Sitting still isn"t good. It"s too easy to feel the pain. Pain spiking my head, throbbing in my thigh, and scratching at a hundred nicks and bruises. My head drops forward, my arms flop at my sides, the map held limply. I"m in bad shape. I know I"m in bad shape. I gotta get out of here, I gotta get up off the ground and go somewhere and get some sleep. I"ll be so much better if I can just get some sleep, give my brain a chance to shut down. Where? Where am I gonna go? What am I gonna do?
I dig a cigarette out of one of my fresh packs.
Where are my matches? I paw through my pockets looking for a match. Where are my G.o.dd.a.m.n matches? I empty everything from my pockets except for the guns, and dump it all on the cement between my legs. Map, cell phone, charger, cigarettes, Christmas card, empty matchbook, a crumpled pile of hundreds and twenties, a spill of change. Headlights blast me from behind and a car horn jolts me to my feet. I spin, the car from the pumps is a few feet from me, its horn blaring. The silhouette of a head emerges from the driver"s window.
--Get the f.u.c.k out of the way!
I look around. I"m right in the middle of the entrance to the station. The driver honks again, loud and long. I hold up a hand, palm out toward the car, bend down to pick up my stuff, and step out of the way as the car moves forward. It"s a taxi. The driver looks at me as he eases past, shakes his head in disgust. I stand there with my hands full of junk. Map, cell, charger, smokes, Christmas card, money.
Christmas card!
The cabby taps his brakes, halting for a moment as a bus drives past. I run up to his open window and stick the red Christmas envelope inside.
--Here, I need to go here.
He ducks back from me and pushes my hand away.
--f.u.c.k off!
I have my head and right shoulder stuck in the window. He tries to shake me loose, and I stumble alongside the crawling cab. I shove the envelope in his face.
--Here!
He"s looking less p.i.s.sed and more scared now as he slaps at his armrest, trying to roll up his window, but only succeeding in locking and unlocking the doors over and over. I get my other hand inside the window and shake a handful of cash at him. The taxi stops moving.
--A hundred bucks. I"ll give you a hundred.
He looks at the envelope I"m sticking in his face.
--That address is in California.
What? Oh, Christ.
--The other one, the return.
His eyes move to the return address and then to the money in my other hand.
--Two hundred.
--Two hundred.
I peel off two hundreds and hand them to him along with the card in its envelope, then I pull open the back door and flop across the seat.
--You puke or p.i.s.s or anything back there and it"s gonna cost you another hundred.
The taxi starts to move. I close my eyes.
I OPEN my eyes.
f.u.c.k me; oh f.u.c.k me, what am I doing? I look around. Taxi. Got it, I remember. I scooch up in the seat. The cabby is looking at me in the rearview.
--Too much tonight, buddy?
Way too much.
--Yeah.
He stops at a red light.
--In town for the rodeo?
Rodeo?
--Uh.
--Only guys I see as messed up as you are cowboys. You a cowboy?
I laugh.
--Yeah, yeah, I"m a cowboy.
--I figured. Couldn"t pay me enough. Crazy s.h.i.t.
--Yeah, crazy-s.h.i.t cowboy, that"s me.
He"s looking at me again in the mirror.
--It"s about a ten-minute ride. Go ahead and take a nap. I"ll wake you.
A nap. That sounds good. I close my eyes.
SOMEONE IS pulling on me. I open my eyes.
--OK, buddy, here we are.
The cabby is tugging me out of the back of his cab. I jerk free and get out, almost fall, and he catches me.
--I got ya.
He"s leading me toward a rust-streaked, white and turquoise trailer. We"re in a trailer park. He helps me up the steps to a small porch and plops me onto a beat-up couch, setting off an eruption of dust. I cough. He points at the trailer.
--OK, this is the place. Don"t look like anyone"s home.
He"s whispering.
--How can ya tell?
--I knocked.
He"s still whispering.
--Just lie down.
He pushes on my shoulder. I lie back on the couch and close my eyes.
--Here"s your Christmas card back.
Still whispering. I feel his hand shoving the card deep in my hip pocket. His hand grasping.
I grab his wrist and lurch up from the couch. He takes a step back, my hand locked on his wrist, his hand still deep in my pocket. I jerk it out and it comes free; the card and a litter of my cash dropping from his fingers. He yanks his hand away. Both of us standing now, he sees just how big I am, how big he is not. I take another step toward him. His eyes are huge. He"s appalled at what he"s tried to do: roll a crazed drunk.
--Easy, buddy.
But I don"t want to be easy. I"ve been easy, now I want to be hard. Instead, I trip over my own feet and fall onto the porch. The cabby seizes the moment, runs to his taxi, and speeds away toward the entrance of the trailer park.
I lower my head. The Astro Turf that covers the porch scruffs against my ear. I look across the flat plain of the porch at my scattered money, and the Christmas card a few inches from my face. I grab the card and roll onto my back. I take the card from its envelope and hold it up to catch the light from one of the lamps that illuminate the park.
It"s a homemade job, worked up on Photoshop or something. It"s a still from A Charlie Brown Christmas, the part where Lucy is flirting with Schroeder, bent over his piano trying to get him to play "Jingle Bells." The still has been altered. Charlie Brown is standing next to his director"s chair shouting "Action" into his megaphone. Schroeder is playing the piano, he"s naked except for blinders and a red ball-gag. Snoopy is dancing on the piano in front of Lucy, his big dog d.i.c.k stuck in her mouth. The caption reads "EUGH! DOG GERMS." Inside is another altered still that features Charlie and Lucy engaged in an act of coprophilia with the caption "Of all the Charlie Browns, you"re the Charlie Browniest." Charlie"s face has been removed from this one and T has superimposed his own.
f.u.c.king T.
I close my eyes.
PART THREE.
DECEMBER 14-17, 2003.
Still Two Regular Season Games Remaining T was a quiet kid in junior high, one of the Dungeons and Dragons crowd that kept their heads down, trying to draw as little attention as possible. In the summer following eighth grade, his mom died, eaten from the inside by stomach cancer. He showed up the first day of freshman year with a brand new mohawk, safety pins in his ears, and a Clash shirt with the sleeves ripped off. The only punk in a school full of jocks, cowboys, and lowriders, he spent the next couple months getting gang-tackled and having his face stuffed in a toilet every time he turned a corner. Until he bit off Sean Baylor"s earlobe. After that, everybody decided the risks of beating on the school freak outweighed the pleasures.
The only group that would have anything to do with him were the burnouts, and that was only after he started selling off his mother"s leftover pain medication. Then Wade"s mom died, and he and T started hanging out. By the time I came around, T was a regular in stoner circles. He was the guy that could get his hands on good weed, acid, speed, mushrooms, and c.o.ke from time to time. But that didn"t make him any less freaky.
Going to T"s house to score an eighth was a roll of the dice. He might be zonked in front of his Apple II playing Zork, or he might be in the backyard, shirtless and frenzied, the Dead Kennedys screaming from the house stereo, bench-pressing a board with cinder blocks balanced on either end until veins bulged over his scrawny torso like swollen night crawlers.
We didn"t talk much. He was just too strange for me to handle, and I was just the crippled jock tagging along with his pal Wade. He was the only guy in school who actually gave me a bad time about my injury. Hey, superstar, how"s the leg? Hey, superstar, race ya to the corner. Hey, superstar, that joint ain"t a talkin" stick, pa.s.s it over here. My bad, I"ll come get it, you need to stay off your feet.
Last time I saw T was at graduation. He had spent four years smoking, sniffing, and eating anything he could lay his hands on, alienating virtually every member of the student body, faculty, and administration, and he graduated with an effortless 3.9. Someone told me he had scholarship offers from the computer departments at Berkeley and Stanford. Instead, he did a quarter at Modesto Junior College, started dealing crank, and ended up taking a jolt in county, and later another for the state.
--EASY, HITLER.
I wake up shivering.
--Easy, Hitler.
Why is it cold in the Yucatan? Because it"s not the Yucatan maybe? a.s.s. Hole. Something growls.
--Shush, Hitler.
I open my eyes, and see a dog as big as a truck. It"s growling and showing me all of its teeth. It"s wearing a collar, but no leash. I tilt my head and look up. Elvis Presley is standing behind the dog. He"s about five eight, wearing pegged black Levis, black engineer boots, and a black leather vest over a white T-shirt, is beanpole skinny, and has sideburns down to his jaw and an oily black pompadour.
--Who the f.u.c.k are you and why are you on my f.u.c.king porch?
What am I doing on his porch? I start to sit up.
--Don"t f.u.c.king move or Hitler"s gonna eat your face.
I don"t want my face eaten by anyone, let alone Hitler. I stick out my hand to ward off any face eating and Elvis grabs the Christmas card that I"m clutching. He opens it.
--What the f.u.c.k?
He looks from the card to me, and does the best double take I"ve ever seen in real life.
--Holy s.h.i.t! Holy p.i.s.s, s.h.i.t, motherf.u.c.ker, t.i.ts. f.u.c.ks.h.i.t. Holy f.u.c.ks.h.i.t, f.u.c.king Christ. f.u.c.k me. f.u.c.k me. f.u.c.k me.
--Nice to see you too, T.
He picks up all the money, drags me to my feet, hauls me into the trailer, and dumps me on a couch in only slightly better repair than the one on the porch.
--Still havin" trouble walkin", huh, superstar?
He takes the two guns from my pocket. The dog stands in front of me, teeth still bared, a.s.suring that I stay put. No problems there. I close my eyes.
--WAKE UP, superstar.
I open my eyes. T is sitting on the coffee table in front of me, his left hand resting on top of the dog"s head. The dog is an English Mastiff, a light-coated two-hundred-pounder with a sad face. T snaps open a Zippo with an American flag sticker on its side, and holds the flame to the Marlboro Red in his mouth. I stop staring at the dog and reach in my own pocket for a smoke. The dog twitches.
--Hitler, no!
The dog eases back. Comprehension finally dawns.
--Hitler is the dog.
T nods.
--Hitler is the dog.
I take my empty hand from my empty pocket. I"ve lost my cigarettes somewhere. I point at T"s pack.
--Can I have one of those?
He nods, hands me a smoke, and lights it for me.
--Didn"t think superstars like you were supposed to smoke.