SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #12

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #12

BATFISH

ST.PETER SECURITY HOSPITAL

That never did happen there, getting cornholed that is, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t worry about it. There seemed to be a lot of the guys doing each other, and Earl, the gang enforcer, was forcing himself on a few of the weaker ones on the unit. But I was pretty much left alone.

I guess it hadn’t taken long for news of my sucker punch to the back of Ray’s head to travel through the hospital grapevine and that I wouldn’t be a real easy one to take.

When I first walked through the door of that unit I knew right away that this was going to be a world that I had never known in my wildest dreams existed.

I figured that out after this client walked up to me and said “I knew you were coming.”

I was surprised. “How’s that?”

“How do you think? I could smell your asshole.”

Jumping Jesus!!

I had been on the unit for about a week when lo and behold who walks through the door but old Dan, my one eyed buddy from the county jail in Duluth. He acted like he didn’t even remember me, which I don’t think he did at first. Took him about two days to do it. I think he was still trying to get over the initial shock of his life time commitment to the place.

Dan had a companion along with him who was absolutely guaranteed that he would be serving a life sentence. His name was Cedar and although I didn’t know him personally, I had read about him.

One of the staff had left an alternative newspaper called the City Pages, out on the unit, which I had snatched up. In it was an article about this body that was found in the Mississippi River that had been missing its head, feet, and hands. The really strange part about it was that the body had already been embalmed. Turns out that these two idiots had broken in to the crypt of a young boy and had removed the parts and thrown the torso in the river.

They had a hell of a time at parties throwing the head on people’s laps and scaring the shit out of them. Cedar had been mentioned in the article, but only that he was an old former buddy of the two morons.

No, Cedar’s reputation more than preceded him. Cedar had been born to a hippie couple who had some problems with parenting skills. He was a tad too boisterous for them so they decided to medicate him with LSD, even though he was only three at the time.

It would affect him in his adult life since he started to believe that his grandmother was a witch and needed to be killed. So one night after an evening of partying, he beat the old gal half to death, tore out her eyes, and in the final insult, gave her a swirly in her toilet. For the uninformed, a swirly is when you stick someone’s head in the bowl and flush. She died several days later.

Cedar had been on the classification unit for a month prior to coming to Unit 800 and the medications he was on seemed to work wonderfully. He could carry on amusing conversations, knew rock and roll like it was nobodies business, and was obviously pleased when I mentioned to him that I had read his name in the City Pages.

He had smiled and said, “Shit, those clowns are just riding on my coat tails.”

The staff had found a joint on him, hence his trip to Unit 800. Medication wasn’t the only that was keeping him under control.

He had been given a series of ECT treatments, electro convulsive therapy shock treatment, before being brought to our unit. Every week he still made the trip for his dose of the electric juice. Thinking about that worried me.

I don’t know how it happened, but he would become the only person in the whole fucking joint that I would ever be able to trust.

We became chums and began to spend the days together discussing The Allman Brothers Band-both the new and old version, good pot, and most importantly, how to break out of the St. Peter Security Hospital.

But after three weeks on the unit it was becoming painfully obvious that jig was about up. Let me tell you, it’s goddamn hard to play crazy and I just wasn’t up to the task. From the little things like the staff noticing that I’d always ask for the television channel to be changed from cartoons, which the other clients watched like it was the word of God, to football, hockey, or boxing. Or when we went out to the yard how I’d run the inner perimeter doing my road work. The average nut just doesn’t do that. I just wasn’t fitting in.

The other nuts noticed it too. They gave me a lot of space. Everybody but Cedar, and for some unknown reason, Bob. And although Bob himself always had a load of shit in his pants and an odor of urine about him, he smelled a rat was on the unit.

I had been on the unit a month to the day when the unit shrink sat me down on his rounds and told me that he felt “I was full of crap and that it was time to face my responsibilities.” His recommendation to the court was going to be that I was fit to stand trial.

Jesus Christ, the prick only talked to me once a week. And then for only ten minutes. How in the hell could a guy fake he was ready for a permanent straightjacket in that amount of time?

I didn’t have the strength to argue with or try to bullshit him. He was just a typical government employee looking for an easy pension. The thought of pulling him over the desk and whipping the shit out of him passed through my mind. That would let the bastards know I was crazy.

