The Church of the Blinding White Light of Stupidity

The Perpetrators

Doug and Hank came home with that feral smell to them. Stoned and crazy, they darted around the apartment, hiding things, finding them and stashing them again. The drape on the front window next to the door had that face-high threadbare spot from Hank pulling it aside to peek into the street. The odd looks and strange chuckles between the two of them made my skin crawl. Nothing made sense 'til much later.

Doug was a Cajun, a very large black man with blue eyes and red nappy hair. His already wide, flat nose had been broken so many times that it only approximated a position in the middle of his face. One cauliflower ear seemed to have been stuck on the each side of his head as an afterthought, one higher than the other. His skin was the color of coffee with too much cream and marked with old pox scars all over the face and upper chest. A nasty knife scar wound it's way from his left nipple across his hairless stomach to disappear into the waistband of his jeans. At 6' 4", he looked wider than he was tall, but didn't carry an ounce of fat.

A truly mean son of a bitch, his ire was often aroused by an innocent glance from the other side of a smoky bar and he never hesitated to vent it on the first piss-willy to cross his path. Quick with a knife, even faster with his fists, he had left a trail of broken bones and slit muscle from New York to New Orleans.

He had killed his father when he was fourteen and spent the rest of his teen years in the Louisiana State prison in Algiers. Not that the judge didn't agree that his daddy needed killing, but he was concerned for the rest of society, those that didn't deserve to die, and the judge gave him all the time the law would allow. It was the first of his many visits to state run motels. A criminal to the core, he was more at home inside than out. Trapped, helpless victims were his favorite prey and prisons are full of those. I am convinced, to this day, his daddy's is not the only killing Doug is responsible for. He would talk about "going hunting" and then spend a week in a motel room in Miami. Strange place for a hunting trip.

Hank, on the other hand, was a Florida cracker from the old school, a cold-hearted man who didn't like anyone. Tall and thin, he had that tan, sandy haired, almost surfer look, shoulder length hair parted on the left side, the forelock always dropping across his eyes. Those narrow set eyes seemed to look through everything and everyone, past a hatchet-like nose, over a Kirk Douglas type cleft chin. His was a classic Fetal-Alcohol Syndrome face that, even when smiling, carried a barely hidden threat. Broad shoulders tapered to a slim waist, two long legs tipped with two of the largest feet in the world which were always shod in Dingo boots.

Hank wasn't a bigot. He hated everyone separately but equally. Blacks, Mexicans and all other comers were treated to his anger. Born in Panama City, Florida, he spoke with that nasal panhandle drawl/twang. Not Texan, not Alabama, a distinctive southern trailer trash accent that grated on the ears. His father had been in the tree surgery business since before he was born. When he was twelve, his father fell out of an Australian pine tree and broke his back, crippling him. Hank quit school and took over running the business and climbing the trees. A great tree surgeon that could nurse any broken or stunted plant back to health, he lacked even the most basic social skills. Hank was at his best when chasing mullet through a back bay, net weight in one hand and the other jumping between the throttle and the wheel, or topping a tree, spikes jammed into the trunk, standing almost straight out, swinging a chainsaw with complete abandon.

"Where the hell have you assholes been?" I asked.
"Makin money" Hank replied.
"Yeah, makin lots of money" Doug laughed "and copping some get-high."
"Shutup, you banjo lipped, blue gummed motherfucker." Hank snarled and shot a look at Doug that spoke volumes, "What he don't know, he can't tell."
Doug shrugged and muttered "Yeah, fuck you too, boss-man."

They went back to gathering things together, silent and tense now. The three-bedroom duplex was suddenly way too quiet and claustrophobic.

"I'm gonna shower, go to the Bindlestiff and get shit-faced, you guys going?" I asked and got no response, "Wednesday night… Ladies night… wall-to-wall pussy…" still no response. I left them in the living room stuffing brown lunch bags into a grocery sack.

