The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood

by Scott Semegran

  "Well, believe it or not, after Darren graduated from high school, he got a job with City Animal Services as a dog catcher. He'd drive around town in this van, picking up stray dogs and other animals that people called them about. You know, people would call about stray cats and strange birds and barking dogs and all. When they would call, Darren was the one Animal Services would send out to check it out."

  "I guess Animal Services didn't check any of Darren's references, huh?" They sure as hell didn't call any of his childhood friends, probably because he knew we would tell them what a twisted cocksucker he was. Darren was really sneaky like that. He was a lying cocksucker. Jason was really smoking it up, too. As soon as he'd finish a cigarette, he'd light up another one. It was driving me crazy. I really wanted to smoke one.

  "I guess not. He works for the city, you know. They don't check references. Anyway, someone down at Animal Services started to put two and two together and they realized that Darren was bringing back only half of the animals that they were getting calls for. It just wasn't adding up for them. So they had someone tail him to see what he was doing."

  "They hired a private eye to watch him?"

  "Something like that. It was in the newspaper and all. Anyway, they sent someone to tail him and he actually was at least going out to the locations and checking out the calls. But, in fact, he really was only bringing some of the animals back to Animal Services. The guy tailing him observed Darren taking the other animals to a different location."

  "Where was he taking them?" I had to ask this question to keep Jason focused. I could tell that his story could turn into a real heavy story and all. I didn't want to wait all night to hear what really happened to Darren. I was pretty tired from the flight, you know? Plus, Jason could blab and blab if you let him.

  "I'll get to that in a second." Jason lit another cigarette. Man, he was like a fucking chimney with those cigarettes. He was making it really difficult for me to resist them. "The guy tailing him followed him to an old abandoned warehouse where he watched Darren unload the dogs and cats that he wasn't taking back to Animal Services. He'd take them in the warehouse and lock them up in these cages that he brought from the shelter. He literally had hundreds of dogs and cats. The guy who tailed him just couldn't believe how many animals he had in there."

  "Didn't anyone notice all the barking and meowing from all those animals?" I asked. I really wanted a cigarette. They were calling to me like a goddamn Siren.

  "That's the thing, Darren would duct tape their mouths shut and muzzle them. No one could hear them at all. Plus, the warehouse was in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, the guy tailing him watched Darren feed this Pit Bull some dog food, only it wasn't just dog food. He was mixing gun powder with the dog food." I really wanted to smoke now. Jason was smoking like a madman. "And after the dog devoured his food, I guess the gun powder did something when it hit that poor dog's stomach. The dog started to go crazy. And Darren sat there laughing as the dog went crazy, barking and whining from the gun powder in his stomach. Well, I guess Darren didn't expect that dog to bust out of his cage but he did. The dog was so pissed off from the gun powder in his stomach that he busted that cage wide open and lunged for Darren's throat. He grabbed on with those Pit Bull lockjaws and wouldn't let go. Darren fell to the ground and that dog whipped him around by his neck. Pit Bulls are really strong, you know? They're not really big dogs and all but they are really strong."

  "So, what happened to Darren?" Jason was starting to get sidetracked. If I hadn't asked the question, he would have diverged and blabbed and blabbed about the goddamn lockjaws and how strong Pit Bulls were and all.

  "I'm getting there. Well, that dog whipped him around by his neck and kind of snapped it. And when Darren stopped struggling and all, that dog let go and just sat there. It sat there looking at Darren. Well, Darren couldn't move because his neck was kind of snapped and all. He just laid there on the ground."

  "Oh man, that's awful." I wanted to smoke a cigarette so fucking bad. It was really hard to resist.

  "Tell me about it."

  "So, then what happened?" I asked. I had to keep Jason on target, otherwise, he'd get sidetracked or something again. He could be really scatterbrained sometimes.

  "Well, this is where it gets really bizarre. The guy tailing him ran back to his car to make a call to Animal Services about what he just saw Darren doing and to request an ambulance, except that his cell phone wasn't charged. So he drove to a nearby convenience store to make the call. By the time he got back, most of the animals had gotten out of their cages somehow. And they were all around Darren, biting at him, peeing on him, yapping and hissing at him, taking turns getting back at him, I guess. They scattered when the detective guy came up. Darren died on the way to the hospital from internal bleeding and all. His mother was really torn up when she heard about it. She almost died from the shock. It was sad."

  "That's awful," I said.

  "Tell me about it. I told you it was bizarre. But I guess he got what was coming to him, being that he tortured all those animals and all. I just felt bad for his mother. She read about it in the paper. She hasn't been right since. She's kind of gone crazy, you know. When I saw her at the funeral, she said she had no idea just how troubled her son was. She knew a little, because of their pets and all, but she figured she just ignored how troubled he actually was and that he'd eventually grow out of it. I guess he never did." He crushed his cigarette into the ashtray. His pack was halfway empty. He was a smoking fool.

  We sat there for a while in silence under the clear Alabama sky. What do you say after hearing a story like that about someone you used to know? Not much, I tell you. Even though he was a sick bastard, he was my friend at one point in my life. It was weird knowing how he turned out and that he was gone. He really was a twisted bastard but he deserved what he got, I guess.

