PART III- EDGAR
Snow’s picking up.
Ain’t it a bitch?
I don’t mind the snow so much… I don’t gripe about the weather like most people do, but I’ve gotta admit that I’m freezing my balls off. They feel like they’re smaller than snow peas right about now.
Fuckin
’ aye, it’s cold.
I came into town the same way
I left the last one; five sheets to the wind and looking for something fun to poke at with my Matterhorn. If there’s some fun to be had, I’ll sniff it out. I don’t mind being crude about it either. The nastier, the better. Warm vodka and a sleepy hooker, that’ll get my love-motor runnin’ as much as any pretty cheerleader and a wine cooler. Perky tits, saggy tits. Tight puss, loose puss, it all feels the same when you’ve got a nice buzz going.
I need a break from movin’ and groovin’. Time to
settle in and settle up
, that’s what my dear old Daddy used to tell me when he came back from one of his nasty benders where we wouldn’t see him for weeks at a time. It’s been a pretty shitty week on the mean ol’ road, I’ve gotta say.
Time to settle in and settle up.
My shit luck s
tarted out when I hitched a ride from some hippy looking motherfucker with bad breath and a lazy eye. Wouldn’t you know it-- smelled like he'd been suckin' on garlic cloves all morning, and I told him so, with my meanest look.
I asked him if he usually ate dick with his eyes open or closed.
I'm not the type of fellow to pussy foot around people when they offend me. I'm sure I offend plenty of folks myself, so I don't mind it, tit for tat and all that noise. Of course, if you do go too far and end up offending me, I'll pull your testicles out through your nostrils.
I kid.
I kid.
But not really.
I left that garlic-chompin’ son of a cunt on the side of the road. I didn’t kill him, but I put the hurt on. My fists got a mind of their own when I get all worked up, and that odor of his did the trick. Don’t get me wrong, I could have killed him, and probably should have. But I didn’t. I haven’t had any cops on my ass for some time, and I’d like to keep it that way. When the chance presents itself, I’ll take care of that messy business the right way, but not with this dude.
So it s
tarted snowing pretty hard this morning, just when I crossed off of Route 201.
F
ound a dead deer out in the woods a bit earlier. Some asshole just left it behind. Believe that? I snipped off some of the meat with my pocketknife and stowed it in an old tee-shirt for later, but I'm not so great at making fires so I may not be able to cook it up proper. The truth is, I'm a pretty awful outdoorsman, ya’ know? Fucking boy scouts never looked so great to me, even if my Daddy was around long enough to sign me up. I never liked making baskets and go-carts and all that silly shit. I was more into spending my free time sneaking my Daddy's porn mags and cutting out pictures of the biggest titties, gluing them on people's faces in the tabloids. My mom would get pretty pissed off at me for that (
“Why the shit does Joan Rivers have boobs on her head, ya’ little shit?”
) but I told her that's what those fancy rich guys and all them fake-ass movie stars deserved. They deserved to get titties pasted on their heads. What did they do to deserve anything else they got? Fuck if I know.
So here's the deal
: it's cold as a dead man’s cock and I don't have anywhere to go. A few hours back, I got the waitress (who had a big Jew nose) at the Starlight Diner to give me a day old biscuit and twenty minutes in a booth, just to warm my bones, but that was after a lot of begging. I don't like begging ‘cause it makes me feel like a mooch, like a leech, like the kind of fella my Uncle Charlie was before they stuck him in the can for twenty five years. Uncle Charlie died in the clink, so fuck that noise. Moochin’ doesn’t get you anywhere. I’ll take what I earn. Sometimes you gotta earn the things you take before you get to takin’ them.
I’ve been here before. I know the game. Hell, I
invented
the game.
When I'm not sure where to go, I start following the train tracks. This town doesn't have any train tracks, so that isn't
really an option. There's something special about walking down the tracks, like something out of the old days, before men became walkin’, talkin’ pussies. Real men… they called ‘em hobos. Yeah, that right there is the life for me. I don't know much that amounts to much at all, but I know I was born a wanderin' man, just like my pa. And a wanderin' man can't pretend to be anything else or he'll look like a chump. Nothing I hate more than looking like a chump. Hear me knockin’?
