Off Topic
Travelblog of Thom S. Hunter
Editor’s Note: Dammit. Far as I can tell this idiot idea of a beat reporter is going to stick. Guess he’s got low friends in high places. Or at least high friends. And I like to eat, and I got a wife and three kids (that I know of) who need clothes and sneakers. So I got nothing to do but to let the guy write whatever he writes. Good luck reading it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Do you believe in God? I mean. Really? I don’t. Or at least not in that way. I think, anyway. You want proof there’s no God? Just get up early enough that the sun’s not up and try to get your ass moving. I mean. If God were real, mornings wouldn’t start until noon o’clock.
Nuff said.
On the other hand, there’s baseball, which is a damned fine game. Before going to bed last night, I VRed into Bikini’s game with Loserville. Shitty game, but filled with great moments nonetheless. It was good to see little Tony Munyiga breaking in. Went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Kid can hit, I tell ya. If he could field, he’d be a force.
So, maybe there is a God, and maybe there isn’t. How the hell can I tell?
But, anyway, I got up early and made it to the sad-sack Sacramento scallywags’ car with about ten minutes to spare. It was an older model Cutlass. Not hard to jigger the locks if you know how, and with the prospects of Descartes people hanging around every corner I found the memory of “how” flooding back to me. It’s almost muscle memory, right? Took me right back to when I was a kid cracking my way into Loserville games. Sad, I know.
Worst part of getting into the trunk, or the bonnet, as our buddies over on the other side of the right-side ocean say, was that I had to find a way to edge into it around coils and the boxes of beakers and Petrie dishes and notebooks. And, as one has, a collection of Hertz shampoo. That’s kinda funny because I’m pretty sure Foghorn’s gonna be bald before he’s forty. The smell of formaldehyde clogged my brain as I slid in. I found a tarp there, though, and it gave enough padding I could almost be comfortable.
I settled in just as Foghorn and L-Pain left the Greenleaf’s breakfast buffet and hopped in for their trip up north.
With a year and a half of failed UCLA film school behind me, I know that path up north on the I-5 well. Spent many great nights out in the wilds with some friends and a mushroom or two. And the derivatives made up by AI pharmas here and there, too. I’m telling you, there’s nothing that’ll make you feel close to that existent-or-not God better than laying on your back in the middle of nowhere California, high as Graham Nash in Winchester Cathedral, and taking in a perfect, crystalline field of pure stars.
So I can tell Foggy’s got the Cutlass pointed north.
That’s when they got to talking. I can hear them through the back seats. Mostly bragging about chicks and talking about whether the Mad Popes were going to kick some Black Sox ass later tonight.
“Go faster, man. We gotta get back in time to see the game,” L-Pain said.
“I’ll show you fast,” Foghorn replied. Then the Cutlass’s engine gave a petroleum-harsh roar and the car gave a hard kick-back as it bolted down the freeway. I held tight as I could back there, bracing myself. I’d seen this, too, as a film school dropout. Psychopathic narcissists on a quest to prove something everyone already knows. I’d seen Foghorn was a bit of a sharp-intellect loon before, but I wouldn’t have taken him for an adrenaline junkie, too. Goes to prove there’s always more to learn.
“Fast enough for ya” Foghorn howled.
“Jesus, Foghorn!” L-Pain called. "Why you always gotta be such a fuckin' asshole?"
A moment later the car calmed down and speed resumed.
A few seconds of silence and I hear the slosh of water, an echo that’s deep and hollow, almost certainly from the jug the boys are hauling up to the green-eyed woman, who I’ve heard about forever, but never laid eyes on. Sounds like a real piece of work, I’d say.
“What the fuck you doing?” Fogman said.
“I'm thirsty.”
“But we still gotta run tests on that shit.”
“Who the fuck cares? You and I both know this shit here is normal ass drinking water.” He paused and I could hear the big, liquidy gulp all the way in the back. The smack of L-Pain’s lips was so satisfying it almost quenched my thirst. “All that shit I told that green-eyed cunt was complete garbage. Proud of some of the shit I came up with. She fuckin' swallowed all that shit whole.”
Thirty miles farther up the I-5, L-Pain gives a great big belch, then squeaks like he’s struggling for air. Then Foghorn is moaning and groaning, and I get the idea right-quick. L-Pain up and goddamned died.
Holy shit. Holy freaking shit.
The dark trunk suddenly feels about as ominous as a two-run Krill lead entering the ninth.
