THE WAYNIE CHRONICLES
by Jaye DeKambale
This is kind of a shitty story. You will probably see what I’m talkin about as you go along.
Me and Richie was standing in
the shade of the Mule Barn, an old livestock barn at the edge of town behind
“The Show", see, which is what we called our local movie theater. Well, actually, we was more like hiding,
because John Albert was standing in front of The Show just dying to kick some
serious ass and we knew that Richie would draw him
like a magnet, with his red hair and all.
"F-F-Frederick, tell me if you think he's
coming" said Richie, trying to hide the fact
that he was sort of crying. "You
know he made me eat mule dookey last
Saturday". I digested this thought
for a few seconds, then said (after looking around to
make sure old John Albert wasn’t around) "Well I ain't
scared of that little son-of-a-bitch. I might make that little son-of-a-bitch
eat mule dookey if he messes with me much. Sincerely. And besides that, don't call me Frederick".(I like to be called Fred like my TV hero Fred Flintstone,
not Freddie and certainly not Frederick).
Suddenly John Albert stepped around the corner with a
steaming pile of an unidentified brown material heaped on a folded newspaper,
and an instant later I smelled a disgusting odor which smelled suspiciously
like mule dookey, fresh squeezed. With a kind of insane look in his good eye, he
said "O.K.,
Now, I have to admit that I was a little afraid of
old John Albert too, but Richie was literally
terrified of him and was fighting to not make fudge brownies in his new
Wranglers. He won that battle but lost
another as he suddenly cut a fart which sounded like someone ripping an old bedsheet in half.
The fart was so incredibly sudden and loud (a sure winner in anybody’s
Fart Contest) that it made me almost jump out of my skin, and unfortunately
caused me to jar old John Albert's elbow and knock some of that mule dookey onto his T shirt.
This did not please John Albert.
He grabbed
...well, maybe I better start at the beginning and
kind of explain how I got into all this shit in the first place.
You see, I had this baby sitter named Miss Harbin,
who kept me and my brothers during the day when Mama worked at the Blue
Bell. She always brought her mean little
turd of a boy with her, and his name was Waynie. Waynie was a big mama’s boy, and he’d rat you out in a second. Well, anyway, Miss Harbin, she hated my guts
right off and I wouldn't have pissed on her if she was on fire,
nor that goddam Waynie
either.
The first day her and Waynie
come to our house, it was all pretty much innocent to begin with. Mama called me and my brothers together and
said “Boys, this here is Miss Harbin and her boy, and they will be staying with
you during the day while I work”. Miss
Harbin immediately began spreading herself around, saying stuff like “Why, what
a beautiful floral arrangement this is” and “I just love the fabric on this
couch”, when we all knew that she was full of shit, cause the floral
arrangement was just some nigger navels my dumb-ass brother Randall had pulled
up out of the ditch in front of the house and stuck in a fruit jar, and the
couch was about a hundred years old and covered with plastic. She nelt down and
got right in our faces and said “Boys, I’d like you to meet my boy Waynie.” Now, I
guarantee that you didn’t want Miss Harbin in your face cause she was uglier
than a run-over bulldog and her breath smelt like a hogs
ass that had been in the corn all day.
Then she said “Waynie,
please say hello to Freddie and his brothers” and turned around and started
piling some more bullshit on Mama. Waynie stuck out his hand like he wanted to shake mine, but
when I reached out to shake his, he grabbed my hand
and tickled the inside of my palm with his middle finger. I jerked my hand away, rubbing in on my pants
leg, and said “Why you little bas...” but about that time Miss Hardin turned
around and grabbed Waynie’s hand, eyeballed me like I was a dead bloated chipmunk and led him out of the room to show him
around the house. As he was leaving,
though, he gave me the old bird behind his back so his mama couldn’t see. I began to realize at that time that me and old Waynie was gonna have a personality conflict. Anyway, that was the beginning of poor
relations between me and Waynie and his mama.
After that, Waynie would
often do shit like break a glass on purpose or make some kind of fuckin mess, like spilling chocolate milk on the furniture,
then call Miss Harbin and tell her I done it.
I ain’t saying, though, that all the trouble
came from just Waynie, cause
his mother was just as bad or worse, and besides that she was a goddam thief. She
always kept a big old green hickory switch on the kitchen table, and I don’t
believe a day went by that she didn’t tear my ass up with it two or three
times, mostly when I’d catch her stealing some little thing of Mama’s or ours
or every time Waynie told on me about something, true
or not. She never did whoop Waynie. Anyway, she
always kind of shitted me around all the time, and what I'm about to tell you
about is just one example.
