by R. P. Lester
It was almost 2 AM by the time Jay had spoken to Dude. I told Raptious the deal and left her in our closet with the spider’s web of hangers. We got in Jay’s new Caddy and set off. Because we were geeked out of our minds, we followed the speed limits and took the back roads to 116. We didn’t get to Dude’s ramshackle lean-to until 2:45.
***
He greeted us at the screen door with no shirt, ripped jeans, and greasy waves of blonde, unwashed hair that curled at the tips. He invited us in with a jerk of his head. The trashy living room was filled with overflowing ashtrays, scattered newspapers, Nixon-era furniture and 90s-era porn on the twenty-two inch television. He made no bones regarding the manufactured screams of pleasure blaring from the staticky speakers. Foregoing a “Hello,” he immediately went into a dissertation about how he’d been up for a week. It smelled like his last shower coincided with his first line.
His jerkwater wife had joined Dude in his binge. Everybody called her Swizzlestick. To this day I don’t know her real name. She was skin and bones and as backwoods as they come. Her oily red hair clumped together in ropes of dreadlocks as she buzzed about like a blind mosquito. Through her dirty sheer nightgown, we could see her rib cage spread under almost-A-cup breasts. She was in the kitchen making their twelfth pot of coffee in two days. She played hostess through a lisp and nine teeth in her mouth, offering me and Jay a taste of her concoction. I felt confident in speaking for the both of us.
“Y’all wanna cup o’ the good thtuff?”
“Nah. We’re okay.”
“Y’all thure? It’th high-po’ered thit! I’been puttin’ new groundth over the old ‘unsth to give it a kick!”
“Uh, no thanks, Swizzle. We’ve gotta be getting on pretty soon. It’s late and the laws are out there. You know how it is.”
“Awlright then. Thuit yerthelf!”
Jay knew Dude better than I did. They went to a back part of the house to take care of business, leaving me trapped with Swizzlestick for a few minutes. She asked me if I wanted to bump a line off her tits. I gagged gave a polite “No,” telling her I felt funny about seeing someone else’s wife topless. The lie was so convincing that I almost bought it myself. Mercifully, Jay and Dude emerged from the back room a couple of seconds later.
Dude said our new eightball was from a fresh batch. Me and Jay eyed each other expectantly. We couldn’t wait to get back to my place and try it out. Jay put the baggie next to his gas cap before flipping the ignition.
116 wasn’t so bad once you neared Highway 28. There were plenty of byways paved with concrete on that end. You could shake a cop with no problem if you knew where you were going. Once you made it to the intersection, you took a right and rode it straight into the city. Barring a chase, you were home free.
Unless you flicked a cigarette out the window in front of a parish deputy like I did.
***
The law dog sprang into view like Houdini after a disappearing act. I didn’t even see where he’d come from. One minute we’re riding on the blacktop listening to Dr. Dre’s opus The Chronic, chainsmoking as speed freaks do and looking forward to inhaling our new bag. The next thing I know, blue and whites are filling our vision.
I was surprised at Jay’s reaction. He didn’t bitch or cuss, but if facial expressions could speak, his would’ve said, “If we get outta this, I’m gonna knock the living shit outta you.....”
There was no running. Jay’s Caddy was a steamship; the deputy’s car was a Blackhawk. The adrenaline surged and Jay turned onto the first gravel road in sight. The speed was next to the fuel cap. Unless a flicker of intelligence went off inside that Cro-Magnon cranium of his, the deputy wouldn’t think to check there. I wasn’t worried and neither was Jay. Until the deputy got out of his cruiser.
Jay looked in the rearview mirror. Droplets immediately appeared on his forehead. Within seconds the man was dripping like O. J. at a Women’s Lib rally. The winter gusts were blowing hard and we both had our windows down. Even with the most potent speed known to man, there was no reason for him to be sweating like a pig.
“Oh.....FUCK!”
“What, Jay?! What?! What?! What?!”
Never diverging his eyes from the driver’s side mirror, “You remember Mrs. Suckston from high school?”
“You mean the teacher who was busted sucking off the principal in the employee lounge? Yeah. What the hell made you think of her now?”
The sound of the deputy’s footsteps crunching gravel became louder as he approached the vehicle. Jay’s words came in a clipped cadence. “That’s her son, dude. And he hates my ass!”
“You mean that’s Harley Suckston, Jay?”
“Yep! You remember how me and Mrs. Suckston started messing around our senior year?”
Oh my God Christ Almighty Heaven help us Jesus please no.
“Yes, Jay. I do. What does that have to do with us at this very moment, pray tell? Did something happen that I don’t know about? Please, enlighten me before he gets to this car.”
“You remember when I left your house on Senior Skip Day? I said I was going home? I went to her place instead. She’d called in sick so we could hang out. Harley was in ninth grade but he’d skipped, too. He walked in when I was balls deep in his mom’s ass and almost shot me with his father’s pistol from the closet. She stopped him but-”
***
“How y’all doin’? Did y’all mean to throw that cigarette out back there? Ya know that litterin’s against the law, don’t ya?”
Jay silently stared at an invisible focal point in the woods. A disquiet of astronomical proportions whisked through the Caddy.
“Hello! Is everything okay there?”
Jay cleared his throat, never facing Harley. “Yes, sir. Everything’s fine.” He turned to look at me with angry eyes. ”My friend’s cigarette fell out on accident. He went to flick the ash but the wind caught it. Didn’t it, Innis?”
I didn’t leave Mrs. Suckston’s colon awash in semen so I had no problem leaning over to look at him. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that. The wind ripped it out my hands before I knew what happened. That Nor’easter is damn fearful out here. Won’t happen again, Officer.”
Harley leaned on his elbow against the red door of the Caddy. He eyeballed Jay momentarily. “Y’all better let me see yer license, registration, and proof of insurance.”
Knowing that cops are going to be suspicious of two heavily tattooed men with shaved heads riding on a country road in the wee hours of the morning, Jay moved cautiously. He told Harley he had to reach into his back left pocket for his wallet. Said he had to retrieve his insurance card from the glovebox. The deputy said “Sure” and allowed him to get his credentials. It was dark enough to where he didn’t see Jay’s Taurus 9mm under the envelope. Once Jay had the paperwork, Harley snatched it from his hand and started walking to his cruiser to run the information. When he got to the trunk, he doubled back to Jay’s window, his pudgy face twisted into a question mark—like when a strange woman says she knows you and you’re trying to remember her name and whether or not you’ve tossed her salad.
“S’cuse me, sir, but don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“No, sir. I don’t think so. I look like a lotta people, you know.” If it’s possible to hear a human being’s sphincter tighten hard enough to break glass, I heard it.
Harley snorted and walked to his cruiser.
I tried to assuage any anxiety. “Dude, relax, man. He probably doesn’t even remember you. You look totally different! Back then you were clean-shaven with long hair. Now it’s the exact opposite—your face looks like a Chia Pet and you’re bald. We’re good.”
“Yeah, Innis, but you don’t forget walking in on someone buttfucking your mother. Especially when it’s someone you go to school with. He went absolutely nuts!”
“Jay, chill. He’s gonna bitch at me for dumping the cigarette. That’s all. Probably give me a ticket for littering and tell us to get on home.”
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
***
We both looked in respective mirrors when he screamed. Harley leaned in his patrol car. His fluttering blue and whites vanished in the dark, but he’d left his headlights on. Then we watched with horror as six feet, five inches of ruthlessness pulverized the gravel on the way back to the Caddy.
Harley swung the door open on Jay’s side. “Y’all get outta that got’damn car! Now!”
We both looked at each other, fearing the worst. I opened my door and got out. Harley didn’t wait for Jay to move. He grabbed him by his wrist and yanked him onto the hard gravel road with all his might. When Jay got up, he looked down at his palms. There were deep cuts already seeping blood. At that moment, I realized that no matter what Harley did or didn’t find, he wasn’t planning on taking us to a nice, safe jail cell.
“Get yer fuckin’ ass around here, boy!” Against all principles, I did what the cop told me to do. Jay and I both stood next to his Caddy with our backs to the driver’s side.
Harley jabbed his finger in Jay’s chest. “I knew I knew you from somewhere, ya sneaky little shit! We went to high school together! Yer the one who fucked my mama!”
“Hey, Harley, look. I-” The deputy bitch slapped him so hard that Jay doubled over at the waist. When he straightened up, blood trickled from the corner of his lip to fall on his black t-shirt.
“You shut yer got’damn mouth when yer talkin’ to me! Ya hear me?!”
Even in the face of adversity, Jay held true. “Look, Harley. You’ve got it all wrong, man. I wasn’t the only one. A lotta people fucked your mother. It wasn’t like-”
Harley took out his baton. He positioned himself like he was swinging a bat in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded and cracked Jay across his kneecaps as hard as I’ve ever seen a man swing. If his patellas had been white balls with red stitching, Harley would’ve knocked them out the park. My friend screamed bloody murder and fell on his back in a world of suffering.
I yelled at the top of my lungs but never moved. “What the hell, man?! You can’t do that! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Harley grabbed his Glock and aimed it at me. My arms shot to the stars to show my empty hands.
“Calm down, man! Be cool!”
“Did you fuck my mama, too, ya tattooed freak show?!”
“Hell no!”
“Then I don’t want any sass, ya fuckin’ hippie! This motherfucker’s had this comin’ for a long time and I aim to do it right! Now keep yer got’damn mouth shut!” (He lost me. I’ve never known the first hippie who resembled a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.)
Jay was on his right side, coughing and spitting blood from the backhand. He brought his knees to his chest and whimpered from the splitting in his legs.
Jay was one tough cookie, good people. He and I had been involved in many a tussle with many drunken reprobates at various bars, and I’d only seen him go down once. I’d even seen him fight five guys—shoeless—and come out on top. The only time I’d ever heard the man cry was during the scene in The Neverending Story when Atreyu’s horse drowned in that swamp. From the way he curled, I knew he was in immeasurable pain.
Cops the world over have a bloated self-importance that supercedes the most contemptuous politician. That’s part of why they choose to be cops. In my experience, they tend to hold themselves to an unachievable level of greatness. They also want the people they unnerve serve to hold them to this nobility, as well. I thought of a mindfuck that maybe Harley hadn’t considered.
With my hands still in the air, “Hey, man, what do you think people are gonna say when they see the video from your dashcam? You really want everybody knowing this is how the parish acts on a traffic stop? And what the hell you gonna tell your dispatcher when they ask you about your status?”
He holstered his heater. “Don’t make much of a damn to me what they think, son. Ain’t nobody gonna know. Told the dispatcher I cancelled the call.” He ogled me like a pervert on a playground. “And the camera ain’t on.”
***
It was 3:15 in the morning. On that end of 116, the houses were few and far between. We’d turned onto a gravel road that stymied at an old cemetery. Nobody lived down there so the threat of passing traffic was nominal. There were no houses for a few miles, and no one was coming to help. If he so desired, Harley could’ve shot us, zipped us up in the cadaver bags from the trunk of his cruiser, and said he’d found the Caddy abandoned on the side of the road. The parish we were in let their deputies take the cars home after work; covering us with loose dirt in a shallow grave could be handled after his shift. Nobody would’ve cared about two druggies disappearing from existence (if you think none of this is possible, you don’t know the cops in Louisiana.)
For the first time since we got pulled over, I was seriously concerned for our lives.
Throughout this clear-cut abuse of power, I never forgot about the eightball of glass mere feet from our altercation.
***
Harley reached down and grabbed Jay by the front of his shirt. Stood him up straight. He was groggy and weaving. Without warning, he cocked back his right hand and punched Jay in the mouth so hard he flew back and hit the Caddy. The driver’s side door had remained open and the nape of his neck met the edge of the car’s frame to give a worrisome crack! as his head whipped back and smacked the roof. My defenseless friend shriveled to the ground. He coughed two times and spit out three teeth in the rocky roadway. He didn’t move.
I was speechless, which is a rare thing for me. The dirty deputy glowered at me. Maybe he’d expected benediction for his unlawful show of “public safety.” But friend or no friend, I wasn’t interested in becoming an alligator’s full belly in some swamp of the Deep South.
Content with having humiliated Jay for having his way with his mother all those years ago, Harley’s voice held a sense of placidness when he spoke.
“Do you have a license?”
I resisted the urge to wage obscenity. “Yeah. I do.”
“Lemme see it.”
I gave him my license. He scanned it quickly, making sure it was current. That’s all he could do really, since he’d told his dispatcher he was available. He didn’t recognize my name from high school, which almost made me break into song. Harley handed it back to me and looked down at Jay’s unmoving form on the ground.
“Pick this motherfucker up. Y’all get outta here.” He spoke to my soul with his next statement: “If I catch y’all out here again, I swear to God, I’ll kill both of you. Ya understand, boy?” I had no doubt.
I agreed to his one-sided terms and heaved Jay off the ground by myself. He was able to walk a little, but the force of Harley’s punch had left him bewildered. I had to throw one of his arms over my shoulders to get him to the passenger seat. Once he was safely belted in, I walked around to the driver’s side.
This was all my fault. I felt like the shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe. This had all happened because of a cigarette. If I hadn’t been so careless with my Marlboro, we wouldn’t have gotten pulled over and Jay wouldn’t need dental work. I sensed major apologies in my future.
One of my favorite proverbs is “An eye for an eye.” A great chunk of my belief system is rooted in it. I wanted revenge. I needed vindication for my stupefied friend lying in the car. But Harley was a parish deputy. There was a uniformed squadron of men and women standing behind him ready to support his every move. What the hell was I going to do, go to war with a cop? No way. But, goddammit, I could do the next best thing.
As Harley walked back to his cruiser, I called after him. With his headlights, I could see the conniption on his face when he turned around.
Fuck that abusive prick.
“Hey, man, don’t worry about this. Whatever happened with Jay and your mother was a long time ago. And if you’re thinking we’re gonna report anything, don’t fret. We don’t want any more problems than you do. The public needs people like you out here, Harley, and we wouldn’t want to strip the commonwealth of such an upstanding e
xample of protection. We know that a career in law enforcement can make the sanest man snap. After all, it’s widely known that some of you just
Forget
About
Goodness
Sometimes.
“You just need to take up a hobby and vent your inner hostility. That’s all it is. Have a good life, Harley.”
I got in the car, made a Y-turn, and beamed a smile when we passed. He was scratching his head, looking at me like I’d recited the theory of relativity in Latin. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him petrified to the ground, his fading face turned crimson from the taillights.
As far as I know, Harley Suckston is still standing in the middle of that lonesome gravel road wondering what in the hell just happened.
***
Thank God, the rest of our trip was uneventful.
We’d just gotten back to the city limits when Jay started coming around. As I pulled his car into my driveway, I thought about what could’ve gone wrong: not only could we have been sitting in a jail cell for possession of crystal meth, but—worst case scenario—we very well could’ve been speaking with Saint Peter at the Gates trying to talk our way into Heaven and feign repentance for all the shit we’d done. Between the two of us, we would’ve been there for a while trying to sell him on the worthiness of our souls.
I turned off the ignition. “Hey, dude. You alive?”
He was reclined on the passenger side gazing through the window. Blood dripped from his mouth when he spoke.
“Yeah. I’m alright. I can’t believe that dirty cockthucker knocked out three of my teeth, man.”
“I’ve got ‘em, dude. Picked ‘em up before we left. You’ll probably have to get partials, but they’re here if the dentist needs ‘em.”
“Thankth, Innith.”
“No sweat. What you wanna do? You gonna come inside or what?”
“Nah. I’m gonna go home and thmoke the largetht joint I’ve ever had. Keep the thpeed. I don’t even wanna thee it.”