his wife, Juanita, in a remote part of New Mexico, playing occasionally at a local tourist hotel to keep his hand in.

I gave him the short version of my life since graduation, stopping before he went to sleep from boredom. Then I asked about Alex, Vic, Jer, and Sylvia.

“Let’s see. Alex is here so he can tell you about his teaching job at Eastwood High. Been there going on 20 years now. Vic went to LA to make the big time. Instead he met up with a girl who converted him to Mormonism. They moved to Salt Lake, blanded in and disappeared. I think Jer is here, too. He married a girl he met at St. Mary’s, became an accountant for big company. He’s doing well. I don’t know about Sylvia. She told me once that she just wanted to get married, raise kids and pigs. Maybe she did.

“This is my first reunion, too. I don’t like to travel without Juanita but she flat out said no, she didn’t want to have to talk to my buddy Dickshire. She didn’t actually say it that way. Juanita learned a lot of colorful words from the guys in the bands we traveled with.”

We ordered another drink as a group of guys walked into the bar. It looked like some bigshot surrounded by yes men or body guards. He made a show of entering the bar and ordering his retinue about, making sure everybody knew who the big dog was. I didn’t need to read his name tag. I knew it was Richard Dickshire. Except for being 50 lbs heavier and balding fast, he was still Big Dick Dick. He was the richest kid in our class and from the look of things he was still the richest among us. This guy wasn’t born on third base. At birth his toes were already touching Home Plate.

Gabriel picked his drink and said, “Let’s go outside.”

I was a non-entity in high school so nobody ever bothered me one way or another but Gabriel had been one of Dick’s targets for ridicule and humiliation. He came from very poor family who made enormous sacrifices to pay his tuition at St. Thomas. He didn’t dress well and rarely had any extra money. Dick and his pals would harass him and even push him around sometimes. I remember one time the Blue Rockers were playing at a school dance. Gabriel was paying the admission for himself and his date when he discovered that he had left his wallet at home. Dick gave the ticket taker a 20 to pay for the tickets then stuffed another 20 in his coat pocket, saying, “Now, Gabriel, you take Juanita to nice place tonight. Forget about the taco stand. Juanita’s dressed too nice to sit at Tiko’s Tacos. Buy her a big steak. Maybe you’ll get lucky in the bargain.” He looked Juanita up and down. “Juanita, you can do a sight better than this loser. Let me know when you’re ready for a winner.”

The fact was that Juanita was never his girl. She only had eyes for Gabriel and was still with him. Dick had tried everything to win her, throwing his money around; buying her gifts and disparaging Gabriel. Juanita was the one thing he couldn’t buy and it rankled.

She was one of those rare human beings who improved your mood just by saying hi in passing. Even the girls who hated everything liked her. She was beautiful, too. All of us had a crush on her at one time or another but even when she turned us down we didn’t feel all that bad. Once she had settled on Gabriel, nobody else had a chance in hell with her. I only met one other girl like her and I married her before she came to her senses.

The first day of the two day reunion began the next morning. At first everyone, meaning the 50 classmates and wives, milled around squinting at each others name tags. Nobody seemed to remember me except Alex and Jer. Mostly, Gabriel and I hung out together. People kept coming up to him, telling or retelling some story about his pranks and how they still laughed about them all these years later. I was having a good time just listening and remembering, too.

Unfortunately, Big Dick Dick would not allow himself to be ignored. He made the waiters set up a bigger table for him and his admirers. We could hear him above the chatter and the music from the pianist in the corner. Oh, yes, he had finally gotten rid of the six seater Lear Jet and had a 12 seater here; thinking about refitting a 727 next year.

A six piece rock band set up and began playing and the guys who had brought their wives began dancing. The stag guys catcalled and made innocuous, lewd remarks to the women who seemed to like the attention. Big Dick Dick tried to dance with one of the women but he got winded quickly and left the floor, leaving his partner stranded. Gabriel and I watched and talked about old times.

Our MC, Chuck Kelly, called us to order and made some remarks about old age, time passing, the good old days, etc. He made a few comments about the organizers and named some of the attendees who were there for the first time and others who had not missed a single reunion. They each stood and got polite applause. He read off the agenda for the day and for tomorrow. He ended by officially ending the party and inviting everyone to the bar for a nightcap.

The next day we toured our old high school. The interior hadn’t changed too much except for updated desks and labs. We recalled dozens of events large and small. A new gymnasium complete with a weight room had been built thanks to Dick Dickshire. In an inspired moment of originality, he had made it clear that the facility was to be named the Richard Dickshire Athletic Center. He posed for pictures in front of the barbells rack. Irony and self awareness were not his strong suits. If one were to guess, he weighed more than the combined mass of pig iron stacked behind him. 

The intramural baseball game was called off because we couldn’t find enough people fit enough to make two teams. Instead, we had a picnic by the river, drinking beer and dining off paper plates. Someone brought out a guitar and Gabriel played and sang the folk songs that had been popular years and years ago. By evening we were very mellow and we headed back to the hotel for the closing ceremonies of our reunion.

