Hicks…Pumps…Six Shots Into Bogart.

“This moonshine is meaner than the devil,” Eric said, unleashing his maniacal cackle as his rusty sedan pushed on down the road and every bump or sharp turn the tires rubbed hard against the wheel wells & each time this happened, Eric would again drop the reigns.

“They shot him because the hair on his neck was standing.”

“The hair on is neck was always standing, he was just a sweet chocolate lab.”

Poor Bogart. The townspeople said the first shot took him down. The sixth blow must have driven his fur about six inches into the lawn. But I wasn’t there. Not then. Though I don’t doubt it gave the mayor the biggest thrill of his life to see the neighbor’s dog slaughtered on his lawn. No more late night hollering or shit on his lawn is coming from that horrible beast. Not once they rake his carcass off the lawn. Now they must all live with that stir. & I don’t doubt they’ll all rather enjoy it. A little something to talk about now that the high school football program has sunk to the sewer.

It’s what Tom & Allen might be discussing, were they not so cranked up on their moonshine, marijuana and whatever else anyone was willing to give them.

The both of them wore sandals they’d bought in Mexico. Their parents retired down to Puerto Vallerta & every chance the boys had, they’d haul ass down to Mexico to get crazy with the folks. He told Willie of one time the old man took Allen down the coast stone loaded & strapped a parachute on him & told the driver he better “give him a good ride, now.”

So the captain dropped the throttle & pulled that son of a bitch straight up a couple hundred feet over the ocean with the special instruction that he was to pull the descending lever only when the whistle blew, but when Allen heard a truck on the coast backing up he thought the beeping was the whistle blowing & yanked the lever & went hurling toward the sea as the driver tried waving him off & signaling for him to release the lever before that big mouth of his was filled with water at 40 or 50 miles per hour. He was about five feet from the water when he caught on & I don’t doubt that he got one hell of a thrill & so did his father.

“We got these down there,” Allen said pointing to the sandals that both he & his brother Tom were wearing. Allen wore suspenders made out to look like tape measures that latched on to his oversized jeans & up & over his tie-died shirt. His brother was slightly less conspicuous & hid his eyes behind a pair of glasses, only his eyebrows stuck far above & curled every few seconds, so you knew that even though you couldn’t see them, those eyes were crazy eyes.

“I’ve never been down to Puerto Vallerta. I had intended to go down there with my girlfriend once, but she left me just before I bought the plane tickets, so I never bothered. I was in Juarez once.”

“Juarez, shit…” Tom said going on about whores & bad food.

“Well, it’s not anything like Juarez,” Allen explained as Gomer Pile might, “it’s like a paradise.”

I didn’t argue. I’m sure it must have been & it still stings a bit that I never made it down there. Especially on slow cool summer nights when I’m not to far from the ocean & the sea mist hangs heavy in the air.

The intense exhaustion started to settle as the moonshine wore out of my brain, but the steadiness with which I had been drinking the lager had kept my mind at an accelerating distance from clarity. I was still capable of playing poker, so when the cards came to the table, I stayed seated. It probably helped that Eric kept a steady layer of meats and corn on the hibachi. It was the first day of summer & blue smoke was rising off the deck of the cabin. Between every few hands someone would see to it that we all had a shot of whiskey & the game unraveled as the toasts got worse & worse.

When cards were no longer possible, Eric grabbed his guitar & we sang songs that started to sound better & it is at this point where the night became a short string of cloudy 3 to 4 second flashbacks and then nothing.

According to some reliable sources, I went down somewhere between 11 and 12. It had apparently started as sitting down & then turned into a slide & then a roll that landed me drooling on the floor. Willie, who’d just then begun to drink heavily, acquired the assistance of Allen & picked me up off the floor & set me on the couch. More guests were rolling in & out of the cabin then before. I am told of Greasers, a large bald young man with a long goatee & boots that they tell me resembled a skin-head, and two beautiful young girls; one muscular & beautiful, the other a short tight Italian girl with very small feet.

But I missed all of this & was a little sad about it when Will filled me in that next morning. He’d stayed up through all of it, drinking G&T’s & smoking cigarettes.

We brewed some coffee & took a walk down to the Lake & sat in the sun recalling strange memories of the night before. Chumming chicken livers & sealing off the cracks in the distiller so you didn’t get high off the fumes or lose any of the moonshine.

“Allen told me he was schizophrenic last night,” I said to Will.

“Yeah, he looked crazy. Did you see the way he was looking over at us when we were sitting across the deck. It was like he was just waiting for us to laugh at him or make fun of him for something.”

Willie had a point. I remembered this too. Allen kept staring at us, as though we were just waiting for the perfect chance to take a dig into him for a laugh. When it didn’t happen & he realized it wasn’t going to, he kept going on about how amazing it was that no body was fighting, that everybody was getting along, & no one was trying to hurt anyone else, emotionally or otherwise & the whole thing was very said if you considered the sad hell Allen must have been put through throughout his life. His confidence was buried so deep I wonder that he’ll ever find it & his loyalty & love for his brother tell me that there were some bloody noble battles fought in brotherly honor. & if nothing else, there was comfort there.

“Yeah, it was sad how it surprised him that nobody was assaulting him,” I said, then turned a smile & said, “he could be a pretty freaky mother fucker though.”

“I know…I just hope somebody keeps a short leash on him.”

“I know right. Oh, listen to this…while you were sleeping yesterday afternoon, Eric started to take pictures with that digital camera he got from the newspaper & he took one of Tom & Allen & when Allen saw it he said, ‘I look scary…I always look scary in pictures…I’m not kidding, even when I look in the mirror I feel like I’m just a scary looking guy.”

We both laughed, but it was nothing to laugh about. That poor soul was even scared of himself. The outside world came crashing down on his own psychosis so hard that even he couldn’t bear to be around himself. But it was a nice day & Willie & I decided we wouldn’t think too hard on this. So we kept it lighter & just retold stories the brothers told us, trying to get their voices down. & from time to time I’d think of the two young girls I’d missed & of all of the girls out there that only reminded me how long it had been since I remembered what it was like to hold someone I love & to be comfortable with where I was without wanting anything but more of what I already had.

The sun was hot on my back & we needed a change of scenery, so we walked back up to the cabin to see if Eric & Emily had woken. He was holding her on the couch. They were watching television with the volume turned down so low you could barely hear it. Eric laughed like a madman.

“Did you take Tim for a ride into Bugtussle?” he asked.

“It was mentioned, but we just went down to the lake.”

“Well, let’s head out to Bugtussel,” he said & jumped up, put his army green fishing hat on his head & called into the newspaper to make an appointed to interview two fisherman who fished a creek the next town over. Eric was working on a story about fisherman & their territorial feelings toward the habitats they fished. & so he would interview fisherman who fished different waters. I’m not sure what the lead was going to resemble in this story, but Eric had a fishing license pinned to his hat & I suppose that was the only press credential he needed.

“What the hell is Bugtussle,” I asked, feeling slightly embarrassed at having to ask and later feeling embarrassed for feeling awkward for ever thinking that I should.

“Oh, it’s a town not far from here,” Eric explained, “I took Will to see a little of it the last time he was down.”

We got into Eric’s small sedan, beat up, shaking. The tires rubbed the wheel wells on sharp turns, bumps, and dips in the road & each time they did, Eric would let roar that crazed laugh of his. The road wasn't paved and then there was no road, we drove a few hundred yards into the field up and over small hills filled with tall grass and scattered trees. The car came to a stop somewhere in the middle - or maybe just at the edge - of this huge field in the middle of the mountains.

"Well...this is it," he said. "This is Bugtussle."