Chapter 1: Waynie and the Sugar Buscuits
We didn't have much money in those days so what Mama
would do, she would make sugar biscuits for us- you know, you take the
left-over biscuits from breakfast and you put sugar in the
son-of-a-bitches. Well, me and my two
brothers, R.D. and Randall, was standing in the kitchen about to eat us some
sugar biscuits when who walks in the door but Miss Harbin and that goddam Waynie. About that time I started eyeballin’
them sugar biscuits and noticed that there was only 3
of them.
Miss Hardin immediately walked up to the sugar
biscuits and grabbed them up, and said "Well lets see- we've only got
1-2-3 sugar biscuits and we've got 1-2-3-4 boys, so R.D., here's you one, and
Randall, here's you one and ... Waynie, here's you
one!” and she give that little fucker my sugar biscuit. Well, I knew there wasn't no use in arguing
with that ignorant bitch, so I decided to bide my time and maybe get my revenge
at a later date. My revenge came sooner
than later, however, because Waynie only took about 2
bites of that sugar biscuit and then set it on the back of the couch and announced
that he would eat the rest of it later.
I knew that he did this just to piss me off.
What I done was, I snuck outside and waited for Bitsey, my dog, to take a shit as I knew she would since
Daddy had just give her some worm medicine the night before. Before long she
produced an admirable amount of wormy shit for such a little dog. I scooped up about a tablespoon or two full
of it (don't worry, I didn't use the good spoons, only that old one Granmaw always uses) and snuck back inside. I crawled behind the couch, grabbed the
biscuit off the back of the couch and loaded that son-of-a-bitch up. Then I put it back where Waynie
had left it.
Before long Waynie got up
and stretched and decided he'd eat the rest of that biscuit, so he picked it up
and took a big old bite. He was about
halfway into his next bite when he started hollerin
and spitting and directly started to gag and ran for his mama, dribblin brownish puke as he went. I knew this could spell trouble so I grabbed
the biscuit off the floor and ran outside and stuffed it up the tailpipe of
that piece-of-shit rusted out old Ford Miss Harbin drove. Then I ran back
inside and set down and tried to look casual when Miss Harbin came raisin hell in to investigate, but she couldn't prove nuthin on me, not that time.
Chapter 2:
Miss Harbin and the Flyin Jenny
Me and Miss Harbin had what you might call a cold war
for the next few days. That Friday
afternoon when Mama came home Miss Harbin looked at me and said "I'll see
you next Monday". Now this might
sound innocent coming from anyone else except that wild bitch, so I knew I
better be on my toes.
The weekend ended sooner than I hoped it would, then
it was Monday and Miss Harbin came, with that little shit Waynie. As Mama was leaving to go to the Blue Bell,
she told Miss Harbin "Now don't you have them boys out in that old car of
yours", so as soon as Mama left Miss Harbin said "Boys git in the car, were goin to the
country". So we loaded up in the stinkin matted-up back seat of that piece of shit old Ford
of hers and headed out.
We rode for awhile till we got to where we was
heading, which was an old run-down tin-roofed farm house where shithead Waynie said they lived.
I wasn't suprised, what with the dead possum layin on the porch and all. There was several kind of mean
looking dirty-ass kids hangin around which I assumed
was Waynie's brothers and sisters. One of the girls was real short and wide but
looked kind of old in the face, and her name was Marsheila. Miss Harbin said "
As soon as I got over to her, however, she picked up
one of those big old rough pieces of rope like you tow someone's piece of dogshit Ford with and hit me in the eyeball with the end
that had the knot in it. As soon as I
got back partial vision I figured out that she was some kind of re-tard.
Well, we kind of assed around for awhile and sort of
made friends, then she said "jumajumajuma"
which in re-tard talk meant "lets go down in the
woods and find the rest of the kids". As you may know, anything beats
playing alone with a re-tard so I followed her down
into the woods.
We had been walking for a few minutes when I thought
I heard voices, which got gradually louder.
We rounded a bend and I saw a sight I had never seen before. What it was, was a Flyin Jenny. How you make a Flyin
Jenny is you cut off a pine tree about 4 feet from the ground, then you get a
long plank, bore a hole in the center of it and stick a spike or big nail through
the hole and drive it into the cut-off tree, so when you get it together it
looks like a see-saw, only it don't go up and down, it goes around and around.
Well, them kids had a rider
on each end of the plank and was pushing the plank around like a merry-go-round. I stood there for awhile by Marsheila and watched them, and it got to looking kind of
fun. Suddenly Marsheila said "Let the fat boy
ride". Now this kind of surprised me, her talking human and all. Then one of the older boys walked up who looked
a whole lot like Marsheila, that is, short and mean
looking with a G.I. haircut that looked like it was cut by his uncle in the
Navy.
