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From West by Northwest.org
eBooks
Banjo Lane: Chapter One
By Norm Maxwell
Dec 9, 2005
It was a cold wet afternoon in mid-January and Hayes trudged along the road in the thin clothes he had been wearing when jailed last August. He had managed to hitch a ride to Cottage Grove, 12 miles south of Eugene. It was clear he was going to have to walk every step of the last five in the rain.
He was a small man, not yet thirty, and he had always avoided working for a living as it is a tremendous waste of time. While his body continued to age, his brain had been stunned at about age 15 from a continuous stream of airplane glue, cheap booze, dirt weed and good bud. For the last five years, high quality, locally produced, and reasonably priced methamphetamine was a major part of his life.
Hayes had been released from the county jail late that morning after serving four months for beating his girlfriend in the parking lot of her apartment complex in Springfield. He had rated a couple of add-on raps too. Brandy had moved while he was locked up so he couldn't find her and make her give him a ride in her old car to the house he had grown up in at the end of Banjo Lane.
Cletus, Hayes' father, was out of the country on yet another year long gig as a physical plant manager at a remote facility. Hayes planned to raise a fine crop of marijuana in the disused ten acres of brush in back of the the old house over the coming summer. Working a straight job is a complete loser. You have to get out of bed before you want to every day and somebody else gets every dime you make anyway.
There were still Christmas lights up and dried out trees with tinsel lying in yards of stunted houses as he squished by in his worn Nikes. He turned off on dead-end Banjo Lane and stopped for a minute. There was no traffic. No one was going anywhere. The past months behind bars had sapped his walking muscles and his legs ached. He had to crap too. It was no longer so much a matter of when as where.
The composition of housing on Banjo Lane had changed over the past decade. There were still some of the old do-it-yourself "fernow" houses built with pucky board and tar paper from the 60s. There were a few 10 by 50 foot trailers from the 70s as well as doublewide "mo-beel" homes left over from the 80s. On the corner of Banjo Lane, the old Peterson house had been bulldozed and a huge McMansion stood finished. It was just going up when he went to jail last.
It wasn't far to the homestead now. He picked up the pace and came around the last bend in the road and there sat his father's little house, dark and unloved under a naked oak and a couple of merchantable firs. It had the same blue paint job it did a quarter century ago when Hayes and his brother Zach were toddlers.
He walked through the missing gate of the drunken fence, up two steps and tried the front door. It was locked. He felt on top of the window casement and door frame for the key but it wasn't in the usual places. He checked the windows as he rounded the old house but they were all latched on the inside. On the back porch, he tried the door and then picked up a handy stick of firewood and broke a small pane above the door knob.
Reaching through the hole, he turned back the flimsy locks and let himself in, fumbling with his belt and tearing down his pants as he raced through the freezing house for the little bathroom.
His bowels evicted its last dose of institutional grease and starch as he was squatting towards the mossy toilet. He groaned with pain and relief as he sat on the frigid seat with his head in his hands. His innards gurgled. He was home. There was no toilet paper.
An hour later, the wood stove was putting out heat and Hayes' red Starmart shirt was drying out. There was a small pile of wood on the back porch. Cletus kept the electricty bill paid and so he switched on the pump in the shed that brought rusty water farting through the pipes to the house. All this was a refreshing change from being in jail. There were old familiar pictures on the wall and even a few happy memories before Cletus and his mother had divorced and Mom had moved to town.
Hayes needed to call his parole officer but the phone was disconnected. He would have to hike the five miles back to Cottage Grove. If he couldn't find the keys to Dad's car or truck, he would have to ride his old bicycle or walk. The PO was adament about his staying in contact and Hayes didn't want to go back to jail just yet.
Night came down hard and the rain was steady and almost sleet. Hayes opened cupboards and found a can of Spaghetti-Os along with a surprised nest of mice. His cooking skills were minimal but he could operate a mean can opener. There was one handy in the drawer beside the kitchen sink that had been there all his life. He twisted open the can and shook the contents into a sauce pan on the stove.
While Chef Boyardee heated, Hayes poked around the little house and found a half bottle of decent whiskey. A little more prying uncovered a small coffee can with five pounds of nickels, dimes and quarters. If the phone worked he could score a good high of meth with that much money. If he knew where Brandy had moved to, he could track her down and convince her to drop her kids at her mom's and come out here and drop her pants.
The rain increased on the tin front porch and a gust of wind came through the broken window of the back door. Hayes poured three inches of whiskey in the bottom of a Mickey Mouse tumbler from his childhood. The Spaghetti-Os were a little burned on the bottom but good though.
He was tired from the excitement of getting out of jail and walking all the way home from Cottage Grove. He went out the front door to pee off the porch and nearly fell over the rail. He had been alcohol free for four months and the whiskey was swiftly twisting his head.
Bags of garbage had been tossed in the yard for years and the neighborhood dogs and other wildlife had done a good job of ripping open the plastic and distributing the refuse around the yard. He breathed the wet air of freedom and caught a whiff of smoke from the chimney and a hint of dump smell from the soggy crap on the ground.
Hayes zipped his jeans and ricocheted off the door jamb into the living room. It was good to be home. He was going to stay out of trouble this time and hang around the old homestead and grow a fine cash crop this summer. No more stupid half-assed little punk crimes to finance his meth habit. He was going to keep a really low profile and take care of business. This time. Yes Sir.
He was fading fast and headed for his father's bed to crash. He managed to remove his worn out felony shoes and crawled between the icy sheets of Dad's bed fully dressed. He groped the bedside light out. He was looped enough that he had to keep a knee bent and one foot on the floor to keep the room from spinning.
He would check dear old Dad's shoe collection tomorrow. Their feet were about the same size. His head throbbed almost pleasantly. It was good to be home. The rain noise on the front porch made him feel happy and lonely at the same time. The wind soughed through the oak branches above the roof.
It was full daylight and there was nobody but his bladder to tell Hayes to get out of bed. He enjoyed the warmth of the old down comforter and the discretion to stay in bed until he was totally ready to get up and face the day. He was clearly going to have a small hangover but if he took his time getting vertical, it should be OK.
He slowly sat up on the side of the bed. He could see his breath in the uninsulated house so he wrapped the comforter around his shoulders. The floor was cold through his socks so he put on Dad's carpet slippers that poked from beneath the old box springs. Then he shuffled out to the front porch to relieve himself. His urine steamed and reeked of whiskey fumes as it pooled in the long neglected flower bed in front of the porch.