No railroads, so t
he next best thing is to follow the cars. You see ten cars heading north and two cars heading south, and then you head north. Simple enough, right? That rule always served me proper. Wherever the cars go, so do the people. Wherever the people go… they got food, they got clothes, they got warm beds and pretty wives and cable television and the internets and air conditionin’ when it’s hot as sin. I like the finer things just the same as the rest... Don’t act like
you
don’t. Damned if I don't deserve a little taste every now and then, too. I work my ass off, even though I got no paycheck to show for it.
Welcome to my peaceful little kingdom: s
tanding on the side of this here snowy road, staring at a sign that says "Moose Crossing." I wish I'd see a moose so I could check it off my bucket list. Never saw a moose, but I heard they’re as big as dinosaurs sometimes. If it let me get close enough, I'd jam one of my knives in its neck, let that shit spray all over the snow. Just so I can say I killed one and ate it. I’m big into always a’changin’ my bucket list. Never ate a Reuben sandwich. Never killed a kid, but that’s cause I got morals. Never had sex with a
darkie
, never voted for one neither. Never been to Disneyland. Never jumped out a plane. Never did a lot of things, but I reckon I’ve got a long way to go.
Fuckin
’ righteous.
I count a string of three cars
; one motherfucker, two motherfuckers, three motherfuckers that just missed getting all wrapped up in my world. There’s a blue Dodge caravan, a rusted out Cadillac, and a fancy lookin’ four-wheel drive Jeep. In the opposite direction, one car shoots by. It looks like it's a mile or two away from totally shitting the bed. Probably belongs to somebody who lives on the bad side of the tracks and can't afford to fix it.
In the
same direction the three previous cars went, two more come rip-roarin’ down the road. One of them is a slick looking ride; a white Camaro with a vanity plate that I can't catch with my eye because he’s burnin’ ass like a real tough guy. The next one is brand new and looks like it just pulled off the car lot. I don't recognize the model, but it looks Japanese... the headlights are slanted.
Zing.
That there is one of my things. Every now and then, I’ll
zing
you, just so you don’t get sleepy on me. Look out for the
zing
, ya hear?
Another car
comes by, haulin’ ass. Yep, the jury is in on which way I’m prancing my handsome ass next--towards the nicer cars, away from the shit boxes.
I listen to the click of my leather boots
as I get movin’ again. They're nice boots, probably the best I've ever had. Found these boots in a house a few towns over. They were some old folks, didn't even have to be quiet when I climbed through the window. They didn't hear me for nothin’. I probably could have walked right behind them, shouted
boo
, and they wouldn't have blinked. Nothing like robbing old folks. They're easy to spot; just look for cars in the driveway that look like they are driven once a week. Big, wide cars that look brandy-spankin’-new.
The boots were a bonus
prize. I was only looking for some warm grub and I found a whole lot more.
Old fellow keeled over right off the bat. Didn’t even have to pull out my
steel and show it to him like I usually do when somebody catches me in their crib. He was wearing this funny hat, looked a bit like a golfing hat of some sort, with a big pom-pom on top. Maybe it was some sort of kinky old fogey sex parade I walked in on, or maybe he just dressed like an asshole every dang day. Probably figured he was well retired, wringing his wrinkly ol’ hands while he watched television, thinking he had it all figured out.
Fuck that noise. He
settled in and settled up
, but he didn’t look like he deserved it just yet.
Mister-Wizard-lookin’ dude
didn’t see me coming into his life. Remember that show? With the fella always making experiments in his garage? Then he’d bring the kids in and show them his experiments. I bet that wasn’t all he showed them (
ZING!
), if you know what I mean. Anyway, this old fellow—the one I stole the boots from--was wearing this dark blue sweater with a weird triangle shapes on it, kind of like something Mr. Wizard would have worn.
Holy shit
, I thought. Did I kill Mr. Wizard when I tapped him on the shoulder? He looked dead. I’m not sure he actually died (who dies from getting tapped on the shoulder anyway?) but he wasn’t looking too hot when I moseyed on out the front door wearing his tan leather boots, a clippin’ and a cloppin’ up and down the street.
I bet you’re wondering about
his old lady, aren’t you?
A gentleman never tells, and I’ll leave it at that.
Zing.
I said that I’ll leave it at that, ya
’ hear?
A
fella like me says something borderin’ on mysterious like that, and your brain gets to churning real fast, don’t it? Well, let me tell you this… whatever it is you’re picturing inside your sick little head, it was a whole lot worse than that. Not the kind of thing I’d ever tell my Mama about, God rest her precious soul.
All I can
rightly say is this:
DAMN, THESE BOOTS LOOK GOOD ON ME.
Here I am, tossing my thumb out to passing traffic, hoping somebody will pick me up and bring
a poor bugger into town, and I can’t stop staring at these kick-ass boots. It’s like they’re a part of me, sort of like I was born wearing them. There’s some saying I heard about tough guys who “died with their boots on,” something that gets bandied about when a man becomes a little bigger than just a man. I hope that I die with my boots on, and I don’t mean a
met-a-for
(or whatever it is those fancy college-thinkin’ boys call it). I mean that I want to die with my actual boots on. What I mean to say, is that these boots are something special and I plan to be buried in them. I don’t care if anybody comes to my funeral. I don’t really know anybody, anyhow. Mama is dead, Daddy is dead, and my uncle is dead.
Just let me keep my boots and my soul will drift all the way to
that brotherly fellow named Jesus H. Christ to the tune of Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. One thing you ought to know about me: Jesus and me are right as rain. We got a special kind of thing going on. I got my boots, I got Jesus, and I got a whole lot of love to give to some lucky lady one of these days. All I want is a warm place to live my days,
settling in and settling up
, to rest my boots and rub my aching toes (these boots are snazzy as hell… I won’t take them off cause they look so fuckin’ spiffy).
Hey now
, I mouth towards a Dodge that is drifting by, appearing and disappearing through the blindin’ snow. Cars look like ghosts when you see them comin’ on quick in strange weather like this. I don’t believe much in ghosts, but I think the human eyeball is a tricky bitch when it wants to be. This car comes by, and the next one will come by, just the same, sneaking up on me, pinching my ass, and running away without offering any help. Selfish.
It’s almost zero goddamned degrees, and nobody wants to help
this well-booted man out. Ain’t that a bitch and a half? Maybe they’re intimidated by my boots. Maybe they’re---
This
son of a bitch in a brown pickup truck just stopped. Right on.
I lean forward,
put on my smiling lips, squinting one eye so that I seem a little bit unsure about what I’m about to get doin’. The guy behind the wheel rolls down his window, spying out at me. He doesn’t say anything at first. Sort of like sharks and snakes, how people always say that they’re just as scared of you as you are of them; that’s what hitchhiking feels like every now and then. I’ve been doing it all my life, and it never gets easier. It’s a crapshoot.
“Afternoon,” says the man, leaning his head out the window. He’s balder than a
ten-year-old tire, and his eyes are red and stingy looking. He probably has some ripe weed, or he hasn’t slept in a few days. From the smell that drifts out of the cab of his clean as a whistle truck, I am sure that the smell is
can-uh-bis
, as them college boys call it. Yep, this guy might be a good bet for a home visit, to see what other kind of goodies he has. “You need a lift?” he asks. All too easy.
“I reckon I’d
be much obliged,” I say. They love it when you use old-fashioned words like “obliged” or “reckon,” and it’s a homerun when you mash them together in one sentence I find. Makes them feel like they’re in some sort of freakin’ cowboy movie from the good old days, when everybody was nice to each other, not knowing that it’s a big ol’ lie. They usually don’t realize that people have always been horrible to each other, ever since the first caveman fucked up his neighbor’s pretty face with a dinosaur bone. I say, “Just a lift into town would make my day.”