THE WAYNIE CHRONICLES
by Jaye DeKambul
This is kind of a shitty story. You will probably see what I’m talkin about as you go along.
Me and Richie was standing in the shade
of the Mule Barn, an old livestock barn at the edge of town behind “The
Show", see, which is what we called our local movie theater. Well, actually, we was more like hiding,
because John Albert was standing in front of The Show just dying to kick some
serious ass and we knew that Richie would draw him like a magnet, with his red
hair and all.
"F-F-Frederick, tell me if you
think he's coming" said Richie, trying to hide the fact that he was sort
of crying. "You know he made me eat
mule dookey last Saturday". I digested this thought for a few seconds, then said (after looking around to make sure old John Albert
wasn’t around) "Well I ain't scared of that
little son-of-a-bitch. I might make that little son-of-a-bitch eat mule dookey if he messes with me much. Sincerely. And besides that, don't call me
Frederick".(I like to be called Fred like my TV
hero Fred Flintstone, not Freddie and certainly not Frederick).
Suddenly John Albert stepped around
the corner with a steaming pile of an unidentified brown material heaped on a
folded newspaper, and an instant later I smelled a disgusting odor which
smelled suspiciously like mule dookey, fresh
squeezed. With a kind of insane look in
his good eye, he said
"O.K.,
Now, I have to admit that I was a
little afraid of old John Albert too, but Richie was literally terrified of him
and was fighting to not make fudge brownies in his new Wranglers. He won that battle but lost another as he
suddenly cut a fart which sounded like someone ripping an old bedsheet in half.
The fart was so incredibly sudden and loud (a sure winner in anybody’s
Fart Contest) that it made me almost jump out of my skin, and unfortunately
caused me to jar old John Albert's elbow and knock some of that mule dookey onto his T shirt.
This did not please John Albert.
He grabbed
...well, maybe I better start at the
beginning and kind of explain how I got into all this shit in the first place.
You see, I had this baby sitter named
Miss Harbin, who kept me and my brothers during the day when Mama worked at the
Blue Bell. She always brought her mean
little turd of a boy with her, and his name was Waynie. Waynie was a big
mama’s boy, and he’d rat you out in a second.
Well, anyway, Miss Harbin, she hated my guts right off and I wouldn't
have pissed on her if she was on fire, nor that goddam
Waynie either.
The first day her and Waynie come to our house, it was all pretty much innocent
to begin with. Mama called me and my
brothers together and said “Boys, this here is Miss Harbin and her boy, and
they will be staying with you during the day while I work”. Miss Harbin immediately began spreading
herself around, saying stuff like “Why, what a beautiful floral arrangement
this is” and “I just love the fabric on this couch”, when we all knew that she
was full of shit, cause the floral arrangement was just some nigger navels my
dumb-ass brother Randall had pulled up out of the ditch in front of the house
and stuck in a fruit jar, and the couch was about a hundred years old and
covered with plastic. She nelt down and got right in our faces and said “Boys, I’d
like you to meet my boy Waynie.” Now, I guarantee that you didn’t want Miss
Harbin in your face cause she was uglier than a run-over bulldog and her breath
smelt like a hogs ass that had been in the corn all
day.
Then she said “Waynie,
please say hello to Freddie and his brothers” and turned around and started
piling some more bullshit on Mama. Waynie stuck out his hand like he wanted to shake mine, but
when I reached out to shake his, he grabbed my hand
and tickled the inside of my palm with his middle finger. I jerked my hand away, rubbing in on my pants
leg, and said “Why you little bas...” but about that time Miss Hardin turned
around and grabbed Waynie’s hand, eyeballed me like I was a dead bloated chipmunk and led him out of the room to show him
around the house. As he was leaving,
though, he gave me the old bird behind his back so his mama couldn’t see. I began to realize at that time that me and old Waynie was gonna have a personality conflict. Anyway, that was the beginning of poor
relations between me and Waynie and his mama.
After that, Waynie
would often do shit like break a glass on purpose or make some kind of fuckin mess, like spilling chocolate milk on the furniture,
then call Miss Harbin and tell her I done it.
I ain’t saying, though, that all the trouble
came from just Waynie, cause
his mother was just as bad or worse, and besides that she was a goddam
thief. She always kept a big old green
hickory switch on the kitchen table, and I don’t believe a day went by that she
didn’t tear my ass up with it two or three times, mostly when I’d catch her
stealing some little thing of Mama’s or ours or every time Waynie
told on me about something, true or not.
She never did whoop Waynie. Anyway, she always kind of shitted me around
all the time, and what I'm about to tell you about is just one example.
