Out of the Machine

Cowboy Boots are no kind of thing to get kicked with. Trust me, I’ve taken a fairly complete sample of most footwear, and from both sides too. Even in the Marines, riding the very tip of George Senior’s Desert Storm toward Saddam‘s Bagdad, I longed to switch out my canvas and steel reinforced rubber combat Desert Eagles for my warn-ass Tony’s back home. Don’t get me wrong now: kick a guy in the head with U.S. Army-Issue and he’ll probably stay down for a while. But you get a good one with the eagle-beak point of the cowboy leather and you might as well be taking a full rip with a ball-peen. Tissues will be exposed. You might see twitching. The last thing I remember, before waking up in an astringent-smelling pitch-dark (Fuckers put me in the cleaning closet, was three pairs of pointy, leather cowboy boots dancing a nasty Bojangles on my neck, and on my face. One pair had a steel tip. I felt around my body in the dark, and stinging, ragged holes manifest like mutant Braille under my fingers. They sing out when I touch: My shoulder, my stomach, my legs. Everything is coated with a slick, smelly substance. I feel around the wound in my abdomen for a moment and accidentaly stick two fingers into my stomache. That’s how I discover that the fingers on are broken.

***

My best friend when I was in elementary school was a guy named Jimmie Tenny. Jimmie was a roly-poly chap, but athletic. Since we became friends right around 5th grade, we ended up with a lot of shared first times. You know, the type of bullshit that adults, and even older kids don’t really give a shit about, but what seem, like, apocalyptic at the jump. Tenny and I didn’t have a Lone Ranger / Tonto type thing either. We were both vicious jd’s trying, openly, to pull as many chains as possible. We drank booze for the first time together, and a lot of times after that as well, we broke into a house together for the fist time (graffiti-ed the SHIT out of the finished basement walls and then bolted, only to get caught immediately just coming from the crime-scene), If we didn’t quite get laid for the first time together then we certainly talked enough about it. We challenged each other, like a Bird / Magic type of gig.

Then came summer. Last week of school, to be exact. Summer 1985. That’s when I lost him.

Or maybe “lost” isn’t the right term there. I mean, I knew where he was. Jimmie was in his house. All the time. Listening to the noise of his mother crying, and planning for the eventual return of his father, Joseph. Dude went out for cigarettes on a Sunday in November, right around the time when the department stores are switching out skeletons and ghosts for elves, wreathes and Santa. Dude just got an idea, and fucking ran with it.

After that, Jimmie and his mom and his brother were just figments. I’d see them sometimes, moving like Zombies through town, slack-jawed at the carport of Polk Junior High. And I remember thinking that Jimmie hated his dad, and his mom did too. Dude was a fucking jerk. So why the Zombie faces? And why so fixated on a possible return? Cause they were. I mean, if you could get the kid talking at all, that’s what he wanted to talk about. The misery. After a while it just got fucking unbearable.

But before I got even fifty miles into my escape, it started hitting me. It was bad. I actually had to pull over. The facts: I left as a direct result of an event, an accident, that I alone was the cause of. Jimmie’s Dad, as far as he told anybody, didn’t have any such trigger to his AWOL bid. I hope my wife recognizes that, and I hope in time my children do too. But looking at it without prejudice, all I can see is my wife and kid wandering from room to room in their empty, miserable house. The misery, the confusion, and those awful, tear-burned eyes. All my fault.

***

I hear voices outside the door, along with quick strides and the noise of four cowboy boot soles tramping past on, what was that, cement? Wood floor? I could make out this conversation as they went passed.

Well where did you put him?

The closet we just passed.
Two of the boot-noises stop, and two keep going for a few steps, and then they stop too.

That closet? This one right here?

The steps that stopped first are walking back toward me now. I hear the other guy start back as well. He’s playing apologist, and you can hear in his voice that he’s scared.

Well, where was I supposed to put him? Under a tarp on the loading dock? Parade him around the warehouse a few times. Boss I…

No it’s all right Denny, you did good. You did good. You took his I.D. and such? I’m gonna’ send the boys to plant him up near the orchard in back.

Yeah I did. I got ‘em. Actually no. No I didn’t. Lemme just…

Yeah why don’t you just…

And then the door opened.

***

My wife says: We’re ordering. Kids want pizza.

And that’s what it all turned on. Just that little proclamation, and life, the world, people…Everything there is altered forever.

How long?

Go now. Go to the ATM. They don’t swipe cards.

Mm hmm.

And hurry! The quicker you go the quicker you’ll get back and we can put ‘em to bed.

