WastedPotential
sociotard
Registered: Aug 2000
Location: the heart of an awl
Posts: 3692 |
a dish best served cold...
For some reason this episode keeps rolling around in my head. I think it's because my manager's name is John, and he has an ever-present toothpick dangling from his mouth or clamped between his thumb and the back of this forefinger (the picknose finger, as we used to call it). That, and i would like to watch excruciatingly painful things happen to him, so he can discover his soul once he realizes it is burning in hell.
Anyways, when i was in high school there was this guy a few years older than us that worked at the theatre. He was a full-on badass, really buff, into martial arts, but also fairly kind to strangers, like me. I had met him several times, and despite his intimidating presence, he was a good guy. I recall the one time i went to his house, he bought us some booze. Can't be much friendlier than that, at least not without further violating state law.
One night this guy goes into one of the local dive bars and an out-of-towner started stirring things up and acting like an ass. This out-of-towner was a migrant forestry worker, a Mexican national working for a Forest Service contractor, planting seedlings. He didn't speak a whole lot of english and he didn't have a whole lot of manners. Jerry, the fellow from the above paragraph, took it upon himself to teach the guy some manners. The Mexican national took a few swings at Jerry, got shoved, and left.
When the guy started shouting outside the bar, Jerry went out to continue the charm school lesson. The migrant shot him in the chest and Jerry died in the street.
The police caught the man fairly quickly. There was some dispute about who started what and how and when, and the Mexican national, who had given his name as Juan Palillo, was set free on bail. An unarmed man was shot in the chest, the man with the gun left the country before he could be brought to trial. After the fact, the local yokels figured out that the Mexican had given a fake name, "Johnny Toothpick," and they more or less gave up looking for the guy.
Fast-forward about seven years. I'm in a church, changing into my tuxedo, talking to my brother just before his wedding. He's telling me about his new father-in-law, whom i have just met a few minutes earlier. The guy was striking in his tuxedo and silver mullet, his face was beet red and his veins bulged out of his neck and forehead like worms were crawling around under his scalp.
"He was a POW in Viet Nam," my brother says. "They hung him upside down for 28 days. He got disability after that. Permanent damage. He isn't all right in the head sometimes."
"Like when he gets his haircut?"
"Heh, don't make fun of his haircut, he's still kind of a bad-ass. He used to be Special Forces or something."
"Makes sense."
"Right when i met him, he had just got off the phone talking to one of his old military partners. He had kind of done him a favor."
"Like what?" I took the bait, I could tell he wanted to tell the story.
"Well, [my wife] is Jerry [Badass]'s half-sister."
"Whoa!" This was all news to me.
"Well, one of [tuxedo mullet]'s Special Forces friends found Johnny Toothpick."
"What? Was he stupid enough to come back in the area?"
"No, they found him in Mexico."
"On accident?"
"No." He paused for a second while i connected the dots. "[tuxedo mullet] said that Johnny Toothpick did not enjoy his last days..."
"Days?"
After hearing what these guys can take, I couldn't even fathom what they could dish out. I had a vague picture of something painful and awful, but incredibly poetic and just.
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02-17-2003 08:02 AM