Chapter 1: Waynie and the
Sugar Buscuits
We didn't have much money in those
days so what Mama would do, she would make sugar biscuits for us- you know, you
take the left-over biscuits from breakfast and you put sugar in the
son-of-a-bitches. Well, me and my two
brothers, R.D. and Randall, was standing in the kitchen about to eat us some
sugar biscuits when who walks in the door but Miss Harbin and that goddam Waynie. About that
time I started eyeballin’ them sugar biscuits and
noticed that there was only 3 of them.
Miss Hardin immediately walked up to
the sugar biscuits and grabbed them up, and said "Well lets see- we've
only got 1-2-3 sugar biscuits and we've got 1-2-3-4 boys, so R.D., here's you
one, and Randall, here's you one and ... Waynie,
here's you one!” and she give that little fucker my sugar biscuit. Well, I knew there wasn't no use in arguing
with that ignorant bitch, so I decided to bide my time and maybe get my revenge
at a later date. My revenge came sooner
than later, however, because Waynie only took about 2
bites of that sugar biscuit and then set it on the back of the couch and announced
that he would eat the rest of it later.
I knew that he did this just to piss me off.
What I done was, I snuck outside and
waited for Bitsey, my dog, to take a shit as I knew
she would since Daddy had just give her some worm medicine the night before.
Before long she produced an admirable amount of wormy shit for such a little
dog. I scooped up about a tablespoon or
two full of it (don't worry, I didn't use the good spoons, only that old one Granmaw always uses) and snuck back inside. I crawled behind the couch, grabbed the
biscuit off the back of the couch and loaded that son-of-a-bitch up. Then I put it back where Waynie
had left it.
Before long Waynie
got up and stretched and decided he'd eat the rest of that biscuit, so he
picked it up and took a big old bite. He
was about halfway into his next bite when he started hollerin
and spitting and directly started to gag and ran for his mama, dribblin brownish puke as he went. I knew this could spell trouble so I grabbed
the biscuit off the floor and ran outside and stuffed it up the tailpipe of
that piece-of-shit rusted out old Ford Miss Harbin drove. Then I ran back
inside and set down and tried to look casual when Miss Harbin came raisin hell in to investigate, but she couldn't prove nuthin on me, not that time.
Chapter 2: Miss Harbin and the Flyin
Jenny
Me and Miss Harbin had what you might
call a cold war for the next few days.
That Friday afternoon when Mama came home Miss Harbin looked at me and
said "I'll see you next Monday".
Now this might sound innocent coming from anyone else except that wild
bitch, so I knew I better be on my toes.
The weekend ended sooner than I hoped
it would, then it was Monday and Miss Harbin came, with that little shit Waynie. As Mama was
leaving to go to the Blue Bell, she told Miss Harbin "Now don't you have
them boys out in that old car of yours", so as soon as Mama left Miss
Harbin said "Boys git in the car, were goin to the country".
So we loaded up in the stinkin matted-up back
seat of that piece of shit old Ford of hers and headed out.
We rode for awhile till we got to
where we was heading, which was an old run-down tin-roofed farm house where
shithead Waynie said they lived. I wasn't surprised,
what with the dead possum layin on the porch and all.
There was several kind of mean looking dirty-ass kids hangin
around which I assumed was Waynie's brothers and
sisters. One of the girls was real short
and wide but looked kind of old in the face, and her name was Marsheila. Miss
Harbin said "
As soon as I got over to her, however,
she picked up one of those big old rough pieces of rope like you tow someone's
piece of dogshit Ford with and hit me in the eyeball
with the end that had the knot in it. As
soon as I got back partial vision I figured out that she was some kind of re-tard.
Well, we kind of assed around for
awhile and sort of made friends, then she said "jumajumajuma"
which in re-tard talk meant "lets go down in the
woods and find the rest of the kids". As you may know, anything beats
playing alone with a re-tard so I followed her down
into the woods.
We had been walking for a few minutes
when I thought I heard voices, which got gradually louder. We rounded a bend and I saw a sight I had
never seen before. What it was, was a Flyin Jenny. How you
make a Flyin Jenny is you cut off a pine tree about 4
feet from the ground, then you get a long plank, bore a hole in the center of
it and stick a spike or big nail through the hole and drive it into the cut-off
tree, so when you get it together it looks like a see-saw, only it don't go up
and down, it goes around and around.
Well, them
kids had a rider on each end of the plank and was pushing the plank around like
a merry-go-round. I stood there for
awhile by Marsheila and watched them, and it got to
looking kind of fun. Suddenly Marsheila said
"Let the fat boy ride". Now this kind of surprised me, her talking
human and all. Then one of the older
boys walked up who looked a whole lot like Marsheila,
that is, short and mean looking with a G.I. haircut that looked like it was cut
by his uncle in the Navy.
