Puppies, Dope Cooks, and DCFS

     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.

Chapter Fourteen

          One event, in particular, changed the course of things forever for Bull and all of us reliant on his talents.  This change came in the form of a visit to the farm by the Department of Child and Family Services.  Bringing up DCFS in front of a group of meth-heads is kind of like saying the word 'Voldemort' to a bunch of non-muggle, magic-folk in the Harry Potter universe.  You just don’t say it without expecting bad things to happen.  Spines tingled, and hair stood up on the backs of necks from thoughts of previous experiences with these people  whenever the dreaded four-letters were uttered during normal conversation.  It was not a joke to anybody, being that none of us were capable of saying that we didn’t know somebody who had had their way of life turned upside down at one time or another by these child-harvesters and home-wreckers. 

People who worked for DCFS were thought of as the enemy, no matter how desperately the children in question needed to be plucked from their tweaker parent’s hands.  Nearly one-hundred percent of the times that DCFS showed up for drug related concerns, the police were not far behind (sometimes hours, sometimes days, but rarely a week) with search warrants, ready to arrest addicts and further separate addicted parents from their kids and begin the lengthy process of prosecution and re-distribution of the family.  I knew this fact-of-life very well, and Bull knew it all to well, as he had dealt with them extensively following one of his lengthier prison terms.

The day that DCFS showed up and took Dayna’s son from the farm I was on an errand which resulted from Dayna and her son losing their puppy, Lillybell, under the wheels of a combine passing in front of the farm the previous week.   Dayna had become increasingly incoherent and incapable of dealing with the boy over the last month, and often relinquished him to willing family members or more functional members of our circle.  The day that Lillybell got crushed by the passing combine must’ve been one of Dayna’s better days, as the days that her boy was with us on the farm were becoming few and far between. 

Lillybell’s death was traumatic for Dayna, but surprisingly not-so-traumatic for her son, who immediately hugged his crying mom and told her that it would be okay, and that they could just get a new puppy somewhere.  I thought that this was a surprisingly detached thing for a boy his age to think, but I immediately jumped at the chance to make things alright.  My friends a few towns over had just had a litter of mini pinschers, and they were looking to find willing homes for several of the pups… and I just so happened to have a couple of friends in need of a replacement puppy.  I borrowed one of Bull’s pickup trucks the following week, and traveled to my friends farm to pick up the puppy.  This was an all-day affair, as my friends were clear across two counties, and I hadn’t visited with them for quite some time.  They weren’t users, which made visiting kind of difficult for me, but they did have good beer and moonshine in the freezer, so I wasn’t preoccupied thinking about dope all day.

When the visit was done, and I had picked the puppy I wanted to take back to my friends, I said my goodbyes and carefully drove every gravel road I knew back to the farm, as I was pretty well hammered from a day of drinking and bullshitting.  I sobered up a little bit by taking a few hits off of a nearly dry, glass pipe, but it was really only enough to agitate my addiction.  The farm couldn’t come into sight soon enough.

As twilight set in, and the sun went down leaving a pink and purple hue in the southern Illinois sky, I pulled up into the driveway of the farm, and was met by Bull who was sulking around outside a darkened farmhouse by himself.  I waved from the truck as I turned off the engine, and grabbed the puppy, which had fallen fast asleep exactly two minutes before we reached our destination.  Before the pup had found a spot suitable for sleeping, it had been everywhere in the cab of the truck, including my shoulders, my lap and underneath the pedals.  There was also a fresh pile of puppy poop on the floor of the passenger side, and I believe it peed by my feet.  It was a nerve-wracking trip, to say the least.

“Hey Bull…” I said as I retrieved the puppy and shut the truck’s door.  I tossed him his keys which he caught without taking his eyes off the puppy in my hand.  I smiled at that little feat of skill.

“Is that it?” He asked.  “It don’t look like much of a dog.”

“Nah, it ain’t much.  But it’s enough for that boy, I suppose.  Where is everybody?”  I was beginning to get a dismal feeling about Bull’s demeanor, and asked, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“DCFS came today… Dayna failed her drug test for them, and they took her son away from her.”  Bull, looking more morose than I have ever seen him, reached over and grabbed the puppy from my hands and held it up in the diminishing light to inspect.

“Shut the FUCK up!  Did they bring cops?”

“Yessir.  They were ready for her to fail before they came out.  I guess somebody called the DCFS anonymous tip-line and reported her as an unfit mother who was addicted to meth.  You don’t know anything about that, right?”  Bull’s gaze fixed on me, and I couldn’t lie to him even if I had tried.

“Fuck you, man… why the fuck would I do that to you guys?  Are you being serious?”  I felt the blood in my knees disappear, and I went numb from my elbows down.  “I mean, for fuck’s sake, dude… I work hard around here trying to make things as easy as possible for you guys.  Why would you ask me something like that?”

“Hell man… I know you didn’t do nothing wrong… but everybody’s a suspect in my world.  You know that.  At least I hope I’ve taught you that much.”  He sighed and looked at the puppy in his hands.  “I don’t know how this is gonna go over with Dayna.  She’s a fucking mess, brother.”

“Well, I suppose it could go either way, Boss.  She’ll either love that doggy, or snap its neck.  Either way we have a lot of cleanup to do tonight, if we want to get that child back in his mother’s arms.”  I started to walk towards the dark farmhouse.  I can’t remember ever feeling like the farmhouse was this dark before.

