by Jacki Moss
Chad sat silently, surreptitiously, immobile, still feigning sleep. His revenge plotting was interrupted sporadically by unintelligible gruff chatter on the C.B. from other truckers. They must have their own language, Chad assumed. The only thing he thought he understood were snorts that seemed to be lecherous laughter interspersed between growly verbalizations and lung-disintegrating coughs.
“Dude, where are we?” he mumbled to Clyde as he pushed himself more upright into the seat and straightened his ball cap. He was momentarily unnerved at the realization he was in an unfamiliar place and utterly at the mercy of a sketchy stranger. The irony of him being a sketchy stranger, more dangerous than this truck driver, escaped him. At least knowing the general vicinity of his whereabouts would afford some amount of security, he thought.
“Just the other side of Jonesboro, Arkansas. A little more than an hour from Memphis,” Clyde barked. “You snore like a son of a bitch!” Clyde complained, slapping Chad’s partially numb leg with the back of his hairy hand, a firm payback for three hours of unremitting snoring. “It was like a damn chainsaw over there. But you kept me awake, so I guess it’s all good.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been told that before. Deviated septum. Too much snow up the nose. Like I said, I’m a musician. It comes with the territory,” Chad self-importantly proclaimed, lying through his perfect teeth. He had never done cocaine in his life. Beer and booze were his only chemical vices. He hadn’t even smoked pot, even though he had sold it when he was a kid. He thought it smelled like burning rope, so all he wanted to do with it was make money for a new set of rims for the car his daddy gave him.
There was no way Chad could be a drug addict; he couldn’t be that consistent with anything. And coke, no way. He thought snorting something up his nose and having it on his snoot like a pig rooting in the dirt for a truffle was so undignified. No, thank you. Have some dignity, for God’s sake.
But a musician, well, it’s expected that a musician would be all up in the drugs, so he let fly with what seemed to solidify his stereotypical musician persona. Hell, yeah, he was hip. He was edgy. He snorted blow off the taut, bare bellies of barely legal groupies in sleazy hotel rooms. Or not.
“Oh, yeah. That’ll do it to ya. Ya nose will look like Swiss cheese inside eventually,” acknowledged Clyde. “I had a crank problem for a while. Messed me up good. Had to kick it before they yanked my CDL. Still do a line or two of coke when I need a pick-me-up, like now. Ya got any on ya?”
Chad sensed he had inadvertently let his mouth run him into dangerous territory again. The story of his life. Never knew when to shut up. His thigh was still stinging from Clyde’s good-natured smack a minute ago. He wanted no part of making him seriously annoyed. “No, dude. Sorry. Did it all after my last show. Haven’t made my connection since then,” Chad rasped, nervously maintaining his ruse.
“No worries, I got some. Reach up under your seat, way toward the back. There’s a shave kit. Look in there.”
Oh, crap! He didn’t see that coming. Chad was getting very nervous now. He was again getting backed into a corner of his own making. He reached between his legs so far under the seat he almost did a somersault. Finally he felt and retrieved the well-worn, black leather shave kit. As he unfolded himself and rested the treasure in his lap, Clyde nudged his arm with a closed fist, shoving him like a rag doll against the door, and then pointed to the kit, indicating Chad was supposed to open it.
“Yeah, that chewing tobacco tin. It’s in there. Be careful, asshole. I don’t need you spilling my shit all over the cab,” he growled. “Gimmie a bump,” Clyde ordered, pulling out and instantly deploying a scary-looking switchblade from the hand-tooled, leather sheath on his belt. Chad almost peed himself. He had no idea what Clyde intended to do with the switchblade, nor how to give Clyde the “bump” he demanded. He just froze, eyes as big as grapefruits, open tin filled to the brim with cocaine in his trembling hand, roaring eighty miles per hour in the dark in a wiggle wagon, and less than arm’s length from its distracted driver. Chad’s adrenalin could not have spiked any higher than now if he had been geeking.
Apparently my nap pissed him off, thought Chad, briefly grateful he wasn’t dismembered and stuffed in a garbage can at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. Just a few more miles and I can escape this madness, he reassured himself, trying to slow his breathing so he didn’t hyperventilate and pass out, or his heart explode.