The boy said "My name's John
Albert. Get your fat ass up there".
I climbed on up on one end and they added two other kids on the other
end for ballast. Then about 15 kids started pushing the Flyin
Jenny while old John Albert and Marsheila stood back
with these mean little grins on their faces and watched. It started off slow and kind of fun, but soon
them kids got up a head of steam until I started having trouble holding on, and
besides that I was getting sick. Now you
didn’t have to hit me in the ass with a two-by-four to make me realize that ol Miss Harbin had done set me up.
Every time I would make a round and get
close to John Albert he would spit, and after awhile he got to where he could
lead me perfect with it. On my 65th
round or so I couldn't keep it down any longer, and this time I led John Albert
perfect with it when I let go an amazing stream of lumpy puke which hit John
Albert square in the face. On my next
round I lost my hold and got slung off the Flyin
Jenny and slammed into old John Albert like a ton of flying whaleshit.
I got up and saw old John Albert laying on the ground saying something that sounded kinda like "jumajumajuma". Then I made like cowshit
and hit the trail, and covered a whole lot of ground in a hurry for a fat
kid.
Chapter 3: Me and Richie
It was a hot, dusty summer that year,
maybe the longest summer I can ever remember.
Mostly all I did was hang out with my best buddy, Richie Fortenberry. Richie
was a skinny, knob-kneed little guy with bright red, raggedy hair and a long
nose which he rubbed when he got nervous.
And he was nervous quite often. I
was kind of the opposite of him-short, chubby and freckle-faced, with a flattop
haircut, the kind where they buzz a bald spot in the center of the top of your
head and leave a few sprigs of hair which stick up in the front, aided by a gob
of Butch Wax, some of which always rubbed off on your forehead and made it
greasy. We wore white T-shirts and jeans
with the cuffs rolled up in a 3-inch cuff, like most of the other kids. Shorts were not allowed- only sissys wore them.
Richie was a very good-natured and
friendly kid who just about anybody would like, but he had an older brother
named Jasper who was nothing but bad news.
Jasper ran around with a pretty nasty crew, and we avoided them every
chance we got. On that particular
Tuesday we had walked to the local junkyard where we normally did any of a
thousand things boys did for fun in those days, such as bust out windshields
out of old cars, smoke cigarettes, catch frogs, kill snakes, etc.
We had just about succeeded in prying
the headlight out of an old Chevy pickup as we took turns smoking a cigarette
which Richie had stold off his Daddy when we heard
voices which we recognized as Jasper’s and some of his buddies. We beat it around behind the truck and hid,
but commandeered a good peephole which allowed us to view the proceedings.
With Jasper came Barney McGhee, a
local bully with greasy black hair and a fat, pimply face who smelled like
soured buttermilk. Barney looked just
like his dad, Elmer, who was also an ugly son-of-a-bitch. Alongside Barney was Frankie Finesdale, a scabby-looking wirey
little bastard who quit school the second week of his Junior year and liked to
kill cats. And last but not least was Turdbelly Tony Brown, the meanest 17 year old in the ninth
grade. Only his best friends called him Turdbelly to his face, and that was if he was not
around. Besides, he didn’t have no friends.
Barney was in the middle of one of his
lies about his latest sexual conquest (probably one of Frankie’s dead cats, I
thought to myself), and he was just getting to the part where she was begging
him for more when Turdbelly stopped and pointed to
the non-filtered Camel butt which me and Richie didn’t put out good and said “Shuddup, somebody’s just been here - see that butt smokin”? They all
kind of got quiet and inspected the butt and peered around the junkyard but
didn’t see me and Richie.
“You recon they’re gone now? “ asked Barney.
Frankie kind of snickered at that ignorant-ass remark and this pissed
Barney off. “Who you laughin
at, scarecrow” he said in his billy-joe-bad-ass voice and took a step toward Frankie like he
was gonna whip his ass or something. Quicker that you could say “It fuckin sure is fuckin hot”
Frankie whipped out a 7-inch switchblade from the back pocket of his jeans,
stuck it up the sleeve of Barney’s T-shirt and ripped the sleeve wide open all
the way to Barney’s shoulder.
Barney jumped back pale as a ghost and said
“Shit, Frankie, I was just bull-shittin you”. Frankie, who never had too much to say,
said “Don”t ever call me scarecrow, tubass”, which was a very long speech for him. You could tell that this kind of hurt
Barney’s feelings and he was about to make some kind of intelligent yet
sensitive remark when Turdbelly, who was not
impressed by all this extracurricular activity, said “You guys shut the fuck up
and listen”. An then he outlined a plan
which we heard snatches of, but the gist of which was that on Saturday night
them four was going to sneak into the drive-in theater through the trees, put
on masks and steal the money from the cash register in the snack bar right
during the middle of Bingo.
