The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (19 page)

Dude
said our new eightball was from a fresh batch.
Me
and
Jay eyed each other expectantly. We couldn’t wait to get back to my place and
try it out. Jay put the baggie next to his gas cap before flipping the
ignition.  

116
wasn’t so bad once you neared Highway 28. There were plenty of byways paved
with concrete on that end. You could shake a cop with no problem if you knew
where you were going. Once you made it to the intersection, you took a right
and rode it straight into the city. Barring a chase, you were home free.

Unless
you flicked a cigarette out the window in front of a parish deputy like I did.

***

The
law dog sprang into view like Houdini after a disappearing act. I didn’t even
see where he’d come from. One minute we’re riding on the blacktop listening to
Dr. Dre’s opus
The Chronic,
chainsmoking as speed freaks do and looking
forward to inhaling our new bag. The next thing I know, blue and whites are
filling our vision.

I
was surprised at Jay’s reaction. He didn’t bitch or cuss, but if facial
expressions could speak, his would’ve said, “If we get outta this, I’m gonna
knock the living shit outta you.....”

There
was no running. Jay’s Caddy was a steamship; the deputy’s car was a Blackhawk.
The adrenaline surged and Jay turned onto the first gravel road in sight. The
speed was next to the fuel cap. Unless a flicker of intelligence went off
inside that Cro-Magnon cranium of his, the deputy wouldn’t think to check
there. I wasn’t worried and neither was Jay. Until the deputy got out of his
cruiser.

Jay
looked in the rearview mirror. Droplets immediately appeared on his forehead.
Within seconds the man was dripping like O. J. at a Women’s Lib rally. The
winter gusts were blowing hard and we both had our windows down. Even with the
most potent speed known to man, there was no reason for him to be sweating like
a pig.

“Oh.....FUCK!”

“What,
Jay?! What?! What?!
What?!
”

Never
diverging his eyes from the driver’s side mirror, “You remember Mrs. Suckston
from high school?”

“You
mean the teacher who was busted sucking off the principal in the employee
lounge? Yeah. What the hell made you think of her
now?
”

The
sound of the deputy’s footsteps crunching gravel became louder as he approached
the vehicle. Jay’s words came in a clipped cadence. “That’s her son, dude. And
he hates my ass!”

“You
mean that’s Harley Suckston, Jay?”

“Yep!
You remember how
me
and Mrs. Suckston started messing
around our senior year?”

Oh my God Christ Almighty Heaven help us Jesus please no.

“Yes,
Jay. I do. What does that have to do with us at this very moment, pray tell?
Did something happen that I don’t know about? Please, enlighten me before he
gets to this car.”

“You
remember when I left your house on Senior Skip Day? I said I was going home? I
went to her place instead. She’d called in sick so we could hang out. Harley
was in ninth grade but he’d skipped, too. He walked in when I was balls deep in
his mom’s ass and almost shot me with his father’s pistol from the closet. She
stopped him but-”

***

“How
y’all doin’? Did y’all mean to throw that cigarette out back there? Ya know
that litterin’s against the law, don’t ya?”

Jay
silently stared at an invisible focal point in the woods. A disquiet of
astronomical proportions whisked through the Caddy.

“Hello!
Is everything okay there?”

Jay
cleared his throat, never facing Harley. “Yes, sir. Everything’s fine.” He
turned to look at me with angry eyes. ”My friend’s cigarette fell out on
accident. He went to flick the ash but the wind caught it. Didn’t it, Innis?”

I
didn’t leave Mrs. Suckston’s colon awash in semen so I had no
problem leaning over to look at him. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that. The wind
ripped it out my hands before I knew what happened. That Nor’easter is damn
fearful out here. Won’t happen again, Officer.”

Harley
leaned on his elbow against the red door of the Caddy. He eyeballed Jay
momentarily. “Y’all better let me see yer license, registration, and proof of
insurance.”

Knowing
that cops are going to be suspicious of two heavily tattooed men with shaved
heads riding on a country road in the wee hours of the morning, Jay moved
cautiously. He told Harley he had to reach into his back left pocket for his
wallet. Said he had to retrieve his insurance card from the glovebox. The
deputy said “Sure” and allowed him to get his credentials. It was dark enough
to where he didn’t see Jay’s Taurus 9mm under the envelope. Once Jay had the
paperwork, Harley snatched it from his hand and started walking to his cruiser
to run the information. When he got to the trunk, he doubled back to Jay’s
window, his pudgy face twisted into a question mark—like when a strange woman
says she knows you and you’re trying to remember her name and whether or not
you’ve tossed her salad.

“S’cuse
me, sir, but don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“No,
sir. I don’t think so. I look like a lotta people, you know.” If it’s possible
to hear a human being’s sphincter tighten hard enough to break glass, I heard
it.

Harley
snorted and walked to his cruiser.

I
tried to assuage any anxiety. “Dude, relax, man. He probably doesn’t even
remember you. You look totally different! Back then you were clean-shaven with
long hair. Now it’s the exact opposite—your face looks like a Chia Pet and
you’re bald. We’re good.”

“Yeah,
Innis, but you don’t forget walking in on someone buttfucking your mother.
Especially when it’s someone you go to school with. He went absolutely nuts!”

“Jay,
chill. He’s gonna bitch at me for dumping the cigarette. That’s all. Probably
give me a ticket for littering and tell us to get on home.”

“MOTHER
FUCK
ER!”

***

We
both looked in respective mirrors when he screamed. Harley leaned in his patrol
car. His fluttering blue and whites vanished in the dark, but he’d left his
headlights on. Then we watched with horror as six feet, five inches of ruthlessness
pulverized the gravel on the way back to the Caddy.