While I was in the shower, I heard the stereo fire up Grand Funk Railroad full blast, speakers splitting, and I thought, "I gotta find another place to live!"

I had worked for Hank trimming trees and doing yard work off and on for three years. It wasn't terribly demanding work and he didn't care how stoned I got at work. Hank had won a contract with the Power Company, clearing and trimming beneath the transmission lines and had hired me to run the other truck. As long as I did my half-mile of line a day, he didn't give two shits what my crew and I did out there. He would wake me in the morning with a hot shot of meth, already fitted-up and ready to boot, then tie me off while I got off. Fortified for the morning, we would race off in different directions, blazing our way through Banyan, Pine and Brazilian pepper, using wino day labor for the heavy hauling and for gathering-up the branches and shoving them into the chipper. It was a very dangerous job, especially for those poor bastards that fed the chipper.

We used Asplunde scrap shredders, a trailer towed behind the lift truck with a four cylinder engine spinning a set of four blades at a thousand rpm's and a chute to push the small limbs and branches into. Once they caught, the machine would pull them into its maw, chopping the wood into small chips and blowing the chips through a funnel into the box on the back of the truck for easy dumping at the landfill. The whine of the spinning mandrill always set my teeth on edge, the sound giving the effect of fingernails on a chalkboard. Some suicidal impulse in me drew me towards the opening, staring and wondering what it would be like to be caught and shredded. Watching the winos stagger back and forth, seeing them shake like dogs shitting chicken bones, I speculated on which one of them was going to be pulled into the beast and spewed out onto the chip pile. I also wondered if I would report it or just drop them at the dump with the rest of the refuse. It didn't came to that, so I never had to find out, though I'm still not sure what I would have done.

Doug showed up about a month into the contract, just as the money started to flow. Hank leased another truck, we found some more winos, and since the contract was by the linear mile, more money came in. I didn't like Doug the first time I saw him. Frankly, he frightened me. No, he scared me shitless. I had fought all my life, in the street and in the ring, but I never enjoyed inflicting pain. I had even shot a man once and had cut a few, but only in self-defense. This was a man who took great delight in causing suffering and bragged about it, recounting tales of raping, beating and torturing fellow prisoners. It was a dark day that Hank offered him the extra bedroom in the apartment we shared.

Hank and I had an easy going relationship, we each did our own thing, going our separate ways when not working, meeting up in the morning to hit the job, occasionally borrowing his father's mullet skiff to net fish all night when the mullet were schooling. He didn't give me any shit about my bike and I didn't razz him about his boots. We each had our own crowd and there wasn't much overlap. All that changed with the arrival of Doug. A tense stress moved in with him, a blue elephant in the living room that we tried to ignore. It didn't help much that Doug kept making thinly veiled comments about how cute my butt was either. After hearing his prison stories, I slept with my back to the wall and kept my door locked.

Secret night runs to Miami, hushed conversations and interrupted arguments became the norm. The two of them were never seen apart. They started combining their crews and running the trucks under the same lines. I began to think there was more than friendship there, that maybe they had that weird prison fag thing going on, but I didn't pry. I really didn't want to know. I have found it best not to get involved with my roommate's love life, especially as a participant. Daddy always said, "Don't shit where you sleep." Besides, I don't do guys.

I had started to search for alternate accommodations, trying to find a house where I could park my bike in the living room without the landlord going nuts. Leaving my pan-head outside was not an option, so finding a house was proving difficult. It's not like my baby leaked any oil, I made sure of that by tightening the case screws daily and repacking the lifter tubes every month. If you own a pan head, you learn to make these things part of the morning ritual. Take a dump, get your coffee and tighten bolts. I could skip the coffee but the other two were absolutely required. Bikers earn the black residue under their nails, it's the price of a machine that always runs.

The Can had rented a small house on Tenth street south and I had made an offer on the spare room, but it was going to take him a month to get rid of the dude living in it, so I was stuck where I was. Patrick McCann had moved down from Detroit, looking for construction work and I had hired him to run the groundlings so I could run the bucket. We had similar tastes in reefer and women and traded pot and dates. Living in the same house would put a crimp in the date swapping but I was willing to make any sacrifice to get away from Doug.

