Revoltingly Young

by Payne, C. D.

  Don’t ask me how long I lay in that ditch. It seemed like hours and hours. I saw vision after vision like I’d plugged into some miraculous alien world. Sometimes I shivered from cold and sometimes I felt a warm tropical breeze like I was lying on a beach in Hawaii. Then the night sky began to lighten and I could feel the furry arms gradually release their grip. I became aware of a shooting pain in my hip from where I’d been lying for hours on a sharp rock. I crawled to my feet again and started walking back and forth to get warm. I had a sweatshirt on over my t-shirt, but was very, very cold and my teeth were chattering.

  I tried to get a sense of where I was: steep hills covered in dense forest. I figured I probably wasn’t that far in off some highway, but I didn’t know which way to walk. I listened for the sound of passing cars, but heard nothing except morning bird chatter. I still felt woozy and a little sick to my stomach. I wasn’t sleepy at all, even though I’d been awake most of the night. I found the wad of paper I spit out and examined it. Little paper squares covered in brightly colored designs. Didn’t mean anything to me, but I stuck the soggy mess in my pocket. I felt around in my other pockets. No wallet and no cell phone. That dwarf had cleaned me out. I was starting to feel hungry too.

  I remembered from somewhere that if you’re lost in the woods, it’s best to walk downhill. So I set off down the logging road. Every time I came to a branch in the road, I took the lane that appeared to be going downhill. But I must have missed the turnoff to the highway. I walked for hours and wasn’t getting anywhere. Sometimes the roads I followed petered out and I had to backtrack. The sun was well past overhead when I came to a big mountain stream tumbling down through giant boulders. I took a long drink of the icy water and decided to follow the stream as best I could. I struggled around rocks and over ravines for at least another hour when I rounded a point and spotted an old guy in boots up to his waist standing in the stream and flicking a fishing rod back and forth.

  The men weren’t too happy to see me. It was a guy in his 30s named Gary and his laconic father-in-law. They had driven there in a four-wheel-drive pickup with a camper mounted on the back. At first they wanted me to wait until Monday afternoon for a lift back to Grangeville, but I managed to talk Gary into interrupting his trout-fishing holiday to give me a ride back to the highway. He also grudging fixed me a peanut butter sandwich. The trip back to the main road was 13.7 miles by Gary’s odometer. It appeared I’d been walking entirely the wrong direction the whole time. Gary said if I hadn’t found them there was not much between me and distant Montana except thousands of square miles of national forest. He dropped me on the asphalt and pointed the direction I should hitch to get back to Grangeville. Not many cars came by, so it was dusk by the time I made it back to the fairgrounds.

  Of course, the Hercules Circus had long since departed. I walked around and found most of my stuff dumped in a drainage ditch. I shoved the muddy clothes into my backpack, rescued my battered poetry book from a puddle, and retrieved my $5 laptop from where it had lodged behind a rock. The thing still works as demonstrated by this sad blog entry, which I’m typing at the rear table of the only café still open this time of night in Grangeville. I just ate an entire extra-large, family-sized pepperoni pizza and still feel like I could wedge in another slice or two. Thank God, for the $50 bill in my shoe. Never did find my cell phone, so communication is a problem. No, I don’t know where the circus was headed next, and nope I never bothered to write down their phone number. No, I don’t have a place to spend the night.

  As I noted before, I’m screwed. Big time.

  MONDAY, September 5 – Labor Day in Grangeville, Idaho. Not the most festive of holidays in this burg. Most of the stores and businesses are closed down tight, including the café where I was hoping to eat breakfast. So I had to content myself with a plastic-wrapped pastry from a gas station. I asked the clerk why I couldn’t find a working pay phone in town. She seemed to think it was because everyone had cell phones these days. So sorry, but company policy prevented her from letting me use their phone. She suggested if it was an emergency that I walk over to the sheriff’s office and ask to use their phone. Of course, that was the one building in town Dr. Richard Kimball and I weren’t going anywhere near.