  "Tell you what, Simon," he said, getting up from his seat. "I'd like to stay out here and catch up but I have to get up for work early in the morning. I really don't have all night and I need to get to sleep. I'll leave you some blankets out so you can sleep on the couch. When I get up, we'll catch up some more over breakfast. How's that?"

  "No problem," I said. It really wasn't. I was feeling kind of tired anyway from the flight. And that story about Darren about wiped me out. I told you it would be a really heavy story. It's true. I followed Jason inside and he got some blankets and a pillow for me. I sat on the couch and took my shoes off. The couch was kind of smelly but I was too tired to care. Jason turned off most of the lights and sat on the couch with me.

  "In case you're interested, I'll leave some car keys on the kitchen counter, if you want to go for a drive or something. I don't want to spoil your trip and all just because I have to go to sleep."

  "I think I'll go to sleep too. I'm tired from the flight."

  "Well, the offer stands. And you don't have to drive the Chevette. You can drive my other car in the garage. It's OK with me." He got up and went to his room. He turned off the last light and shut the door.

  I laid down on the couch and thought about Darren. I thought about this time he and I camped in my backyard. I had this little pop-up tent and we camped out there under the stars. We ate smores and told ghost stories and laughed and laughed. It was a real shame how it all turned out with him. It was a real fucking shame.

  10.

  I was really curious by what Jason meant when he said my other car so I put my pants back on and went into the garage to check it out. When we were kids, Jason's dad had this beat-up 1967 Mustang in the garage and he used to always tell us about how he was going to restore it but he never had the time to do it. It was rundown like everything else and even though he used to always talk about it, he never did work on it like he said he wanted to, even when it seemed like he did have the time to do it. It just sat there in their garage, all beat-up and shit. But when I stepped in the garage, I discovered that he finally did find the time to do it after all. For the first time since I had seen it
back then, it looked like fucking brand new. It was the only thing in the house (as far as I could tell) that wasn't rundown.

  And his dad did a real job on it too. It was this bright, pearl turquoise color with white leather seats and shiny chrome everywhere. I walked around it and looked it over and it didn't have one dent or scratch on it. It looked like it had just rolled out of the goddamn factory or something. I mean, it was beautiful. And I was (for the first time since I walked in Jason's house) really amazed. It was like a little pristine oasis out there in the garage in the middle of all this crap in the rest of the house. The driver-side window was down so I popped my head in. Again, the interior was in immaculate shape. And just as I had remembered, it had a three on the floor. The only thing not original (again, as far as I could tell) was the stereo. A completely modern stereo was installed with new speakers mounted in the doors. That was OK considering that automobile makers in the sixties didn't appreciate the importance of a high quality sound system in their vehicles. I could hear the car keys calling to me inside and I knew that I had to drive it. So I ran back inside.

  I put a fresh, clean shirt on since Jason spilled my goddamn vanilla Coke on my other shirt, hopped in that beast of a car, and backed out of the garage. There was no need trying to be quiet about it since the Mustang rumbled like a goddamn monster. Jason had to have heard me, it was so loud. It's true. Plus, the garage door rattled and shook as the garage-door opener strained to pull it up the rails. I thought it was going to fall off the goddamn rails, it shook so much. I backed out of the garage past the turd-on-wheels Chevette and took off.

  The Mustang handled like a dream. It really did. The clutch was nice and tight and responsive and the engine roared like a monster. I was afraid I was going to wake up the whole goddamn neighborhood the way it roared. It even had air conditioning. You know, one of those big air conditioning units that look like small refrigerators. It was mounted on the floor behind the stick shift. It rumbled and gurgled like a rusty window unit at a cheap motel and spit water all over the place when I turned it on but it worked. That's all that mattered. I decided at that moment that I was going to check out some places I never had a chance to go to when I was a kid, being that I was a minor and all. Since it was late, that limited it to bars and clubs but I was OK with that. It must have been close to eleven o'clock. I kept the beast in second and hauled some serious ass past my old house and Darren Reedy's old house and Beth Myers' old house. I turned on the main boulevard outside the neighborhood and took a left towards town. Everything was within twelve to fifteen miles of Country Down Estates. Montgomery was a sprawling goddamn metropolis. It's true.

  I couldn't think of any reason why Jason would drive that turd-on-wheels Chevette over this beauty. I really couldn't. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and thought that maybe driving the beast would stir up recent memories of his parents' death; maybe driving it would remind him of his father and how much he loved this car and all. But that didn't seem (to me, at least) to be a valid reason to subject the entire town to the sight and sound of the turd mobile. I mean, it was a goddamn eye sore. And the smell that poor-excuse-for-a-car emitted was horrendous. It smelled like the farts I get after I drink milk. I'm lactose-intolerant, if I didn't tell you before, and drinking milk gives me the worst gas. It's true. That's what that Chevette's exhaust smelled like, my milk-gas. And who would want to drive around with that? But Jason's family was never into looks and class and all. They liked everything rundown. Maybe driving something that wasn't rundown made him feel uncomfortable. And if that was the case, that would be a real goddamn shame. It really would.