And Foghorn, he’s busy talking to L-Pain and maybe hitting him. It sounds for everything I know like he’s losing his shit. I kind of get it, though. I mean, that knack for putting two and two together on the spot and getting the four about right has saved my ass a hundred times over by now. Foghorn’s got himself a di-lema. He’s got to get the water to Sacramento. And now that L-Pain done drank the Kool Aid, he’s got to figure that the green-eyed woman is gonna want to dig into the dude’s death herself. But driving the I-5 with a dead body in the car’s not conducive to arrival, and getting caught with one is not conducive to anything good.
After a long-assed soliloquy, I feel the car slow, then take a right off the exit ramp.
Shit.
My internal compass/clock knows where we’re going. A place desolate and wild. A place out in the desert. A place that, while perfect for meeting God (or not), would also be perfect for dumping a body. Which, as I hear Foghorn muttering, I realize he’s decided to do.
“Can always come back…” he says. “Green-eyes can wait another couple days.”
Then there’s a crunch of dirt under the tires and for another hour the car bounces and shuffles right and left. What the hell is Foggy thinking? A Cutlass is not made for this kind of off-road driving. It’s getting hot in here, too. The car comes to a halt and Foghorn drops the engine off.
We’re out in what I might as well call a desert, though this far north they might say it’s a grassland. I’m actually pretty sure this was the place I got to kiss Gina Faithful, who was hot as hell and way, way outta my league, and who has gone on to star in ten or so films. Probably never win an Oscar, but, we can’t all be Meryl Streep.
“Time to take a nap, Louey,” Foghorn says, using L-Pain’s real name. He gets out of the car and slams the door with enough vinegar that the motion would probably hit a hundred on the gun. Suddenly I know he’s coming for the tarp I’m laying on. Planning to wrap L-Pain’s body up to keep it preserved and dump it out behind a knoll or a ridge of rocks or whatever. Like that's gonna keep the buzzards away. Ha. Fact is that, crazy-assed or not, Foghorn isn't as smart as he thinks he is.
And just as suddenly I’m thinking I might not make it alive long enough to see if the Krill can beat Madison tonight. Some kinda minor league scout I'm turning out to be, right? That's what I get for swinging for the fences. I mean, I coulda just laid low and done the easy-peasy job. But no, I hadta go and try to get Westy the big scoop. I hate that part of me.
I get ready, though.
Footsteps crunch to the back. Keys jangle. Then there’s the scratching of metal on metal, and the trunk swings open with a dazzling shower of scintillating sunlight.
Do you believe in God? I mean. Really? I don’t. Or at least not in that way. I think, anyway. You want proof there’s no God? Just get up early enough that the sun’s not up and try to get your ass moving. I mean. If God were real, mornings wouldn’t start until noon o’clock.
Nuff said.
On the other hand, there’s baseball, which is a damned fine game. Before going to bed last night, I VRed into Bikini’s game with Loserville. Shitty game, but filled with great moments nonetheless. It was good to see little Tony Munyiga breaking in. Went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Kid can hit, I tell ya. If he could field, he’d be a force.
So, maybe there is a God, and maybe there isn’t. How the hell can I tell?
But, anyway, I got up early and made it to the sad-sack Sacramento scallywags’ car with about ten minutes to spare. It was an older model Cutlass. Not hard to jigger the locks if you know how, and with the prospects of Descartes people hanging around every corner I found the memory of “how” flooding back to me. It’s almost muscle memory, right? Took me right back to when I was a kid cracking my way into Loserville games. Sad, I know.
Worst part of getting into the trunk, or the bonnet, as our buddies over on the other side of the right-side ocean say, was that I had to find a way to edge into it around coils and the boxes of beakers and Petrie dishes and notebooks. And, as one has, a collection of Hertz shampoo. That’s kinda funny because I’m pretty sure Foghorn’s gonna be bald before he’s forty. The smell of formaldehyde clogged my brain as I slid in. I found a tarp there, though, and it gave enough padding I could almost be comfortable.
I settled in just as Foghorn and L-Pain left the Greenleaf’s breakfast buffet and hopped in for their trip up north.
With a year and a half of failed UCLA film school behind me, I know that path up north on the I-5 well. Spent many great nights out in the wilds with some friends and a mushroom or two. And the derivatives made up by AI pharmas here and there, too. I’m telling you, there’s nothing that’ll make you feel close to that existent-or-not God better than laying on your back in the middle of nowhere California, high as Graham Nash in Winchester Cathedral, and taking in a perfect, crystalline field of pure stars.
So I can tell Foggy’s got the Cutlass pointed north.
That’s when they got to talking. I can hear them through the back seats. Mostly bragging about chicks and talking about whether the Mad Popes were going to kick some Black Sox ass later tonight.
“Go faster, man. We gotta get back in time to see the game,” L-Pain said.
“I’ll show you fast,” Foghorn replied. Then the Cutlass’s engine gave a petroleum-harsh roar and the car gave a hard kick-back as it bolted down the freeway. I held tight as I could back there, bracing myself. I’d seen this, too, as a film school dropout. Psychopathic narcissists on a quest to prove something everyone already knows. I’d seen Foghorn was a bit of a sharp-intellect loon before, but I wouldn’t have taken him for an adrenaline junkie, too. Goes to prove there’s always more to learn.
“Fast enough for ya” Foghorn howled.
“Jesus, Foghorn!” L-Pain called. "Why you always gotta be such a fuckin' asshole?"
A moment later the car calmed down and speed resumed.
A few seconds of silence and I hear the slosh of water, an echo that’s deep and hollow, almost certainly from the jug the boys are hauling up to the green-eyed woman, who I’ve heard about forever, but never laid eyes on. Sounds like a real piece of work, I’d say.
“What the fuck you doing?” Fogman said.
“I'm thirsty.”
“But we still gotta run tests on that shit.”
“Who the fuck cares? You and I both know this shit here is normal ass drinking water.” He paused and I could hear the big, liquidy gulp all the way in the back. The smack of L-Pain’s lips was so satisfying it almost quenched my thirst. “All that shit I told that green-eyed cunt was complete garbage. Proud of some of the shit I came up with. She fuckin' swallowed all that shit whole.”
Thirty miles farther up the I-5, L-Pain gives a great big belch, then squeaks like he’s struggling for air. Then Foghorn is moaning and groaning, and I get the idea right-quick. L-Pain up and goddamned died.
Holy shit. Holy freaking shit.
The dark trunk suddenly feels about as ominous as a two-run Krill lead entering the ninth.
And Foghorn, he’s busy talking to L-Pain and maybe hitting him. It sounds for everything I know like he’s losing his shit. I kind of get it, though. I mean, that knack for putting two and two together on the spot and getting the four about right has saved my ass a hundred times over by now. Foghorn’s got himself a di-lema. He’s got to get the water to Sacramento. And now that L-Pain done drank the Kool Aid, he’s got to figure that the green-eyed woman is gonna want to dig into the dude’s death herself. But driving the I-5 with a dead body in the car’s not conducive to arrival, and getting caught with one is not conducive to anything good.
After a long-assed soliloquy, I feel the car slow, then take a right off the exit ramp.
Shit.
My internal compass/clock knows where we’re going. A place desolate and wild. A place out in the desert. A place that, while perfect for meeting God (or not), would also be perfect for dumping a body. Which, as I hear Foghorn muttering, I realize he’s decided to do.
“Can always come back…” he says. “Green-eyes can wait another couple days.”
Then there’s a crunch of dirt under the tires and for another hour the car bounces and shuffles right and left. What the hell is Foggy thinking? A Cutlass is not made for this kind of off-road driving. It’s getting hot in here, too. The car comes to a halt and Foghorn drops the engine off.
We’re out in what I might as well call a desert, though this far north they might say it’s a grassland. I’m actually pretty sure this was the place I got to kiss Gina Faithful, who was hot as hell and way, way outta my league, and who has gone on to star in ten or so films. Probably never win an Oscar, but, we can’t all be Meryl Streep.
“Time to take a nap, Louey,” Foghorn says, using L-Pain’s real name. He gets out of the car and slams the door with enough vinegar that the motion would probably hit a hundred on the gun. Suddenly I know he’s coming for the tarp I’m laying on. Planning to wrap L-Pain’s body up to keep it preserved and dump it out behind a knoll or a ridge of rocks or whatever. Like that's gonna keep the buzzards away. Ha. Fact is that, crazy-assed or not, Foghorn isn't as smart as he thinks he is.
And just as suddenly I’m thinking I might not make it alive long enough to see if the Krill can beat Madison tonight. Some kinda minor league scout I'm turning out to be, right? That's what I get for swinging for the fences. I mean, I coulda just laid low and done the easy-peasy job. But no, I hadta go and try to get Westy the big scoop. I hate that part of me.
I get ready, though.
Footsteps crunch to the back. Keys jangle. Then there’s the scratching of metal on metal, and the trunk swings open with a dazzling shower of scintillating sunlight.
