An internet novel.  Dumped online 1/30/10.  Enjoy.  Download Epub

Go to chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12  complain

Chapter 1

“I hate it when they giz all over my hands,” Paul said.  He cursed as he fumble with the worm, hook, and the fishing pole held between his legs.  Paul’s oversized hands lacked the precision required to impale the worm.  All the while, the worm writhed and secreted a sticky goo that further added to his frustrations.       

Connor snickered and said, “I bet your boyfriends hate it when you tell them that.”

“Shut up, Connor.”  Paul said.  He shoved Connor, putting all of his considerable bulk behind it.  Connor slid into Matt, pushing him off of the top of the picnic table like a domino.  Matt landed squarely on his ass in a particularly muddy patch of earth, but he did manage to keep his fishing pole from hitting the ground.

He looked up at his three so-called friends perched like crows on top of the table, holding their fishing poles, and laughing so hard they could piss themselves at any moment.  “Assholes.” Setting his pole on the ground, he stood up and wiped the mud from his jeans.  Matt scraped together the excess mud in his right hand and flung it at them.  They kept on laughing. 

Matt walked over to Paul and took the hook and worm from him.  He threaded the hook through the worm three times so that it wouldn’t fall off.  “Here,” he said handing it back to Paul.  “Your welcome.”  He went back over to the end of the table, picked up his fishing pole, and assumed his position beside Connor.  Paul looked around for something to wipe the worm giz on, finally scraping it onto the underside of the wooden table.

“Paul, the master fisherman can’t concentrate with you screwing around.  Isn’t that right College Boy?” Grant said, sitting on the opposite end of the picnic table.  Matt wanted push the dominos the other way and knock him the off the far side of the table.  Instead he stared at the lake and said, “I can’t help that you suck at fishing.”

The lake shimmered like liquid metal as the sun drifted towards the earth.  The sun seemed to hang in the autumn sky for hours, casting rays at sharp angles and making every creature north of the water line squint.  The wind picked up momentum across the lake and made the surrounding trees clamor in unison.  The leaves were turning a myriad of colors that coordinated well with the setting sun.  People would travel from miles away to see the vivid shades of yellow, orange, and red.  Matt watched the leaves change every year for as long as he could remember.  It was a mystery to him how people could get excited about dying leaves.  The way he saw it, the leaves changed colors like a choking victim desperate for the Heimlich maneuver.

Fall weather in Pennsylvania was so unstable that one day it could be balmy and seventy and the next it could be fifty and rainy.  Sitting by the lake wearing his red flannel shirt, Matt couldn’t decide whether he wanted to shiver or break out in a sweat.  He could respect summer and winter’s clear-cut hot and cold agendas, but spring and fall just couldn’t seem to make up their minds. 

October was the tail end of tourist season at Richmond State Park.  As the four of them sat on the picnic table, there was a slow succession of people walking on the gravel path fifty feet behind them.  Every once in a while a bicyclist would ride past, decked out in a spandex suit and helmet.  The gently rolling hills along the gravel trail made the helmet seem excessive, but the psychological advantage was immeasurable.  In reality, an avid bicycler would get board by the lack of challenge presented by the four-mile loop around the lake.  Riders looking for a challenge took to the backwoods trails near the perimeter of the park.  They were only discernable by two tire-rutted lines of knocked down grass and brush.  

Paul dismounted the picnic table and surveyed the water for the location that would yield the largest fish.  It was a delicate process considering the close proximity of his fellow fishermen’s lines.  The three of them leaned away from Paul as he brought fishing pole back over his shoulder, as if swaying one foot in either direction would make any difference in whether they got hooked.  With a flick of his wrist, Paul sent the worm flying into the water.  When he was satisfied with the positioning of his cast, he squeezed back between Grant and Connor.  The table bowed as he sat down, causing the others to shift inward like a large planet exerting gravity on three little ones.    

A few weeks ago, Grant stole four lawn chairs off the front porch at Paul’s house so that they wouldn’t have to sit shoulder to shoulder on the picnic table.  “You know,” Paul said, “my parents have four chairs just like these.”  “Yeah,” Grant said, “what a coincidence.”  Then after about two weeks, Grant got sick of lugging the chairs from his apartment to the park, so he decided hide the chairs in the weeds and retrieve them for fishing on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  He gathered a few tree limbs and meticulously placed each one until he was sure that the chairs were well hidden from the trail.  

Two days later they were gone.  Someone had stolen the stolen lawn chairs.  Grant tore through the weeds like a brush hog, searching frantically for any sign of them. Connor turned to Matt and whispered, “Looks like Paul’s Mom is going be short a few more lawn chairs.”   When Grant heard them laughing he spun around and screamed at them for not participating in the search.  Connor and Matt tramped though the weeds, knowing that the maintenance guys probably tossed them in a dumpster.  After an hour of searching, they found a dead salamander, weeds, and a shit load of poison ivy.  Somehow Grant came to the conclusion that the Park Ranger had stolen his precious chairs.  Paul concurred with Grant’s assessment and called the Park Ranger a worthless piece of shit.  After that, Matt and Connor decided that sitting on top of the picnic table didn’t seem so bad after all.     

Just the thought of those chairs made Matt’s skin crawl.  The poison ivy was still lingering all over his arms.  Even after the fact, he only had a vague idea of what poison ivy looked like.  ‘Leaves of three stay away from me’ was the extent of his horticultural knowledge.  Sure that’s how the rhyme went, but when he was knee deep in weeds, they all looked like they had three leaves.  Later it occurred to him that instead of looking for poison ivy in a patch of weeds, he was actually looking for weeds in a patch of poison ivy. 

Go figure, it was hot last week and he happened to be wearing short sleeves during his swim through the poison ivy.  This week it was cold and the slightest movement of his long sleeves caused a flood of 911 calls to his brain.  His arms looked yellow and caramelized, and the thought of scraping them with a potato peeler crossed his mind more than once. 

The fact that Grant didn’t catch any made it even worse.  Matt felt like grabbing the biggest poison ivy plant he could find, or the biggest plant he thought might be poison ivy, and rubbing it in Grant’s face.  It would be worth getting a little more of it just to see Grant’s face swell up like a punch-drunk boxer.  He wanted to but he didn’t.    

Connor started to get board, and worse the wood table made his ass fall asleep.  He shifted restlessly from side to side trying to get rid of the dead needle feeling running though his legs.  With a smile he said, “Hey Paul, did you know that Keanu Reeves is actually Christopher Reave’s illegitimate love child?”

“What?” Paul said.

“It’s true.  I read it in the People magazine.  Back in the seventies, before his accident with the horse, the senior Reaves was one of the finalists for the lead role in the TV show Hawaii Five-O…”

“What part was he auditioning for?” Grant asked.  

“I don’t know - the white guy, whatever his name was, that’s the part he was going for.  Anyways, he’s on location in Hawaii auditioning when he meets this beautiful island girl named Kilowayhe, and they…”

“What was that name again?”  Grant asks. 

“Kill-Oh-Way-He. It means…‘she who rides the waves.’ Now, can I continue?  So Paul, where was I?  Oh yeah, Chris and Kilowayhe wind up having a one night stand out on one of Hawaii’s beautiful beaches.  And as we all know, he doesn’t get the part of ‘white guy’ in the series.  So, he flies back to California, and as soon as he gets home his agent calls and says they want him to play Superman” 

Paul leaned in towards Connor, not allowing a single word to escape him.

“Kilowayhe gives birth to a son nine months later, just as Superman hits the theaters.  Here’s the kicker: she names the boy Kea-nu, which in her native language means, you guessed it, ‘Super-Man.’” Connor paused to let it all sink in.  “See there Paul, you learn something new every day.”

“Woah,” Paul said. 

“Woah indeed,” Connor said. “And the moral of the story is that everything happens for a reason.”

“I thought the moral was go to Hawaii and have sex a native girl,” Matt said. 

“Well that too, but ‘everything happens for a reason’ sounds better.”

“I don’t believe that,” Grant said.

“I report, you decide,” Connor said with a shrug.  “I’m telling you I read it in the People, and then I saw it on one of those celebrity stalker shows.  You saw it didn’t you Matt?”

“Yep,” Matt said on cue. 

“I’m not talking about your bullshit story.  I’m talking about ‘everything happens for a reason,’” Grant said.  “Just the other day I was putting up trim with Bobby Bogner at that big new house over at Lincoln Courts.”

“I saw that place going up, what’s it like inside?” Matt asked.

“Big and new.  All the houses up there are huge.  It’s like a competition to see who can build the biggest barn-of-a-house possible.  We plan on being there another week at least.  The guy having it build is rich and doesn’t seem to mind that were taking twice as long.  Jake is always walking around with a grin on his face telling us to slow down, and Jake’s never like that.  He’s usually bitching about how we need to move our asses or get fired. 

“Anyways, me and Bobby are humped over on all fours nailing trim and taking our time doing it.  Then all of a sudden Bobby falls over and starts screaming this high pitch girly scream.  I get over to him and I’m looking, trying to see what’s wrong.  He’s lying on his stomach grabbing his ass.  Here this dickhead new guy crept up behind him and shot him in the ass with a nail gun. 

“He shot him right here, I mean direct hit,” Grant leaned over and pointed to his right pants pocket, where the frayed Levis emblem came to a point.  “As soon as Bobby pulled himself together and stopped bawling like a little bitch, we got our guns and squeezed off round after round at this new guy.  I emptied my gun at this prick, and you know what?  Not one nail went in him.”

“You missed?”  Connor asked.

“No, we hit him alright, but none of the nails went in.  Once you fire a nail, it only goes straight for about a foot before it starts to spin end over end.  It’s a safety feature.  We’d shoot, the nails would spin, and everything we fired hit him broad side and bounced off.  It leaves a welt but doesn’t break the skin.” 

“What happened to Bobby?  Did you pull the nail out off his ass?” Matt asked.

“Hell no, that’s what they have doctors for.  They took him to the emergency room, pulled it out, and gave him a tetanus shot.  It must have looked pretty sick.  Bobby said that they brought the med-students around to look at his ass before they pulled it out.  Took X-rays and everything.  Bobby said that if he knew his ass was going to be that popular he would have stopped at a tanning bed before he went to the hospital.”  Grant let a wad of spit fly into the lake and said, “If everything happens for a reason like you said, the nails would’ve stuck and the new guy would be looking like Pinhead from Hellraiser right about now.”

“I disagree,” Connor said.  “You see, you’re looking at it all wrong.  Bobby’s a little bitch who deserved to get a nail lodged up his bitch-ass.  And the new guy was a messenger of karma, so it’s only fitting that the nails bounced off him.  Thus everything happens for a reason.”

“Messenger of karma?  What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Grant said.    

“You wouldn’t be talking like that if Bobby was here,” Paul said.  “Maybe I’ll let him know what you’ve been saying,” Paul and Bobby were both lineman on the high school football team.  They juiced up together, but neither of them figured out that you still had to lift weights in order to get any bigger.  A nickname for the two of them floated around school, but no one dared say it to their faces.

“You can tell your Raisin Brother whatever you want.  While you’re at it, tell him that he’s one ugly son of a bitch too.”  Connor said. 

“What did you say?”

Paul could midget toss anyone of them into the lake if he wanted.  With this in mind, Connor began to backpedal.  “Ah calm down.  I didn’t call you anything.  I said that Bobby smelled like a tater-tot, and got what was coming to him.”  

Just then they heard a bicyclist riding on the path behind them.  They all turned and looked in the off chance that it might be a pretty lady.  “Then I called you Raisin Brothers,” Connor said while the cyclist distracted Paul.  A Skinny guy wearing a canary yellow spandex outfit peddled past, huffing along with the determined look of a champion idiot.   Matt waved to him but he didn’t bother to wave back.  He turned his head and stared at them as if they were part of the scenery.  The cyclist couldn’t spare the energy to respond because he needed to get back to where he started as quickly as possible.  Being snubbed by this outsider really pissed Matt off.  The sign out front said Richmond State Park, but Matt had staked his claim by attending the park on a regular basis.  This fool took the liberty of riding through Matt’s backyard like he owned the place.  At the very least, he should’ve waved in acknowledgment of the fact that he was only visiting.                  

“Speaking of Hospitals, did you hear what happened to Charlie Bravo?” Grant said.

Distracted by the non-waving bike jerk, Matt couldn’t remember if they were ‘speaking of hospitals.’  He also couldn’t recall anyone named Charlie Bravo.  “Who’s Charlie Bravo?” Paul said, reading Matt’s mind.

“You know…Charlie Bravo.” Grant said as if restating the name would crystallize everything.  “The guy from the flea market?”  Oh yeah, Matt thought.  Charlie Bravo sold a variety of military surplus supplies, hats, and clothing.  His little stand was chalked full of stuff that screamed ‘redneck.’  He sold belt buckles that said, ‘You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hand,’ bootleg stickers of Calvin pissing on various NASCAR driver’s numbers, and enough camouflage to ‘hide’ a battalion.

His real name wasn’t Charlie Bravo.  They had no idea what his name really was, nor did they care to find out.  The name Charlie Bravo came from one of those cheesy, cliché ridden Vietnam movies.  Charlie! Bravo! Alpha! This is delta squad! Do you read me!  The young grunt would scream into a radio attached to quasi-dead guy’s back.  We need air support, damn it!  Every time they visited Charlie Bravo they acted out the scene right in front of his little flea market stand.  Charlie played the NVA, firing an imaginary Russian made machine gun from behind his little flea market stand.  Connor played the young screaming grunt.  Grant played the dead radio operator struggling for life.  Matt and Paul were the miscellaneous GIs included in the movie only to get mowed down by machine gun fire.  Their faces were rapt with anguish as they patted their chests, marking where Charlie’s imaginary bullets had riddled them.  As they fell to the gravel, other flea marketers would hurry past, dragging their kids along behind them.  They played the role of the scared Vietnamese villagers.         

Needless to say, Charlie Bravo wasn’t all together with it.  At first glance you would suspect that he was mildly retarded, judging by his slack-jawed, dim countenance.  He was missing many of his teeth, and the survivors looked to be a hard apple away from surrender.  As a result, his speech was nearly undecipherable, which made him even more fun to mock.  He always wore a black POW/MIA hat, which alluded to the possibility that he might be a veteran.  He looked about the right age to be in the war, and being a veteran served as a convenient and dismissive explanation for why he was a bit messed up in the head.  On the other hand, anyone could purchase an identical hat from him for $5 ($3 if they bothered to haggle). 

In a way, he was sort of like a pet.  They enjoyed playing around with him and arguing over the price of a huge machete or an empty grenade they had no intention of buying.  Paul occasionally bought redneck paraphernalia from him, but no one else bothered.  Sometimes Charlie would drape his arm on Connor’s shoulder and pull him close so that he could relay a critically important secret.  Connor would smile without the faintest idea of what he was saying.  “You’re right Charlie…it’s all one big conspiracy.” 

“Oh yeah, Charlie Bravo,” Paul said.

“You’re not going to believe this but, he got shot robbing a bank,” Grant said.  “Give me a cigarette.”  Paul reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small red box and lighter.  The smokes weren’t the cheapo Jacks or Lucky Strikes, they were the premium Cowboy Killers.  Paul passed the lighter and a cigarette to Grant, and then lit one for himself.  Matt and Connor never smoked and despised Grant and Paul for lighting up in such close proximity.  If they complained, Grant and Paul would blow the smoke in their faces out of spite.  If they kept quite, the smoke would be blown up into the air.  Grant took a drag and held it longer than he needed, allowing for a dramatic pause that he milked for all it was worth.  He let his words hang in air with the cigarette exhaust, enjoying the feeling of importance.

“Charlie tried to hold up the Valley bank downtown.  I heard it from Judy Marsh.  She watched from her house across the street.  He must have decided to go big time and hit the cashiers and the vault all at once.  After he camps out in there for an eternity, the cops show up, and he decides to make a run for it.”  Grant paused for a cigarette break.  “So he takes off out of the front door, double-fisting wads of cash.  The cop’s standing behind his squad car door with gun in hand, just waiting to put one in him.  He yells twice but old Charlie is set on making it to his car parked round the corner.  So Po-po opens fire and drops Charlie with one in the arm.”  Grant took another drag and licked his lips because his mouth was parched from relaying the hot gossip. 

“Bummer,” Connor said.  “What about Judy?  She still a fine piece?”

“She’s looking all right, considering she’s working on her third kid.” Connor cringed. 

“Then what?”  Matt said. 

“What do you mean ‘then what’ College Boy.  That’s it.  After he got shot he wised up and said ‘fuck it, I’m done.’  Except coming from him it probably sounded like ‘s-suck it, I’m f-fun.’  The cop comes over, slaps on the cuffs, and he lies there bleeding until the ambulance shows up.  The end.  He very well should have known better that to try and pull something like that.  It can’t be done.”  Grant reeled in his line a little, like he was getting a bite.

Grant’s remarks wore on Matt, and the words ‘College Boy’ had a nails-on-chalk board effect.  He looked past his fishing pole at the lake and tried to calm down.  Emotions are best kept bottled up and pushed down into a tight little ball of hate.  The thought brought a smile to Matt’s face.  He’d have to keep that nugget of wisdom in mind for his future career as a self-help guru. 

Far over on the other side of the lake a little yellow spot appeared bobbing up and down.  Upon closer examination, it was the no-waving two-wheeled trespassing canary making his way around the jogging path.  Matt thought about giving him the middle finger but didn’t bother.  It was at least 200 yards across the lake, much too far for the bicyclist to see and appreciate it. 

Matt reached down and scratched his arms, giving in to one of those fire calls in his head.  His arms were encouraged by the reaction and began to call twice as frantically. 

Turning to Grant, Matt said, “It could be done.”

Grant looked back at him, a bit surprised and said, “No, it couldn’t.  Maybe if you were lucky you could hit the registers before the cops showed up, but then what?  You’d make off with ten grand if you were lucky.  It’s not worth the effort.  Just ask Charlie soon-to-be-a-large-man’s-prison-bitch-Bravo.”

Matt’s mouth made a declaration that his brain wasn’t prepared to back up, but he was bound and determined not to lose the budding argument.  His mind started spinning like a car tire looking for traction, making lots of smoke but not going anywhere.

“You could do it and make it worth while, I’m talking about the registers and the vault, but you would have to rob two banks, not just one.”

Grant looked for his next move.  “Double the pleasure, double the fun, double the odds of getting shot by the cop’s gun.  Two banks?  Why not three?”

“I heard about something like that before,” Connor said like a diplomat from a far away country.  “The Younger Brothers’ Gang did it back when robbing banks was still fashionable.  I read about it a long time ago in one of those Time/Life books on the Wild West.”

“Is that right?  And what happened to the Younger Brothers?” Grant asked.

“The gang of twelve guys split up and robbed two banks across the street from one another.  Both groups were knee deep in money when the town’s people find out what was happening.  Thieves had robbed them before, and this was their money getting stolen.  So they gathered together at the general store, and the owner started passing out shotguns to everybody:  men, women, and children.  With guns in hand, they go to the banks vigilante style and blow away the Younger Brothers and their gang.  All except for one, that is.  And then, they gathered up what’s left of the bodies, put them in caskets, and displayed them in the front window of the general store like trophies.  The advertising increased shotgun sales by eighty percent, and the storekeeper used the profits to found the NRA.  True story.” 

Grant grinned at Matt on the other side of the table.  “That’s what I’m talking about, College Boy.”

Matt shot a look at Connor questioning where his loyalties lied.  Connor avoided his gaze and pretended to be interested in fishing.  Next, Paul would chime in with some painfully stupid insight, and then they’d all be against him. 

Matt’s mouth said, “That’s not what I had in mind at all.  If you two would shut your holes for a half a second, I’ll explain.”  Actually, that was what he had in mind.  He reeled in the fishing line in order to stall for more time to think of something. 

“You said that these guys robbed two banks at the same time, right?”  No traction yet, still spinning. 

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Well, it would work if you staggered the time.”  The green light flashed and his mind began to run.  “One group goes into bank A, and they hit the registers like Charlie Bravo was planning on doing.  The difference is that they don’t fool around.  They hit the registers, pass Go, collect the ten grand, and get out fast.

“Now the alarms are going to get set off, and this is all going to be caught on tape.  That’s a given.  The cops are going to swarm at bank A, all wanting to be the one first one on the scene, shoot some robbers, and maybe get on TV.  But, nobody’s going to be there because they got out fast.

“The second group sits back and waits for the first to go in.  They’ll be across town, not across the street, at bank B.  They wait about ten minutes from when the first group goes in.  After ten minutes, the cops have a full response to bank A.  Thus, the second group has ample time to hit the vault in bank B, because the cops are all the way across town.

“The first group is a decoy, and the second group cleans house.”  Matt leaned forward and looked across at Grant.   He stared at him blankly for a moment and then contorted his face to produce the biggest, fakest, ear-to-ear toothy grin he possibly could.  “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

It had been a while since he had anything to smile about.  The muscles around his cheeks hurt like the time he watched Chris Farley audition for Chippendales.  His face had grown accustomed to the broken clock, nothing expression he showed to everybody everyday.     

After that, Matt studied his bobber floating out in the water, which marked the location of his bait.  Then he flicked off the insignificant remainder of dried mud on this hand.  He tried hard to look cool and indifferent.  Actually he was mentally reloading, sharpening his fangs, and waiting to see what Grant would come up with next.  But it didn’t come, and he started to realize that wasn’t going to. 

The silence allowed a million different weird little insects the opportunity to step up to the microphone and be heard.  Some bugs preferred to chirp in a repeating pattern, relaying some indecipherable bug-to-bug communication.  Others howled like tiny opera singers, turning blue in the face as they held out one high-pitched note as long as they could. 

In a way, it sucked to kill the conversation.  Matt started to get an awkward feeling, like he had just said something so stupid that no one could even think of a response to humor him.  Maybe they’d keep quiet for now and log the rant away in their memories in order to mock him when he wasn’t around.  Maybe Paul wasn’t the biggest reject of the group after all.  Maybe Matt had rapidly elevated himself to the position of Chief Dumb-ass in their four-man tribe.

No.  The only reason Grant didn’t say anything was because he couldn’t think of anything.  I’m the big wheener, Matt thought.  Another tip for future career as self-help guru:  never engage in direct confrontation on a pertinent subject, instead start a petty argument over some trivial detail.  At any rate, he still felt like he needed to say something.  His best option was to backpedal.  All he had to do was concede the point before Grant could say anything, that way he could come off looking like the magnanimous winner.  Anyways, he was in an untenable position.  If Grant said  ‘that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,’ the argument would deteriorate to a third grade nuh-uh/uh-huh battle.

“Yeah, but even if it did work, which isn’t very likely - I mean you wouldn’t come away with enough money to make it worthwhile.  Banks don’t carry cash anymore.  Nobody does.  If you think about it, money doesn’t really exist the same way it did thirty years ago.  With credit cards and ATMs, cash only exists as an inconvenience for the IRS.  First it was metal, then it was paper, now it’s an idea stored in a computer somewhere.  Imagine if everyone in the world decided one day to cash out.  All the rainforests in South America couldn’t produce enough paper to make that much money.   In fifty years there won’t even be traditional banks.  They’ll only exist on the inter…”

“What happened to the one?”  Grant said. 

“Huh?” Matt said, caught off guard.

“Not you.  Him.”  Grant pointed to Connor.  The cigarette in his mouth bounced up and down as he spoke.

Connor turned his head, with a ‘who me?’ look on his face.  “What’s this now?”

“You said that the store owner passed out shotguns to all of the town’s people, and all of the robbers got killed except for one.  What happened to the one?  How much did he get away with?”

“Oh.  Uh, he didn’t get away with anything.  They locked him up and threw away the key.”

Grant nodded and continued to puff away.  He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and held it for a while.  Setting his fishing pole on the table, Grant got up and stretched.  He threw his arms into the air and yawned with his mouth wide open, and then he flicked his cigarette butt into the lake.  After that he took off his faded blue baseball cap and ran a hand through his short brown hair.  A big red ring on his forehead marked where his cap had been.  He put it back on, pulling the cap down low until he barely peaked out from underneath the bill.  “Well, I’m sick of this,” he said.  “Ready to go?”  And with that, he picked up his pole and reeled in his line.  The others weren’t necessarily ready to go, but it wasn’t like they were catching anything.  Paul shrugged his shoulders, flicked his cigarette butt, and pulled in his line too.  Connor and Matt followed suit. They knew better than to say anything because they were riding in Grant’s car.  The first one to express a dissenting opinion would likely to find himself left behind.               

Matt picked up the He-Man lunch box that they kept all of their fishing gear in and the Styrofoam dish filled with dirt and worms.  Since he was tasked with collecting all of the items, he lagged behind the group and had to hurry to catch up. 

Paul told them that he had to stop off the bathroom located adjacent to the parking lot.  He warned Grant that there would be hell to pay if he left without him, and then went into the public restroom.  The word ‘public’ before any other word could be interchanged with ‘filthy’ or ‘disgusting,’ and although the restroom was pretty well maintained, it still was little more than a permanent port-a-potty.  There was no running water, just a toilet connected to a big hole under the building. 

As they stood outside the restroom, making loud grunting sounds and laughing at the echoing sound of Paul’s shit hitting the water, they spotted a guy walking towards them on the trail.  They didn’t recognize him at first, just a nondescript fisherman wearing dark brown hip waders.  He carried a fishing pole and tackle box in his right hand and a fold up chair in his left hand.  As he got closer, they could see that he was wearing sunglasses and had long, thinning blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.  The sunglasses were the oversized black kind they give to old people after eye surgery.  “Well lookie what we have here,” Grant said, “It’s your good buddy Johnny Lesh.”

Matt felt cold with fear like he was thirteen years old again.  For a moment, he thought that old Johnny would keep on walking towards him, getting bigger and bigger until he towered over him.

Johnny wasn’t that big anymore, but he still had that same old smile.  There was nothing in the world so wonderful that could possess a man to smile all the time, but Johnny did it anyways.  He’d force out a long-toothed grin no mater what the topic or how inappropriate.  When he spoke, his lower jaw barely moved so that he could maintain that smile the whole time.  Old Johnny was around thirty, but the smile lines jetting out from the corners of his eyes made him look fifty.  The smile coupled with his long, pony-tailed mullet made Matt nauseous.  Looking at him now, it appeared as if his cocky, aggressive mullet had disengaged into a skullet.

“Howdy, boys.  Hey, wait a minute, something’s wrong here,” he took off his post-op sunglasses and placed them in his pocket.   “Where’s the fourth stooge, the big one that delivers my mail.  Well, we got Moe, Larry, and Curly so I guess Shemp’s got the night off.”  He smiled at his stupid Three Stooges reference.

“Why don’t you run along, bitch,” Connor said.  “While you’re at it, run on down to the barber shop and get that pussy-assed pony tail cut off.”

Matt’s initial feeling of fear melted away and was replaced by anger.  He stood up strait and glared the way Christopher Reave would right before the lasers started shooting out of his eyes.  His arms started to itch even worse that before, worse than they had all week. 

“Now is that any way to talk to your old pal?”

“Hey, bitch,” Grant said, “shouldn’t you be practicing for a marathon or some kind of long distance race?  We don’t want to hold up or anything, that’s all.”

The smile on old Johnny’s face went away for an instant, and later Connor would swear he heard a cracking sound.  “Don’t worry, I’ll be seeing you little fagots later,” he said recomposing his smile.  He started walking away from them towards the parking lot.  Halfway there he turned and said, “Matt, tell your mom I said hi.” 

What happened next didn’t really have to happen.  If old Johnny had enough sense to keep his mouth shut and leave well enough alone, everything would’ve been cool.  Old Johnny saw Matt as that little kid from back in the day, not a twenty year old man looking for an excuse to beat the living shit out of him.

As soon as the last syllable hit Matt’s ear he threw down the fishing pole, supply box, and cup of worms, and started chasing after Johnny.  Matt stood six foot nothing and a buck seventy, but when Johnny saw him coming he dropped everything, including his smile, and starting running. 

“It’s on now!  Run bitch!  Run!” Connor yelled.     

Running in thigh high hip waders, Johnny waddled like a scared penguin being chased by a polar bear.  His arms pumped fiercely, totally out of sink with his legs.  His ponytail cracked in the wind like a little blonde whip.  His Trans-Am was so close, yet impossibly far away like an untethered astronaut inches away from the ship. 

When he realized he wouldn’t make it to the car, he decided to turn and fight.  Johnny spun around with Matt only a few feet behind.  He reached way back and wildly swung a haymaker with his right hand.  Matt ducked to miss the punch and put his shoulder squarely into Johnny’s stomach.  He wrapped his arms around Johnny’s thighs, but instead of tackling him, Matt lifted him up.  He carried Johnny waist-high above his head for a few steps and then in one motion he stopped, bent at the waist, and flung Johnny forward without releasing his thighs.  Johnny had no way to brace himself for the impact.  He landed head first on the gravel path leading to the parking lot.

 Matt let go of his legs and stood over him.  Johnny wasn’t dead, but there was no more fight left in him.  For all intents and purposes, the fight had ended before it began.  Then Matt knelt down on Johnny’s arms and pinned him to the ground by sitting on his chest.  He punched Johnny squarely in the mouth, splitting his top lip.  The punch went straight down, driving Johnny’s head into the ground.  Blood filled the spaces in between his teeth like the black keys on a piano.  By now Connor and Grant had caught up to them.  Matt hit him again, and then a third time before Connor reached down and half helped him up and half pulled him off Johnny. 

Matt breathed heavily with his teeth exposed.  Both his hands were still clenched tight.  The right one was covered with blood that matted the hair on his knuckles.  “Hey.” Connor said. Matt didn’t respond.  “Matt.”  Connor grabbed Matt’s arm and it pulsed like an electric fence. 

“What?”  The response came out louder than intended.

“Man, you kicked his ass,” Connor said.

At about this time Paul emerged from the bathroom and found himself deserted.  For a Kodak moment he thought that everyone left without him, but then he saw all of the fishing poles lying around and that really blew his mind.  Finally, he spotted them off in the distance, huddled together and looking down on something.  He gathered up the fishing poles and the supplies and ran towards the funeral circle.

“What I miss?  What I miss?”

“Did I kill him?”

“College Boy beat the piss out of Johnny Lesh here.”

“Don’t even worry about him.  Look at you.  There’s not a scratch on you.  We’re talking flawless victory.” 

“Damn it, I pick the worst times to have to take a dump.”

“What if he wakes up and calls the cops?  Then I’m screwed.”

“On the other hand, I wouldn’t really say he beat the piss out of him.  It was like a body slam, but not quite.  Kind of reminded me of one of those anything goes, human cock fights.”

“No man, he’s not going to call the cops.  Be happy.  You know how many people I’d like to smack down?  I keep that list on the fridge, but I know it’s never going to happen.  Not like this anyways.”

“You mean Ultimate Fighting?  No way.  No way.  Damn it, I missed it.  I wish I had my camera.  I haven’t used that thing once yet.”     

“I didn’t mean…I don’t know.”

“Even if you weren’t in the shitter and had your camera rolling, it didn’t last more than a few seconds.  It would be bad-ass to see it on replay though.”

“Look, everything’s going to be alright.  Don’t worry about it.”

Johnny Lesh, who everybody forgot about, turned his head and convulsed out some blood.  Johnny’s gurgling made everyone glance down at him.  He looked like a drowning victim that just hawked out a lungful of water, except no one was trying to resuscitate him.  “That almost hit my shoe,” Grant said.  He kicked some dirt and loose gravel into Johnny’s face.  Johnny didn’t seem to mind.  “Won’t be smiling anytime soon, that’s for sure,” Grant said with a laugh.  “Can we leave already?  While I’m young, huh?”

Connor put an arm around Matt’s shoulders like a trainer leading the champ out of the ring.  Grant continued to try to explain the fight to Paul by referencing some obscure martial arts film.  When words failed him, he started to act it out step-by-step.   Connor stopped when they got to Johnny’s black Trans-Am and told everyone to keep going, he’d catch up. 

Johnny had backed into the parking space crooked, taking up two spaces.  Connor looked at the big red and orange bird covering the hood of the car in front of him.  It was almost the same one Burt Reynolds drove in Smoky and the Bandit, except that there was rust bubbling up on the quarter panels.  The car also need washed badly.  The thick outline of dirt on the windshield marked the range of the windshield wipers. 

Connor used his pointer finger to write the words ‘WASH ME’ across the wingspan of the phoenix.  He took a step back and crossed his arms like an artist sizing up a fresh painting.  Something wasn’t right.  It was just too passive.  It failed to convey the artist’s inner motivation and emotional depth.  No, this would never do. 

The other three were waiting in Grant’s blue Cavalier setting across the parking lot.   Grant started laying on the horn, but Connor remained in the zone and didn’t bother to turn around to address them.  He raised is right arm and gave them the finger.  The finger was Connor’s way of asking for just one more minute.  After all, a true artist can’t be rushed.  Finally, Connor stepped up onto the hood of the car, standing over where he had written ‘WASH ME.’  He unzipped his fly and started to urinate on the big decal.  As he pissed, the phoenix changed to brighter and richer shades of red and orange.  Connor hosed all over the windshield and roof too.  ‘WASH ME’ slowly got washed away. 

Watching from the backseat of Grant’s Cavalier, Matt couldn’t help but be reminded of the bootleg stickers of Calvin pissing on things that Charlie Bravo use to sell.  To the best of Matt’s knowledge, Charlie didn’t have a sticker of the cartoon boy pissing on a Trans-Am logo.  Maybe he could get one made to mark the occasion.  It would fit nicely on the back of his Honda. 

Connor finished, shook, zipped up, dismounted the car, and ran over to them.  Paul got out of the front so that Connor could climb in the back.  “At first, I didn’t think I could squeeze out another masterpiece, but once the creative juices started flowing I couldn’t hold back.”

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