Sheriff's Dismay (28)

Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

            As far as I knew at the time, when the police escorted me into the back of a waiting squad car and off of Bull’s property, those would be the last moments I would spend on the farm for a very long time.  I had begun to settle into the idea that it would be the last time I would share some freedom with Bull for an equally long time.  We rode in separate police cruisers to the county jail, were booked in separate intake rooms, and finally we were dressed-out in bright orange pajama’s and delivered to different cells at opposite ends of the jail.

            I had been issued a thin mattress-roll, and I was disappointed to find that I would be laying it down in a corner of the common-room between the two bunked rooms on either side of it, as the four metal bunks extending from the cinder block walls were all currently being occupied by snoring lumps of orange-clad inmates.

            I turned around to watch the jailer close the door.  As he turned the key in the lock, his face appeared in the small, solitary window of the heavy, steel door and said, “Seems we’re a little full right now.  Have fun sleeping on the floor!”  He disappeared from the window, and I rolled my mat into the corner of the room, and slowly slid down the wall onto the negligible cushion of my makeshift bed.  The jail was cold and uncomfortable, but when I closed my eyes several minutes later, I found the ability to sleep came to me without much effort.  I slept dreamlessly for what felt like days, only waking for brief moments when one of my cellmates would announce that it was ‘chow-time’.  I didn’t even bother to look at the trays of food that were quietly offered to me on several occasions.  I responded only enough to tell whichever cellmate brought the tray towards me that they were welcome to eat it.  My confinement companions were quiet and unsociable.  I was extremely grateful for this blessing.  As the first day turned into two, and day two turned into three, I had all I could do to lift my head from the ground I was sleeping on.  I was left completely undisturbed until the second meal had arrived on my fourth day in jail.  It was just after the five trays of food had come through the slot near the bottom of the door, that I heard keys rattling inside of the locked door, followed by the shrieking sound of its metal hinges.  The door had swung open to reveal a large, grinning jailer standing in the doorframe calling my name repeatedly until I had shaken the dreary depths of dreamless sleep from my head.  I sat up, and looked to the jailer, who simply stated, “Come on now, it isn’t THAT comfortable on the floor.  The Sheriff wants to see you.”

            I stood up and walked towards the door, where my escort was twirling a pair of handcuffs on the pointer finger of his right hand.  “Turn around and put your hands behind your back for me.”  I did as he requested, and was once again acquainted with the cold, tight grip of handcuffs.  He allowed me to pass in front of him, where I paused and waited for him to shut and lock the door of the cell.  The hallway we were standing in was loud with the ambient echoing voices of caged men talking between cells from behind heavy steel doors.  They were telling jokes, spouting insults, and I was surprised to hear one guy singing ‘twinkle, twinkle, little star’ at the top of his lungs, accompanied by a loud chorus of protests from neighboring cells.  As I was nearing the end of this hallway, a knocking sound near the vicinity of my head caught my attention, and I was surprised to see Bull’s fierce and fiery eyes staring intently at me through a tiny square window.  He mouthed two words to me from behind the thick, scratchy glass.

            Go home!

            I shrugged my shoulders, smiled at him one last time, and continued walking towards the end of the hallway, and towards the open door of a visitation room.  I turned around when I reached the open doorway to make sure that I was going to the right spot.  The jailer simply nodded once, and said quietly, “Have a seat.  Sheriff Doyle will be right with you.”

            There was a table in the center of brightly lit room.  There was a chair on either side of it, and I quickly sat in the closest one.  The jailer closed the door, and I was left alone.  After several minutes alone, I heard the approach of footsteps in the hall on the other side of the door, and the sound of Sheriff Doyle’s voice speaking in fragments.  When he opened the door and entered the room, I saw that he was speaking into his cellphone.

            “You’re sure that I should O.R. him?   …Mmmhmmm… yeah.  …Oh he did?  …It was??  Well, madam states attorney, I’m looking at the young man, right now… mmmhmmm… and from the looks of him, I wouldn’t trust him to microwave me a bag of popcorn… but if you say so, I’ll take your word for it.  …Mmmmhmmm… okay… I’ll let him know that you’ll look forward to seeing him in court next week.  …Mmmmhmm… alright then.  Bye.”

            The Sheriff sat down in the chair facing me.

            “Well, young man… I hope you remember our conversation the other night about the opportunities that I hesitantly, and wisely I might add, give to individuals such as yourself to lie to me.  Do you remember that conversation?  I know there was probably an awful lot going through your mind that night, so I hope you do.”

            “Yes sir.  I remember.”

            “Well, that’s good.  Do you feel like you might lie to me if I ask you some questions?”

            “No sir.”

            “Alright, tell me something.  Would you consider yourself friends with Mr. Gunville?”

            “Yes sir.  He is one of my only friends.”

            “My goodness, son… you must be a very lonely man.  Not many people I know around here would ever stake a claim in that used-up dope cook.  How is it that you came to make friends with him?”

            “Well, sheriff… honestly, I started using drugs a couple of years ago, and we sort of ran in the same circles.  My friendship with him began when I realized that there was more that we had in common than the ways we chose to beat ourselves up.  I think he feels pretty similarly.”

            “So, you started using drugs a couple of years ago, huh?  Was that around the time that you lost your restaurant over in Ft. Justice?  The state’s attorney tells me that your restaurant was the best place to eat in this part of the state.”

            I was surprised to learn that the sheriff knew this tidbit of information about me.

            “I suppose it was around that time that I lost my restaurant, yes.”