At this point Jasper started bragging
about that time he won that fruit-juice dispenser during Bingo- real
Tupperware, he said- when Turdbelly said “Shut the
fuck up” and looked around at the group and said “Is any of yall
chickenshit”?, and gave everybody the old
eyeball. Barney looked kind of scared
and sick and so did Jasper, but Frankie looked like
somebody had just told him to pass the goddam salt. I don’t guess Frankie gave much of a shit
about anything long as you didn’t fuck up and call him scarecrow or something.
Anyway, they all agreed to this plan
and then left. After they were safely
out of sight, me and Richie came out from our hiding place and talked about
what we had just heard. After a few
minutes Richie said “Well, what do you think we ought to do about it”? “Not a goddam thing” I said. “Do you wanna die
young?” You see, Richie had been a Cub
Scout ever since he was seven and took stuff such as this very seriously- he
thought that people ought to do the right thing and all. I had been a Scout too, but had kind of a
rough transition from Wolf
to Bear so finally I had just said fuck it. Anyway, I wasn’t no
hero and sure as hell didn’t want to start now at this late date.
But Richie could not let this go. Since I was the brains of the outfit he
wanted me to come up with some kind of scheme to mess up Turdbelly
and the boys’ plan. He kept on and on
and finally I give in just to shut him up.
So we talked most of the walk home and finally came up with a couple of
ideas but I secretly kind of figured to be sick and missing in action when all this shit was supposed to
happen.
Chapter 4: Miss Harbin and the
Chocolate Cake
The next day was Wednesday, and was
probably my least favorite day of the week, because it was what Miss Harbin
called “Dress-Up Day”. This was the day
of the week that she and that goddam Waynie wore
their church clothes to our house, because as soon as they left on Wednesday
afternoons they beat it to their church for Wednesday night church meeting.
On that particular day Waynie was dressed up all in white- white shirt, white
pants, white belt, socks and shoes. Even
a blind hog could have seen him coming from a thousand yards. What was even shittier, however, was that
that crazy bitch Miss Harbin would make me and my brothers dress up too, after
Mama left for the Blue Bell, so that “Waynie would
feel more comfortable”. Personally, I
think he would have been more comfortable with a two-by-four up his ass. Anyway. we would have to just kind of sit around all day and “be
nice” and play the “quiet game” about 100 times.
Well, old Waynie
kept strutting around, looking at hisself in the
mirror every chance he got. Directly I
got fed up with this happy bullshit and said “Hey Mully,
set yore ass down”. Well of course he
went screaming to his bitch of a mother and told her that I called him Mully (I
didn’t really know what Mully meant, I had just heard it from Richie’s brother
Jasper, and had added it to my repertoire).
Miss Harbin came stomping into the
kitchen where I was, and said “Waynie said you called
him Mully”. I
said “Waynie’s a lyin
little son-of-a...” and then I stopped myself just in time and said “I didn’t
say nothing to Waynie, cause
I’ve been playing the quiet game”. I was
just about to start congratulating myself for getting her on a technicality
when she looked around and saw this fresh chocolate cake Mama had made for me
and R.D. and Randall the night before, and said “Cussers
will not be getting no chocolate cake today”.
Now this highly pissed me off, for that cake was the reason I was in the
kitchen in the first goddam place, and if Waynie had
not been in there strutting his ass around I probably wouldn’t have called him Mully, and I would have been ass-deep in chocolate cake by
now instead of hasslin around with that bitch from
hell.
Well anyway, her pronouncement about
the chocolate cake was about more than I could bear, so I said “I recon I can
git some of that chocolate cake, cause I recon that
chocolate cake is ourn”. This
did not set well with Miss Harbin, who forgot her Christian manners and grabbed
me by the hair and shoved my face into that cake. Then she said “Get under that table - you’re gonna get plenty of cake”.
I crawled under the kitchen table, wiping chocolate icing out of my eyes, and she grabbed a
big chunk out of the cake, slung it on the floor in front of me and made me eat
it. The first part of that piece of cake
was pretty good but the last half started getting pretty tiresome, as it was a
very big piece of cake and kind of gritty from the dust under the table.
She then tore off another chunk of
cake as big as the first, slung it under the table and made me eat it too. By that time I was crying and getting sick,
but she made me keep eating it until I threw up all over half of the
kitchen. Then she said that I’d have to
clean up all that chocolaty puke by myself “until not a trace was left.”