Chuck, the MC, proceeded to read the names of people whom he had not been able to reach and asked us to help look for them. He announced that after his remarks we would have another dance, dinner and drinks afterwards. Finally, he was just absolutely delighted (!) to announce that Richard Dickshire had generously paid all of our hotel expenses including the hall, music, meals, and our individual rooms. Applause!

Chuck was just beginning to call Big Dick Dick to the stage to say a few words but Dick was already going up the steps to the stage. He took over the microphone and began to speak.

“Hello, everybody. It sure is nice to see all of you here. I see a lot of smiles and I guess I know why. It’s not everyday that Santa pays your bills for you. Well, I’ll tell you when a man is successful he feels he owes something to others so I’m happy to let go of some of my loot once in awhile.

“My daddy left me a beer distributorship that was only grossing five million a year. I sold it, first thing. My mother said it would break my father’s heart if he knew what I did but I’ll tell you what. I smelled the future and it smelled like crude oil. I invested in a couple of oil wells and before you know it I doubled the 5 million, then doubled it again. I’m not a bragging man but I do love my comforts. There’s a brand new Lamborghini Aventador in the parking lot. You might have seen it. It’s the red one with the two guys standing next to it. They’re guarding it for me everywhere I go. Damn thing cost me $449,500 and it goes like scat. I’m having it shipped to Germany so I can take it on the Autobahn. For those of you that don’t know it, there’s no speed limits on that road!

“No doubt about it I’ve been blessed more than most. But for all that, I didn't get somehing I really wanted. Do you all remember Juanita Moreno? Beautiful girl. Gabriel, back there” pointing now, “stole her away from me and I never forgave him for it. That said, I’m going to be big about it and let bygones by bygones. Gabriel, I love you, man.

“Thank you all. Now let’s all have a good time.”

Dick left the stage and began working the crowd, stopping, saying a few words to each person. He reminded me of an old freighter cruising slowly into the harbor with seabirds circling and following. When he got to Gabriel he dropped anchor and spoke.

“So how’s Juanita doing these days? As long as I live I’ll never figure out why she picked you. She’d been better off with me. She could be driving her own Lamborginhi to Neiman-Marcus every day instead of trailing you around the country like a camp follower. You know it. I know it. And I’ll bet she’s thought about it time and again all her life.”

Hearing that, we all drew in our breath expecting Gabriel to explode. But he didn’t.

“Dick, Juanita is fine. She’s more beautiful than ever. But in case you didn’t know, she isn’t here because she can’t stand you. She was nice to you but she was always nice to everybody, even to creeps like you.”

Now it was Dick’s turn to explode but he didn’t. He puffed out his chest and tried to whisper but didn’t seem to know how. No one had ever heard him whisper. Leaning in, he said,

“Gabriel, do you know why you never got any recording contracts? Do you know why you spent your whole life going nowhere? It was because of me. I have friends everywhere. They do what I say. If I say Gabriel doesn’t get a contract he doesn’t get it. If I say his CD’s don’t get on the shelves, they don’t get on the shelves.

“You might think money can’t buy everything. Maybe you’re right but I sure bought you your miserable life.”

Everyone was looking at Gabriel, including me. He was shaking with fury as he remembered all the doors slammed in his face; the sure things that fell apart at the last minute. All those years waiting for the breaks that would never come. Thank you, Richard Dickshire.

He started moving and I thought he was going to charge Dick but he turned on his heel and walked out fast. I followed him out and led him to my rental car. We got in and headed to the freeway just to go somewhere, anywhere.

In the hall, the band started playing but everybody was buzzing about Dick, Gabriel, and Juanita.

We drove over the bridge to Juarez and stopped at the first bar we saw. Inside we ordered beers. Gabriel gulped his beer down, ordered two more and started laughing hard. Oh, oh, I thought, here it comes. The breakdown.

“Damn, that’s good beer. Viejo, bring me two more and two for my friend. Our horses are outside. Take them some beer, too.” The confused bartender actually looked out the window to see if there were any horses. "Gringos", he muttered and went back behind the bar.

Gabriel looked at me, staring hard. “That fat sonofabitch owes me but I don’t know what. I’m happy with what I have. Remember how Fr. Tippington showed us how to make a decision tree? If you do this, what are the consequences? If you do that, what are the consequences? You go through all the possibilities and you choose the one with the least negative consequences. All the time we were driving around tonight I was thinking how I could pay Dick back. Then that first beer hit my mouth and I realized something. I’ve had a damned good life. Why would I screw it up now by killing that asshole?

“Juanita loves me the same as she did 44 years ago. We had two great kids, 5 grandkids. My pension and savings are good enough to last me years. I live in a nice cabin in the mountains. I play my music at the hotel when I want to. And look at my job. For god’s sake, I never had a boss or an office I had to be in every day. If the beeper didn’t go off I could do whatever I wanted with my time. And the pay was damn good, too. Best of all, I have Juanita.”

It was only 9:00 o’clock. We decided to return to the reunion hall for the closing. On the way back Gabriel had me stop at a Walmart and wait for him in the car. He came back holding a plastic sack. “Some beer for my room,” he said. Yeah, right. He was up to something. His innocent look didn’t fool me in high school either.

As we approached the hotel he said he had a plan. I knew it! In an instant I stopped being 65 year old never-been and became 16 year old gonna-be again. It made me giddy until I heard the plan.