“You’re right… we do.  Let’s go get this over with.”  Bull followed me to the house.  The puppy was licking his face and he was murmuring something under his breath to the dog.  He seemed to be smiling, but I could hardly tell in the faint light.  The sky had turned orange and black behind the silhouette of the farmhouse.

I opened the screen door, to find Dayna lying on the couch with an arm over her eyes, and a river of  tears flooding down her face.  She took her arm from her eyes and looked at me with red, bulging eyes underneath puffy, bruising eyelids.

“They took him away from…  I’ll probably never see my son again…”  What appeared to be fresh cuts above her elbow had left streaks of pink tears on her face, adding to the horror of the day.

“I heard about that Dayna.  I’m real sorry, but believe me, we’re gonna do whatever we can to fix this situation.  Right Bull?”

“That’s right.”  Bull was pandering to her a little bit, but Dayna didn't seem to notice.  “Look at the present he brought for you.  It’s a male.”  Bull pulled the puppy from behind his back, and at that moment, the puppy who had been silent most of the ride here, and the whole time we had been in the driveway, began whimpering and trying to get out of Bull’s hands.

Dayna’s eyes brightened briefly underneath the glaze of sticky tears and puffy eyelids for a brief moment while she reached for the puppy, which went silent in her hands, as if inspecting Dayna the way Bull inspected him. The pup remained squirmy in Dayna’s hands until she held him to her face where he immediately began licking the tears and pink, diluted bloodstains from her face.  She closed her eyes and hugged the puppy, and muttered “Awwww… thank you.”                   
That was the last we heard from Dayna that night.  Bull and I began to carry on a conversation as if Dayna wasn't there, which in all actuality... she wasn't.      

“I guess that went well then… right?”  I asked Bull and smiled.  We both began walking towards the round table in the other room.  Bull pulled a pipe from his pocket, turned on the overhead light to inspect its contents, and began smoking.

“It could’ve gone A LOT worse.”  He said through thick smoke as he smiled back and handed me his pipe. “Well, I guess we ought to cook up the rest of these pills before we throw everything away, huh?”  Bull pulled a pile of pills and about 15 blister packs out of his jacket and showered them on the huge, solid table.

“Are you fucking serious?”  I nearly choked on my hit, as I stammered with obvious disbelief in my voice.

“When am I not?” Bull replied flatly.  He threw me a small, black duffle bag.  So, without thinking much, and before he could change his mind, I started to gather the blister packs and whatever else we needed from the house and shove them into the bag.  

“You're right you lunatic... lets fucking cook some dope before they come back with search warrants.”  I smiled and said, but I was scared as hell.  But there was no amount of fear that could keep me from doing what we were about to do.  There wasn’t any authority in the world who could threaten to take anything away from me that could stop what we were about to do.  At that moment I loved nothing more than the idea of spinning off another batch of dope.  DCFS or not.  At that moment I realized that I  wasn’t only addicted to meth, but I was addicted to making it… I was addicted to the shared giddiness between Bull and I, and I was addicted to getting away with it.  Bull must have seen it in my eyes, because he smiled that fierce grin, and his eyes looked like a bright blue propane torch again.  It was refreshing after witnessing his morose behavior when I arrived.

“Let’s get on it motherfucker." Bull sneered.  "Johnny Law is coming, and the clock is ticking.”

The clock was ticking, indeed.


This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo

Intermission

     Up until this very moment I have been writing a fictitious story loosely based on my life experiences with one of the most charismatic and intriguing people I had ever met up to that point in my life.  Bull Gunville was both a master of deception and possibly one of the best male friends I had ever had in my life.  He was both somebody I loved deeply, and feared ferociously.  I have taken a break in writing the 'story as I have seen it', to bring to light one of the most miraculous things that happened to me during my time with Bull and our crew of dentally deficient deviants, cutters, whores, thieves, and southern Illinois white-trash.  This miracle took place in the form of my loving, supportive, and ever vigilant wife... Erica. 

      By October of 2011, I had deteriorated to about 130 pounds of black nail polish, dark makeup, and dyed-black shoulder length stringy hair.  I had been high on meth for about a year and half at this point, and had suffered through the loss of our restaurant, and the loss of mine and my wife's best friend in a tragic motorcycle accident.  Our friend had given me everything he could, within his power, to see me succeed or make me feel some sense of self-worth.  We were building a fire department training facility together at one point.  Alas, I had become so caught up in the world of Methamphetamine that he had all but resigned himself of me, and was contemplating coming to the farm and dragging me home by my hair. I loved this friend and so did Erica.  The sense of loss and grief I felt when I carried his coffin that day can never, ever be erased from my soul.  The drug amplified my narcissism, and I began focusing all of my resentment of our lost business, and my deceased friend solely on Erica's resistance to allow me to 'go to hell in my own way...'  The following are scathing and fiery emails that I sent to Erica while I was fueled up on Meth.  Erica, God Bless Her Heart, saw fit to see through my spitfire and venom and prayed constantly for me to come home and come back to her... where I rest easily these days. 

     The following are the emails in their rawest form.  The following is an attempted justification of my horrible behavior at home, and my attempts at pushing Erica further away so I could spend more time cranked up on meth.  All of my accusations of my wife are an extreme example of where I was at in my narcissistic paranoia. This is the monster I had become to the woman who loved me through all of this.  Erica has never wanted anything more than to see me happy and healthy.  Erica never did anything during this time in my life to inflict pain on me directly.  Erica took steps to protect herself and our daughter from what I was becoming, while trying to leave enough wiggle room to allow me to come back home if I lived through it.  Erica never lost faith that this would happen, despite the demon manifesting inside of me during this time.

