Axel Grease

Axel Grease

 

“All the better people are crazy… Only the mediocrities, the unimaginative bystanders, are having a great time…”- Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

Sometimes ‘convenience’ is giving poison as a birthday present.  It was convenient that the Joker had snuck outside to kiss a Pall Mall with the other vagabonds when the Thief entered and drilled holes into the faces of everyone else sleeping inside his home. 

            When the cops came the blood was still steaming on the sheets like mustard gas.  One laughed at the woman in her cauliflower nightgown, he said her long face looked like strawberry shortcake.  The other smiled, but preferred Swiss cheese or the Canadian flag. 

            Both were longtime veterans.  They’d seen worse.  They had a right to poke fingers at a greenhorn slop show. 

            The neighbors congregated out in the yard.  The slug across the street with his three piglet children wondered if he could have their hanging phlox plants.

            “Sorry but one of ‘um is missing.  Might be alive.”

            “Alive?” Damn. Inconvenience. Sometimes ‘inconvenience’ is throwing a party for the dead. 

            “Maybe.”

            “I hope so. I really do.”

            But he didn’t.

            So the pig and his three piglets trudged back inside their pigsty.

            The neighbors next door- a serious couple- who’d done their service cultivating two biotic machines into prospective citizens of a dead union, lingered on the walk.  The father, consultant, husband, cheater, and charity tart stuffed enameled fingernails in his pockets and inquired of what design the victims’ locks were.

            “Parkinsons, I think?”

            “Parkinsons?”

            “Rather Perkins.”

            He clicked his tongue, the Mackerel he had for dinner had a bad after-taste.

            “Told him Yale. Yale, Yale, Yale.”

            He’d order those locks in the morning for the windows and everything.

            “Well, it wasn’t the locks though.”

            “Wasn’t the locks?”

            “They left the backdoor unlocked.”

            He thought for a moment while the cop queerly looked on then his lips curled skyward like baked tortilla.

            “So it was the locks.”

            The Mackerel man thought his joke was the funniest thing since Seinfeld and nudged the cop with his elbow, office style, like the prettiest nobody working to impress the ugliest somebody.  But the cop didn’t get it.  He laughed so he wouldn’t look or feel like an idiot. 

            The wife of the Mackerel man was in a fret on the cold pavement, her eyes terrible water drums.  She was ranting on and on about how nice they were, this and that, blah and blah, damn the villain who did this, throwing god in the mix like confetti but by no means as blasphemy.  He was included in a wet prayer.

            The only intelligent cop in the lot itched his sleeves at this one.  There was always a prayer or god and them and justice and heaven, as if any and all of them could solve the already brewed chaos.

It’s a pity though. 

That b*****d cop should have read Revelations.  Then he’d understand.  How we all loathe the atheist’s ignorance, right?

            The other neighbors consisted of a cultural Jew who dressed up at three in the morning for the occasion.  Tie and everything.  His wife was handing out coffee in thick mugs to the cops. 

            “Hazelnut, from Israel.”

            The only cop who denied her coffee was surprisingly not the same who held honorary titles in six Neo-Nazi web forums.  He was too busy sucking up the creamer.  It was the black cop who couldn’t stand coffee. 

            And what was wrong with that?

            Everything.

            Non-conformists to the morgue, please.

            A few of the cops punched him with words.  Something about being un-American, as if they were experts in being American, as if Americanism was categorical in and of itself. 

            Ism, ism, ism! Everybody count and bless your isms!

            The irony was that the black cop was the only one of the entire mass gathered there before the opera of the ages who had read and understood the Constitution fully.

            The Jewish wife was concerned with the black cop’s polite refusal to take her coffee.  It wasn’t that she felt it rude, but a conspiracy.  Always a conspiracy, except this time she stood outside of it.

            “Probably a n****r who did it.” She spit through gutter teeth then smiled fashionably at the black cop. 

Her husband ignored her.  Not because he disagreed but because it wasn’t a women’s place to serve opinions before a table of men and boys with guns and shiny badges.

Two minutes later the cops slapped a patent on her remark and fed it to the black cop like tomato basil soup.

“You think it was a black boy?”

The white cop didn’t catch himself until after his words sat with knees crossed on the curb for too much of a little while.

            “I mean you think it was an African-American?”

            Grins everywhere.

            The black cop currently hated two things.  Political correctness and statistics.  The chance that the criminal was African-American were relatively high. He understood the stats.  After all he was un-American.  You have to be to understand anything.