The boy said "My name's John Albert. Get your
fat ass up there". I climbed on up
on one end and they added two other kids on the other end for ballast. Then
about 15 kids started pushing the Flyin Jenny while
old John Albert and Marsheila stood back with these
mean little grins on their faces and watched.
It started off slow and kind of fun, but soon them kids got up a head of
steam until I started having trouble holding on, and besides that I was getting
sick. Now you didn’t have to hit me in
the ass with a two-by-four to make me realize that ol
Miss Harbin had done set me up.
Every time I would make a round and get close to John
Albert he would spit, and after awhile he got to where he could lead me perfect
with it. On my 65th round or so I
couldn't keep it down any longer, and this time I led John Albert perfect with
it when I let go an amazing stream of lumpy puke which hit John Albert square
in the face. On my next round I lost my
hold and got slung off the Flyin Jenny and slammed
into old John Albert like a ton of flying whaleshit.
I got up and saw old John Albert laying
on the ground saying something that sounded kinda
like "jumajumajuma". Then I made like cowshit
and hit the trail, and covered a whole lot of ground in a hurry for a fat
kid.
Chapter 3: Me
and Richie
It was a hot, dusty summer that year, maybe the
longest summer I can ever remember.
Mostly all I did was hang out with my best buddy, Richie
Fortenberry. Richie was a skinny, knob-kneed little guy with bright red,
raggedy hair and a long nose which he rubbed when he got nervous. And he was nervous quite often. I was kind of the opposite of him-short,
chubby and freckle-faced, with a flattop haircut, the kind where they buzz a
bald spot in the center of the top of your head and leave a few sprigs of hair
which stick up in the front, aided by a gob of Butch Wax, some of which always
rubbed off on your forehead and made it greasy.
We wore white T-shirts and jeans with the cuffs rolled up in a 3-inch
cuff, like most of the
other kids. Shorts were not allowed-
only sissys wore them.
Richie was a very good-natured and friendly kid who just
about anybody would like, but he had an older brother named Jasper who was
nothing but bad news. Jasper ran around
with a pretty nasty crew, and we avoided them every chance we got. On that particular Tuesday we had walked to
the local junkyard where we normally did any of a thousand things boys did for
fun in those days, such as bust out windshields out of old cars, smoke
cigarettes, catch frogs, kill snakes, etc.
We had just about succeeded in prying the headlight
out of an old Chevy pickup as we took turns smoking a cigarette which Richie had stold off his Daddy
when we heard voices which we recognized as Jasper’s and some of his
buddies. We beat it around behind the
truck and hid, but commandeered a good peephole which allowed us to view the
proceedings.
With Jasper came Barney McGhee, a local bully with
greasy black hair and a fat, pimply face who smelled like soured
buttermilk. Barney looked just like his
dad, Elmer, who was also an ugly son-of-a-bitch. Alongside Barney was Frankie Finesdale, a scabby-looking wirey
little bastard who quit school the second week of his Junior year and liked to
kill cats. And last but not least was Turdbelly Tony Brown, the meanest 17 year old in the ninth
grade. Only his best friends called him Turdbelly to his face, and that was if he was not
around. Besides, he didn’t have no friends.
Barney was in the middle of one of his lies about his
latest sexual conquest (probably one of Frankie’s dead cats, I thought to
myself), and he was just getting to the part where she was begging him for more
when Turdbelly stopped and pointed to the
non-filtered Camel butt which me and Richie didn’t
put out good and said “Shuddup, somebody’s just been
here - see that butt smokin”? They all kind of got quiet and inspected the
butt and peered around the junkyard but didn’t see me and Richie.
“You recon they’re gone now? “
asked Barney. Frankie kind of
snickered at that ignorant-ass remark and this pissed Barney off. “Who you laughin
at, scarecrow” he said in his billy-joe-bad-ass voice
and took a step toward Frankie like he was gonna whip
his ass or something. Quicker that you
could say “It fuckin sure is fuckin
hot” Frankie whipped out a 7-inch switchblade from the back pocket of his
jeans, stuck it up the sleeve of Barney’s T-shirt and ripped the sleeve wide
open all the way to Barney’s shoulder.
Barney jumped
back pale as a ghost and said “Shit, Frankie, I was just bull-shittin you”.
Frankie, who never had too much to say, said “Don”t
ever call me scarecrow, tubass”, which was a very
long speech for him. You could tell that
this kind of hurt Barney’s feelings and he was about to make some kind of
intelligent yet sensitive remark when Turdbelly, who
was not impressed by all this extracurricular activity, said “You guys shut the
fuck up and listen”. An then he outlined
a plan which we heard snatches of, but the gist of which was that on Saturday
night them four was going to sneak into the drive-in theater through the trees,
put on masks and steal the money from the cash register in the snack bar right
during the middle of Bingo.