Email #1:  (I was still getting very high, despite all of the claims otherwise)

I am so sick of your shit. I refrain from telling you all of the things that I know are going on in your miserable head because I am afraid of the threats you have made, and your insatiable desire to see me just as hateful and miserable as you. I have never been so scared and unhappy in all my life as I have been the last couple of years. It never had anything to do with alcohol or drugs, they were just the last cry for help in a situation I never thought would lead to the manipulation and destruction of my desire to better myself in any way. I had done so much and worked myself to the brink of insanity, only to decieve and betray my own family for the sake of your hopeless, control-freak, content-to-be-miserable family. You can't stand the fact that even after a devastating brush with a life-threatening addiction, the friends who survived it with me, and relied on me to help them regain control of their lives are still interested in being my friends, even without illicit drugs or criminal activity. We still love each others company and laugh until our bellies ache. We laugh about the lives we were living and the stupid, life-threatening things we did, the danger we put ourselves in and the fact that at the end of the train crash we still walked away with the ability to laugh about it with each other. Every family of each of these people you loathe and never fail to proclaim your distaste for still stands behind them and loves them, regardless of their actions while they were being controlled by something bigger than them. Every family supports them, and visits them, calls them, and never passes judgement on who they were or continue to be friends with. Every family, spouse, or ex-spouse... except for mine. For the first time in my life I am the odd man out because the woman I believed I wanted to spend my life with for so long refuses to even acknowledge anything other than the fact that her perception of the events which transpired lead her only to memories of how she was hurt. You have no regard for what it is that I was going and continue to go through because I suffer daily through an addiction I will never be able to stay ahead of without the support of people who know what I went through, understand it, lived it, or loved somebody who had. The only persons feeling's you concern yourself with on this matter is you. How did it make Erica feel? How many times did Jerry hurt my fragile little self-esteem and make me feel less than the horrible person Erica sees herself as? Have you ever taken into consideration what horrors I was going through, or continue to go through daily. These compounded with the constant umbrella of suspicion, anger, and what seems to me like perfectly timed threats of orders of protection, or divorce which you keep me under make me grateful that I never gave up the faith I have always placed in the people outside of my family who appreciate me for what I am, and more importantly what I am not, and hope I will never become. Someone like you. What kind of relationship are you hoping for where you try to control my decisions with threats of having the law demand that I stay out of my home for fifteen days, before I can go before a judge and have my friends... witnesses to your threats, caretakers of my emotional well-being, testify against you and prove once and for all that you are exactly what I have been warned about by people who have known you and your family for years. A vindictive, selfish, hopeless, sad example of a daughter, sister, mother and twice forgotten wife. I refuse to bargain my sanity and potential to appease your desire for undivided attention and your need to see my soul placed on some sort of sick, sacraficial altar so that I will only know what life looks like through your clouded, constricted views of how the world should be treating you. You need to work on fixing yourself because I have never appeared to you in this life in any condition to lend a hand to that cause. I think of you constantly throughout my days. What was once anticipation of your arrival home morphed into anxiety over whether or not I was going to be hassled by the local authorities over some false accusations requiring you to be protected from my coming and going from a house that I want nothing more to do with, and now it has changed into thoughts of what your future will hold when I am no longer a part of it. Ever. I don't need you, Erica. I never have needed you to make me feel significant to this world. It would have been nice to see this journey to its completion with you at my side, but I now believe that my happiness and sanity, and maybe my eternal soul will be forever altered for the worse if you reamain in my life as anything more than a regreattable memory. One that I will never be able to reminisce about and smile, or share a laugh about something we did with the friends who want to see me become better, and stronger and fulfill my potential, regardless of whether my decisions include them, or make them feel happy. What you should be concerned about is if I am happy with my life. Not if what I choose to do that makes me happy affects the fragile, little, eggshell ego that you barely maintain. I am not resposnible for your happiness. Only you can be responsible for that. A great truth that I realized long ago about my life is that if I am not truly happy in everything I do then I can never hope to bring any joy to anybody who relies on me for anything. Maybe if you had concentrated more on what makes you happy, and realized how happy I was for you in your decisions and had not been so concerned about how my struggle for happiness, and my desire to find your place in my world affected you poorly, and made you feel angry, jealous, betrayed, or second-rate. You will never be first in my life, Erica. If I only concerned myself with your feelings, how could I possibly ever better myself, or hope to for that matter. You still have so much to learn about people. I'm afraid that you never will. That when you wake up one day and realize that you have grown old and lonely seemingly overnight, while everybody you know has left you behind to seek out their happiness, yet miss you and whatever small way you affected their lives. You will wake up and realize that because you wasted your time and only concentrated on how you could derive happiness from how others made you feel, you have either completely lost memory of or epically failed to learn how to make yourself happy. I wanted you to be a part of my journey for so long that I have failed to remind you that this journey is mine, and your journey is yours. We should have relished in each others triumphs and shared tears when we failed. We should never have tried to manipulate the paths either of us were on with empty threats, schemes to catch one another in a lie, blind accusations, or held each other in suspicion of anything more than perfect love for each other. Love of each other for our staggering successes or tragic flaws. Love of each other for our ability to make our own decisions about which directions our lives went and joyful celebration when our respective paths allowed us to revel in our ability to combine our different experiences in life to overcome obstacles together. What we have been doing is damaging and dangerous to everybody around us, and I want out. I love you, and hope you reread this and save it and share it with anybody you have left who cares enough to suffer through your pity party bullshit.

Email #2 


no... it wasn't just you yelling. It was your irrational anger and you telling me that I did nothing for this family. It was you dropping me off at home so you could run off to your sisters by yourself to get (daughter) instead of taking me with you, probably so you could bitch about how much money I've STOLEN from you and how the gas your dad brought for the lawn mower wasn't needed quite yet, so instead of asking my wife, who along with restraining orders and threats of divorce, arrest, and homelessness, uses money try and control my comings and goings. It was how you wouldn't take me along with you to get (daughter) and then maybe on the way home swing by my friends house to drop off his starter and pick up the fucking sewing machine we needed to finish (daughters) costume that i had been working on all day. It was my irrational fear that if I walked too close to the road while cresting a hill on our road that you might in your anger swerve and try to hit me with your car. It was the fact that in order to remove myself from a situation that looked like it was heading towards more useless fighting and hurt feelings, and very likely a physical conflict that I absolutely refuse to allow myself to get into with you ever again, I felt that my best bet was to not wait for a ride or your fucking permission to leave... it was just to get the fuck out of there while you were gone for however long it would take you to break the speed limit there and back to tell me how useless and horrible I am for wanting to do everything I can for anybody who seems to need me including my family, as long as they don't make me feel like my family isn't important... which my friends never do. Doing things for people isn't buying their friendship... Its helping people you care about. As foreign a concept as this is, being that you leave me scared to ask for the littlest things, or gas to get away from the house where depression lives for a little bit... and I'm your husband... I won't even bother asking you for cigarettes anymore. I don't leave the lights and the tvs on around the house. I clean the dishes and cook dinner, and pick up (daughter) if she's sick, or your too busy fucking with your phone to inconvenience yourself long enough to show her the personal attention of a ride home alone with mom. Don't worry, though... I tell her how much I love her, and I make her laugh, and I hold her hand and tell her that I think she is beautiful just like her mom... I try every time I get the opportunity to let her know how great my life is because she has gotten to be a part of it. So don't you tell me about how I'm hurting her. Your insecurity and low self-esteem are leading you to a place where you allow yourself to make me appear as though I'm the only fucking problem you fucking have, when in actuality I have always been your biggest fucking cheerleader. I will not defend myself against baseless allegations of neglect, abuse or dishonesty. You have designed an idea about who it is that you need me to be, and you will never allow me to live comfortably outside of that idea you hold so dearly in your head. That idea is a fucking lie, Erica... and if you sit the fuck down and shut your fucking mouth for just a couple of minutes and think about the fact that I worship the ground you walk on every day you let me, but you're twisted ideas of what you believe would be an ideal life if Jerry would just do everything that pleases you, and put the things that truly make him feel like he is contributing to something in the trash where they belong... these ideas have left me leading what some people would call the life of a person with a serious personality disorder. I can't help it that I have people who want to be around me because I make them smile, or they can count on me to help them nail some boards into their house and share a conversation with to ease their minds. I do all of these things for you too. And that shit about me ignoring your "exciting' news about a promotion you hated the thought of taking because your daughter might have to learn to be without her mommy for a couple of hours in the evening. How the fuck do you think it makes me feel to know that you were just baiting me to fuck up and waiting for an opportunity to jump my ass about a mistake I made so you could tell your dad and mom and sister and daughter that you didn't take the promotion and make more money for yourself and move ahead in the world because you couldn't trust your husband to be at home with your daughter, who is perfectly capable of handling most things on her own these days, and that is perfectly natural for the record. Your sociopathic lying is so ingrained that you don't even know your doing it, and I refuse to sit back and enable your mental illnesses and worthless self-esteem any longer. You need to apologize to me for all of the rotten things you have done to me over the course of our marriage that have driven me to feel like a dual personality. You need to apologize for every time you make me feel like shit because I want to do something nice for someone, and it might mean that I won't ask for cigarettes for a couple of days.... but I would never tell you thats how I justify it. I just let you be a complete bitch and put all of the worlds weighty problems that you create for yourself on my broken and miserably weak shoulders. I truly hope you think about sucking it up and considering this, because I've been waiting for a long time for you to realize just how good you have it with me around, and how much of your bullshit I tolerate without calling it to your attention and making you feel like the batshit psycho control freak that you are. You need to apologize for expecting me to be someone you want me to be instead of someone I am happy with and can love you honestly with. You need to apologize for making me feel responsible for your moms addictions and suicide attempts. You need to apologize for letting your sister talk to me like I'm a worthless piece of shit, when in all honesty she is only projecting her worst fears of herself onto me when she hates me so openly and talks to me with distaste on her tongue. I have done everything to protect from those poisonous aspects of my family. You seem to revel in the fact that you know if you ever need to bitch about me, you know that your mom and sister will agree with you wholeheartedly and probably point out a couple of things that you would have never realized because your so fucking selfishly stuck on the world you want, that the world you could have had is rapidly slipping through your fingers.