Hayes needed to call his PO today or there could be problems. He would see if he couldn't get one of Dad's cars going and drive to the little beer store on the edge of Cottage Grove and use the pay phone and buy some Olde English 800 in 40 ounce bottles. He could even buy cigarettes with his coffee can of new found wealth. There was no smoking in the county jail. Some people might have continued to march after a 120 day tobacco free stint but not Hayes. He was young enough that he was still immortal.
There was a big jar of Western Family instant coffee in the kitchen so Hayes put a kettle on the old kitchen range and cranked up the baseboard heaters. While he waited for the water to boil, he went through Cletus' closet and found a warm sweater and a pair of wellingtons that were only a little too big. He kept an eye out for valuables that could be converted to ready cash.
After his third cuppa, Hayes decided it was time to get busy and plan his day. He should call Linda K, his parole officer. Just his luck to draw Linda as his PO. She had absolutely no sense of humor when it came to domestic abuse on women. He had no doubt that she would put him back in jail if he gave her the slightest excuse. He must be just as nice as pie and always have the right answers for her. There was no doubt whatsoever that he was going to be peeing in bottles for drug testing too.
After a thorough search of the house for car keys, Hayes decided that there was nothing for it but to hotwire Dad's car or pickup. He walked out the back door and headed for the main barn where Cletus parked his rigs when he was away.
Behind the house was a small jumble of trashy travel trailers, filled with assorted junk that nobody had ever found the time or inclination to deal with. They had flat tires, expired license plates and leaky roofs. To one side of them was a little detached bunk house Cletus had built on ce-ment blocks for the boys when they were ten and twelve. It, too, was filled with stuff that nobody would ever use. When something broke or was of no use in the house, it got bannished out back and was forgotten about. Nobody had made a trip to the dump in years at the Loveless place.
The ass end of a Ford Fairlane stuck out of the brush 50 feet beyond the trailers. Hayes was mad at Cletus when he was 15 after his mom left and the logical thing to do was to pour a mixture of molasses and paint in the gas tank of Dad's car. The next logical step was to push the dead car out behind the house and let it return to nature. The glass was mossy and the interior was wasted. Packrats lived in it but the body was still solid. Some day he would invite some friends over and they would all get drunk and shoot the car. Maybe they would remove the plates and tow it over onto BLM land first. Maybe not.
He walked the 70 yards out to the old barn. The red Buick and green pickup sat side by side on the plank floor under the disused hayloft. The Buick was locked and had a locking steering column as well. Hayes focused on the old three quarter ton Chevrolet pickup. The driver's door opened and it had a simple ignition switch on the dash board. It took Hayes no more than ten minutes to remove the ignition switch and route run and start wires from its terminals as it dangled below the dash board.
The old truck's battery was way low but the engine caught just before the juice ran out. Hayes revved the cold V-8 and the barn filled with noise and smoke. He had wheels! No more walking like a little loser. The big bald tires of the 2-wheel drive truck spun as he banged across the muddy front pasture to the gravel driveway.
Hayes didn't have a driver's license any more. The old truck had broken tail lights and turn signals that worked when they felt like it. The plates were still valid but the rusted glass pack mufflers were loud. It was a good bet that any cop who saw the old heap on the road would pull it over for a look see. He needed to find the keys to the straight Buick.
With the can of chump change on the seat beside him, Hayes rolled for the beer store on the edge of Cottage Grove. The old three quarter ton had less than a quarter tank of gas and got really bad mileage. Money was too scarce to waste buying gasoline so he was going to have to hose the neighbors' cars at night. The car radio didn't work.
He grabbed high and roared the half mile to the stop sign at the beginning of Banjo Lane. The old truck sounded like a performance machine with its hollow glass packs as he slammed through the gears. The road to the Grove was empty and he flogged Dad's truck the five miles to the beer store on the edge of town.
The heater worked and the cab was comfortable as he parked the green machine in a back corner of the Minute Mart parking lot and disconnected the run wires. Hayes sat still as he composed his mind for the phone call to Parole Officer Linda K. He scooped up a fist full of quarters from the can and exited the truck.
One of the phone booths didn't work but the other did. "Hello--Ms Killion? This is Hayes Loveless. Checking in." The rain pattered on the smudged glass of the booth as Hayes slumped against the folding door and listened to his PO take charge of his life.
"Yes'm, I aim to look for work. I don't have a place to live. Stayed with friends last night. They don't have a phone. No, I haven't been drinking. I don't have a car or a driver's license. I can't get a phone until I have a place to live. I suppose I could get a cell phone. Never had one of those."
He bit his tongue as Linda told him that he was going to have to come to Eugene to submit to a urinalysis soon and that she wanted to see him in person once a week. He rolled his eyes as she contiued to talk about him getting a job--any job--as his number one priority.
After another five minutes of policy guidance, he flipped off the telephone saying, "Good bye, Mam. See you soon." He hung up the receiver upside down and stalked through the rain to the Minute Mart where he lightened his pockets for four 40 ounce bottles of chilled Olde English 800 and four packs of generic smokes. He would soon revert to rolling Top tobacco but he was going to splurge for now.
He sat in the truck and cracked the twist top of a 40 ouncer. The heady charcoal smell of liquid crack filled the cab. After looking to see nobody was watching, he guzzled down a quarter bottle and refitted the cap. Then he rolled down the window a bit and opened a pack of smokes, savoring the smell. The cigarette lighter in the dash board still worked and he lit up and enjoyed a long drag and felt the familiar bite and buzz of Olde English take hold.
He hadn't smoked in so long that his head thumped wickedly in short order. He butted the cigarette carefully for later and walked back to the phone booth, breathing the wet air gratefully. He was out, and by God he was going to party like he wanted to regardless what that bitch Linda K had in mind.
The quarters dinged as he dropped them in the slot and dialed Scary Larry's number. After a few rings an answering machine picked up and Larry's voice said: "Your dime--Leave a message."
"Hey Larry, this is Hayes. I'm home again and I'm behind the eightball." In other words, he wanted to score an eighth of an ounce of meth.
