Around the corner, of the most happening place on a Monday night, a shifting bunch of ruffians loitered about on the sidewalk. They were all heedless of the shaking heads of upstanding citizens who rolled by them in an abstract wash of traffic. When the sky opened up, and it began to pour, a few of the idlers wandered around the corner, across the street, or down the sidewalk in zigs and zags. Only two scruffy looking no-gooders were left standing on the sidewalk under an overhanging roof which had been purposed to provide shelter for anyone but the likes of them. It was a sidewalk, meant for walking, but Ferguson and Tyson had been standing, leaning against the wall for the last ten minutes. If it had been a bus stop, perhaps their presence would be more excusable, but they had no business just standing where they were. No business other than demonstrating a flagrant disregard for the law.
“Dude, you should roll a joint,” Tyson cautioned. “Smoking that pipe is hella sketch.” He peered down the glossy street of Pahoa, wary. Even in the rain, a blue light atop any police vehicle would stand out, obvious enough to spot in the night. At the same time, it seemed an unnecessary hazard to chance being forced to stash Ferg’s enormous pipe. It was the type of pipe that couldn’t be palmed or easily tucked back in Ferg’s backpack. That, and there was perfectly good weed that would be wasted if the bud was lit up and cherried in the bowl. If they needed to get rid of it in a hurry… ugh! This was so dumb. There was no reason to risk anything like this.
Tyson had never before imagined a place in which people could be so brazen, lighting up in the heart of town. Considering himself a resident, having be-bopped around Puna a few months, he still had the willies when Ferg did this, firmly believing that there were certain ways to go about smoking in public, and joints were sensible. Joints, not pipes--especially ones like Ferg’s monstrosity.
Besides, joints tasted better. The last person on rotation wouldn’t be left to inhale butane and ashes. Unlike pipes, joints intensified after each draw with an oily resin working its way down into the sticky roach end. A roach could always be pocketed for later. With a little paper crutch, rolled in the place of a filter, fingers wouldn’t be burnt on the end of a joint. Nothing would go to waste, delicious to the last puff. With a pipe, inevitably there’d be some unlucky schmuck handed a tragically cashed bowl. The last hit would taste like sweaty socks and defeat. Tyson could think of so many reasons not to smoke out of a pipe in public.
“It’s weed, homie,” Ferguson pontificated, tamping down a bud into the pipe with his thumb. “The cops here are cool. They don’t want to see anyone smoking meth, but we’re just getting irie. No one cares. The war on herb is over. This is my medicine, brah, relax.”
Tyson wasn’t convinced, but that didn’t stop him from accepting the pipe when it was passed over. The music from the open mic drifted around the corner, as did a few scraggly characters, reeled in by the skunky aroma. All were expecting nothing less than a toke, and then disappeared again, happy to bestow their stoned attention on whoever was on the mic.
“Does anyone have a nickel bag?” asked Bart, ragged looking as he lumbered up. It was less of a despicable question than his usual one--an endless loop of groveling about a dollar someone might be willing to part with. As was to be expected, Bart’s eyes were black holes of insatiable need as he looked to Ferguson.
“A nickel bag?” scoffed Ferguson. “Scrape up twenty, and maybe, but five bucks? Come on, man. I’m not risking jail time for five bucks. It’s kind of insulting that you would even ask for a nickel bag. If I start selling nickel bags, people will be calling me little Nickie, and I can’t have that. I ain’t little Nickie, Bart. Ask Derek. I got an eighth if you come up with a twenty.” Bart looked unsatisfied with the answer, so Ferguson explained, “I just loaded some dankness in my bowl. You’re gonna like it--frosty goodness.”
“Derek said he was out,” Bart said, in that sickening F minor of dreariness which dominated his personality. Dreariness and longing comprised Bart. He scuffed about the art of living, trying to cop anything he could, like a city pigeon in an outdoor food court.
Charlie thundered down from the gas station, his skateboard wheels howling with a ferocious sound, like the roar of a jet engine, until he tried to hop up onto the curb. He almost made it, but almost doesn’t look pretty on a skateboard. The green wall was there to greet him, not giving as he flailed off the board and thudded into it. No one asked if he was okay. They took his moaning as a sign that he’d live.
“Come on Ferg,” Bart tried to bargain. “I shared that bottle of Mickey’s with you the other night. Five bucks for just a gram.” His eyebrows were pressed up, begging, and Ferguson looked away.