            “Well, I suppose I could use this time to lecture you about how infinitely stupid it was for you to throw away your life for meth, and friendship with a guy like Bull Gunville, but I shouldn’t have to.  You should pretty well have that figured out for yourself at this point.  You sir, are a textbook example of how meth takes a talented, promising young life, and completely reduces it to absolutely nothing in a very short amount of time.”

            “Yes sir.  I suppose I am.”

            “Your wife has been calling my office around the clock.  Apparently she’d like you to know that you still have a home to return too.  That’s rare for somebody in your predicament.  She says you haven’t been there in months.  Where have you been staying?”

            “I’m not going to lie to you sir, I have been staying at Gunville’s farm on and off for some time.  I have also spent time at Rhonda Donning’s house… or anywhere that I could.  But mostly with Bull and Dayna at the farm.”

            “Have you been cooking dope out there with Mr. Gunville?”

            “No sir.”  It was the first of many difficult lies I was about to tell.

            “So… you want me to believe that your good friend, Mr. Gunville was manufacturing methamphetamine on the property that you were living at, albeit infrequently, and you never had any idea that he was doing it?”

            “Sir, there are eighty acres of land out there.  I would be lying to you if I said that I had seen everything there was to see on that property, or kept tabs on what my friend did while I was busy getting high or trying my best not to deal with my own problems.  If you say that he was cooking dope out there, then it is news to me.  It’s sad news too, because if I had known, I probably would have told him to take up a new hobby.”

            “So that’s your story, huh?  You don’t know anything about it?”

            “Yes sir, that is my story.  I’m really very sorry that I didn’t know earlier, because Bull Gunville IS my friend and I would have tried to make him stop… If I had known.”

            “Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that.  That’s pretty much what Gunville told me too.” He folded his hands and rested them on the table in front of him.  He looked down his nose at me and continued, “But let me tell you something… I think you’re a dope cook.  I think you’re an anomaly, because I don’t normally get the story wrong.  I think you and Gunville have been cooking dope out on that farm for awhile now, and I think Bull Gunville is trying to protect you for some reason.  But there’s one thing I know about dope cooks… They die or they get caught, but they never, ever change.  You’re friend in that cell back there will most likely be going away for close to twenty years this time.  He’ll be 60 years old when he gets out of prison, but do you want to know what he’ll do when he gets out?”  He hesitated, but not with any intention of letting me answer his rhetorical question.  “He’ll cook dope again… and so will you.  Mark my words.”

            Silence filled the room.

            “But, today…” the sheriff’s voice which had been steadily becoming more agitated, suddenly returned to a benign, almost friendly demeanor.  “Today the state’s attorney wants me to charge you with felony possession of methamphetamine for having that glass pipe in your hand when my officers executed the warrants that were issued for Mr. Gunville’s arrest.  Even more aggravating to me is the current overpopulation of my jailhouse, and my inability to keep you in custody any longer.  She told me to release you on an O.R. bond, which means that you will have the opportunity to call your wife in a couple of minutes, sign some paperwork and get the hell out of my sight.  I can’t help but feel like I’m walking around with egg on face today because of you and Gunville.”

            “Thank you sir and I’m sorry you feel that way.”  I looked at the floor between my feet as he stood up from the table.

            He exited the room, and I was left alone until the jailer who had escorted me to my meeting with Sheriff Doyle returned and asked, “So, do you wanna call your wife, or what?”

This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo

Arresting Developments & The Long Winded Sheriff (27)

Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

            When the chaos and commotion of the initial phase of the covert invasion of the farm by the local and state authorities had concluded, my face, head, and upper torso were still being forcefully held down onto the round table by what felt like the cold, steel barrel of a large shotgun being wielded by a very over-zealous cop in modest body armor.  I was breathing in panicked, deep breaths and choking on the dusty ashes from the ashtray which felt like it was being fused to my face.  My body was numb with adrenaline and a growing sense of rage.  I felt a cagey desire to self-combust or scream in terror.  I felt Bull’s arm touching mine, and knew that he was very likely in the same, unfortunate position. 

            I wasn’t the least bit shocked or surprised in any way to learn very quickly that Bull’s fearless personality hadn’t been too badly wounded by this surprise attack on us this night.  He began speaking very deliberately and quietly to me from under what I could only imagine was a very similar gun wielded by another similarly amped-up cop.  “Calm down, brother.  Calm down and relax your body… don’t move, or give them any reason to make a mess on my fucking table with that big brain of yours.”  I knew he was smiling at this snarky, poorly-timed, jab at my ego.  “I know you’re freaking out right now, but this will be over soon.  Just chill out and don’t say anything.”

            He was interrupted by the cop who was presently securing my uncomfortable position on the table.  “SHUT THE FUCK UP, GUNVILLE!”  Unbelievably to me, the gun barrel at the base of my skull pressed even harder into my already sore neck and head, and the faceless voice that had silenced Bull directed his next comment to me.  “Don’t you fuckin’ talk meth-head, or he’s exactly right.  I’ll paint the table top with your ate-up fucking brains.  Just keep your methy little mouth shut or I’ll fucking do it.”  I could tell he was gritting his teeth as he spoke.  The cop’s words were hissing at me with a sense of triumph that I can only imagine comes from an excessively overdeveloped sense of job satisfaction.  I extended the fingers on both of my hands in an attempt to express my surrender and desire for self-preservation.  The pipe I had been gripping tightly, clinked onto the table.

            “Take it down a notch, hard-on,” Bull continued, much to my dismay.  “This guy hasn’t done a fucking thing TO you, and he’s a guest in my fucking home.  We’re not gonna fight or resist you guys.  You fucking got me dead to rights at the moment… everybody here knows that and I’m assuming that’s primarily what you came here to do, so let’s try and achieve some level of decency.”