He hung up the receiver right side up this time and got back in Dad's truck and twisted the run wires together and touched the start wires briefly. The warm engine sprang to life and Hayes looked around carefully to see if any cops were around before engaging the clutch and rolling smoothly out of the parking lot. He knew better than to drive all the way into the Grove with the legally challenged pickup so he returned home to the little house under the gaunt oak. The gas gauge had perceptably fallen in the short drive to the beer store. The needle wagged back and forth constantly, but it had gone down.
He looked in the rear view mirror and put the bottle of piss-yellow Olde English between his legs and twisted off the cap. With no cars visible on the road, Hayes tipped up the forty ouncer and chugged while looking sideways around the glass and driving. The world was a better place. He re lit his generic cigarette as he turned in Banjo Lane. Despite its rough exterior and powerful thirst, the old Chevy ran well for its age. Its exhausts boomed as he downshifted for the driveway. He parked it in front of the house and pulled the wires apart.
The snipe fit in the hole in the top of Smokey's hat on the dash and he gathered his bag of beer under one arm. The coffee can of was lighter after his shopping spree. He was going to have to glean Dad's stuff for things to sell when this trove ran out.
Hayes was feeling the liquid crack as he put his bottles in the fridge and gathered up the last of the wood from the front porch and started a fire with the aid of old newspapers and cardboard. It smoked and sputtered for a while and then the wind went just right across the chimney top and air drafted through the open stove door and the fire took. All he needed now was some poon tang and good meth.
Dad's easy chair was calling him and he sat down and kicked the wellingtons off his feet and nursed the last half of the bottle. He let loose a charcoal filtered belch and settled into the Lazyboy. He was hungry but it just wasn't worthwhile to get up. Besides, beer has nutritional value. He drained the suds from the bottom of the clear glass and dropped it on its side beside the chair. Linda K could kiss his ass. He would grow the finest crop of dope anybody ever saw this summer and just enjoy life.
In an hour or so, Hayes stirred and carefully moved his head back to top center--slowly, so his neck wouldn't break. The house was warm and he decided to look for the keys to the old Buick. They had to be be around somewhere. He shifted his stocking feet on the hassock and gave it some thought. Dad probably didn't take the keys with him to Timbuktu.
Dad owned a pair of pistols that could be pawned or used to rob 7/11 stores. One was an old Colt Single Action Army made before World War II and the other was a .45 auto souvinered from the military. If Hayes could find the stash, he could sell them and buy drugs. Dad might be irate when he came home, but it would be too late.
The Mossberg 20 gauge stood in the broom closet by the back door. It was an old turnbolt model with the bolt removed. Two shells were visible in the gun's magazine. Without the bolt, the gun was worthless. With the bolt, it wasn't worth much. You'd think the bolt would be near the gun so Dad could slip it into the back of the receiver when he needed it.
Hayes lurched to his feet and padded onto the porch to recycle some Olde English. The sun was going down and it was already cold. A neglected rose bush bobbed slightly under the golden shower.
Where would Dad hide something of value? Cletus knew from long experience that if Hayes was out of jail, he would sell anything that wasn't nailed down to buy drugs. He wandered about the house looking for hiding places.
The desk had a few .45 ACP cartridges rolling in the pencil drawer. The old Sperry Rand copy of the 1911 had to be around somewhere. He had shot it a few times and remembered the buck and roar of the old sidearm. Linda K. had made it clear that he had no legal right to touch a firearm ever again. He could carry it with him while driving without a license and convert any routine traffic stop into a rolling felony. "Fuck you, Pig! You'll never take me alive!"
He broke open another 40 ouncer and took a big slug before putting it back in the fridge. The Nash Kelvinator was empty except for his beer and jars of old mustard, pickels and rancid catsup with green and blue mold on the bottom shelf. Opening the door was enough to start the old electric motor under the appliance wobbling to life.
The little house was packed with boxes of junk and paper. Looked like they would all have to be sifted through for valuables. That would take time. Well, he had nothing but.
Hayes lit a smoke and sat back down. Dad collected coins. There must be some hidden throughout the house. The Buick keys were a must. He needed low profile wheels with good gas mileage to get around to sell stuff and score.
He was getting the hang of smoking again. Cletus didn't like smoking in the house but he was in Iraq making big bucks as a civilian contractor. Maybe he just would never come home and Hayes would inherit a lot of money and the old hacienda on Banjo Lane. He was sure his brother, Zach, wouldn't want the house. He wondered what his dad was worth as he stubbed his butt halfway smoked.
Canned beans were on the menu tonight. Hayes stirred the pot with a big spoon as he wandered around looking for ratholed valuables. Close examination of the broom closet produced the bolt for the shotgun tucked on a ledge above the door on the inside.
He brought the rusty fowler into the kitchen and inserted the bolt through the back of the piece, carrying a round home and locking it. Hayes pointed it at the wall and fantacized that he had the drop on a screw at the county jail. He was no longer a little punk. He was a little punk with a gun. He visualized the screw pleading for his life and then lowered the weapon, put it in the corner and stirred the beans. The 20 gauge wasn't worth much. He'd have to do better than this. He could hacksaw the Mossberg down into a clumsy gat. Pistols were cool.
He sat at the kitchen table eating beans out of the sauce pan and drinking OE 800. The TV was on. You could sort of see Channel 13 but you could only listen to Channel 9. There was no possibility of selling the 25 year old television. It was brand new when he was in diapers. Zach and he watched Sesame Street on it together.
Burping beans and beer, Hayes put the pan in the sink and took a look underneath. There was a jumble of cleaning agents and dish soap and brushes but nothing of value. Yes there was. Hayes removed the roll of paper towels from the hanger inside the door cand carried it through the pantry to the bathroom. He had butt wipe.
The woodstove was cooling and there was a little pile of coals left, visible through the murky glass of the old Fisher. He stepped out on the back porch and picked up a gnarl of seasoned apple wood. He really was going to fix the broken pane in the back door. Soon. The lump of apple wood barely fit in the stove. It smouldered briefly and then crackled alight.
Hayes wanted money. Like the song goes: Money Changes Everything. Life is like a shit sandwich in that the more bread you got, the less shit you gotta eat. He had no real work experience and even less enthusiasm for looking for a hated realjob like Linda K wanted him to. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of just forgetting about his PO and fading off into the sunset. He would grow hundreds of pounds of good dope this summer and have to contend with very little shit in his sandwich.
He hefted cardboard boxes filled with paper until he found one that weighed more than it should. Placing it on the kitchen table, he felt through it hoping to find a pistol on the bottom. His hand closed around something round and cold. He brought out an old Indian artifact that he had found on the way home from school almost twenty years ago. It was a ground basalt boat building tool with a hammer on one end and a cross between an adze and a maul on the other.
Hayes had been so happy when he had found the thing in the fresh cut where a cat had widened the first corner of Banjo Lane. Other kids he knew had found arrowheads and pestles in gardens and other disturbed earth but nobody he knew had ever found such a unique piece as this. What was it worth? He had no idea who would buy such a thing. Guns were the ticket. You could always turn a bad ass looking pistol.
The next suspiciously heavy box was more like it. His groping hand came up with a tarnished silver cup almost full of pre-1964 silver coins. Score! The small blackened cup had some hard to read engraving on it. Turning it to the light, Hayes could just make out: Hayes Blaine Loveless July 1, 1978.
The coins were worth more than their face value. He would have to get the Buick going so he could drive into Eugene and sell them at a numismatic shop. The baby cup with his name on it would divert any possible suspicion that the coins weren't his to sell! You had to show ID in order to sell any thing at the Eugene/Springfield second hand shops. He would keep the cup and always carry old coins to pawn shops in it. The wanna-be professional criminals at the Lane County Jail would be proud of his flawless logic.
After shaking down another dozen boxes of paper trash, Hayes decided he had enough for one night. A draft blew through the broken pane with the suggestion of rain on it. There must be a roll of duct tape around somewhere that he could use to block up the hole. It was getting old crunching over the broken glass too.
Hayes took his 40 ouncer and sat in the lazyboy with his feet to the fire. A spare coffee cup served as an ash tray. He thriftily saved the butts so he could field strip the tobacco out of them and roll jailhouse cigarettes when he ran out of tailor mades.
Car lights wavered through the living room side window up Banjo Lane. This was an unusual event as the Loveless house was at the end of the road. Hayes turned out the light and moved rapidly to the kitchen where he took up his father's shotgun. He verified that a round was chambered and the safety off. "Fuck you, Pig," he muttered, "You'll never take me alive." He would have peed his pants and come out with his hands up if the cops surrounded the place, but it sounded tough.
An old white sedan rolled up to the house and parked by Dad's truck. The driver's door opened and slammed but no interior light came on. Foot steps moved with a purpose across the little parking lot, avoiding the yard and up the steps.
"Hayes, you in there, bro?" It was Scary Larry.
"Yeah, Larry! Come on in."
Hayes stood the shotgun in a corner and turned on the light. The door opened and a tall, lean man in a black leather jacket stepped in and closed the warped door behind him.
Scary Larry was a rare bikeless biker. Not much past 50, his hair was in a long ponytail with a ZZ Top beard. He dressed like a biker and had a Harley Davidson sticker on his car's back window. He read Easy Rider magazine, or at least looked at the pictures, and talked about all the chopped shovels, pans and flatheads he had owned in the past. He had a HD logo tatooed on his chest. He knew all the key words and phrases but nobody had ever seen Larry on so much as a Honda. He did have excellent connections for the finest crystal meth you could hope to score. Like Hayes, he couldn't spell "job" with three tries and a dictionary. He called everybody "bro" because he thought all bikers talked like that.
"When did you get out, my man?" Larry bear hugged Hayes and looked him up and down. "Life treating you OK? Heard about you going down for beating Brandy again. She'll be back. She digs it." He hung his jacket on a hook by the door and stood by the fire.
"Got out yesterday. My PO doesn't know I'm here. I'm gunna lay back and grow dope this summer." Hayes stated this like someone else might say he was going to get a summer job before going back to school. It never even crossed his mind that the maximum number of people who can keep a secret is one.
"Boss plan!" said Larry. "I can help. I know all about growing dope. I remember the time I grew a million dollar's worth of killer green bud on the American River in California years ago. It's the right time of year to start preparing the site."
He looked at Hayes' Olde English bottle on the floor. "Share the wealth, Brother!"
Hayes obligingly fetched a fresh bottle from the fridge. Larry held the cold 40 in his hand and twisted the top. He inhaled the aroma of the cheap drunk and sighed, "Breakfast of Champions."
He chugged a mighty draught and wiped his long moustash with the back of his hand. "Good for what ails you."
"Yep."
They sat in the lazyboy and overstuffed chair and regarded the fire. The can of beans interacted with the Olde English and Hayes fired a three second burst, loud and long. It stank too. Bad.
"Talkin' out your ass." Commented Larry.
"Yep."
"So how many plants you want to grow this summer?"
Hayes thought about it. There were at least ten acres of pasture that had gone to seed out behind the barn. Dad used to raise a couple cows for beef but he hadn't done that in years and scotch broom had swiftly repossessed the ferral ground. If you didn't overplant it, the broom would conceal the dope from the annual helicopter patrols of the Lane County Sheriff's Department.
"Maybe a dozen really good plants."
"That would do the trick all right." Larry nodded. "You want to be sure and minimize traffic where you're growin' so you don't have trails all over hell for the pigs to see from the air."
He hauled out his big leather wallet on a chain and opened it. Inside were a few wilted dollar bills, a wad of paper and a metal smoking pipe with a small ziplock bag. Hayes perked up immediately. Larry packed the crusty metal bowl with a green dope bud and put a generous pinch of white powder on top of that.
"Fire that up, bro." Larry handed over the pipe with a blue bic lighter. And Hayes did. He inhaled just as hard as he could and held the smoke until he gagged while Larry sucked down the rest of it. In a minute the meth combined with the dope and Olde English to produce an incredible buzz complete with sound effects. This was the life. Complete freedom to get as high as you wanted. He needed to screw Brandy. He wanted to take something apart and maybe even put it back together!
"Wow! Been a long time, Dawg."
"No doubt, bro."
"I want to shoot up some good crystal."
"That can happen."
The stove was really putting out the heat now that the apple wood was fully involved. Rain sheeted down and the wind blew stoutly in the night. The two were warm and dry and unsupervised. They smoked generic cigarettes and Larry rambled on about the fastest Sportster in the world that he had built in California. Years ago.
"I'm going to blow off my PO." Hayes declared.
"This is Lane County, bro. It's not like they have room to keep you in jail."
"Right on! I'll stay out of sight and grow a hundred pounds of good bud this summer and live like a king. I'll get Brandy to come out here and fuck and suck until the cows come home and I'll find the keys to Dad's car so I can get around without being hassled. I'll find stuff to sell and sleep in every morning. None of that loser job crap for this kid."
"You're a man after my own heart, bro."
Hayes was really wired up on low order crank now. It was a perfect night for stealing gas. Dark so nobody could see you. Windy so nobody could hear you, and wet so nobody in their right mind would be out of the house anyway. It was a Thursday night as well so all the little wage slaves would be in bed resting up to trudge wearily off to the salt mines in the morning. "Larry, let's go hose some cars."
Larry considered the idea. He was no stranger to the oklahoma credit card and it certainly was an ideal night for the sport. He had three dollars, a little change and a back seat full of beer cans. He was out of food stamps. He did have a small inventory of meth that he could sell if he didn't party it away first.
His old school bus had a stone empty gas tank. It was parked beside Big Barbara's house. Big Barbara was a woman who'd never leave you and if she did, so what? He was getting tired of her shit and it was time to be moving on down the road. Every time she carped at him about helping around the house or getting a job or some other establishment bullshit, he was reminded that his GMC hippy bus had no gasoline. Its fifty gallon tank was too cavernous to even consider paying to fill. Money was for drugs and beer and other things that could be had in no other way.
"Shrewd idea, bro. I've been planning to part ways with Big Barb for some time now. I need some gas to move my bus. I'll wait til she's at work and split."
This being settled, Hayes found a pair of empty five gallon gas cans on the back porch. They were made of plastic so they would make little noise. Larry had a nice syphoning hose in his car trunk as well as a two and a half gallon can.
Hayes put on his old felony shoes and a black sweat shirt and borrowed a dark Kellog, Root and Brown baseball cap that his dad had brought home and never worn. Larry tied a mostly black Harley bandana over his head.
"We'll drive to the Grove and steal gas over by the high school." decided Larry. "It's pretty dark back there and nobody should be out tonight. We don't wanna piss your neighbors off right away. My car's close to empty so we can fill it up if pickins are good."
The drugs and excitement made Hayes have to crap in the worst way and so he voided alternating solid and semi-solid discharges in the cramped and damp bathroom.
"My God, bro, turn on the fan or something. That stinks all the way out here."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
An hour later they shared the last of Scary Larry's 40 ouncer and dropped it with a clink in the back seat of his Fairmont. It was quiet out and everything was wet. The gas thieves stayed in the shadows and looked for big American cars to hose.
Somebody had parked a jacked-up Suburban with oversized wheels along the street with its locking gas caps in a dark penumbra from the street light. Larry felt a rubber filler pipe behind the quarter panel and sliced it in half with a razor sharp folding knife. He passed the knife to Hayes and deftly threaded a small diameter hose into the gas tank. He blew experimentally through the hose and could tell the tank was nearly full. He sucked daringly and the fuel flowed. He could hear it pouring in the empty gas can over the background rain noise.
Hayes hadn't been idle and had managed to cut the filler hose to the second gas tank. Water ran down the inside his sleeve. He closed the blade on the Buck knife and handed it to Larry.
It took nearly five minutes for the first can to fill and Hayes moved the hose to the empty five gallon. Scary Larry took the full can and moved silently half a block to empty it into his old Ford.
It rained steadily and nobody interrupted their work. No dogs barked and Larry brought back half a five gallon when the car would take no more. They drained the rear tank and topped off all three jugs with most of the front. Somebody was gunna be pissed in the morning.
Hayes felt the Suburban's tires and wheels. They were just worn enough that they didn't feel worth stealing. If they had been brand new, he and Larry would have had the lug nuts off and traded the car for Dad's truck. They would have come back with a hydraulic jack and four ce-ment blocks and given the battered Suburban the "concrete wide oval" treatment. You could always sell Bubba truck tires on Chevrolet rims. Oh well. They gathered their gear and loaded the full jugs in the trunk of the Fairmont and drove away.
The little car had a good muffler and the lights all worked so they drew no attention as they eased out of town. They were wet and adrenaline boosted their high. They were smug in the satisfaction of having ripped off a citizen. The Minute Mart was closed as they left the Grove.
"Yee Haw!" exulted Hayes. "We bad, We bad!"
He burped gasoline fumes and lit a cigarette, handed it to Scary Larry and lit another.
"Good Scene, bro." Larry's leather jacket was wet and his beard was sodden. He stepped on the accelerator as they cleared the city limits sign.
They were back in the little house at the end of Banjo Lane enjoying the heat from the mature hardwood coals in the Fisher. Their clothes steamed as they passed the last 40 ouncer and enjoyed the warm fuzzy feeling of a theft well done while high. Larry loaded up another pipe.
"Let me hold the gas we scored tonight, bro. I need to move my bus and I never have any gas when Big Bitch pisses me off. Next time, I'll have 12 gallons and I can just leave."
Hayes nodded. It was going to cost Larry.
"The TV doesn't work very well. I'm gunna take it apart and fix it."
For some reason, the ingestion of methamphetamine fosters the hallucination that things can or need to be taken apart and fixed. It sponsors the even worse hallucination that the user suddenly has the ability to repair mechanical or electrical appliances. There are millions of cardboard boxes across the country filled with pieces of household appliances that have been taken apart and will never be reassembled. Eventually the boxes are thrown away. Perhaps this is a good thing. A lot of household junk is reduced and eliminated in this manner.
Hayes got some screwdrivers from the tool drawer in the kitchen and started in on removing the back of the old Hitachi. Scary Larry looked on the back porch for more wood and found only chunks of bark where the stack had been.
"Hey bro, got any more wood for the stove?"
"Should be some under a blue tarp behind the porch."
Larry shrugged on his leather jacket with the HD logo on the back and ventured outside. The rain was taking a break. A couple minutes later and he was back with a double arm load of semi dry oak. A big limb had come crashing down behind the house a few years ago and Cletus had cut it up with his old chain saw and laid it by.
Larry dropped his load in the wood box and crammed the biggest piece into the maw of the stove as Hayes tinkered. Televisions store an impressive electrical charge even when they are unplugged.
"We're out of beer, bro."
"Got some 7 Crown in the kitchen."
Scary Larry located the half bottle of whiskey by the stove and poured generous slugs in coffee cups. He handed Hayes the black one with KRB in gold leaf and took the one with the teddy bears for himself.
