98 Hostibal

Well hey there.


Now get your bowl of beer/smoke/Honeycomb cereal all set, and let's see what happened next, shall we?







The night skies above the desert began to weep, then cry, and then deluge. Rain pummeled the shit out of Fuckno with furious knives. The wind howled, and then shrieked.


Sean’s brother Paul Ant-Knee jogged into Sean’s pre-surgery room just before their mom and the rest of their family strode on in. He grabbed my arms and said, “We need to go back to Tellesco's ranch and finish that shit up. Let’s go now!”

I just looked at him, “That would be stupid.”

He turned his head toward his mother coming into the room. “Ahhhhh Fuck. All right, so be it.”

Sean’s mom went right to his side and touched is face. His eyes opened and he looked around, then he saw his mom next to him and his eyes smiled at her.

She looked at the tube in his mouth and other tubes and wires all connected to her boy and her eyes welled up with tears. Then she turned away from her boy lying in the white bed and looked at each of us in the room now, glancing past Minacca.

She came towards me, singling me out, and stopped right in front of me. Her face was deep red. “You.”

Oh no.

I gulped. “Hah?”

Her fists balled up. “What did you have to do with this? Why are you not under white blankets on a hostibal gurney yourself?!”

I stepped back, but she was only just starting. I looked around at her brothers, and saw that one looked sad for me, another had his eyebrows up, and the third was also red in the face.

She ranted. She railed. She raged.

It was not pretty.

Here is a tune for you while I tell you about a Rant, a Rail, and some Rage.

She put her balled up fists on her waist.

“I knew you were trouble the first day I saw your family move next door.”

I shrank back from a mother’s fury. “Uh, hah?”

She stepped forward again. “You dirty Indians and your drunken tomfoolery. How dare you bring my favorite son into your pitiful, ugly world.”

I began to get a little bit hot under the collar at seeing this interesting, new side of her.

She went on. “When you showed up in the apartment complex we all watched you unpack. You had nothing except clothes in trash bags. Drunken, cheap, broke-ass poor ugly Indians, all of you, feeding off the system.”

What the fuck was she talking about? We weren’t drunks, and those of us who were old enough most certainly were working at jobs.

She pointed at Sean. “Now my favorite one is in the hostibal and he ain’t got no front teefs. It’s all your fault!”

Minacca grabbed my arm and tugged me out the door.

Sean’s mom yelled after me, “Son of a bitch drunken Indian!”

I pulled away from Minacca to charge back in there but Ant Knee came out and slammed the door closed behind him. “No, Will, don’t take the bait. She’s just lashing out.”

“She said some pretty rotten things in there. She called my mom a---“

“She don’t mean it. She’s just being mean and hurtful. Now she’ll turn on my uncles since you’re gone.”

I swallowed my anger and shook my head. “That is one mean bi--- …uh, your mom’s mean, dude.”

Minacca led Ant Knee and me down to the cafeteria for some coffee. As we sat down with old, weak coffee at one of the round tables near the huge windows, we saw ambulances light up their flashing markers and race out of their garage bays. There must have been twenty of them, all leaving at once.
Ant Knee took a bite out of his brownie and sipped his coffee. His eyes closed for a moment, and he looked like he was in heaven. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me. “I gotta apologize for my mom’s behavior at you. She’s very emotional.”

I nodded. “It’s cool, Anthony.” I looked down at my coffee. “Sorry about your brother, man. What was he thinking?”

Minacca said, “I’ve known him only for a few weeks, but I can tell you something about him.”

Wha? They had been dating for a few weeks and I found out about it just now? And I’d just met her that very morning?

She went on. “Sean is afraid of nothing.”

I tapped her arm. “You guys been dating for a few weeks now?”

Ant Knee said, “Yeah, Sean’s pretty brave.”

Minacca said to me, “You didn’t know?” Then she looked at Ant Knee and said, “There’s a big difference between bravery and simply being afraid of nothing.”

I answered her. “I would have remembered if he had told me. What the hell?”

Ant Knee said, “What do you mean? Courage is being fearless, fighting when others are running off like scared little bitches.”

Minacca said to me, “So I’m just a big secret?” Then she answered Ant Knee, and this was pretty good, what she said: “It takes a bigger man to face down his fear and overcome it, than it does to just do dangerous shit without regard to anyone’s safety, including your own.”

Ant Knee and I stared at each other. Who was this brainy chick?

Joey later told me about the party after we’d gone figging and then crashed in the night. This is what he said:

“Check this shit out, Weeeee-ill. I introduced Nolei to Jerry, man. We were just finishing up when some folks come barging in hollering about flashlights and first aid kits. Well, it jumped the fuck out of us all, and Jerry, he stands up and screams at them about manners and such.

“But they were focused, man. Well, you know how those folks who live way the hell out in the boonies always have they emergency shit in a big box so they can get everything they need at a moment’s notice? That was were they got what they needed and left.

“We didn’t know it was you guys all fucked up. We didn’t really think much of anything. We were flying, Weeeee-ill. Sorry about that. But these guys were harshing our high. Shit got crazy after they went back outside with those flashlights and first aid kits.

“Did you know that Gilbert and some of his football buddies were there? They were looking for Big Bryan, of course. I left Nolei with Jerry and went looking for Bryan and you guys before Gilbert could find him. Tommy Hewitt said he thought maybe Bryan was hiding in the cellar. That was a pretty cool secret passage way, man. I mean, holy fuck? I was in heaven down there where they had all them wine bottles.

“I was checking out all of that heavenly vulva nectar down there and we grabbed some bottles to bring back up. That’s when the ambulances showed up, well the first batch, that is. I mean, they were like three of them. After shit hit the fan, the next round of ambulances was like fifty or so, all blocking the road. When the LPG exploded, they were all going off into the fig trees to escape the heat. Hahaha! Ambulances going figging man!

Well anyways, me and Tommy Hewitt come out from the secret passage way to the table with no Bryan. We totally forgot about him. Sorry. I keep saying sorry, but you understand Weeee-ill, don’t you? So Jerry, he looks at all this expensive old wine and he stands up with this huge shit-eating grin on his big ugly melon, and he spreads out his arms wide.

“Fucking Jerry says, he says, ‘mi hermanos!’ My brothers. Hehehe. Fucker! He was all happy. Well, we got ourselves all lined up again, you know, Nolei included. Then the ambulances drivers all head off down the road a little bit back towards town, and they must have stopped back near where you guys were all fucked up on top of a fig tree. Someone told them where you were.

But these badass mother fuckers appeared out of nowhere. I think they showed up before the ambulances did. When the ambulances left, these guys came out from under their rocks, or where ever they hid from the flashing lights. These guys looked hard, Weeeee-ill. They looked mean. And they brought the pain.”

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Visit the next chapter, won't you?


God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.



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