You need to apologize to me for badgering me until I couldn't rest because if I were ever going to be able to love myself or anybody close to me ever again, I needed to tell you how much I resent you for never apologizing to me for anything more than forgetting to pick me up a pack of cigarettes. You need to apologize to yourself, because I do resent you, and resentment lasts a long, long time.

~~~END~~~

Cash Only

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.

Chapter Thirteen

            “Boss, can I holler at you for a minute?” I asked Bull as Snake pulled the case of beer from the table and placed it on the floor in front of his feet.  He pulled four more cans of Pabst from the case after asking Bacardi and Milly if they cared for one.  Bacardi responded wordlessly by pulling her own bottle from the floor and waving it, rolling her eyes.  Milly declined and held up a dirty glass, half full of soda, and what I can only assume was some of her friend’s rum.  He handed Bull his beer and lobbed me a can which I bobbled and dropped.  I cursed under my breath to the laughs of everybody at the table.  Snake and Roxy cracked their cans and swilled deeply.  Bull stood up and walked through the kitchen and out the back door, which was my cue to join him in discussion on the porch.  I got up and set my can on the kitchen counter and bee-lined for the back door.

            I closed the door, and looked up and met Bull’s wide-eyed gaze as he was already inhaling deeply from his glass pipe.  He handed me the pipe, which I rolled in my fingers until the puddle of dope had cooled and recrystallized.  “What’s on your mind, my friend?”

            I held my lighter under the pipe, lit it, and watched smoke fill the glass ball as I inhaled deeply.  I began to talk as I exhaled, handing the pipe back to him.  He didn’t wait for the pipe to cool and just continued to smoke. “Dude, Roxy’s friend has GOT to be raising some red flags with you.  I mean, he’s openly offering you the hardest thing to get for what it takes to make dope, and he just met you.”  I shook my head and paid attention to the butterflies flittering in my head as the dope started to take effect.  He offered me the pipe again, still holding his breath and hit in his lungs, and I took it.  I began rolling it in my fingers again.

            “Yeah, that’s kind of weird, huh?”  He gestured hurriedly for me to hit the pipe again.  “You ever met this guy?  I mean, I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never dealt with him.  You think they’re up to something?”  I held my lighter under the glass ball and inhaled deeply.

            “I don’t know, Bull…” I handed the pipe back to him.  He took the time to let the puddle cool this time.  “But please don’t deal with this fucker.  Let’s drink his beer and entertain his offer, but don’t give him any idea that you’re EVEN interested in anhydrous.  Tell him that you’re out of that business.  I think the illicit exchange of that chemical constitutes a lot of charges besides ‘manufacturing’.    If I didn’t know him, which I clearly don’t, I wouldn’t even offer him any dope to smoke, let alone selling it to him, or buying any of his anny.”  Bull handed the pipe back to me.  “What??  Are you done?” I asked.

            “For now… just hold onto it for a minute.  Smoke it if you want.  Just not in the house.  You might be right.  We shouldn’t even get high in front of this guy.  If Beecher died and Roxy was delivering him to the hospital, you can probably bet that the law got involved.  Roxy is all about protecting her own ass, and she’d fork us over in a minute to avoid DOC time.  Go double check the garage and I’ll bring him back there to enlighten him to my lack of involvement in that whole scene.”

            “Bull-SHIT…” I stammered.  “You think I just want to wander back there calmly, knowing full well that there are three bobcats roaming around?”  I laughed in spite of myself.  Bull laughed too.

“Don’t worry, man.  If they haven’t pounced on you yet, they definitely won’t tonight.  They’re busy with a snack.”  Bull grinned and his eyes resumed their normal, lighthearted appearance.

            “Shit… can I get my beer first?”  I rolled my eyes and Bull pushed the door to the house open with his foot.  He held his hand up as if to say I should go first.  “Oh, hell no… I don’t think so.  I got a face full of mud last time I went before you.”  I laughed.  “I insist… age before beauty, my friend.”

            Bull laughed and took several steps inside only to turn around and catch me eyeballing his right foot which was still on the porch.  “EEEEEE-zay!” he said, laughing.   I laughed as well, and followed him in.

            We were surprised to see that Snake and the girls were passing around a folded piece of foil with a brown puddle of melted dope on it.  Snake had a tooter in his mouth and was inhaling the smoke from the foil.  His eyes were watering a bit, and he looked like he had to struggle to keep the hit in his lungs.  My eyes went wide, but Bull was first to ask, “What the hell’s all this?”  
              He laughed and sat down in his chair.  I reached for my beer, which was hopefully relaxed now after its tumble to the floor, and went to sit down.  Bull reached for my forearm and said, “Nah, man… go finish putting the rest of that carburetor together in the garage like we talked about.  It doesn’t look like you want any of this anyway.  It doesn’t look real good.  Who graced us with this treat?”  Bull’s tone was sarcastic, but he held his lighter under the foil and smoked it anyways.

            “Okay boss, be back in a minute.”  I took my beer and wandered through the kitchen and out the door to the sound of Bull faking a coughing fit and cursing about somebody taking a shit on the foil.  “Thanks for the beers, Snake!”  I hollered as I smiled and headed for the garage.