My part of the scheme was to start a fight with the guy wearing an earpiece at the entrance to the hall. He was one of Dick’s guards. I was skeptical.

“Don’t worry! Just make enough fuss so that the goons guarding the Lamborginhi have to come over to see what’s going on.”

I was still skeptical. “Look, as soon as they start running towards you, run into the hall. Trust me. They won’t come after you.”

Ok. Ok. I went up to the guard acting drunk and bumped him harder than I intended.

“Get out of my way you cheap rent-a-cop!” Whether it was the bump or the insult that motivated him, he stiff armed me on the chest and sent me flying. I staggered back.

“Come on. Come over here and try that again you Mother something. Did I just call you Mother something? Mother Superior? Mother Jones? Whatever Mother you are, game on!”

By the time I got that out the guard had radioed his buddies at the car. They came running and, suddenly sober, I ran into the hall where everybody was creaking around the dance floor to “Mustang Sally.”

Meanwhile, Gabriel snuck up to the car. As soon as the guards sprinted off he put a portable air horn under the car, turned it on, and scrambled away into the bushes.

Portable air horns are used by boaters and sea going ships to signal their presence from a long distance. The ear piercing sound can travel more than half a mile at sea. The sound level has been compared to that of a jet engine measured close up. Sustained exposure to a sound that loud makes it impossible to think. The automatic reflex is to do something, anything, to make it stop.

The blaring horn brought the guards back to the car. It was locked so one of them ran to the hall to find Dick and the keys. Dick stormed out, yelling at the guards to stop the car alarm. They couldn’t hear him over the horn’s blast. Finally, they got the keys, opened the door, but couldn’t find any way to stop the noise.

Dick was screaming at the guards and they were yelling at each other. Finally, resorting to sign language, the opened the hood to disable the klaxon. Still the horn blared. More Dick yelling. More sign language. They disconnected the battery. The horn blared.

Someone in the hotel called the Sheriff who pulled up with his siren going which didn’t help matters. Dick yelling in the Sheriff’s ear. Dick yelling at his men.

The opened the engine compartment and frantically pulled at the wires but the noise didn’t stop. The Sheriff brought out his heavy duty bolt cutters and went to work on the wire harnesses, tossing them over his shoulder as he worked. Nothing stopped the blaring horn. By this time Dick’s men had taken the dashboard apart, ripped out the seats and interior door panels. The Sheriff cut more harnesses. The car looked like a chop shop victim, parts scattered all around.

The horn got softer and softer. It gave up a last tweet then went quiet. The Sheriff peeked under the car and found the exhausted air horn canister.

Dick was so bewildered he couldn’t speak. His mouth was working but no words came out. His half million dollar car was ruined.

He saw Gabriel in the crowd that gathered around the car. And he knew. He just knew who did it.

Only $450,000, give or take

$19.95 plus tax

My First Time

It was difficult but not impossible

I remember the first time I had sex in a car. It was in a '65 Volkswagen. Imported from Germany after the Big War, Volkswagens were renowned for their economy but not for roominess. As I remember, they had an advertising campaign that really worked despite competition from American made cars with big engines. Anyway, the VW belonged to Mike Bennett. Old Mike, (I call him Old Mike now because he's old, but he wasn't old at the time I borrowed his car. Matter of fact, we were the same age.) Mike's father gave him the car to go back and forth to school. Mr. Bennett Sr., now that was a man's man. I heard that one time he and his buddy Eduardo had been drinking and Eduardo got so drunk he wanted to fight everybody in the bar. Not a problem if you’re built like Bennett Sr. but Eduardo was only about 105 lbs of skin and bone. Well, Bennett Sr. being Eduardo's best bud stepped in to stop him from getting hurt, so he cold cocked him, threw him over his shoulder and took him home to Magda. You don't mess with Magda even if she's just a wisp of a woman. Once her mouth starts working you won't stop her. You had to let her wind down no matter how long it took. She said to leave Eduardo on the step and go on home. So, Bennett Sr. got in his car, not the Volkswagen, that comes later. 

