So it started snowing pretty hard this morning, just when I crossed off of Route 201.
Found a dead deer out in the woods a bit earlier. Some asshole just left it behind. Believe that? I snipped off some of the meat with my pocketknife and stowed it in an old tee-shirt for later, but I’m not so great at making fires so I may not be able to cook it up proper. The truth is, I’m a pretty awful outdoorsman, ya’ know? Fucking boy scouts never looked so great to me, even if my Daddy was around long enough to sign me up. I never liked making baskets and go-carts and all that silly shit. I was more into spending my free time sneaking my Daddy’s porn mags and cutting out pictures of the biggest titties, gluing them on people’s faces in the tabloids. My mom would get pretty pissed off at me for that (“Why the shit does Joan Rivers have boobs on her head, ya’ little shit?”) but I told her that’s what those fancy rich guys and all them fake-ass movie stars deserved. They deserved to get titties pasted on their heads. What did they do to deserve anything else they got? Fuck if I know.
So here’s the deal: it’s cold as a dead man’s cock and I don’t have anywhere to go. A few hours back, I got the waitress (who had a big Jew nose) at the Starlight Diner to give me a day old biscuit and twenty minutes in a booth, just to warm my bones, but that was after a lot of begging. I don’t like begging ‘cause it makes me feel like a mooch, like a leech, like the kind of fella my Uncle Charlie was before they stuck him in the can for twenty five years. Uncle Charlie died in the clink, so fuck that noise. Moochin’ doesn’t get you anywhere. I’ll take what I earn. Sometimes you gotta earn the things you take before you get to takin’ them.
I’ve been here before. I know the game. Hell, I invented the game.
When I’m not sure where to go, I start following the train tracks. This town doesn’t have any train tracks, so that isn’t really an option. There’s something special about walking down the tracks, like something out of the old days, before men became walkin’, talkin’ pussies. Real men… they called ’em hobos. Yeah, that right there is the life for me. I don’t know much that amounts to much at all, but I know I was born a wanderin’ man, just like my pa. And a wanderin’ man can’t pretend to be anything else or he’ll look like a chump. Nothing I hate more than looking like a chump. Hear me knockin’?
No railroads, so the next best thing is to follow the cars. You see ten cars heading north and two cars heading south, and then you head north. Simple enough, right? That rule always served me proper. Wherever the cars go, so do the people. Wherever the people go… they got food, they got clothes, they got warm beds and pretty wives and cable television and the internets and air conditionin’ when it’s hot as sin. I like the finer things just the same as the rest… Don’t act like you don’t. Damned if I don’t deserve a little taste every now and then, too. I work my ass off, even though I got no paycheck to show for it.
Welcome to my peaceful little kingdom: standing on the side of this here snowy road, staring at a sign that says “Moose Crossing.” I wish I’d see a moose so I could check it off my bucket list. Never saw a moose, but I heard they’re as big as dinosaurs sometimes. If it let me get close enough, I’d jam one of my knives in its neck, let that shit spray all over the snow. Just so I can say I killed one and ate it. I’m big into always a’changin’ my bucket list. Never ate a Reuben sandwich. Never killed a kid, but that’s cause I got morals. Never had sex with a darkie, never voted for one neither. Never been to Disneyland. Never jumped out a plane. Never did a lot of things, but I reckon I’ve got a long way to go.
Fuckin’ righteous.
I count a string of three cars; one motherfucker, two motherfuckers, three motherfuckers that just missed getting all wrapped up in my world. There’s a blue Dodge caravan, a rusted out Cadillac, and a fancy lookin’ four-wheel drive Jeep. In the opposite direction, one car shoots by. It looks like it’s a mile or two away from totally shitting the bed. Probably belongs to somebody who lives on the bad side of the tracks and can’t afford to fix it.
In the same direction the three previous cars went, two more come rip-roarin’ down the road. One of them is a slick looking ride; a white Camaro with a vanity plate that I can’t catch with my eye because he’s burnin’ ass like a real tough guy. The next one is brand new and looks like it just pulled off the car lot. I don’t recognize the model, but it looks Japanese… the headlights are slanted.
Zing.
That there is one of my things. Every now and then, I’ll zing you, just so you don’t get sleepy on me. Look out for the zing, ya hear?
Another car comes by, haulin’ ass. Yep, the jury is in on which way I’m prancing my handsome ass next—towards the nicer cars, away from the shit boxes.
I listen to the click of my leather boots as I get movin’ again. They’re nice boots, probably the best I’ve ever had. Found these boots in a house a few towns over. They were some old folks, didn’t even have to be quiet when I climbed through the window. They didn’t hear me for nothin’. I probably could have walked right behind them, shouted boo, and they wouldn’t have blinked. Nothing like robbing old folks. They’re easy to spot; just look for cars in the driveway that look like they are driven once a week. Big, wide cars that look brandy-spankin’-new.
The boots were a bonus prize. I was only looking for some warm grub and I found a whole lot more.
Old fellow keeled over right off the bat. Didn’t even have to pull out my steel and show it to him like I usually do when somebody catches me in their crib. He was wearing this funny hat, looked a bit like a golfing hat of some sort, with a big pom-pom on top. Maybe it was some sort of kinky old fogey sex parade I walked in on, or maybe he just dressed like an asshole every dang day. Probably figured he was well retired, wringing his wrinkly ol’ hands while he watched television, thinking he had it all figured out.
Fuck that noise. He settled in and settled up, but he didn’t look like he deserved it just yet.
Mister-Wizard-lookin’ dude didn’t see me coming into his life. Remember that show? With the fella always making experiments in his garage? Then he’d bring the kids in and show them his experiments. I bet that wasn’t all he showed them (ZING!), if you know what I mean. Anyway, this old fellow—the one I stole the boots from—was wearing this dark blue sweater with a weird triangle shapes on it, kind of like something Mr. Wizard would have worn.
Holy shit, I thought. Did I kill Mr. Wizard when I tapped him on the shoulder? He looked dead. I’m not sure he actually died (who dies from getting tapped on the shoulder anyway?) but he wasn’t looking too hot when I moseyed on out the front door wearing his tan leather boots, a clippin’ and a cloppin’ up and down the street.
I bet you’re wondering about his old lady, aren’t you?
A gentleman never tells, and I’ll leave it at that. Zing.
I said that I’ll leave it at that, ya’ hear?
A fella like me says something borderin’ on mysterious like that, and your brain gets to churning real fast, don’t it? Well, let me tell you this… whatever it is you’re picturing inside your sick little head, it was a whole lot worse than that. Not the kind of thing I’d ever tell my Mama about, God rest her precious soul.
All I can rightly say is this: DAMN, THESE BOOTS LOOK GOOD ON ME.
Here I am, tossing my thumb out to passing traffic, hoping somebody will pick me up and bring a poor bugger into town, and I can’t stop staring at these kick-ass boots. It’s like they’re a part of me, sort of like I was born wearing them. There’s some saying I heard about tough guys who “died with their boots on,” something that gets bandied about when a man becomes a little bigger than just a man. I hope that I die with my boots on, and I don’t mean a met-a-for (or whatever it is those fancy college-thinkin’ boys call it). I mean that I want to die with my actual boots on. What I mean to say, is that these boots are something special and I plan to be buried in them. I don’t care if anybody comes to my funeral. I don’t really know anybody, anyhow. Mama is dead, Daddy is dead, and my uncle is dead.