Clyde, growing increasingly impatient with Chad, took the knife and dipped the tip into the powder, lifted the tip to his nose, and competently snorted the coke up. He was like a surgeon. Quick, precise, and effective. He then flipped the switchblade handle around to Chad, offering him a helping.
“Oh, dude, thanks, but I’m good,” Chad responded, sweat beads popping out on his forehead. His hand holding the tin began to visibly shake. He worried that his hand would tremble so violently the illicit powder would start to jiggle over the sides of the shallow tin.
“Uh-huh. You’re good?” Clyde said, looking down at Chad’s quivering hand and then up at the sweat on his brow.
“Yeah, dude. Really trying to quit. You know, like you and crank. Heh, heh, heh.” Chad laughed nervously, trying to paint on a nonchalant grin. He could taste blood inside his mouth from having chewed his cheeks.
“You a narc?” Clyde bellowed, now feeling the full impact of the coke buzz, combined with the customary paranoia and rage.
“No, dude! Aw, hell, no. I ain’t no damn narc. You gotta believe me. I got busted for selling once. I want nothing to do with the damn pigs. I swear to God!” Chad lifted his shaky left hand to the heavens, silently praying God would save him from whatever Clyde had in mind, and gripping the tin with his right hand.
“Well, Mr. Not-a-Narc, do a bump with me. Now!” Clyde demanded, shoving the knife handle in Chad’s face.
“Sure! No problemo!” Chad uneasily tittered as he took the switchblade, holding it like it was a viper. He mimicked Clyde’s dip and sniff actions, but instead of actually sniffing, while Clyde glanced at the road, he flipped the coke toward the door, emptying the knife tip. He simulated Clyde’s reaction to his bump, and waited for a reaction to his enactment.
“Okay. Good. It’s all good. Put it back and zip it up good. Stash it where you found it,” Clyde snapped.
Chad appeared to comply, but instead slipped the tin of coke into the right front pocket of his jeans. He replaced the shave kit and looked straight ahead, praying for the Memphis city lights to appear quickly. He surreptitiously leaned on the door, wiping the coke dust from the vinyl, while Clyde launched into an animated recollection of his amazing tenure and superhuman feats of athleticism as the center for his championship high school football team two decades ago.
Finally, finally, a golden glow began to appear on the horizon. As they got closer and closer, Chad grew more and more antsy. What if Clyde wants another bump before parking? What if Clyde has a switchblade and a gun? What if he figures out his coke is missing before I can get away? Oh, shit. Chad’s insides were quivering like tomato aspic as his fears raced through his addled brain and hit his gut.
Thankfully Clyde, now entirely glazed-over, had changed topics and was working through a coke-induced nonstop soliloquy in great detail about all the sex he had experienced on the road. He was so enjoying his monologue he paid no attention whatsoever to Chad.
At the truck stop just before Memphis proper, Clyde took an intermission from his oration to skillfully nestle the rig into a slot at the diesel pump station. While he was inside paying and using the facilities, Chad hopped from the truck and escaped into the darkness with his bags, his sobriety, and his life. And a chewing tobacco can full of Clyde’s prized cocaine. He knew he had to disappear into the night far, far away from the geeked-up trucker who would inevitably discover Chad’s thievery, become even more paranoid about it, and possibly come after him with a vengeance.
Chad darted down a service road that led toward the downtown lights and started hoofing it.
He marched head down, hands crammed into his pockets, just putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as an innocent-looking pace would carry him. On the way, he walked past prostitutes, rail-thin stray dogs, burned-out cars missing their wheels and batteries, used syringes, broken beer bottles, bushes that smelled like piss, bushes that smelled like vomit, piles of what could either be human or dog feces, used condoms, dumped appliances, dirty diapers, what was either a human big toe or a half-eaten hot dog, and what might have been either a person passed out or a corpse. By the time he started hearing music from Beale Street and getting a snoot full of barbecue aroma, Chad was thoroughly freaked out. Freaked out but focused.
Chapter 20—Selective Amnesia
Chad’s disgust at the roadside debris seemed contrary to his gruesome, murderous behavior, but to him, it wasn’t. He could decapitate someone, because Dangcat deserved it. That made sense to him. All this other unsettling flotsam and jetsam, the debauchery, the neglect, the puke, and the random possible cadavers, were just too much to bear. Too random. Too ubiquitous. It was just all so disgusting.