"I'm getting closer to my home"

I came out of the bathroom, grabbed my helmet and headed toward the door when Hank called from the kitchen, "Mark, you want a line?"

Hell, I don't think I ever turned down a hit so I wandered in and found the two of them sitting at the table with a silver serving tray in the middle of it, a pile of white powder shining in the center of that. Pulling my buck knife from my wallet pocket, I neatly cut an inch long line from the heap and started chopping it, making sure to crush any chunks, then slid the blade back and forth, stretching the crystals into an even row.

"All the better to snort you with, HA HA HA HA HA!" A good wicked witch of the west, even if I did say so myself. "Coke, smack or speed?" I asked as I grabbed the straw and leaned over to hoover it up.

"Speed and that might be too much, even for you. We haven't stepped on it yet, so watch your nose." Hank looked smug, knowing how much I liked to zip along on crank.

I slammed the entire line up one nostril. I always thought it was better to keep the ruined sinus on one side, leaving the other for breathing.

"Weep-weep-weep oh-oh-oh-oh" I howled as I danced about the room and ran to the sink, drawing some water from the faucet my palm and lifting a bit with my finger to my nose, holding my head back and letting it run into the nostril to hasten the drain. "Oh MY Fucking God! That burns! Shit, Shit, Shit!"

Doug sat there and laughed maniacally, his eyes darting to and fro, pupils constricted to pinpoints. Hank's hands fluttered around on the ends of his arms as if he had caught a pair of powerful but clumsy butterflies, his knee bouncing till it damn near hit the underside of the table. I felt the methamphetamine start to crawl up my spine, the tension spreading across my shoulders then lifting the hair on my scalp. An involuntary shudder moved from my heart, out to my lungs, to my diaphragm, through my bowels, into my arms and legs to finish at my fingers and toes. Only my head did not move. ADD has its advantages, one of which is a high tolerance to stimulants.

To my mind, there was only one thing better than sex on acid and it had to be riding my motorcycle on speed.

"I'm gone, dudes." And with that I was out the door and on the scooter, kicking it to life, slapping the helmet onto my head with one hand as I opened the choke with the other. Lifting it into first with my toe, I eased out on the clutch and revved the engine, felt the horsepower surge between my legs, pulling me out into the street and around the corner before I stomped the gear shift into second as I accelerated to the light. A right against the light and I was heading north on US 41 into the black hole.

The black hole was a stretch of Main Street with no crossroads and no streetlights for about three miles. Naples was a fishing village at that time; a cracker filled town that folks came to for sport fishing or by mistake. A hundred and ten mile west of Miami, the only roads east were The Tamaimi Trail and Alligator Alley and both of them ran straight as a string through the largest grass swamp in the world, the Florida Everglades. Eighty miles of alligators, snakes and mosquitoes separated us from the teeming population on the East Coast and we liked it like that.

Naples also boasts the lowest elevation in the state of Florida and it has been said that every loose nut in the southeast United States eventually rolls downhill and ends up there. Of course, that can't be true, as I have met some loony folks from the southeast whom we didn't have the pleasure of hosting. I guess they weren't loose enough to make the slide.

The black hole is now lined with strip centers and malls, but that is now and this was then.

I opened the throttle and stepped through the gears, the wind rushing past my face almost as fast as the blood was roaring through it. I let off at eighty and coasted for a bit, enjoying the sexual sensation of the exhaust from the two cylinder engine thumping out the open pipes, the vibration entering through my balls and spreading throughout my body. The feeling of power and control, combined with the speed rush, came close to putting me over the edge.

Decelerating and downshifting, I made the U-turn at Vanderbilt Beach Road and headed back into town, back to the city limits and the Bindlestiff Tavern.

Posted by Mike S at September 1, 2003 09:13 PM