But I couldn’t do it. I knew that he had a wife and kids at home.I had needed more time. Sitting in the jail in Duluth it had sounded so easy. It was a hospital, a fucking hospital! How hard could it be to escape from a hospital? I had underestimated everything. Security was much tighter than I thought it would be. And it wasn’t just a hospital. It was a prison with thick glass instead of bars. To top it off, the place was full of goddamn lunatics. How could you possibly form any sort of escape plan while living in that sort of environment?

I had looked and looked and still could not find a detect a chink in the hospital armor. A way where I could get the fuck out of here.

The past eight years hit me hard and I walked out of his office without a word. I went and sat down in the day room with the rest of lunatics. It was all rushing back in a steady stream through my head, like a bad acid trip. Albert Lea, my drunk parents, my dead brother, all the drugs, all the booze, Rose dead, the drunk admiral sitting there in his Fruit of the Looms, AWOL, Zak hanging in his locker, L.A., the dead bodies on Wonderland Avenue, half dicked blacks and one eyed Indians, it all ran together.

Shit, maybe I am nuts.

Norm and his diminutive biker lackey stood up and walked off like I smelled like Bob. Muttering some shit under their breath.

Fuck ‘em, at least I’d be out of here. Prison would probably be better anyway. Get this

shit all over with. They call Stillwater a gladiator school. Well it’ll be better to get carried out of there than rot in here. They were going to catch up to me sooner or later anyhow. How much longer could this nightmare go on?

Cedar came over to join me. “You know I've been pondering this escape shit all this time and all of a sudden, right out of nowhere, it hits me right between the motherfucking eyes, dude. All you need to break out of here man is a crack torch. It’s as simple as that.”

Sweet Jesus! Without a word I stood up and walked to my cell.

I was snorkeling on Oahu’s north shore. Warm, crystal blue water,me and a good Navy buddy named Tom. We had smoked a big fat number of a weed called Mango and were just floating on the surface like a couple of jelly fish. I had a spear with like a rubber band on the end that you stretched out to propel the spear forward, but hadn’t found anything to take yet. Then I saw this fish, this strange fish, swimming along the bottom. It

was almost translucent and it looked like a bat. A clear underwater bat swimming along like it was looking for its cave or attic to go hang upside down in. I dove down so I was over it as I pulled the band on the spear back. It was a perfect shot, right through its back. But I could hear this weird sound in the distance and I looked around but there was nothing there. It had a weird high pitch, kind of like it sounds when you’re inside a house and an outside water faucet is on. And then I saw what it was. The batfish had his mouth open and he was the one that was making the noise.

His little mouth was open and he was screaming. Screaming because I had shot him in the back and now he was dying a horrible death.

I awoke with a start. It had gotten dark outside. Someone was standing in my cell, in the dark. Cells aren’t locked in the hospital at night. Only on the sex offender’s unit or if the doctor writes up an order in your chart, something to do about patient rights.

It was Cedar standing there, quietly, just watching me. I was hoping he didn’t think that I was a witch and try to kill me. Or worse, give me a swirly.

“A torch is what I really thought we would need. That glass will fucking melt, man. But we don’t need my crack torch. The sons of bitches have the torches on the units, man. Just waiting for us. Those fucking cans of Right Guard!”

Cedar turned to walk out of my cell. “By the way you missed supper. Chicken Kiev. Tasted like shit.”

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #11

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SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #10

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #10

BATFISH

SAN DIEGO

I staggered off the plane in San Diego smelling remarkably like my step-grandfather did in the terminal stages of alcoholism, only without the dying.

We were not greeted warmly by the swabby in the airport. “Putout those fucking cigarettes and give me your goddamn orders you dumb shits,” he shrieked at our little group. He didn’t seem to care that there were a lot of civilians walking around. The gray Navy bus awaited us at the curb and we were whisked away to what would be our new home for the next nine weeks.

Looking back now, the first day was the worst one, after that  itwasn’t so bad. But the first day truly sucked. Long before the sun came up, some asshole came running into the barracks and screamed “Get your pussies out of those racks and hit the deck running.” It was not the kind of awakening that I normally preferred.

The only thing we were allowed to do before marching over to the chow hall was either take a leak or a shit, couldn’t even brush your teeth.

Upon the arrival at the dining facility I sat down across from a fellow recruit who promptly barfed all over his tray. The day had just begun.

After our delicious meal, we were then taken over to have our heads shaven, outfitted for uniforms, and then to this huge hall where the biggest prick that I would ever meet in the military was waiting to greet us.

He was in charge of making sure our clothes were stenciled. All of your clothes that are issued to you in the Navy have to be stenciled so they can be returned back to you if you are on a ship that does your laundry for you.

I also think it’s because the Navy is nothing but a den of thieves. As I would find out in the coming years that some son of a bitch would steal your used rubber if you left it lying around.

This guy though was an absolute maniac. He ran around screaming “pussies, limp dicks, motherfuckers” and anything else at us that happened to pop up in his mind.

At the same time we were trying to stencil all this crap with this big round brush and permanent India ink. Of course, we were fucking up horribly and at one point he even jammed a guy’s brush into his mouth. I never did figure how that poor dude got that ink out of his teeth.

As this was all going on I noticed a rather heavy, older, black man observing us from the back of the room. I would shortly find out that this was our new company commander, Chief Petty Officer Johnson. We would be his last company prior to his retirement.

He wanted to go out with a bang so he physically tortured us and mentally mind fucked us until we were the number one company in the battalion at graduation. He also wound up with a tidy little nest egg upon retirement after he ran two scams on us.

The first being the cigarette scam. Johnson announced that you could not have your own cigarettes, so all smokes were rounded up and a collection was taken. If you smoked, every week you were required to put in two dollars towards the smoke kitty. BUT, only two cartons of cigarettes were to be in the possession of the company commander, base regulations of course. You were given one cigarette a day.

If you deserved it. Johnson ran things on the merit program. Normally no one deserved it. 

Yet, every week the yeoman(the recruit unit clerk) came around and took another two dollars from you. This went on week after week. Do the math. About sixty guys smoked. 120 bucks a week times 9 weeks gives you $1080. The old bastard maybe bought three cartons of smokes the whole time we were there. Cigarettes at that time cost about five dollars a carton on base.

Close to eighty guys bought into the next grift. Johnson announced that he would smuggle pizzas in for recruits who would chip in ten dollars a piece. When the big night came it looked like he had gone out and bought about fifty of those frozen pizzas that you get for a buck a shot at the grocery store and cooked ‘em himself. The boxes that they came in didn’t even match.

But we all had it better than Murphy, the recruit unit clerk. The day we left San Diego, the recruit company commander told me that one of Murphy’s many duties besides running the cigarette scam was also smoking Johnson’s big black cigar.

He knew this for a fact. Late one night he had got up to take a leak and heard a weird noise coming from the company commander’s office.

Risking great bodily harm to himself, he still couldn’t contain his curiosity and had gently opened the door, only to see Murphy on his hands and knees getting his ass blasted by Johnson.

The weirdest day in boot camp was the anti-drug lecture that they gave you. We had a chaplain give us our seminar. He actually showed an old episode of Dragnet. The one where at the beginning of the show some straight business man type comes into the station and informs Joe and Bill that his daughter and her husband are smoking reefer and he fears for the safety of his granddaughter. The acting is way over the top. All the heads are wearing love beads and granny glasses and call the cops “pig”.

In the end of course, the granddaughter drowns in the bathtub while the hippies are having a “pot” party. Bill Gannon has to run out to the driveway and get sick. At the end of the viewing we were all roaring with laughter and the chaplain was enraged. Shaking his fist and screaming about how his own daughter had become “addicted to reefer.”

The man of God then had us marched to our barracks where we were outfitted in our raincoats and forced to do push-ups and jumping jacks until four or five recruits passed out.

“He had to do the dude’s pole? Man, talk about nasty!” screamed out Artimus. He was laughing so hard I thought he was going to pass out.

“No shit like that ever went down in the Marines, man, that’s for goddamn sure. Fucking guy getting ass blasted by the company commander.” He shook his head in amazement.

“I’m starting to put on a serious buzz here what do you say we go over to the Posada del Mar and try to force some chow down before I get wasted?” I asked.

“Good idea. I could use a big plate of beans and rice. Let’s roll.”

Artimus lumbered to his feet and began to walk down the beach then suddenly stopped and started laughing again.

“Hey you never had to put out to the old company buck did you? Or did you wait to lose your ass at the nuthouse?”

Such a sensitive guy.

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #6

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #6

BATFISH

ST. PETER SECURITY HOSPITAL

"Fucking A. I use to move pounds of weed for a biker gang from Albert Lea called the Grim Reapers. Man, were they a lame bunch of faggots. The biggest guy weighed about a buck fifty and none of ‘em rode Harleys. Shit! Suzukis, Kawasakis, Hondas, not even a fucking BMW or an Indian. They never wanted any quality. Just fucking ditch weed.”

Artimus seemed like he was over the initial shock of my story and was on a roll. His eyes wide open but the pupils looked like pinheads. I always suspected that he did a lot more speed than I saw him do, but never brought the subject up. He must have dropped something while I was waiting on a customer because he was chain-smoking his Camels.

“I think I even know where St. Peter is. Is it over by a place called Mankato? Where the Vikings have their training camp? Me and a buddy went over there one time cause he claimed he knew some guys, who knew some guys, who dealt weed to the Vikings while they were there and if we brought some primo shit we might get turned on to some season tickets but it turned out to be bullshit.”

Once he got on a rant you couldn’t stop him. His brain just seemed to bounce around in his huge skull like a pinball.

“You know with that anchor tattoo on your forearm I should have guessed you had been in the Navy. But since you never said anything I just thought you might have been in the merchant marines or something. Lots of dopers are. So anyway what happened after you popped that pervert at the looney bin?”

I had to sit in a cell for around three hours while a variety of guards, nurses, and I guess some shrink or something, either would peer at me through a little glass window or ask me questions through the food tray

slot in the door.

Shit like “Are you going to hurt yourself?” or “Are you going to try to hurt anyone else?” I didn’t answer them, just shook my head and that seemed to be good enough for them, because pretty soon this big dude opened the door and said I could come out.

He introduced himself as Scott and said he was the lead security counselor (that’s what they called guards there) for the unit. He laid out the ground rules: no smoking on the unit, smokes - if you had them, were given out on the hour and were to be smoked out in a secured courtyard adjacent to the day room. You never left the unit unless escorted (the doors were always locked anyway), and basically everything revolved around sort of a merit system. But, as Scott pointed out, there was to be no more of that kind of foolishness that went on in receiving. 

In other words, if you were a nice boy everything would be just swell and dandy. I would remain in an isolation cell which would be locked at night for three days and then would be assigned to my own room/cell. I would be free to roam the unit at my leisure and could partake in the group activities.

The observation period began. They observed me and more importantly, I observed them.

There were twenty inmates on Unit 800 and unlike me; of course, every one of them belonged there. But as I was soon to learn, there was really no hierarchy there, like I imagine there is in prison. These freaks were the cream of the crop for anti-social behavior and couldn’t even come close to forming any sort of bond with each other.

There was a threat of physical violence in the air at all times.

The biggest client was Norm. A bear of a man who so dangerous that he wore what the counselors called walking restraints, it was like a weight lifting belt around his waist with one hand strapped securely to it. While the other hand, while also strapped to it, had about a ten inch strap which gave Norm a range of motion so that he could eat and somewhat protect himself in event of an attack.

Norm had killed his father by beating him over the head with a cast iron skillet.

He had a follower in Jeff. Sort of a biker wanna be who closely resembled Charles Manson in facial appearance (probably in beliefs, too). They had the only (if you could call it that) semi-friendship on the unit.

Jeff had killed his mother by slashing her throat.

Bob was probably one of the more interesting, certainly the most pungent, of the “clients.” Bob had grown up in the local area and was in the habit of having his morning coffee at the Greyhound bus depot in Mankato. One day the dumb son of a bitch had sauntered in and held up the place. He was immediately arrested and sent to Stillwater prison where he immediately called a large inmate a “nigger” and was promptly thrown off the third tier.

Only the finest in prison medicine could save him. Bob now had no feeling below his waist but could actually walk. Who knows how? He had to be sent to a state hospital to serve out the remainder of his sentence as he was defenseless in the general prison population. But while at the state hospital he unwisely attacked a nurse. His prison sentence had now long ago expired but he was now just another client caught up in the system. He was despised by clients and staff equally. He was required to have a permanent catheter attached to a bag with a nifty ankle holster and the nursing staff had to give him two huge soapy enemas every week. He didn’t like to shower which resulted in him smelling like a walking pile of shit.

Earl was the only black client. Minneapolis Vice Lords would give him a McDonald’s happy meal and would send him out with an aluminum baseball bat on payback missions against opposing gang members. He had been picked up and had assaulted several St. Paul police officers. He also had a reputation on the unit of trying to fuck anything that walked, so he had a special cell that set a light off in the guards control bubble anytime he left his cell.

Alvin was an Indian off the Red Lake reservation who had stabbed his brother in the stomach over a bowl of his mom’s chili. I would once witness him during medication time turn around and jam his narrow little ass through the medication window and fart - freaking out the nurses. That earned him a one day stay in seclusion.

Pete had married a woman in a wheel chair and had pushed her chair, with her in it, down a long flight of stairs. Pete had been around a long time. Long enough that he had been in the hospital when they actually took clients out on field trips. At Como Zoo in St. Paul, Pete had picked up a young boy and held him over the alligator moat. He didn’t drop him but the staff almost had a nervous breakdown. The boy had loved it.

Tony, a wild religious fanatic, had tried to kill the president of Planned Parenthood. He also had the ability to get drunk by drinking huge amounts of water and could get very aggressive.

Fred was in for a variety of assault charges. He had been a suspect in the Green River killings in Washington State at one time. The police had arrested him and in his possession he had the scarf and Bible of one of the dead whores. For some reason nothing ever came of it. The guy had pure predator eyes. I was very careful around him.

And that left me and a number of other clients who had acted up at the state hospital below the hill or in one of the lower security units. A number of them are what the politically correct public calls the developmentally disabled. They are referred to as “retards” by the other clients and staff.

The old days of straightjackets, billy clubs, and ice bath therapy were over. Medication, handcuffs, and a high starch diet kept the inmates from wanting to take over the asylum. If they really wanted to fuck you up they still old electro-shock therapy going on though.

The staff of the unit would only on occasion venture on to the unit. Mostly to pass out the food trays brought on to the unit or to direct clients to the med line to receive their daily medications.

I had been put on a multivitamin and something to keep me “calm.” I would cheek this and then try to spit it out as soon as I could.

Under the watchful eyes of the staff, sometimes this could take fifteen minutes or so and some of the medication would seep into my system much like chewing tobacco or snuff, and I would have some very wild and vivid dreams. For some reason they usually involved me laying the wood to Marcia of The Brady Bunch. I mentioned that to the unit shrink the first time we met and he seemed genuinely puzzled as he scribbled it down in my chart.

Three days later after arrival I was moved into my own cell. All brick with a metal toilet and sink combination attached to the wall. A cement bed with a thick mattress and a large window equipped with shatterproof glass that looked out on to the grounds of the hospital. I had to act fast. I had no idea how long it would be before my colorful background would catch up to me and how long it was going to take these geniuses to figure out I wasn’t crazy.

Principal Diagnosis:

Acute Paranoia

Bipolar Disorder

Narcotic Intoxication

This patient has been admitted to SPSH for a two week evaluation on the recommendation of Judge Darwin C. Hardwood, Circuit Court Seven,Duluth, Minnesota. Patient was arrested at a Duluth shelter after he allegedly attacked another shelter resident with a knife, partially severing the resident’s penis. Although patient was not aggressive to the arresting officers, he was involved in another physical altercation at the jail with the same shelter resident, which resulted in further injury to the resident’s penis. Patient was observed by jail staff to have extremely poor hygiene and appeared at times to be suffering from hallucinations. Upon arrival at SPSH the patient assaulted another patient who had been on the same transport. Due to patient’s size (6”2 and estimated 225 pounds) it was considered in the best interests of the facility to admit patient to a more secure environment while here for evaluation. Patient did well on initial consultation. Has good memory and appears to have knowledge of current events. Performs well on counting back from 100 by the #7. Refuses to give

any information about any relatives or his past. Anchor tattoo on right forearm may indicate military or another seagoing service. Staff is to be

reminded to practice extreme caution while on the unit with this patient.

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #5

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.”