Miss Harbin, who had probably forgotten
about the time, called all the kids into the kitchen and said “I have taught
In the stunned silence that prevailed
as Mama opened the door and took in what was probably a very surprising scene I
leaned down to Waynie and whispered “How about some of
this here chocolate cake, Mully”, and spit a glob of
that cake into Waynie’s right ear. And then I made myself scarce ‘till things kinda sorted theyselves out.
Chapter 5: Ruby Bells
You know, some things happen to you
when you’re a kid which kind of stay with you always, and what I’m about to
tell you about is one of them times. In
fact, every time I see a school bus full of kids it brings me back to that
time.
Me and my two brothers, Richard Dale
(we called him R.D.) and
Randall, always had to ride Bus 12 to school, and it was usually a very shitty
experience. There would always be some
big old bastard which would thump your freezing cold ears in the winter time,
or in hot weather some big sweaty fat fucker wearing an old ratty sleeveless
tee shirt who would stand over you with his arm propped against the side of the
bus, giving you the armpit treatment- you know how them bastards do. Well, anyway, there was this girl named Ruby
Bells who always rode that bus.
Ruby was a very poor girl of about the
same age as me, even poorer than most of the rest of us on that bus. She was skinny and very dark-complected, with stringy black hair that never looked
washed or combed much. Either she didn’t
have a mamma to care for her or she may have had one that didn’t give a damn; I
never knew or thought about it that much then.
Bus 12 stopped in front of her old tin-roofed shack of a house in the
mornings, and her treatment for the
day would begin.
The kids would lean out the windows
yelling dumb-ass stuff at her even before she got on, like
“Hey Ruby, is that a new dress?”, which of couse is wasn’t,
because she had nothing but hand-me-down rags from the Goodwill which were
always too big or little, with holes here and there. Ruby would just look down, never making eye
contact with anyone as she entered the schoolbus.
She would always walk to the back of
the bus to sit, and any kids who happened to be sitting near her would move,
saying things loudly like “she stinks” or any of a thousand other mean things
kids say to each other. I guess she
probably did stink a little, but her family probably didn’t have no hot water most times to take a bath in. And there she would sit, alone always, just
looking out that bus window. Her days at
school were pretty much more of the same, and she hardly ever talked, hoping to
not be noticed by anyone.
The time that I remember the most
about Ruby, however, was one Valentines’s Day. On Valentine’s Day, all the kids would make a
box with a slot in the top to drop Valentines in, and decorate it with hearts,
cupid arrows and the like, and leave it on the top of their desk. You would bring paper Valentines that day,
either homemade or store-bought, and address one to each of your friends, and
you would walk around the classroom and drop one into his or her box. Then after awhile, the teacher would bring
out some candy of some kind and we would have our Valentine’s party.
Well, that year Ruby was in my class,
and we was having our little party. All the kids had dumped out their Valentine
boxes and were counting their paper Valentines- the more popular kids would
always have the most. I was counting
mine (I had several, although I sure wasn’t one of the most popular by a damn
sight), and saw to my embarrassment that one of mine was from Ruby. It was a shabby little homemade thing, with a
heart drawn in pencil on the outside and inside it was inscribed “Be My
Valentine. Ruby Bells”. I was very ashamed that she had sent it to
me, so I slipped it into the pocket of my jeans before my friends could see
it. I casually turned around in my desk
then to look around at her, and saw the saddest sight I have ever seen. There was poor Ruby, with her little box
opened, and she didn’t have a single Valentine in it. She was just sitting there, looking down, with
tears running down her cheeks.
Nowadays, the teaching profession has
come a long ways, and they do stuff like give the kids a list of all the
children in class, and they have to bring a Valentine for everyone, not just
the most popular ones or only their friends.
I have wished a thousand times since then that I had given Ruby a
Valentine that day, but I didn’t; no one did.
I am still haunted by that memory.
Chapter 6: Miss Harbin and the Revival
I tried to stay out of Miss Harbin’s
way that week, but the bitch wanted to go to a day-time tent revival they was
holding out near where they lived, so she made me and my brothers go with her
and Waynie. In
my opinion she wasn’t the religious type, she just wanted to go to yack it up with her country-ass heathern
friends. Also, that was the long-windedest preacher I had ever had the misfortune to have to
listen to, so I was pretty much miserable most of the time, sitting there on
them hard-ass benches without no backs on them, sweating and swatting these big
old green flies that came buzzin out of the chicken
house next to the tent.
Every day, just when you thought the
preacher had wore down enough to let you go home, him and the choir would bust
into “O Lamb of God I Come”, and just when they finally reached the last verse
some son-of-a-bitch would go down to the pulpit to get saved, along with Miss
Harbin, who got saved every day that week.
I was quite embarrassed to have her for a baby sitter. Them people getting saved didn’t bother me
all that much, though, the problem was, when that preacher saw them coming he
would get all fired up and make everybody sing another 100 verses of “O Lamb of
God I Come” again, hoping he would hook a few more.
Well, on Friday, the last day of the
revival, Miss Harbin had it cooked up with the preacher so that Waynie would sing a solo just before the sermon. That little turd got up there and sung the
shittiest rendition of “Do Lord” I had ever been exposed to, but that
ignorant-ass congregation clapped when he got through anyway,
and the preacher give him 2 dollars. (I
guess you might think that was generous of him, but I saw him get the money out
of the offering plate, which he had just told everybody was the Lord’s money. I don’t think that the Lord would have went over a nickel for that performance, if He would have
had any say-so).
Anyway, when Waynie
came back waving that 2 dollars in my face, I said, kind of conversationally,
“That sounded like shit, Waynie”. But I guess I said it too loud, cause Miss
Harbin turned around and give me the old eyeball which would have froze the
blood of anybody not as continental as myself.
I sat through the rest of the service kind of nervous-like, until we
finally got to the “O Lamb” part. It was
a repeat of the previous four days, except that after Miss Harbin got through
being saved that day I saw her having a few words with the preacher as the
choir finished up.
The preacher jumped back to the pulpit
again smiling and all red-faced and excited-like and said “We have another one
of God’s little children who has volunteered to bless us with a song on this
closing day of our revival. Sister
Harbin has told me that Frederick Jones (that’s me, Fred Jones) also wants to
sing his version of “Do Lord” for yall”. Well, everybody stood back up and looked
around at me and started clapping and all, and that preacher was saying “Come
on,
Well, I had no choice but to head on
up there. I guess I could have ducked
out of the side of the tent, but then everybody would have thought I was chickenshit and all and besides that, I thought that this
might be a good chance to collect two dollars off of the Lord. Anyway, being the natural showman that I am,
I broke into “Do Lord” at the top of my lungs.
I started enjoying myself and before long it started gettin
so good that I threw in a few of my Elvis moves and ended up with doing the
Chuck Berry hop in front of the pulpit, and finally finished the song with a little
Hank Williams yodel on the “way, beyond the blue” ending, you know, kind of like “Way, be-yah-hond, the blue -ooooooo”.
Nobody clapped or nothing when I got
through, though, so I just turned around to the preacher and said “Whur’s my two dollars”.
You could tell he didn’t want to, but he give
it to me anyway, and everybody left without waiting on the prayer. I guess everybody left happy, except maybe
the preacher and Miss Harbin, both of whom seemed highly pissed off.
Chapter 7: Friday Night
It was early autumn in Alabama, hot as
a bitch wolf, and at this time of year everyone’s thoughts turned naturally to
football- first, Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide (or Shug
Jordan’s Auburn Tigers, for the rest of you assholes out there), then our local
high school team, the Marshall High Hootowls. Everyone would get all fired up and all about
Everyone’s parents would be all
cheerful and everything about it being the first game and all, but I was not
really too crazy about going, because all the mean kids hung out under the
bleachers and that was a really fine place to get your ass kicked if you did
something inflammatory, like walking or drinking a Coke.
Now I had worked on my daddy all
summer to get me a black motorcycle jacket, with zippers and all, and he had
finally got me one just in time for the game.
Just before time to leave I stood in front of the mirror with that
jacket on, sweating like a pig, and turned this way and that, and finally
decided that I looked like a bad son-of-a-bitch. This made me feel a little better about going
to the game.
When we got there I went the opposite
direction from my parents for appearance purposes, and just kind of mingled
with the football crowd. Finally, I got
up enough nerve and was bored enough to pay a visit behind the stands. I took in quite a sight as I rounded the end of
the bleachers: First I saw this Pakistani fucker, Allum
Brelum, on his knees puking up 3 bottles of vanilla
flavoring, a couple of fights going on, and also my friend John Harbeson smooching it up with just about everybody’s
girlfriend, Karen Sue Martin. John and
Karen Sue were so wrapped up in their makin’ out
session that they hadn’t yet noticed that Allum Brelum had shot a projectile stream of vanilla-flavored
puke onto the back of Karen Sue’s jacket.
I’m sure he didn’t mean nothing by it though-
you know how them Pakistani fuckers have strange customs and all. The rest of the
kids were just milling around, trying to act casual so as to not get their ass
whipped, and I determined that I would do the same.
It was pretty dark there, and as I
walked through the crowd people kept kind of moving out of my way. I was kind of puzzled by this, but I finally
figured out that they couldn’t see me too good and, with my new jacket on,
thought I was some kind of bad ass. I
started to get on this kind of stupid-ass power trip, thinkin
I was bad, and before long I started shoving kids out of the way, pinching
girls on the ass, shit like that. This
continued for 10 -15 minutes, and I was having a great time until I shoved this
short kid who had his back to me. “Out
of my way, turd-knocker” I said . He slowly turned around and, to my horror, I saw that it was old John Albert, with a
non-filtered Camel hanging out of his mouth.
“Well if it ain’t
the god-dammed Flyin-Jenny fat boy, all dressed up in
his new jacket, here right on time to get his ass kicked” old John Albert
said. A chill ran down my spine and my
knees got kind of weak as John Albert grabbed me by my collar and drew back his
fist. Now I would undoubtedly have been toting a whipped ass out of that
ballgame if not for good old Richie, because, unbeknownst to me, Richie was on
the top row of the bleachers above us and had had his head hung off the back,
listening to the whole thing. I could have kissed him (not really) when I heard
a high-pitched scream and looked up and saw Richie come falling out of the
stands and land square on top of John Albert.
This happy accident knocked old John Albert flat on his ass, and as an
added attraction had put that non-filtered Camel out in his right eye.
Me and Richie got the fuck out of there
immediately, before John Albert could get his bearings, but not before John
Albert tore a handfull of Richie’s red hair out,
which he would later use for identification purposes. I believe that this was probably what got
Richie and John Albert off on the wrong foot together.
Chapter 8: Saturday Nite at
the Drive-In
The night of the big event had finally
come, and Richie had worried the shit out of me all week about trying to fuck
up Turdbelly and the boys’ Bingo robbery plans. So
that’s where we was that nite,
at the Pine View drive-in theater, although my heart sure wasn’t in it. We had snuck through the woods and were
hiding behind a tree, watching the end of one of the greatest movies of all
times, “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”.
Richie kept kind of fidgeting around,
however, and, just when we were at a very exciting part of the movie, said
“Don’t you think we ort to sneak on down to the snack bar and find out if
anything’s happening with Turdbelly?” “Not till they kill that goddam Cyclops, we
don’t” I says. Anyway,
directly old Sinbad killed that fucker by pushin’ him
off a clift, and I was left without any more excuses
except to go on down and probably get my ass kicked early and often by Turd and
the boys (I called him Turd for short, but his real name was Turdbelly as you may know).
Well, about that time we heard some
commotion about 10 yard to our left, and directly we see Turdbelly,
Richie’s brother Jasper, Frankie and Barney come sneakin
out of the trees. They had some kind of
masks in their hands, and we could just hear Jasper talking: “Well i god, I’ll tell you one thing, i god,
I believe somebody ort to stay out here and i god be the lookout”, he said. “Looky here, chickenshit” says Turdbelly, “you
can be the lookout, except you ain’t staying out
here, you’re coming into the snack bar with us and watch the door while us real men who ain’t chickenshits get the money.
Now, everybody put your masks on and follow me-
it’s about Bingo time”.
They pulled on their masks, which I recognized
as Lone Ranger masks which looked like they had been cut out of somebody’s
wore-out old curtain. They started
easing on down toward the snack bar, keeping in the shadows of the cars as much
as possible, with Richie and me following at a respectable distance.
About that time we heard the voice of Mookie Harris, the manager of the drive-in, say over the
loudspeakers “ITS BINGO TIME”. Now Bingo
was the highlight of everyone’s Saturday night at the Pine View, and one of the
rare times there when all sexual activity came to a (temporary) halt. Everyone got out their Bingo cards which had
been issued to each carload of teens, and got ready to win some of the fabulous
prizes which Mookie produced. (Some of the more popular past fabulous
prizes were: Fruit Juice Dispenser
(Tupperware glass, see above), Nursery Choice Plant Container (plastic flower
pot), Frosty Freeze gift certificate (good for 15 cents weekdays only), free
pass to Pine View Drive In (good for second feature only, after 10:00 p.m.),
free drywall estimate from Curt’s Drywall Service (Mookie’s
brother), etc).
What Mookie
would do was, he would warm up the crowd telling these joke which he thought
were funny as hell (in reality I would rather have a case of the screaming
shits than to have to listen to those same old boring-ass jokes which he told
every Saturday night). Then, after Mookie got the crowd loosened up he would turn the mike
over to Allum Brelum, this Pakistani
fucker who was Mookie’s assistant on Saturday
nights. Allum Brelum would call out the Bingo numbers which Mookie drew. To make
the Bingo experience more pleasurable they would leave the projector running
with the sound off, showing Elvis previews, Bugs Bunny cartoons, and other
interesting shit such as that.
