Velociworld

BACK ISLAND TRASH

Back when I was a youngster, between gigs as they say, I was a cabinet maker. On Wilmington Island, where I lived. Very nice custom stuff, and I was proud of my handicraft, but I worked with some bizarro fuckers: Fat Jack, Red, Randy Jack, Li'l Chris, Nigger Boy, Biggun. Good guys, but sordid bastards, if that makes sense. They were known, collectively by everyone, as Back Island Trash. I was one for a while.

We would work from 7 AM until 3PM, and then toss horseshoes on the playing field at May Howard Elementary, and drink red liquor, always Crown Royal, for three or four hours. It worked beautifully for me, as The Bride was working the 3 to 11 at the Sheraton Savannah Inn and Country Club, and so I had this, this time to kill. Which I dids.

Fisticuffs would break out on occasion, because there were disputes over leaners, and such. Even though we all wore tape measures like I wear a cell phone now. We needed micrometers, apparently. But all good fights end in comraderie, and another drink, right?

Some background: Li'l Chris walked into the C&S bank branch on Wilmington Island when he was 19 years old, wearing a ski mask and brandishing a shotgun, and demanded ALL the money they possessed. "Sure, Chris," they said, and gave him a thousand dollars. He was quite pleased, and rode his bicycle home, all four blocks. He was picked up in 20 minutes, and served three years. Lucky boy. This was before mandatory sentencing.

Fat Jack had a decent house, actually, and threw an oyster roast every Saturday, when in season. As I would at times. We were the community pillars of the Back Island Trash coterie, and the others seemed to look up to us, when not planning to gut us.

Nigger Boy: David wasn't actually black, but I swear in the five years I knew him no one ever called him by his real name. I suspect this had something to do with the fact he had lost his license so badly after so many DUI's the Georgia General Assembly likely passed a Nigger Boy Law, wherein he would never drive again, ever, lifetime revocation, and so he bicycled around the island, and only made it to the mainland if he could cop a ride. A sad case.

Randy Jack looked like the bass player from ZZ Top, only with lice. Good guy, actually, except for the fact he could not control his brother, Biggun.

Biggun: he was the Primal Force here. At about 300 hundred pounds he was a liquor swilling fiend. Story: we once went camping at Bloody Point, on Daufuskie Island, before they developed it, and only Gullahs lived there. Biggun was hammered, of course, wearing the Crown, and the dogs Alanon and Ragashack had ridden roughshod over our food, so we were pissed anyway, and this kid named Michael had decided to talk some sense into Biggun. Bad, bad move. After about 20 minutes of hectoring, Biggun picked Michael up by the throat and proceeded to lay a most egregious pummeling on him. It was horrible. Especially since, after he was finished, no one had the balls to fire up a boat and take this guy for medical treatment, some one hour away. I had no boat myself, and so stood in the shadows and observed. The consensus was Michael should have kept his mouth shut in the first place. You didn't poke an enraged Biggun. It was Darwinian, is all. What a fucking beat down.

I almost forgot Bucky. He was such a damned derelict he couldn't even get a job sweeping the floors at the cabinet shop. He was also a bicycle case, having lost his driver's license at, like, 16, through multiple DUI's. His claim to fame was to have pissed off some hard cases so badly one night that they not only took a knife to his face, but they carved verticle slits in his eyebrows, so that, even after the wounds healed, he had a continual expression of surprise on his face, like a freaking clown. Scarred for life? That be Bucky.

I think about these guys from time to time. Never miss them, but I think it would be hoss to throw a game of shoes with them, for old time's sake. I hear Biggun got sober, and lost 100 pounds, and found Jesus. I hope so. As for the rest of them? Who knows? More importantly, who cares?

Wheels within wheels. Who said that?