Chapter 33. The Justice Card

The storm had turned east before landfall and petered out. The next night at the park was to be our last. We would sell our stash, split up the money between ourselves and go our separate ways.

“How many hits are left, Max?” Ted asked as he got out of the car.

I pulled the film canister from my pocket and poured the contents into my palm… “Thirteen, can you believe that? Lucky number. We oughta be able to get rid of these in less than an hour.”

I put the canister back in my pocket with the lid loose… just in case. I was already dreaming of Taos.

It happened in a blur of action. A squad car pulled up in front of our car and another behind us. We were effectively blocked, in-between parked cars… doors opened… I had just enough time to flip the lid and chuck the contents of the canister into my mouth with the same circle of motion that had my arms pulled down behind my back and cuffed. The canister made a tinny sound as it rolled under one of the parked cars. I recognized the cop in front of me even though he wasn’t wearing a long-blond-wig this time. In less than a flash, I was being tucked into the back seat of a cruiser. The same was happening to Ted and Kenny. They were also cuffed and in one of the several cop cars. I could see Duggie off to the side talking with Art as we left the parking lot.

I was doing the math in my head… thirteen hits of acid at two hundred and fifty mics each… comes to what? Three mgs and two-hundred and fifty mics? Woah! Had I swallowed more than that before? Maybe at Magic Mary’s bash… I’d be okay… I think… I’d been telling folks that these blue microdots were as pure as acid gets, and I was hoping I wasn’t wrong. If the myths about pure acid were true, they say that it takes at least two-hundred and fifty mics to get off on acid, but that acid was peculiar in that anything over two hundred and fifty mics won’t get you any higher. The drug myths on the streets were not always the most reliable sources of information, but so much of what people believed and accepted as absolute truth concerning drugs, amounted to nothing more than street mythology. If anyone were to overdose on acid, it meant it was believed that the acid was cut with speed or strychnine. I was going to test this theory this night.

I wasn’t paying much attention to where the squad car was going but was curious when they pulled up and parked at a diner inland from Fort Walton Beach. The other squad car, with Kenny and Ted, came in next to ours about five minutes later. I watched and was surprised that the cop opened my door and helped me out of the car. We were escorted all the way back to the booths in the back of the far corner from the door. My hands were un-cuffed from behind, and cuffed to my front, before the cop gestured that I slide into the seat  first and he sat next to me on the aisle side. There was no way out but to leap past him over the table but I was in no mood to test mine, or his, reflexes.

The waitress came, he ordered, "We'll have some coffee; won't we, boy?"

I knew that the coffee would activate the acid faster but I no longer cared, "Sure, you don’t suppose I can have a piece of pie with my coffee?” I asked, half in jest.

“Sure, why not, you want it ala mode?” The cop seemed almost giddy.

“Sure, vanilla is fine."

The waitress nodded at the cop for permission, smiling, "Sure, Hon, want the pie heated too?”

Ted and Kenny were seated together with their backs turned to me two boothes from us. Ted looked calm, and winked when they passed, but Kenny, fear pasted on his face, was shaking and I heard him refuse his offer of coffee before he was asked.

I noticed one squad car, then another, and another, cruising by outside our window very slowly. The drivers were looking hard at the three of us… like we were on review. “Must be a big bust for y’all.” I commented under breath.

“Why do you say so, Mr. Max?” The giddy cop asked.

“Oh, the parade, I guess,” I pointed outside with cuffed hands.

“Oh, yes,” a sneer replaced the giddiness, “the fellahs want to see what big city Miami drug dealers look like.”

"And the witnesses too?" I wasn't really asking because I knew we were being fingered.

That pie was the best pie I'd ever eaten by the time the acid started to do its magic. Before we left the diner, it looked to me like human beings were wearing cop masks, and cops were wearing human masks. They escorted us back to the squad cars and driven to the Okaloosa County Jail where we were separately booked. I hoped the others remembered my coaching for interrogation, but I knew it was likely Kenny would crack. I was fucked and resigned to the reality of the Taos reading by Truth.

At the jail, a human being in a guard’s mask took me back to a holding cell where I shared the space with a mask of a drunk. This holding cell was luxurious compared to some I’d been in. It  had bunks… no mattresses, but it had bunks. I didn’t feel like climbing to the cold steel top bunk so I stood holding on to the bars letting the acid take my mind where it would.

“What you get busted for?” the mask of a drunk was awake. I didn’t feel up to having a conversation.

“I haven’t seen the charges yet.”

“They booked you, didn’t they?”

“I didn’t read these papers.” I had the booking papers folded up in my back pocket. I pulled them out and handed them to the mask of a drunk.

“I don’t have my reading glasses… I can’t make out nothin’ without ‘em.” The drunk was resigned.

One of the trustees came to the door. He was a feminine, boyish looking kid, with bleached blond shoulder length hair, and a turquoise necklace that did nothing towards making him look more masculine. “I’m Ray… Shit man…  I hear you ate the evidence?”

“How’d you know?”

“Word gets around… you trippin’ yet?”

“Yeh, it is coming on pretty strong right now.”

“How much ya eat?”

“Not much… a dozen hits or so.”

“Shit… I can get you some Thorazine if you want.”

“No, I’m okay. This acid’s pretty pure.”

“I’ll be back… let me know if I can get anything for ya.” As he walked away he turned one more time asking, “No kidden, really, I can get some Thorazine for ya… let me know?”

“No thanks, I’m enjoying the trip.” I answered with a nervous acid grin.

The drunk sat up on his bunk, “What was he talkin’ ‘bout? You in for El Ess Dee?”

“It appears so.”

“You ain’t gonna flip out on me, are ya?”

“Don’t worry old-timer. I’m okay.”

My mind wasn't in the cell. My mind was trying hard to wrap itself around the events of the past months. Taos, Mama Puma, Jamaica, Hoss Bozz, Miami, the hurricane, the party in Destin, the girls, the booze, the rape… Shit, that is what it was… rape! Images of Duggie, the narc in the wig, the parade of cruisers, and Daphne… poor Daphne. "You are he, and you are me, and we are all together..." Oh no we aren't!  I knew why I was in jail. It wasn’t for selling a few hits of acid. It was for rape and my karma and a deep dark place I had submerged myself within: and it wasn’t over yet… oh, and the card reading!

I was eventually taken to the High Sheriff’s office where the Sheriff was none other than the guy in the wig I’d shined on a few days before.

“So, we meet again, Mr. McGee… or should I call you Max?” the Sheriff was grinning from behind his desk as I was seated in front of it. A deputy was observing, leaning back and rocking from a chair in the corner behind the Sheriff. “We don’t have much to ask you about… do we?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to know?”

“Your buds, Teddy and Kenny, already told us everything. We just need to get your version.”

“Told you about what?” I had seen enough movies to know cops don’t have to tell the truth. They just need a confession so their charges will stick if you go to court. I wasn’t so sure I cared one way or the other, but I didn’t want to give up anything that would screw up Ted or Kenny.

The Sheriff plopped down a thick wad of twenties and c-notes, “Is this your money, Max?”

“Sure.”

“How did you come by this much cash?”

This wasn’t the time to get smart with the Sheriff but I couldn’t resist, “A cake sale?”

The Sheriff pulled out a baggie with at least fifty hits of blue microdot acid, “You ever see this cake before?”

“What are they?” I thought of all the kids who were buying from me in the past few weeks. Of course, I never saw the buyers but I’d already knew that there might have been a few Eagle Scouts among our customers.

The third ace the Sheriff pulled out his figurative sleeve was a wild-eyed, psycho mug-shot type picture of Daphne. He tossed it across his desk where it spun around, perfectly, face up on my lap. A sledge hammer hit me in the heart. If ever I was fucked I was fucked in this minute. I looked over at the Sheriff’s stone cold face. There was nothing I could say or do. I just sat letting it sink in.

“I’m not saying, but you guys did fuck her up pretty bad, didn’t you, Mr. McGee.” He wasn’t asking. “You should know, she’s a basket-case now, as we speak. And I know you did it.”

Between guilt and shame for what I’d done, I was also overcome by fear. I feared what could become of me if I were charged with rape and I feared what I could face if charges were pressed for dealing acid. The State of Florida drug laws were not at all known for leniency and I’d heard of kids getting thirty years for three separate counts of possession on a roach; for the seeds, the stems and the papers, as paraphernalia. I needed an out… any out would do. I thought of confessions taken under duress… as when on drugs. I didn’t feel the guilt as hard as my senses reeled at the fear. I had to escape any way I could.

I was reaching for any thread of hope, “Okay, what do you want from me? I’ll sign it, but I’m tripping pretty heavy and I might O.D.” 

 I pictured myself locked-up in a funny-farm for the next twenty years, “I need to get medical help. I’ll sign anything you want… just get me to a hospital.”

I was passed a form by the deputy who had not said a word the whole time. The form had a list of charges and a space at the bottom of about a half-dozen blank lines for a written statement. I scrawled across the lines explaining I was under the influence of LSD and was admitting to the charges under the condition that I be given medical treatment. I signed it and waited to be put in a squad car with two young deputies.

The deputies were talking with each other as they cruised away from the County Jail towards Crestview. Making their way into town, the officer riding shotgun grinned towards me, “So you’re the big time drug dealer from Miami. Tell me, you ever get any of that New York Jewish pussy in Miami Beach?”

They parked in the back of what looked like a clinic. I was hoping for a hospital, not a clinic. Strapped down on a gurney, I was rolled into a small room that looked like a converted garage. It still had a garage door.  A heavy-set, middle-aged nurse came in; took my blood pressure, pulse, stuck a thermometer in my mouth and left the room. She came back in a few minutes later, “What’s wrong with ya?”

“… Took a bunch of acid.”

“Acid? What do ya mean, you swallered some battry acid or sumpin'?” She wasn’t acquainted with street terms.

“LSD.”

“Oh, LSD, that’s differn't. What did you go and do that fer?”

“Oh, I don’t know… looking for God I guess?”

“What parts you from anyway?”

“Washington.”

“Dee Cee?”

“State.”

“Well, you should’ve stayed home and read the bible.” She turned and walked out again.

I wasn’t all that sure, at this juncture, that the big, backwoods, nurse was at all wrong on that count. I lay there on the gurney waiting for what seemed to be hours going over and over in my head the events of the past few days. 

She came back with the doctor, who looked at my pupils with a pen light, “Yep, he’s under the influence of LSD,” and then, speaking to the deputies, “You can take him back now.”

This was not good news for me. I’d hoped I would be admitted to a nice, comfy, hospital bed. They picked me up off the gurney and cuffed my hands behind my back. On the way out to the squad-car I tried to stop, went limp, half-feigning panic, “No… no… where are you taking me? I need to be hospitalized!” I protested.

They swooped me up to standing and tossed me into the back seat of the squad car and, with a sure sense of finality, slammed the door shut. They turned out of the parking lot and I could see that they weren’t going back the same way they had come.

The deputies were joking, “Sure do like coon huntin’” the deputy riding shotgun turned, grinning back at me, “Do you like huntin’ coons, or do you like rabbits, Max?” He pulled out his revolver, holding it up for me to see, and spun the cylinder.

The deputy driving chuckled… “Oh, I think we should let this hippy loose in the swamp and let the gators take care of him.”

“Ole Daphne’s got six or seven bad-assed brothers. We oughta drop him off at her place,” the other deputy added.

I was thinking “This is the end.” I thought of Jesus on the cross saying, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they are doing.” Then the absurdity of posing as an innocent going to the cross struck me. It struck hard… Man, Jesus wasn’t a rapist. So I opted for one of the two thieves. I was the unbeliever one whose very life had become a mockery of Christ... the spirit of compassion, the cosmic union, and I lost it all the past few months.

The squad car came to a stop. It was so dark that I could barely make out the bayou. The deputy that drove got out and opened the back door. “You want ta stretch yer legs, Max?”

“Naw, I’ll stay here. If you’re gonna shoot me, you're gonna have to mess up your back seat.”

He spun the cylinder... fractions of seconds crawled by, one click-at-a time... for several lifetimes in the limbo of time and space.

I was sure this was it. It was all going to end right there.  I closed my eyes and waited for a bullet to go through my cranium and blow my acid muddled brains all over the back of the car.

The driver returned behind the wheel.

“Naw, Max, you got us all wrong, we wouldn’t want an accident like that to happen on our watch. Now, would we?”

The bullet never came. The car started rolling. The deputies were laughing, telling stories about this or that bust and otherwise ignoring me.

Chapter 32. Daphne & the Hanged Man (pt.2)

After the threat, she resigned… probably hoping to get it over with... that the rest would be painless. Through the blackness of it all, I would remember the scene in detail, and try as I might to block it out, it would come back in waking dreams for the rest of my life. Worse than nightmares, waking dreams haunt like ghosts triggered by a tune on the radio or an odor from the swamps: a hot, humid, stillness that even birds won’t fly through…. Or worse, they fly at one’s conscious mind like bats from a cave.

“Hey, Kenny, you didn’t get laid yet. You want some of this?” I passed another beer up from the open twelve-pack.

“Yeh, uh, okay… sure,” He nodded. He was reluctant and, beyond any other motive, as likely compelled by no reason other than to just go along with us. It bugged me that he might have still had some decency left in him.

Ted steered us onto a trail off the side of the road and into some woods. He stayed in the car and watched as Kenny laid out a beach towel and I tugged Daphne by the arm out of the car and she followed docile as I commanded, “Lay down!”

Eyes pleading, she hesitated. I jerked her down onto the towel where she laid motionless. And, yes, I took her. Took her? That’s a mild way of saying, I raped her. I raped her fucking soul! To describe it in any terms more specific than that is to further defile her, and I can’t do that again. I tried to convince myself, she’s a snitch and deserves anything we do, but Daphne’s eyes stared out through me into a void… a nothingness… as though she was already a corpse. 

Kenny took his turn but, to his credit, he went limp right away. I was disgusted, why would he want to be decent with her? What was he afraid of? Was he judging me? We went back to the car… she wanted to stay, but I yanked her to her feet and insisted, “Get in the car,” The first pang of guilt struck, “we aren’t going to hurt you anymore.”

 In the shadows of the scrub pine, a cougar turned away.

On the way inland to Crestview, Kenny asked, “What are you gonna do with her, Max?”

“I don’t know. We can’t just drop her off on some street corner, Can we?”

Ted glanced back at me through the rearview mirror, ran a forefinger across his neck and raised his eyebrows.

Kenny shouted, “Fuck no! We can’t do that. I ain’t havin’ no part in it. We don’t need to. It’s her word against ours; right, Max?”

Ted was calm, “It’s okay Kenny. You’re right. They never prosecute for rape around here. They might charge us for it… at the worst. Let’s just sell the rest of our crap and go. I’d be more bothered by her brothers than the law.”

I felt some relief that we weren’t going to make things a hundred times worse. That's all it took… that one objection and one calm voice.  

She was still; eyes glazed, unflinching; body as dead, and unmoving, when we came to a stop in the middle of town. I got out, opened the door for her, and took her hand. She jerked it back and stood, stone-faced, with her eyes fixed on mine. More guilt washed over me like a tidal wave. It was raging at me, if only… if only I hadn’t… We stood facing each other for what seemed an eternity… the words came out of my mouth, but I knew how stupid, futile, and useless, they were as I spoke, “I’m sorry.”

She turned robotically, and walked away.

No one said a word as we drove off.

Chapter 32. Daphne and the Hanged Man

Detail-Francis Bacon triptyche
despair/disgust

Later that night at the park, Duggie brought Daphne out to the car. Daphne was a very attractive girl but something about her was off-kilter. She got in the back seat with Ed and they got it on right there in the parking lot. I had to stand outside of the car twiddling my thumbs while all this was going on.

Duggie started talking his jive, “Hey, I want to introduce ya to a pal of mine,” he beckoned.

I knew that folks like Duggie aren’t likely to have “pals” of any kind but I was bored. We walked about two or three spaces over and I saw Duggie’s pal in a sedan that had the look of a confiscated undercover narc car. The guy was overly friendly like Duggie.

“This here is Art.” Duggie went on, “and this here is Max.”

I looked into the car. Arty greeted me, “What’s happenin’, Max?” I stepped back to look a little closer at Arty’s face. It was lined, and he looked to be in his forties. There was something about his shoulder length blonde hair: it was a wig, like what you’d get from the back of magazines!

“What’s up?” I glanced around looking to see if there were any squad cars in the lot.

Art asked, “Y’all from ‘round here?”

“We came up from Miami a week ago.”

Art went right to the point, “Duggie tells me you got some good acid.”

I stepped back and looked at Duggie, nodding disapprovingly, and then at Art’s eager, nervous grin. I said, loud enough for Art to hear, but directed my comment to Duggie, “Ya know, they don’t have many snitches in Miami. They all end up at the bottom of Biscayne Bay.”

Turning to Art, I channeled Alfonzo Bedoya’s accent… the Sierra Madres bandito, Gold Hat, “Battery acid? What? Acid indigestion? What acid? We don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no stinkin’ acid. We got no stinkin’ acid! We don’t need to show you no stinking Acid.”

I spun around and walked away, pissed off at myself because I had the aluminum film canister in my pocket with a couple dozen hits in it and wasn’t prepared to chuck it if I needed to. My fingers were plying and twisting the lid to the canister just in case I had to eat the evidence.

Duggie ran up to me waving his arms, “What is the matter with you, Max, that guy’s a friend of mine!”

I turned on Duggie like a cat hissing, “The guy sitting at the wheel had a wig… a cheap fuckin’ woman’s wig! Your friend is a fucking cop and you are trying to fuckin set us up!”

Duggie threw his arms out like he was ready to be nailed to the cross…crucified! “Naw… Naw, Man. I ain’t doin’ no such thing. Arty don’t want anyone to recognize him buying drugs, ya know. It’s a small town.”

I hadn’t noticed before, but my nose was about chest level to Duggie’s. The fucker was tall, and jail-house buffed. Besides, I was holding, and Ted was banging away in the back seat. If Art was a cop, we were busted by now anyway. Who knows how many people we had sold our shit to might have been Eagle Scouts working on a merit badge? It was just a matter of time.

We had the house to ourselves the next few days. The hurricane was making its way slowly in the direction of Fort Walton Beach. Ted spent the day in the bedroom with Daphne while Kenny and I hung out in the living room watching the weather broadcasts on the television.

The TV screen showed a cartoon wheel turning over a chart of the ocean and coast. I was looking forward to the arrival of the hurricane. I loved storms and savored the memories of typhoons in the Pacific. While in the Navy, I was on a small skimmer for a while. We’d go over one seventy-foot wave and ship’s prow would plunged through the next. It was downright exhilarating! I dropped a tab of acid hoping to welcome its landfall. Outside of the cottage it was quiet… no birds… eerily quiet. The sky was grey, and the air was thick, hot and humid. Being in a low elevation area most of the neighbors had boarded-up their windows and gone to higher ground. If the hurricane made landfall, the storm surge would put the whole region as much as five to ten feet under water.

“So, we gots the TV on to see which way the hurricane goes when it gets near Panama City.” Kenny drawled on. “If it turns towards us, we’re fucked. Most likely it will go t’other way.”

“East, you mean?” I wondered, “I mean, how soon would we know?”

“See where that wheel is now?” Kenny was laid out on the couch casually, “If it gets any closer and does not turn we have about a half day, maybe a couple of hours, to get our asses out of here.”

The air… it was the air that was so thick… mopping our brows was our only movements besides lifting cans of beer that had us sweating through our T-shirts like working out in a gym. I hadn’t noticed that Ted and Daphne had come out of the bedroom.

Ted opened the fridge, he said, “Let’s go to the beach.”

Ted cracked a beer, and wrapped one arm over Daphne’s shoulder. I couldn’t tell whether he was keeping her from running or if he was just being affectionate.

“Hell yes, the beach!” I was into it. “Gotta be some great surf, eh?”

Driving through town there wasn’t much traffic. A few people were still boarding up windows but everything else was quiet. Fresh in everyone’s memory was Hurricane Camille smacked the coast very hard in sixty-nine, so people weren’t in the mood to get caught off-guard by this one. Any mild storm could turn catastrophic in an hour’s time. Still, the attitude of our diminished Crew was indifferent.

Ted drove with Kenny riding shot-gun and Daphne wedged between. I was stretched out in the back seat. Daphne wasn’t talking at all and seemed to be in a world of her own. I had liked her look before. She was an attractive brunette with short cropped hair, a luscious body, and a cute enough face. I began wishing I was having some of that stuff. Ted turned to me, “She ain’t never had any acid.”

“No kidding? You want some, Daphne?”

She didn’t answer… looked scared.

“Sure, she does,” Ted spoke for her. “Give her a hit, Max.”

I pulled out the film can from my pocket and held a tab to her lips. She opened her mouth enough for me to put it in. After she swallowed, I said, “Maybe she’s not a snitch after all.”

Kenny looked at me like I said something crazy, “Snitch? What? No, she ain’t no snitch.”

A few minutes later Ted asked her, “Are you getting off yet?”

She drawled, “I don’t feel nothin’ yet.”

 “Have another then,” Ted fed her a hit and beckoned me to pass another one up.

Kenny objected, “She ain’t had time to get off.”

Ted had found out something about her in the bedroom. She must’ve let something slip because this wasn’t characteristic behavior for him. He fed Daphne four or five more hits in as many minutes, as we wound our way around the back roads through the sloughs and across the bridge going west to a deserted stretch of Santa Rosa Island beach. The last couple of hits were literally crammed down her throat. It began my first recognition that my suspicions were justified.

I was disappointed that the surf wasn’t roaring, and the wind wasn’t howling once we got to the beach, but. The air was still and just as hot and humid there, as it was back at the cottage. We did have the beach to ourselves so we all stripped off our clothes and skinny dipped. Tripping, I fixated my attention on Daphne’s svelte body and swam towards her underwater, trying to get close to her. I’d approach, and she’d back off. It bothered me that she seemed, not only frightened by me, but I sensed she might’ve been disgusted too. I grabbed her from behind and cupped her breasts. She pulled herself away and fled towards Ted. He was done with her, so he offered no protection and sent her back with a push. After a few fruitless chases we put our clothes back on and went back to the car.

Driving around the lowlands between the sloughs, we stopped at the only convenience store still open. I went in to get a twelve pack of beer and, when I got back, Daphne was in the back seat. I slid in and pulled Daphne over to me as she tried to twist away.

“Don’t worry, Babe, I’m not going to hurt you.” She glared at me as though she was seeing a demon, I frowned, “So, what do you think, Ted, is Duggie a snitch?”

“Yeh, he was telling me he just got out of jail,” Ted kept driving. I cracked a beer and passed it up to him.

“So, do you figure our little princess here is part of his set-up?”

At this mention I could feel Daphne shrink like she was trying to disappear. She was undoubtedly tripping her brains off by now and must have sensed a horror was about to take place. I unzipped my pants, put my hand behind her head, and pulled it to my lap. She jerked her head back resisting as best as she could… “You are gonna suck my dick, bitch, or you will end up in a slough with the gators.”

The evil had begun. I felt the presence of an untamed blackness that was determined have her any way I could, by force or by fear. I was pissed that she had shrunk away from me more than suspicious she was a snitch. She had done so at the beach and she was doing it now. Was I so disgusting that even this bimbo didn’t want me? “You can’t run from Apollo, Daphne.”

I doubt she understood the mythological reference, and for sure, I was no Apollo.

Chapter 31. The Amusement Park

Ted and Kenny cruised the park for potential customers and come back to me at the car for the exchange. The acid we had was pure two-hundred-fifty mics of blue microdot tabs. Word got around that we had some good acid and people came to us as soon as we showed up at the park. I stayed at the car in the parking lot holding on to the money and the product.

Freaks began coming out to the car and, at first, I turned them away.

I complained to Ted after the first night, “I don’t like it. Don’t send them out to the car, dammit.”

“I’m not sending them,” Ted shrugged, “Kenny only sent one.”

“One? Shit, word’s out now!” I lamented. “I didn’t come up here to get busted for holding.”

“Lighten-up, Max, we can see cops comin’ a mile away.”

“Just tell Kenny not to send any more. We’ll have it all gone soon enough.”

After a few days I let down my guard and dealt from the car. This was against my better judgment about this arrangement but figured the way it was going it wouldn’t be long before we got rid of what we had, and I’d be out of there.

“Yeh, I know what you mean." He looked back over his shoulder at a lanky dude in a Peterbuilt cap lopping across the lot towards the car, "But hey, this guy, Duggie, says he can hook us up with some girls. I ain’t had no pussy since Moses built the ark. He knows about a party going down in Destin. It’s just over the bridge to the east.”

Ted and Duggie shook hands, then Duggie took mine, “Call me Duggie. I got some connections all around this place.”

The ass-hole glad-handed me with a harder than firm handshake… the kind that grinds knuckles… painful and more of a challenge than a greeting.

I said , “That's Noah, Ted. Fuckin’ Moses didn’t build the fuckin’ Ark." 
While I was locked in a face to face stare-down with Duggie, I added, "Hope you're right about this guy, ‘cause you’re sure as hell got it wrong about Moses.”

I had a bad feeling about Duggie. He was hyped up on crank and just acted a little too jailhouse-snitch-friendly to me. I had developed good instincts about jailhouse snitches in the past few months in Miami. My evolution, or de-evolution, into the world of petty drug dealing, and contacts with the shadiest of characters, groomed some instincts I thought I’d shaken back on the beach in Waikiki. I knew how these walking turds acted because, in my heart, I was then becoming as shady as any of them.

Duggie didn’t know what we were talking about and ignoring my comment said, “Hey dude, bring some of that saweeeet acid ya got with ya to this party.” His eyes were darting around like a rabbit’s from a hawk, “Man, there are chicks there that will blow your mind… hey, they’ll all put some that action on your dick too if ya want.”

By the time we’d arrived at the party it was going down. I forgot all about the gut feeling and went with the rhythms of the acid and, of course, the ratio of women to men was better than two to one because half the dudes were so fucked up they just sat and stared at kaleidoscope patterns flashed in the vacancy between their ears. There must have been about fifty people hanging out at the house and most of them were tripping on the acid we sold.

Since the beach in Waikiki, I wasn’t the kind of tripper that spent most of my time navel gazing. No longer interested in acid alone, as there were a couple kegs of beer for the non-trippers, I preferred getting fucked up and getting laid. These small-town southern kids had a different take on drugs, booze, and the law. They’d grown up together, been in jail together, and turned State’s evidence on each other too. The cops were more likely members of their own families… an uncle, a brother, or a brother-in-law. Two of the girls took me aside. One was a golden-haired-braless goddess with nips pointing out from a gauzy tie-dyed tee-shirt exposing a white-belly-down-to-her-pubes in-hip-huggers… an attractive lean young thing. Her friend was a frumpier-roundish girl, who let me know in no uncertain terms that she wanted to get down and dirty. I was going for her too but wanted her hip-hugger friend more.

Hip-huggers said to me, “You came with Duggie?”

“Yeh, what about Duggie.”

She warned, “You do be careful around him.”

I didn’t pay any heed to her warning because the words just melted out past her lips with that southern belle accent.

The night was winding down and the trippers were leaving or sacking out in the other rooms. The two girls shared a room though there were two beds. Frumpy and I went to bed together first thing and did the deed. I noticed that Hip-hugger was watching in the dark from her bed as I ground away at Frumpy. After we had done our deed and Frumpy went straight to sleep. Hip Hugger was still awake so I seized the opportunity and I went over and crawled in bed with her.

“What are you doing, Max?” she protested.

“Oh, hell, I wanted you all along… you knew it?” I could see that she was confused. Not too many of the boys from her experience crawled from one bed to another as fast as this was happening.

“Okay,” she whispered, “but what about you two… I mean, you were just getting it on a few minutes ago.”

“Yeh, it wuzza mercy fuck…” I was drunk enough that I just didn’t care, “She’s fat. I like your body better.”

My answer was good enough for the moment. We must have rolled around for an hour before I fell asleep.

Ted shook me awake, “Max, c’mon… we gotta get goin.”

“Yeh, what’s goin’ on?” I was upright but only half-conscious. “What’s the rush, man.”

Hip-hugger walked me out to the car… she pulled me off to the side, “I thought you’d stick around a few days.”

“Oh, baby, I’d like to but we gotta go…” I turned to pull away.

“I should have known… like after what you said about Melissa.”

“What did I say about who… what? Who’s Melissa?”

“My room-mate… you were in bed with her before me… Remember?”

I didn’t… not really… it was like a vague dream to recall, “Oh, yeah… I remember now.”

“You said she was fat. It was a mercy fuck!” at her pause I scrambled around in my head for an out and tried to remember… Hip-Hugger was relentless, “Do you remember my name?”

“Draws a blank, sorry…. the booze…”

“We’re all in this together, Max… like the Beatles song, you know? ‘I am he and you are me and we are all together…’”

I realized by the daylight and her remarks she was just a teeny-bopper… “Okay, I get it… I get it. I gotta go now…. I won’t do it again.”

“You’re fucked, Max… I don’t want your karma around me.” She turned and stomped away.

I yelled to her back, “I’ve been cursed by pros. It’s no big deal.”

Again, I’m cursed. I thought… Hoss Bozz and a girl whose name I didn’t know.

Guilty of that, I called out, “What’s your name anyway?”

She kept walking without turning around.

Chapter 30. The Blackwater Bayou

The news was full of a Hurricane tracking towards Pensacola as we drove North. Except for the tiny spit of sand where the tourist end of Fort Walton Beach was planted, Northwest Florida had the feel of the Deep South. Crestview was a bucolic southern town situated beyond the swamp lands of the coast and halfway to the southern edge of Alabama. Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Daytona could have been anywhere along the Atlantic Coast and no more Southern in character than New Jersey. There were no high-rise hotels and condos on the Fort Walton Beach stretch back then. A few motels, nightclubs, bowling alley, bars, and an amusement park on the sand spit end of Fort Walton Beach. It was the best place to sell the rest of our pot and acid.

Ted’s cousin owned a property in the lowlands on the Blackwater River, west of Crestview and Fort Walton Beach. We drove over the river, and below the bridge, it looked like the Amazon rain forest spreading out from both banks. We took a side road down through a field towards a shambled shack of a house with a styreotypical shaky dock of  rotting cypress pilings holding up old planks out over the water.

Ted explained, “This is my uncle’s place. He died a while ago and my cousin moved in. He took his family to higher ground, so I offered to watch the house until the storm passed.”

What was left of The Crew; Kenny, Ted, and I, set up shop there.

My phobias for spiders and snakes kept me awake the first night. Because I didn’t like Ted knowing about it, I asked Kenny, “I heard ‘bout snakes around here. Are there water moccasins?”

Kenny wasn’t all that reassuring, “Rattlers, widders, and moccasins is all we got here in the bayous.”

“Rattlers don't freak me. They make some noise but moccasins and spiders, shit.”

“You kin smell ‘em. Smell like rotten mud. You wanna see ‘em? We got a pirogue we kin use.”

“I don’t want to see them, but I wouldn’t mind cruising through those Cyprus.” 

“Shit, I’m itchin’ ta catch some catfish and crawdads. Ya ever have ‘em?”

Naw, I thought catfish are too gamey.”

“You just ain’t had ‘em cooked right.”

Ted came in the door and overheard us talking about fish. He was enthusiastic, “Yeah, let’s fuckin’ go. Max, you’ll like the river.”

When he said river, swamp didn’t occur to me, “What’s a pirogue?”

Ted said, “A flat bottom kind of skiff. Kinda late now. Darker than a nigger’s ass at night.”

Nigger? I had to get used to it and never heard Ted use the ‘N’ word before. But, the South was still in Dixie, he was home and those were the times. I'm not even sure he was racist. He never brought it up, and Hank was black.

Ted, like Hank, brought home souvenirs from Nam; an AK and M-16. And we took them with us. We had some fun with them in the Bayou.

“You know how to use these?” Ed didn’t want to let an amateur use his babies.

“I’m familiar with guns. Yeah, we didn’t have ‘em where I served, but I did once at a firing range just for the fun of it.

“Well then, you gotta start breakin’ ‘em down. If you’re gonna use mine.”

I always did like taking apart clocks and motors and putting them back together as a kid to see how they worked; so, breaking the rifles down and reassembling them was sport to try to beat my time as Ed drilled me with a stop watch. The M-16 was harder than the AK, but still simple enough. Ted drilled and timed me on it, over and over, until I could do it fast enough to be somewhat proficient. We talked and drilled all that afternoon, smoking pot and drinking beer into the night. It was about two AM when we tried the blindfold. I could do it fumbling around but not nearly fast enough. I wished I could do it half as well as Ted.

I asked, while going through the drill, “You won’t be taking these to the beach, are you? Full-automatics and illegal as all hell.”

“Naw, I ain’t stupid. I keep them locked up from the kids here. I don’t need anything more than my forty-five and it’s easier to ditch.  We’ll bust some caps in the morning. Man, there ain’t nothin’ like it.”

In the morning there were gators on the banks near the dock that skittered like giant scaled roaches and slithered into the water. I didn’t expect tides in the swamp. We went through narrow channels at low tide in and out and between banks lined with Cyprus, and, as the tide rose we ducked under branches in wider lanes. I also didn’t expect the water to be so clear… that the bottom, even in the deepest parts could be seen in sharp detail.

"See there, Kenny said, "a moccasin on that branch. We go under it and it'll drop in our boat"

We didn't see any after that but Kenny assured me they were there.

We came to a place where we tied up to a branch where Kenny put out a line with a bob just like a Huck Finn. Right away, he got a bite. “It ain’t a cat,” he hollered.

He reeled and fought for a good fifteen minutes before he pulled up a beast of a dinosaur to the surface.

“Fuck, what is that!”

They laughed. I didn’t. Their joy resounded through the cypress swamp.

While laughing, Ted yelled, “It’s too small, throw it back. Don’t land that fucker in the boat!”

Kenny was in another world of carefree glee, “We got us some snappin’ turtle soup for tonight.”

The shell had to be over two feet wide. If that was a little one I wouldn’t want to see a big one.

We cranked up the miniature motor and once back at the place, Ted and I emptied several clips into old bottles and beer cans, while Kenny prepared the meal. He said, "Guns like them are fer war and hell, there ain't no way I'm ever goin' t'war."

When we sat for dinner on the porch I saw the brothers for the first time for what they really were. Ted was no longer the bass-ass Marine and Kenny was his charge. I rolled a spliff to show them how it was done in Jamaica and we drank beer, smoked, and talked to the sound of frogs and gators with fireflies twinkling around us.

Kenny went to bed early while Ted and I sat on the porch without talking until after midnight.

Ted got up to go inside. He stopped at the door and asked, “Where you goin’ from here, Max. San Francisco or New Mexico.”

“Had it with cities. It’s good here, but I miss the West.”

“Yeah, you can’t stay here. You gotta keep movin’. I don’t want you bringin’ down heat on Kenny.”

He went inside and I wondered if that was an observation or an order.

 When he said that I also saw a sadness in Ted’s eyes that matched the darkness in my heart. I would be leaving this scene soon. I had to keep moving and no one wanted me to stay. He would be going off to the fields of war in Southeast Asia and Kenny would settle on the Blackwater River Bayou the rest of his life, maybe find a nice Cajun woman, make a few babies, have a home complete with hunting dogs, and a pirogue of his own. All this was his while I had nowhere to be and no one to be with at all.

I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, I was just tired. My hustle was gone, and I saw no future in anything worthwhile. Fuckin' Hoss Bozz.