Chapter 2: 123,106 & 84,354

My watch reads 12:31:06am.

84,354 seconds to go and the clock is ticking.

I am standing forty-some feet above the street at a rail staring at the bright lights of the cityscape opposing me. It is some distance away because a river divides us in more ways than one. That beautiful view is courtesy of the merchants of East Grand Forks, Minnesota and the rural electric cooperatives that keep the town running twenty-four seven, and so another entry, another visual index card is filed away in my new mental database.

The river that divides us politically, geographically, but really not culturally is the famous Red River of the North. It is the boundary that detaches the greater entity that is Minnesota from the lesser entity that is North Dakota. Strikingly, from my vantage point, the west side of the river has the higher concentration of people compared to the east side, a six-fold advantage in fact. I could muse onward about local geography, demography and sociology all day long like some knock-off version of Garrison Keillor but the story must continue forth.

An old, sputtering rust bucket of a car comes up a snow-covered ramp and parks ten yards due south of my location. It’s a blue 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme covered in liberal amount of advanced corrosion and near-irreparable body damage. Two occupants, both somewhere between the ages that are the fifth and sixth pronic number, depending upon your choice of index, exit the vehicle. The driver is carrying a white plastic bag and the passenger is carrying his hands in his coat pockets. And as I walk toward them, they walk toward me and we meet somewhere meaningful, a point of central tendency. It’s a mean between the extremes so to speak, most likely arithmetic, but maybe geometric, maybe harmonic, maybe even root-mean square since displeasure on all ends is the order of the moment.

In other words, the scene being set up is far from golden.

I stated before that it sometimes takes a while to reveal the really juicy tidbits, and this is one of those times and there will be many more as the story progresses.

The driver is and was christened Remy Hayek at some point late into the Me Decade. Remy’s physical shortcomings are as follows: short, 5’9” or less, triangular face with three-day old growth on his chin, perfect vision, green eyes and brown hair. He hails from the mountainous commune that hasn’t sided with any other principality in any military conflict in more than 450 years, supposedly that is. His back story involves a Louisiana swamp rat that happened to be a peacenik of sorts. She moved to the land of wimpy fence-sitters in the thick of the Vietnam Conflict. She met an assembly-line watchmaker after her self-imposed deportation. And then like clockwork, she eventually gave birth to three children with Remy being the baby of that rather pacifistic clan. Move forward some years later and to a pairing in an international pen pal program. Remy was swapping mail (and in time swapping spit) with an American girl at age sixteen. She, like me, is a native of this frigid hinterland of dirt waffles covered in gravel laser lines, eyes that cannot see, and lots of macaroni shells that end up in the artwork of your neighborhood mental patient. It progressed from courtship to marriage and they are now living on University of North Dakota campus in one of their illustrious married housing complexes, which apparently are nothing more than government-issue, substandard cardboard boxes with decade-long lifespans.

The passenger is and was christened Vladislav Ganon, Vlad for short and for some unfathomable rationale. Vlad’s physical shortcomings are as follows: tall, 6’3”, hooked nose, stringy black hair, a toothy grin in need of proper straightening, bloodshot eyes with hazel around the iris, a distressingly yellow appearance. He honestly looks likes a banana minus the potassium. He also looks like Severus Snape after his face met the business side of a frying pan. To be brutally honest, he is the reason why derogatory terms, why degrading remarks were invented in the first place. He comes from a land that looks like a nasty insect or alien creature in any world atlas, depending upon the personal taste of a particular cartographer. It was where intense xenophobia due to distant historical and ethnic subjectivity took over around a decade ago. Before that historical powder keg blew to mesospheric heights, he had a stable lifestyle and a rather well-balanced childhood from sources I’ve culled. And then the tanks rolled in and the enemy troops tramped through his hometown since Slobodan wanted to be the resurrection of a royally brassed-off Tito. His family emigrated to my hometown figuring that this was the safest, most secure place on the planet. He started going through the Grand Forks school system but flunked out for any number of bullshit reasons. It was likely due to the language barrier or his penchant for abject stupidity or his inability to be a fraudulent conformist. He eventually, despite all the odds against it, received his GED, his “good-enough diploma” to quote a famous laughmeister, and now he has to work a couple of dead end jobs for the rest of his life just to keep the monetary scales balanced. In my rotten tooth, my worm-infested apple of an outlook on life, he has a hard life simple because of who he is.

Or maybe it’s from ethnocentrism, or even my own chosen ignorance, so I can’t really be sure at this moment.

And the meeting of the minds commences forthwith.

Remy [in a Germanic accent not used in customary conservation, glancing to his cohort]: Well, well, if it isn’t the birthday boy, eh Vlad?

Vlad [shrugs his shoulders indifferently]: nothing is uttered.

Me [laughing in the same two-faced manner]: Nice to see you too, Vlady. How’s your sunken, sullen soul today?

Vlad [frowns quickly]: nothing is uttered.

Me [grimacing toward Remy]: He’s in a wonderful mood on this fine and glorious morning

Remy [yawning, hiding his scorn]: Gee, Link. It’s only oh-dark thirty on a school night. And it’s so cold out here I could freeze my hand to an exposed engine block or my tongue to a flagpole. Plus, you had to royally wax Vlad’s backside for some unknown reason.

Me [being somewhat disdainful]: That’s true. I’m sorry I’m robbing you both of your normal eight or nine or ten hours of regularly scheduled shuteye. Life really blows, doesn’t it? By the by, both of you should probably go make out with the flagpole in front of the county courthouse or whatever else your cold weather fetish is.

I try not to screen my derision for these two unworthy mutants. I plead with the spirit of fate to end this minor complication as soon as it deems worthy.

Remy [his tone containing its own hint of annoyance]: If you must know, I let you decide on the place and time because I figured you’d be willing to come around to our side. I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Me [blunt tone, hoping the fearful ghost would play along]: What’s in the bag?

Remy [plain tone, hands off the bag to me]: See for yourself. Consider it a peace offering of sorts as well as your birthday gift.

I open the bag and find a bottle of cheaply-made, cheaply- sold, cheaply-wanting peach schnapps.

Me [further disdain crosses my soul]: You shouldn’t have, Remy. What, no card with some really lame inspirational message and quotable Bible verse?

He also overlooked the liter of orange juice, and the liter and three-quarter bottle of Grey Goose Vodka.

Remy [shrugs his shoulders, gives an explanation of indifference]: Sorry, Link. I purchased it last minute, what else can I say? It’s not like you gave me your wish list or anything?

Vlad [suddenly smirks for the first time]: nothing is uttered.

I don’t consider that sight worthy of being the next index card entered into my mental database. I consider it worthy enough of being ripped off his sallow face and unmercifully pressed into his fart vent.

Remy [rejoins in a pretentious tone of voice]: Vlad chipped in as well, Link, so you should thank him. He probably shouldn’t have considering how you’ve treated him like a dung heap since we all started working together.

That tone of voice is the standard for all of our conversations.

I pull the bottle from the bag and crack the seal. I chug a quarter of the bottle immediately and reseal it. The taste has a central tendency of sorts. As I had already figured, it is on the geometric mean, or the arithmetic mean, or the harmonic mean, or even the root-mean square between two parts radiator coolant and one part high end peach-scented hand lotion. It might as well be pure wormwood oil for all I care, or even undiluted liquid cat s**t.

Me [sneering unhappily]: Well, ain’t that a fine burn. I haven’t tasted anything like that since the bathwater that’s been sitting in my tub since last Sunday.

Remy frowns and Vlad retains his initial stone-faced look. I have a feeling both of them are pissed off at me more than before, but I’m not really sure at this moment.

Remy [sighs awkwardly, attempts civility]: By the way, Link, how are you today?

Me [brow furrows, tone hints of frustration]: Considering the awful burn I’ve suffered, I am happier than a razor blade on a girl’s patch. How’s about you, Pinocchio?

Remy [eyes widen at my odd remark]: Come on now, Link. There is no need for severity or vulgarity here.

Me [more irritated than before]: Screw you, you f*****g fencepost! I don’t need a f*****g lecture from you or any other member of your kind! You aren’t my parent, professor or priest!

I turn away and notice Vlad just standing there, blowing air from his reverse exhaust valve and still playing the role of the innocent bystander.

Me [my tone is both provocative and angry]: Do you have anything to add, you ugly chode?

Vlad [speaks in a heavy Balkan accent, also not the tone for customary conversation]: F**k off, Link. You are a disgrace to the human race.

Me [sneering more malevolently than before]: Wow, Vlad! You can talk using more than one syllable and you can rhyme on top of it. Have you ever considered a career as a poet for children? I think you might have to prove your aptitude with a pencil and paper first. This is America of course, so you might actually have a shot at making your dreams come true.

Vlad [was set on simmer, now set to boil over]: You are gonna wish you hadn’t said that, Link!

Me [reply with an edgier inflection, a more elegant intonation]: At least I wasn’t affected by the language barrier. I can skate three-sixties around you like Tony Hawk except my mouth is my skateboard.

I enjoy upping the ante every once in a while, especially with sub-human s***s like the ones I see before me.

Vlad [lances back with a minute amount of venom on his vocal spear]: Link, you couldn’t affect anybody if you were utterly silent and utterly immobile.

Me [the spear fails to puncture, volley back with stronger antagonism]: I can sidestep you without a glance. You’re a bug that will meet an oncoming windshield someday. The last thing that’ll go through your empty head will be your smelly, s**t-stained browneye, chefur boy!”

Along with witty comebacks, ethnic slurs are always at the ready in my verbal reserve.

Vlad [launches into an immaterial soliloquy since he‘s on the verge of losing it all]: Stop insulting my heritage, you sob. I am proud to be Croatian and I have lost many relatives in the war for freedom. I have seen the streets of Zagreb and Dubrovnik run red with the blood of the proud and the patriotic. I have seen the genocide done at the hands of the sick s***s acting on orders from Belgrade. Your slurs at the strike the hearts and at the national character of the survivors and they dance on the graves of those who’ve perished.

Me [huffing loudly without a care]: It seems to me that the ethnic cleansing squads didn’t fulfill their quota for the day when they went through your neighborhood, Croaturk.

Vlad wants my blood and Remy grabs onto him before the before the Croatard grab a taste of it.

Vlad [beyond enraged at this point]: You sick sob! Your days are numbered, Link Iverson! Mark my words, somebody somewhere will kill you while you sleep! When I find out about it, I will be dancing on your grave or maybe even worse!

I take another swig from my birthday present and then recap it. I take a couple of steps back and mock Vlad’s retort in my own Balkanized accent. Remy lets Vlad go and instead of laying a hand on me, he walks toward a nearby stairwell. I kept my back to Vlad so I could keep the contentment I rightfully received.

Vlad [bellowing like a dying swan]: Your game, set and match will come, Link. I warn you now, it will come.

    

Me [rejoining the vocal pit match]: Sorry, I don’t play tennis with inbred experiments like you.

Our verbal jousting should have sent the police in our direction but that almost never happens. Infinitely despaired by defeat, Vlad disappears from sight and I decide to face the staircase.

Me [playing the role of backhanded winner] Later, chode! That’s S-O-B by the way, I am an S.O.B.

Me [glaring back at Remy with the same derision as before]: Thanks for suggesting this Remy.

Remind me never to accept an invitation from you again, Swiss dick!

Remy [seems cool to my mockery]: That was really unfair of you. I went out of my way, I really went out of my way to help you resolve this issue. I put my repute on the line and the least you could have done was apologize to him.

Me [shaking my head in awe and countering vehemently]: In all honesty, Remy, go sit a*****e first on a very sharp stick. I don’t give a sky high pile of s**t about you and your so-called repute.

Remy [completely unfazed]: You should be very happy that I saw you do it. Somebody else might have had you put in a jail cell.

Me [with despondency in my voice]: You really know how to ruin a man’s fun, don’t you? You’re the narc that ends up with a foot broken off in your tailpipe.

Remy, unlike Vlad, has this ability to be ice-nine collected in ice-negative-nine emotional situations.

Remy [all calm, cool, and collected]: Hanging a full-color picture of a lynching victim in Vlad’s break room locker is not what society on a whole would deem as fun, Link. Society would call it sick and wrong.

The air temperature just drops far down, metaphorically speaking.

Me [humoring Remy because the spirit of fate still hasn’t followed through yet]: Sorry, Remy. I exist outside convention. Besides, what was wrong with that sweet scenario to start with?

Remy [taking on a tone of righteous anger]: You wrote Vlad’s name on the photograph and drew an arrow from it to the victim. That’s what wrong with it! It doesn’t take a genius to extract the inferred message!

Me [taking on a sardonic tone]: I did that? That really took some time and imagination on my part. I consider it very inventive and clever. Miraculous, really.

Remy [taking on a blunt tone]: I consider it ethnically degrading and even non-humanist.

Me [the humoring attitude ceases]: Who asked you? I certainly didn’t, you pole-choker! I don’t think anybody would have either.

Remy [scoffing at my sophomoric retort]: I asked me. After seeing what you did, it had taken me two pitchers of beer and three hours worth of precious study time to finally convince Vlad to face you outside of a manager’s presence. You ruined that in mere minutes.

Me [my tone becomes philosophical]: That’s the problem with you humanistic types. You are interlopers who think at the atomic level you know what’s good for me. Guess what, Remy? Your kind needs to be cremated and buried deep beneath the water table so all the other earthbound pukes can slurp up what’s left and piss it back out again.

Remy [takes up my veiled challenge]: I take it you’re proud to be a jerk-off to your fellow human beings.

Me [snickering loudly]: Yeah, peacenik, I do. I like being an a*****e! It’s liberating and therapeutic even, how’s about that?!

Remy [takes on a nonchalant, but lecturing tone]: The more you torment others, the fewer friends you have.

I think he’s acting like the stagnant ivory tower professor does with a lecture bowl full of hungry and far smarter undergrads.

I also think that the Earth has been unshackled from its orbital constraints to float freely across the universe.

Me: [feeling really cold and lacking any more willpower]: It’s too cold for this and I don’t have the will to press onward. I don’t want to hear your s**t anymore. You had no right to enter this situation. You should have left this well alone if you catch my drift.

Remy [the bleeding heart continues to be his motor]: I had the right because I witnessed what you did. It’s called being a Good Samaritan. You are denying that man’s right to basic respect. He has the right to be treated the same as you and me, and that’s why I had to act.

I deeply search my vocal reserves for some sort of repellant but none is within easy reach.

Me [fumbling one up in the clutch]: Go double fist yourself, you nosy, two-faced fence-sitting fucknut! You are not my f*****g father! You right ends where mine begins!

But Remy is like Tom Petty at the gates of Hell.

Remy [only emboldened by my insult]: Your right ended when you inflicted harm on him! I believe in the peaceful coexistence of humankind and you’re threatening that vision!

Me [slipping into in the void here]: That’s because you’re a f*****g cocoa puff stumping for some notion that is ultimately unreal. By the way, didn’t your own countrymen pioneer the practice if not coin the phrase about ‘good fences’? To rather sober eyes, it seems like they’re experts on the subject.

Remy [still refusing to back down]: My ethnic origin has nothing to do with this. I am a peacemaker and a peacekeeper, Link, and that goes beyond all racial, ethnic and political boundaries! That is what I called on for! That’s what I am supposed to do! I believe that peace is an innate right belongs to all humankind!

Me [pushing for one more shot]: Great, go be an envoy for the U.N. or some other international organization that want to achieve global utopia through mind control. They need irrationally-minded rejects like you to be moving targets in third-world war zones. To me, a peacemaker is a noisemaker. Who do you think gets killed first in a hot conflict, Remy boy?

Remy [merely deflects it with ease]: I don’t care, Link. I will do it or die trying. Blessed are the peacekeepers for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.

I finally believe the ice caps are in no danger of melting anytime soon. They’ve become ice-nine frozen, so to speak, along with all of the other connected bodies of water.

    

Me [hollering loudly as this is my last chance]: Well, f**k the peacemakers and f**k the peacekeepers. I hope you all inherit a huge, heaping kingdom of dog s**t!

Remy: [filled with righteous rage, but the tone is volume-knob-set-at-level-one soft]: Link I didn’t want to do this but now it must be done…

Remy: [then the tone is level-eleven, bullhorn loud]: You are going to burn, and you are going to burn slowly and painfully! The whole experience will be wholly merciless. Unless you repent, unless you make amends, there will no lifeguard on duty for you at the lake of fire!

My strength, despite the statue-inducing, blood-ceasing cold, come back strong therefore the verbal lashing doesn’t hurt me.

Me [answering back at same level of loudness]: Listen up, swatch head! You are naïve for using the compassionate Christian angle on me. You really are desperate and dumb for even trying the smell-the-brimstone-burning angle. The roar is intense, but the bite lacks, if you understand me?

Remy [answering more calmly than before with a hint of pity in his voice]: You have likely lost the last person who has any shred of compassion for you. Life will be very intriguing for you from here on out, Link. Unless you change yourself by ways of your action and your attitudes, I will think of you as a lost cause.

Me [responding in kind, but the compassion isn’t really there]: Well, don’t lose sleep over it, fencepost. I am sure your loving wife will provide you with that relief.

Remy huffs madly and stomps off toward the Cutlass. Within a few seconds, he speeds off the parking ramp that is the setting for this section of my rambling story. I am alone with a partially-drained bottle of peach schnapps and a white plastic bag dancing around my feet. Since I despise such sickeningly sweet spirits and random references to pointlessly overrated movie scenes, I glance over the railing at the flat concrete squares below. I see the reds of Remy’s taillights fade off toward the north. I put the bottle back in the bag and I sling it over the railing. From my left hand, the bag falls to the pavement fifty-some feet below like a negligent guardian would do with an innocent newborn while ground-level photographers are popping off white flashes of light. I hear the glass break and clear liquid materializes from the bag at instant or two after impact. I smile at my handiwork and it becomes the third entry in my mental database, my mental card catalog.

A new thought occurs to me: why don’t I become a librarian that specializes in these kinds of collections?

And the answer: there’s no passion, no praise and no action in the life of such an archivist. And in such a way, I still want both sides to such a strange coin.

    

My watch reads 12:56:14am.

Author's Note

Long chapter, introducing two major players in this piece. Other players will be introduced in later chapters.

Again, thank you for reading.

Reviews

[Shep]

No that I am back on line with my Pc. I have always learned to always have a back up hard drive you never know when its going to go “so long s**t for brains dumpsters two points.”

Awesome story. Confusing at first tell I got the hang of it. You need quotation marks to give character dialog. Not use bold for it in replace.

This idea of brackets I have no idea where it came from, but is bad form of writing. Brackets are used too highlight a [word or phrase]. I’ll give an example and email it to you. Other than that this story amuses me enough to continue reading. I will also put in my library so I can come back. Note: didn’t find that many errors except for words that your created, but we all do that. Its not our fault that Webster can’t keep up with us…Lol

[Elijah Gleaves]

The descriptions in this story are amazing. The style is a good breath of fresh air as well man. Ken your the man

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

Kenneth, I thoroughly enjoyed this introduction, you my friend have one wicked sense of humor that I adore.

[Ruth]

Hon..your style never ceases to amaze me! I comment and say wonderful work to you..but omg! You have no idea how much your work strikes me! Freakinnn awesome!

"I think he’s acting like the stagnant ivory tower professor does ".............such imagery...

WOW!

xx

[Coyote Poetry]

A outstanding chapter. I enjoyed the conversation and the strong characters. I like the feel of real life and strong topics being discussed. The description in the story is making the character interesting and having purpose. Thank you for this amazing chapter.
Coyote

[Rene Velez]

good stuff so far, I will keep reading...Sir.

[joshua deathdealer]

Interesting and captivating. I really like how you go off into telling the history of the places described here and the way that you describe things with scientific accuracy. Excellent work!!