  Being that I had been away from Montgomery for so long, nothing looked the same to me. I mean, I recognized the main street and some of the businesses and buildings but it also looked quite different too. That happens, you know, when you move away from a place; it changes without your knowing, whether you want it to or not. Montgomery was trying really hard to be a goddamn modern mega-metropolis. It allowed the Home Depots and McDonald's and Starbucks and strip malls and fast food restaurants and convenience stores to invade its city limits. And in a way, that was comforting because there was now a level of familiarity to it that made things simple for a visitor like myself. I mean, the level of unexpected disappointment was lowered because of these conveniences. A goddamn cappuccino at Starbucks here would probably taste pretty close to a goddamn cappuccino from a Starbucks in Austin. But I didn't want that really. If I wanted a cappuccino that tasted like the ones in Austin, then I would have stayed in Austin. It's true. Why travel all that distance to get the same thing you would get at home? It cracks me up when I hear friends of mine say that when they went to Paris, they ate at McDonald's. Why the fuck would you want to do that? Is a French McDonald's better than a plain old American one? I don't think so.

  Anyway, I was looking for a place called Dan's Watering Hole. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the sign this place had in front. The place looked like an old saloon, what, with the wood façade and the post for tying up your horse and the old barrels and the swinging door. But the thing I remembered most was the sign. The sign had a picture of a cowboy standing next to his horse in front of a barrel filled with some brown water. The goddamn horse looked drunk off his ass with his criss-crossed eyes with the x's in the middle and his sagging, drooling tongue hanging from his mouth. I was completely fascinated with that goddamn sign. Whenever my parents would drive by, I would always ask them why the cowboy would take his horse to a barrel that was obviously filled with alcohol. They never answered my question and I think that fed my curious imagination with plenty of bizarre scenarios. Maybe the cowboy thought it was funny to see his horse sitting there drunk and drooling. Or maybe that was all they had to drink being that they lived in a desert and water was scarce and all (duh). Or maybe the horse was my Uncle Sherman reincarnated as the drunk horse, being that he was a pretty mean alcoholic. My twelve year old mind just couldn't figure it out. Now that I'm older, I think it's funny that I thought any of those things were reasonable explanations for the horse being the way he was in that sign. I had a fervent imagination. It's true. But now that I was older, I wanted to check it out for what it really was: a hole-in-the-wall, serving cheap beer to the locals with a stupid cartoon for a sign. I really needed a drink anyway after that story Jason told me about what happened to Darren Reedy. It was a heavy story like I knew it would be and it really brought me down.

  But unfortunately, Dan's Watering Hole was nowhere to be found. No evidence of that old saloon or the sign with the drunk horse on it was anywhere on the main boulevard. And I drove up and down a few times. I pulled the beast over to an old convenience store that I remembered from my childhood: Tyrone's BGP Convenient Store. The BGP apparently stood for Beer, Gas, and Peanuts, or at least that's what old Tyrone used to tell me when Jason and I would ride our bikes down to his store for ice cream sandwiches and sodas after school. And I always got a kick out of the fact that he used convenient instead of convenience on the store sign. That's what it said, it's true. Old Tyrone was really nice to us, especially considering that we were just two white kids from the nice, white neighborhood up the street. He didn't have to be nice to us but he was. I'll always remember his kind smile. I remembered thinking that I would hit the ceiling if he was still there. He would have to be old as hell to still be there. He was old as hell when I was kid. I parked the car and went inside.

  It smelled just like I remembered, what, with that sweet candy smell and, of course, the smell of fresh, buttered popcorn. No matter what time of the day you went in, it always smelled like fresh popcorn inside. And even though it was rundown inside and out, it never smelled musty or mildewy like you would expect. It just looked kind of musty and mildewy, like the rest of Montgomery. But the store was laid out the same. The two middle aisles were filled with all kinds of candy from front to back. And the comic book rack was still there on the side by the window. I spent long hours there reading issues of Spiderman wh
ile I ate my candy and ice cream. Man, did that bring back memories. And there it was, past eleven o'clock and it still smelled like fresh popcorn inside. I grabbed a beer from the cooler and went to the counter. I wanted a small bag of popcorn and directions to Dan's Watering Hole. But old Tyrone was nowhere to be found. In fact, there wasn't anybody in there except for me. The counter was unmanned and the store was unpopulated. There was a small sign with a bell on the counter. The sign said: Ring the bell for service. So I did.

  Pretty quick, old Tyrone came from a back door and hopped behind the counter. He didn't look as old as I thought he would. In fact, he looked pretty goddamn good. Well, you know what they say? Black people always age better than white people, at least in the looks department. He looked pretty goddamn good for his age, what with the pitch black hair and no wrinkles and all his white teeth. I was pretty sure he wouldn't remember who I was. I mean, it's not like we were friends and all. He was probably more a fixture of my memories than I was of his. But he plopped on his stool just like he used to and gave me a look of indifference and kindness simultaneously. He was chomping on a smashed up cigar, just like he used to. And he was wearing the same kind of Dickies overalls. Back then, he'd chew those cigars until they disintegrated.