Chad didn’t do disgusting well. When faced with the disgusting aspects of his vile deeds, he simply blacked out. He performed his atrocities with great gusto and agility but had absolutely no stomach for the up-close, gory portions of them. His deranged thinking and selective amnesia seemed to protect his fragile psyche from his evil actions.
When he’d strangled, butchered, and skinned Boots when he was a kid, all he remembered was strangling the cat and wearing the hat. When his alarmed parents questioned him about it, he honestly said, “I don’t remember doing that.” It’s not that he refuted he did it; he just honestly stated he had no memory of parts of the actual act. It wasn’t a ploy; it was the truth. He could have passed a lie detector test on it. His parents were more than eager to accept his explanation and to interpret it as his innocence.
The only thing that saved the family dog, Vinny, was Chad’s fear of him. When his parents or siblings weren’t around, Chad would torment Vinny by teasing him with his food bowl, poking, and kicking him. When Vinny was just a puppy, he would just scream and hide. But one day, when Vinny was an adult, he had reached his limit of tolerance and spun around and muzzle punched Chad, knocking him to the ground. Vinny then stood over Chad, teeth bared, just barely touching the tip of Chad’s nose, and let him know in no uncertain terms this was his first and last warning. Chad took him at his word. When Vinny walked away, Chad scrambled to his feet and permanently avoided Vinny and every other dog since.
The same blackout phenomenon that happened when Chad killed Boots had happened again when he beheaded Dangcat. Chad was fully aware of what he did. He even knew how he did it. He just couldn’t recall the grisly details of doing it. He remembered demanding Dangcat meet him at the pancake house with the tape of his record. He recalled following him to the quarry, and having to listen to the Jump Steady record mix in his car, because Dangcat’s damn piece-of-shit car didn’t have a tape player. He clearly remembered his blind fury at being totally erased from the record, and Dangcat lecturing him about being his own worst enemy. If he had a dime for every time someone had told him that…
He had suspected prior to hearing the record that Dangcat had mixed his tracks down, but he didn’t for a second think he was totally deleted from the record. He thought if that were the case, he’d lay his magic personality and captivating charm on Dangcat and persuade him to reinstate his tracks to their full volume on the final master. His charm and bullshit almost always worked with people to get what he wanted.
He insisted on hearing the record. Then he would either be pleased and would go about his business as usual, or, just in case they had wronged him and he could not convince Dangcat to make amends, he had Plan B. He had in his pocket a jerry-rigged mandolin string to garrote Dangcat. He had skillfully attached a part of a drum stick to each end of the steel wire, wrapped in duct tape, as handles. He relished the irony that Dangcat would be eliminated by one of the very mandolin strings he’d eliminated from the record.
He remembered being in his car’s driver’s seat, arguing with Dangcat, demanding Dangcat put him back into the record. Dangcat kept refusing and insulting his playing. He took a swing at Dangcat, who easily fended off his prissy attempt at coldcocking him.
To gain an advantage, Chad told Dangcat he was sorry, out of line, and he understood Dangcat could only do what Cafton told him to do. He then said he had a drawing he had done for the cover art for the album in the trunk with his gear, and he wanted to show it to him. Instead of opening the trunk, he walked around the car and jumped into the back seat, immediately trying to position the wire on Dangcat’s throat.
He distinctly remembered flipping the wire over Dangcat’s head, hitting Dangcat’s chin, and Dangcat pulling it off, and him having to do the maneuver three times before he had the wire in perfect position at the top of the throat. He recalled bracing against the back of the seat with his knees, leaning backwards and pulling with all his might like he was holding the reins of a runaway stagecoach. Then, blank.
Chad emerged from his blackout afterward to the sound of his girlfriend, Chrissie, screaming outside the car and crying. He got out of the back seat, looked at his handiwork, and vomited beside the car. He wrapped his bloody and bleeding hands in Dangcat’s Merriepennie Music sweatshirt and checked his Swiss watch. Damn! He had just four hours before the tour bus left. He had a lot to do.
By then Dangcat was just a thing, not a person, a thing to Chad. An inconvenience. Garbage that needed to be disposed of. It was Chrissie’s idea to toss the torso into the medical waste incinerator and take the head on tour so the two body parts wouldn’t be found together. It was Chad’s idea to remove the teeth. It was a splendid win/win idea: no dental records, and he would have a trophy. Simple, easy, foolproof. Damn, I’m brilliant, he told himself.
Chad rummaged through Chrissie’s trunk for something to cover Dangcat’s body from the prying eyes of the police or passersby. It was dark out, and Dangcat was slumped over, sort of crumpled halfway into the floorboard, with his head between his blood-filled sneakers. No one needed to see that. He found a tablecloth in a picnic basket in Chrissie’s trunk. Tiptoeing around his vomit on the ground, he hastily threw the cloth over Dangcat’s body, trying to avoid actually looking at Dangcat lest he puke again. He slammed the passenger-side door and got into the driver’s seat.
He told Chrissie to wait at the quarry while he drove his car with Dangcat to the back of the hospital. Chad waited for the back of the hospital parking lot to empty and pulled up to the bin of red toxic waste medical bags destined to go in the next incineration cycle. No one messes with those bags any more than they have to. They fear catching some exotic disease, so the bags were deposited in the incinerator via a small front-end loader. As he wrestled Dangcat’s torso out, his head rolled out onto the pavement and toward the incinerator. He quickly grabbed it by the hair, like a sack of potatoes, and slung it in on the back floorboard for safekeeping, then continued to wrestle the torso into a red bag.
On the way back to the quarry, Chad stopped by his apartment, cleaned up, plucked five handkerchiefs from his underwear drawer, pulled a lilac-scented garbage bag from the pack, dug out his bowling ball bag from the bottom of his closet, and dropped in his special woodworking tools to take with him. As he drove through downtown, he had heard Dangcat’s head rolling around on the back floorboard, which made him sick to his stomach again, so as he left the apartment, he snatched two towels off the towel rack to use to stop Dangcat’s head from annoying him.
He bought a lighter and five sodas at the convenience store. He drank three of the sodas and poured the rest out as he drove. At the gasoline station, he bought a small gas can and filled it with a quarter of a gallon of regular.
Meanwhile Chrissie paced up and down between her car and Dangcat’s, formulating a plan for the future for her and her gorgeous, misunderstood psycho-killer lover. Marriage was surely in the st
ars for them, she imagined. And a big wedding, with lots of celebrities and covered by the paparazzi! They would honeymoon off the coast of Monaco. She would charge the tabloids for publishing their wedding photos, and be photographed and written up in fashion magazines for her magnificent, one-of-a-kind, handmade wedding dress.
She had hitched her star to his glorious wagon, sharing his visions of fame and fortune, and she wasn’t about to give it all up just for his attempt to set the record straight with the hired help.
Chad skidded up into the quarry, whipping his car directly in front of Chrissie’s, nose toward the abyss of tar-like water seventy-five feet below in the quarry. He stuffed Dangcat’s head into the garbage bag and crammed it into the bowling ball bag. He wiped off and shoved the wire into his pocket. He then took his gear and tour baggage, as well as the bowling ball bag, and put them in Chrissie’s car trunk. Then, with no regret whatsoever, Chad put his beloved foreign sports car in neutral and shut the doors. He told Chrissie to get in the passenger’s seat of her car as he jumped into the driver’s side.
Gently, slowly, Chad nudged his precious car into the quarry, careful not to get too close to the edge. When he heard the resounding splash as it thundered into the water, he put Chrissie’s car in reverse and slowly left, headed toward Cafton’s home to wrap up his plan.
A block from the intended destination, Chad assembled the Molotov cocktails. He opened Chrissie’s door and placed them on the floorboard between her feet, telling her to hold them upright or they would both be flambeaux. There was no traffic on Cafton’s street, except for the tail lights of a car gradually headed away from them. He turned off his headlights as he pulled alongside a parked car in front of Cafton’s house.
Chad motioned to Chrissie to get out of the car, telling her he needed to be able to drive away in case something went wrong. He rolled the passenger-side window down, reached across the car, and handed her a Molotov cocktail and the lighter. He instructed her to run up the walkway to the porch, light the bomb, and heave the firebombs into the windows, one by one. She complied, running on adrenalin more than will, as she awkwardly tossed the flaming bottles onto the porch, not giving much consideration to their proximity to the windows or the effectiveness of her aim.