They lit smokes and drank Dad's booze. The alcohol and dope they had consumed was counteracting the low grade crank Larry had put on top of the bud in his hash pipe. Hayes lost interest in fixing the TV. The spread at 1234 Banjo Lane is a long narrow lot of marginal bottom land up against the beginning of foothills of second growth fir belonging to the Bureau of Land Management.
It is all that remains of a century plus old donation land claim that was staked out by a Civil War veteran as a reward for faithful service. It didn't cost much for the Federal Government to give away land roamed by the Calapooya before the English could pour out of Canada and occupy it.
Eventually the Government Land Office got around to surveying the area and tied the cedar posts and worn out rifle barrels the old sergeant used to monument his corners into the official Willamette Meridian survey.
The original homesteader had plowed the flatter portions of the black gummy soil and raised hogs and wheat and children. He hunted the deer and elk and planted orchards. He cut timber when he needed it and his sons sawed it into lumber or split it into puncheon.
The original cabin had been built somewhere near the current house. It had been used as a sty after the new house, built with lumber, nails and glass windows, was erected before the 20th Century.
The old man had divided his original 640 acres and given it to his sons and recorded all these transactions down at the Lane County Courthouse. The sons had in turn split their shares yet again or sold the land for ten dollars an acre. Some of them became loggers and they all worked for someone else as their small land holdings wouldn't make a living and it was no longer possible to just move west as Dad had done.
Indian trails got bigger and evolved into wagon roads--dusty when dry and knee deep when wet. The old man died and was buried in the Silk Creek Cemetery and time accelerated relentlessly. His youngest son fought in the Spanish American War and a passel of great grandsons served in the War to End All Wars.
Eugene grew to 20,000 people and airplanes landed within current city limits. The Great Depression dragged along and land wasn't worth much. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States.
Lane County's young men waited for the recruiting office to open or the draft board to notify them, according to their nature.
The US never won a major engagement in the Pacific until the Battle of Midway and the Japanese never won one after. Hitler bit off more than he could chew and the Allies dragged him down. The Japanese finally saw the light--the blinding light-over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and surrendered.
The young men came pouring back to Lane County. Some failed to return and a few liked what they saw when they were stationed in California and demobilized where there is no winter.
The old sergeant's cedar posts fell or were burned over but his rifle barrels held true the DLC's corners.
Nobody really wanted to live out of Cottage Grove just so they could travel to town to work so the little houses scattered over the claim stood vacant or were occupied by folks who got by without full time jobs and didn't want to live too close to civilization.
Most roads were graveled after the war and pavement was creeping out from Eugene. Electricity was a fact of life, even in the sticks.
Not a lot changed on the Donation Land Claim for the next thirty years. Douglas firs reclaimed the fallow fields and grew big. The Baby Boom generation started. These children held hands with grandparents who had traveled by wagon and even fought Indians. A very few Civil War veterans still drew breath.
Lane County became one of the biggest producers of old growth softwood logs in the world and the good times rolled. Everybody benefited, from the timber barons who owned the stands to the working stiffs in the mills to the service economy--even the school districts got their fair shares.
Then, suddenly, people wanted to live out of town--but not too far. Even towns like Cottage Grove were getting crowded. The mega cities of Southern California spewed forth thousands and hundreds of thousands of people moving north to Oregon. Most of them wanted to live "out in the country" and five minutes from town.
Oregon land use laws are about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. You can make a lot of money by dividing real estate from one lot into two. Let's say you start with a ten acre tax lot worth a round figure of 100,000 dollars. If you can divide it in two, each lot is worth at least 100,000 dollars. If you can get away with splitting the five acre lots in half, they are worth the same as the original 10 acre unit.
There is lots of money to be made out of lots. There are many incentives to violate land use law and not one red cent to be made defending it. An entire caste of developers' minions known as "consultants" came into being. They make huge livings greasing the skids for developers with the county planning department and running interference on watchdog land use groups.
Returning to the present day, it isn't hard to see what happened to the Civil War vet's DLC. Cletus' little house sat on the last sliver of the original claim with BLM timber on one side and a hundred meter buffer to the first McMansion on the other.
An old fence loosely defined the Loveless land. The cedar posts were gray and the field wire was brown with age and crushed down in places where people felt the need to cross from time to time. The entire fence was held up periodically by steel fence posts driven into the clay with the top strand wired to them. The fence had been built long before Hayes was born and he remembered it no differently than it was since he and his brother played Cowboys and Indians around the place.
The sergeant's wife's dream house with the glass windows had burned down around 1950. It was pretty worn out by then. The cabin/sty had collapsed before that and been used for stovewood. The end of the road had reverted to fir trees and puckerbrush for ten years before somebody bought the last forty of the old DLC and built the little blue house on it.
In the mid 70's the owner managed to split the forty several ways after crossing a few palms with silver and sold Cletus the original remnant of the DLC using the old fence to legally describe the parcel.
The ancient barn out back, was considerably older than the little house. It was a blend of vernacular construction with rough sawn old growth and machine made nails. It was covered with hand split western red cedar shakes, covered with lichen. It was built closer to the First World War than the Second. It showed no trace of paint and was still solid for all its neglect.
If you kept going away from the house, past the barn, you came to a sad, six acre pasture with an open gate imprisoned by blackberry vines. The pasture was overrun with scotch broom and dense with thickets in the corners. There were a few great apple trees in the margins that were long forgotten by everybody except the deer and bear.
Hayes didn't know or care, but he was a very distant relation to the Union sergeant who had patented the land. This, then, was the Loveless place.
It was Sunday morning about 10 o'clock and Hayes was driving Scary Larry's white Fairmont as chase car behind the lumbering school bus that Larry had lived in, off and on for 20 years.
The two had reasoned it out that it would be best to move the bus on a Sunday morning when traffic was light and cops were few. The old GMC had no working lights. The license plate was long expired and Larry saw no reason to drop twenty dollars for a paper trip permit. Twenty dollars could buy three gallons of muscatelle on sale at Bi-Mart.
Of course Scary Larry's bus had no automobile insurance. Its California license plates were black with yellow letters and attracted attention. The thirty-footer had most of its seats removed and been painted brown with bucket and brush so it would blend into a woodland background. The flatland machine was powered by a small six cylinder motor and any hill slowed it to a crawl. There was a big Harley Davidson sticker on the window of the rear door emergency exit.
Big Barbara had traveled to Portland to hang with her sister over the weekend and Larry decided the planets had aligned for him to ditch the bitch and find something half his age and weight. No point in talking about it-nothing was going to change.. just weigh anchor and silently steal away. Big Barb would figure it out pretty damn quick when she got home.
Ever since Barbara had blimped out beyond 250, Larry couldn't fantasize hard enough to make the sex worth while. Time to move on.
The plan was to drive the bus via back roads to the Loveless place and park it in the barn. The principals had hammered out a verbal agreement whereas Larry would live in the barn and help cultivate the coming marijuana crop while keeping Hayes going with a steady supply of meth.
Larry topped a hill and started down Fox Hollow Road. The engine quit smoking so much and the bus rolled almost silently. The worn tires hissed softly on the wet pavement. They would follow Lorane Highway into Lorane and then turn east on the Cottage Grove-Lorane Highway, climb the hill and descend to Banjo Lane.
The underpowered bus hobbled along under its own tonnage and the burden of Larry's worldly goods. There was a moldy king sized mattress in the very back and piles of clothes on the floor. An extensive collection of VCR porno tapes with titles like: Butt Bang III and Lesbian Lust filled cardboard cartons behind the driver's seat. A small generator powered the TV/VCR set up when the bus was out of extension cord range of free electricity. Dozen and hundreds of pennies and .22 cartridges littered the recycled shag carpeting. The GMC/Bluebird had a complete galley with a household refrigerator. Years of grease and dirty dishes were everywhere . Empty Tokay bottles clanked as the bus lurched around corners. A heavy wood stove with a rusty pipe out a side window gave the bus that "Back to the 60s" look. Years ago someone had painted a peace symbol over the original hand powered STOP sign that swung out from beneath the driver's window with the pull of a lever.
A rigid Harley frame sat in a cardboard box. The numbers were filed off and it had been painted rattlecan black. Larry was going to build the most righteous chop anybody ever saw. Just any day now.
Several grubby ice chests contained Larry's meth cooking equipment. Like most cooks these days, he used the new cold method which utilized jumbo plastic drink cups from AM/PM stores or 7/11s. Larry could brew up an ounce or two of pretty good meth that worked fine when smoked in a pipe, with or without reefer.
The bus might as well have had PLEASE BUST ME stenciled in two foot letters down both sides of its subdued hull.
The Sunday Morning strategy was sound. The token force of Oregon State Troopers and Lane County Deputies on duty was busy running speed traps on Interstate-5 in order to pay salaries to run speed traps to pay salaries to run speed traps. The big bus rolled through the back roads to Lorane under the radar and labored up the winding hill towards Cottage Grove.
Hayes got a steady whiff of burning oil from behind the GMC as it slowed to a crawl on the moderate incline. Larry continued to down shift until they were moving at 20 mph. Private and federal timber lands bordered both sides of the CG-Lorane Highway. A Porcshe Boxster shot around them both on a questionable straight stretch.
The brakes on the bus worked if pumped with vigor. You wanted to plan your stops well in advance. The hand brake would hold the bus on a pretty steep grade if it were at the halt.
Scary Larry's mobile mansion was accustomed to remaining stationary for years at a stretch. When the time came to relocate, Larry would round up a car battery, some gasoline with a can of starter fluid, and the 235 cubic inch six cylinder always cranked up with ease. The Diehard from Cletus' pickup was on duty today.
Larry had taken anything that was his or what he wished to confuse for his from Barbara's small house in the hills south of the "South Hills" in Eugene. He had thrown a few armloads of residue from the past couple years of living with Big Barb on the floor of the bus and it was moving day.
The big brown bus left a big brown spot alongside the house where it had been parked the last couple years with six deep holes where the tires settled in during the rainy seasons.
Hayes signaled electrically as the little convoy made the turn onto Banjo Lane. Scary Larry made no pretense of signalling at all.
Dierdre Devereaux-McCally was unlocking her new Lexus with Oregon license plates, when the smoking bus heeled through the corner and grumbled past the McCally driveway at a walk. She was flaunting designer spandex and getting ready to drive into the Grove and work out at the spa before a massage. Her platinum ponytail stuck through the back of her green baseball cap with oversized bill. Dierdre and her new third husband, Ken, had just moved up from The Valley and had a custom built million dollar house on one corner of the Union sergeant's DLC. It was tastefully screened from the unwashed masses on the main road by a picket of 20 foot tall fir trees transplanted last year.
The Devereaux-McCallys were aware that the Tobacco Road house at the end of the lane was no longer deserted and the increased traffic of junk automobiles was distressing and reduced property value.
She was almost 50 but looked more like 30 thanks to extensive expensive So Cal plastic surgery and augmentation. Larry slowed the bus still further, cranked opened the main doors and wolf whistled.
Diedra took a look at Scary Larry and got a glimpse of his Hustler centerfold wallpaper and made out a faded bumper sticker on a window that read: Save an Antelope--Bag a Bagwhan.
She rendered an artificial smile and a half wave. There goes the God damn neighborhood, she thought. Charley Manson drives a school bus. Maybe we can get more trees planted along the front. This would be such a nice place if it weren't for all these inbred Oregonians. Maybe we can buy the house at the end of the road.
The bus groaned away in a blue haze and some other loser in a heapy white car smiled and waved. Diedra got in her polar ice Lexus and locked the doors.
The bus sat in the mud with its rear end facing the barn door. It was time for Hayes to move the Buick one way or another. It was too tight a fit to back the bus into the barn with the red car there. He wanted to find the keys so that he didn't have to destroy the locking ignition. He valued the straightness of his father's car and if he busted up the steering column, a cop might notice just such a detail while wandering by in a parking lot.
"Whatcha gunna do, bro?"
Hayes circled the car. He had shaken down every hiding place he could think of in the house and failed to find the car keys or pistols.
"I'll bet Dad put a magnetic key box under the car somewhere. He always believes in backup. I'm going to jack the car up on blocks and go over every inch underneath it with a flashlight."
Within the hour the Buick's Goodyears were perched on concrete blocks and Hayes was examining every nook and cranny between chassis and sheet metal. The exhaust system sported a shiny new muffler. Scary Larry leaned on a barn wall, sucking on a half bottle of warm tokay and offering encouragement. Tokay Is OK til payday.
The rough planks of the floor were uncomfortable as he writhed on his back from under the trunk of the sedan and worked forward. He carefully felt on top of the gas tank. Nope. He slithered along under the whole automobile and was about to give up in disgust when his probing fingers felt a little tin box on the inside of the front bumper.
"Bingo!"
"You find it, Bro?"
"You got it, Dawg."
Hayes pried the magnet loose from the bumper and shook the hide-a-key box. He was rewarded by a tinny rattle. The rusty box thumbed open with an effort and Hayes held two keys close in front of his eyes under the car.
"I'm in business now!"
"Far out, Bro. I'm happy for you. Did you see the way that blonde babe at the beginning of the road looked at me? You can tell she wants me. Did you check out her balcony? She's got tits out to here!" He exaggerated with one hand while maintaining control of the tokay with the other. "Women are always turned on by hard core bikers like me."
"I think she's married Dawg, but hey--go for it."
Hayes slid out from under the car and cupped a pair of keys marked GM in his hand. He strode to the driver's door of the Buick and inserted a key and the inside door lock knob popped up. The door opened effortlessly.
Cletus had bought the car brand new and while it was now 20 years old, it was of very low mileage as it was parked a year at a time in the barn. Sometimes Cletus would stay home for six months and sometimes he would ship out for another gig almost immediately. The car was unremarkable in every way and a cop would look right at it and look away and forget it--it was that straight.
Hayes used Larry's handyman jack to lower the Special to the deck. Larry stabilized the jack with both hands and a foot as one corner teetered on the five foot handyman and Hayes removed the ce-ment block. It was a lot like work but the car soon sat on its underinflated tires without mishap.
"Let's see if she'll start." Hayes sat in the driver's seat and unlocked the passenger door for Larry.
"Boss ride, bro."
"I remember when Dad bought this car. He had just come back from working on an Army base in Japan. He took me and Mom and Zach all the way to Portland in the old car and we drove to a lot and he let Mom picked out the color. He had made a deal over the phone. Then we drove to Chucky Cheese for lunch. Mom and Dad took turns driving home." Hayes almost smiled. He twisted the ignition and the motor turned over for five seconds before it caught. "Hot Damn!"
"Let's hear it, bro!."
Motor revving wasn't very satisfactory due to the new Midas muffler. Hayes put it in gear and patched out of the barn and into the mud. He did a few doughnuts in the boggy area between house and barn and then blasted for the pavement of Banjo Lane.
The street tires of the Buick almost made it to the parking area but they lost traction on the slight rise just before the gravel. Hayes floored the gas and the rear of the Special dropped in the mud up to the axle. Larry capped his fortified wine and put it on the floor.
A handy rope, and an assist with the old white car from solid ground, and the Buick was out of the mire.
Mud dropped from the undercarriage and flew from the tires on the pavement. Hayes slowed down and drove the speed limit. The Buick Special's V-6 whispered along. He braked to a complete stop at the beginning of Banjo Lane. Nobody was coming. He slowly pulled across the main road and sedately cruised to the Minute Mart at the edge of Cottage Grove.
Larry and Hayes stood in the parking lot admiring the low profile car. It had mud streaks on the rear fenders and globs in the rear wheel wells but a hose would take care of that. It looked like an old man's car. It WAS an old man's car. "I got three dollars in change, Dawg, Let's buy some Olde English."
"That'll work, bro." Larry preferred 20% tokay but Old English was OK too. He opened his big wallet on a chain and matched Hayes' three bucks and raised him a handful of change. "We'll get some Top and roll smokes."
Hayes enjoyed driving the invisible "citizen" car at precisely the speed limit. If he got in the habit of never speeding and always using the turn signals, he should be able to drive forever in a car like this without his lack of a driver's license becoming an issue.
Larry dusted off his Tokay bottle and unscrewed the cap. He drank off the last inch and rolled down the power window. A speed limit sign was coming up. He leaned out the window and held his fire until the last possible moment before dashing the green glass and red label against the unyeilding metal of the sign.
"Good shot, Dawg!"
"Right on! Death to the Pig!" Larry closed the window, belched, and rolled a couple of perfect cigarettes. The Buick had never been smoked in before, but that had just changed.
Hayes opened the ashtray and scooped up a clutch of change Cletus stored there. Everything was coming up roses today.
Larry opened a forty of liquid crack, took a big swig and passed it to Hayes.
"Just the thing, Dawg."
Larry hadn't eaten all day and the cold Olde English did not sit well on top of the warm tokay. His head spun as he fumbled for the window hand crank like on his car, remembered the power window switch, looked for that and it was too late.
"BUUUUU-IIIICK!" he retched, as he pulled the door handle. Some of the rejected tokay actually made it out of the car. Most of it deflected off the door and splashed on the floor or splattered on the velour seat. His huge beard was dyed purple.
"Oh, Dude!" Hayes stopped the car and Larry power-hurled three times running on the shoulder of the road. The smell was fierce and vomiting seemed like a good idea to Hayes as well.
A couple of bubbas headed back to the Grove in a monster truck took in Larry's performance. The driver lowered his window as he slowed down.
"Party hardy, Dude!"
"I think I'm gunna die," moaned Larry.
"You will when Dad gets home. You gotta clean this up like it never happened."
The rest of the ride home went down with Larry hanging out the passenger window of the car. The turn at the beginning of Banjo Lane was just unsettling enough to resume a small encore.
Deirdre Devereaux-McCally generally looked out the window whenever a car passed in or out of Banjo Lane. It was a rare enough event, unlike in The Valley.
"Ken, come look at this!"
Ken was in the kitchen and missed it.
"Oh my god--you should have seen it! It was that Charley Manson character with the school bus I saw this morning. He was hanging out of an old car blowing chunks! It's disgusting! What's wrong with the hicks who live around here? It must be the water. I want you to buy the house at the end of the road and have it torn down. It's a blight on the neighborhood."
"Yes, Dee Dee, I'll call the real estate agent in the morning."
"Banjo Lane," Copyright ©2005 by Norm Maxwell
Norm Maxwell is a regular columnist for West By Northwest.org. He writes articles on firefighting, land use, government forest work and country life. This is his first novel utilizing his knowledge and observations of Lane County life. He is inspired by John Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat" and Erskine Caldwell's "Tobacco Road," portraying his own 21st century version in Banjo Lane.
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