by JN Lenz
“Keep your shit together here Jack” I assured myself out loud.
I did after all; still trust Clyde with my son’s life. The discovery of who Clyde had really been for all these years did not change that fact.
Who thought at this age, some sixty years after my birth, would I only now discover such an unfathomable revelation, one that I had been deeply involved in. Providing me with one of those, once in a life time reality checks, like a deliberator shock to the system while you’re fully awake.
Beyond the unspeakable truths about this man, as evil and dire as they are, Clyde had had made me the man I was. He was the best of friends, trust was not a concept to Clyde, and it was a truth. Even the dark and the evil couldn’t make me hate him, we were family.
Hell, I can thank him for giving me my name of Jack, first and fore most. Clyde offered it to me that morning in the basement of the Catholic Church, seconds after we had met for the first time.
“What’s your name” Clyde asked, straight off all confident sounding
“Jochint Schysmitt.”
“Jack Smyth, my name is Clyde, Clyde Drexler”
“No, not Jack, err, yaa Jack”
I would decide not to correct him; I’m not sure why other than it sounded cool coming from him. Maybe a new name that was exactly what I needed, even at that young age I was tired of everyone asking me to repeat my name, and the funny look that came along with the question.
Jack Smyth was just fine by me. Who the hell gives they’re kid the name Jochint anyway?
I was born in southern Ontario, not in the fucking German Alps!
What the hell ever happened to Bill, Bob, hell even make it Barney for all I care, but Jochint? Then there was the whole last name thing, Schysmitt, like seriously? When you made your way across the Atlantic on that retrofitted banana boat, could you not have shortened your name to something a little more North American sounding? Like changing it to say Schmitt before completing the Canadian immigration papers?
If shortening the name was out of the question, at the very least add a Von or a Count between the first and the last name? Try to give it some kind of lineage to a non existent quirky heir and dispel the possibilities for the annoying neighborhood kids who had latched onto the whole “Schys” connection to the word “Shit”. So instead of the humiliation of being referred to as “Shit mitt” I could have held my head high as a Count Shit mitt or Von shit mitt at the very least. It really would have added a touch of class to the whole Shitmitt family name. That first morning, six year old Clyde would not be shy about telling a story, or two, or six.
“I was born on all sixes” Clyde would profess immediately after meeting him that morning in the basement of the church
“Sixes? I got sixes in my birthday too.”
“Not just sixes, I got four of umm. I wuz born on June six and June is the number six month an the year is sixy six too. Least tat is what Pop said, the devil child is what he likes to call me.”
“Why you a devil child?”
“Pop says cause I wuz burn with all sixes in my birthday, six, six, sixty six. Is what Pop would repeat over an over, specially when he drinks his medicine.”
“Hiz medicine, he drinks medicine?”
“Lots, most every day. Big brown bottles ov it, don’t yur Pop drink medicine to?”
“No my Dad don’t drink medicine, I guess.”
“Butz Cassity was born in sixy six too, but back in da days of Cowboys and Injuns. I shoot guns like Butz Cassity, Pop showed me how to. I shot rabbits dead.”
“You shot real guns, witt bullits too?”
“Lots, I shoot like Butz Cassity.”
“Wow, never shoot a gun before, I gots all them sixes in my birthday too.”
“No, I got like ALLL sixes.”
“I got all does sixes too, my birthday is six, six and sixy six too”
“Is not”
“Is too”
“Weally”
“Yaa, weally all sixes”
“Boys you need to be quiet back there, sit straight and pay attention now” the Sunday school Nun reprimanded the two of us as the dozen other kids in the room turned to stare at the pair of us. Finding out soon after the way Clyde was raised, I was shocked that he did not tell the crusty old Nun to “Fuck Off”, I’m sure it was on his mind even back then.
“When dey gonna feed us” Clyde whispered after the Nun had turned back around
“Shh, food is at the end”
“Da end, how long is that?”
Boys quiet, you go sit over there” Looking up I would see nothing but the black of the Sister’s dress, she was now standing directly in front of the pair of us. She was looking directly at me as she spoke.
“You, go sit over there and be quiet now and pay attention.”
That first conversation had stuck with me for all these years, unlike so many which I had long forgotten. From that first conversation, a life time friendship began, one that would forever change not only my name, but my life. That first conversation cut short by the same stern Sister that would teach us Sunday school for the next three years. Why she had singled me out from the pair of us, would be a trend that would persist throughout our lives, Clyde’s good looks always won him favor in the eyes of the opposite sex.
Over that summer, Clyde and I would become the best of friends, both lucky enough to be placed in the same grade one class that same fall. That first day when the teacher asked each of us to stand up and introduce ourselves, I would stand and tell everyone my name was Jack.
Over the years the two of us have remained the best of friends, along with being business partners for over fifty of those years.
At this point in my life, I could really not remember any of my life that did not include Clyde and our connection to everything six. Having been brought together in that Catholic Sunday school basement, our connection to the number six was more than enough to forge that initial bond. The pair of us born twenty years to the day that the allies invaded France on D day. To this day, he is the only person I have ever met with the same birth date as myself. Sixes you see are in our blood, having both entered the world on the sixth day, of the sixth month, of the sixty sixth year.
