“Yeah?” I ask, afraid that the Mormon Tea has flipped on a monologue switch in Denny’s brain that will not shut off for the rest of the trip.
“I’ve got a choking hazard for you in my underwear.” He reaches over and punches me in the arm. “Seriously, though, underwear with pockets. You can keep whatever you want protected from pickpockets. Ain’t no Mr. Slippyfingers going to get down in your pants to take your wallet without your knowing it. And if you’re sitting around your basement in your underwear, as is typical for you, you can keep a tube of Jergen’s lotion in your pocket so you can lube yourself up for the five-knuckle-shuffle, burpin’ the worm, ya know, the tug of war with Cyclops.”
Having heard enough of Denny’s genius and knowing that our trip is a straight shot down I-75 I nod off for a while (a whole heck of a lot of good the Mormon Tea did me).
Jellico . . . Clinton . . . Knoxville . . .
“And who wouldn’t want one of those things in his bathtub? Three quick squirts and you’re good to go.” Denny is still talking as I ease into wakefulness. “Hey, do you believe in love at first sight?”
“Umm, ahh, I don’t know,” I mumble and wipe slobbery moisture from my chin.
“Or better yet, do you believe each person has a soul mate?”
“I dunno.” I’m barely even conscious and Denny wants to engage me in a philosophical discussion of love and soul mates. Jesus. I’m 35 years old and I have only slept with a handful of women in my life. Haven’t had a relationship that’s lasted over three weeks and I’m supposed to have answers about love and soul mates. If anything, Idjit Galoot is probably my soul mate.
“I have a soul mate,” Denny announces proudly. “Her name is Marie. She’s still in Utah.”
“Izzat so?”
“She’s a Mormon, though. They’ve banned her from seeing me. Sent her away somewhere. But our souls are one. She says our beings are inextricably intertwined. Marie has guaranteed that I will get into heaven, no matter what.”
“She can’t do that. She’s not God.”
“No. But she is a devout Mormon,” Denny defends, “and she’s taking me with her when she goes to heaven.”
“What is a devout Mormon girl doing sleeping with you?” I ask.
“I ain’t never slept with her. Our connection is different. I think she sort of pities me for some reason—feels a need to nurture. She told me that there is a Mormon ritual that binds her soul to mine. I don’t understand it all; she was kind of vague. But, what it amounts to is that she will drag me up to heaven with her when she goes. I’ve got a get-into-heaven-free ticket.”
“How in the hell does that work?” I am genuinely curious.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m going to heaven.” Denny tilts his travel mug up and chugs the remainder of his tea. Some spills down his chin and leave a green stain on his shirt.
“What if she dies before you?” I ask. Finally the conversation is getting interesting and I’m starting to wake up. I think the tea is working. The back of my neck is tingling. “I mean, say she dies before you. Do you die at the exact same time and get dragged right up to heaven? Or does your soul just get yanked but your body goes on living, moving, shitting, eating and sleeping, but thoughtless, kind of like you are already I guess.”
Worry lines form on Denny’s brow. “I dunno. She never explained that to me . . . ”
“It is interesting. Do you die or does your body just wander the earth as an empty shell, like a zombie?”
“She never explained any of that shit. She just told me I could go to heaven and I went along with it.” His voice rises in pitch. He’s freaking. Just for shits and giggles I needle him a little bit more.
“What if Marie commits a mortal sin? What if she somehow falls out of grace with God? If she fucks up and goes to hell, does her soul suck yours down into the depths of Hades right along with hers?”
“I never thought of any of that.” I’ve never seen Denny shaking like that before. It’s not a pretty sight to see a slightly balding man with a mullet crying. It’s like something straight out of an episode of Cops. “She just said I could get into heaven so I said ‘great.’ It was more like she was sneaking me into the movies through the side door or something.”
“Hey, Nancy, I’m just busting your balls. Calm down. I’m sure that Marie is just some wackadoo, probably has no more inside connections with the big man than you or me.” I may have gone too far. Despite the fact that Denny’s kind of an asshole . . . and a bumbling idiot . . . and has a really bad haircut . . . well, I do kind of like him anyway. He is kin. “By the way, you’ve already managed to get us lost.”