At this point Jasper started bragging about that time
he won that fruit-juice dispenser during Bingo- real Tupperware, he said- when Turdbelly said “Shut the fuck up” and looked around at the
group and said “Is any of yall chickenshit”?,
and gave everybody the old eyeball.
Barney looked kind of scared and sick and so did Jasper, but Frankie looked like somebody had just told him to pass the goddam salt. I don’t
guess Frankie gave much of a shit about anything long as you didn’t fuck up and
call him scarecrow or something.
Anyway, they all agreed to this plan and then
left. After they were safely out of
sight, me and Richie came out from our hiding place
and talked about what we had just heard.
After a few minutes Richie said “Well, what do
you think we ought to do about it”? “Not
a goddam thing” I said. “Do you wanna die
young?” You see, Richie
had been a Cub Scout ever since he was seven and took stuff such as this very
seriously- he thought that people ought to do the right thing and all. I had been a Scout too, but had kind of a
rough transition from Wolf
to Bear so finally I had just said fuck it. Anyway, I wasn’t no
hero and sure as hell didn’t want to start now at this late date.
But Richie could not let
this go. Since I was the brains of the
outfit he wanted me to come up with some kind of scheme to mess up Turdbelly and the boys’ plan. He kept on and on and finally I give in just
to shut him up. So we talked most of the
walk home and finally came up with a couple of ideas but I secretly kind of figured to be sick
and missing in action when all this shit
was supposed to happen.
Chapter 4: Miss Harbin and the Chocolate Cake
The next day was Wednesday, and was probably my least
favorite day of the week, because it was what Miss Harbin called “Dress-Up
Day”. This was the day of the week that
she and that goddam Waynie
wore their church clothes to our house, because as soon as they left on
Wednesday afternoons they beat it to their church for Wednesday night church
meeting.
On that particular day Waynie
was dressed up all in white- white shirt, white pants, white belt, socks and
shoes. Even a blind hog could have seen
him coming from a thousand yards. What
was even shittier, however, was that that crazy bitch Miss Harbin would make me
and my brothers dress up too, after Mama left for the Blue Bell, so that “Waynie would feel more comfortable”. Personally, I think he would have been more
comfortable with a two-by-four up his ass.
Anyway. we would have
to just kind of sit around all day and “be nice” and play the “quiet game”
about 100 times.
Well, old Waynie kept
strutting around, looking at hisself in the mirror
every chance he got. Directly I got fed
up with this happy bullshit and said “Hey Mully, set
yore ass down”. Well of course he went
screaming to his bitch of a mother and told her that I called him Mully (I
didn’t really know what Mully meant, I had just heard it from Richie’s brother
Jasper, and had added it to my repertoire).
Miss Harbin came stomping into the kitchen where I
was, and said “Waynie said you called him Mully”. I said “Waynie’s a lyin little
son-of-a...” and then I stopped myself just in time and said “I didn’t say
nothing to Waynie, cause
I’ve been playing the quiet game”. I was
just about to start congratulating myself for getting her on a technicality
when she looked around and saw this fresh chocolate cake Mama had made for me
and R.D. and Randall the night before, and said “Cussers
will not be getting no chocolate cake today”.
Now this highly pissed me off, for that cake was the reason I was in the
kitchen in the first goddam place, and if Waynie had not been in there strutting his ass around I
probably wouldn’t have called him Mully, and I would
have been ass-deep in chocolate cake by now instead of hasslin
around with that bitch from hell.
Well anyway, her pronouncement about the chocolate
cake was about more than I could bear, so I said “I recon I can git some of that chocolate cake, cause I recon that
chocolate cake is ourn”. This
did not set well with Miss Harbin, who forgot her Christian manners and grabbed
me by the hair and shoved my face into that cake. Then she said “Get under that table - you’re gonna get plenty of cake”.
I crawled under the kitchen table, wiping chocolate icing out of my eyes, and she grabbed a
big chunk out of the cake, slung it on the floor in front of me and made me eat
it. The first part of that piece of cake
was pretty good but the last half started getting pretty tiresome, as it was a
very big piece of cake and kind of gritty from the dust under the table.
She then tore off another chunk of cake as big as the
first, slung it under the table and made me eat it too. By that time I was crying and getting sick,
but she made me keep eating it until I threw up all over half of the
kitchen. Then she said that I’d have to
clean up all that chocolaty puke by myself “until not a trace was left.”
Miss Harbin, who had probably forgotten about the time,
called all the kids into the kitchen and said “I have taught
In the stunned silence that prevailed as Mama opened
the door and took in what was probably a very surprising scene I leaned down to
Waynie and whispered “How about some of this here chocolate
cake, Mully”, and spit a glob of that cake into Waynie’s right ear.
And then I made myself scarce ‘till things kinda
sorted theyselves out.
Chapter 5: Ruby Smalls
You know, some things happen to you when you’re a kid
which kind of stay with you always, and what I’m about to tell you about is one
of them times. In fact, every time I see
a school bus full of kids it brings me back to that time.
Me and my two brothers, Richard Dale (we called him
R.D.) and
Randall, always had to ride Bus 12 to school, and it was usually a very shitty
experience. There would always be some
big old bastard which would thump your freezing cold ears in the winter time,
or in hot weather some big sweaty fat fucker wearing an old ratty sleeveless
tee shirt who would stand over you with his arm propped against the side of the
bus, giving you the armpit treatment- you know how them bastards do. Well, anyway, there was this girl named Ruby
Smalls who always rode that bus.
Ruby was a very poor girl of about the same age as
me, even poorer than most of the rest of us on that bus. She was skinny and very dark-complected, with stringy black hair that never looked
washed or combed much. Either she didn’t
have a mamma to care for her or she may have had one that didn’t give a damn; I
never knew or thought about it that much then.
Bus 12 stopped in front of her old tin-roofed shack of a house in the
mornings, and her treatment for the
day would begin.
The kids would lean out the windows yelling dumb-ass
stuff at her even before she got on, like
“Hey Ruby, is
that a new dress?”, which of couse
is wasn’t, because she had nothing but hand-me-down rags from the Goodwill
which were always too big or little, with holes here and there. Ruby would just look down, never making eye
contact with anyone as she entered the schoolbus.
She would always walk to the back of the bus to sit,
and any kids who happened to be sitting near her would move, saying things
loudly like “she stinks” or any of a thousand other mean things kids say to
each other. I guess she probably did
stink a little, but her family probably didn’t have no
hot water most times to take a bath in.
And there she would sit, alone always, just looking out that bus
window. Her days at school were pretty
much more of the same, and she hardly ever talked, hoping to not be noticed by
anyone.
The time that I remember the most about Ruby,
however, was one Valentines’s Day. On Valentine’s Day, all the kids would make a
box with a slot in the top to drop Valentines in, and decorate it with hearts,
cupid arrows and the like, and leave it on the top of their desk. You would bring paper Valentines that day,
either homemade or store-bought, and address one to each of your friends, and
you would walk around the classroom and drop one into his or her box. Then after awhile, the teacher would bring
out some candy of some kind and we would have our Valentine’s party.
Well, that year Ruby was in my class, and we was having our little party.
All the kids had dumped out their Valentine boxes and were counting
their paper Valentines- the more popular kids would always have the most. I was counting mine (I had several, although
I sure wasn’t one of the most popular by a damn sight), and saw to my embarassment that one of mine was from Ruby. It was a shabby little homemade thing, with a
heart drawn in pencil on the outside and inside it was inscribed “Be My
Valentine. Ruby
Smalls”. I was very ashamed that
she had sent it to me, so I slipped it into the pocket of my jeans before my
friends could see it. I casually turned
around in my desk then to look around at her, and saw the saddest sight I have
ever seen. There was poor Ruby, with her
little box opened, and she didn’t have a single Valentine in it. She was just sitting there, looking down, with
tears running down her cheeks.
Nowadays, the teaching profession has come a long
ways, and they do stuff like give the kids a list of all the children in class,
and they have to bring a Valentine for everyone, not just the most popular ones
or only their friends. I have wished a
thousand times since then that I had given Ruby a Valentine that day, but I
didn’t; no one did. I am still haunted
by that memory.
Chapter 6:
Miss Harbin and the Revival
I tried to stay out of Miss Harbin’s way that week,
but the bitch wanted to go to a day-time tent revival they was holding out near
where they lived, so she made me and my brothers go with her and Waynie. In my
opinion she wasn’t the religious type, she just wanted to go to yack it up with her country-ass heathern
friends. Also, that was the long-windedest preacher I had ever had the misfortune to have to
listen to, so I was pretty much miserable most of the time, sitting there on
them hard-ass benches without no backs on them, sweating and swatting these big
old green flies that came buzzin out of the chicken
house next to the tent.
Every day, just when you thought the preacher had
wore down enough to let you go home, him and the choir would bust into “O Lamb
of God I Come”, and just when they finally reached the last verse some
son-of-a-bitch would go down to the pulpit to get saved, along with Miss
Harbin, who got saved every day that week.
I was quite embarrassed to have her for a baby sitter. Them people getting saved didn’t bother me
all that much, though, the problem was, when that preacher saw them coming he
would get all fired up and make everybody sing another 100 verses of “O Lamb of
God I Come” again, hoping he would hook a few more.
Well, on Friday, the last day of the revival, Miss
Harbin had it cooked up with the preacher so that Waynie
would sing a solo just before the sermon.
That little turd got up there and sung the
shittiest rendition of “Do Lord” I had ever been exposed to, but that
ignorant-ass congregation clapped when he got through anyway,
and the preacher give him 2 dollars. (I
guess you might think that was generous of him, but I saw him get the money out
of the offering plate, which he had just told everybody was the Lord’s money. I don’t think that the Lord would have went over a nickel for that performance, if He would have
had any say-so).
Anyway, when Waynie came
back waving that 2 dollars in my face, I said, kind of conversationally, “That
sounded like shit, Waynie”. But I guess I said it too loud, cause Miss
Harbin turned around and give me the old eyeball which would have froze the
blood of anybody not as continental as myself.
I sat through the rest of the service kind of nervous-like, until we
finally got to the “O Lamb” part. It was
a repeat of the previous four days, except that after Miss Harbin got through
being saved that day I saw her having a few words with the preacher as the
choir finished up.
The preacher jumped back to the pulpit again smiling
and all red-faced and excited-like and said “We have another one of God’s
little children who has volunteered to bless us with a song on this closing day
of our revival. Sister Harbin has told
me that Frederick Jones (that’s me, Fred Jones) also wants to sing his
version of “Do Lord” for yall”. Well, everybody stood back up and looked
around at me and started clapping and all, and that preacher was saying “Come
on,
Well, I had no choice but to head on up there. I guess I could have ducked out of the side
of the tent, but then everybody would have thought I was chickenshit
and all and besides that, I thought that this might be a good chance to collect
two dollars off of the Lord. Anyway,
being the natural showman that I am, I broke into “Do Lord” at the top of my
lungs. I started enjoying myself and
before long it started gettin so good that I threw in
a few of my Elvis moves and ended up with doing the Chuck Berry hop in front of
the pulpit, and finally finished the song with a little Hank Williams yodel on
the “way, beyond the blue” ending, you know, kind of like “Way, be-yah-hond,
the blue -ooooooo”.
Nobody clapped or nothing when I got through, though,
so I just turned around to the preacher and said “Whur’s
my two dollars”. You could tell he
didn’t want to, but he give it to me anyway, and
everybody left without waiting on the prayer.
I guess everybody left happy, except maybe the preacher and Miss Harbin,
both of whom seemed highly pissed off.
Chapter 7:
Friday Night
It was early autumn in Alabama, hot as a bitch wolf,
and at this time of year everyone’s thoughts turned naturally to football-
first, Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide (or Shug Jordan’s
Auburn Tigers, for the rest of you assholes out there), then our local high
school team, the Marshall High Hootowls. Everyone would get all fired up and all about
Everyone’s parents would be all cheerful and everything
about it being the first game and all, but I was not really too crazy about
going, because all the mean kids hung out under the bleachers and that was a
really fine place to get your ass kicked if you did something inflammatory,
like walking or drinking a Coke.
Now I had worked on my daddy all summer to get me a
black motorcycle jacket, with zippers and all, and he had finally got me one
just in time for the game. Just before
time to leave I stood in front of the mirror with that jacket on, sweating like
a pig, and turned this way and that, and finally decided that I looked like a
bad son-of-a-bitch. This made me feel a
little better about going to the game.
When we got there I went the opposite direction from
my parents for appearance purposes, and just kind of mingled with the football
crowd. Finally, I got up enough nerve
and was bored enough to pay a visit behind the stands. I took in quite a sight as I rounded the end of
the bleachers: First I saw this Pakistani fucker, Allum
Brelum, on his knees puking up 3 bottles of vanilla
flavoring, a couple of fights going on, and also my friend John Harbeson smooching it up with just about everybody’s
girlfriend, Karen Sue Martin. John and
Karen Sue were so wrapped up in their makin’ out
session that they hadn’t yet noticed that Allum Brelum had shot a projectile stream of vanilla-flavored
puke onto the back of Karen Sue’s jacket.
I’m sure he didn’t mean nothing by it though-
you know how them Pakistani fuckers have strange customs and all. The rest of
the kids were just milling around, trying to act casual so as to not get their
ass whipped, and I determined that I would do the same.
It was pretty dark there, and as I walked through the
crowd people kept kind of moving out of my way.
I was kind of puzzled by this, but I finally figured out that they
couldn’t see me too good and, with my new jacket on, thought I was some kind of
bad ass. I started to get on this kind
of stupid-ass power trip, thinkin I was bad, and
before long I started shoving kids out of the way, pinching girls on the ass,
shit like that. This continued for 10
-15 minutes, and I was having a great time until I shoved this short kid who
had his back to me. “Out of my way, turd-knocker” I said . He slowly turned around and, to my horror, I saw that it was old John Albert, with a
non-filtered Camel hanging out of his mouth.
“Well if it ain’t the
god-dammed Flyin-Jenny fat boy, all dressed up in his
new jacket, here right on time to get his ass kicked” old John Albert
said. A chill ran down my spine and my
knees got kind of weak as John Albert grabbed me by my collar and drew back his
fist. Now I would undoubtedly have been toting a whipped ass out of that
ballgame if not for good old Richie, because,
unbeknownst to me, Richie was on the top row of the
bleachers above us and had had his head hung off the back, listening to the
whole thing. I could have kissed him (not really) when I heard a high-pitched
scream and looked up and saw Richie come falling out
of the stands and land square on top of John Albert. This happy accident knocked old John Albert
flat on his ass, and as an added attraction had put that non-filtered Camel out
in his right eye.
Me and Richie got the fuck
out of there immediately, before John Albert could get his bearings, but not
before John Albert tore a handfull of Richie’s red hair out, which he would later use for
identification purposes. I believe that
this was probably what got Richie and John Albert off
on the wrong foot together.
Chapter 8:
Saturday Nite at the Drive-In
The night of the big event had finally come, and Richie had worried the shit out of me all week about trying
to fuck up Turdbelly and the boys’ Bingo robbery
plans. So that’s where we was that nite,
at the Pine View drive-in theater, although my heart sure wasn’t in it. We had snuck through the woods and were
hiding behind a tree, watching the end of one of the greatest movies of all
times, “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”.
Richie kept kind of fidgeting around, however, and, just
when we were at a very exciting part of the movie, said “Don’t you think we ort
to sneak on down to the snack bar and find out if anything’s happening with Turdbelly?” “Not
till they kill that goddam Cyclops, we don’t” I says. Anyway,
directly old Sinbad killed that fucker by pushin’ him
off a clift, and I was left without any more excuses
except to go on down and probably get my ass kicked early and often by Turd and the boys (I called him Turd
for short, but his real name was Turdbelly as you may
know).
Well, about that time we heard some commotion about
10 yard to our left, and directly we see Turdbelly, Richie’s brother Jasper, Frankie and Barney come sneakin out of the trees.
They had some kind of masks in their hands, and we could just hear
Jasper talking: “Well i god, I’ll tell you one thing, i
god, I believe somebody ort to stay out here and i
god be the lookout”, he said. “Looky here, chickenshit” says Turdbelly, “you can be the lookout, except you ain’t staying out here, you’re coming into the snack bar with
us and watch the door while us real men who ain’t chickenshits get the
money. Now, everybody put your masks on
and follow me- it’s about Bingo time”.
They pulled on their masks, which I recognized as
Lone Ranger masks which looked like they had been cut out of somebody’s
wore-out old curtain. They started
easing on down toward the snack bar, keeping in the shadows of the cars as much
as possible, with Richie and me following at a
respectable distance.
About that time we heard the voice of Mookie Harris, the manager of the drive-in, say over the
loudspeakers “ITS BINGO TIME”. Now Bingo
was the highlight of everyone’s Saturday night at the Pine View, and one of the
rare times there when all sexual activity came to a (temporary) halt. Everyone got out their Bingo cards which had
been issued to each carload of teens, and got ready to win some of the fabulous
prizes which Mookie produced. (Some of the more popular past fabulous
prizes were: Fruit Juice Dispenser
(Tupperware glass, see above), Nursery Choice Plant Container (plastic flower
pot), Frosty Freeze gift certificate (good for 15 cents weekdays only), free
pass to Pine View Drive In (good for second feature only, after 10:00 p.m.),
free drywall estimate from Curt’s Drywall Service (Mookie’s brother), etc).
What Mookie would do was,
he would warm up the crowd telling these joke which he thought were funny as
hell (in reality I would rather have a case of the screaming shits than to have
to listen to those same old boring-ass jokes which he told every Saturday
night). Then, after Mookie
got the crowd loosened up he would turn the mike over to Allum
Brelum, this Pakistani fucker who was Mookie’s assistant on Saturday nights. Allum Brelum would call out the Bingo numbers which Mookie drew. To make
the Bingo experience more pleasurable they would leave the projector running
with the sound off, showing Elvis previews, Bugs Bunny cartoons, and other
interesting shit such as that.
Anyway, when Turdbelly and
his boys got to the snack bar they stood in the dark shade to the side of the
building, and Turdbelly sent Jasper inside without
his mask on to scope out the joint. When
Jasper entered the room he saw that it was almost deserted- Mookie
Harris and the Pakistani fucker, Allum Brelum, were in the projector room drawing the Bingo
numbers, and only one kid was in the room, sitting in the booth in the main
room in front of the picture window which faced the big screen outside, eating
some popcorn and drinking a Coke.
Well, what Jasper done was, he went in and sat down
in the booth right against the kid
eating the popcorn and stuck his finger down in the kid’s Coke, put his other
hand on the kid’s thigh and leaned over and stared him in the eyeballs. Well,
needless to say, the kid didn’t want no more Coke and
got the fuck out of there immediately.
Jasper got up and leaned out the door and gave Turdbelly
the “all clear” thumbs-up sign, then went back and sat down in the booth, which
he figured was a real good lookout spot, and pulled on his Lone Ranger mask.
Well, what Jasper had not taken into account was that
the kid he run off was none other than that goddam Waynie, who had come to the drive-in with his bitch of a
mother, Miss Harbin and who had run screaming to her after Jasper fucked up his
Coke. Along with Miss Harbin and Waynie had come his sister Marsheila
the re-tard and old John Albert, the meanest little
son-of-a-bitch who ever lived in my humble opinion- all of whom had been
sitting in Miss Harbin’s rusted-out piece of dogshit old
Ford getting ready to play Bingo, and were now preparing to skin somebody’s
ass. Unfortunately, that someone was Jasper, who turdboy
Waynie had recognized from when Jasper had drove Richie, his little brother, over to my house on several
occasions.
About this time the Bingo game started. They always turned their shitty sound system
up real loud so everyone could hear the Bingo game, and you could hear it
ringing all over the drive-in lot.
“Everyone m-m-m-mark their f-f-f-free space” says Allum
Brelum, who was bad about stuttering, to go along
with his Pakistani accent which did not sit well with the southern population
anyway. “b-b-b-B Nine” says Allum Brelum. “B as in bad boy” echos
Mookie (they had this comedic Bingo routine that they
did, well practiced from many a shitty weekend together). “o-o-o-O Sixty-Four”
says Allum Brelum. “O my head hurts” says Mookie.
“g-g-g-g-G Fifty” says Allum Brelum. “Gee we love the Pine View” says Mookie (this one was always particularly funny to the
crowd, and several dozen people all over the lot would always shout this one
out together then laugh like hell and blow their car horns). This was some seriously funny shit- I’d
probably like to hear it about another 2000 more times or so- maybe some other
time.
Anyway, here comes Turdbelly,
Frankie and Barney through the door with their masks on. They walk straight into the projector room,
where Frankie whips out his switchblade and says “Gimme
your money i god”.
Well, Allum Brelum,
the Pakistani fucker, and Frankie were in the junior class together for a
little while and Allum Brelum
thought he recognized Frankie’s voice.
“f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-Frankie f-f-f-f-Finesdale ” says Allum Brelum. “Fuck a duck!” says Mookie. This interesting and intelligent conversation
had been broadcast all over the drive-in, and the crowd started to get
interested.
Then everyone at the Pine View and the neighbors
nearby heard a loud BOOM when the
door to the snack bar was kicked in. Into
the snack bar comes old John Albert, that bitch Miss Harbin, Waynie and Marsheila the re-tard, swinging her favorite piece of rough old rope with
the knot in the end of it. Well, old John Albert, he immediately walks over to
the booth where Jasper is sitting, rips Jasper’s mask off and pops him about 4
times in the nose. About the same time Marsheila walks into the projector room and
indiscriminately wears out the head of everyone in the room with her rope with
the knot in the end of it, even including pore old Mookie
and that Pakistani fucker too.
I wish I could say that they all got caught that
night, but they didn’t- the law, they come in and arrested Frankie and Jasper just
after Turdbelly and Barney slipped out the back door. Frankie and Jasper both looked like they had
been shot at and missed & shit at and hit, thanks to Marsheila
and John Albert. On a cheerful note, Turdbelly and Barney did leave a blood trail. Me and Richie
didn’t really have a chance to get involved in the ruckus that night, except
that we stood outside the building in front of the projector shooting birds on
the big screen ‘till the law come, which was fine by me. Old John Albert and Marsheila
were everyone’s heros that
night, I guess. However, Miss Harbin,
never one to miss a chance to fuck with me, tried to tell the law that I was in
on it some way or other, but she couldn’t prove nothing on me; not that time.