  It had rained overnight, but I had stayed dry. If you walk down a residential street in small towns in rural Idaho, you’ll discover that lots of houses have trailers or motorhomes parked next to them. And in such locales people are not as inclined to lock their doors. The second trailer I tried was unsecured. Smelled a bit musty inside, but I made myself at home. Didn’t dare switch on a light, but I found a sleeping bag rolled up in a cupboard so I didn’t freeze. Slept like a dead dwarf, but woke up early enough to sneak out without being seen. The RV toilet flushing mechanism didn’t seem to be working, so I left behind an unpleasant memento in the bowl.

  3:13 p.m. I’m in a laundromat in a little shopping center. My clothes are finishing up in a dryer. I knotted my soggy poetry book inside a t-shirt and tossed it in as well. A nice Mexican lady with four little kids just lent me her cell phone and I made a collect call to Veeva in L.A. Actually, she was in Newport Beach where she had been dragged by her parents to watch young Nipsie (the real one) compete in a video game tournament. Therefore, she could not access a computer to look up the Hercules Circus tour schedule. She did clear up a few mysteries. She said the knockout drops they used on me were likely chloral hydrate or gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), which are popular “date rape” drugs. She knows all about such menaces because her paranoid mother is always handing her articles to read and warning her never to leave her beverage unattended at parties. The little paper squares are called blotters, and each of them contains a potent hit of LSD. The normal practice, Veeva informed me, was to put one or two of them under your tongue. Packing in a great wad of them definitely was not recommended.

  “Sounds like someone wanted to send you on a very bad trip,” she commented.

  “Yeah, well, they did.”

  “Have you had any flashbacks yet?”

  “No,” I replied, alarmed. “Is that common?”

  “Mostly for chronic users, Noel, but since you did a whole lifetime’s worth in one night, you may have some. Don’t they know anything about acid in Owatonna?”

  “That’s Winnemucca, Veeva. No, we’re totally into meth there.”

  “I hear that stuff turns your teeth to cheese. God, Noel, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m considering therapeutic suicide.”

  “I guess you’ll have to stay put. I’ll overnight you another cell phone and the circus schedule in care of general delivery there. It should be at the post office by Wednesday.”

  “Oh, fuck!” I groaned. “Can you add some cash too?”

  “I’ll try, Noel. God, the situations you get yourself into!”

  I didn’t point out that I wouldn’t be stranded in Podunkville, USA with an acid-fried brain if it weren’t for her.

  TUESDAY, September 6 – More rain. Cold too. Does Idaho go straight from summer to winter? I’m holed up in the little public library. They have a computer with an Internet connection, so I was able to find the circus schedule. I also e-mailed Mr. Patsatzis that I had been inadvertently detained in Grangeville and to please hold my job open for me. Also did some emergency research on LSD flashbacks. They can happen anytime–even years later! I did find out that many famous people have taken LSD and still get written up regularly in People magazine. All of which makes me hopeful that I have not permanently toasted my brain.

  I got kicked out of my trailer last night. The homeowner’s little ratty dog sniffed me out and barked his damn head off like I was Charles Manson on a crime spree. All the other ones I tried were locked. So I sat up in the laundromat until it closed at midnight, then crashed behind a dumpster in an alley. I don’t know how the homeless survive in cold climates. Perhaps they don’t and nobody cares. First thing this morning after the stores opened I blew $8.99 from my dwindling stash for the war
mest thrift-shop coat I could find. I think it may be intended for chicks, since the buttons are arrayed down the wrong side. Plus, in direct daylight the burnt rust color veers suspiciously toward pink.

  Feeling and looking extremely grungy. Haven’t showered or brushed my teeth since Saturday. Move over, Dad. I expect pigeons will be roosting on me soon.

  WEDNESDAY, September 7 – Veeva’s package contained her brother Nipsie’s spare cell phone, one measly crummy $20 bill, the now redundant circus schedule, and this note:

  Darling Noel,

  I looked up Grangeville in Daddy’s atlas. It’s in the MIDDLE of NOWHERE! Hope you are COPING and holding together physically and MENTALLY. You sounded in a VERY bad STATE on the phone. Alas, Tyler has been able to find out NOTHING about Sarah Nunez. That dwarf may be LYING. You must deploy all your WILES against him. I realize you have mostly failed MISERABLY so far, but I DO have confidence in you. Remember, Noel, you are a TWISP–the most CUNNING and RESOURCEFUL of men. Sorry, this is all the cash I could muster. School is commencing and one is simply OVERWHELMED by financial necessities. Btw, Maddy reports her brother is MISSING you terribly. He keeps babbling about his LOST BUTTERFLY. Thought you’d like to know.

  Also loving you,

  Veeva

  P.S. While I was at it, I looked up Winnemucca on the map. Your home town is ABSURDLY remote. You are WELL out of there!

  Thanks a pantsful, kid, as I once heard my brother say to Ada when they were discussing which corkscrew he would be permitted to retain.

  12:07 p.m. Had the cheapest budget lunch I could find, washed my face in a gas station restroom, and am about to blow this burg.

  Montana here I come!

  FRIDAY, September 9 – Sorry I skipped a day. One of these days, blog readers, I may just decide to skip the rest of my life. No, there is no such thing as justice in this world. I knew that already, but I got slapped with a fresh reminder yesterday. Señor Nunez denied any knowledge of my alleged kidnapping, and I think Mr. Patsatzis believed him. It was not just my word against the dwarf’s. His story was corroborated by Randy, who testified that when I returned from Señor Nunez’s trailer last Saturday night, I asked him if he wanted to drop some acid with me. The lying asshole also stated that I was always abusing various substances and asking him where I could score drugs.

  Mr. Patsatzis was ready to send me on my way, but his wife said she thought I deserved another chance if I promised to renounce drugs and stay straight.

  So now everyone in the show thinks I’m a deadbeat drug-head, and Randy is walking around pleased as punch.

  6:28 p.m. We’re in Missoula. All these small western towns are starting to look alike to me. Business is way down because of the lousy weather. You wouldn’t believe the mud everyone tracked into my nice clean donikers while I was away. Very demoralizing. If I’m going to be subjected to LSD flashbacks, I wish they’d happen while I’m hunched sponge in hand over a stinking toilet. An out-of-body experience would be most welcome then.

  I had to sit with Jin and Sam Pak at dinner tonight because the Lurrieta sisters have been warned by their parents not to associate with me. Jin was hot to arrange a duel of honor with Randy, but I told him I was still too wasted from my ordeal in Idaho. Señor Nunez, who serenaded everyone after dinner as if nothing had happened, is back to pretending I don’t exist. As I was leaving the cookhouse tent, that strange tall clown Marcel sidled up to me to chat. He reminded me that he had warned me about the dwarf, and added that he had seen Alfredo and Randy around midnight last Saturday muscling my unconscious person into the back of the big Dodge pickup. When I demanded to know why he hadn’t tried to stop them, he replied that he never gets involved in such affairs. And no, he wouldn’t go with me to the boss to back up my story. His parting words were, “Frankly, Jake, I thought we’d seen the last of you. I was amazed when you turned up here again alive.” Not that he seemed care one way or the other if I’d lived or died.

  11:49 p.m. If I had a gun, I could fire it straight down into my mattress and kill Randy. What an intriguing idea, except I’m not sure eliminating that moron would merit the destruction of a perfectly good mattress. As I was pondering these matters, someone tapped lightly on my roomette door. I feared it was Señor Nunez back to finish the job, but it turned out to be darling Miren. Since my quarters were not secure from eavesdropping slimeballs, we sneaked off in the rain to the cab of the swamp-cooler truck. It smelled of diesel fuel and old seat covers, but I found that if you snuggled close to Miren, you hardly noticed such things. I gave her the full scoop on what happened to me, and she gave me a great deal of sincere and welcome sympathy. By then we were rather fully embraced, so I tried an experimental kiss. Extreme fireworks such as I had known only briefly with Uma. I don’t know if all that acid expanded my mind, but I had never before experienced such a feeling of complete union with another person. It was like a direct connection through our lips from one beating heart to another.

  Miren had to get back, but she promised to try to see me again when she could.

  What a revelation. Is it possible there’s another girl in this universe for me besides Uma?

  SATURDAY, September 10 – We jumped this morning to Butte, an old mining town perched on the edge of a giant hole in the ground. I’m told this is an abandoned open-pit copper mine, now filled with acidic water so toxic it will boil the flesh right off your bones. A real environmental disaster, but helpful for attracting tourists, who come to gawk at its scary immensity. Mr. Patsatzis is hoping some of them will come to look at us. Butte is also the birthplace of Evel Knievel, a bus- and canyon-jumping daredevil who inspired generations of dirt bikers and snowboarders to sail off into the sky in bone-breaking disregard of gravity.

  The gray clouds have all blown away and things are starting to dry out. A soggy circus is a very forlorn thing, which may be why they call our type of smaller circus a “mud show.”

  While waiting for the first bounce house customers to show up, I used my latest hand-me-down cell phone to check in with my old pal Stoney Holt, who informed me that she has now experienced heterosexual lovemaking three times with studly Scott Chandler.

  “So how is it?” I asked.

  “Aw, it’s OK. Hurt sorta bad the first time. I mean that’s a pretty big thing to be shoving in a guy.”

  “You didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Not really. I’m not seeing what all the fuss is about, Noel.”

  “Well, perhaps Scott is just a clumsy lover.”

  “I don’t know. He seems to be doing the usual stuff. I like it when he goes down on me, but then I could get some cute chick to do that. And I wouldn’t have to pretend to be some feminine princess all the time.”

  “Well maybe you are a dyke, Stoney.”

  “I don’t know, I think sometimes I am, but then I see him with that bitch Uma and I want him really bad.”

  “Is he making it with her too?” I asked, attempting to sound marginally disinterested.

  “He claims not, but I know all you guys are lying assholes in that department.”

  “I think you should keep doing it, Stoney. Some chicks just take longer to get warmed up to sex.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Noel. You’re not the guy with the pussy getting banged.”

  “I know, Stoney, but lots of chicks just can’t get enough of it once they get, you know, stretched out.”

  By then there was a parent in my face wondering what the hell I was talking about. I took her tickets, admitted her two rugrats, and told Stoney I had to go. She reminded me to call my grandmother and said she’d call my new cell phone number if she heard from Carlyle.

  I can’t let Stoney break up with Scott. She’s my only hope of keeping him away from Uma. I know he’s just the sort of experienced male that misguided Uma would be inclined to yield her virginity to. If only there were some way I could make Stoney’s complaints known to Uma. Not to mention contrast them with the numerous good times enjoyed by Veeva with yours truly. Cle
arly, the facts prove that I am the preferred sexual partner for aspiring virgins.

  11:14 p.m. Pretty good crowds today. Mrs. Patsatzis said her daughter the advance man did some heavy flirting with a bigwig in the Butte schools, who agreed to distribute an Annie Oakley (free ticket) to every grammar school kid in town. The bounce house alone did over $400 in business, which pays for a whole month of my valuable services.

  After the last show Kardos Herczegh stopped me to ask in his very halting English if I would sell him some weed. He was disappointed when I replied that I wasn’t in that line of work, but invited me to share a joint with him. This we did in the cab of the ostrich truck. Quite powerful, mind-expanding stuff. In reviewing my experiences with various intoxicants, I’d have to say it’s more likely that I’ll wind up addicted to drugs than alcohol. Kardos smokes several joints a day, which is how he copes with missing his girlfriend back in Sopron and having to ride ostriches for a living. He speaks only about 200 baby English words, but is fluent in German, which overlaps much more with English than Hungarian. So whenever he’d get stuck for a word, he’d say it in German and I’d try to figure it out. (I, needless to say, know no German.) A tough way to communicate, but his potent grass helped grease the language skids.

  Kardos would rather be going to university in Germany to become a sanitation engineer. He says you can get a very good job in Hungary with a German technical degree. Hard to believe a good-looking guy like him wants to devote his life to cleaning up the stuff people flush down toilets, but there you have it. His parents, though, are insisting that he stick with the family trade even though he finds it boring and unchallenging. Plus, he doesn’t care much for ostriches except grilled with garlic and onions. Plus, he’s horny in the extreme because all the attractive chicks in this circus are either married or too young. He had his eye on Dorcas, but then she ran off with the “damn dog man.”