Bennett Sr's sweet ride

No, his car was a white-over-powder blue '57 Chevy. I'll tell you no finer looking car's ever been designed than that Chevy. It had a bright orange 283 cu. inch V8 engine. Everywhere he went, guys wanted Bennett to pop the hood so they could look at that orange motor. V8's were a big thing back then. They sounded different from a straight six; most of us could tell just by hearing if it was a V8 or a six. My father told me when that when he was a young, guys with Model A Fords would compete to see who could set the idle lowest on the four bangers and keep running. He said it was a real treat to watch the engine fire one time, pause a bit then fire again and keep going like that. You had to keep the engine running at least a minute to qualify. Nowadays you look under the hood of a car and you don't see anything that looks like a motor. It's all hoses and pipes. Hell, you don't even see spark plugs. The way I grew up, you took the spark plugs out and cleaned them with a wire brush. I had to borrow a gap gauge from Juan to set them. Those things cost about a buck, but why buy one if Juan would lend you his? He was a nice guy who let you borrow his tools but you had to clean them before giving them back. One time Mr. Bennett let him drive his '57 Chevy. Juan took it on the FM256, got it up to about 90 miles an hour before the State Trooper pulled him over. Juan figured he was in trouble but his Mom always told him to respect the police so he just pulled over expecting the worst. This was going to be bad. The Trooper was a badass that nobody wanted to cross. Everybody called him Thumper because he looked like a rabbit. His eyes were close together, pinched looking, and he had a bit of a hare lip that he tried to hide under a mustache that made him look like a rabbit with a mustache. Turns out Thumper just wanted to look at that orange 283 V8. But his judgment left him and he told Juan he would let him go if he let him drive the Chevy one time. Juan could follow in Thumper's Ford Cruiser. Off they went. Thumper got the Chevy up to 85 with Juan in the Cruiser close behind. Competition among men is built-in to every cell so Juan gunned the Ford and started pass Thumper now hitting 90. As they got bumper to bumper, Juan thought about what his Mom, Rosario told him about respecting the law. Rosario had been brought up hard, working the cantaloupe fields in Marfa, Texas and she knew a thing or two about disrespecting the law. If you’ve ever tasted a cantaloupe from Marfa, no other cantaloupe will ever satisfy you again. The good ones are bigger than a softball but smaller than a soccer ball she told me once. Cut ‘em open, get the seeds out and you’ll get tastiest, sweetest orange fruit that doesn’t taste like an orange. Whenever I went to the store for my mother to buy cantaloupes she told me to ask Mr. Barrera where the fruit came from. Mr. Barrera owned a grocery store two blocks away from my house. An old guy, if you went in to the store, he’d be asleep on a stool next to the cash register. A lot of his customers would get their stuff off the shelves and leave the money on the counter. Well, I know that’s shocking to hear but that was in the 60’s when things were different. These days, even 10 year olds are staging holdups. Matter of fact, just today I read in the paper about just such a thing. Don’t laugh. I still get my newspaper delivered. I pay once a year by check now because of an incident with the paper boy that I won’t get into now, except to say that the kid conned me and my neighbors paying him twice. Mr. Ramirez got so mad he went to the kid’s house and got into a fight with Howard Johnson, the kid’s father, not the Howard Johnson motel magnate. The nearest Howard Johnson to our town was in Fort Stockdale, 10 miles away. We never got to use the swimming pool because you had to be a guest there except once when my Uncle John came to visit and stayed at the motel. My father said Uncle John thought he was big stuff and our place wasn’t good enough for him since he sold some gadget he invented to Montgomery Ward’s for a lot of money. Back then Sears and Montgomery Ward were each trying to beat the other for customers until “Monkey Ward” (that’s what my Dad called it), got in trouble and had to sell out to Sears. And Sears was different then, too. Their name was Sears Roebuck and Co. I don’t know what happened to Roebuck but one day it was gone. Now I hear that Sears and Kmart are the same company. What a world. I never had much truck with Kmart. I was 12 when they opened their first store at the edge of town. You’d think they were giving stuff away; and if you thought that, you’d be right. The place was packed with shoppers who were getting some free stuff; balloons and hot dogs, Cokes for two cents. Cokes had been five cents all my life for a six ounce bottle. 

Pepsi, better than Coke

You could buy a 12 ounce Pepsi for seven cents and get two cents back when you returned the bottle. We kids did the math and the Pepsi was the better deal. Problem was, where to get seven cents. Enrique figured it out. Two of us would go into Barrera’s store real quiet. If Mr. Barrera was asleep we’d steal some empties from behind the counter then wake him up and ask for the deposit money. It was the perfect crime that only worked once. You know, I haven’t thought about Enrique in a long time. Margarita, the waitress at the Knock Knock Diner, said she heard he was a big time mortgage broker now. The Knock Knock wasn’t exactly a diner. It was Manuel’s house. You had to knock on the screen door and wait for Manuel to come out to take your order then wait on the porch. Margarita would bring it out and set it on a little table for you. If I’m right about it, this was the origin of knock knock jokes that become popular once every generation. “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ham & Eggs, How? Over easy”. 

But I could be wrong.  

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Important Note from Time Served

The foregoing should serve as a tip that you won’t find in books on How-To-Write-Good.

Never write while under the influence of powerful antihistamines that are likely to make you dopey like the bourbon your mother used to put on your gums when you were teething.

Roll Over, Beethoven

A true story

A friend of mine and I met Chuck Berry in the Spring of 1964 when he performed at an old skating rink on Dyer street, past the Rocket Drive-In in Northeast El Paso. That area at the outskirts of the city was known for its predominantly white and somewhat redneck population so it was with a little trepidation that we went to the show. Not that we expected trouble but the Southwest has lots of rattlesnakes, some of which are bipeds. We called the kids who lived there Stompers but I don't know why. The cultural divide between us could be measured in astronomical powers of 10 given their preference for The Beach Boys’ surf music. That's right -- surf music in the deserts of West Texas. All the Stompers needed to realize their bikini laden surfing fantasies was a few quadrillion barrels of salt water added to the several million acres of sand that surround the city. And a massive wave machine.

