Nat was feeling great, not feeling a bit like Scott!
He walked behind Sergeant Crook, who marched as stridently as a “hog-bodied individual” might behind Major Pitt, who swaggered in his snakeskin cowboy boots, his yellow streaked with white viking hair falling about his epulettes. Mrs. Crockett was standing in the doorway to his classroom wearing a look of concern. Majot Pitt tipped a missing hat, “Darlin’”, and Sergeant Crook saluted at the march, “Ma’am, don’t you worry. This young fellow is bound for better!”
They were headed towards the back of the building, not for the front door, which was really sketchy. Ahead of them, was the turn.
‘What type of strange stuff could happen before we make the turn for the back lot? The bell ringing and mobs of students flooding the halls? Some enemies of these assholes—I don’t even know if these guys are good or bad—they seem to be both?’
“Just relax, Son,” intoned Sergeant Crook as he took a jocular comic shuffle.
Then they turned the corner.
‘Good! One hallway, four doors to release, to get some air and wake up from this insane nightmare!’
‘No fucking way?’ he thought before he had the good sense to stop.
The Principal was in the hallway with the floor scrubber, yanking on the wonky handles, kicking at the floor wiper, cussing under his breath, as Benny, the old black dude who normally cleaned before and after they were in the halls, stood by staring at his boss, who seemed to have lost his mind.
The Major strode up, “At ease, Seat Shiner, at ease,” and the Principal stopped too suddenly, then lurched forward in a daze, his hands on the clasp-like handles of the big box of rolling liquid filled cleanliness, drool trailing from his quivering lower lip.
The tall chimp-armed viking in snakeskin boots and a uniform too sizes too small, then called a halt with his hand and stood with hands clasped behind his back. Benny was terrified.
“At ease, Negro,” soothed the Major, and Benny’s eyes bugged out like he was frozen in terror.
“Good boy,” drawled the Major and spoke without taking his eyes from Benny, “Sergeant, assess the bio equipment.”
Benny was now relaxed.
‘If they hurt Benny I’m going to rethink my racism!’
With that suggestion, Crook walked up between the two men and waved his hand slowly, first before the Principal’s quivering face, which twitched and drooled more actively, and next before Benny’s fearful yet calm visage. The man then took out a flash light and shone it first in Benny’s eyes, which did not move, then in the Principal’s eyes, which fluttered as the man shat himself explosively—bubbling, liquid gruel of bowel staining the gray suit, draining into and over the black hard shoe uppers to pool around those clack prone soles.
“Major, works like a charm on the savage races, as predicted by Pappa-Boy Crock. There is certainly a lack of efficiency in the mesmeristic operation of this here meat bot. A dressing down oughtta do, Sir.”
Major Pitt then let loose, “Seat Shine! You have shit the bed with a Board of Education Inspection in bound!”
The man tittered, stopped shitting, stood at attention, and cried.
“Seat Shine! My floor is as black as Toby’s ass here,” pointing a thumb towards Benny, who stood stalwartly at attention.
The man in the suit whimpered in incoherent babble but stood straight, “Dismissed. Retire to the latrine and police your person.”
The Principal, tottered like a broken, shit-footed reed, turned and shuffled towards the boys room.
The Major turned to face Benny, saluted and directed, “Resume sanitation detail, Soldier.”
Benny straightened even straighter, saluted like a cartoon soldier, stepped to the scrubber at attention, unlocked it, an action quite beyond the Principal’s capacity, engaged the scrubber and followed the stuttering school administrator’s slime trail towards the bathroom.
The officer looked, as it seemed, for an opinion, to the sergeant, who answered, “Aircraft are out of the question, Sir. A war galley, single bank of oars, maybe—perhaps a steam engine. Force multiplication will be a hurdle. Perhaps Nat Star here has fixed his lawn mower?”
Crook grinned over his shoulder at Nat, who had cut a lawn or two, but had not had the luxury of a teenage car and had cooked for coke sluts just to get a ride to New York for a Motorhead concert, so was not feeling much like a functional gear head.
“I’ll learn you up, Son—once a man has made metal bricks fly, coaxing lesser machines to roll and such is child’s play.”
Nat just nodded in the affirmative, as if he knew what he and this insanity were all about. In the company of such men it behooved a punk to project confidence, especially if this was a drug-induced state and he was doomed to relive this in future dreams. So he did.