            The cop holding the gun to my head said, “Goddammit, will you please shut Gunville THE FUCK UP!”  Apparently he was trying to communicate with Bull’s momentary handler and had succeeded.

            “Please Gunville,” his cop sounded surprisingly calm and almost compassionate.  “Let’s not turn this circus into something it doesn’t have to be.  Put your hands behind your back for me, okay?”  I could hear Bull moving into a position to be handcuffed, and the cold zip-clicking of the bracelets being tightened.

            “You too douche-bag,” my cop hissed, as he took the opportunity to push the barrel momentarily harder into my skull, letting me know that he was talking to me.  “Put your hands behind your back.”

            I repositioned my arms so my shoulders were resting on the table, and reached behind my back.  The gun barrel at the base of my skull seemed to ease up slightly, as another officer appeared behind me to accessorize my wrists with the cold metal handcuffs.  They were tightened over the bones in my wrists, which I had apparently never taken notice of.  I was now painfully aware of just how uncomfortably skinny my wrists and arms had become.  The cop holding the steel barrel to my skull eased the pressure of the gun he was jamming into my head, and I finally began to breathe in shallow, shaky breaths.

            “Go ahead, methy… sit up.”  I found myself becoming surprisingly agitated at this cop’s fondness for the slew of unoriginal nicknames he was giving me and the gleeful way with which he was coloring his orders to me.  As he relinquished the pressure of the massive gun barrel he was happily trying to skewer my head with I began to concentrate very hard on not making my distaste for his uncreative vocabulary, being fueled by his brief moment of authority over me visibly noticeable.  He insisted on making this as difficult for me as possible, as it took a moment for my brain to remind the rest of my body that it was still in control of my functions, regardless of what my bladder had thought minutes earlier.

            “C’mon methster,” he used the butt of his giant gun to guide my forehead off of the table as I was trying to shake loose a cigarette butt that had adhered to my cheek while I was sharing intimate face-time with an overflowing  ashtray that he and his gun had introduced me to upon his unfortunate arrival to the farmhouse.  I gave up trying to coax the butt from my face, and sat up to survey our uninvited guests for the first time. 

            The house was swarming with law enforcement.  Dayna was being handcuffed, face down on the couch.  She didn’t appear to be coherent or resisting, but when the two cops manipulating her had finished immobilizing her wrists, she was dragged into a sitting position on the couch, eyes closed and mumbling groggily.  A female officer appeared in front of her, and snapped her fingers several times, yielding no noticeable response from the bleary, closed, and sunken-eyed focus of her attention.

            “What did she take tonight, guys?” The she-cop barked in the direction of where Bull, Rhonda, and I were now silently, yet ravenously trying to make sense of the situation.

            “Can I talk NOW, hard-on?”  Bull swung his head in the direction of the cop that had been handling me.  The cop locked eyes with Bull silently, in what appeared to be an attempt to intimidate the three-time felon, ex-convict, and seasoned expert in cop/criminal relationships.  It was no surprise to me when the cop nodded his head, and dropped his defeated, vacant stare to just over Bull’s shoulder.   Bull took the briefest of moments to flash a grin in my direction.  I found surprising comfort in my friend’s confidence and fearlessness in the face of what was looking like it could very well be the last time we sat together as free men for a very long time.  To add to my feeling of comfort and acceptance of our current dilemma, I was surprised to see that Bull’s eyes had recaptured the fierce glow and infectious, glaring clarity of a man who had absolutely nothing to fear, but more importantly, a man who felt that everything was completely within his control.  In spite of my overwhelming fear I felt a grin beginning at the corners of my mouth when Bull began to speak again.

            “Ma’am, she has been terribly depressed since DCFS took her boy away from her, and when I returned home tonight, she was passed out drunk on that couch with this bottle of tequila wrapped in her arms.”  Bull nodded towards the bottle of tequila on the table, now lying on its side like a wounded soldier.  The expensive looking cork-cap, which I had replaced loosely after I had helped myself to some earlier, had become dislodged in the chaos, and it had spilled a majority of its contents onto the table and floor near my feet.  Bull continued, “It looked to me like maybe it had been relieved of about one-third of its contents, before my friend here wrestled it out of her arms just before y’all let yourselves in.  She’s not much of a drinker normally, but I’ve never seen her this incoherent.  Frankly, I’m a little worried about her… it seems like she would be awake for something like this under normal circumstances, don’tcha think?” 

            What I was witnessing was Bull’s sarcasm dripping from his mouth like invisible gobs of honey.  Apparently the cops were so absorbed with everything else, or were so blinded by the fury with which they attended to their jobs during the minutes beforehand, that they didn’t see Bull’s loosely motivated explanation of Dayna’s unresponsiveness  for what it was; an attempt to remove Dayna from the situation before she could come to her senses.

            “Mr. Gunville, do you think she might have taken something else before or maybe during the time she was drinking?”  The she-cop resumed snapping her fingers in front of Dayna’s face while she was trying to talk over the growing chatter in the farmhouse.

            “Ma’am, believe it or not, that is the exact conversation I was having with my friends here… before… you know,” Bull hesitated purposefully, rolling his eyes around in their sockets and continued, “I mean, before you guys interrupted us.  These two folks showed up at my request, to take her somewhere and see if she needed her stomach pumped or something.  I’m afraid she might have been trying to hurt herself, honestly.  She’s been talking about that a lot lately.”

            The she-cop bent her head down to the communications radio positioned on the shoulder strap of her uniform, pressed a button on the spiraling cord leading to it, and quietly spoke into the device.  She moved out of my line of sight and left Dayna sitting on the couch, handcuffed and mumbling incoherently.  Dayna began to slump to one side as two hefty looking paramedics appeared, carrying a gurney-board.  They waved the nearest cop over to where they stood, and motioned to her handcuffed wrists while talking to him.  The new cop quickly removed Dayna’s restraints and disappeared.  The paramedics made quick work of transferring Dayna’s limp body to the board, where she was strapped down, and carried from the house.

            It suddenly dawned on me that Bull intended to absorb as much of this trouble as he could.  He was improvising at the moment, but he had already managed to have Dayna removed from the house, and at least temporarily keep her out of police custody.  He had flagrantly lied to the she-cop and anybody listening about what I was actually doing in his house and on his property tonight.  Rhonda fell under this umbrella of protection that he was attempting to provide for us with his interpretation of the truth in this matter as well.  As the dawning of my realization began to grow, I immediately became uneasy with how comfortable I felt with allowing him to do this. 

Bull was watching me intently as my eyes returned to the table from watching Dayna being removed from the house.  He was now sitting back in his chair, although with his hands in restraints behind him, it looked as though he was sitting on his hands like a child being punished.  It was almost comical.  I looked directly at him, and did my best to communicate with him silently, using only my eyes, facial expression, and my overwhelming emotional state at the moment.

Are you sure about this?  I don’t think I can let you take this by yourself, boss.

The fire in Bull’s eyes was as fierce as ever, and in an instant I knew he had at least kind of understood my concerns.  He cocked his head to one side, nodding first, and then he lowered his head and eyes like a predatory animal about to pounce.

Don’t be a fucking idiot.  It doesn’t make sense for both of us to go down for this.  Don’t forget, we have a deal.  I will need your help now.  You can’t help me or yourself if you’re locked up in some hole.  When this is over… go home.  You need to go home and wait.

“Okay, gentlemen…” we both looked towards the sound of the voice coming from the first cop that I had seen so far without a Kevlar vest or some kind of protective gear over his uniform.  “Mr. Gunville, I do believe you know who I am, and clearly, I know who you are.  I am familiar with the lady sitting here at your table as well.  Rhonda Downing, I do believe…”  The shiny, slick-haired, mustached cop then turned his eyes towards me.  “But I’m sorry, fella… I am just at a complete loss in your case.  At any rate, I’m Sheriff Don Doyle.  I preside over things in this county.  You probably would be tempted to try and deceive me if I asked you outright who the hell you are, so I won’t bother with that, as the currently overburdened states attorney in this county doesn’t really have time to pursue the obstruction of justice charges that you would face if and when I do EVER give you the opportunity to lie to me.  My extensive experiences in these matters have taught me not to give a person in your current predicament, and under the influence of the drugs that I suspect you are on, a chance to lie to me or I will inevitably receive an strongly worded, ear-chewing phone call, or worse yet a personal visit from a very angry, fellow public servant, when she finds out that I am wasting the counties precious tax dollars, provided for us to do our jobs by the honest, hardworking citizens of this county who are already struggling in these difficult economic times.  She will then explain what a waste of HER time it is when my officers are obligated to file charges against some jerk who tried to lie to me about who he was, when I just as easily could have asked to see his identification.  So, tell me pal, do you have some identification I can look at?”    

“Sure, it’s in my wallet.  In my back pocket.” I began to retrieve it with one of my cuffed hands, but this was met with a knock on the head with the butt of a large gun I had become very familiar with, which was being held by the one cop in the room who had no problem using either end to exacerbate my current agitation.

“Let the officer get it for you… go ahead and stand up, sir.”  The sheriff waited patiently while I stood up.  After the cop behind me fumbled through my wallet and pulled my license out, he handed it to Sheriff Don Doyle for his examination.  He read the front of the plastic identification card, turned it over, examined the back side, and handed it to another neatly groomed, unvested, uniformed cop who had appeared at his side. 

“Nope... this doesn’t help me at all.  You are a total stranger to me, and see that disappoints me, because as the duty-bound sheriff in this county, elected and respected by the fine people who reside around here, I like to think that I know just about everybody who intends to bring harm to the people who hold me responsible for their safety and well-being.  I was not familiar with you before this moment sir, and that bruises my ego.  I am familiar with you now though, and I hope that you take that bit of information very seriously.  You are now on my list of very bad people that I have had the displeasure to become acquainted with due to the nature of my chosen field of employment, and consequently your poor choices so far in life.  But my bruised ego, and your lousy life decisions are irrelevant to the simple fact that at this moment, gentlemen… and lady,” he turned and nodded to Rhonda nonchalantly, “you are now all under arrest for this sneaking suspicion I have that you have all been engaging in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine, and the dangerous and equally illegal procurement of the precursors with which to do so in my beloved county.  You will be transported to my lovely and hospitable jail tonight, where you will be well taken care of until you can each be questioned regarding my suspicion of your involvement in these activities.  Is that understood?”

            I sat back down, heavily, in the chair behind me. 

            I was surprised to find myself awe-struck and amused with Sheriff Don Doyle.

            Well, at least this cop had a more interesting and creative way of telling me 

that he thought I was a piece of shit.


This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo

The Crashing Halt (26)

Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

            I took some extra time pushing stray trash from around the bonfire into the glowing embers after I threw my bag of trash onto the top of the flames.  The bag was melting and hissing as I finally turned away from the fire and started my hike through the dark property and towards the faint sounds and dim lights illuminating the farmhouse.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear the sounds of several car doors and engines starting followed by the familiar sound of the gravel driveway under the moving wheels of hastily exiting vehicles.  I deliberately slowed my pace to allow as many of our guests to leave as possible before I got to the farmhouse.  I wasn’t really in the mood for a lot of fake goodbyes and the potential to witness the expressions of feigned sadness on the faces of some of Bull’s longtime acquaintances as they retrieved the last bags of dope that they knew they would ever receive from Bull.  I refused to take part in some kind of charade of mundane grief over a decision that I knew Bull thought was obviously for the best for those of us closest to the situation on the farm.  Nevertheless, I was starting to ache for the taste of our last batch of dope, and I finally climbed the cinder-block stairs leading to the leaning, ramshackle porch at the rear of the farmhouse. 

