SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #8

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #8

BATFISH

ISLA MUJURES

Business was winding down at the beach bar. It usually does after the boats head back with the tourists to Cancun. The majority of the tourist trade does not stay overnight on Isla Mujures. Which is one of the reasons I live here. More low key, more out of sight, more out of mind.

I took the days receipts up to the hotel and locked the doors to the bars coolers.

Artimus and I then strolled down to the sea wall with two six packs of Bohemia beer, apiece. We often sat and drank the nights away there.

Whatever he had taken was really starting to wind him up.

“You want a couple of these?” Two black capsules sat in the palm of his outstretched hand. “Black beauties, dude. The real thing. Not those fake, caffeine, diet pieces of shit they sell in those women's magazines.”

I washed the capsules down with a swig of icy cold brew. Knowing that I wouldn’t probably be getting much sleep for the twenty hours or so now.

“So do your folks know all about this shit? Did they come see you in the nuthouse?”

“No, they sure didn’t. In fact, I haven’t seen or heard from my parents since the day I left for the Navy. I’m sure they have no idea where the hell I am. I don’t even know if any authorities have ever tried to contact

them,” I replied.

“I hated the fucking Marines, man. Those guys were some of the most uptight assholes I’ve ever met. Should’ve joined the Air Force. They had it dicked. Navy didn’t seem much better. How did you decide on joining up with those gonads?”

“Just like I said before. That Nicholson movie. I thought it would really be like that.”

“I’d like to find my recruiter and beat the ever living shit out of him. Fucker fed me a pack of lies and I ate it like a hash brownie.” Artimus belched out. An annoying habit he has when he’s been seriously drinking.

“Coming from where I was though, I sure bought the hell out of it. Here I am seventeen years old, 120 pounds soaking wet, buck toothed, and no one is mistaking me for Paul Newman. And here sits this Navy recruiter telling me about going to the Philippines and screwing all the broads you want. Even two or three at a time. The Navy should have made that part of their advertising campaign. All I could think of was laying around at night while my oriental house girl serviced me in ways the sluts of Albert Lea hadn’t even thought of.”

I was starting to feel the intense black beauty buzz

coming on.

Not much fanfare when I left home. I had graduated a few weeks earlier. Not much to say about that either. The old man dropped me off at the bus depot and told me to “give’em hell boy” and drove off in his calf

shit yellow colored Ford Torino.

He was probably glad that I had made it that far considering the families recent experiences with the military.

Before my big brother bought the big one at the state reform school he had been given an option to either enlist in the Marines or go to the state reformatory in Red Wing. He had been caught on a breaking and entering charge. He and some buddies had broken into the local high school and tore the place up. The coup de grace had been the taking of a shit in the principals top desk drawer.

Offender of said heinous crime never identified. He enlisted and it took him four visits to the induction center before the Marines had had enough of him.

First time up he was running a fever, probably had some cigarettes tucked under his armpit.

Time number two he went to “wash up” after his physical and someone stole his glasses. There’s a big black market out there for stolen prescription glasses.

Third time was not the charm; he “slipped” on ice the night before he was to leave and broke

his arm. Probably had someone drive a car over it.

Fourth time he simply walked out the door of the induction center before they swore him in. Some jarhead called my Dad on the phone a few hours later and told him to keep his “pussy” of a son. His exact words.

Both of his buddies that had been involved in his crime of the century had also been force enlisted into the Marines. One was killed in Vietnam within six months by a sniper. The other one had been busted shitting in his

commanding officer’s desk top drawer and was serving three to five in the brig. Mystery solved on the who shit in the principal’s desk.

But the judge wasn’t as forgiving to my brother as the U. S. Marine Corps had been. He didn’t buy his USMC rejection story. Sent him straight up the highway to Red Wing reform school and the rest is history. Shank in the gut and a bar of Ivory up your ass.

There was uncle on my mother’s side of the family who had also joined the Navy, but he wasn’t a real popular subject of family conversation. Something to do with young boys and syphilis, but the facts aren’t very clear

I had just turned drinking age and made the most of my last night in Minnesota. They put us up at the Raddison Hotel in Minneapolis and a couple of us filled a bathtub full of ice and Crazy Horse malt liquor. Got insanely fucked up and went and saw my first porno movie down on historic Hennepin Avenue. Historic because it’s such a shithole.

Not much of a going away party. I had an old army vet in my room who was going back on active duty and I was slightly afraid of losing my anal cherry but

had nothing to worry about. He came in and said he had drunk about “a fucking hundred beers” and passed out.

I was sworn into the Navy with a hangover that would have killed a fucking horse and I couldn’t have cared less. The induction center reeked of the smell of dirty feet and bungholes and it was all I could do to hold down my free continental breakfast. It was a relief to leave the place even if the next stop was the San Diego Naval Induction Center.

I started to bang down screwdrivers and soon as the drink cart rolled down the aisle of the plane. Looking out the window at the cornfields down below I never realized that I how long it would be before I ever saw Minnesota again.

I didn’t remember until I was two days into boot camp, that the night before I left Albert Lea, high on LSD and beer, me and a buddy of mine had shot all the streetlights out in Alden, Minnesota and then burned down an abandoned farmhouse. The blood of Al Capone must run in the family.