Harley
swung the door open on Jay’s side. “Y’all get outta that got’damn car!
Now!
”
 

We
both looked at each other, fearing the worst. I opened my door and got out.
Harley didn’t wait for Jay to move. He grabbed him by his wrist and yanked him
onto the hard gravel road with all his might. When Jay got up, he looked down
at his palms. There were deep cuts already seeping blood. At that moment, I
realized that no matter what Harley did or didn’t find, he wasn’t planning on
taking us to a nice, safe jail cell.

“Get
yer fuckin’ ass around here, boy!” Against all principles, I did what the cop
told me to do. Jay and I both stood next to his Caddy with our backs to the
driver’s side.

Harley
jabbed his finger in Jay’s chest. “I knew I knew you from somewhere, ya sneaky
little shit! We went to high school together!
Yer the one who fucked my
mama!”

“Hey,
Harley, look. I-” The deputy bitch slapped him so hard that Jay doubled over at
the waist. When he straightened up, blood trickled from the corner of his lip
to fall on his black t-shirt.

“You
shut yer got’damn mouth when yer talkin’ to me! Ya hear me?!”

Even
in the face of adversity, Jay held true. “Look, Harley. You’ve got it all wrong,
man. I wasn’t the only one. A
lotta
people fucked your mother. It wasn’t
like-”

Harley
took out his baton. He positioned himself like he was swinging a bat in the
bottom of the ninth with bases loaded and cracked Jay across his kneecaps as
hard as I’ve ever seen a man swing. If his patellas had been white balls with
red stitching, Harley would’ve knocked them out the park. My friend screamed
bloody murder and fell on his back in a world of suffering.

I
yelled at the top of my lungs but never moved. “What the hell, man?! You can’t
do that! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Harley grabbed his Glock and aimed
it at me. My arms shot to the stars to show my empty hands.

“Calm
down, man! Be cool!”

“Did
you fuck my mama, too, ya tattooed freak show?!”

“
Hell
no!”

“Then
I don’t want any sass, ya fuckin’ hippie! This motherfucker’s had this comin’
for a long time and I aim to do it right! Now keep yer got’damn mouth shut!”
(He lost me. I’ve never known the first hippie who resembled a member of the
Aryan Brotherhood.)

Jay
was on his right side, coughing and spitting blood from the backhand. He
brought his knees to his chest and whimpered from the splitting in his legs.

Jay
was one tough cookie, good people. He and I had been involved in many a tussle
with many drunken reprobates at various bars, and I’d only seen him go down
once. I’d even seen him fight five guys—shoeless—and come out on top. The only
time I’d ever heard the man cry was during the scene in
The Neverending
Story
when Atreyu’s horse drowned in that swamp. From the way he curled, I
knew he was in immeasurable pain.

Cops
the world over have a bloated self-importance that supercedes the most
contemptuous politician. That’s part of why they choose to be cops. In my
experience, they tend to hold themselves to an unachievable level of greatness.
They also want the people they
unnerve
serve to hold them to this
nobility, as well. I thought of a mindfuck that maybe Harley hadn’t considered.

With
my hands still in the air, “Hey, man, what do you think people are gonna say
when they see the video from your dashcam? You really want everybody knowing
this is how the parish acts on a traffic stop? And what the hell you gonna tell
your dispatcher when they ask you about your status?”

He
holstered his heater. “Don’t make much of a damn to me
what
they think,
son. Ain’t nobody gonna know. Told the dispatcher I cancelled the call.” He
ogled me like a pervert on a playground. “And the camera ain’t on.”

***

It
was 3:15 in the morning. On that end of 116, the houses were few and far
between. We’d turned onto a gravel road that stymied at an old cemetery. Nobody
lived down there so the threat of passing traffic was nominal. There were no
houses for a few miles, and no one was coming to help. If he so desired, Harley
could’ve shot us, zipped us up in the cadaver bags from the trunk of his
cruiser, and said he’d found the Caddy abandoned on the side of the road. The
parish we were in let their deputies take the cars home after work; covering us
with loose dirt in a shallow grave could be handled after his shift. Nobody
would’ve cared about two druggies disappearing from existence (if you think
none of this is possible, you don’t know the cops in Louisiana.)

For
the first time since we got pulled over, I was seriously concerned for our
lives.

Throughout
this clear-cut abuse of power, I never forgot about the eightball of glass mere
feet from our altercation.

***

Harley
reached down and grabbed Jay by the front of his shirt. Stood him up straight. He
was groggy and weaving. Without warning, he cocked back his right hand and
punched Jay in the mouth so hard he flew back and hit the Caddy. The driver’s
side door had remained open and the nape of his neck met the edge of the car’s
frame to give a worrisome
crack!
as
his head
whipped back and smacked the roof. My defenseless friend shriveled to the
ground. He coughed two times and spit out three teeth in the rocky roadway. He
didn’t move.

I
was speechless, which is a rare thing for me. The dirty deputy glowered at me.
Maybe he’d expected benediction for his unlawful show of “public safety.” But
friend or no friend, I wasn’t interested in becoming an alligator’s full belly
in some swamp of the Deep South.

Content
with having humiliated Jay for having his way with his mother all those years
ago, Harley’s voice held a sense of placidness when he spoke.

“Do
you have a license?”

I
resisted the urge to wage obscenity. “Yeah. I do.”

“Lemme
see it.”

I
gave him my license. He scanned it quickly, making sure it was current. That’s
all he
could
do really, since he’d told his dispatcher he was available.
He didn’t recognize my name from high school, which almost made me break into
song. Harley handed it back to me and looked down at Jay’s unmoving form on the
ground.

“Pick
this
mother
fucker up. Y’all get outta here.” He spoke to my soul with
his next statement: “If I catch y’all out here again, I swear to God, I’ll kill
both of you. Ya understand, boy?” I had no doubt.