            When I pushed the door open into the kitchen and walked into the fluorescent brightness of the lit house, I was pleased and visibly relieved to see that the only remaining faces at the table were Rhonda and Bull.  Dayna had resumed her position on the couch in the living room, and was snoring loudly while hugging a large bottle of what looked like expensive tequila.  I walked past the round table, and stood over the couch where Dayna was sleeping while Bull and Rhonda watched me wordlessly.  I looked over my shoulder at Bull and pointed to the bottle resting in Dayna’s arms.

            “Think she’ll mind?” I asked quietly.

“If you can wrestle it out of her grip, I don’t think she’ll even know it’s gone,” Bull laughed.  “I think she got pretty loaded while everybody else was out cleaning up.”

I began wiggling the bottle away from Dayna’s motherly embrace, and finally liberated it from her.  She never stirred, and I returned to the round table and sat next to Bull in Dayna’s chair.  I put the bottle of tequila in front of me as I sat down, and Bull picked it up, apparently examining the contents.  It was about two-thirds of the way full, and he set it back down while a fierce grin spread across his tired face.  The folds in the skin on his face looked almost like a worn out piece of sandpaper.

“Doesn’t take much to knock her the fuck out, does it?” He stated it more than he asked, laughing and shaking his head.

“Nah… cheap date I guess, huh?” I smiled back and removed the fancy, cork-style cap on the bottle and drank deeply from the warm contents.  Tequila always tasted better to me when it was warm, and now I was thankful that Dayna had been keeping it so close to her body.  “Can we get high now, boss?  Or did you give all of our hard work away to the worker bees?”

“Hell no, I didn’t give it all away…” he snarled, and reached under the table.  He retrieved two glass jars from somewhere near his feet.  The jars were dry, but cloudy with dope residue that had collected there during the smoking-off process.  At the bottom of one of the jars were two tightly wound coffee filters which resembled the crafty ghosts that kids made in grade-school art class with Kleenex and cotton balls.  Bull dumped the ghost-shaped filters onto the table in front of him and handed the jars to Rhonda, seated to his right in what was normally my spot.  She was holding a denture brush in one hand and had a square mirror on the table in front of her.  She immediately began to gently scrub the jar’s interiors with the brush, collecting and dumping the dope residue onto the mirror in front of her in a healthy-looking pile of white, powdery crystals.  Bull began to carefully unwrap one of the filters, exposing a large lump of white dope.  I watched intently as he gently prodded the clump of meth with his pinky finger.  It began crumbling into a fluffy pile of what I had begun to apparently, desperately and visibly want to ingest in some fashion. 

“Looks pretty good, huh?”  Bull looked over to me, and I responded with a sigh and a smile that must have looked and sounded pretty dumb, because he sat back and started laughing with his hand in front of his mouth.  Rhonda looked up from what she was working on, but by then I had recovered my composure, sat back in my chair, and lifted both of my middle fingers at Bull.

“Yeah… fuck you, boss.  You caught me geekin’ out a little bit.  You know how much I love to watch you take your time.”  My face felt warm and flushed, but I couldn’t help but laugh at myself.

“Okay, so what are we doing with this shit?” Bull asked, leaning to his immediate right.  He punched several buttons on his safe, and popped the door open.  He reached into the bottom of the large vault and retrieved a set of digital scales.  I watched as he powered the scales on and calibrated them, using a stray nickel he found on the table.  “Are we selling it, or keeping it for a rainy day?”

“Well, if what you mean by ‘keeping it for a rainy day’ is smoking it until its gone, then I vote for the rainy day plan.”  I was certain that Bull had no intentions of retracting his plan to stop cooking dope, but I was uncertain as to what his plans were for the recreational use of our drug of choice.  I clearly wasn’t looking forward to halting my use altogether.

“Alrighty then,” he powered off his scale, and tossed the device into a nearby garbage can.  “I guess I won’t NEED these anymore then.  I’m officially out of business.”

“Well thank God!” Rhonda exclaimed from her seat, and tapped the last of her two jars on the mirror.  The jars were now nearly crystal clear.  She dropped the denture brush into the jar she had just finished, and clapped her hands.  “Where do you want these?”

Bull yanked his thumb in the direction of the kitchen, and Rhonda quickly stood up and delivered the two jars to the kitchen counter and reclaimed her spot in my usual chair at the round table.

Bull pulled a clean pipe from the front of his bib-overalls and began loading it with fresh dope.  “I can’t believe none of those fuckers stuck around to at least get high with us.”  He shook his head thoughtfully, and lit his lighter underneath the glass ball of the pipe.  He inhaled from the smoking pipe deeply and deliberately, and handed it to me after it had cooled.  My mouth was wet with saliva, as my brain anticipated the effects of the smoke I was about to inhale.

“It’s not like I was gonna make any of them load any from what I gave them.”  Bull reached for one of the several packs of cigarettes in front of him, and tapped several smokes onto the table in front of him.  “I guess they all had better company to keep.”

“Fuck ‘em if they wanna be like that, boss. We’re done with most of them anyways, right?” I ignited my lighter, melting the dope in the pipe, and inhaled deeply from the smooth rich smoke.  I’m not sure if it was the effect of the tequila I had drank when I sat down at the table or something different Bull had done to this batch, but that particular hit was some of the best dope I had ever tasted in my time with Bull.  I handed the pipe over the table to Rhonda, and sat back in Dayna’s chair.  As I exhaled slowly I inhaled through my nose and recycled my own hit.  I relished the flavor of the dope, and it’s instant, stimulating effect on my weary brain.  I smiled to myself, and looked back towards Bull.

“Yeah,” he replied, “I think we’ve seen the last of most of ‘em anyways.”  Rhonda finished her turn with the pipe and handed it carefully to Bull.

“Good riddance, I say.” Rhonda stated during her exhale.  “Bully, do you mind if I bag these scrapings up and take ‘em home later?” She motioned towards the mirror in front of her, and the pile of powder upon it.

“Hell no, I don’t …” Bull stopped mid-thought and was looking at the wall behind her where the monitors we normally watched with great enthusiasm were now powerless and blank.   “Who powered down the monitors?”

We all looked at the blank screens.  I started to stand up, intending to remedy the malfunction when Bull reached his hand over to stop me.

“Don’t worry about all that just now.”  Bull used his hand to pat the table in front of me.  “Relax for awhile… somebody probably unplugged the power strip when they were cleaning.”

“Then it’ll be easy to fix it, boss.  Anyways… I’ll feel better if they’re on.  What if I run out of stimulating shit to talk about with you two boring motherfuckers?”  I ignored his request, made my way to the wall, and found the overburdened power strip and plugged the monitors back into the wall.  There was a series of beeps, affirming that the power had returned to the hub that gathered signals from the cameras located throughout the property, and I moved back towards my waiting, vacant seat at the round table.  The monitors began to flicker to life, and the green glow of the night-vision cameras began to come into focus as I sat down and took the pipe from Bull’s offering hand.

I continued getting high, and my attention fell from the monitors and their cycling views of the property until Bull stood up from his chair, pounding both hands on the table in front of him. 

“What the FUCK is this all about?”

I turned my attention to what had startled him from his spot.  The cameras had come online and began displaying a seemingly endless line of vehicle headlights approaching the farm from all directions.  Every time the camera view changed and flickered to another view it appeared as though another area of the farm was being invaded with the bright headlights of more vehicles closing in on the farmhouse.  

The last image I saw on the monitors was from the camera overlooking the front porch.  Several bulky figures were gathered at the door in what appeared to be body armor that I had only seen in the movies.  They were swinging what looked like a giant, black, metal log.

The front door to the farmhouse exploded inwards, as the kitchen door at the rear of the house was shattered from its hinges.  Black silhouettes were everywhere I looked.  I barely had time to realize that I was pissing my own pants before a hard, metal gun barrel was forcing my head onto the table.  The pipe was still in my hand as I exhaled my last hit of dope and began pleading for my life in unintelligible words escaping from my face and mouth which felt like they were being crushed onto the hard wood of the table, and one unfortunately overflowing ashtray.

This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo

Final Instructions (25)

 Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

            I wish that I had a terrific story to share about something mystic or fantastic that came to pass during the last time that I watched Bull perform the series of steps in the process of farmyard alchemy that had become the routine on dark nights out at the farm.  I wish that in the last pages of this story that I could share some deep revelation that I had experienced by being in his presence for the amount of time that I was fortunate enough to have spent with him during the last hours of our free lives together, but in reality we spent those last brief hours together doing what we did better than anybody else we knew. 

We cooked dope. 

We cooked dope without regard for our personal liberties, and without regard for the dangerous and under-educated methods that we were using.  We cooked dope without regard for the safety or the mental and physical health of the people we were cooking it for.  We cooked dope because it was all that we really knew how to do anymore.  We were no longer anybody’s husband, boyfriend, father, friend, or lover.  We were worn out, dirty, dope-cooks… plain and simple.  We had no regard for the law or the people paid to uphold it.  We had lost our ability to determine what was best for anybody we thought we cared about, but more importantly we had lost the ability to determine how to do what was right for the people who cared about us. 

We worked silently and with profound, unspoken determination that night.  When I hesitantly dropped the twisted bits of tightly wound aluminum foil into the dirty, glass bottle of muriatic acid, which had always signaled the final step in the cooking process, Bull looked in my direction and sighed deeply.  He capped the thick glass bottle with a rubber stopper, fitted with long piece of aquarium hose, designed to allow the release of the noxious, smoking gas that this particular chemical reaction produced.

“Well, I guess this is it brother… lets smoke this shit off, and clear these people off of the property.” Bull slid his hand along the line of aquarium hose, which had been loosely knotted in several spots to deter any of the condensation from the acid reaction from dripping into our precious dope liquid.  One single drop of that condensation could completely destroy our chances of yielding a single crystal of dope from the batch.

“I’m with you boss, let’s get it done.” I whispered.  The bottle he was holding was quickly filling up with white smoke, and the hose in his hand began to spew a stream of white, heavy smoke that smelled like strong vinegar.  We both turned to the table in front of us that had three Ball Mason jars of crystal clear liquid waiting to be introduced to the smoking hose in Bull’s firm grasp. 

“We’re done after this brother.  At least I am.  I want you to be done with it too.  I’ve brought you along with me all this way because I’ve never met anybody like you, or at the very least… so much like me.  I have the distinct feeling that I’ll probably need your brand of help and abilities in the very near future, and I can’t have your head all muddled up with shit like this if I’m going to get through what could very likely be coming next.  Everybody else will stick their heads in the sand and refuse to help us because they’ll be scared and dopesick."  He hesitated briefly and continued, "but I have always expected more out of you.”  Bull wasn’t looking at me when he talked, but that didn’t lessen the impact of the words he was speaking.  He was being purposefully cryptic, and moments like this were where he shined brightest in my eyes.

“No, boss… I’ll do whatever you tell me.  If you tell me something has to be so, then goddammit, I’ll make it so.”  I watched as he held the hose delicately above the surface tension of the clear liquid in the first jar.  The smoke from the hose fell heavily onto the surface tension of the liquid, and almost immediately a cloud of white, milky dope appeared in the jar where the white, swirling smoke was coming to rest.  The dope began to fall from the top of liquid and came to rest in small piles resembling sand castles at the bottom of the glass jar.  Bull was blowing his own breath slightly over the surface of the liquid in the jar to perpetuate the reaction quicker, and very soon the clear liquid in the first jar took on the appearance of thick, white school glue.

“Good…” Bull continued.  “I want you to know that if any trouble comes for either of us regarding our activities during the last couple of months, that I have your back if you keep your mouth shut and don’t throw me under the bus.  In return, I will do the same for you if the opportunity presents itself, however unlikely, in other ways.  I know that you don’t have any experience in jail, so you’ll probably be scared out of your wits if it comes to that.  Don’t be scared.  I won’t let anything happen to you if you’re protecting my interests… do you understand me?”  Bull had moved the hose to the second jar, and I was mesmerized by the sight of falling crystals in the liquid.

“Yeah boss… I’d never throw you under the bus.  But what do you want from me if it goes south for you first?  I mean, assuming it goes south at all?”  I suddenly became aware that Bull’s sense of impending doom was consuming his thoughts.

“Well, you’re a smart fucking guy, and up until you met me and we became whatever it is that we are right now…” Bull hesitated, feigning deep thought, “addicts, friends, protectors, brothers, dope cooks…” he was waving the hose around in front of him now, propagating the growing, noxious fumes.  “I know that you were a pretty solid part of the community.  You had a couple of business adventures.  You were actively involved in your daughter’s education, and you were a good husband and father.  I’m gonna need you to go back home and resume that behavior if I’m going to have even the slightest chance of seeing my way through this…” He stopped waving the hose, “If it comes to that.” 

“And do what?”  I laughed and continued, “My wife has probably filed for divorce.”

“Really?” Bull pinched the hose in his hand, effectively cutting off the spewing smoke.  “Do you really think that you are incapable of being found?  Everybody who smokes dope in at least three counties knows you’re here... including the authorities!  Do you think that if she wanted to have you served with divorce papers that she wouldn’t have taken great pleasure in having the law bring them to you out here?”  Bull rested his free hand on my shoulder, “Brother, I need you to go home and make things right after today.  Your wife needs you there just as badly as I’m going too.  She and I need you at home with your family just as badly as you need to be there.  You can’t do any more for me here.  You’ve learned just as much as I have about what we are, and how things need to be from here on out.”  Bull freed the hose, and resumed smoking off the third and final jar.

I turned away from our work station, and suddenly began to feel the weight of the months of absence from my wife and family set in upon me.  I was shocked to feel the hot sting of tears reach my horrifyingly dry eyes.  It had been months since I had heard my wife’s voice, and the memory of the comfort I received in her sober presence was overwhelming to me at this moment.  I didn’t want Bull to see the emotional effect that his intentionally heartfelt request had had on me, so I began to clean up the garage.  As the first tears spilled out of my stinging eyes, I used my filthy sweatshirt sleeve to wipe my face.

“Alright, boss… I get it,” I mumbled as I was gathering the refuse from our evening’s illicit activities.  “I’ll go home today.”

“Yeah… I figured you’d see reason eventually.” Bull had finished smoking off the third and final jar and tightly knotted the end of the aquarium hose in his hand.  He walked to where I was holding the large black garbage bag, and deposited the warm bottle and long hose carefully at the bottom.  “I need Rhonda to take you to the store so you can get some groceries for Dayna and me first, though.  Something tells me we’re gonna be awfully hungry when this dope is gone.” Bull patted the concave shape of his belly and smiled.  “Not to mention that I called my stepmother yesterday.   She’s coming out to the farm today to talk to me about getting a lawyer for this whole DCFS fiasco.  Breakfast would be a nice thing for her to see on the table when she showed up.  Take that garbage bag out to the bonfire while I filter this shit.  Tell anybody you see that it’s time to meet me at the house.”

Bull smiled vacantly at me and turned around to finish working.  I left him alone in the garage and walked towards the smell and sounds of a large, glowing bonfire and the people I imagined anxiously waiting in front of it for word of our completion. 

This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo 

The Last Hurrah (24)

     Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

            When I had taken a couple of moments to re-compose myself, and had found an acceptable pair of jeans to change into from the pile of dirty laundry I had been working out of for months, I joined Bull, Dayna, and our continually growing group of comrades at the round table.  At first glance it appeared that people were seated two-deep at the table.  I leaned against the doorframe for a moment until Bull held his hand above his head in a gesture for me to make my way towards where he was sitting.  He leaned into the kitchen from his chair, and retrieved a small camping chair from the corner.  He unfolded the canvas seat, and set it down next to his old, broken wooden chair that he refused to let me fix or reinforce in any way, despite my persistent requests in an attempt to do so.

            I was greeted by the friendly faces at the table with smiles and brief nods of heads.  Others just scooted their chairs to make room for my passage.  Not a few people shared looks between themselves that I can only describe as the jealous behavior of people wanting all of Bull’s attention.  I finally negotiated my way through crowded room and sat anxiously in the small chair Bull intended me to sit in. 

            Bull leaned over to me and quietly asked, “You feeling okay, brother?”

            “Yeah, boss… I’m better now.  How about you?”  I looked cautiously in his direction, and saw that his eyes were neither full of their usual fire, nor did they exhibit any of the extraordinary sadness I had witnessed during our exchange in the bathroom.  Instead I saw what I can only describe as the soft glow of a candle nearing the end of its wick.

            “I’m good, brother… I’m sorry that it happened like that, but I’m glad that we had a chance to communicate like that today.”  He hesitated for a moment and continued, “Did you change your clothes?”  He looked curiously at the grungy camo pants that I had exchanged my piss-dampened jeans for.

            “Yeah, motherfucker…” I said under my breath.  “You made me piss my other pants when I thought you were gonna crush my skull,” I whispered and laughed uncomfortably to myself.  Bull joined my laughter, slapping me playfully on the back.  My eyes, which were focused on the floor during this brief exchange, finally looked up at our companions who were all staring at us silently… waiting in vain to be let in on whatever funny joke had erupted between the two of us.  I didn’t know what Bull assumed, but I had no intention of telling any of them that Bull had very recently and quite literally scared the piss out of me.

             Conversation resumed slowly within the group.  Under the table, and out of sight of most of our guests, I reached into the large pocket at the knee of my pants, and retrieved the wad of folded money that I had received from Rhonda.  Bull was watching as I did so, and let his hand fall from the table to meet mine as he took possession of the cash.  He held it between his thumb and fingers momentarily, then deposited it securely in his own pocket.  He gave me the thumbs up from under the table, and his hand returned to the cigarette he had left burning in one of the many nearby ashtrays.  Bull never bothered to count cash that I gave him, ever.  This bothered people sometimes, but I think that Bull used this little bit of openly displayed trust between the two of us as a way to keep people in check when they had to deal with me if I was by myself.  Bull’s faith in me gave people the idea that I wasn’t to be fucked around with.  It was one of my favorite things about being friends with him.  People may not have liked me for one reason or another, but they never tried to get one over on me.

            “Did you get anything else in your travels?” Bull asked.

            “Yeah, boss… I got maybe three or four boxes of pills.  I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to bring that up yet.”  I began to reach into my pocket again, when he held his hand up to stop me.

            “Well, hold onto that a second…” Bull rapped on the table to get everybody’s attention.  “I think that since we’re all here for the same reason, then it’s time to have a serious discussion before we go any further today.”

            Silence.

            “Who brought boxes?” Bull asked.

            Almost simultaneously, everybody seated at the table that had brought boxes of pills began reaching into their pockets and purses, to retrieve the coveted ingredient.  When they had all been placed on the table, Bull looked around the room at each person sitting with him.  He was being purposeful about making eye contact with everybody, one at a time.

            “Alright… I’m only going to say this once, so I want everybody to listen, and listen closely…”  Bull stood up and began to retrieve the boxes, and deposit them in front of where I sat in neat stacks.

            Silence.

            “Everybody here today is going to get something extra for what they brought this time,” Bull stated firmly, and looked down at the stacks of boxes.  “I can’t tell you exactly how much, because we all know how this shit goes sometimes.”  He paused and reached his hand over to where Dayna was sitting to his left, and grabbed her hand.  She leaned her face down to Bull’s hand, holding hers and kissed it deeply and affectionately.  “After we get done with what it is we are doing here tonight, that’s it.  I’m done… I quit.  I don’t want anybody to ever bring another box of pills or anything used to manufacture of this fucking drug back onto my property.  If you bring something stupid over to my house after tonight, you will be greeted with a swift kick to your ass, and I will never have another word to say to you.  Is that completely understood?”

            Silence.

            “DOES EVERYBODY FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME?”  Bull roared.

            Everybody in the room seemed to awaken from the same trance at the same time with a startled jump.  There was a chorus of immediate affirmations, and to my surprise not one person questioned Bull’s decision, or tried to make the smallest of protests.  I sat quietly in my uncomfortable camping chair and took a moment to examine the stunned faces of the people whom Bull had chosen to have near him at this exact moment in his life.  When my gaze crossed to Dayna, who had apparently never stopped staring at Bull, her face was wet with tears, and she was beaming with a glow of pride and hope that had been sadly absent from her appearance for a great deal of time. 

            “In exchange for my generous nature, and as a token of everybody’s appreciation for my sudden spiritual awakening, I have a favor to ask of everybody here with me right now.”  Bull was sitting back down in his rickety old chair as he finished.

            “What’s that, boss?”  I asked, vocalizing for the group.

            “Not you, brother… you’ll be otherwise occupied and uncomfortably compromised, as usual this evening.  But the rest of you need to get out onto the property and gather up anything that resembles something used to cook dope.  We’ll start a bonfire towards the back fields, and burn EVERYTHING.  Everything that won’t burn needs to be disposed of somewhere far away.  Can everybody agree to that?  Can you guys help me get this place ready to bring Dayna’s son back home?”  I almost had myself convinced that I heard Bull’s voice crack a little, and Dayna sobbed momentarily.

            The resounding chorus of agreement and readiness for the task at hand was unanimous.  We were all ready to help Bull with whatever he asked.  I can’t say for sure though, just how many people at that table were agreeing just to see Bull to get to work so they could get their dope.  Regardless, Bull had a plan, and I was amazed at how focused he was on seeing this goal achieved.

            Bull utilized the next half-hour to delegate areas of the property to people while Dayna took notes on who was supposed to be where.  When the delegation of tasks was finished, and Bull was satisfied that everybody understood the importance of the mission at hand, he reached under the table and grabbed a large square mirror and set it on the table in front of him.  He then dumped a massive pile of dope out of a bag, divided it into lines, lit his propane torch, and began to share the last hotlines he would ever inhale at the round table we had all come to feel at home in front of.

This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo