SCREAMING BATFISH BLUE #5
JUICE
NEW RICHLAND
Just before Jake’s junior year started, Rick Morrow was killed in a spectacular and lurid car accident that would start the tongues of the local idiots of New Richland wagging for years.
Jake’s sophomore year in football had been incredible, although the team had finished with a record of four and four.
His hard charging, balls to the walls, take no prisoners style had even attracted a sportswriter from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who had written up a glowing article on the
young local star.
In final game of the year against Ellendale, Jake had snorted a line of his Uncle Billy's finest crystal in his pre-game ritual, and it had shown against the receiving corps of the opposing team. One of the receivers had gotten so gun shy that he had cut off on one of his routes and the quarterback had thrown the ball directly to Jake who had returned it 95 yards for a touchdown.
Big things were in the making for the next season. The team was starting to gel as a unit and there was talk of not only making the playoffs but advancing deep into them.
The town itself was ecstatic, especially after the newspaper article was published. New Richland had never been much of a football town.
In the off season, Jake had thrown himself into a strenuous diet and conditioning regime. Grades were no worry as no teacher was even giving their new “star” anything close to a failing grade. His older girlfriend had dumped him when she was accepted to a college on the east coast but he didn’t give a shit. His new piece of tail, Janine, was the daughter of the minister that several years past had barred Rick from attending the Pee Wee games. Life was getting sweet at the Morrow ranch.
The first game of the new season was two weeks away and Jake was taking it easy. The final two a day practice session had concluded that afternoon and school itself would be in session in a few days. He had
wanted to slip over to Janine’s to get in a little bed pounding.
Man, that chick could fuck for a preachers’ daughter, but she had begged off with plans to go to the movies with friends over in Owatonna. So he had burned a joint and was lying on his bed with the windows open, around ten o'clock in the evening.
Late summer in Minnesota can be incredible and that night had been no exception. Beautiful starry night with a nice warm breeze blowing in lightly through the window. Led Zeppelin was playing softly on the
stereo and he slowly dozed off when he heard the phone ring and then his mother screaming.
“Oh shit, oh no, oh fuck, oh god, no, no, no, no....” she wailed.
Jake jumped out of bed and raced down the steps to find his mother collapsed on the kitchen floor, clutching the phone. By now Jake could bench press weigh over three hundred pounds but his mother had gotten so fat that he could barely lift her and drag her over to the couch.
“Mom, what the hell is wrong?”
The woman was in hysterics and refused to answer. She rocked her massive frame back and forth while tearing at her hair. Jake finally heard a voice calling his name from the phone still hanging by its cord.
“Who is this?” he demanded.
“Jake, this is Chief Gates.”
There was a long pause and Jake had to plug one ear to hear over his mother’s shrieks. “Son, I’ve got some bad news. Your Dad and Janine were in a car accident just outside of Otisco. They hit a manure spreader crossing the road. I’m sorry, but they’re both dead.”
No one ever found out what was really going on between Rick and Janine - but you really didn’t need to hire a detective - but there was enough evidence at the scene of the crash to pump up the rumor mills for years. They had hit the shit spreader broadside in Rick’s Viking purple Mustang and Rick had been killed by the force of being thrown into the steering wheel.
Janine had been decapitated, just like Jane Mansfield, as many of the locals would comment.
Rick’s pants had been undone and pulled down to his thighs. Janine had been topless. There was an open bottle of Crown Royal in the vehicle so it didn’t take Dick fucking Tracy to figure out what had been going on.
Two days after the crash, while staying at her parent’s house, Sandy Morrow tried to bump herself off by washing down a bottle of painkillers with two sixers of Pabst. It was only her extreme size that saved her, even then she had still slipped into a sort of a coma like state, which the doctors felt was brought on by a combination of the drugs and the shock of the news of the accident.
Along with the fact that her husband had been humping her son’s fifteen year old girlfriend.
She was rushed by ambulance to the hospital in Waseca and after she recovered from the physical aspects of the overdose, she was transported back to New Richland and admitted to the local care facility.
She was unable to attend the funeral of her husband or even leave the facility for that matter. Sandy would spend the remainder of her days watching Wheel of Fortune and reruns of Mannix, her late husband had had
some resemblance to the main character in that series and Sandy believed that he had left her to become a star in Hollywood.
Nurses at her care facility would also often witness Sandy carrying on deep meaningful conversations with Oprah Winfrey in the last few years of her life even though it was the facility cat she was talking to.
Jake had been taken in by his Uncle Billy and Aunt Dawn immediately after the accident. Rick’s mother had been dead for years and his father was a permanent resident of the alcohol treatment center in Hazleton.
The former owner of a hugely successful golf course, Grandpa Morrow had loved fast cars and women, and even more, good quality scotch.
At the age of seventy, the old fart had been pulled over on I-35 after a high speed chase of way over 120 miles an hour with the highway patrol.
He had a blood alcohol level of .025 and had tried to pull a handgun on the arresting officers. It was his seventh driving while intoxicated charge. His license had been pulled years before.
Sandy's parents were God fearing country folk in their late sixties and frankly their grandson scared the shit out them, with all the weightlifting and football and such. They had no problem at all with their
only grandson moving in with his father’s brother and wife.
After the funeral and when school started was the hardest time for Jake. Everyone was whispering about the illicit affair that been going on with Rick and Janine. The news of the crash had even been picked up by the Pioneer Press, the same rag that had written the high praising article about Jake’s football exploits.
By the time the first game of the season rolled around Jake was a loaded gun that was ready to go off. The coach of the team had even told Jake that he would understand if he wanted to sit this first one out. Jake would have none of that.
The first receiver that came into his zone was going to pay for all the bullshit of the last two weeks.
Jake moved into a spare bedroom in Billy and Dawn’s farmhouse and Billy had cleared a spot in his barn for Jake’s weight equipment.
Dawn was a woman who had known great misery almost her entire life and she did her best to try to help young Jake through this terrible time. She felt that Jake should think about not be playing ball this year, about transferring to another high school in the area until all this tragedy passed.
Billy would have none of that babying crap. He had spent his formative years in the bars, brothels, and jungles of Vietnam, and the way to get through grief was to make some other motherfucker feel some pain.
The night of the first game of the season, Billy had driven Jake into town in his truck and pulled into the small cemetery outside of New Richland where both Janine and Rick were buried.
“What the fuck are we doing here Billy? I don’t have time for this shit; I’ve got a game to get ready for. I don’t want this in my head tonight.”
“Boy, you need in your head tonight. These local assholes have been laughing behind our backs for the last two weeks. Do you think your Dad would have put up with that shit? Hell no, he wouldn’t have. No one gave him any shit when he was alive and they’re sure not going to do it now that he’s dead. Not if I have anything to do about it.”
Jake looked over at his uncle. It would be the first and last time he would ever see anything close to resembling tears in his uncle’s eyes.
“Your dad always told me that you had the juice, that you were gonna be big time. Well, tonight's the night, big time. You’re gonna show these cocksucker what we’re all about. Can you do it?”
Jake hung his head and cried for the first time since the accident.
The two men sat quietly in the dark for several minutes.
Finally Jake spoke. “I can do it, Uncle Billy, I can make ‘em pay.”
“Fuck ya, you’re going to make ‘em pay!” His uncle roared as he pounded his nephew on the back. “That’s my boy.”
“I’ve got something special for you tonight, Jakey boy. Something to really give you an extra edge.”
His uncle reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a small round mirror and a glass vial. With his
Buck knife he cut four long lines across the mirror. Two lines apiece.
“This is a little combination that I whipped up myself. Some dynamite crank cut with just a hint of absolutely pure coke. You’ll be wired for sound.”
No comments:
Post a Comment