Benny was herding the Principal into the boys room with the scrubber, a great white grin splitting his face. Soon the side door onto the back lot, which was technically the back door onto the side lot, opened to admit the glaring blast of hated sunlight that would have galled his eyes after a night spent reading by flashlight. Yet, this blaring bath of sunlight was welcome. Directly to a white sedan, a Crown Vic, an obvious federal cop car, they marched, three men on a mission.
‘This feels good, feels too good to be the acid trip from some shit-head painting the water fountain with PCP.’
Closer they walked as the DOD tags above the rear bumper, which was smeared with blood, grew closer, bigger, more real.
‘Shit, man, this looks bad—looks real.’
The two men stepped up to the rear of the white Crown Vic and the Major spat on the dried blood and growled, “Nigger juice on the bumper, Sergeant.”
“Major, he was a might stout. I don’t think you over did him—some uses of force cannot be avoided, even when we are in the covert way.”
Sergeant Crook jingled a set of keys, inserted one into the trunk lock, turned it with an ominous click, pried open the trunk, and there were two men in underwear, one a thick set black man with a badly broken-broken, indeed crushed, nose and a bloody rag stuffed in his mouth, who, looked dead, bailing wire binding his ashen, swollen, wrists, one broken ankle kind of tied around—‘ouch’—a sound ankle with a belt.
There was also a terrified, tall, thin, white man who had a gag on that had not choked him to death. His ankles and wrists were bound together with bailing wire to the point where they were purple. He glared in shock-laced fear up at the Major who absently declared, “Shit fer breakfast, Sarge. They don’t make niցցers like they used to. I thought he’d be fine, a tough somb bitch—kind a liked how he wasn’t ready to lick boots like this prick, rear-echelon major. Guess we overdid the bailing wire. Good job cramming them in. Looks like he’ll lose both feet and a hand in any case. Shit fer lunch, too.”
The white man in the trunk was now crying and whining, gagging and—the Snakeskin version of the Major slammed the trunk shut.
“Drive it down the slip at Watersedge. Crock will need another zombie.”
Crook walked around to the passenger’s side, opened the door for the Major, then walked around to the driver’s side and pointed to the rear driver’s side door, “Behind me, Son—Nat Star is going on his maiden journey, and believe you me, your civilian cherry is about to be popped!”
The door slamming shut encouraged the bound thing in the trunk to mumble and bump and otherwise disturb the suspension. This was happily discouraged, or drowned out, by the engine gunning and the cheery sound of the Segeant’s voice, “Sir, white zombies seem to dysfunction at an ominously reliable rate. Might I suggest the old fellow under the bus stop at Logan Village. Won’t be missed a lick.”
“The guitarican, you mean?”
“None other, Sir. Called himself Da Playa From Dah Himalaya, if I am properly respecting his rounded sense for the enunciated consonant and the accented dangling vowel.”
The over long chimp arm reached back on the passenger’s side rear seat, grabbed a gray felt Stetson, from atop a gray slicker and a set of smart felt dress grays. The hat was set with a brass CSA stamped set of crossed sabers, such that the emblem seemed to be a belt buckle repurposed for a hat band clasp, that hat band being a red silk sash with white stars, of which he would not be disappointed in finding 13 if he were permitted to count them…
And there was a brace of long barreled, .50 caliber Texas Ranger pistols, a Bowie knife, all on a belt, with a bandoleer stuffed with rounds, tucked behind the front seat.
Behind the driver’s seat was a web belt with a 1911 .45 APC, an ammo pouch with what he reckoned were two spare clips, and, ‘No fucking way,’ a burnished photo, worked into a brass whiskey flask frame, of Ronald Reagan, leaving Marine 1, a great Sea King single rotter chopper, on the White House lawn, being saluted by none other than the man in the driver’s seat, who seemed to read his mind as he pulled off and looked into the rear view mirror, “Do not molest the belt, PFC Star, but do acquire the forty-five, eject the mag and the round in the chamber, and be prepared to administer a pistol whipping to whichever one of the Major’s chattel he deems worthy of your attention.”
When he reached out for that snapped-down holster, the rebel in the back of the DOD cruiser, which did have the paint job to recommend it, felt as if he reached out for Eternity.