            The Hispanics on the street kept their distance.  Six children still slept inside, the youngest outside translating bits and pieces of what she could hear for her parents.

            “No mom they’re not here for us.”

            “Yes mom it really did happen.”

            “No daddy the cops aren’t here for us..”

            They slowly hurried back inside as inconspicuously yet suspiciously as possible.  The fattest white cop noticed and gagged on his coffee.

            “Illegals moving in on us everywhere. Can’t believe we can’t cage ‘um and ship ‘um off.”

            There were two things wrong with this statement.  One was an assumption; the other was a classic case of misunderstanding.  Both are reasons for why there will always be war.  The assumption was that they were illegal.  The fact was this:

            They had actually moved to America almost twelve years ago to escape Chavez just before he moved his Jacuzzi and Jaguar into the Bogota presidential suite.  And they came legally on permanent refugee status.  That’s what the American government did when the Communists invaded.  Ran a lottery ticket for 10,000 lucky Columbians and smacked an embargo on Venezuela. 

I wager Chavez is still laughing. 

And drinking Budweiser. 

In his Jacuzzi. 

In Bogota.

The Columbian family was hardworking, well, the parents were.  But they’d shouldered debt in five digits since they came.  The two story single home, nine cell phones, television in six rooms, four laptops, and four cars probably didn’t help ease that burden.  But that’s the crux of America.  We feed them materialistic fantasies, commercials, celebrities, and credit cards then whine when exploitation backfires.  I wonder if that’s how the south saw John Brown.

The case of misunderstanding is cops defending law they don’t even know.  They fumble around with eight year old books wondering what the hell charge they should impose on a group of minorities who just happen to be happening.

The Korean family remained inside, their faces in the kitchen window.  They were the ones who called the cops.  The father was the first to hear the shots.  He’d run next door to wake Robert Lee, a southerner, who owned a carpet service line in two states, both below the Mason Dixon Line- like his soul. 

“Someone’s shooting.”

Lee knew what to grab first.  A handful of Copenhagen then a Remington.  He still sat out on the curb in his flannel two piece and coon hat, the very same sold for eight dollars at the Alamo gift store.  Funny, that tourist shops actually prosper. 

And sick.

Humanity breeds in a shadow box made of plastic.

“Like the coon hat.”

The cop who sat beside him tried hard not to vomit on the dash of tobacco in his bear trap of a mouth.  When he told Lee he was from South Carolina the latter nearly wet his pants and forced him to pack a lip.  But the only bit of Carolina that cop knew was in bold, nasty black bold, in the most boring lettering, fat on his birth certificate. 

Christ, he didn’t even know who Duane Allman was.

But Lee was atypical with a mind of tin and cardboard.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Get what.”

“That coon hat.”

This is where fact and fiction both make separate appearances.  The fact being boated from his conscience.  The fiction dancing like a wicker toy.

“Made it myself after a trapping trip.”

“Trapping?”

“Yep.”

Lee fit his elbow onto his knee to flex and flush.  Why? No logical reason.  The bicep is considerably irrelevant in trapping.  The cop was not a high school cheerleading mouse with an IQ below freezing and Ds for cups.  But let me apologize and excuse his vibrant masculinity.  All applaud the caveman. 

“Where’d you go trapping at?”

“Well.”

Drama left Lee’s mouth with a brown wet clap in the gutter.  After that followed the narrative of adventures in the Yukon, a claim to lineage with John Wilkes Booth and Stonewall Jackson, the finale spiraling around states’ rights and how the Confederacy was justified.

“It wasn’t about slavery, horseshit; it was about the north telling the south what to do.”

Yes it was. And they said no slavery.

It wasn’t long before the media arrived in coffin vans like a dark, blurred procession.  They leapt out with their cameras rolling, already delivering live commentary, awakening the nation to salivate over the latest tragedy.

Anyhow, it was the public’s right to know, the privilege of deliverance: the medias’, to bend and contort in any way either liked as long as the truth was stuffed in a corner and covered in formaldehyde.

The Jewish couple hastily left, the wife tearing her mugs from the cops’ hands whether they were finished or not.

“How rude!”

She hissed at the nearest parasite while counting and recounting the mugs to ensure all were present.  One minute later the pair were back inside.

“How rude of them.”

She echoed in the warmth of a velvet sofa with the television coughing up images of the house across the street.  The Mackerel man was the first face she saw.

“B*****d…” Slipped from her mouth and hit the floor like an anchor.

“Well, I was up reading Gorgias, you know, by Plato…”

But he wasn’t reading.  He was fast asleep.  And he doesn’t even own Gorgias let alone know a lick of Plato.  But that’s how men operate.  In clouds.

“When I heard gun shots, sounded like a hurricane in a cave, bang, bang, bang…”

He went on and on with everyone bought and lapping up the details like tired dogs.  But nobody would have cared even if they did find out everything he said was a lie. People love bullshit. They breathe it in, like sex.  They don’t care how much just as long as it’s interesting and something worth skinning over dinner.  Some might point caustic fingers at the Mackerel man, wiggling them, flogging him superfluously for dishonesty, putting on a nice show for their children to watch and later jot down in their diaries about the modesty of their parents.     But anybody deemed normal in society would have gladly stuck their face on the screen spewing whatever comes to their spongy minds, all of course to later hand out on sample DVDs to friends and family.

“George, on the news?!”

“Yes, on the news!”

“How lovely!”

Yes lovely. The sickest of lovelies. Dilute me please in pixel form for all the mob to slobber over.

God, how people bathe in deception.

And the Mackerel man did it well. Punctuation.  A good seven minute segment for the local station.  Later a twenty-one minute segment for the big fish. 

A week later he’d be a guest on some vain talk show. 

A month later no one would care.

A year and four days later he’d be swinging from a rafter in the attic with all the world still applauding him. 

And that is humanity.  In its most evolved form.

Robert Lee was next, his thumbs stuck in the corners of his bottoms like Randle, the tobacco leaking out of his blistered mouth.  They’d cut him off two minutes into it as he started professing states’ rights but pretend like they were still filming.  But he should have known better.  Free speech is reserved for when you’re in the privacy of your home, scolding yourself in the mirror or hollering at your dog after it leaves yellow on your Indian import. 

The Korean family by this time had left the window in sincere disgust.  Their curtains slapping the window sill, bodies in bed, the mother with her face in the pillow sobbing the most human tears shed that night.  They fell asleep around the same time the last of the Hispanic family did. Both had to wake up early to slave away.  The causal price paid to wear a red, white, and blue bandana and drive a low riding Ford pick-up. 

Which, of course, is only fair.  Christ, when is capitalism not.

            Our youth returned a quarter after five stumbling down the road whistling Bob Dylan, a cashed Pall Mall crawling out his jowls.  Robert Lee noticed first and slung a hand his way.

            “That’s the son! That’s him!”

            Lights, camera, and hungry eyes pivoted. 

            At first, he laughed.

            Then instinct kicked in when he noticed the men in blue.  Usually he would holler ‘pigs’ as was fitting.  When you’re with your posse. Safe in the limbo of most likely didn’t hear.  Able to speed off in a four door if necessary.

            It was the chief on the scene who handed him the news in words carefully constructed years and years ago by a board of good fellows instructed to write police protocol.

            But reality was a far better messenger.

            The youth sat on the curb, drunk, eyes married to his hands for some time.  And oddly it was the Mackerel man’s wife who held him and shared with him a piece of fabricated compassion.  He tried to swallow it but it only stuck in his throat.

            The Mackerel man hung uneasily in the background like frost.

            The youth begged to see the bodies.  But he wasn’t old enough.  You see America has morals.  We stick age limits on porn and alcohol but Christ at eighteen you can see all the f*****g war you want. 

            No, the bodies being rolled one by one, five in total, were reserved for the starving cameras and entertained watching now, tomorrow, and the few days to come.

            The youth, they said, would ride in the cab for an evaluation in a few minutes.  Meanwhile, two cops were playing Euthyphro on the lawn.

            “That little punk is wasted and his family dead.”

            “Terrible.”

            “Terrible? We should cuff his a*s now and bring him in!”

            Thank the gods of uncertainty we have machines protecting our citizenry and not men.

            “He just lost his entire family-“

            “Place one above the law and you place everyone above the law.”

            “I think we can make an exception.” The police chief rattled. “Or you can arrest me for negligence.”

            But it’s a crime to be human.  Or at least the human they don’t want you to be.  Rebellious, a skeptic, with no interest in politics or real estate or taxes or patriotism or the super bowl or the food channel or Abercombie and Fitch or money and religion or anything polished and championed by the plotting, menstruating, bobble-headed masses. 

            And so our youth is punished, punished for being raw, primitive, and beautifully human.