“At wholesale, yeah, maybe I’d do a gram for five bucks. But anything less than twenty, no way. Not worth it. You gonna bail me out of jail if I get caught? Didn’t think so.”
Tyson shook his head, thinking it was an absurd stance to take, more than hypocritical as Ferguson passed over his beast of a pipe to Charlie. Ferguson was asking to be caught. Still, there were no blue lights down the street. Even if no one else cared, Tyson would be the self-designated lookout. He deemed it his responsibility give the six-up cry, if he saw trouble headed their way.
“Well, how bout just a little pinch, then?” continued Bart, persistent in his pursuit to acquire a crumb of weed. Bart hovered, floating in like a mosquito returning to circle an ear after being swatted away. Ferguson felt a loathing. Bart didn’t buzz, but he sure as shit was a buzz killer. But, being the irie fella Ferguson thought himself as, he chose to drop some knowledge of irie living.
“Brotha Bart, why do you always gotta be asking for this, asking for that? We’re smokin’ a
bowl right now. Try to live in the moment, and enjoy what I’m loading. It’s on me, brah. For free, so be irie, not needy. Give thanks.” Ferguson gave a benevolent nod for Charlie to pass over his glorious pipe to Bart.
“But I wanna have some for the morning, just a bowl,” whined Bart, even as he clasped his dirty paw around the pipe.
Ferguson was ready to smack him up side the head for tainting his headspace. He was a patron of the open mic, here to surround himself with positive vibrations, but a dark cloud clung to Bart, permeating the space of all unfortunate enough to be in his immediate proximity. Ferguson had a bit of a mean streak, but checked his temper, and bit his tongue.
Through the drizzle, an enormous truck was grumbling up the orange lit street. No one looked until it stopped in the middle of the lane, and a white floodlight from the passenger door caught them all in a terrible beam which was so bright it felt hot on their faces.
“Got you now, fakas!” bellowed a deep and angry voice from the truck.
Ferguson, and the rest of the sidewalk urchins, began shielding their eyes, blinded and unable to see who was addressing them with such hostility. The truck’s engine revved, and then it sped away, an enormous belch of diesel smoke left lingering behind like a stinky ghost.
“Bart, were you holding my pipe like that the whole time?” Ferguson demanded.
“What?” Bart asked, with a vapid expression, never being the quickest to put things together.
“Do you guys smell something funny?” Tyson queried. “I think they released some gas or something. I swear, I smell something.”
“Come on dude, that’s diesel fumes,” Ferguson quipped, then turned back to Bart, outraged, and scolded, “I can’t believe you stood there with my pipe held out in the open like that, you dumb fuck. You know they must have been videoing us, right?”
“What?” Bart blubbed. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
Ferguson winced, feeling pained to be in the company of such a moron, and then rolled his eyes up the road to where the truck had gone, expecting to see it loop back around.
“I didn’t see no one recording us,” Charlie mumbled. He’d just recovered from the slam into the wall, rubbing his shoulder.
“That’s because no one could see behind that light,” retorted Ferguson.
“Maybe they used the spotlight thing to try and scare us,” said Bart.
“You’d better hope that’s all it was,” said Ferguson. “I wasn’t the one holding the pipe like an idiot.”
“Hey Ferg, its your pipe. You passed it to me,” Bart complained. “I didn’t do nothing but hold onto it.”
“You never think, dumbass,” Charlie joined in, standing next to Ferguson, as if he had some skin in the game. “You stand around all day and mooch off us. You’re too dumb to do nothing for yourself but sponge up what we score.”
Ferguson took his pipe from Bart, but he didn’t like being lumped in any category with Charlie. The ‘we’ part of Charlie’s chiding caused him to take a step back, physically distancing himself from the two.
Although the open mic would be going strong for a few more hours, Ferguson thought it might be wise to skeedaddle. If the cops (or whoever ended up watching that footage which he was confident the truck had captured) did roll up, they’d be looking for Bart first. No one would have to know it was Ferguson’s pipe.
“Shoulda rolled a joint,” Tyson maintained, in a told-you-so reprimand. He rolled his eyes, and walked around the corner. Ferguson didn’t appreciate being reminded that he hadn’t followed sound advice. There was nothing in life more aggravating than somebody on their high horse who would run their mouth with a ‘shoulda this’ and a ‘shoulda that’. Once the chips of any situation came to rest, it was a 20/20 perspective, worthless in the present unfolding of the Now. A ‘shoula’ was usually from some broke-ass Punatic who needed to get his own affair in order, unaware Ferguson had his game on lockdown. He heaved a sigh, not wanting to be stuck here listening to Charlie and Bart. However, whatever girl, bless her heart, was singing her lungs out, she couldn’t hit a note. The open mic’s speaker blared out the inharmonious subtleties, which were more than audible from around the corner where Ferguson stood.
