Without Further ado:
Story #6: BUDDY
“Me and my buddy came apart in New Mexico. For my part I was all laid back in the passenger seat, looking out the back window where little raindrops were sliding across, lit up bright white from headlights behind like they were stars or something. A whole universe just sliding across the back window where sometimes a big drop would form with others, and then it was a huge asteroid sliding wild across that universe and taking galaxies with it off the edge of that black window. And I was all laid back watching it peaceful and sleepy when those white stars turned red and blue in a flashing way like the big bang end of the universe. But that turned out to be the cop car lights pulling us over.
My buddy said my name a few times to snap me up and I sat up and my seat up with me. He kept saying I wasn’t speeding, I wasn’t speeding and he said it with an edge to his voice like he was going to challenge the cop when he came up. He sure was on edge. End of a hard trip, I guess.
So the cop gets out of his car and pulls his hat down against the rain. It was just a drizzle, but I think he knew we were watching from the mirrors and it made him look more rugged I guess. Big dumb hat though, with a round brim all the way around like a park ranger hat and a brown cop shirt and olive pants coming at us in that cop waddle from being too overburdened with instruments. Big ol’ cop. He gets up to the window and my buddy reaches down with his left arm and rolls the window down. And the cop says something like I got you for speeding and my buddy says I wasn’t speeding. He says it real quick and just in the same way he’d said it to me. The cop doesn’t let it go. He says back 77 in a 75. That’s speeding, and my buddy looks at me and real loud says gimme a break! Just like how you’d point out an idiot to your friends.
This same trip we were around Memphis, just starting to head west, and we stopped at this bar right on the side of the highway, quaint little place that fancied itself a dance hall. Checkerboard floor and on the outside it had portraits of 50’s stars going all the way around the façade like some frieze on a temple. Buddy Holly and Elvis and Chubby Checker and the whole gaggle of them. Worn down though, so you couldn’t tell the Richie Valens from the Little Richard. So we go inside to sit down on something that isn’t moving and we sit off a ways from the dancefloor. And there’s this guy on the dancefloor moving like it’s still the 50’s. Just this middle aged guy out on the dance floor doing the twist. It must have been 3 pm in the afternoon. Nothing in that bar but this guy and us and that black white checkerboard floor. My buddy laughs right at him and turns to me and says the same thing he later said to the cop in New Mexico. Gimme a break he says to me, real loud and with a hard edge and in a way that made you believe he’d press the button to erase all the sad sacks in the world if you just put it in front of him.
We’ll this cop put it in front of him I guess, cause he got mad at my buddy for saying gimme a break and ordered him out of the car. So he gets out of the car, but not in a meek sorta way at all. He get’s out of that car like a shot and he slams the door and gets right up in that cop’s face. And that big old cop is bigger than he is, towering over my buddy with that park ranger hat brim keeping em both dry, so if you rolled up on the scene without knowing you mighta thought the cop invited my buddy close just to converse out of the rain. But you wouldn’t have thought that if you stayed. My buddy gets right up in the cop’s face, he’s bumping bellies with him, saying that 77 was bullshit and he wasn’t speeding. And this cop must have been from the old school cause he was bumping him back instead of going for his gun or pepper spray or whatever else was strapped around his waistband. Real man to man they were spitting it out right there on the shoulder, like baseball players sometimes argue. Then my buddy starts acting real crazy. He starts just screaming at the cop. Arms flapping and nonsense words and blowing out his tongue at the top of his lungs, with the spittle just flying into the cop's face. I think when the cop saw my buddy just go ape crazy is when he got a bit scared, cause that’s when he went for his gun.
Bout two weeks before this we were outside Corpus Christi, still heading west. We were in pretty bad shape. My veteran pay couldn’t find me on the road and my buddy’s disability is all used up. So he’s standing in front of the gas station asking for dollars so we can fill the car and keep going west. We’d been at it about an hour and I think we had something like 4 dollars. Anyway, this couple comes walking out of the station towards this astro van, and they’re dressed nice and they look nice. Husband has these lean glasses and dark hair, wife has big hair and big ol pads on her shoulders. I approach them solely so as not to intimidate them with the two men and I tell em what I tell em and they say, we’ll do you one better than a dollar, we’ll buy you dinner. And as they say it they look at each other and you can tell they’re some kinda Christian because they get that charity look on their face. Now my buddy and I ain’t no bums and we don’t usually take charity unless it’s the government’s and that's for services damn well rendered. We’re just looking for some gas, but we were hungry so we said yes, also partly because that couple looked so damn happy to be giving us their charity.
Off we go to a McDonalds and we’d just as soon taken it to go and went back to the gas station, but they insisted we sit down. I think their plan was to preach at us, and truth is I wouldn’t a minded it, but my buddy’s pretty far gone past Jesus and I could tell he was winding up to have none of it. The husband starts in about Jesus being the way and accepting him and the straight and narrow path. They’re good Christians and that wife sure looks handsome with that big hair and high shoulders, but my buddy’s had enough. He stops the guy when he’s talking about the 10 commandments and he says to him, I still remember it clear, he says, sirs, theirs only one commandment and I’m going to tell it to you once so you’d better listen the hell up. My buddy stands up from the table and he’s got a fry in his hand and he starts shaking it like a gavel for emphasis. Only one Goddamn commandment!, he says and he eats the fry and pauses and the couple looks pale beyond death and my buddy says real loud, I don’t care who you are, you’d better fucking run away from crazy people. People that bait a boobie trap with their kid. That’s fucking crazy and I’ve seen it. You can think your way out of all other jams on earth except when people get damn crazy and then thinking don’t work, just running the God Damn other way is the only thing that works. And if Jesus we’re here right now he’d say amen to that.
That’s what he said to the Christian couple, but I think what he really meant was that he could be or act crazy and get away with anything he wanted, cause people really do fear when someone just goes loony. I mean, he wanted to be out of that McDonalds, and he got it. He reached over and took that couples’ food as if it was his and marched right back to the station, me following him, and we left before anyone could blink an eye. Only had four dollars of gas though, and that ran out real fast. We had to hitchhike into McAllen, and I swear that Christian couple passed us hithcin in their big astro van and didn’t so much think about stopping. And that was just one time. I’ve been all across the countryside with that man and I never could figure out it he was crazy or if he was just playing crazy so that people gave him what he wanted.
Until New Mexico, that is. Then I guess he proved he was crazy. Cause when that cop reached for his gun my buddy went quick as a cat with an open fist and punched his palm right up into the bottom of that cop’s big round nose. He went from crazy spitting to some type of ninja, fast as you could blink an eye and the cop didn’t see it coming it all. I’d never seen my buddy use that move, but it sure did work cause that cop just went right down on his side and blood just started coming out of his nose like you’d turned on a hose. My buddy’s laughing and screaming and saying, Hit em right with the death punch. Right into the fucking brain. And he’s saying other things too that make less sense and I get out of that car quick and come around the front of it to hold my buddy back and somehow get us the hell out of there. And this whole time the cop is down on his side and he’s trying to reach for his gun but you can tell something is shit wrong with the guy cause he looks like a mouse with one half caught in a glue trap, legs trying to run away but doing nothing but spinning him around a bit on the pavement. And he’s making weird noises through the blood. My buddy says, let me help you with that officer, and reaches down and takes the cop's gun from its holster and fires two shots into the side of that cop’s face. When the cop stops moving for good my buddy pulls off that big rimmed hat and puts it on, with the hat all bloodied and the back of it covered with matter. Then he tells me to get in the car and I do and we head out down that road, still going the speed limit.
I wasn’t afraid. I’d seen dead men before and been responsible for it too, but I knew I wasn’t responsible for that big ol cop and within ten miles I told my buddy to stop that car and let me out. He looks at me like Gimme a break, and I can tell he’s on the verge of crazy again but I’d seen shit loads of crazy in my day and I wasn’t scared. Things kinda slowed down for me and my head started working. I said, this is where we come apart and I told him to shoot me in the leg to make me less of an accomplice. He looks at me again like Gimme a break and then he gets real quiet and then he starts to cry. I’ve been all around the countryside with that man and I’d never seen him cry. The car’s just stopped now and I say it again real slow to shoot me in the leg and drop me off and he looks at me with tearful eyes and says something about betrayal, but I don’t hear all but the end of it cause I’m getting out of the car. I say goodbye in a real solemn way then I scream again at him to fucking shoot me in the leg. So he shoots me and I think he shatters a bone in there and then he drives off.
I’m down on the ground putting pressure on it but knowing that it’s bad news if it nicked the big vein and the rain’s coming down good now and sooner or later I end up on my back. And there I am again laid back tracing stars except this time I can’t look at em good because the rain keeps coming into my eyes. I must have been there for an hour before I saw the first cop lights coming at me sideways, red and blue. I crawled halfway out onto the shoulder and that’s where they found me. Propped me up and asked me where the other guy was headed and I told em and they asked me his name and I told em and then I guess I kinda slipped off the edge there into unconsciousness. And when I woke up the doctors told me it was a week later and that I was lucky. Then the cops pushed past the doctors and started asking me more questions about my buddy. I guess in that whole time they hadn’t seen a hair of him or that car, which means I guess that he got to where he was going.
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