            Much to my relief I was not attacked by any ferocious bobcats on the way to the garage.  I did hurry though, and waited till I had the lights turned on in the building and the door latched from the inside to open my can of Pabst.  I wandered through the main areas of the building looking for anything incriminating while drinking nervously.  My ears were hearing things both natural, and imaginary.  Being alone on Bull’s property and trying to enjoy a good tweeker buzz was pretty difficult.  I couldn’t find anything else that would lead anybody normal to believe that anything criminal was happening.  In fact, it was a little too clean, so I pulled Bull’s pipe from my pocket and smoked while kicking over a couple of paint cans full of nuts and bolts.  This gave the place the appearance of having been recently used.  I reached into a large cardboard drum of sawdust and wood scraps and flung woodchips and sawdust around so that it didn’t look like I had swept recently.  I finished smoking, cooled the pipe and put it back in my pocket.  I grabbed my beer and made for the door. 

            After locking up the garage and throwing the switch for the electricity to it, I scanned the property outside.  I finished my beer and crushed the can in my hand and tossed it into a pile of old tires near the garage door.  I noticed the barrel was still smoldering from my fire earlier in the night.  Pleased with myself I headed for the relative safety of the farmhouse, and our questionable company.

            After a tweeked and nervous walk back to the house, I breathed a sigh of relief when I gained entrance to the back porch.  I pushed the door open and walked in to sit down next to Bull on my milk-crate makeshift chair.  “We’re all good, Boss... carburetor should be ready.”  Bull nodded, not looking in my direction, but listening intently to Snake, whose speech was becoming more slurred and drippy since I had left a little while earlier.  There were now five empty cans stacked in a tower to his left, and three empties in front of Roxy.  Bull seemed to be working on the same beer that he had been given before I left.  He held his can up to Snake and pointed at me.  I still couldn’t tell what Snake was talking about, but he stopped and said, “Oh… yeah… sure.”  He reached in the case, but before he had the opportunity to give me a chance to embarrass myself again, I reached over the table and he put this beer in my hand.

            “Thanks, man.” I offered, and sat back down.

            “Sure, man… “ Snake slurred and went back to hemming and hawing about somebody it sounded like he and Bull both knew.

            “Yeah, yeah… forget all that.  How about you, me and Roxy walk back and take a look at this motorcycle I’m fixing,” Bull offered.

            Snake looked to Roxy, who was already getting to her feet.  She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled her dentures out and slid them back into her mouth.  I found this repulsive and deliberately turned my head to look at nothing on the wall.  I heard Snake getting up and turned to see him pick up what remained of his case of beer and he and Roxy followed Bull out the back door.

            “So, Dayna...” I started, “That was weird, huh?”

            “Yeah, I guess so.”  Dayna was brushing me off, and turned her attention to Milly and Bacardi who were sharing a cigarette.  “Can I have some Rum, Hide-Me?”  Dayna asked.

            For the first time that night, Bacardi spoke up, and said, “Sure thing.  Straight or do you have a soda or something?”

            “Fuck it… straight… I don’t care.”  Dayna was noticeably high, as her head and arms were twitching.  Bacardi handed over her rapidly diminishing bottle and Dayna took a quick sip.  She shook her head violently and exhaled like her throat was on fire.  Dayna wasn’t much of a drinker.  She handed the bottle back to Bacardi who offered it to me.

            “Nah… you don’t have much left.”  I responded.

            “I’ve got another one in the car… no worries.”  She assured me.

            “Cool.” I took a large pull and chased the rum with my now room-temperature Pabst.  “So, what have you two been doing?”

            Bacardi elbowed Milly, who looked up from texting on her phone, which became present as soon as Bull had vacated the house.  She looked up and spoke to me for the first time tonight.  “Oh… you know.  Same old song and dance.”

            “I guess that sounds about right.  You guys know this Snake dude?”

            “Well… I know him,” Milly said, “but I’ve never had anything to do with him besides getting high.  You know what I mean?”

            “Yeah, I guess I do.”  I was becoming uncomfortable with the challenging nature of the conversation, so I just started watching the monitors.  Dayna was crocheting something that looked like a flower.  It absorbed all of her attention, but she was still twitching every once in a while.  After a couple of minutes the monitor switched to a view of the driveway and I saw Snake going into the car he and Roxy had arrived in.  I perked up just as the back door opened.  Bull and Roxy entered the house and sat at the table.  Bull bent over to the corner farthest from me, where his safe was situated.  He entered a code into the keypad, pulled the handle to open the safe and then pulled out another box with a small padlock on it.  It was different than the box he kept locked with the vials of his personal supply.  
            He kept the safe open, sat up, and placed the box on the table and sat down.  He began spinning a dial on the tiny lock and finally pulled the lock off of the latch and opened his dope box.

            Milly, who had immediately stashed her phone when she heard the door open, perked up.  “While you’re in there, can I get a gram from you?”  She asked meekly.

            “Have you got cash?”  Bull’s eyes darted to Roxy, who was pushing her dentures out of her mouth with her tongue and using her finger to push them back in.  This was taking all of her attention, so she didn’t see Bull’s signal to Milly.  “I’m sure that this guy would walk out to your car with you, if that’s where your cash is at.”

            Milly smiled and slapped her hands on her thighs, “You must be reading my mind Bull, because that’s exactly where my cash is.”  Milly started laughing.

            Bull tossed her a gram sized bag.  Without examining it too thoroughly at the table she stashed it inside of her purse.  The front door opened, and Snake walked in with some money in his hand.  He gave the money to Roxy, who tried to hand it to me.  I immediately sat on my hands and said, “Nope.  I ain't your middle-man Roxy... so unless you're just handing out cash, I don't know what you want me to do with that.”  Bull laughed and reached over in front of me and grabbed the cash.

“You guys just want a half gram, right?” Bull asked.

“Well... unless you want to give us a gram for fifty bucks...”  Roxy laughed.

“Um… No.”  Bull counted the cash and handed a smaller baggie to Roxy, who sat back down at the table and pulled out her own, dirty, shit-stained pipe and loaded most of the half-gram into the glass bulb.  Bull turned his attention to me.  “Go get what Milly has for me, will ya?”

“Sure boss.” Milly had already stood up and was anxiously waiting for me to lead her out of the house and to her car.

“Oh… you’ll be her middle-man, huh?”  Roxy barked while exhaling a large hit.

I didn’t answer her, and walked to the front door with Milly and opened the door for her to exit.  Bacardi was close behind.  “I guess you guys are leaving then, huh?”  I asked.  I got no response from the girls and began following them out to a small rusty Plymouth parked on the road in front of the house.  
Milly looked around to make sure we were out of the porch-camera's vantage point and covertly handed me a stack of foil blister packs containing a variety of pills.  I started to understand why Bull sent me to get Milly’s payment.  He didn’t want Roxy or Snake to think he was cooking dope anymore.  
Cash only.  
I still wasn’t pleased that he sold anything to Roxy and her new friend, but it appeared as if they planned on smoking all of it here tonight anyways.  My thoughts quickly turned to getting back in the house while the pipe was still fresh.  “Is this everything then?”

“It should all be there.  Take care of yourself, huh?”  Milly offered.

I rolled my eyes, and turned around to go back into the house, but not without stashing the blister packs in my pants.  I opened the door and went to my milk-crate seat and sat down at the table where Snake had already added another empty beer can to his growing stack of towers.

Bull handed me Roxy’s pipe -- I heated it up and inhaled deeply.  
“I thought you said you cleaned the garage, man?”  Bull asked and laughed.  “That place looks like we just got done building something... or wrecking it.”  He grinned at me.

“Yeah… it was a quick clean-up.”  I retorted.

“We’re gonna have to go back and finish that up there in a bit,” Bull was dumping sarcasm on me now.

“We’re gonna have to do more than clean it I guess... that building is a trap,” I muttered.  “Snake, give me a beer, huh?”  I asked.

Snake cracked another beer, looked in my direction, swilled half the can, belched loudly, and slurred, “Sorry, man… this was my last one.”

Figures.


This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo

An Offer from a Snake

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.

Chapter Twelve

              I finished up my visit with Bull and his beasts at the back of the property, and watched him rolling around with the cats for about half an hour.  I watched a car pull up in the far driveway at the farmhouse and whistled with my tongue through my bottom teeth.  I began my trek through the mud and cut wood, glancing back to see Bull responding to my whistle by batting his cats away and back into the darkness of the property, shagging and scruffling the nape of their necks and their hindquarters as he bade them farewell.  The last cat dragged the carcass of the neighbor’s dog along with him.  Bull began to jog through the night towards my position.  I halted and watched the visitors exit their car.

            Bull walked up next to me and slapped me on the back.  “How about that shit?  You’re the only person to see those cats since the motherfucker who gave them to me when they were kittens!”  Bull wasn’t panting or sweating, even though he had just sprint a couple of hundred yards.

            “Yeah boss... what the fuck?  You have some serious wildcats roaming around your property.  Those cats took down the neighbor’s dog...  and ate that fucking motherfucker… and then you just walked out and played with them!!??”  I stopped and looked at his proud eyes and expectant stare.  “I will never cease to be fucking amazed with you, brother… I mean, holy shit… WHO ELSE SEES THAT KIND OF SHIT?”

            “Nobody…” Bull stated, matter-of-factly and laughed loudly.  “What’s going on at the house?”  He cast his eyes in the same direction I was staring.

            “Well, that Volkswagen just pulled in…  Dayna is up there with Milly and Bacardi McBoozey, and the house is cleaned-up except for a box of some pipes that I left in front of the wood-burner.  Who the fuck is driving that V.W.?”

            “I have NO idea.  I suppose we should we find out, huh?”

            “Yeah… I guess so… but, boss… I’m fucking beat.”  I slumped down and trudged towards the house.  I was quietly accepting the idea that most of what I heard about Bull was true, or at least grounded in some form of the truth.  Bull was meandering close beside me, and I could see from the corner of my eye that he was grinning and periodically looking in my direction.  He reached in his shirt pocket and handed me a glass pipe. He stopped in front of me and opened his flannel jacket to block the breeze.  I ducked inside of his makeshift shield and lit my flame under the pipe and inhaled deeply.  Bull smelled like mud.  I smiled to myself as the buzz fluttered into my brain.

            “Yeah… those are my cats.”  Bull was looking back over his shoulder as I pulled away from his open shirt.  I instinctively looked back over mine to make sure that those cats weren’t on our path... but recognized the gesture as futile and gave up. 

            “Fuckin’ right… I saw something about somebody getting mauled on Discovery Channel who was trying to keep pet a cat like that in their house.  You’re something else, Bull.  I haven’t figured out what you are yet… but you’re something else.”  I shook my head and pushed him as hard as I could mid-stride.  He held his ground and grabbed my wrists.

