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.

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #4

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #4

BATFISH

ALBERT LEA

Artimus sat at the bar looking like he had tried to swallow a cockroach and it was stuck in his throat.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“What’s the matter?” he exploded. “You sit here telling me a fucking story like that and then have the nuts to ask me what the matter is? Jesus Christ! I cannot fucking believe that you’re an escaped mental patient on top of all the other shit you’re on the run from.”

“Well, in a way I am and in a way I’m not.” I replied.

“What the hell is that suppose to mean?”

“I’m not crazy. I think. But I did escape.”

He shook his head in disgust and just stared at me. A couple of college babes on spring break had wandered in off of the beach and had sat down at the bar, so I made myself scarce for a second to take their order.

They both wanted a drink called a “Smelly Beaver” that was all the rage this year.

When I came back to Artimus’s side of the bar he appeared to have gotten his second wind.

“Both of those bimbos have decent racks.” He paused. “Hey! You never told me you were from Minnesota. All this time you’re from Minnesota and you never tell me? Shit man, I’m from right next door in the Dakotas. Do you realize how fucking homesick I get? And you don’t have the common decency to at least tell me you’re from the same neck of the woods so we could bullshit about it.”

The mental patient issue seemingly having dropped from his mind. 

That was another thing about Artimus. Very short attention span.

“Hey man, what town in Minnesota? I use to run a lot of dope through this shithole called Albert Lea.”

That “shithole” was my hometown. Albert Lea was named after some civil war colonel who got smoked at a big battle. Its biggest accomplishment is that it’s the hometown of Eddie Cochran, the 1950’s rock and roll star, who was killed at a very young age over in England. Car wreck or something. Summertime Blues.

Marion Ross from the show Happy Days supposedly is from there, too. She was Richie Cunningham’s Mom. But who gives a crap about that?

There had also been an incredibly cool murder in Albert Lea when I was growing up. But no one talks about it now. A local minister had been carrying on a torrid homosexual affair with a younger member of his parish. For reasons unknown, the young man had stabbed the minister about a million times and had dragged the body all over the county for a couple of days. He was the subject of a massive manhunt that the area has never seen the likes of since.

During that time my mother’s favorite way to keep me in her sight was to remind me that this maniac was on the loose. And to just think of horrors he would inflict on my young body once he caught me. Further evidence of her terrific parenting skills.

No wonder I had horrible nightmares all through my childhood. I still think that that murder would make a great John Waters film. Would really have put the town on the map.

Albert Lea has always had its own distinct smell. There was a packing plant in Albert Lea and the air always smelled like someone was taking a shit and smoking a White Owl cigar at the same time. You’ll never forget that smell once it hits the nostrils.

When I was a kid, the biggest thing going on was “dragging Broadway.” Just driving up and down the main drag of the town.

Well, not the biggest thing. The biggest thing was drinking and just like you said, Arty. Drugs If drinking was numero uno, then drugs were numero dos.

Albert Lea sits right at the intersection of Interstate highways 35 and 90 so it’s a natural location for drug trafficking. A lot of biker gangs hung around and meth was popular in old A. L. long before it became trendy but pot was king.

Albert Lea was where I acquired my taste for marijuana. I think you remember your first joint just like you remember your first piece of ass. I sure do. It was a massive red, white, and blue number and we smoked it right next to Billy Hawk’s garage. It was like smoking rubber.

Albert Lea was not exactly what you would call a racial friendly town either. Hispanics were tolerated because it was felt that they were good for the local economy. In other words they would take the jobs that no one else would take. But if you were black, beware. You better be out of town by sundown!

There had been at one time in the city’s history, a local chapter of the KKK, its offices located above the Woolworth’s store.

I feel truly fortunate to have had the chance to grow up in my formative years in an area filled with such culture, along with such kind and caring people.

Neither of my parents was from Albert Lea originally. My Dad was born just up the road in Faribault, Minnesota. His parents had both been employed at the state hospital there as ward attendants.

My grandfather was a mean son of a bitch. Strong as a rhino on steroids and he could back it up. For fun, he liked to go in the local taverns and beat the shit out of the first person who looked at him wrong. For money, he could knock out a horse with one punch. My grandmother weighed over three hundred pounds. All I remember about her is that she had tits the size of basketballs.

My mother was born in Plainfield, Wisconsin. The home of Ed Gein, the first famous serial killer. She actually had known him personally.

It was really her claim to fame, due to the fact that my grandmother was one of the bodies that Ed had dug up. My grandfather was a rambling, gambling man who one evening stepped out for a smoke and never came back.

My Dad was a Hoover vacuum cleaner/bible salesman, which was the first job(s) that he grabbed after he got out of the service after the big one, WWII. My Mom was a beautician who ran her own shop out of the basement of our house.

Dear father was offered Albert Lea as his territory shortly after they were married and they had lived in A. L. ever since.

The family house smelled like permanents, gin, and dog shit. They had three kids. In order of birth it was my sister, Lucy (named after Lucille Ball), my brother, Luther (named after Martin Luther, the religious guy, not the great guy), and me. Plus, our family dog, Skippy, a rat terrier.

Now that’s a whole different story. Skippy is my entire reason for believing in reincarnation. He had the unbelievable habit of roaming the neighborhood and either taking a crap or pissing on whatever he set his little brain to. If someone had just washed their car, Skippy would come over and take a leak on his clean tires. If someone had just rubbed mink oil on their prized leather golf bag and had left it in the sun to dry. Skippy would piss on it. He even walked into a neighbor’s house one time and took a leak on the family’s floor length curtains, which had just been bought that day. But his crowning achievement in life was for some reason he liked to back his little hairless asshole up to the windows of the neighbor’s basements and shit on the glass so that it stuck.

That little dude was doing some serious payback for being fucked over in an earlier life. Maybe he just liked the feel of cool glass on his bunghole. I don’t know. But I do know one thing. More than once I heard a scream of anguish or rage and would see Skippy running for life and some neighbor chasing him down.

He would eventually be bestowed the nickname of “Squirty” by the neighborhood. Skippy/Squirty died of a heart attack and I know that the only people in town who grieved for him were our immediate family, minus my Dad.

Dear old Dad wasn’t the kind of guy who would get all emotional over a dead dog. Dad had four passions in life: Selling suckers and Bibles, God, the Minnesota Twins, and Buckhorn beer. Not necessarily in that order.

During the baseball season, he and my mother would sit on the back porch and easily kill damn near a case of beer every night while listening to the Twins lose another game on a tiny transistor radio.

Both my parents are what you today would call functioning alcoholics. They could kill the better side of a case of brew along with a couple of shots of cheap bourbon and still pretty much carry on a normal

conversation.

Not that there hadn’t been a few slip ups. Dad once was burning trash while pie eyed and accidentally threw a box full of hairspray cans in the fire causing a fucking nuclear blast.

He was lucky that he wasn’t killed. The lid off that burn can blew 500 feet in the air and landed on a neighbor’s kid riding his bike down the street.

My mother and her sister once got so trashed on an August evening that they put sheets over their heads and went trick or treating in the neighborhood. My aunt was so bombed that she fell off a set of steps and cracked her head open.

It was all a thrill a minute for them, although my mother had lost a few customers when she took to having a few morning bracers before she gave some old broads their Lady Clairol dye

jobs.

In those days drunks were funny. Remember Otis on The Andy Griffith Show staggering around?

My poor sister reacted to these shenanigans by hiding in her room, reading movie magazines, practicing her cheers for cheerleading squad, and dreaming of the days to come when she would move to Minneapolis and lead a life of glamour. Her goal in life was to marry someone with money and drive a Buick.

My brother reacted with underage drinking, fast cars, felony theft, and assault of school teachers and anyone else who told him different. His goal in life was to be a bad ass or a prison snitch.

I just looked toward getting a meaningless high school diploma and leaving town. Hopefully, I would get laid at some point in that time frame. At that point in my life, that was all that mattered.

In then end we all got what we wanted, in a strange way that is.

Dad’s mind got so pickled on cheap Minnesota draft beer that he and God often sat talking to each other on the back porch. Remember that in the years to come the Twins would win two World Series titles. Maybe my Dad had something to do with that.

My mother had to close down her beauty shop after she really got tanked one morning on beer and tomato juice and wound up passing out in the middle of the floor while she was giving some old biddy a makeover. She then had plenty of time in her day to sit around and agree with whatever nonsense came out of my father’s cakehole.

My sister married a high school athletic star. They moved to Minneapolis where he had a full ride at the University of Minnesota. There he majored in football, pot smoking, and having lots of sex with both women and men, while she stayed at home and had his kids.

But it was my brother who really brought pride to the family name. He was sent to the state reform school at Red Wing, where he ran into a stainless steel shank in the shower room on his first day, when he refused to be the new shower boy toy.

The night before they took him away he had confessed to me that he had been laying the pork to two of the women who came to my mother’s beauty parlor. They were both in their late sixties! He should have been imprisoned for that alone.

He did leave me his titty magazine collection. There must have been two hundred dirty books and magazines hidden in my parent’s attic. They were under my mother’s wedding dress in a trunk.

And me? Early in my senior year I had smoked two huge joints of Colombian Gold and had gone to see the Navy flick The Last Detail.

That was all the convincing I had needed to go join the Navy.

By the way, I got finally got laid before I left. It just wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.