The sign up ahead greets us: “Welcome to Erwin, Tennessee. Population 5610.” Somehow we ended up in an area of Tennessee with town names like Bumpus and Dry Hump Cove.
Dusk approaches and Denny’s despondent over the heretofore-unconsidered ramifications of the binding of his eternal soul to someone else. A blinking green neon bull lights up the front of a cinder block building, beckoning us. “There’s a bar right over there,” I tell Denny. “Pull over and let’s get a drink.”
Denny wheels the moving truck into the gravel parking lot of the Brahman Bar and Package Store. The once transparent glass door to the bar is smudged with smoke residue and oily handprints. By concentrating real hard and looking at the door from an angle, it appears that there are faces trapped in the smut on the door, as if the spirits of the customers, or parts of them, remain stuck in the bar forever (or at least until the door is introduced to a clean rag and some Windex). A patron exits—smoke and the strains of bad karaoke roll out, trailing him. Denny gives me a shoulder-shrugging question of a look, as if to say Are you sure you want to go in here?
“Let’s do it,” I say as we enter the Brahman. The room is dimly lit and thick with the smog of burning tobacco. We sit down at the bar beside a scruffy-faced, scraggle-toothed customer.
The barmaid approaches. She has red hair, a black eye, and yellow teeth. “What can I do ya for, honey?” She asks, surprisingly without a trace of a southern drawl or twang. And smiling.
“Two PBR’s.” I smile back, evaluating her. I get a feeling about her—my senses, ESP, mind-reading, whatever you want to call it. I know about her already. She’s good-natured. She was pretty once, but time, Pall Malls, ethyl alcohol, and a string of abusive relationships took care of that. Ramona is her given name, but she goes by Annie. Ramona is a nice name, I think to myself. She’s not from here, maybe up north judging from her speech pattern.
“I can have her,” I tell Denny when Ramona walks away.
He squinches up his face, as if I just held a tiny, pungent, nugget of a dog turd directly under his nose. “You’d better drink a bit more first, buddy. You’re gonna need some beer goggles for that one.” More than anything I know that Denny is striking out because he’s still upset about that soul-binding business. He’s certainly not the picky type with women.
“What, you wouldn’t do her?” I ask defensively.
“I’m lonely, but I ain’t that lonely yet.”
“I’m serious. I have a feeling. I can have this woman,” I tell Denny. “I’m no ladies-man like you. What do I do?”
“I don’t know. Tell her a dirty joke. If she laughs, you’re in. It always works for me.” It’s true, too. Denny is way more experienced with women than me. He claims that he “gets more ass than a park bench.” My cousin is really more of a quantity over quality kind of guy. White ones, black ones, skinny broads, fat dames, bad complexions, yeast infections, mob connections, he doesn’t care. If it has a warm wet hole and is vaguely feminine, Denny will fuck it. He doesn’t care what they look like. It is his firm belief that the light switch was invented so that he could enjoy sex with women whose beauty is not readily apparent to the eyes. Aside from the self-serving aspect of his philosophy, Denny truly believes that he is doing a public service by porking the women that most men with vision and the sense of smell would reject.
I do
n’t have Denny’s suave and debonair manner. Sometimes just making small talk with people I don’t know is like exercise. That’s why I enjoy people like Denny. They do all of the talking and I will add something when it’s relevant or important. I am pitiful when I try out my skills on women. The few who have slept with me have done so as a result of intoxication, pity, financial incentive or all of the above.
No matter where you go, Karaoke night always brings out at least one person hoping to be discovered singing Patsy Cline’s Crazy, or maybe Lady in Red. As we wait for our beers, a big-haired, mule-faced hopeful sings some fucked-up country song. She’s cleaned-up and dressed in her thrift store best. Sequins sewn across her ample bosom spell out her stage name—Peaches. I’d bet dollars to donuts there are no Nashville talent scouts in the Brahman scraping the bottom of the karaoke barrel for their next big star. Nevertheless, the big-toothed girl is singing her heart out and rigidly performing her choreographed moves.
The scruffy little man beside me at the bar introduces himself as Crash. “Peaches performs that song every night,” he tells me. “I’ll be goddamned if my girl don’t get better each time. That girl has IT. She will be famous, one day, you watch.” I suggest to Crash that he might want to change his name to Herb if Peaches ever does hit the big-time, and he looks at me like I’m speaking Japanese.
Two Pabsts arrive and I take Denny’s advice. “Hey Ramona,” I venture, “what’s black and white and red and doesn’t like sex very much?”
Her eyes widen. Shock? I’m not sure. She relaxes, looks at me apprehensively. “I don’t know. What?”
“The nun I have tied up in my basement,” I answer and wait for a reaction. It’s like time stops. Ramona just stares. I think I blew my one shot. Then the corner of her mouth starts to move. A full-blown grin breaks out, followed by a good natured, genuine laugh.
“You’re a sick little puppy, aintcha?” She laughs. “I like you.”
In my peripheral vision I see Denny give me a slight nod that says “You’re in.” We hang around, listening to Karaoke and drinking more beer. Denny’s mood never really lifts. He still frets. I decide to do something to cheer him up. Borrowing a pen from behind the bar, I write on a napkin and hand it to Ramona.
“This says you’re selling me your soul to pay for your bar-tab tonight,”[6] she says. “What am I gonna do with your soul?”
“Well, if you ever get in a jam, you could sell it to the Devil for something and you will still be squeaky clean, no eternal damnation for you,” I tell her.
“We usually prefer U.S. currency. But you seem like a nice enough guy . . . Probably relatively low mileage and only a few dents and dings on this model,” she says, eying me as if I were a used car. “You’ve got a deal. But you have to let me buy you breakfast at the Egg Hut after I close up.”
The black clouds hanging over Denny lift. The possibility of my eternal damnation makes us comrades in the same foxhole. Misery loves company, I guess.
Closing time approaches and Crash explains the origins of his nickname. “I crashed my TransAm into a tree. Flew out, through the windshield, and my forehead smacked into a big old oak tree. My head’s been all fucked up ever since.” Pulling off his sweat-stained ball cap, Crash shows me a scoop of negative space where much of his forehead used to be. “Go ahead, feel it,” he tells me, indicating the large dent in his forehead. I oblige, pushing on the spongy indentation. There is no skull there.
“Ow, you’re poking right into my frontal lobe,” he yelps. “Pushing too hard on me! I told you to feel it. I didn’t say jam your finger through my brain to the back of my head, did I?”
“I–I–I–I . . . ” I stammer, a bit in shock. “I’m sorry. Jesus. I didn’t realize . . . ”
“Aw, it’s okay. I was just fuckin’ with ya anyway,” he laughs. “That was my brain you were pushin’ on, though. Pretty weird, huh?”
“Alright,” the cheesy DJ-wannabe voice of the Karaoke MC says, “next we have Crash singing a little ditty.” The music to Kiss’s Beth begins but Crash has written his own words, a love song about Peaches. I think to myself that he’s not so fucking great. If I had a couple more beers I might get up and sing some Iron Maiden, or maybe The Safety Dance.
The plan was to drive straight through to the Sunshine State. The possibility of a sleazy, meaningless, perhaps demeaning, one-night-stand changed everything. Guys (real guys) will help each other out with stuff like that. Denny didn’t mind the delay. He even gave me some advice before Ramona and I went up to her apartment above the Brahman: “Don’t tell her your real name.”
The Egg Hut was closed for renovations. That sucks because their sign advertised a smashed, squashed, splattered, chewed, chunked and spewed bucket of griddle-taters for $1.99. I don’t know what they do to those grittle-taters but they sure sound good. Ramona offered to cook us breakfast at her place. Denny declined and stayed in the moving truck with a six-pack of Red, White and Blue to keep him company while Ramona and I went upstairs. Her apartment was small, wood paneled, dirty and warm. Scooping up a pile of dirty clothes from a threadbare chair she told me to sit down while she cooked up some eggs and corned beef hash. The greasy smell of breakfast food gradually and partially edges out the odor of stale tobacco smoke and cat urine.
Emptying an overflowing ashtray and lighting up a fresh Pall Mall, Ramona asks, “How did you know my name? Everybody calls me Annie. Nobody here knows me as Ramona.”
“I have powers,” I tell her in a spooky voice, wiggling my fingers in front of me as if casting a spell.
“You’re weird. I like it. Listen . . . I don’t usually bring random guys up to my place . . . ” (she lies) “ . . . and you haven’t even told me your name. But I just have a good feeling about you.”
“My name is Larry Mondello . . . ” (I lie)
“That’s not what you signed on the napkin when you bartered your soul to cover your bar-tab.”
“Yeah, I’m lying. I’m not very good at this kind of thing . . . ” (I’m truthful)
“You didn’t seem like a player. Just relax, Mr. Mondello. We’ll hang out and see what happens.”
A grey and white, large-footed cat tries to move me off of my seat, its nose an ineffectual bulldozer on my leg. Recognizing defeat, the cat instead decides to make itself comfortable on my lap, purring and nudging my belly with its face. The kitty’s name is Earnest.
“He is a poly-dak-tul,” Ramona says. “That means he has more toes than a normal cat. It really just means he has more claws to tear up my carpeting and furniture.”
We drink beer, eat an early breakfast/late dinner, and talk. Ramona tells me about her adopted town.
• • •
Erwin’s most famous character was Murderous Mary. Mary was a circus elephant, originally dubbed Mighty Mary. One day, in the early 1900’s, while parading through the adjacent city of Johnsonville and thrilling the local townspeople, Mary put on her greatest show to date. She took umbrage at her handler’s ungentlemanly manner. In a perfect example of the Peter Principle[7], Walter “Red” Eldrige (Mary’s wholly unqualified handler) began to hit her with a bull-hook. The long stick with a hook on the end generally irritated Mary, and, specifically, tore into her thick, elephantine, hide and made her as pissed off as . . . well . . . as pissed off as an elephant whose skin is being torn apart by a stick with a hook on the end of it.
All that Miss Mary wanted was to enjoy a tasty looking watermelon rind that was left on the street by one of the gawkers. But she was being put down by The Man. Walter “Red” Edridge being The Man in this case. In front of the entire town, Mary picked up Red with her trunk and bounced his body off of Charlie Morgan’s sausage stand. The five-ton bad-ass-mother-fucker of an elephant then crushed Red’s head, smashing it amongst a scattering of sausages, onions and peppers and ruining the townspeople’s appetite for ground, encased meat for some time to come. Mary’s enormous round feet ground Red’s large square head into the dirt street, making a muddy, messy, spiced
meat, pepper and brain haggis on the ground.
The villagers’ original shock quickly turned to anger, giving them reason to form an angry mob (as villagers are always happy to do). They quickly gathered pitchforks, torches and random implements of destruction and began to chant in unison: “Kill the elephant. Kill the elephant. Kill the elephant.” Mary was promptly arrested by the Johnsonville chief of police and chained to a stake in the ground outside of the police department. Mary’s owner, Charlie Sparks, decided he had to do something before the townspeople took things into their own hands. Charlie transported Mary and the rest of his traveling circus to the Clinchfield Railroad yard in Erwin. Sparks’s show performed that morning in Erwin without Mary. The real show was to come later that day. After the circus, Mary was taken to the rail yard. The elephant-hating fervor of the Johnsonville angry mob had spread to Erwin like a virulent strain of gonorrhea. Thousands of Erwin’s citizens, hungry for blood, crowded the rail yard to watch the execution[8] of Murderous Mary.
Mary’s legs were chained to the rails to keep her still while she awaited her fate. Another chain was thrown around her neck and hooked up to the 100-pound derrick that was usually used to unload lumber from freight cars. The signal was given. The derrick operator set the winch in motion. Mary’s feet were lifted off of the ground while her back legs remained chained to the tracks. Those close to her cringed as they heard tendons ripping, Mary being in the middle of a tug-of-war between the mighty derrick and the rails. As her body was lifted off of the ground, the chain broke and she thumped back down to earth, still alive, scattering the townspeople for fear that they would also be crushed by the dangerous pachyderm. Mary just lay on the ground, stunned and injured. The roustabouts from the circus unchained her back legs from the rails (as they should have done in the first place) and fastened a thicker chain around the wounded elephant’s neck. This time the chain held and the crowd watched for several minutes as Mary dangled from the giant crane until the life was choked out of her.[9] The five-ton mammal’s corpse was buried at a now unknown location in Erwin.
Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed Page 3