            “EEEEE Zay” he laughed and threw my wrists down.  We were coming up to the house now, and we both looked at each other waiting for each other to decide who would go first.  I took my opportunity to get ahead of him and walked up the back stairs of the house.  Bull pulled my foot as I took the last step, and my boot came off.  I tumbled and spilled through the door into the kitchen.  I rolled over and caught the boot as Bull threw it to me.  Mud from the boot sprayed my face and arms as I sat shaking my head, red-faced as the group congregating at the round table stood up to witness the ruckus. 

            “Oops… sorry man.”  Bull laughed and stepped over me as I pulled the boot back on and laced it tightly.  I wiped my face and eyes clean of the mud and filth from outside and thought,  that won’t happen again.  “False alarm everybody…  my friend saw a neighbor out there looking for his dog.  I don’t think he’ll be shining flashlights around the property anymore... at least not looking for his dog, right?”  He looked back to me, winked and flashed a fierce grin.

            “No, boss… he won’t be looking for his dog anymore.  I hope everybody realizes that this man is a fucking maniac of mythic proportions…” I started laughing and got to my feet.  “You fucking put your life into his hands if you wander out into the dark around here.”

            “Shit, brother… you put your life into my hands when you sit at this fucking table…  speaking of which…”  I walked up to Bull at the round-table.  Dayna, Milly, and Bacardi were keeping company with a particularly faded Roxy and a brawny looking guy with an opened case of Pabst sitting prominently in front of him.  “I know who this bitch is…  so, tell me," Bull inquired of the newest guest, "who the hell are you, and why do you have your beer on my grandfather’s table?”

            Roxy was fumbling with something in her lap that looked like teeth and was quick to push her dentures back into her mouth. “Take it easy, Bull… this is Snake," she said once she situated her mouthpiece.  "He’s with me.”

            “I wasn't talking to you Roxy, and that ain't what I asked, was it? What are YOU doing here?”  Bull took his seat at the head of the table and eyeballed Roxy deeply, then turned his attention to her friend.  I pulled a milk crate up and sat next to him.

            Roxy rolled an opened can of Pabst can around in her hands.  “I think you guys have something in common to talk about.  It’ll benefit everybody.”

            “Benefit everybody…  yeah.  Soooooo… Snake, is it?  Can you talk, or are you just being fucking rude in my house?”

            “Snake, yeah, and if that doesn’t work you can call me Butch” the newcomer offered.
            Bull just nodded at him and glared before turning his attention back to Roxy.

            “Roxy… how’s Beecher anyways?” Bull held his pack of cigarettes to his mouth and pulled one out with his lips.  His demeanor had changed and I was feeling anxious watching him draw information out of our guests.  He lit his smoke, dropped the lighter onto the table and folded his hands in front of him.

            “Beecher didn’t make it, Bull.  He’s dead.  I guess he jammed too much into his veins before he pulled up here that day.  His heart stopped before I got him to the hospital.”

            “You don’t say?” Bull shook his head, trying to look regretful.  “Butch... or Snake... or whatever... knowing that the last boy that followed Roxy here is now… ashes I suppose… what could you possibly hope to get out of following her here yourself?”

            “I’m no banger, man.”  Snake replied.  "I don't do needles."

            “Beecher wasn’t either before he met Roxy.”  Bull raised his right hand and pointed a finger at Roxy.  Roxy put her beer on the table and held her hand to her mouth and spit her dentures into her hand.

           “That’s not fair…” Roxy was turning red and twirling her fake teeth in her hands.  “I’m not sure that you didn’t have something to do with that you old fucking warlock…”

            “Careful, Roxy…  I was with you and this guy,” Bull pulled his thumb in my direction, “I had nothing to do with what Beecher was doing before he showed up.”  Bull leaned over to me and whispered, “Warlock?”

            “Wizard… same thing, boss. But it's kind of a big word for Roxy to be slinging,”  I smiled and whispered back.

            “Oh,” Bull whispered.

            “Anyhow… what the fuck do you have for me… um… Butch?  Is it?”  Bull focused on our new associate.

            “Snake,”  He replied.

            “Whatever Snake... Butch is too fucking hillbilly for even my standards.”  Bull laughed in spite of himself.  Roxy rolled her eyes and looked at her new boyfriend curiously.

            “Well, I have a tank of anhydrous in the car for you… I mean, if you can use it.”  Snake reached for his beer and pulled deeply from its contents.  The room became silent with the gravity of the offer.  He crushed the can when he finished drinking and dropped it on the floor.

            Bull melodramatically looked under the table to see where the beer can landed at Snake's feet.  “I think you better give me one of those beers before we talk about that, Snake.”  Bull replied.  Snake’s hand pulled a can from the case and rolled it across the table towards Bull.  Bull snatched it up and handed it to me.  “Here, you take that foamy mess… Snake, hand me a fucking beer if you wanna talk.”  Bull glared at Roxy.  She reached under the table and picked up the empty, crushed can.

            "Don't do that again you fucking idiot..." Roxy told him.

            Snake pulled another Pabst from the cardboard case and stood up to reach across the table to hand it to Bull.  I held my hand out from my body and cracked my beer at the same time Bull cracked his.  Foam ran out the can and over my hands.  I shook my head and Roxy laughed.  Before my lips met the can Bull had finished his beer and slammed the empty can on the table. 

            “How about another one… or… two…” Bull looked at me as I was slamming what was left of my beer.  “ And Snake... get that fucking case of beer off of my grandfather's table.”


This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo