Brown ribbon, its shiny surface spinning, a neon crimson bead the size of an insect eye
blinking as the sour smell of three-day-old noodles lingers from a slimy sink, rats scuttling,
roaches doing the 40 and hurdling motels.
You’re crazy as hell to go into journalism. Go to a shrink. Kill yourself. Go to a pastor.
Get help. You're going to need it in this global cage of non sequiturs.
I'm too drunk to catch it. Swan-diving on the insect couch, I check for the spins with
luck, so coherence keeps me conscious as the answering machine rewinds to the beginning
of my first message. Have you ever sobered up so quickly you vomited before reaching
the toilet? It’s a long run - longer than the walk into a baptismal pool.
Walking in on a live message is always so embarrassing. You feel so very awkward
for the caller; it's like walking in on someone else's conversation. I feel guilty for hearing it
late. It's like Daddy said after 60 years without an answering machine; “If you call and I'm
not here, call back. You'll get me sooner or later.”
Syrupy Southern drawl. A male, maybe in his 30s. Caucasian. A visceral, instant recall
of voices in my coral Meandrina reef. I’m starting to feel severely agitated, losing what’s
left of hangover intoxication. It’s a dark dread, an apprehensive panic that I might
recognize the voice. The real trepidation is when you cannot for the life of you recognize
who it is leaving an anonymous message. Cloaked in an invisible hideout, the perp feels
safe, knowing you don’t know, or at least hoping you won’t discover his address. “Fear is
the parent of cruelty,” J.A. Froude said. Ever feel like killing your parents? I wasn’t
frantic yet, but after I called all my crazy friends, I knew he would remain free from my
alarm here in Mullins, S.C., 100 miles from Cape Fear.
“You're dead. You hear me? You're a dead man.”
Sandra used to always tell me that it's the threats you never get or hear about that one
should be frightened of. But she never was one to get threats because she never was
threatening as editor of the Watauga Democrat in Boone, N.C. It’s why I liked her more
than any other editor - it could be that I work better for women, or maybe it was her
protective sense. It made sense the first day she told me that, and the second time she
dredged it out for a rerun, so by the third utterance, the arcane logic of such an editor's
twisted logic was revolting and totally inconsistent with known fact, the proven blips on
the cardiac EKG of journalism. I’m 51 today, nearing my 52nd Dec. 16, 2007. I’m the oldest of
three boys, all Eagle Scouts. I flunked out at Appalachian State after an electrifying bad acid trip.
I am bi-polar to the 1,000th degree, 250 pounds, six feet, blue eyes, brown hair. I’m not the usual
journalist you meet on the street, the kind that cowers to power and bosses. I am a hammer
journalist.
Ears buzzing, I still hear Butch's voice in my grandmother's yard, daring me.
“Go ahead, I dare you.”
I love dares. Proving your insanity can be uplifting. Dares are hard to explain,
especially the one born in my home state in 1587, the first yard ape born of English
parents on Roanoke Island, but Virginia Dare disappeared in 1591 along with the
members of the Lost Colony Andy Griffith used to recreate in an outdoor drama.
Butch and I were only five years old, old enough to know how sweet Grandmamma
Sanford’s magnolia tree's blossoms scented the East Laurinburg lawn, drowning out the
harsh aroma of musky North Carolina tar down at the railroad track out front. I had a rock
in my hand. It was perhaps the biggest wasp nest I'd ever see. Gulping, it was impossible
to mask my fear as I stepped up to the plate, two yards from the humming hive. Don't ever
dare me.
“Here goes....nothing,” I yelled, winding back with a fast ball Willie McCovey Stratomatic-
style couldn't hit. Unfortunately, my aim was true, and the rock sank into the soft cardboard
shell, signaling the Rapture to a few hundred imbecile soldiers who took flight like the
monkeys from Oz, butts in the air, stingers dripping poison. My grandmother was making
her Lipton's, heavy on the lemon juice and strong enough to pucker the cheeks, and the
pressure cooker was whistling over the roast while the pastry, what I called chicken 'n'
dumplings, boiled in the steam-filled kitchen. There were turnips boiling too. “Pot liquor”
is what Uncle Norman called it.
My shrieks quickly persuaded my relatives to run out on the porch with Quicksilver
feet where the sight of a child's swollen face, ears and throat must have struck the
Methodist fear of God into their hearts. Bees have always scared me since that day, and
it's hard to forget the pain, surge of poison and delusional madness that turned me into a
mush puppet at Grandmamma's. Humming drowned out my shrill shrieks and my family's
screams as I ran around the yard in circles, my brain and throat swelling. The wasps are
still buzzing in my head, and the whorehouse is still open to this day five years after that
horrible phone call.
************
1989
The sound of sand sifting off your plastic construction helmet in the bowels of a
small 20-foot pit is terrifying. I'm digging with a red-haired co-worker as the boss's
face and sardonic grin is shielded in darkness from the sun's halo above us.
“It's caving in,” I said. Suddenly a huge wall of large brown dirt clods breaks loose
from the hole's wall above us, and I grab him as the heavy downfall misses us but seals
our steel-toed boots in captivity on the future site of a paper mill.
“I'VE GOT A BOOK LEFT IN ME! IT'S NOT MY TURN YET!” We celebrated
our freedom from captivity with mega-brews a .22-shot away at the bar in a motel
lounge where there is a “certain smell mixed with bleach and pine-scented cleaner. It's
known up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Everyone's talking about Randy Travis
from Marshville, the local cattle market and a love-obsessed bulldozer operator at the
bar. We're at Trucker's Motel. It's a whorehouse, the most famous brothel on the Eastern
Seaboard. A group of Lumbee Indians are gambling at one table as to who will collect the
pot, a mound of cash which will pay for a blowjob.
“You don't have anything do you?”
“No! Never have. Those are sexy panties.”
“You like? It'll be $50. You can have a half-and-half. You look like you had a hard
day.”
“It was rough on that bulldozer today. One guy got hit by lightning. We got off early.”
“I'm going to get you off good. What's under those jeans? Looks like a big package.”
Strawberry papers had gone out of style years ago, but Christy was still using them.
“This is the third time this week. You must be really horny.”
Wildman was developing a solid crush on this prostitute. Every night at the bar he'd sit,
Slack-jawed, chin in palm with a Miller at arm's length. All he talked about was this chick
on breaks. It was her name he was screaming when my apartment door on Parsonage
Street flew open, his brown hair illuminated by a strange orange backlight, his eyes wide
and bloodshot. Wildman was a deeply religious fellow. You see, he'd always have a talk
with the Lord every day. However, on this particular day, we had been rained out, and his
talk with Lord Calvert had gone south while taking a breather on the sofa during a French
fry deep oil feast. His apartment was on fire.
“Christy! Christy!”
The bottle almost broke against my door as he shook me, confused and very
intoxicated, not knowing how to prevent this wooden, two-story 1960s building from
burning down. The stovetop's greasy blaze was about to light up the cabinets when I
quickly grabbed his sheets, running water on them, and placing them over the roaring pot.
Thick black smoke filled the room, as I knocked on doors, and guided him down the
stairs. I was hocking up black oysters and blowing soot out of my nose for days.
Wildman's fire today was below his belt, as his imaginary lover unbuckled his pants,
mouthing her lips against his wet jeans' crotch, giving him a rise.
“Can you use the warm water and that tin dish? It feels good.”
“I know you're clean.”
“It feels good. Can you get on top this time?”
Christy started out, licking his nipples, his favorite starting point, pulling his white
cotton jockey briefs, soiled from clay dust, down to his knees, brushing her long hair
against him on the way down.
“Mind if I smoke a joint? Don't tell anyone. They'd get mad.”
“Go right ahead. I don't smoke the stuff. Can we 69?”
“You're a brave one today. You better pace yourself before tonight with that beer.”
The mirror told the tale as her buttocks jiggled, humping him on the bed's edge as her
fingernails, painted black with Earnhardt's number 3 emblazoned on them, dug into the
topsheet.
“I love you Christy.”
“Don't say that. No kissing today. I've had a hard week.”
Her thrusts were slow, teasing, with wiggles on the way down as he grabbed her rear,
guiding it to his a syncopated pace. He had approximately 42 thrusts on this go round.
There were exactly 15 left.
“Can I get on top?”
“Sure. Who was hit by lightning today?”
“A supervisor. I'm going to follow him around from now on.”
“Why?”
“You know. It never strikes twice.”
Christy went through the motions running her tongue over her teeth, suggestively,
cupping her bosoms, twisting her nipples as Wildman bit his lip until it bled.
“Can you give me a hickey?” Ten strokes left.
“You sure you're not a cop?”
Wildman smiled, slapping her on the butt with both hands, enough make them pink.
“What'd you do that for?”
“I ain't no cop. I swear! This place will never get busted. It hasn't yet, has it?”
“You never know.”
Five. His pulse was 120, blood pressure steady at 140 over 90. The fluid was building
at the base as his tensed groin milked and pumped. Grinding, she could see it in his eyes.
Four. Glazed, his toes tickled her's. He pinched her, grunting. Her breasts were
glistening with perspiration.
Three. Now she let it fly, humping fast as she could, feeling him harder inside.
“I'm not a cop! Are you going to come with me this time?”
“You can't never be sure!” she yelled, grinning as the radio's reception faded into static.
Gurgling, the backed up sewer burped a bubble up into the bathroom's commode.
Two. While most of the other customers visualized two other hookers joining them
nude, sucking and caressing at this point, Wildman was fantasizing of wedding bells, a tux,
his family and the surveying crew as his best men.
“Give it to me! I want you to come! Shoot it! My pussy's hot!”
“Could we go out sometime?”
“No! Absolutely not! Keep your mind on your cock!”
His sweaty stomach was trembling, hard with tensed muscles, as he felt her teeth bite
into his neck, her finger shoved way up into him as he stopped concentrating and went
limp, letting his genitals go on overdrive by themselves.
One. On the last thrust, she did what he paid her to do every time, the tip. She hopped
up off the bed and stood there, fingering herself on his order as he ejaculated on his own,
groaning and calling for his mother.
As Christy used her white cotton terrycloth robe to dry him, she licked his Harley tattoo.
“You sure ain't no cop.” Wildman was sobbing, holding his face in his hands, telling her
to get the hell out of the room.
**************
“Thank you suh.”
That's what Jim Ed Williams of Laurinburg and I used to say to each other when we
were 14 working in the hot cornfields detassling seed corn stalks. I had a Social Security
card at 13.
“You're fired!”
“Thank you suh!”
One of us would start it off with that in honor of the way I defied my football coach,
our boss in the field, during the summers between football seasons. Once I drove a
detassling machine in a ditch of curdling nasty standing water - on purpose - earning us a
bonus 30-minute break in the 103-degree 1 p.m. heat.
“Thank you suh!” we would retort after getting a fake firing order.
Well, I just got my 112th one today on the Sabbath. Just got called into the editor's
office and fired for telling the truth which no one owns. Everybody just shares the truth in
a collaborative effort. Nobody has a franchise on the truth like Col. Sanders does on his
secret recipe of herbs and spices. It was a solemn session. No histrionics. Just Frank, Bob
and me in Frank’s office. Bathos. Panther breath on your neck. Frank was my editor at the
Florence Morning News newspaper. I started my newspaper career at The Appalachian, the
campus rag in Boone, N.C. at Appalachian State. Then I worked at the Hickory Daily Record for
a year, writing under a nom de plume of Kid Charlemagne at FOCUS in Hickory. Later I moved
to the Marion Star after living at the whorehouse for a while. When the paper wouldn’t publish
articles I wrote about a female murderer, I took my work to the Florence rag.
In Frank’s office I thought I'd feel noble and happy and proud, but instead I feel depressed,
embarrassed and semi-high on a six pack. I couldn't help myself. I had to go with it. There was
no other alternative. I respect no authority because it doesn't respect me. Nobody tells me what to
do. I suppose I've let everybody down except myself. I'm proud of my work. It's the best
on the planet, and no one can tell me otherwise. I feel better writing about it. I kept my
mouth shut.
“Do you admit that I told you to lay off this story?”
Silence.
“Your employment is terminated as of today. Have you got the key to the building on
you?”
Reaching in my pocket, I felt the sharp corners of a Bud bottle cap, a few paper
matchsticks and my keyring. If you can measure a man’s worth by the number of keys on
his key ring, my worth was sinking, and the key ring would be lighter once I returned
home and bought an illegal Sunday six-pack at the local package store on my revolving
credit account.
I know now how far power extends in this state. It's like I told Peggy Jordan
our backdoor childhood neighbor during a Sunday night prayer meeting on her family's
porch. As we held hands in a prayer, we were each to say what we wanted. I said I just
wanted to make sure that my life touched a lot of people and that I had a positive effect on
the world.
What am I going to tell everybody? My parents are going to be so pissed off. Mamma
will go silent with the Amish treatment Daddy has mastered and talk to me in short
sessions for several months until I get a job. When I lose a job, my mother usually doesn’t
talk to me at all or call for a few months, and when we make contact, her demeanor is
brief, curt. And my girlfriend is going to go ape . She will become my wife a year and a
half from this point. I suppose I need to hit the job trail at 7 a.m. tomorrow after I finish
throwing up vomit all over the white bathroom tiles. I've got to remember to hold my head up
high in honorable regal splendor and hide my anguished pain. It feels like I've just been naked in
front of 10,000 laughing citizens. At least I'm not a public figure anymore. It's time to slink back
into the wormy citizenry of meaningless, powerless orphans of political prowess. Move over
Rover, let Timmy take over. Somewhere, somebody is on my side.
Something supports me in a teeny tiny corner where the cockroaches inch in through
the sandy piles of dirt, a place where only the worthy, the wise, the brave and the tall
cower in lonely isolation. All fall down. Every last durn one of them. The heck with every one of
them, the sorry baby rapers. I don't give a hot crap what anybody says. Sorry
no-good criminal mothers. I feel like I've beendrilled in the ass. Gorilla head
monkey mothers. Hardhead, diehard blowhards. Censor me, will you? Well, the heck with
you! Drill you in the ass, you slimy piece of feces. I don't need your sorry slipshod editing
skills anymore to mess up my stories and butcher them beyond readability, slandering the
poor and worshipping the rich Republican powerhogs. Take that, you sorry excuses for
human flesh, in the balls, and don't ever censor with me again because you'll be sorry.