Just add water

Chuck had been released from prison a few months before and was now attempting a comeback. I don't know if he chose the El Paso venue because it was obscure enough to hide a possible failure or because given his prison records, better venues weren't ready to hire a convicted rapist and armed robber. He had served a prison sentence for armed robbery when he was a teenager in 1944, then again for violating the Mann Act in 1959. Even the city's most popular and influential DJ, Steve Crosno, who counted many celebrities and top musical acts among his friends didn’t risk appearing with Chuck, though he regularly defied his Program Director and played Berry's records several times out of the normal rotation.

 

  In the 60's only one radio station in El Paso played Chuck Berry's records. His music and other music like it were considered uncivilized but kids like me liked it a lot. We couldn't wait for school to let out so we could listen to the Top 40 on KELP. The Top 40 was mostly populated with smarmy doowop songs freighted with teenage angst, lost loves, untimely teen death, unrequited passions, and one song that ended with a romantic double murder. But interspersed within the treacly flotsam were the golden nuggets of the real Rock & Roll we longed for. We didn't bother with KROD or KTSM and the sterile offerings by Pat Boone, Perry Como and the like. KSET billed itself as "El Paso's Fine Music Station" featuring familiar classical music excerpts and atrocious instrumental covers of songs by Connie Francis, Frank Sinatra and the cast of TV's Hit Parade. KHEY played country music and I didn't know anyone who listened to that station save one of my classmates and me. We both listened for the same reason. If we could ignore the content of the songs and the singers we could hear some creative licks, riffs and counterpoints from the backup musicians whom I guessed weren’t listening to lyrics or the singers either. Late at night, if the weather conditions were just right I could tune my radio to KOMO, 800 miles away in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and hear more Rock & Roll. The static was awful and the station faded in and out but it didn't matter. Across the border in Juarez, border blaster XELO with its 150,000 watt transmitter spread Garner Ted Armstrong's evangelical polemics worldwide on weekends from 10 PM 'til midnight.

The powerful signal swamped many stations in the U.S.

I could pick up KOMO on this radio

Berry's music was new and exciting. Defying their parents and pastors, kids danced to it and begged for more. It felt good to use up the energy that our elders kept hammering down. It made musicians want to play harder and louder. Dozens of future Rock & Roll stars credited Berry for his influence on their music. Though by current musical standards his music and onstage antics are considered quaint, at their inception they were revolutionary. He was among the first musicians to venture into the unknown ocean of lifelike, exuberant musical expression; not dipping his toes cautiously in the water but jumping in, guitar and all, without a safety line. Chuck didn't teach anyone how to play, he just showed them the way. Play what's in your head ---- not what’s expected. Jimi Hendrix, admittedly influenced by Berry’s music, would lead the next generation of rockers into even deeper waters.

Berry's music broke many radio traditions. Music like his and the musicians who inspired him weren't played on typical radio stations. There were things wrong with "Colored" music. It wasn't fit for the civilized. During the Flapper Era of the 1920's the saxophone’s seductive sound was blamed for causing young women to lose their virtue. (If only!) Now Rock & Roll was believed to be the on-ramp for the highway to hell. Before Americans had genitals, TV audiences watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show were not shown his gyrating hips lest America's youngsters think there was something down there besides pocket change. Chuck broke other traditions as well such as the tradition of paying income taxes. Over his lifetime he would make and lose small fortunes and earn convictions for violating tax laws.

"The highway to hell is that way! Let's go, people!"

On the afternoon I met Chuck I was surprised to see that his band was made up of local guys I'd seen playing around town. Where were his sidemen? Where was the tour bus? Why were those kids on stage? I looked around and wondered why he would play at an old skating rink with its lousy acoustics and rickety bandstand. I understood then what the term rinky dink meant.

The band began to play and I thought they must be the warmup band. Chuck and his men would be up next after the local guys got the audience revved up. But, no. Two songs later Chuck walked on stage wearing a white suit, white shoes, red shirt, white tie, and, of course, his duck tail hair. The band backed up to make room for Chuck and got ready to play.

It wasn't until the late 1980's when I was watching a documentary* celebrating his 60th birthday that I learned Chuck Berry didn't have a band, a tour bus, or a manager. He did as many as 100 shows each year, all one-nighters, using unrehearsed local bands who were paid by the concert promoter. His requirements were that the promoter pay his air fare, one hotel night, pay him in cash, and that the local band had to know all his songs. It was the cash that got the IRS' attention.

We cheered when he opened the show with “School Days”. It was a rough start for the band. They were nervous and it showed. For starters, the drummer was an eighth note late with the first beat, then the bass fumbled the bass run. Chuck continued playing until they caught up. After the first song they got better and the show got better with Chuck doing the stage act we had all seen on American Bandstand, including his trademark duck walk across the stage. The acoustics was crappy and the only pro on the bandstand was Chuck Berry but we loved it anyway.