Anyway, when Turdbelly
and his boys got to the snack bar they stood in the dark shade to the side of
the building, and Turdbelly sent Jasper inside
without his mask on to scope out the joint.
When Jasper entered the room he saw that it was almost deserted- Mookie Harris and the Pakistani fucker, Allum
Brelum, were in the projector room drawing the Bingo
numbers, and only one kid was in the room, sitting in the booth in the main
room in front of the picture window which faced the big screen outside, eating
some popcorn and drinking a Coke.
Well, what Jasper done was, he went in
and sat down in the booth right against
the kid eating the popcorn and stuck his finger down in the kid’s Coke, put his
other hand on the kid’s thigh and leaned over and stared him in the eyeballs. Well,
needless to say, the kid didn’t want no more Coke and
got the fuck out of there immediately.
Jasper got up and leaned out the door and gave Turdbelly
the “all clear” thumbs-up sign, then went back and sat down in the booth, which
he figured was a real good lookout spot, and pulled on his Lone Ranger mask.
Well, what Jasper had not taken into
account was that the kid he run off was none other than that goddam Waynie, who had come to the drive-in with his bitch of a
mother, Miss Harbin and who had run screaming to her after Jasper fucked up his
Coke. Along with Miss Harbin and Waynie had come his sister Marsheila
the re-tard and old John Albert, the meanest little
son-of-a-bitch who ever lived in my humble opinion- all of whom had been
sitting in Miss Harbin’s rusted-out piece of dogshit
old Ford getting ready to play Bingo, and were now preparing to skin somebody’s
ass. Unfortunately, that someone was Jasper, who turdboy
Waynie had recognized from when Jasper had drove
Richie, his little brother, over to my house on several occasions.
About this time the Bingo game
started. They always turned their shitty
sound system up real loud so everyone could hear the Bingo game, and you could
hear it ringing all over the drive-in lot.
“Everyone m-m-m-mark their f-f-f-free space” says Allum
Brelum, who was bad about stuttering, to go along
with his Pakistani accent which did not sit well with the southern population
anyway. “b-b-b-B Nine” says Allum Brelum. “B as in bad boy” echos
Mookie (they had this comedic Bingo routine that they
did, well practiced from many a shitty weekend together). “o-o-o-O Sixty-Four”
says Allum Brelum. “O my head hurts” says Mookie.
“g-g-g-g-G Fifty” says Allum Brelum. “Gee we love the Pine View” says Mookie (this one was always particularly funny to the
crowd, and several dozen people all over the lot would always shout this one
out together then laugh like hell and blow their car horns). This was some seriously funny shit- I’d
probably like to hear it about another 2000 more times or so- maybe some other
time.
Anyway, here comes Turdbelly,
Frankie and Barney through the door with their masks on. They walk straight into the projector room,
where Frankie whips out his switchblade and says “Gimme
your money i god”. Well, Allum Brelum, the Pakistani
fucker, and Frankie were in the junior class together for a little while and Allum Brelum thought he
recognized Frankie’s voice.
“f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-Frankie f-f-f-f-Finesdale! ” says Allum Brelum. “Fuck a duck!” says Mookie. This interesting and intelligent conversation
had been broadcast all over the drive-in, and the crowd started to get
interested.
Then everyone at the Pine View and the
neighbors nearby heard a loud BOOM
when the door to the snack bar was kicked in.
Into the snack bar comes old John Albert, that bitch Miss Harbin, Waynie and Marsheila the re-tard, swinging her favorite piece of rough old rope with
the knot in the end of it. Well, old John Albert, he immediately walks over to
the booth where Jasper is sitting, rips Jasper’s mask off and pops him about 4 times
in the nose. About the same time Marsheila walks into the projector room and
indiscriminately wears out the head of everyone in the room with her rope with
the knot in the end of it, even including pore old Mookie
and that Pakistani fucker too. But hell,
you couldn’t have expected no different, her being a re-tard
and all.
I wish I could say that they all got
caught that night, but they didn’t- the law, they come in and arrested Frankie
and Jasper just after Turdbelly and Barney slipped
out the back door. Frankie and Jasper
both looked like they had been shot at and missed & shit at and hit, thanks
to Marsheila and John Albert. On a cheerful note, Turdbelly
and Barney did leave a blood trail. Me
and Richie didn’t really have a chance to get involved in the ruckus that
night, except that we stood outside the building in front of the projector
shooting birds on the big screen ‘till the law come, which was fine by me. Old John Albert and Marsheila
were everyone’s heros that
night, I guess. However, Miss Harbin,
never one to miss a chance to fuck with me, tried to tell the law that I was in
on it some way or other, but she couldn’t prove nothing on me; not that time.