I was in the car with the stereo bombing not three minutes after her last word, “bed”. In retrospect, I should’ve slowed down.

Before I went to the ATM I needed a little weed-time. The trees that November were famously delicious and heady. The protocol: three hits for every four hours of consciousness. Then pick up the pizza, and head home for a CGI kids movie. Typical for us on a Friday, and awesome. Instead of puffing in the car outside the Kingston Pizza, I took a detour to drive around a bit. I headed for the Fox Ridge, a neighborhood adjacent to mine. I’d planned to smoke, and see the gigantic houses of people who lived not three minutes from me in my 1300 square foot castle. It had just rained, and I had Frank Zappa pounding out of the stereo.

The trees I had were crazy. Even for a grizzled old stoner like me, this is some strong plant. I’m riding now, maybe fifteen-twenty miles an hour. Partly because it’s practically my neighborhood, like, my own kids are going to be playing on these blocks within a few years. Mostly though, I was going slow cause I was driving with my knees. Breaking off a tree-nugget to stuff in the one-hitter. I’d missed my turn to get out of Fox Ridge and now I was driving even slower, trying to decide weather to turn around or press on and do the whole loop again. I saw a few kids and on the lawn to my right and up about three-hundred yards and made my mind up to stop and bust a U. The idea never went honored though, because right then I took a pull of the glass weed-pipe. I slowed almost to a complete stop, put a flame to the trees, and inhaled, still just barely crawling along in the big blue Buick Century, Presidential. As the pipe came free from my mouth, two things happened. The first, was that a sizable chunk of burning sour diesel came blasting out of the thing. I watched it in slow motion as it paused at the apex of its flight. The second thing, was that my right foot shifted back over and feathered a bit. The Buick Presidential accelerated. I remember the last cogent thought that came cranking through my skull: the kids. And I looked up.

No kids. I was about 50 feet away from their yard and they were nowhere to be seen. I registered this, and then the spilled weed started branding itself into my right testicle. The pain was sudden, but there was to be no slow-developing discomfort, Instead my entire mid section began to cry out in agony. I slapped hard at the thing, and a caught my own balls with the swing. Fetched’em a good one too. Part of the burning thing burrowed deeper under my sack and continued to blaze a trail of burnt nut-flesh, while another section bounced up into my left eye. The ball-swat started to bark and my mid-section was flipping and contracting. On top of that I was blinded in both eyes and in terrible, inescapable pain. It didn’t even register - not right
away anyway - that the car’s left front tire had run over something. The driver’s side window, however, was open, and before the rear tire went over the bump I heard a strange thing from directly below. I heard the voice of a little girl exclaim a breathy…

Ooooh!!

…Then, when the rear tire rose and fell, I realized what had happened. I punched the brakes, opened my door. Bracing a little for what I knew was there. I stared for a while that seemed like a year. And then I left.

***

There they were, looking down at me. I tried to say something smart-ass (Can either you gents direct me back to the freeway?), but nothing came out. The guys looked disgusted, so I must have been a site. My broken fingered hand was still stuck in my stomach and both areas were starting to ache and throb. Neither guy said anything for a while. The guy who was obviously not the boss said:

Well there he is, just like a told you.

Mm Hmm. Ok. Ok. Ok. Let me think.

When he said this he ran both hands over the top of his head and down the back side, revealing a goofy looking widows peak, almost on the very top of his skull. Again, I tried to crack wise and failed.

Man what’s with his eyes?

What?

Well they’re open. That’s creepy.

The Boss reached down, closed my eyes manually.

There, ya fuckin’ faggot, better?

***

I was deep into Connecticut before another complete thought dared enter my seething mind. The whole way from the scene of the crime to the highway to the interstate was conducted with the deliberate efficiency of auto-pilot. Now though, with only greenway visible for miles on both sides of I-95 Southbound, I began to deal with the options. My life - I thought - was over. That much was a fact, and I made sure I damn well knew it before I moved on. The wife, the kids, the house, the cars. Over. All of it. I had our bank card on me to hit up the ATM. I had fifteen dollars to my name. I hadn’t picked up the pizza. Following all that, I thought I’d better pull off and fix all that needed fixing. I hit an ATM in the Stop and Shop of Norwich CT, and then headed for the prepared foods. I spent 84 dollars on things I thought I might need. I was underway again, looking for a gas station on my side of the road, when the Radio came with an emergency alert. They interrupted the Foreigner song “Urgent,” and I had to laugh. C’mon! Ya gotta admit that’s weird right?