By 1967 he was a headlining again

By the time they had played six or seven songs they were in sync with Chuck and were able to pick up his cues for the bridges and the beat. They began playing "Johnny B. Good" and the exhilarated crowd dove into it, roaring the chorus along with Chuck and the band. It was a shared moment of discovery, kindred spirits, exuberantly shouting out joy and fun. The bass player who had been rock steady in support of the song decided to show off his improvisational skills. Chuck and the other musicians looked at him -- what the hell was he doing? They continued playing and when the chorus came around we roared again:
        “Go, go, go Johnny go! Go, go, go Johnny go!"
Chuck turned his back on the audience to face the bass player. He cued the drummer to increase the tempo. He turned back to the audience, tossed his head in the direction of the bass player then cued the drummer to up the tempo once more. The drummer was having the time of his life taking direction from Chuck Berry! By this time the beat was so fast that the bass player could barely keep up. He was standing high up on his toes, leaning back as far as he could, holding his breath, and seemed about to fall over. Chuck brought the beat down to normal and gave the bassist a little smile maybe to remind him to never upstage the marquee act.  

Go! Go! Go, Johnny! Go, Go, Go!

When band took a break my friend and I went looking for a bathroom. We got lost and found Chuck sitting near an exit at the end of a hallway backstage. He was sitting by himself on a rusty folding chair smoking a cigarette; the exit door propped open to let the smoke out or fresh air in. He saw us and nodded acknowledgement. We were alone, face to face with Chuck Berry. I could ask him anything. I was afraid to lose the moment and tried to think of intelligent things to ask. Instead, I became a standard issue “fan” babbling nonsense ---- Great show! Love your songs! Have all your records! What do you call your guitar?! His responses to my stupid remarks were appropriately courteous and laconic.

Many musicians have a sort of affection for their instruments. The attachments might be based on some superstition or maybe they truly have a favorite instrument that "fits" them better than any other. B.B. King's favorite guitar is named Lucille. He has an elaborate story about how he came to name it following a fire at a club where he was playing. Willie Nelson's acoustic guitar which has as many miles on it as Willie's face, has a large hole worn into the wood below the strings where his picks scrape when he hits hard chords. Chuck took a drag on his cigarette, looked out the door at the desert then said to me, "What do I call my guitar? I call it my guitar". 

Almost 50 years later, paraphrasing Sigmund Freud, it’s clear to me that sometimes a guitar is just a guitar.

Come on, Baby, Light My Fire

 A mostly fictional story

We were standing outside singing loudly when the firemen and paramedics drove up. The Chief, who to us looked about 12 years old, hustled over trying to look tough ordering us to move away from the fire in my front yard. "Move back!" he squeaked. Naturally, we all ignored him. We were all his senior in years, experience, and cussedness. This pipsqueak knew nothing of what we had seen and had to do decades ago. On this day of all days his power had no power over us. Through our lost youth and lives we had earned all the authority we needed to ignore this kid and his over-sized Chief's hat. Meanwhile, the other fire fighters had located the garden hose and were putting out the fire.

It had all begun when Spence had suggested a reunion of the bunch of us who had served together in Vietnam. We had been a tight group, bound together by our circumstance, our distaste for the authoritarian demands of the military, our coincident tastes in music and reading, and on a few occasions enjoying R&R together in some of the sleazy recesses of the Far East from which no man returns the same as when he went in.

It was decided that we would get together in Florida where I live because it has the mildest weather in January. Russ would come in from Idaho, Spence from Baltimore, Sergio from San Francisco, Max from Austin, Marc from Alaska. No formal plans were laid. The only thing set in stone was that everyone arrive at my home on the same day. Our wives, who had known each other and us when we were single, immediately agreed that we should get together without them.

Luckily, the guys landed at the airport within an hour or two of each other and I picked them up in my van. Russ and Max had their guitar cases and a small suitcase each. Marc, the most fastidious among us, had 3 suitcases; beach wear, formal wear, and everyday wear, he explained. Sergio carried only his backpack which I hoped contained some of the herbal remedies we had used to calm our nerves back in the day. More than forty years had gone by since we had all been together. None of us looked familiar to one another anymore. We'd been just kids long ago. Now we were old men but the light behind our eyes still shone as it had back then.

We trundled into the house, got some beer and sat on the couches and chairs I'd set up in the den. As they talked and sipped their beers I looked at each of them in turn.

Russ, the gunsmith, had quit his successful criminal law practice and purchased 300 acres of mountainside in Idaho. The land was far enough from the general population to ensure privacy but near enough to have some creature comforts that included electricity and internet service. His private forest was posted with numerous and very specific warnings about the consequences of trespassing and even more severe warnings about hunting on his property. His income came from making meticulously handcrafted replicas of various historical firearms. Though it took him several months to complete each piece, the collectors who bought them didn't mind the wait or the sums he charged. Each piece was constructed so that it could never be fired. Other gunsmiths so respected his fine craftsmanship that they refused to modify his creations in any way. The guns were too perfect. Any change would lower their value. His wife of 35 years was an artist and naturalist by inclination, content to work her art and live in isolation in their snug home in the woods; their library, and their crafts.

Spence had become a forensic accountant for the IRS who could seemingly spot phony numbers just by reading the cover page on an accounting report. His supervisors weren't comfortable with his work, however. While he was an unparalleled expert in detecting falsifications in a report, he also knew how to make them undetectable. It made his bosses wonder if some of companies that had been cleared by other agents had been coached by their star accountant.

Marc ran his own charter service in the Northwest. His youthful dream to be a pilot had been partially fulfilled as he flew hunters and fishermen to remote sporting lodges in which he was a silent partner. His real ambition to be an airline pilot collapsed when failing to take his unreported medications, he had two extended outbursts of Tourette's while welcoming the passengers to their transoceanic flight aboard his 747.

Sergio had become a professional pharmacist. When I first met him he was an amateur pharmacist mixing cold remedies using various over the counter drugs and one or two under the counter drugs. He knew exactly how much each of us needed to be boosted to improve our odds of survival 'way back when'. Nowadays, his small neighborhood drugstore gave him enough income to vacation in Hawaii once a year and drive a nice car at home.

I don't think I ever saw Max more than a few feet away from his 12 string guitar. He was an excellent player who had been good enough to be a sideman for some of the luminaries of the rock and folk music of the 60's and 70's and through the revivals of those genres in the following decades. Like thousands of musicians who shine but never explode as super novas, Max lacked stage presence. His work was widely admired but he disappeared as soon as he stopped playing. The stars who remembered his playing if not his face still hired him for their studio sessions.

We spent the next couple of hours insulting each others wrinkled, flabby bodies; missing hair and the youthful six-pack abs that were now more like soft-side party kegs. When we ran out of beer, Max and Marc made a beer run but forgot the beer. Instead, they bought whiskeys, mixers, and a bag of ice. On the way to buy beer they reminisced about an R&R trip to Singapore where they had tried to teach a wretched hotel bartender how to make mixed drinks "American Style". His bad English and their slurred English didn't help. It finally came down to Max or Marc pointing to the liquor bottles and mixes, pantomiming how much of each ingredient to make Max's Southern Comfort Old Fashioned or Marc's complicated Black Russians. Naturally, we were obliged to consume both the successes and the failures, though it wasn't long before none of us knew the difference.

Back at the house, Marc became the bartender. He knew the formulas for dozens of cocktails. Russ and Max took out their guitars and Russ tried earnestly to replicate the speed and skill of bygone days. The speed was gone and his hands moved along the strings as though his fingers had become 2x4's. But it didn't matter how it sounded. There was enough of the old sound to remind each of us of how we had been once upon a time; a few good times in the middle of a real bad time.

Obviously frustrated with his wooden fingers, Russ went outdoors with Max to sit on the porch with their guitars. The rest of us settled in our chairs to talk about all that had happened to us after our service; the divorces, remarriage, kids, grandkids, jobs, triumphs and failures. All in all we had survived and made it this far in life. Sergio dug into his backpack and found his cigarette papers along with a baggie of grass. Unlike Russ, his fingers were in fine shape and he deftly rolled a fat joint which he lit then passed to me. I nearly passed out from the first hit just as I had the first time I inhaled the weed at Russ's behest decades ago. Spence took a shallow hit and passed it on to Marc who declined. A curious fellow was Marc. Though he consumed and smoked the same things we all did, he never appeared drunk or high. He never got the giggles or the munchies and I never saw him stagger even though he had matched me drink for drink or hit for hit.

Spence scooted down in his chair resting his head on the backrest. Sergio squatted on the floor. Marc sat by the window sipping his custom made Mai Tai watching Russ and Max out on the porch starting and stopping several tunes. I went looking for my laptop where I keep my digitized music. My collection of vinyl LP's and reel to reel tapes was gone but I had converted them to digital files over the years. I selected the folder labeled "The Devil's Handbasket" which contained the supposedly satanic music that had driven my older sisters, their spouses and their entire cohort into righteous rages and condemnations back in the 60's. Reflecting on those memories I concluded that they're probably still raging about everything they wish they had done but never had the courage to do.

I started the music, keeping the volume low so that we could hear each other talk. In a few minutes we were very mellow and starting to get the giggles watching Marc sip his drink while he made funny faces at us as though he were entertaining infants. Sober as a judge was he. Out on the porch I heard Russ talking to someone. I looked out and saw Charon, my neighbor from across the street, and Fred from next door. Russ assumed they were my friends and invited them in for a drink. Fred practically burst through the door looking for the booze. Charon stopped just inside the door, acknowledged everyone then sat down next to Spence who was humming to a Simon and Garfunkel tune playing on my computer.

Sergio rolled another joint while Marc mixed more drinks. Fred told me he was hiding out from his sister who had been on his case all day about him losing her copy of "Anger Management Made Easy" for which she had “paid 25 goddamn dollahs at the traffic school the %&*@!!&$ judge had forced her to attend after her arrest for calling the cop a #*&@#$%^, $%^&*!@#, and a &^*#$%# thug, stomping on his foot, and tearing up the traffic ticket”. I told him he could stay until my party was over. After that he was on his own.

Charon was telling Spence and Russ about himself and his work as some kind of civilian minister at a local church. I saw Sergio sit up at the mention of Charon's conversion to The Church of The Second Coming of The First Christ in The Last Millennium (TCTSCTFCTLM for short). Sergio had been raised in a very religious home but had left the faith at the age of 14 after decking a priest whose ideas of the holy sacraments were not exactly holy. He saw the tiny Bible Charon had in his shirt pocket. He reached out and snatched it. His eyes narrowed as he flipped the pages until he found the passage he was looking for. He was about to read out loud but Spence, knowing Sergio's temper, quickly told him to go with him to get more ice and snacks at the liquor store. He took the Bible and passed it off to Max, who opened it to the title page and read that it was a condensed, abridged version.

"My grandmother", he said, "has a First Edition signed by the Author. She used to read me her favorite parts like 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. I always wondered if that included the shitty parts of the earth. What do you think?"

Then Russ averred that the Blessed Peacemaker he owned would bring a man to a dead stop at 50 yards either from fear or the impact of high velocity lead. “Remember Dirty Harry?” he asked. Then he clenched his jaws, gritted his teeth. Squinting hard he rasped a quote from the movie:

"I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?"

Charon thought they were jesting and began to recite his favorite Dirty Harry lines. He must have seen the movies dozens of times since it appeared to me that he was reciting entire scripts. He'd only had two drinks so far but was acting as though he'd had a lot more. He tried his Clint Eastwood impressions, first threatening Marc, then Max but stopped when he turned to Russ who was not amused, Dirty Harry being his all time hero. Russ was no Bible scholar but he did know some movie dialog. He gathered himself, assumed a wrathful look then delivered a quote from Pulp Fiction with all the malevolence and thunder he could muster:

'The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.'

Charon panicked when he saw the rockets' red glare in Russ's eyes. He knew his Bible inside out but had never read that passage. Had he missed it somehow or did he have the wrong version? He was afraid to ask. Besides, Russ and Mother Nature had placed an urgent call to his loosening bowels and he moved fast to find the bathroom.

Meanwhile, Fred was scarfing up more booze and occasionally looking out the window in case his sister came home.

We slowly ran out of reminiscences about old times. Each of us had added to or subtracted from the recollections until we came to silent agreement that "Yeah, that's how it happened". As the liquor and the second hand smoke from Sergio's joints began fuzzing our memories even the smothering weight of the bad times began to lose its power to crush. We started to have fun.

Max told a story about the time he gave a ride to a chubby girl he met during one of his gigs. His next job was in Tulsa where the girl was from so he said ok when she asked for a ride. Late that night as they were heading up I35 from Austin to Tulsa the fan belt broke. Max remembered that in a pinch, a panty hose could be used as a fan belt so he asked the girl if she had any in her stuff. She was wearing the only pair she owned so she opened the door to take them off but being wide hipped she was struggling. Seeing her struggle, Max came around and started pulling on the waist band. The Texas State Trooper coming up the road saw a woman's legs kicking in the air and a man hunched down between them.

The trooper's siren scared the girl who started screaming. A few seconds later Max was face down on the ground, handcuffed and knocked silly, his head having had a momentary but violent collision with the trooper's 8 cell flashlight. It took a half hour for Max and the girl to convince the trooper that there was nothing untoward going on. I told him he should make the experience into a song a la Bob Dylan, working title: "I Didn't See the Light But I Sure Felt It."

Spence, the IRS auditor, told stories about how he would mess with the finely coiffed big shots and their slimy tax attorneys who thought they could intimidate him by flashing their cuffs and pinky rings to show how much status they had and how little he did.

His favorite thing was to stare dejectedly down at the desk and say, "You know, six months ago I lost my wife to assholes just.......... like......... you. She was the only thing in life I ever loved; the only thing that ever mattered to me. She's gone. She's not coming back. I have nothing left to lose if I take you and your pissant lawyers down. So, let me ask, are you feeling lucky? Well, are you punk?"

We were so high and giggly we even toasted the IRS. There was a knock on the door and I went to open it. There was Fred's sister, Patti, in her favorite string bikini. I couldn't look away from her tanned hide. She was a natural Florida blonde who in her youth had refused to believe that the sun was her skin's enemy. In the course of her 50 some years the sun's relentless rays had turned her once creamy skin into five and half feet of beef jerky. I had purposely put up a hedge between her yard and mine to shield my eyes when she sunbathed by her swimming pool.

"UPS delivered this to my house. I didn't know it was for you so I opened it. It's a cake. The note says Happy Birthday from your sister. Sorry", she singsonged.

All eyes were on Patti. Even Fred looked up from behind the couch where he was hiding. I had a flashback to Engineering 101 when I had struggled to understand Newton's Laws of Motion. Now here, Fred and Patti were about to teach me with flashbulb clarity the meaning of the First and Third Laws.

First Law
An object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. 

AKA -- the law of inertia.

To wit, they saw each other and Fred made a dash for an exit. The the one he chose was a sliding glass door that my wife had thoughtfully cleaned in anticipation of my friends' visit. In a word, or in four words, actually, the glass was invisible. As a result of my wife's diligence, Fred was unable to pass to the other side of the glass, bouncing off, thus demonstrating Newton's Third Law. (To every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.) He got up fast and ran out the kitchen door with Patti close behind.

"Did you see that?", Marc giggled. Through the patio door we saw Patti tackle Fred then kneel on his back, yelling at him as she banged his head up and down on the dirt.
Q.E.D - Newton's Third Law

Everyone got the giggles all over again. Then we smelled smoke. On her way over to give me my birthday cake, Patti had tossed her cigarette in the pile of leaves on the lawn. I was still holding my cake as we stumbled into the night to admire the spreading flames.

Max started it: "Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Dear Fernando ......."
We were still singing when the Fire Department showed up. 

Killjoys, punks.