Chapter 12
Big Al, Skeeter Crosby, and Honey Boy Gaskins sat at the bar at Flood’s Place drinking and watching the football game as they did most Saturdays. Al’s large hairy tattooed arms were folded on the bar holding a Bud. All three men’s bodies were marked with tattoos. Al and Skeeter’s were more prolific than Honey Boys. One of Al’s arms had elaborate scrollwork on it and the other, his right, pictured a naked girl with the words, “Hell’s Crusaders,” below her modeled body. Honey Boy only had one small tattoo of a shark on his upper left arm. He didn’t believe in decorating his smooth skin with ink but felt that the single tattoo was enough to get him accepted into the ink fraternity. He did love to ride motorcycles, and if you were a biker, you needed a tattoo to complete the hell-raising façade.
By 1:00 PM, the men, had been drinking for three hours already. All three were two sheets in the wind. They, like 90 percent of the citizens of South Carolina, had their eyes glued to TV. Historical rivals, the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Clemson Tigers were battling out their annual classic. Parties were going on in parking lots and backyards of citizens throughout the state. Any bar or place that had a TV was sure to do a big business on this day. If you were a football fan, and who in South Carolina wasn’t, you knew all the players and usually had a strong opinion of their fielding abilities. The game always came at the beginning of deer season. Every red-blooded South Carolina male and a smattering of females lived for the deer season. The only thing that was more important to the good old boys than a deer hunt was the annual football match going on today.
Oats always made up a sheet with different scores along both sides of the paper. It cost $50 to enter the contest. The person that predicted the correct score won $5,000. The good slots were quickly taken up. Oats a self-taught entrepreneur who knew the gimmick would draw more customers and more customers meant he would sell more beer. The $50 entry fee was too steep for many of his customers, so he had a cheaper version that paid out $2,500 for a $25 chance to win.
The three men had been watching and heckling each other all day about one thing or the other. Al could normally match Honey Boy on a one for one friendly put down, but today he wasn’t up to his usual wittiness. After two years of Honey Boy’s friendship, it was getting to Big Al who had become disgusted with his suave friend’s habits and demeanor. Honey Boy got his name because he had the smooth facial features of a woman. He had no beard, and his skin was without a pimple or scratch. He combed his thick black hair straight back on his head, leaving very distinguished comb marks. His hair defied disorder due to the huge amount of thick crème he used. He didn’t fit the picture of the typical hell-raising member of the Cobbs, but he was in fact as vile and wretched as any of them.
Now, Skeeter, he was altogether different. Having served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, he had the Marine logo on his right arm, with the words, “Once a Marine, Always a Marine,” emblazoned beneath it. The Parris Island Recruit Depot was within 50 miles of the area and he often ran into Marines. When he met one, his tattoos always sparked a conversation between old brothers in arms. Skeeter ate it up by relating exploits of his service in Iraq. Although the seasoned Marines gave him his honored dues, when he met a recruit on a 12-hour pass, they were spellbound by his stories.
Skeeter and Al had been friends since high school. Neither of them graduated. They had more important things to do than sit in a classroom all day. Al dropped out in the 9th Grade and somehow obtained an old motorcycle to occupy his young adventurous escapades. Skeeter had to repeat several grades. When he was in the 10th Grade, he was 18 years old and learned he could get into the Marine Corps without a high school diploma, so off to the Marines, he went. Skeeter wasn’t a big man, weighing in at about 150 pounds and standing only five feet five inches tall. Although a small man, he had a quick trigger temper and was always mouthing off. Big Al and Honey Boy, another good friend of Al’s, had gotten into several unwelcome fights defending their friend. Besides his quick temper, the other thing that set him apart from his peers was that he had a severe cleft lip. All of his “S” words came out like “Ts.” Even at a young age, the impediment always caused him trouble in one way or another since. His mother was furious at his first-grade teacher when on his first day at school the children were introducing themselves. Unable to pronounce his name properly, he said, “my name ‘ith Theeter.” The children, as well as the teacher, pronounced his name, Theeter, until his mother went to school and chastised the teacher, getting the affair straightened out. Behind the bar, as was customary, Oats took turns alternately charging the drinks on one man’s tab, then the other. Each man had already downed at least a dozen Buds by 6:00 PM. The night promised to be a barn buster.
