The thunder of that engine crackled in the cold, late afternoon cold—there was nothing else to call it but cold. Just inhumanly cold, as if some force that did not care about all the aspirational comforts and fetishes of humanity, as if all the angels in the skies had lied, as if Eternity did not dedicate itself to the succor of sissy souls, and yet held sway over heaven and earth on this cold, goddamned night.

It was none too soon. Beaker was beginning to repeat his legends of daring do, was already, giving the third recitation of the tale of Split-tail Joe, the fucking bad-ass tranny bitch with the Nazi-killing scissors… such tales as this, where Beaker did not play the lead role, but basked in his association with the hero, like the fact that this Nazi killing shape-shifter with an Adam’s apple blew Beaker in an alley after he had paid her parking ticket and then told him about shanking Nazis, well, it made Big Sam wish he was a young man so he could whoop this big-beaked bastard’s asssssss!

“I see it, niցցer!” chortled Beaker.

“I see it in yo old-ass eyes. You was wishin’ you was still young enough to slap my mouth shut, huh? Fool, don’t try ta hide yo heart from me. I got da Jew up in me—smartest muthafucka in da hood. Shit, my dick daddy smarter den the judge! I see it—let me slap da taste outta dat old face!”

Then the thunder that might have belonged to some old time Viking god came into their grassy space, with Downtown Charlie Brown, arriving just before sundown.

The man stood seven foot if he were a ϲunt-hair above six.

The man was ugly as all get-out, a beard growing up to his werewolf eyes, braided down to his leather-chapped thighs, his mustache forked with matches he’d use to light his meth pipes.

He stepped off of that rumbling machine, looked down at Beaker like he was Willy Wanka harshly judging the Umpa-Lumpas in his chocolate factory, ignored him, his span of shoulder passing over the other-man’s big shoulder and walking up to Big Sam and Jimmy Jam, taking to one knee and producing from the folds of his studded leather jacket, a bottle of Port Royal 151 Rum!

Downtown Charlie Brown was a cruel and hideous man—with a dozen bodies on his name, raped little girls even, killed a cop and killed a brutha and dropped it in the doorway to make it look mutual—the man was a terror. But the man had a soft spot for Jimmy Jam and Big Sam and was handing over an entire bottle as a present.

He then patted them both on the shoulders and stood, breaking out a bottle of Crown Royal—that was the shit!—and toasted his friends of old.

With that Beaker could contain himself no longer. And not having the street smarts of his negro half leaned on the court smarts of his white half, and over thought the situation, walked up behind Downtown Charlie Brown, grabbed him by the shoulder, failed to spin him around, so stepped around himself—oh, this is a dumb negro here—and said, “Hey you white faɡɡot, ain’ you fogettin’ sometin’?!”

Then Downtown Charlie Brown, a man who did not speak but much, but when he did sounded like some professor, answered, “Oh, I’m sorry, Niցցer. Here,” and he hammer-fisted Beaker across the bridge of the nose, smashed that shit clean into pieces and then grabbed that big beak and dragged the gushing face over the mouth of that bottle of Crown Royale and drained that nose-gushing blood into that thing, let go of the broke-brown nose, put the cap back on the bottle, shook it up so it mixed and held it out to Big Sam and Jimmy Jam and said, “Wanna cocktail?”

Jimmy Jam convulsed in the negative and Big Sam, “Said, “Thank ya, Downtown, but we good.”

Charlie Brown then chugged that bloody liquor down, half the bottle gone like that.

Meanwhile, Beaker was prancing about, bloodily mumbling, “Ma beak, ma beak!”

Some white folks were now stopping and watching and Big Sam thought he saw a blonde lady on her phone calling someone.

“Jimmy Jam, the police might be comin’, soon.”

Jimmy Jam twitched, “Shieee, Warren ‘ill wait fo Detroit en Detroit ‘ill wait fo Armageddon!” and he then relapsed into twitching and lolling and drooling.

Then Beaker done fucked up!

What was all in good fun had now become undone.

Beaker, holding his sacred Hebrew nose together in one hand pointed the forefinger of his other hand and said, “You done fucked up, faɡɡot! I’m Boone’s boy.”

The sound of Beaker’s forefinger breaking in half in the cold was just as loud as the squishing howl that came from his spouting nose. Downtown Charlie Brown, then spun Beaker around, tore his baggy pants down, bent him over, pulled his own leather pants down, and went to town!

“Oh Gawd, I think I’m a gonna be sick, Jimmy Jam!”

But Jimmy Jam was laughing to beat the band, convulsing ecstatically on Big Sam’s lap as white folks stopped in their cars and beeped like rich folks at a wedding do and Down Town Charlie Brown held Beaker’s Chicago Bulls hat by the bill and whipped his brown velvet vested back as he—oh, erase, erase!—was making like a cowboy in some San Francisco Rodeo, even letting loose a “Yeehah!”

Big Sam took a dram of 151, passed it to Jimmy Jam and they swayed and sang on their milk-crate bandstand:

“Here he come,

Downtown Charlie Brown,

Loaded fo fun,

Lovin’ it brown!

Ya betta run—

Ya cute-ass clown!”

There was just too much a song-master could do with a name like Downtown Charlie Brown. In Fact, that was what was behind the name. His real name was Jerome Deadwood Presbikowinski—only the wood weren’t dead! It had been Jimmy Jam who named him Charlie Brown—because that shit hilariously did not fit, and it rhymed with the fact that his big, Hunting Danny Glover and Snarnald Switchanigga’s ass was headed downtown! It had been Jimmy Jam’s acertation that the only nigga safe before the walls of Ancient Troy was the poet that sang about that shit, because Achilles and Ajax both wanted to outlive the gods and be remembered—so here they were, singing about their Achilles, well doing what he do beneath the Walls of Joy.

Downtown got down.

Beaker, ass up in the grassy median, cried like the bitch-made switch he was.

Downtown lit up his meth pipe and got right.

Then, as the dark embraced the night and Downtown sucked on his pipe, he went another round and Beaker moaned like the woman in him had been found.

Finally, Big Sam and Jimmy Jam, halfway through the bottle of 151 took pity on that big, ruined bum. At Jimmy Jam’s sad urging Big Sam said, “Downtown, can we give da pretty nigga a drink?”

Downtown, as kings do, nodded his permission and stood, looking the other way, walking up to the speeding traffic and pissing on passing cars.

Lesson learned: raping a bull Negro in public will not get the cops called on your fornicating ass, but don’t go pissing on some Walmart manager’s Escalade… or its on, like Donkey-Kong!

Beaker had pulled up his pants and was resting his aching ass between Big Sam and Jimmy Jam, who, truth be told, were feeling a little sorry for their scam—I mean that shit was nasty! I done seen some shit in times befoe, but never found the need to look the other way until taday!

They both patted the violated brutha on the shoulders and watched as two police pulled up on either side of Eight Mile Road.

Downtown was chugging the last of a shooter of Zwiebeck vodka and smoking his last glass of meth, when both cops pulled up at the same time, what must have been a miscalculation, as one municipality was always trying to show up second so they could say the other had it under control.

On the Detroit side of the road was some big, strapping brother, looked like he could have been an NFL linebacker, walking up to Downtown shaking his head, giving the “I got this, my fine-ass little sister” open hand of masculine control to the Warren officer, who was this nicely formed, bubble-butted, blonde shorty that should have been dressed in a bikini and holding up the ring cards between the rounds of this heavyweight contest—and it came, as the big buff cop approached Downtown Charlie Brown while he was sucking so hard on that Pepsi bottle full of smoldering glass that that thing imploded like a supernova and said, “Sir, we have a complaint…”

“Ka-rack!” Big Sam would articulate later, to future generations, came the sound of that slap.

No, “Kooo-rackk!” said Beaker, through his leaker, whistling into the ether, so he would recount this tale to young fellas yet to be misborn.

“Ksh-ack,” related Jimmy Jam, and his version was charitably upheld, him having but half a brain and half a mouth to relate it, came the sound of Downtown Charlie Brown, pimp slapping—“Can you dig it, brutha, ‘Offica Brown!”

“I could not make this shit up,” Beaker would recount at some latter time, as Big Sam did not object to him omitting certain moan-sodden moments of the encounter leading up to the cop response…

Who would have known that on the night that they had become mortal enemies that they would become fast friends, boon companions even, as Jimmy Jam mumbled through his sneaker-induced haze, and Big Sam, Beaker and Jimmy Jam, all partaking of that bottle of 151 rum, would roar in laughter as—“Oh no!”

And Officer Brown had his own cruiser’s headlight put out by his manhandled pumpkin head and old Charlie Brown was bending his ass over, going DOWNTOWN, with Officer Brown crying in shame on the hood of his car, as the lady officer from Warren drew her gun and began shaking it’s muzzle and Officer Brown moaned, “No, bitch!”

The woman cop dropped her gun—it took until the morning for them to find that weapon, what with the hooplah and all.

You see, that dumb white bitch reached for her tazer afraid to shoot her fellow officer, and as Charlie Brown was going WAY DOWNTOWN, she electrocuted his ass, and that terrible shock—via ways not politely got—was transmitted to Officer Brown who held onto that headlight like it was the deck of the Titanic and screamed, “AAAAAAAAAAA!”

Thusly, after an electronically amplified orgasm triggering a post-rape ennui, was Downtown Charlie Brown, brought into custody, by a Detroit taskforce that would insure Officer Brown that he had experienced a moment he would never, ever, live down.

Y’all might doubt this shit, being new to the charity and oratory clarity of Shayner and Grasshit.

But there are three worthy historians, possibly drinking fortified wine at Shayner and Grasshit this very misbegotten moment, who would be willing, for a sip oh yer high-falooting shit, at least, to tell you the story of Downtown Charlie Brown.