The number would prove to be the guiding force of both our lives, at every fork, during every challenge, if it made itself present we always acted on our gut instinct. The number gave us that much confidence; it made us millions after all.
I remember asking Clyde what time he was born, but he did not have a clue. I would later discover his mother was a drunk and a junkie, she had long ago forgotten what the time of day was. Fact is, she most likely had forgotten what the day, month and the year Clyde had been born in as well.
“Mother told me I was born at six in the morning” I would explain to him during that first encounter in the church basement.
We both swapped our stories of six, aware even then of power six held on our soul. I remember Clyde was obsessed with Butch Cassidy back then; his interest in the cowboy coming after seeing the movie, which he had snuck into. It was a Matinee movie; hiding amongst a large family past the ticket taker one afternoon.
“The day I turned six” Clyde proclaimed as he explained how he had entered the Theatre by hiding beside a family that was going through the ticket wicket. Clyde had been wondering around town alone that day, even though his sixth birthday fell on a Tuesday, his parents were sleeping off a mid-week hand over.
“I knew I had to do something special on my birthday, never been to a movie before that” he would tell me, no wonder it was his favorite; it was the only movie he had ever seen up until then.
“When you got sixes in your blood you got sixes just like you and me. See take a look behind you what’s the time on the clock right now?” Clyde would obsess on our connection to everything six.
Sure enough when I turned around, the flip style numbers on the clock read six minutes after nine. I would spend the rest of my life looking at clocks, only to see the
number six, time after time. How it is that I still recall those first tall stories coming from Clyde, his education on Butch Cassidy and of course everything six. I had never heard of Butch Cassidy before meeting Clyde, and I had been to the movies lots, just not that one. During those first years, Clyde would always associate himself with Butch Cassidy or BC as he liked to refer to him as.
It would take a full four years, after I had turned ten that I finally saw the movie with Redford and Newman (still one of my favorites after fifty six years). Being the nineteen seventies before the age of even VHS, it would not be until a “Saturday Night at the Movies” broadcast of the classic that I would finally see what had so amazed young Clyde. Viewed on the only TV my dad would ever purchase a twenty inch color model. Finally I could understand why Clyde wanted so bad to be as cool as Butch Cassidy (or as cool as Redford made him look).
The two of us quickly became inseparable, spending more and more time together as the years past. During the summer of nineteen seventy six, we were both ten years old and the movie The Omen was playing in the movie theatres. The lead played by Gregory Peck, wanted to kill his evil son. The sign of the devil, a brand of three sixes would be on the boys head.
Having both been convinced with our birth date of sixes that we must both possess a similar branding of sixes somewhere on our bodies; we went in search of their location. Later that night we checked each other’s head and the cracks of each other’s asses, all in search of a series of sixes marked like a tattoo that must be somewhere on our bodies. We were both so disappointed, after it became clear the markings were not visibly apparent on either of us. We both had such high hopes for our evil powers, sick six shit. At the very least we could have frightened the hell out of all the girls at school by showing them our sixes.
Our disappointment in the lack of any brandished number sixes on our flesh did not by any means diminish our attraction and connection with the number six. I had a particular penchant, or as some might say compulsive habit of quantifying everything to the number six. It just happened in my head; I never really thought about it much, the answers would just present themselves. In the same way the numbers would randomly appear throughout our lives, day in and day out, coincidence to some, controlling for us. Be it on the clock, when we looked at the time. There were the six items mother packed each day in my lunch, and the six stop signs I passed each day on my way to and from school.
The odometer on the family car, it ended in six almost every time I leaned over my dad’s shoulder to look at it from the back seat. For Clyde and I, the number six followed us everywhere, when we saw the sixes we always believed. I remember reading a magazine at the doctor’s office, that same year of nineteen seventy six, there was an article about a new company called Apple that was selling a home computer for six hundred and sixty six dollars and sixty six cents. I knew I had to have one, when I begged my parents, asking for one on Christmas my father laughed as though I was the biggest fool.
“A computer for home, what the hell are you going to do with that? Computers are for governments and businesses, not for homes you idiot. Six hundred and sixty six dollars for a Christmas present, not in my life time.” I held exception to the idiot part, but the end to his response was spot on, he was certainly a cheap prick.
There would be no point in Clyde even asking his parents for the money, the pair of them would never have that kind of money. One of the biggest reasons he got dumped off at the Catholic Church by his hung over mother each Sunday; was number one, to get rid of him for the morning. The absence of Clyde would allow both his parents to sleep off their ever present Sunday hang over.
By that first winter, his parents would be too lazy and hung over, to even drop him off. This forced Clyde, to walk or ride his old rusty bike the several miles through the snow, rain or sunshine to the church. Number two, his looser parents sent Clyde to Sunday school for food, a minimum of some cookies, maybe a sandwich. It was that or he could go try to shoot something out back behind their run down old house.
Clyde would tell me years later that it was only for the food; along with the fact I would be at the church that kept him coming back for those first few years. There was little chance his drunken parents would never have known, or cared whether the young Drexler had attended church or not. Most weeks they would still be passed out cold, as Clyde returned home from church, usually well past one in the afternoon. An empty stomach and fridge, was reason enough for Clyde to sit through the weekly sermons.
Skip and Flo would usually stay in bed well past two or three in the afternoon on the weekends, and at minimum of one day through the week. Clyde was free to leave the house at any time, even at a very young age. By the age of five, he had become a fixture on the streets of small town Parsons. Clyde’s attendance at church, gained him favor among many elder town residents, since they were all fully aware of Clyde’s home life. The whole town kind of watched out for him, Clyde knew damn near everyone and they knew him. The fact he was one of the better looking kids in town didn’t hurt either, Parsons had never been known for the attractiveness of its residents.
My reason for attending Sunday Mass year after year, the product of a strict Catholic upbringing, Sunday mass was mandatory and not negotiable. For Catholicism in their eyes was the only true Christian religion. A view they attempted to pound into my head in the same senseless way they clung to their old world beliefs and prejudices. Not until after leaving home after high school would I finally put an end to my weekly attendance of Sunday Mass.
If Clyde and my common birth dates served as a baptism to each other, than the hatred of our home life would became our confirmation. Legally Jack Smyth had been taken in place of Jochint Schysmitt at the age of eighteen; friends had been calling me Jack forever. I would change my name officially to Jack Smyth ten days after leaving home, sixteen days after my eighteenth birthday. I wanted no part of the connection between my last name of Schysmitt and that of my family and their miserable hidden secret, a past they had no idea I knew of.
I had heard the whole story of how my father had killed a private who had served under him in the SS, late one night when my parents thought I was out of the house. The pair of them drunk and arguing, the arguing part was normal. The being drunk part not so much. The old bitch wanted something; I think it was a new car. She was threatening “Herr Wurst” or that was what she was calling him that night, this apparently my father’s true identity. My mother was threatening him with revealing his true identity if he did not purchase her the new vehicle. She just laid the whole story out that night, loud and clear as I sat silently at the top of the stairs, listening to it all.
The old lady got her new car, and Herr Wurst, now bitterer from the expense of the new car continued to be a prick. Not in a physical way, instead he found more joy in just treating me like shit. It was like all that propaganda Otto had swallowed as a Nazi, about their superiority over all others. Only to be humiliatingly defeated, by those they had been taught that were impure and inferior, he had been cheated of his place in the Military hierarchy. Seemingly safe from incarceration, but forever sentenced to the life of a common working man.
Clyde Drexler made no such alterations to his inherited surname, yet he had more reason than I to hold similar biter views toward his broken family. Perhaps it was this uniform hate of our upbringing as much as the sixes that set the foundation for our lifelong friendship. As young boys we would often joke that we were in fact orphans, brothers, but orphans.
We would both leave home leaving six days after turning eighteen. Clyde needed to escape the violence and drunkenness of his father. For me it was the arrogance and bitterness surrounding my upbringing which became more than I could stomach. We compensated for the families we had lost, by becoming family ourselves. Both Clyde and I looked out for each other, all the while combining our work towards common financial goals. In reality our friendship had become the only true family we had, the business partnership just evolved out of that.
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br /> To the town folk we perhaps appeared as an odd couple of chums, the pair of us coming from two families on opposite ends of the social structure. Visually the view of both of our residences could not have been any wider. While the Schysmitt’s home was well kept, all neat and tidy, the Drexler home was awash in garbage and rusting hulks of past projects that Clyde’s father Skip Drexler, had long ago abandoned.
Sitting on a large lot at the edge of town, the story and a half wood clap board’s paint was faded and peeled. A sickly mutt barked endlessly, racing circles around a stake in the ground on the west side of the house. The property was surrounded by the heaps of rusting cars and scrap metal that sat amongst piles of rubbish, all of which was over grown with weeds.
In fact, Skip had accumulated so much rubbish; he would have no idea that Clyde had pulled an old trailer into the back bush, behind the old wooden house. We both worked to camouflage the trailer, pulling it next to the cedars and thickets of thorn strewn shrubs. We then went about covering the trailer with some of the rubbish from around the yard, to hide its existence. We had used the old David Brown tractor that Clyde’s old man owned, to pull the trailer into the bush. It was a tractor that Skip had used to skid logs years ago, back when he had damn near destroyed the little tractor. The old bucket of bolts still started on the first attempt, despite the rough rusted and dented exterior of the old tractor.
This hidden trailer became our primary hangout for years. In time Clyde would spend all his nights away from his bed in the old farm house, choosing instead to sleep most nights in the trailer. Skip and Flo Drexler cared little about their vanishing little boy; they had the higher priority of consuming alcohol and drugs to contend with.
Acquiring and consuming whiskey had long been Skip’s hobby of choice, along the way he dragged his family into the squalor and misery that only a drunken fool can compose. Skip worked at one of the towns local garage’s on days when he was sober enough to work, which was typically three days a week. What three days he would choose to work? That would be anyone’s guess. A drunk and a fool, he was barely tolerated by local tavern patrons. They dismissed Skip’s ignorance and belligerence as a genuine lack of intelligence.