Big Al yelled to Oats, “give me another Bud and let my shit head buddies here have one too.”
Honey Boy couldn’t let that one go, and came back, “yea maybe you better skip Al this round, ‘cuz he can’t hold his liquor. I bet he can’t even keep up with our new Cobb member, Jeff Ireland. I guess Big Al is getting soft. I think we should change his name to Pussy Al.”
Skeeter added, “yea, the ‘thit head, ‘isth a ‘puthy. Gimme another ‘pigth ‘theet, ‘theb. How ‘bot one with ‘thum meat on it this time.”
This incensed Al. He drank at least a third of the fresh Bud in one gulp, not letting on to his frustration with his friends. What really frustrated him was that Jeff Ireland’s popularity among the Cobb members was replacing his own leadership status. In his alcohol soaked mind, he declared to himself that he had to do a better job to exert influence amount the members.
Around 9:00 PM, the crowd, was packed beyond capacity. People were two deep at the bar when the three-piece band led off with their rendition of Johnny Cash’s, “Another Broken Hearted Girl.” Big Al was in no mood to hit on Jill tonight, in spite of her flaunting tight jeans and her well-exposed cleavage all over the dance floor. He felt sick to his stomach and had to vomit. He made his way across the floor, pushing through the shaking and shimmering couples and out the door.
Al stopped half way to his bike, put his hands on his knees and threw up. The pickled sausages, pig’s feet, and the Saturday night special hamburger he had consumed earlier splashed on the ground unrecognizable as anything ever consumed by a human. After he completed the painful exercise, the pavement, and his riding boots were decorated with the slimy, unrecognizable remains of partially consumed stomach bile. Briefly, feeling better, he straddled his motorcycle and immediately his tired eyes closed, his chin bowed to his chest and in five minutes, he began to snore. After a short while, he became so relaxed that his body leaned to one side and he almost fell off the seat. Grabbing the handlebars, he caught himself and became fully awake.
A now sickened shell barely able to function replaced Big Al’s once macho façade. As he pressed the starter button, the iron machine immediately belched a roar. Her rider paid the gas to the engine, and it responded. The man-machine team sped off onto the two-lane highway leaving a black streak on the pavement behind. Al had been on the road for only a couple of minutes when he felt the urge to puke again. He turned off and headed south on a small dirt road leading to the Combahee River. The road was Public Landing Road, where Al first saw Fuzz. About a mile up the road was a boat ramp and a small swimming area where the locals escaped from the 95-degree summer heat by dipping in the cool river water.
No sooner had he exited the main highway, than his motorcycle light illuminated a figure walking along the road in the same direction he was traveling. The figure that Al saw was a teenage boy on his way to his home just up the road. Why he was out this time of night was an unfortunate mystery. Upon sighting the boy, Al had a vision of Fuzz. It was not a teenage boy at all. Determined to get rid of Fuzz once and for all his adrenaline became revived as he sped by Fuzz and beyond for another 300 feet or so. Spinning the bike around he stopped facing Fuzz
balancing the bike with his right foot. Holding the bike with both hands, he eased the throttle forward, and the mechanical beast obeyed the order by slowly moving forward a few feet. Fuzz, who in reality was the boy, stood wide-eyed waiting for the strange man to do something. The eerie sound of the motorcycle idled, chug, chug, chug, in the still night. Then Al turned the throttle forward several times. The old motorcycle responded with a loud thunder. Vrooom, Vrooom, Vroom!
Shoving the machine into gear, it jerked ahead straight at Fuzz. Just a little fun at Fuzz’s expense, Al thought. The boy dove into the ditch barely escaping the speeding machine. Al was going at least 40 miles per hour by the time he passed the victim. The boy was able to stick his head up from the ditch to see Al speeding down the side of the road. In his attempt to hit the boy, Al was headed toward the ditch himself. The motorcycle went too far off the road and dipped down into the ditch. As it did, it hit a hole, and the bike took on the characteristics of a bucking horse. Al was thrown at least 15 feet into the air landing in the muddy ditch. He hit face down in the soft mud and slid another 10 feet before hitting a small stump that stopped his forward lurch. Unconscious, his large body didn’t move. The boy who he was trying to scare, was scared all right, and jumped out the ditch and ran as fast as he could down the road. In the safety of his home, he woke up his parents and frantically related the story. The parents called the sheriff’s office and reported what had happened.