Pahoa had talent, but Ferguson had been cursed with an ear which would often inflict a psychological sort of pain when people sang off key. A curse, despite that his high school music teacher had touted it as a gift, saying that his Perfect Pitch was exceptional, as it was rare. Ferguson was no Mozart, so what good did being tortured by a note that was a little flat, or a tad sharp, do him? Little to none, but with his irie medicine, it was almost bearable to be around the corner from any musician who couldn’t perform flawlessly. Of course, no one could hit every note, but after a toke, Ferguson could listen without cringing.
In the meantime, Charlie and Bart were blah blah blahing. Both of their voices were insufferable, grinding on and on about strains of weed, as if they were aficionados. As if anyone around here (especially those two) would turn their nose if it was an indica, instead of sativa, which had been loaded into a bowl. As if anyone in Pahoa weren’t a cannabis aficionado.
Ferguson sighed, knowing that it wasn’t Charlie or Bart’s fault that they’d been equipped with sub-par mental faculties. Just like Ferguson’s too-picky ears, their talents were hard to put to use, but much more difficult to point to. Unless annoyance was a talent, Ferguson didn’t think either of them had much to work with. Nature never claimed to be fair in distribution, but it was kinda sad, as they began to harp on about unjust laws prohibiting CBD oil, stating arguments they’d overheard and could now plagiarize, trying to appear informed as they talked over the top of one another.
However, Charlie and Bart’s imbecilic banter wasn’t at the root of Ferguson’s perturbation. No, his discomfiture sprang out of the not-so-idle-threat of the truck returning. He couldn’t shake the notion that if he deciphered his gut’s opinion correctly, and the pang of foreboding was an omen which he’d do well listening to, it was time to bounce out.
“Come on, just a little nugget,” pleaded Bart, pulling on Ferguson who was looking up the street, apprehensive and brooding.
“Hey dipshit,” Ferguson snapped, turning to the parasite. “Unless you can come up with a twenty, fuck off.”
“Would you be down to do some bartering? I got a fair trade. How about some trade, Ferg?” Bart haggled, obtuse in his offer, completely unphased by Ferguson’s lashing words of rebuke. But then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a smartphone.
“Whoa, where’d you get that?” Charlie asked, leaning in.
Bart didn’t answer Charlie and tried to pass the phone over for Ferguson’s appraisal.
“No way am I gonna touch that,” Ferguson said. “Whoever that belongs to, return it now, before I beat your ass.”
“No, it’s mine. I traded it at Kehena for some shake,” said Bart. It was a dubious claim.
Ferguson took the phone, tried to turn it on, but the screen remained black.
“The guy said it needed a new battery, but it works,” Bart insisted.
“What guy?” Ferguson asked.
Before Bart could answer, a familiar rumble caused Ferguson’s head to pop up in alarm. A big truck was headed toward them with a distinctive diesel chortling. It might have been a different jacked up diesel monster, but Ferguson wasn’t about to stick around and find out. He handed Bart the phone back, and stepped around the corner. The wailing sound of dissonance (even the girl’s guitar was out of tune) didn’t register as anything but background noise to Ferguson. All he perceived was the angry churning of the diesel engine around the corner, gurgling in the key of B flat major.
Just as he leaned against the wall, a spotlight flooded the sidewalk, further blackening the shadow in which he was hiding. Ferguson listened to the truck’s doors open, followed by argumentative voices, ones full of complaint, hurling accusations in chaotic sevenths and fifths, then more diminished notes which were tight with indignation. Ferguson listened to Bart protest, heard Charlie’s skateboard clatter on the cement. It didn’t sound like a physical altercation, but Ferguson wasn’t swayed to move from the wall’s shadowy enclave. He glanced over to Tyson who’d been leaning next to the open mic stand. Tyson straightened, and took a step forward, but only a step. The rest of the audience, which had been focusing on the brave guitarist, bleating her soul’s stirrings into the microphone, turned their heads, but no one could see what was happening on the sidewalk around the corner of the cinderblock wall. No one ventured out to witness until it was all over.
After the truck’s doors closed, the spotlight was extinguished, and the truck tore away again, up the hill and out of sight beyond the gas station.
When the fumes cleared, Ferguson rounded the corner to inspect the scene. On the sidewalk Charlie’s skateboard lay like an overturned turtle, belly up and quivering. Ferguson looked down the street, thinking that Bart and Charlie must have bolted. He scanned the vicinity. Across the road, a schizophrenic ice-head was flapping his arms in the air, but Bart and Charlie were nowhere in sight. They probably ducked behind the museum, Ferguson reckoned.
“Dude, did Bart and Charlie just get kidnapped?” Tyson asked.
“Oh my Goddess!” exclaimed Amanda, a freckle spattered dreadlocked warrior, her trusty ukulele hanging by her side like a short handled battle-axe. “Who’s missing?”
“Charlie and Bart,” said Ferguson.
“Maybe it was the cops,” Tyson suggested.
“No way,” countered Ferguson. “There are only seven cops on patrol in the entire district of Puna, and that’s not the way they’d handle someone smoking weed. I’m thinking Charlie and Bart probably ran away. I’m guessing that whoever was in that truck, stepped out to whoop their asses, but those two are fast. They probably decided it wasn’t worth the effort of chasing them and drove away.”
“Then where are they?” Tyson asked. Ferguson gave no answer, shrugging and bemused as he looked down to the bank, and then up to the glistening pavement to the gas station.
“So, they were smoking weed out here on the sidewalk?” asked Amanda, in a D minor of disapproval.
“Yeah, and the truck shined a spotlight on us earlier,” Tyson said, filling her in.
“Why does everyone smoke out in the open here?” Amanda asked. “People should smoke in the alley, not out on the sidewalk.”
Ferguson and Tyson smirked. Amanda--how new she was to the island, having flown in from somewhere in the midwest a few weeks ago.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” exclaimed Ferguson, a genuine smile lighting him up. “You’ve seen the license plates; we’re over the rainbow. That means the black and white world of the squares has no business boxing us in. Not here. This is Puna, and if some living meme of gentrification wants to draw a line between me and my freedom to be irie, they should ask me why I am partaking in the sacrament, my medicine, and I will explain myself.”
Amanda swung her ukulele to her shoulder, shaking her head, incredulous. “It puts unneeded heat on everyone here,” she argued. “Now, look. Bart and Charlie just got abducted.”
“We don’t know that,” Ferguson said, looking toward the museum. “Why do you have to put dark energy into whatever it was that happened? Be more aware of what kind of vibration you put out into the world with your words.”
“Dark energy?” Amanda laughed, and then grew serious and went on, saying, “I’m being real. You should smoke in the alley, not out here.”
“Maybe it was a SWAT team,” Tyson offered, having heard Ferguson’s spiel about his God-given right to be irie too many times. Tyson knew he was about to launch into a sermon, so he tried to reroute Ferguson, asking, “Or maybe, like a DEA sting operation? You know, like a special task force?”
“No,” reckoned Ferguson, relenting to the subject change, but shooting Amanda a defiant look. “That was some gangsta shit, right there. I’m gonna cast positive vibrations with my words now.” Ferguson was looking out of the corner of his eye at Amanda, who was now spinning the neck of her uke like the nervous tail of a cat. He declared, “Bart and Charlie got away. It’s all good.”
The off-key girl on the mic ended her set, and there was a heartfelt applause and gratuitous hollers of approval. Amanda lifted her chin, and haughtily excused herself. She was up next, so enjoy, and please smoke in the alley from now on.
Ferguson walked over to pick up Charlie’s skateboard. He spun one of the small wheels, but it halted. It could use some new bearings, he mused.
“Should we call the cops?” questioned Tyson.
“You can,” Ferguson replied, “but don’t mention me. I’m out.”
Tyson called out, as Ferguson skated down the center of the road, “Hey, what if Charlie wants to know where his board is?”
Without turning around, Ferguson shrugged, and gave another pump with his foot into the moist air of the night.
Charlie never returned to ask about his skateboard. The next day, Bart wasn’t at the Tin Shack begging for a dollar, as was his morning schtick. The day after that, when neither of the missing transients reappeared, rumors began to circulate.
Someone eventually went to police station, and reported them missing, but no one was sure where Bart or Charlie resided at night. Tyson recalled that they’d both slept up in the baseball dugouts, but it had been weeks since anyone had seen them up there. No one knew their last names. It didn’t take much time for all the ultracrepidarian conspiracy theories to take shape. For weeks, at the beach, the Natch tables, and along the sidewalks of town, there was little talk of anything else.
Their absence was a trending topic of discussion. As the wave of gossip rose, socialites who had never spoken a word to Bart or Charlie, surmised that it was queer--more than a little suspicious that neither of the vagabonds could be found online. They were both millennials. Most social media addicts surmised that they must have had accounts before their abduction, but now their accounts were deleted. But where was the evidence? No one could remember receiving a friend request from either. Those in the community with the highest technological proficiency, purported that Bart and Charlie's Facebook accounts might have been deactivated, but they wouldn’t have been deleted, if they existed at all. It was a moot point. No one found any online photos, or any pictures, to plaster up on ‘missing’ posters.
It was the CIA who captured them to work in a FEMA camp, reasoned a handful of flat-earthers, but no one took them seriously. The truth was, no one was sure whether Charlie or Bart were missed. No one knew a thing about their families, either one’s origin, and it became evident that they were each other's only friends. Some said Bart had been around longer than Charlie, but no one recalled when either had arrived on the island.
It wasn’t that he particularly missed Charlie or Bart, but Ferguson feared he’d be identified by the picture. Or had it been a video they’d shot? Maybe he’d been wrong about the truck videoing them, but then what had that spotlight been for? Throughout the next couple of days, a panic would grip him when he detected the roar of a diesel engine, but with time, homeostatic normalcy set in, and the sound was a bit unnerving, but nothing to fret about.
As for Bart and Charlie, Ferguson still preached that they ran, and didn’t stop running until they were in Kona. Why not? It was a positive reconstruction of the unknowable past, especially in contrast with some of the theories about their involvement with terrorist organizations. If the right voice could bring up the Patriot Act, most heads around were sure to nod with solemnity.
After a few months, the rest of the Pahoa loafers forgot that Charlie’s skateboard hadn’t always belonged to Ferguson. Ferguson’s was the face people expected to see. When the rush of skateboard wheels on pavement could be heard rolling down from the gas station, everyone knew it would be good ol’ Ferg.
In the daily dawdling of the rest of the idle souls, which haunted Pahoa’s sidewalks, or slouched under awnings, festering up the place, nothing of consequence had changed. In a succession of Mondays, the street dwellers would sidle along the side of less disheveled folks, all gathered around the open mic, like a warm hearth after sunset.
As for Ferguson, he was humble in his concession. Tyson’s suggestion about rolling a doobie had been solid. Instead of bringing his custom blown, double-helix dragon pipe, Ferguson now sparked up joints--joints he’d prerolled to share on the sidewalk.
After a toke, their foggy minds often traipsed down well worn and familiar paths. Each stoned meandering would flip through its own unique set of possibilities. What had happened to Bart and Charlie? But no one spoke aloud what nobody could know for certain. They hadn’t for weeks. Every plausible scenario had been thoroughly exhausted. New topics of discussion trended, but as for the missing? Out of sight, eventually, meant out of mind. The confused memory of the two nitwits faded like smoke curling up from the end of Ferguson’s medicine. He passed the diggidy to Tyson, and spun a wheel of his skateboard, introspectively.
He’d installed new bearings, and so round and round the little wheel went. It was no longer encumbered by the friction of rust and street scum. New was good. And the skateboard had always been Ferguson’s, hadn’t it?
The wheel went round until a trilling voice wrapped around the corner, and Ferguson pinched it to a stop. He had to look, and turned his back to the street to peer around the wall. His jaw dropped. She was new, a perfect face amongst the autumnal influx of other not-so-pleasant-looking travelers fleeing winter on the mainland. Ferguson listened, pleasurable goosebumps raising the hair on the back of his neck. Every note swept the air, flawless. As the rain began to fall, he stood straighter, stupefied, with a lopsided grin of twitterpation. Droplets landed on his shoulders emitting the smallest of interfering noises with their contact. He stepped to the center of the sidewalk where the acoustics were triangulated.
Ferguson inhaled the fresh smell which permeated the air, feeling rapturous. While entranced, a spotlight illuminated his back, his shadow leaping forward into existence, long and black as the light was bright behind him. He tuned out the diesel engine. It was growling out an ominous melody in B flat major. Ferguson was leaning forward, trying to soak up every bend and fluttering of the voice of this amazing artist. Never before had he heard anyone who could belt out with such Perfect Pitch, floating up and down the scales of the melody like grace itself. As big hands gripped Ferguson by the arms, pulling him to the street, he only stammered, grateful to be alive and witnessing this most irie of vibrations rise into the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment